Leaping into freelancing can be scary.

We’ve all heard stories of freelancers with no time, stress overwhelming their personal life and an occasional sleepless night in the week.

Freelancers are a breed of individuals that work long hours in the pursuit of freedom from routine jobs and a boss. Pursuing this line of work can put you in tricky situations and help you discover your true calling.

For many, freelancing is a long, unknown road in the pitch black, but there are many elements that are brand new with many surprises along the way.

In this article, we thought we’d share a few things to consider before you take the leap into the world of freelancing.

1. There’s lots of work!

As we all know, clients for a freelancer are the bread and butter of the work. Making sure that you have enough clients to keep the cashflow is an important element of freelancing.

There are countless stories of clients dropping their freelance counterparts after a few weeks of working with them due to monetary pressures or the need for their team to take the project on internally. This is only natural.

The one question that many don’t ask themselves is how long and how likely their clients will work with them. Plotting out your roadmap of clients is one of best chances of you working out what’s coming next.

Planning as if all goes wrong is another strategy, lining up new clients and expanding your outreach will help to reduce that stress of being dropped.

2. Have you tried being a manager?

There’s an expectation for those going into freelancing to know that they are a freelancer. You don’t truly know anything until you’ve been thrown in the deep end and had the scars to see whether it is for you.

As opposed to being a natural freelancer, you might be a manager, a leader, or even a business owner, all of these aspects can be overlooked.

Knowing who you are and the best style of work for you is so important.

This is something many people don’t consider before making the jump to see if they are a more effective manager than a freelancer. But you’ll only know by constant exploration.

3. Chances of mastering work/life balance are thin

Starting out as a freelancer is pretty mad! The idea of being on your own with no boss sounds exciting but the practically, freelancing can make it very tricky to balance between your workload and personal life.

Although not impossible, the long hours and sacrifice of being a freelancer means you might have to regrettably stay up late, burn through family events or even stop some of your hobbies in the pursuit of progress.

There’s some hope, reading self-development books can help you put the work/life balance in perspective and also help you with strategies to reduce the chances of working on ineffective projects. These tactics can provide a solution to this work/life balance problem, but a lot of sleep and quality time with friends and family can be lost in this adventure.

This is something you need to be made aware of as you begin your journey as many believe freelancing can be the door to freedom, which it is, but disregard the elements of stress, pressure and accountability.