successful freelancer

In episode 19 of The Product Design Podcast, Seth Coelen interviews Peter Loving, Founder of User Active, his agency where they create software interfaces that users love. He is a Product Designer based in Barcelona and originally from London in the UK.

Peter transitioned from a degree in product design focused on interior lighting and furniture but quickly realized that the toolkit he gathered in this area easily translated into UX and software design. He shares with us his journey into freelance and then how he founded and has grown his agency from there! 

During our interview with Peter you will learn:

💡Peter’s journey from designing interior lighting and furniture to UX design
🔥 How to get started in freelance and the strategies that make it work long term
📢 Finding leads from cold calls to personal and professional connections
💪 Building an agency when the freelance work requires more time and a larger range of skills
🎯 How to motivate the team you are building
🤔 What Peter looks for when he is adding to his team

👍 If you enjoyed this episode please like and subscribe so I can keep making content for you good people!

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Make sure to follow Peter after the podcast to stay on top of what he is up to!

• Twitter: @lovingpeter
• LinkedIn: Peter Loving & UserActive
• YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC90U-MSOnqflTzfBNz10_xA
• Website: https://www.useractive.io/

Thanks for listening to The Product Design Podcast with Seth Coelen, CEO at UX Cabin!

Where to find UX Cabin:
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/uxcabin
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uxcabin/
💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uxcabin
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uxcabin?lang=en
📹 YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/UXCabin
🎨 dribbble: https://dribbble.com/uxcabin
⌨️ Website: https://uxcabin.com
✍️ Blog: https://www.uxcabin.com/blog

In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to have a self-employment mindset in all aspects of your life. If you’re going to be a true entrepreneur, your personal life must reflect the entrepreneur’s mindset. It’s not just about your work life here. This career choice bleeds into every part of your existence.

As a self-employed person, you can’t care what other people think of you. It’s important that you challenge the social norm and that you’re always looking to create rather than consume. If you want to know what kind of person you need to be to successfully be self-employed, today’s episode is for you.

0:00 – Introduction
4:29 – What Does It Mean To Be Self-Employed?
9:02 – You Can’t Care What Others Think Of You Or Your Choices
11:47 – You’re Always Developing Your Skills
15:49 – Separating Out All The Voices In Your Head
20:14 – Making Sure No One Is Hijacking Your Mind
25:44 – Outro

In this episode we discuss:

• How Tom got started freelancing
• Landing the first client
• Do you need to be able to "sell yourself" to make it as a freelancer?
• Getting out of the "feast/famine" cycle that traps many freelancers
• What are the biggest mistakes that most people make when first starting out as freelancers?
• What would Tom do if he was starting over again today?
• Should you use marketplaces/platforms like UpWork to sell your services as a freelancer?
• Is it important to choose a niche? 
• Where Tom gets virtually all of his new leads from
• The advantages of "working in public"
• Finding success on Twitter
• Tom's viral Twitter thread on pricing freelance projects ( https://twitter.com/tom_hirst/status/1277933730078785537
• How to create additional sources of income as a freelancer (besides client work)
• Translating freelance expertise into creating and selling content online
• Tom's new agency, Run the Show (https://twitter.com/rtsagency) that specializes in Headless Wordpress
• What is "Headless Wordpress" and why would someone use it?

You can find links to all of the resources we discussed and more on Tom's website here: https://www.tomhirst.com/links/