The Freelance Diaries: The Caffeinated Project Manager

18 comments — written on January 14th, 2010

As part of the series on earning more money, today’s Money Diaries — actually, today’s Freelance Diaries — is from a project manager who left his fulltime job to work as a freelancer.

Below, you’ll notice:

• He now makes 3 times what he made at his fulltime job — but he still nets less overall
• His tactics for managing his clients
• Weaving lifestyle (video games from 3:30pm – 6:00pm) with work

Be sure to sign up at Earn1k to get specific scripts on increasing your rates, managing clients, and using psychology against yourself to keep motivated.

* * *

“I’m a freelance project manager. Which I know sounds weird. Project management, I always thought, was one of those made-up corporate jobs, kind of like that one guy from Office Space who deals with people so the engineers don’t have to. You’ve seen it, right? Of course you have.

In reality, project management basically just means I get paid to make sure things get done. It’s incredibly valuable to companies that are disorganized or run tight deadlines. The hard part is packaging it because it’s not often perceived as high-value (kind of like how most people think they know how to write well).

The trick for me is, I never position myself as a project manager when first pitching to a client. I’m usually brought on to do something small, like a writing project or a PR project. At some point, the client realizes their organization/communication flow used to suck and I’m making it better. So after that I usually just end up being a project manager. That’s the classic “sell them what they want, give them what they need” technique, I guess.

Anyways, here’s my Diary.”

Day 1

6 am: Wake up. Yeahhh, freelancing doesn’t always mean you get to sleep all day. Although sometimes it does!

7am: Drive over to a coffee shop to start working. I have noticed that good, work-friendly coffee shops (meaning they don’t have screaming children or broken tables) are rare. The only one in town worth going to costs $5 a cup, and parking there sucks. But it’s worth it. My time is important, so I try to save it any way I can.

8am: I spend a few hours at the coffee shop doing some work, following up on deadlines, shooting emails. No interruptions or random requests from clients, which is nice. I know you’re not supposed to leave your email open all day (the 4-Hour Workweek people tell me so) but whatever. I like to be responsive to clients, and I have a good process for handling email already.

2pm: My productivity level is dropping off. I guess that’s why I get up at 6 to work. Once I hit that “I don’t feel like working anymore” zone, I usually stop and pick it back up in ...

]]> http://www.walkwithmoney.com/the-freelance-diaries-the-caffeinated-project-manager/feed/ 1 http://www.walkwithmoney.com/price-targeting-coffee-shops-and-supermarket-secrets/ http://www.walkwithmoney.com/price-targeting-coffee-shops-and-supermarket-secrets/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:20:09 +0000 Robert Wilkinson http://www.walkwithmoney.com/price-targeting-coffee-shops-and-supermarket-secrets/ >>>>The Undercover EconomistFreakonomics]]>

>>>><<<<I recently startedeag href="ht:/ww.mon/amazon.php?asin=0345494016">>>>>The Undercover Economist<<<< by Tim Harford. So far, it’s a small like >>>>Freakonomics<<<< but a bit a lot much more economics and with considerably a lot less controversial topics.

one inating conce ein was cost-focusing on. Let’s say a coffee retailer has to invest 50 cents to make a cup of coffee, this type of as labor and supplies but not rent. Now, each and every individual strolling by has a specific set off cost. If the coffee is less costly than their personal set off cost, they buy, and if the coffee is much much more costly, they do not buy.

In a totally effective market, a individual would be sincere about their set off cost, and a company could market their coffee to anyone whose set off cost is much more than 50 cents. A frugal individual may stroll up and make investments seventy 5 cents, although a spendthrift coffee addict in a rush would make investments $4 for the exact precise exact same cup. Obviously, this wouldn’t function in the real planet, so retailers have to uncover a way about this. Obtaining people to make investments as shut to their set off cost as possible is known as cost-focusing on.

Fairly, you have the present Starbucks menu = an entire wall of caffeinated options differing considerably by roast, dimension, flavoring, and preparing. When I require to get out of the house, I generally go in and get an iced coffee for about $two. They will add milk, or I can add it myself and you can ...

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