Having cold feet in taking the plunge from a full-time office job to freelancing? You never know until you try, and freelancing might be for you. Some women who’ve done it successfully explain why they did it and how they did it.

---

Tricia Morente, a former writer of Inc Southeast Asia, recently went back to freelance mode. “This is actually my second stab at freelancing,” she narrates. “I left Manila Bulletin, a broadsheet in the Philippines, where I worked for seven years to do the freelance thing for three years before I finally worked at Inc.” She says she rejoined the office life because she needed a new mentor. “You can only teach yourself so much when freelancing and I felt I was in a rut and wanted to improve on my writing and editing,” she says. She then decided to become a freelancer again, due to wanderlust. “I did get [the mentorship] from my editor at Inc, but I’m at that point in my life where I already know that I’m really most effective when I work remotely. Travel is a big part of my psyche and after a full year working for a company and doing the 9-5 routine, I felt like the whole routine was eating away at me. I felt caged and I had some previous clients knocking on my door presenting exciting opportunities. I felt I had already learned a great deal from [my mentor] so I made plans to eventually get back into freelancing once the year was up.”

For Kristel Dacumos-Lagorza on the other hand, who is also currently a freelance writer, she says she went into it because she wanted to reduce stress and free up her time to build a family. “I had plans of going back [to office life] after a year or so (should I have or not have a baby by then) but I found that freelance work fit me better because I was able to manage my schedule, reduce stress, and increase my income,” she explains.

Here are their tips on how to smoothly transition from office life to freelancing:

1. Reconnect with old retainer clients and start talking to your network about your plans. The network you built in your previous job is a gold mine which will benefit you your whole life, so make the most of it. “My past clients never really disappeared because I had built good relations with them, so I do a bit of work here and there for them while I was employed, so the moment I was decided on freelancing, it was quite an easy transition, luckily,” shares Tricia. She says most of her current clients were people in her network. “How I started with them was largely due to the network I built in my previous job—people I met and got along with in events, conferences, etc. were the ones I eventually had as clients,” she says.

2. Make sure you have at least three months’ worth of salary saved before you take the plunge. “Freelancing, especially in the beginning, is not going to be immediately stable so it’s best to have that financial cushion when you begin,” says Tricia. Kristel agrees. “Start building the network also since payment for freelancers is not as stable as office work, which comes every 15 and 30 of the month,” she says. She says make sure you save before resigning.

3. Get a coworking membership. Tricia has traveled to many places all over the world and she can work effectively anywhere because of a coworking membership she obtained from a space that has branches worldwide. “When you freelance, you need to create your own structure,” she explains. “If you think that working from home is what it’s all about, it’s not really sustainable because eventually you burn out. I find it more effective when I have an ‘office’ I go to—in my case, I have a global membership for a coworking company and I can work in any of their branches while I travel. It helps draw the line between when my time is for work and when it is for travel, because you really can͛t help but be on vacation mode when you’re out there. Coworking helps establish that boundary.”

4. Deliver during deadline. Kristel, who freelances in publishing, believes that one is as only as good to the client as one’s last project. “Increase the chances of being booked again by delivering output that’s not only done well, but most importantly submitted on time,” she shares.