Freelance Your Way to Freedom: How to Free Yourself from the Corporate World and Build the Life of Your Dreams

by Alexandra Fasulo

Master the new realities of work with this step-by-step guide to freelancing

In Freelance Your Way to How to Free Yourself from the Corporate World and Build the Life of Your Dreams, freelancing phenomenon Alex Fasulo delivers a practical, step-by-step guide to navigating the potential and perils of launching your very own side hustle. In the book, the author draws on her own experience transforming a $36,000/year Fiverr side hustle into a million-dollar enterprise. She explains how to manage those critical moments in business when decisions need to be made quickly and without warning.

You’ll find concrete tips and hands-on examples to make the gig economy work for you, Freelance Your Way to Freedom also

The good, the bad, and the ugly about the new work economy Relatable struggles, mindset challenges, and a woman’s perspective on solopreneurship Anecdotes and examples that show you how to apply the advice and guidance contained within A can’t-miss handbook for freelancers, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs, Freelance Your Way to Freedom belongs on the bookshelves of anyone participating or interested in the new world of work.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Self Help

237 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 8, 2022

Reviews

[Jillian B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof, I really disliked this book! There were some practical tips, but also a lot of hustle culture/prosperity gospel/law of attraction stuff that really does not align with my approach to work and life. I think her target audience will like this, it just wasn’t for me.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an established freelancer four years in, but my income is all active (excluding investing income). The book inspired me to think about next steps in how I want to expand my empire! Thanks Alex, I'll be sure to send you a free copy of my forthcoming ebook since you inspired it. 😋

[Megan Meisberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish there was more detail about how to accomplish the things she describes, but it seems it's enough info to get you started. I also would have preferred no New Thought/Law of Attraction stuff.

[Stephanie Farmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Very straightforward and simple read loaded with helpful information! Going to reread and take notes 🫶🏻

[Linduš · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this one up, as i was curious, but now I am a bit disappointed, as it did not have any actual examples and was mainly scratching the surface of topics which many people are already aware of.

[Shubhneet Chawla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book review highlights key insights on achieving financial independence, freelancing, side hustles, and personal growth. Here's a concise summary of the main learnings:

Financial Independence and Accountability

Accountability is crucial for achieving personal and financial independence. Financial freedom is not a one-size-fits-all concept; it's tailored to each individual's goals and beliefs. The journey to financial independence is as much internal as external, focusing on personal growth and resilience.

Freelancing and Side Hustles

Freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and others offer opportunities for remote work. Key aspects of successful freelancing include:

- Communicating trust to clients
- Specializing in a niche to establish expertise
- Maintaining personal accountability
- Understanding your most productive periods
- Meeting client expectations, including clear communication and honesty

Side hustles can lead to passive income and financial freedom if pursued consistently. It's important to align side hustles with your personality and gain personal experience before outsourcing.

Building an Online Presence

Developing a personal brand and leveraging social media can be lucrative. Tips for success include:

- Going live consistently to gain followers
- Responding to comments
- Focusing on content quality over posting time
- Using trending songs for viral potential
- Connecting authentically with your audience

Personal Growth and Mindset

The book emphasizes the importance of:

- Practicing gratitude and positive affirmations
- Journaling for manifestation
- Surrounding yourself with supportive people
- Being authentic and true to yourself

Financial Strategies

The book mentions seven streams of income: investment, earned, rental, royalty, capital gains, profits, and interest. It encourages readers to prioritize experiences over material possessions and to be strategic in building wealth.

This review encapsulates the book's emphasis on personal accountability, diverse income streams, and the importance of mindset in achieving financial independence and personal fulfillment.

----- Key Pointers from the book

* Accountability is the only sacrifice that must be made in the achievement of personal & financial independence.
* Financial freedom dose not have one blueprint definition ; it is tailored per person.
* We attract what we believe we deserve.
* Few freelance websites are Fiver, Slack, Dribble, We Work Remotely & Upwork.
* A creative life is an amplified life. It’s bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.
* While doing freelance, your priority should be to communicate trust to the client as directly as possible; the sooner they trust you, the sooner they are going to do business with you.
* The niche tells customers that you are specialized in particular topic. They will quickly trust you as an “expert”.
* A freelancing lifestyle revolves around personal accountability .It starts & ends with you as a freelancer.
* Spend time learning about your focus periods and when you are your most alert.
* Top three freelancing customer expectations to prepare for are a complete information collection process, a clear revision policy & honesty about the status and completion of the order.
* For the longest times thought I had to be gentle & delicate with the clients to keep them happy. Boy, was I wrong ! I come right out and state everything at face value to them-and they love it.
* The more quickly you will remove your personal offence and feelings from the transaction, the more quickly you are going to scale your business-but there is no place to take personal offence to requests of the client.
* Customers are a necessary part of your business, so learn to live in peace with them. The happier you make a customer, the more they are going to buy from you.
* The Freelance Revolution has a Supply Problem not a Demand Problem.
* Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
* Every freelancer should strive to join a top 1% program on a freelancing platform.
* Freelancing comes with minusucle costs when compared to any other business today.
* Working only part time hours can still produce $5,000/month in freelancing revenue.
* E-learning tutoring is another example of freelancing that is massively expanding industry in itself.
* Value>Everything else. Remember that !!
* Don’t worry about editing it to a perfection. People want authenticity. Be yourself, teach something, read a book, or eat a meal.
* Prioritize starting side hustles that can become passive Income.
* Bigger risk comes with bigger reward in the world of side hustling.
* Spend some time identifying your unique personality traits and how they align with the available side hustles.
* You must get personal experience at the business for months and really know how it operates before you bring someone else into do it for you.
* Two amazing software tools that you can use to make your knowledge infinitely accessible are Notion(the all-in one planner/note-taking tool) & Loom(a screen recording tool in which you can record your voice talking over a video).
* If you stick with a side hustle to months 9 through 12, you can enjoy financial freedom.
* Develop a testing process to weed out those who can’t manage their time and who perform sloppy work.
* Virtual Assistance can take any virtual business to the next level.
* Your virtual team can make any business goal or dream possible. They can also make it easier four to take time off & live life the way it was meant to be lived.
* Building a personal brand will bring both personal and monetary rewards.
* Social media influencing has become an incredibly lucrative industry today.
* Few Posting & Algorithm hacks :
1. Going live consistently for 4 to 5 days in a row kick-starts new followers to your account.These sites like YouTube, TikTok reward you for going live and making their app worth other user’s time. The longer they can retain people on their platform, the more money they make.
2. Responding to comments from your followers is important, no matter how big you are.
3. Worrying about what time you post is not as important as the content itself.
4. Account warnings will drop you out of the algorithms. If you think a topic is going to give you an account warning, consider the risk that if you are making good enough money through that social media app.
* There are some automation tools that you can use when posting on social media & regular online content; Buffer, Hootsuite, Hopperhq, Otter.ai, Pallyy, SocialPilot.
* Falling in love with researching will be key if you want to constantly earn big bucks at content creation.
* Using trending songs is a great tactic for going viral-if the song is trending, that means it’;s something current social media users want to be hearing that day.
* People want to connect with people online today. They want to see you, up close, and hear your voice.
* A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it. They are what they think about all day long.
* Affirmations are the building blocks of manifesting a goal or dream. They are statements in which you envision & believe that something is going to happen.
* Commit yourself to being grateful, every single day for what you have & what you are doing, I promise you will never lose sight of this new kind of thinking.
* Grab a journal & start practicing manifestation and affirmations, mixed with handwork.
* There are seven streams of income; Investment, Earned , Rental, Royalty, Capital gains, Profits & Interests.
* Best thing in the entire world don’t come with a price tag, but we can experience more of them on a regular basis if we set ourselves free, first, from the financial burden of existing in the 21st century.
* It’s okay to be selfish in the moment & curate a community of people who supports you and your positive endeavours.
* Remember to be grateful and pay it forward, you are always going to enjoy this process.
* We are the sum of five people we surround ourselves with.
* Being authentic and true to yourself will help attract your financial freedom tribe.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great actionable book on freelancing and where the industry is heading

Alex Fasulo is the master of Fiverr! What you'll find here is great advice and experiences that she gained in doing the work. She likes to share what she is doing, in order to help you get started. She is not one of those people that like to rip you off with an expensive course, she is sharing her experiences in a very low cost setting, so that you can get started. She is on all the major social platforms like YouTube, Tiktok, Facebook and others. I listened to it via text-to-speech on Kindle. I'll re-buy the Audible version when it comes out. That's how much I love what she is doing!

[Cannon McClain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where do I begin with this book? Most of the advice here is terrible, and the rest is barebones top of Google search stuff.
One of the main points of the book is to freelance using Fiverr or Upwork, which is quite possibly one of the worst ideas possible. Every serious freelancer today knows that these sites are a race to the bottom and not worth pursuing.
Alexandra touts the fact that she let hundreds of thousands of dollars sit in a dormant bank account for years rather than investing it, and she recommends you do the same. If you do invest, she recommends staying away from long-term investing and instead put all of your money into crypto, which is notoriously unsafe and unstable.
She regards any fan with criticism as a "hater." Upon doing some research, I found that Alexandra is widely despised and seen as a con artist in the online community (I had never heard of her before randomly picking out this book to read), and it's apparent why. In a hilarious excerpt she states that her haters are loud but her supporters aren't very vocal because they're "too busy building their own empires" which is a funny way of saying that she has no supporters.
Near the end of the book, she claims that you can become rich if you just "manifest it" in your mind.

This book is a lazy attempt by Alexandra Fasulo to make money by stealing points from other books (like the 4-hour work week) giving bad advice to hopeful people. Most of the book talks about side hustles and BS passive income methods rather than actually freelancing. Don't bother wasting your time on this

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am a big fan of Alex Fasulo's content online, specifically on TikTok and Youtube, and was looking forward to her book a lot. That said, I was a little let down by it because I think I'm not the main audience for it.

For people who are thinking about starting to freelance but haven't done it before, I think this is a really good primer and intro on all parts of it, from picking a skill to marketing it, branding yourself, having the right mindset and so on (also touches on investing to keep things going but doesn't dive into it very significantly, so might need to pick up a second book for that).

Since I've been freelancing for a while, I was hoping for a book that would focus a lot on going from an intermediate level of freelancing to a higher "expert" level with strategies to develop an online brand, how to game different freelancing platforms, etc. Maybe that will be her next book!

At any rate, still a big fan of hers, but this book is way more for complete beginners than it is for anyone who already has some experience.

[Mary-Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I enjoyed this book. I've been following Alexandra for a while now, and it was nice to learn more about her story. I really liked the layout of the chapters and how everything was very straightforward.

I picked this book up because I'm starting my own journey as a freelance writer and was hoping to learn from it. I did, but there was also something missing for me. This book focused a lot on what comes after you start freelancing - trying other side hustles, investing your money, growing a social media following. It didn't feel like the best fit for me as a beginner, but it still had good tips in it.

[Cici La · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent for what it is. I was a little baffled at first because you have to read a lot of the book where she talks about "freelancing" without actually describing what the work is like. Also, the field is changing so much with technology that this book really doesn't hold up over time. It is very current and, in that case, it is no longer up to date.

However, there are some good points in this book about working alone and being a self-starter. It is a light read if you are curious about ways to make a living by yourself.

[Esmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the author's enthusiasm. She has reached levels of success that are inspiring. The book primarily focuses on leveraging passive income. Alexandra started a freelance writing business on Fiverr eventually expanding to an agency. If you want to follow the same path, this book is for you. For everyone else, there are some tips and ideas that you could use for your freelance business. Aside from that, anyone else pursuing a different niche will need to look for additional resources.

[nay ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one covers everything from starting out freelancing and the platforms and ways you can do it, to the mental and emotional work of getting to the point of being a wealthy person - and still, it feels to me like a book for beginners. Or something to keep a physical copy of, and read the parts as they become applicable, as opposed to being read in one-go as I've read it. Personally, I found it to book provide some value and, in some places and aspects, be rather trite. Not bad; not fantastic.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this is a solid, inspiring book that touches on a variety of topics as far as freelancing and financial freedom go.

It wasn’t as detailed and specific as I would have liked it to be. However, I’m still glad that I read it at the beginning of my freelance journey because it’s given me high hopes and something to aspire to.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book at first and it had good content but I was hoping for more step by step on how to freelance. It didn’t really describe how to start and pick what to do and how to offer it. I felt like she just said start freelancing! But offered not help on how to start. It was very motivational and gave me tons of ideas but again no map or guide on how to start the process.

[Andra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I'm not a freelancer but a small artist who's trying to make her way on her own and I found a lot of helpful tips in this book.
The author also seems to operate on a wavelength that I can understand and the writing flow really clicked for me and made it a very pleasant read.

[Mylène C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have ever read in a while. I learned so much and I loved that it was an easy read. I can't wait to implement some of the strategies I read and I will be expanding my side hustle.

[Maggie Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had some helpful tips for pursuing a freelance writing career, although the majority of the book seemed to focus on actually getting out of the writing career and into automation. I appreciated the practical guidance for using freelance platforms.

[Kaitlynn Flint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspirational read! I highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in freelancing and need a little direction on where to start. As a new freelancer myself, I could not put this book down. Everything was so helpful and motivating. I can't wait to read more of Fasulo's work.

[Adriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm totally new to anything freelance so there was a lot of info in this book that will help me know where to start. I like her writing style, very colloquial and since I follow her on social media I could hear her saying a lot of things from the book 😆

[ReConnect · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Thanks for the tips.
Freelance your way to freedom in order to serve God.
Serve God = Finalement actualise whatever you have been sent here for.
My first book of the year, by the way :)

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

She lost me a bit there in the last 20% and I could’ve done without the hustle culture 💪🏼 visualize and pray and you’ll make money 🙏🏼 but all in all there were some good resources in here that I’ll be referencing!

[RJ Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful and informational

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of great info.

[Danielle Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for anyone interested in starting freelance work or those who have started but looking to take their business to the next level. Motivating, inspiring and timely.

[Beth Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed & lots of good information! 4.5 stars

[Tiera Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! I tell everyone about it

[Alexis Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good information to get started.

[Jenna Grimm · Rating 4 out of 5]

4⭐️ Super inspiring! I really loved learning about some new side hustles/freelance opportunities. It honestly gives me courage to try new things and believe in myself more. It’s on my bucket list to create at least one form of passive income before 30 and now I want to make it like 5!!

[vic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Easy read. She’s pretty honest about the work that goes into starting an online business. I thought her most valuable info was the social media statistics (even though those are always changing) it’s nice to be able to see every social media platform with the numbers of sex, age, etc. But yeah I love Alex so can’t wait to read her next book.