In this article I want to share with you how I was able to launch a successful freelance career, how to replace a day job with freelancing, and start a whole new adventure for myself and my family!
Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I started a new career at 34, transitioning from real estate to bookkeeping because I stumbled upon it and I was really good at it! I educated myself on everything I needed to learn about one software platform and really just dove in. Now I made numerous mistakes along the way and I ended up writing a book about HOW I did all these things and what all I learned, but more on that later!
In 2020 I was working a full time job as an accountant with a decent salary in rural Arkansas ($55,000 a year) and I also had full health benefits and retirement, which is something I hadn’t had for over 10+ years due to my real estate career. It was the stability I’d been looking for for awhile but I quickly realized that 1 40 hours a week job did not work for my personality.
So I really wanted to learn more about how to replace a day job with freelancing. Because my biggest issue was that I could get that entire job done in about 20 hours a week and the rest of the time I had to sit in my office and pretend I was working. The first few months of that I took more and more classes online to further my education. I have always loved learning so this was something I always gravitated towards. But after awhile I just felt like I could be doing so much more. I realized that I could be making MORE money, helping more people, utilizing these skills I’d learned.
Client #1 was a word of mouth referral. I met them in the halls of my original day job and they had already heard everybody singing my praises of how I’d come in and cleaned up messy books and he asked me if I could clean up his books evenings and weekends around my day job and I said absolutely.
So I did just that and sat out on weekends primarily to work on his books which worked well for me because he knew I had a full time day job and he wasn’t expecting me to complete anything super quickly. That client told someone else about what I had done for him and recommended another local company to me. This was pre-covid so people were shocked I could work remotely from home and still help solve their problems while not costing as much in overhead.
By this point I had done or completed 3 successful projects/clients within this same new niche and I felt confident to go online to my freelancer profile on Upwork and add my new skill set. And boy did a whole new adventure begin!
Within 3 months of having this new skill listed on Upwork I had a found more new clients. I had found the budding sucess on how to replace a day job with freelancing. Now I didn’t sit around those few months. I was working my existing clients, my day job AND constantly looking for new clients on Upwork and applying to opening position. In the beginning it seemed like 90% I’d never even get an interview for. But with a newer freelancer profile and less experience, you have to really earn your way in the trenches and just don’t ever give up because each month it gets easier!
By month 4 I was making MORE than my regular take home salary and I made the choice to lose the health benefits, lose the stability, and go out on my own full time! I launched my LLC then, in June I believe and was off to the races.
I feel like the biggest reason I had continual success comes down to a few solid factors:
- I had monthly and yearly goals and regularly checked in with myself. These were clearly defined, monetary goals in gross monthly income as well as number of clients.
- I stuck with it day in and day out, whether I had a good day or not.
- I treated my clients like my best friends. I was genuinely good to them, I was not just professional but I wanted to make them feel like family and I would say half of my client list now are clients I’ve had from my first year in business. So when you treat people like family AND successfully perform the job they hired you to do, or continually solve the problem they need you to solve, you will retain the client!
But if you’d love more information about how to replace a day job with freelancing, replace a $55,000 salary office job with a work from home, freelancing, self-employed career to bring in $55,000 my first year, keep reading!
After 4+ years in freelance and growing a successful small firm that has made over 6 figures multiple years in a row, I wrote a book! I wanted to help other people who feel trapped by the 9-5, who yearn for time freedom, or who have a creative skill they’ve been wishing they could turn in a full time gig!
So being as I’ve been a writer since I was a pre-teen, I wanted to share everything I learned in written form, to try to reach as many people as possible! You don’t have to be a mom, don’t have to be 34, you could be a 19 year old young man or even a 60 year old woman looking to supplement income!
The thing is, if you’re looking for some time and financial freedom, then you should give this book a read because what do you have to lose? It’s less than $10 and will likely take you less than 3 hours to read cover to cover and best case, you’ve learned amazing new skills and tips on how to hit the races running!
You can check out my book on Amazon here, it’s a very quick read!
If you’re just curious though and not ready to commit, I’d like to offer you the first 5 chapters of my book for free when you opt in to join my reader newsletter! You can find the link on my website https://booksbyelizabethrichey.com/ on how to sign up with just your email and then the pdf of the book will be emailed to you! If you go this route, please do let me know what you think of it!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and if so why not give me a follow or subscribe, as I’m always sharing more about great places to eat, Airbnb recommendations, traveling, health tips, recipes and more! Thanks for the read!
If you’d like to read my personal story, you can find it here!
xoxo,
Elizabeth Richey
About the Author: Elizabeth Richey, living and thriving in rural Arkansas, Aquarian and iced coffee enthusiast. When she’s not writing, gardening, playing with her chocolate lab Maple or sharing videos on YouTube (Elizabeth’s Many Adventures) you can find her enjoying time with her family or traveling somewhere new! Most of the time she’s dreaming of being kicked back in her hammock in her cottage garden listening to the birds sing.
Photo of author on her travels with family, in Galveston Island, Texas
