Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Learning

Are you a financially independent freelancer? If yes, congrats! You’re in the top 1% of the world’s freelancers. If not, read on to find out how you can master your finances and build a sustainable freelancing business. The importance of financial independence for freelancers Did you know that ...

Most people go into freelancing with the wrong mindset. They ask the wrong question. That question is: How can I find a client that will pay me more than my boss did, for doing the same work? The question implies that you’re a finished product, ready to be swept up by the highest bidder in the open market. But it doesn’t work that way. Not in the first year or two, anyway. When you ...

I write equally for beginners and for experienced freelancers who want to earn more or scale their business. But, often, I get questions from those who are only starting to consider freelancing as an option. Here are some of the most common questions I get asked by such readers: Could I become a freelancer? What does it take to become a freelancer? Can anyone become a ...

I got a lot of things right in my decade-long freelance career: I found a bunch of great clients, helped others transition to freelancing, bootstrapped a successful startup, and did the digital nomad thing for a while. But, it wasn’t perfect. When I was starting out in 2011, I didn’t know a single freelancer, let alone a more experienced one. So, I had to learn on the job and adapt ...

Have you ever watched a lecture, or read an article, where the author had a lot of knowledge but struggled to express it clearly in English? I’ve personally dropped at least a dozen Youtube tutorials for this reason. If you’re a non-native speaker thinking about creating content, it can be a daunting prospect. Will native speakers mock you? Will your friends find you pretentious? Will your ...

Back in 2011, I was a university graduate with a very foggy look at the future. The field of study that I had chosen at age 18 now seemed like a foolish choice. Even though it was an engineering degree, in my country it resigned me to office work in one of maybe a dozen telecommunications companies. This is not what I had envisioned when I left high school. I was lucky enough, however, to ...

How many people do you know that went off to university with admirable academic goals and returned disillusioned, broke and scandalously unprepared to contribute anything productive to the economy? This has become the norm rather than the exception, but why? In theory, we go to university to acquire knowledge which allows us to join the ranks of our desired profession. In practice, we stumble ...