“You can freelance if God gave you \u2014 I’m not going to take it from you.”<\/p>\n
That’s what my boss said when I told him I wanted to take side projects. He said it proudly, with the air of a man granting a favor to a loyal employee. He liked to brag \u2014 always positioning himself as the generous one, the mentor, the guy who gave young developers their start. The statement sounded supportive. It felt like a green light.<\/p>\n
It was a test. And I failed it \u2014 not by freelancing, but by succeeding at it.<\/p>\n
The “permission” I’d been given was conditional on me never actually landing a client. The moment I did, the narrative flipped. I wasn’t an entrepreneur he’d supported. I was a traitor who’d exploited his generosity. The blessing disappeared the second it became real.<\/p>\n
That’s the thing about verbal agreements in an industry with no contracts: they’re worth exactly as much as the other person’s mood at any given moment. What’s allowed today is betrayal tomorrow. There’s no paper trail, no documentation, no way to prove the conversation ever happened. You’re left with your word against theirs, and they have the platform.<\/p>\n
I learned an expensive lesson from that experience: in this industry, if it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist. Permission from a boss who sees you as competition is not permission \u2014 it’s a leash with a long slack.<\/p>\n
My first independent client was a hardware retailer from Elma. He already had an online store \u2014 a broken one built on a cracked theme that was falling apart. But this was his second e-commerce attempt, so he had experience. He knew what he wanted, what questions to ask, what a working store should look like. I didn’t need to convince him of anything. He just needed someone who could build it properly.<\/p>\n
That project was the turning point. Not because it paid a lot \u2014 it paid fairly, but nothing life-changing. But because it showed me there were clients out there who valued competence over salesmanship. He didn’t care about my CS degree or my tech stack. He cared about whether the site would work for his customers. We agreed on scope, timeline, and budget in one meeting. No back-and-forth. No price haggling. No endless revisions.<\/p>\n
That’s a rare kind of client, and I didn’t appreciate how rare until later. Most clients don’t know what they want. They need you to guide them, educate them, sometimes even convince them that they need a website at all. But when you find someone who’s been through the process before \u2014 who’s been burned by a bad dev and knows what good looks like \u2014 the project practically runs itself.<\/p>\n
My second client was the opposite. A single-page showcase site, urgent, needed it fast. I worked 9 or 10 hours straight to get it done. Rushed the build, cut corners on testing, submitted it. The client was happy at first. Then the payment came in \u2014 20,000 out of 30,000 DA. The remaining 10,000 never arrived. He ghosted me.<\/p>\n
That 10,000 DA was a cheap lesson in the long run. I learned: never rush. A rushed project attracts clients who don’t respect the work, and those are exactly the clients who won’t pay the full amount. If someone needs a site in record time, that urgency is usually a sign of poor planning on their end \u2014 and you’ll end up absorbing the cost of their disorganization.<\/p>\n
I also learned to ask for at least 50% upfront before writing a single line of code. It’s not about distrust. It’s about making sure both sides have skin in the game. A client who pays nothing upfront has no real commitment to the project. And when things get difficult \u2014 and they always get difficult \u2014 an uncommitted client is the first to walk away.<\/p>\n
If I could go back, I’d start building client relationships earlier \u2014 not necessarily taking projects, but networking and proving value before I needed the income. I’d have a portfolio ready before I started pitching. I’d have testimonials from pro bono or discounted work. I’d treat freelancing like a real business from day one, not a side experiment.<\/p>\n
The boss’s fake blessing was a warning sign I chose to ignore because I wanted to believe it was real. If someone “allows” you to freelance but makes sure everyone knows they’re doing you a favor, they’re not supporting you. They’re positioning themselves to take credit if you succeed and distance themselves if you fail. It’s a no-lose situation for them and a no-win situation for you.<\/p>\n
If you’re working at a small agency and thinking about freelancing, here’s what I wish someone told me: don’t ask for permission. Build your skills and your network quietly, on your own time, with your own hardware. When you’re ready to leave, leave cleanly and don’t look back. The “blessing” of a boss who sees you as competition is worth nothing \u2014 less than nothing, because it gives you a false sense of security.<\/p>\n
And when you take on your first clients, choose carefully. A client who knows what they want and treats the project as a partnership is worth ten rush jobs from people who haven’t planned anything. The money will come with the quality of the relationships, not the speed of the delivery. I learned that the hard way \u2014 but at least I learned it before the losses got bigger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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