Megan Ingram
June 25, 2021
Freelance
2.5 min
Do your homework. Dress a certain way. Make friends with the “popular people.” Get married. Have Kids. Who determines these said rules? What makes the “rules of life” right for one person but wrong for someone else? And then we graduate and start our professional careers and they carry over to the office. Be in the office before everyone else. Socialize often. Play office politics. Do as your boss tells you. I’ve never been a fan of following “traditional rules.” These rules might work well for other people but I’m different from other people. I wanted to dream bigger. Live in a big city. Build my own business. Live life on my terms nobody else’s. And no one was going to define that for me. Especially not some old corporate CEO.
My first few jobs were working for a big corporate accounting firm, a large biotech company, and a large agency. I played the game and I was pretty good at it. But I found myself never really loving playing by their rules. Whether it was office pleasing, or being told you need to be more billable. It was draining me and taking the passion out of doing the thing I love. Working with clients and people.
Our whole lives we often follow these predestined, unwritten (but expected) rules. And if you dare to step out of them you’re asked - who are you to dare question them?
As luck would have it I got a break - I got let go because of weird COVID financial circumstances. And it’s like a weight has been lifted. What would I do? What did I want to do? How was the rest of my career going to be defined? I started to think about all the things in my career that I loved. Then conversely, all the nasty, ugly stuff. I decided to take a risk and go 100% freelance.
Now look, entrepreneurship is hard, don't let anyone tell you differently. Cash flow, sales pipelines, and hiring people. All this stuff you never have to worry about with the 9-5. But the good stuff - freedom, flexibility, passion projects. Some pretty awesome and freeing things. I began to write a business plan and before I knew it I had created this mission that was built on everything I believed in. Amazing what happens when you are authentic, huh?
But it’s not for everyone. We want to work with a unique group of people who have chosen to be freelancers and not be employed by someone else. People who want to choose their own projects and are seeking financial freedom. People who want to think outside the box and create something amazing.
I’m not trying to torch the 9-5 pension life. It works great for some people. But I want to work with and celebrate people who maybe feel like they don’t belong. They just haven’t found their people yet. People who choose a different career path and want to do something different. Because they aren’t like everybody else. And that is OK. Amazing even.
I talk about four guiding things that we do above else - four things I want every Digital Outlaw to represent:
But at the end of the day it comes down to building a group of people who just do things differently. In the way we think, in the way we work together, and in the way we want the world to be.
June 25, 2021
