The “Power of Now" Can Help Freelancers Starting Out On Their Journey

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 5th November 2018.

Perhaps there has never been a time in human history when so many workers were starting out their work journey alone. We are all called freelancers, but we come from many diverse backgrounds and skills with the common goal of making a fair and reasonable living, often in the global internet community.

We all share a commitment to changing our future, but having the right mindset for the journey is important.

When I was financial planner, I had a client who lost her husband in her early twenties. Mary (not her real name) had two children and her husband of about the same age had died of cancer after a six months battle with an aggressive form of melanoma that spread throughout his body.

After several months we had worked out the best financial plan with superannuation entitlements from her husband’s estate and government support possible for a young widow.

Over a cup of coffee and reviewing the results of the plan, I asked her what she was going to do. I had expected her to be totally demoralized, but she smiled at me radiantly over her cup and said: “Now, I am going to start a business.”

The photo of her two girls was sitting on the kitchen mantelpiece. That is the “Power of Now”! It is an important mindset that all freelancers should share.

Steve Pavlina has written a blog post about Eckhart Tolle’s New York Times listed bestselling book The Power of Now. You can read his post here.

Now, having read how impressed Steve Pavlina was with The Power of Now look inside the cover and see the index and then read the preview by clicking here.

Motivate Yourself!

“From an early age I didn’t buy into the value
systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I
thought creativity, friendship and loyalty and
pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable
was much more interesting.”

– Adam Clayton

Where Can You Run A Cyber Security Testing Service As A Freelancer?

Imagine that you lived in a rural town and the main town’s employer where you worked closed because of international competition. It does not matter in which country your rural town is located. What you need to know is that you can motivate yourself to change your circumstances. The internet makes this possible.

I have asked the question in the title about cyber security testing for a reason. It is because it is listed high on Upwork’s 20 fastest-growing skills for freelancers in Q1 2018. You can see the list here.

Freelancers from around the world are having a social conversation about this skill and whether they can run a freelancing cyber security testing business and how to go about it. Here is an example of one of the conversations here.

If you had read this article and started to be motivated to find out what the future for this industry is and what is the reason for the demand, this article will show you here.

The size of the business activity of cybercrime is astounding when you consider that it is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of many countries. See the International Monetary Fund ranking here. It is bigger than Australia’s GDP!

For people looking to establish a freelancing business, this is a good choice. If you want to read more about cyber security testing click here.

Productivity Tip of the Week

Have You Heard About The One, Three, Five Rule For Productivity?

There are many systems for making freelancers more productive. Some will hit a hot button for you and it will work. Other ideas will not. It is all about your personal preference and what you believe will work for you. Often it is necessary to try systems and see if they work for you or not.

It is important to give ideas a good try before making an evaluation. From my point of view, my role is to present you with articles and ideas that will make you more productive. This quote by Robin Williams is very appropriate because for freelancers it is very true:

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can
change the world” – Robin Williams

For Robin Williams’s fans who can remember the scene from the Dead Poets Society, you can revisit it from the link below.

Nick Burka has written I just want to do One Big Thing for the Minimal Hero blog which you can read here.

Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week

Freelancing From Home And Being A Successful Parent

Traditional careers are on their way out, but most people
are not in this for an alternative career. They are in this
for the kids.

This is a quote from the article a Third of Freelancers Consider Kids to Be More Important than a Traditional Career. The article was written by Chirag Kulkarni and appears on the Entrepreneur.com website here.

If you have a family and are working from home you will not be surprised by this finding. It does not matter whether you started down the freelancer path when the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2008 or not, freelancing is increasingly looking like the future of work for many people. This means that work-life balance and productivity are increasingly to the fore because you want quality time with your family.

This one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful because it supports freelancing and families generally with customer service membership programs that are made for good time management and work-life balance.

Freelancers with a family are always on the lookout for top tips for work-life balance and we are too so we can share them with you.

Here is 8 tips for freelancing from home without ignoring your kids by Preston Lee which appears in the Millo blog which you can read here. If you have ideas to share, contact us via the form at the bottom of this newsletter.

Financial Tip of the Week

Do You Know What Your Average Income Is?

Knowing your target average income is one of the essential building blocks for developing a good budget for your freelancing business. It is only when you have calculated your target average income that you can come to grips with a realistic budget. It also enables you to calculate what you should be able to save and start to trim your expenses to reach your net income goal.

When you go to see your financial planner, which I recommend, it will be one of the first questions asked. The question is asked because if you don’t know, as a freelancer or business person, it means that you do not have a realistic business plan on which to build a financial plan for your life and your family.

When you approach a bank for a business loan or a housing loan they will want to know what your average income is. Katie Lane has written Tips for Freelancers which is published in Work Made for Hire and you can read here. This book is especially written for freelancers and the self-employed:

Drought News

The www.abc.net.au is keeping a full coverage of the drought crisis in Eastern Australia and you can read about it here. You can learn how you can help the farmers here .

I will maintain the links for the New Economy articles which are skills and job-focused training. You can read one such article by clicking on the link: Training choices matter for freelancers and career changers.

There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer according to Upwork’s 2nd Quarter Skills Index for 2018, see here.

Articles now on our website that are relevant are listed here:

There will be more over the coming months.

Amazon News

Artificial intelligence is disrupting and transforming industries and one of the leading companies in the world in using AI is Amazon. Steven Levy has written Inside Amazon’s artificial intelligence flywheel for www.wired.com which you can read about here.

The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for AWS freelancers.

Amazon Associates Website Case Study

The latest article on BestSellersHourly.com Amazon Case Study website is entitled Smart choices matter for millennial families – 15 reasons why! which you can read here.

Freelancers And Cyber Security

Pinterest: In view of the recent hack of Reddit we have decided to link to the Australian Bankers Association fact sheet entitled Small Business – Protecting Your Business Information Online which you can access here. We urge you look at other Fact Sheets that are available from the Association as well related to business and personal security.

We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers. Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant.

He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books: