Summary

The author reflects on four key mistakes made before leaving their 9–5 job, emphasizing the importance of audience building, offering freebies, engaging on Twitter, and being confident in consulting to accelerate self-employment success.

Abstract

In a personal retrospective, the author outlines four pivotal oversights encountered during their transition from traditional employment to self-employment. These include not taking audience building seriously enough, undervaluing the impact of offering freebies to attract an audience, joining Twitter later than ideal, and not charging for their expertise through consulting earlier. The author provides actionable advice on how to rectify these mistakes, such as engaging with peers on Twitter, creating and promoting a freebie, and setting up a consulting page to monetize knowledge. They advocate for these strategies as means to enhance credibility, foster growth, and create genuine connections with an audience that values and is willing to pay for the creator's insights and offerings.

Opinions

The author believes that building an authentic audience is more valuable than merely accumulating followers, as true fans are more likely to engage and purchase products or services.
Offering a freebie is seen as a highly effective method for building an email list, gaining trust, and even generating passive income.
Twitter is highlighted as a crucial platform for creators to connect with like-minded individuals, share ideas, and promote their work, with the potential to lead to successful projects and sold-out courses.
The author advises against giving away expertise for free to those who are not genuinely interested in learning, suggesting that setting up a consulting service is a better approach to sharing knowledge and creating an income stream.
There is an underlying tone of regret for not implementing these strategies sooner, but also a sense of empowerment and learning from these experiences to guide others on their self-employment journey.
The author encourages readers to overcome the initial overwhelm and self-doubt

I Wish I Didn’t Make These Four Mistakes Before I Quit My 9–5

I’ll show you how you can pursue them, too.

I resigned a year ago, a few months before I turned 25. I’ve been self-employed for ten months now.

I’ve written extensively about side hustling and self-employment, and how you can quit your 9–5.

But I’m growing in my journey too. And looking back, I wish I did these four things before I quit my job. It would’ve helped me make more money and move faster on my journey.

But since I cannot undo it, I hope you can learn from what I missed.

Take Audience Building Seriously

I’ll admit that it’s still fun and play for me because having fun helps me be consistent. That being said, I wish I took it more seriously earlier.

Here’s why

It adds to your credibility
It helps you grow
Your true fans want your products and services

I didn’t know all this would matter because when people talk about building an ‘audience’, they’re usually referring to followers.

The two aren’t the same.

Only one of them can be bought. Only one of them is genuine. Only one of them engage with you.

You know which one.

How to start?

By engaging with other people in your niche on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn and publishing enough. Also, have a CTA (call to action) on your profile to build a mailing list.

This actually brings me to…

Launching a Freebie

This can help you make money.

This can help you build an audience.

This can help you add value and gain trust.

Why aren’t more people doing this? I’ve had articles go viral that solely talk about how launching a freebie can make you money.

For over a year, I tried to build an audience with my newsletter CTA. Right now, my freebie that was launched less than 15 weeks ago, has more customers than my newsletter.

I still love my newsletter because it's my little personal corner. But people love free things. This is the easiest way to get to them and build your email list.

How to start?

Here’s a step-by-step plan:

Choose what to make (video, checklist, email course, ebook)
Upload it on Gumroad
Put on pay-what-you-want
Add it as a CTA across platforms

I also use Hypefury to schedule tweets around my freebie and the software automatically DMs people too. You can use my affiliate link here to sign up if you want to grow your Twitter.

Join Twitter Earlier

I sit for an hour to schedule 35 tweets for the week.

I will forever be grateful to Twitter. Here’s why:

It helped me build a tribe of people I’m so glad I connected with
I put out a tweet as an experiment
That tweet then collected emails and invited them to a course
The course did well, and now it gets sold out.
It helps me get ideas for articles
It helped me become a better writer by writing more but with less (thanks to limited character count)

If you’re a writer or creator, jump on the bandwagon already. Plus, you can always copy-paste your tweets on platforms like LinkedIn.

I use Hypefury to sit for an hour and schedule 35 tweets for the week.

And the rest is on autopilot. No, they haven’t paid me to write this, but I genuinely love the platform so much that I write about them often.

How to start?

Create an account
Follow 5 people in your niche
Discover 5 more people through them
Engage with 10 people a day
Post a 3–5 tweets every day

Being Confident About Consulting

If you know something well, you can charge for it.

Or you can get on a call with somebody every day and burn your energy.

This doesn’t go for online pals you vibe with, of course. Getting on calls and building relationships is all cool. But this is for:

those who want to genuinely learn from you
lazy people who want to extract your knowledge for free

Each time I get a DM from someone who wants to ‘pick my brains’ about how I did what I’m doing, I lead them to a consulting page.

I tried a fancy consulting software but now I just direct people to my Gumroad page. Here’s what the cover looks like:

This can help you

build an income stream
help somebody reach their goals
it’s genuinely fun!

Yeah, it doesn’t give you passive income and all that jazz, but getting paid for an hour of speaking to somebody about what you already know is fantastic.

Out of 20 people, 19 won’t be interested because people don’t like to put skin in the game and invest. But one probably will, and that’s money made right there.

How to start?

Create a page on Gumroad or Payhip
Whenever somebody DMs you to ‘pick your brains’, lead them to this link.

Maybe I didn’t do all this so I could have a bit of regret and let you know. Maybe… who knows?

This may sound overwhelming in the beginning and you may think of the magical two words, which is the reason most people fail:

I can’t.

I encourage you to try.

See where it takes you.

Take a chance on yourself.

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