# The freelancer in you that wants to be FREE Do you sometimes as a developer/freelancer/company owner have the feeling that you are being used? **Not adequately paid? Treated like a resource?** That considering all the effort, time, investment, the school you went through you should **earn more and live a happier life?** How many things do you know and use in your daily job? Try to list all of them. Here is my list: * Ruby * Rails * SQL (with different flavors that you need to know) * DDD * Git * Devops (networking stack, investigating, handling fuckups) * HTML * CSS * JavaScript (old and new flavors + constantly evolving browsers API, and non-browser node.js API) * Webpack And **that's not even everything**. I bet the list for you is very similar in length (no matter what is your main programming language and whether you are frontend or backend dev). You want things to * be done **on your conditions**, not theirs * better projects, **better leads**, better customers * select people, you work with, and to be able to do that * you need to have a better reach, reputation, and **authority** You don't want to stress over things every time. Most of the people finish their job after 5, **go home and don't give a fuck.** I've been learning every week since 8 years after I finished studying at the university. I bet you are as well crunching knowledge on a daily basis. Educating yourself and improving your skills. With the impostor syndrome so prevailing in our industry we always feel behind, we need to know more and we spend so much time and money and energy reading and educating in the **ever-changing landscape of technologies**. And what do we get for it? A-holes who tell us that our estimations are too big, **managers who try to micro-manage**. ![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/1bb42b52984bfa86e2ce35215/images/c9f43aba-a104-450d-94ca-fb6db3afed1c.gif) In the meantime, other programmers **earn 2-10x** more, work with nice people, on nice projects, for companies that make money, can **spend time with their family and have a much happier life**. **What went wrong?** Let me tell you what usually goes wrong in a situation like this. We invest **99% of our time in tech skills** (do you remember the long list a moment ago) and 1% of our time in business/sales/soft skills. Boom! **Want a better life?** You need to start attracting better clients into your company. Nicer people, happier people, successful people that will respect your authority. People who treat collaboration with you as an investment into their company, not as a cost. How to do that? The **Independent Consulting Manual** will help you find answers. ![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/1bb42b52984bfa86e2ce35215/images/d22073f1-e37d-4664-b626-540e804e9c31.png) It will teach you how to: * Better **qualify** your clients * **Grow** an audience using podcasts * **Productize** your consulting offerings * **Say no** to bad work * Properly **structure** your sales website * Write proposals using **options** * **Multiply** the **value** of your services * Establish your fool-proof **positioning** * **Automate** your sales pipeline * Transition to value-based **fees** * **Plan** actual minimal viable products * Send **effective** cold outreach emails * Use **winning** email & phone scripts * Faster **fulfillment** with processes * Cope with entrepreneurial **stress** * Start and run a **professional** Slack * Master consulting's **emotional game** * **Travel** as a business owner * Use social media to **get** new clients * Maintain a healthy work/life **balance** * Run your business from **anywhere** * **Effectively** use facebook ads * Avoid late payments & **get paid** on time * Handle **overdue** invoices * Most importantly, you'll learn **how to make more money.** And when you balance your skills to 80% tech and 20% business you will be **truly an independent, happy consultant**. This book will be available as part of our [Smart Income for Developers Bundle](http://www.smartincomefordevelopers.com/) next week.