How I made $100k in my first year as a freelancer

For those who desperately want a life filled with global adventure but weren’t born rich, there are only a few careers we traditionally think of that offer the physical freedom to make that kind of travel possible.

You can work in travel, tourism and hospitality, in a role that puts you on the move.

You can get a job in sales for a company with global reach.

You can wander the planet, taking up odd jobs as you go.

You can save all of your money for years and years, probably hating life as you do so, then sell everything you own, and live off of that savings.

Or, you can join the ranks of digital nomads, living the so-called laptop lifestyle, earning money from the internet in some vague, possibly shady way. Right?

Just like people who think travel is only for the affluent or the retired (and most certainly not for them, the cubicle worker earning $40,000 with 2 weeks of vacation per year), it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we can only break free from our daily grind under some unlikely, unachievable circumstance.

But in 2018 when I was laid off from my corporate marketing job with two weeks’ severance, I decided to turn my unexpected freedom into an opportunity to prove that assumption wrong and flip the narrative I’d always been fed.

I chose self-employment, on my own terms, doing what I enjoy.

And in my first twelve months of business as a freelance social media consultant, I earned over $100,000.

I had no grand plan to go from zero to six figures. As I rang in the new year, 2017 becoming 2018, I had no idea what the year would hold for me.

I certainly was not expecting that in just a few weeks, I’d find myself jobless.

So let’s be clear: this is not a story about courageously quitting your job to work for yourself.

I am certain that without a real hit, I would never have had a reason to get up. My perfectionism and procrasti-planning would have probably kept me treading water at this or that job for several more years until I burned out in some spectacular fashion.

However, it turns out that getting to a six-figure year right out of the gate did happen relatively easily for me, counter to the narrative we’ve all heard about freelancers barely getting by.

And I don’t think I’m some wild exception or business prodigy! This is completely doable - much more so than I’d thought when coddled by the security of a normal 9-5.

Did it always feel easy? Of course not. It was often incredibly isolating. It was (and still is) scary as hell. Even if you have a spouse or family to lean back on if you truly fail, you are still going at this alone, lit only by your own fire.

But even without realizing it, I’d been building towards and setting myself up for this kind of success my whole career.

And there are some lessons in my experience that I think can be useful to others who want this for themselves someday, too.

So here it is. Here’s everything that led me to six figures in my first 12 months in business:

1. I actually never called myself a freelancer, and avoided the term.

For those who want to make actual money, “freelancer” should be a banished term. It has the same connotation as the starving artist, another stereotype I loathe.

When I picture a freelancer, I see someone at a dimly lit kitchen table, hunched over a laptop, scrambling for clients and small jobs to pay rent or buy groceries.

Picture a consultant, though, and what to do you see?

Modern, well-lit board rooms. A polished, confident professional, wearing something that is decidedly not sweatpants, working with well-heeled clients, advising, guiding, making money by telling other people what to do.

Be a consultant. That’s what I did. And you know what?

Because I followed through on that title, and was so much more than a social media manager or content creator, because I acted as a strategic advisor to my clients, I was able to justify prices significantly higher than what some other social media “freelancers" charge.

If you can speak genuinely about strong results you’ve achieved for others, this is a no-brainer for clients who are ready for the transformation you can offer them.

This is about more than what you call yourself.

This is also about how you think about your business. Because it is one.

If you call yourself a freelancer and you consider what you do simply an erratic source of single-person income, you’ll never make as much as the person who forms an LLC right out of the gate, who tracks her business finances, and approaches everything with the rigor of a business owner.

This isn’t just a matter of semantics. This is an important decision.

Are you a freelancer? Or are you building something bigger than yourself?

2. I built a strong professional network before I needed it.

Without a doubt, the number one reason I had such a relatively easy time finding my first few clients is the strong network I already had in place in my community.

When I first moved to Dallas in 2011, I was in the midst of a career change. After working as an executive personal assistant for three years in Austin, thinking I’d eventually figure out a path to becoming a full-time painter (turns out, it’s not just hard, but making-it-in-Hollywood hard), I had the opportunity to move to a bigger city and create a “day job career” that I could both make good money at and enjoy.

So while working at entry-level marketing jobs in Dallas, I took every chance I could get to meet new people in my field and learn about the specialties that interested me. I embraced being a new face in a new city and I put myself out there.

Despite being deeply introverted, I stretched myself thin going to networking and professional events until I found an association that fit what I wanted to do and whose events I didn’t dread attending. Then, I dug my heels in, never missing an event if I could help it.

Over time, I found I was meeting enough of the same people over and over that I could attend without feeling nervous. That face time resulted in more people remembering me and what I wanted to do next. I still met new people, but the real benefit was going deep with a specific group.

And because networking is only valuable when you build real relationships, I focused on getting to know people.

I was vocal about myself and my dreams, but I had no hard sell - I wasn't transactional about it. I just wanted to meet and really connect with people in my field.

In fact, whenever I could, I focused on helping other people. I made myself valuable, instead of seeking value from others.

Through this and other opportunities I created for myself, like speaking on panels and volunteering on the executive team of a nonprofit that let me choose my own title (pro tip: always reach higher than your comfort level), I developed a professional reputation. I was Megan Van Groll, a social media strategist who’s going places. Not a random low-level marketing coordinator.

Within a year, that path landed me at the largest independent advertising agency in the country (a surprise to everyone, especially me), leading social media strategy for household-name brands and working on campaigns of a national and sometimes global scale.

And of course my time there later opened a lot of doors, including many that led to referrals and eventually clients in my new business. But I wouldn’t have gained any of that if I hadn’t built my network first.

So this tip isn’t about landing some coveted job at a famous agency or brand. That can help, but it’s by definition not necessary. (Ultra-competitive jobs are often a crapshoot anyway.)

It’s about organically, naturally building the kind of relationships that can propel you towards whatever it is you want.

So just like you choose your friends, find your people - your professional community. Then go deep. Be genuine, and seek out opportunities to help people.

And show the hell up, in person.

3. I was deeply motivated. This was make or break time, not a side hustle.

There’s nothing quite like a sudden job loss to light a fire under your ass.

Once I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity I’d been handed, I was more energized than ever before to create a business on my own terms - so I could work from wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

(And so I could avoid having to take yet another job that would sacrifice my peace and mental health on behalf of a business I would otherwise not care about.)

Because it happened this way for me, I have a hard time imagining myself in this same scenario with any kind of real employment safety net.

Before the layoff, I always worked demanding jobs that afforded me little time or energy to side hustle. I’m also not one to take any responsibility lightly, so I had a hard time with the idea of simply coasting at work to preserve my energy.

Even if I'd had the time, the path from employee to business owner is typically not an easy one. Your focus is divided.

And it often seems that the moment you take one step forward in your side-hustle business, your job steps in and demands your undivided attention.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to build a business while you hold down a full-time job - many have done it. But there’s also a very good reason many have tried and failed.

This is why losing my job was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Losing my job gave me the focus, drive, and time I needed to do what was necessary to create a business that could sustain me.

So if you find yourself in the same position I did - with no job, in make-or-break mode, please recognize it for the gift it is.

But if you are in the fortunate position to have steady employment while you build your dream on the side, be realistic about the obstacles you’ll face. Understand that you’ll need to be so dedicated to your side hustle that some will think you’re crazy. That your friends will ask what’s happened to you.

You'll need to give it everything you have outside of your job. If you don’t, it’ll always remain a hobby. Which is fine, if you don’t care about generating revenue.

4. I charged by the project, not by the hour, and I (sort of) charged what I was worth.

When I first started out, I absolutely undercharged, relative to my pricing now. But I didn’t go so low that I would have needed 9-10 clients to make up a livable wage.

I also didn’t charge by the hour. On the backend, that is how I price my work: by taking each activity involved in the project, estimating the number of hours, and multiplying by my internal hourly rate.

But the client never sees that hourly figure, because they don’t need to. Instead, they pay for work delivered. This way, the client knows exactly what the final cost and deliverable will be, and they have no incentive to watch my time or question how I spend it.

It’s my job to stay within my estimated hours, of course, which is always a struggle. I cannot stress enough how important it is to track your time down to the minute and communicate clearly with clients about what’s included and what’s not.

But most importantly, I wasn’t afraid to raise my rates with new clients when I realized I’d undercharged the last one.

Even if you’re experienced at the work you do, you may not feel comfortable charging high rates when you first start out, and that’s okay.

But as they say, “If you’re never hearing no, you’re not charging enough."

Once you test the market and hear too many yeses, and then learn what other people with less experience than you are charging, don’t be shy about raising your rates.

In the first 12 months, my internal hourly rate increased several times as I figured it all out. I also got better at estimating how long a project would take me, based on tracking my time on similar projects.

Of course, existing clients pay what they agreed to pay at contract signing, for the length of the contract - that’s the privilege they get for believing in an upstart consultant and signing on early.

But now I confidently charge what I know I’m worth.

What I do creates real value for my clients. The results they get are worth more to them than the price they pay, or they wouldn’t pay.

I’m not for everyone, and that’s fine - because my ideal client is all in on my approach, and is ready to invest in their own success.

5. I didn’t give away my best asset for free. Instead, I productized it and made it a mandatory investment.

When I first started, many of the potential clients who crossed paths with me weren’t right for me or my approach.

They knew they needed help with their social media, but weren’t willing or able to invest in what it takes to do it well: specifically, a thoughtful, data-driven strategy.

I even once had a potential client dismiss the strategy project (and its quite reasonable fee) as something they didn’t need — and in the same breath, ask if “strategy” would still be discussed as part of my monthly content calendars. I withdrew my proposal.

It simply isn't possible for me to jump into a new brand, and create content for a client that is worth a damn, without investing a certain amount of time and energy researching their space, understanding their past performance, and developing a smart strategic plan.

So, I very quickly began to make strategy a required investment to work with me on anything else.

I also turned strategy, something that can be a little nebulous, into a tangible product.

A Social Strategy Playbook™ is something you can hold in your hand when it’s done. It’s a highly customized, printed, bound book that contains actionable plans and becomes a cornerstone guiding document for any team executing social media on behalf of the brand for which it was created.

It’s also produced in such a way that any junior-level team member can execute the strategies within it.

“You won’t need me after this,” I say, truthfully — though clients often still want to work together in an ongoing capacity anyway.

All of this gives clients more confidence about what they’re getting when they work with me, which makes them happy to invest.

6. I STRATEGICALLY PACKAGED MY SERVICES TO GET ME TO $100,000.

It turns out that $100,000 is actually just $8,333 twelve times. Put in that context, six figures feels a lot more achievable, doesn’t it?

To reach that approximate $8k mark, you only need 4 clients paying about $2k, or 2 clients paying $4k.

Sell those clients a service they repeatedly, consistently need, and you can make that same $2k or $4k again and again without having to find new clients each month.

Based on my skills and prior experience, I could have sold a fairly wide array of digital marketing and creative services. But I led with social media, not only because I’m passionate about the medium and have a lot of experience managing it for brands — because social media is a beast that must be constantly fed.

To achieve results on social media, you must consistently create and share fresh content. You must also proactively show up, monitor, and moderate the communities you build.

Even though I offer more than social media to clients, I lead with that because it’s a specific need that businesses have and it’s suitable for a retainer.

Digging my heels into a specialty that inherently requires billable work to be done on a recurring basis turned out to be one of the smartest moves I made in the early stages.

7. I got the help I needed, and quickly.

On the flip side, it became apparent to me very early on that adding more clients would burn me out if I didn’t begin to spread out the work.

Social media was a smart choice in terms of ongoing, recurring revenue — precisely because it requires ongoing time and energy to manage. Even with batching content on a monthly and sometimes bimonthly basis, I still had too many accounts requiring focus and creativity at the same time each month to feel sustainable.

So, I hired it out.

Within 6 months, I’d already hired my first contractor and began giving her the job of creating content calendars, which I would then later review.

Even though I set the creative tone for the month and play a very active role in the feedback and editing process, having someone else start the work and get it most of the way there means my mental energy is freed up to focus on ideas and strategy instead of execution.

This was one of my first indications that perhaps I was building something larger than myself.

Now, I rely on a talented mix of social media managers, ad strategists, copywriters, and designers to make the wheels turn for my clients.

It’s not just me anymore, and that’s a beautiful and necessary thing.

Because if it were just me, I wouldn’t be able to juggle the number of clients required to make the whole thing economically sustainable, even just for myself, and the business wouldn’t survive.

Now, my clients get the best of me, and the best of my team — way better than getting half-baked work from a single overworked strategist who’s too in the weeds to deliver anything but the bare minimum.

8. I surrounded myself with people who support me.

We all know there’s a lot of posturing on social media. Everyone is successful, right? Everyone has thriving businesses! It’s great, you’re great, we’re great, everything’s amazing.

We all want to put our best foot forward. And because women are still operating at a disadvantage, both real and perceived, it can be especially difficult for us to open up about the support systems and communities that enable our businesses to thrive.

But I would be doing a disservice to those who dream of self-employment if I wrote this entire piece about how I managed to make $100,000 in one year if I didn’t talk transparently about the support that enabled me to achieve that.

We don’t talk enough about how important it is to surround yourself with a community of people who get what you’re doing, or at least really genuinely care about your success.

Sometimes, that support is a really kick-ass life partner or significant other. Other times, it’s a group of friends with really good energy who are all in a similar boat as founders and entrepreneurs.

Early on, while debating whether or not to seek another job or go off on my own, I wasn’t making that decision alone. I considered my husband an equal partner in this choice, because if I took the riskier route, he (and our joint savings account) would have to be my safety net.

I’m incredibly lucky that both my parents and my husband saw my potential, maybe even more clearly than I saw it myself, and knew how much happier I’d be working for myself. They were all in on day one. Even before I was totally clear on what I wanted this to look like, I had support.

And by support, I mean that my husband knew my ability to contribute financially would be limited for a while. We crunched the numbers and figured out that while tight and certainly not sustainable, we could do life for a few months without reliable income from my business. And I could join his health insurance, though it would be expensive to do so.

But just as importantly, he didn’t hold that over my head. He understood what it meant to launch a business, as entrepreneurship was the very thing he’d gone to business school to study, and he’d done it himself before.

In fact, he did all of those things happily because he considered himself the first investor in my business. I cannot overstate how much that kind of emotional support means in your earliest days.

Throughout my entrepreneurial journey, I have been relentlessly optimistic about the endless supply of opportunity out there for me. When one door closes, another, better one opens — it’s a simple fact.

But because my family is behind me, that optimism becomes so much easier to call upon when things get tough and doubt creeps in.

Now that I’m further along in my journey, I’m able to invest in additional support like business coaching programs and masterminds, where I’m surrounded by people in the same boat or a better boat, who can show me the way.

But even at the beginning with no budget for that kind of training, I still found a community of likeminded women online — my “biz besties” — to share advice and commiserate with.

I know I am extraordinarily lucky, especially when it comes to my parents, who supported my dream of becoming an artist (that never happens) and later a business owner.

But when it comes to romantic partners, friends, and communities, you get to choose those, so choose carefully and wisely.

—

The funny thing about earning $100k in a year is realizing that it’s not actually that much money - not as a business owner. Your taxes are higher. You’ve got expenses (it takes money to make money!). And if you’re working with contractors, that can be a sizable expense.

Furthermore, when you shift away from a freelancer mindset and truly step into the shoes of a business owner, you don’t even think about the money you earn as your income anymore. It’s revenue.

And what you actually choose to take home from that revenue after expenses, taxes and paying your team is something else entirely (that’s called owner distribution!).

But everyone has to start somewhere, and the lessons you learn on the path to your first $100k will give you the foundation to build a real business on, if that’s what you want to do.

For me, the artist who became a marketer so she could have a better “day job,” realizing that building an agency is not only what I was doing all along, but something I wanted to do, has been one of the biggest plot twists of my life.

I realize now, however, it was always meant to be part of my story.

Onward and upward.

Pin this!