Do you remember how it felt when you got your first pay check?

If you were a kid and all your expenses were already taken care of, it might have felt kind of like bonus money that you’d found. If you were working because you had to work, it might have been just something else that would help you take care of the bills or do what you had to do.

Thinking Like a Freelancer

One of the things I found is that when people can think like a freelancer, they can really tap into the best way to understand how you think like a 4-Day Work Week person. If you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, thinking like a freelancer might simplify the way you think. If you're an employee, it might raise the bar a little bit on how you think. It really just comes down to a couple of basic premises.

1) Freelancers Work for Fun, Purpose, and Freedom

I remember my first pay check. I was 9 or 10 years old and I used to mow lawns. That money for me was extra money, because my needs were taken care of by my parents. I didn't necessarily love cutting lawns, but I worked so that I could buy things that were fun. The money from cutting lawns allowed me the freedom to purchase things that I couldn't have bought otherwise.

2) Freelancers Keep Their Expenses Low

Again, in my case, I was a kid, so my overheads were pretty much nothing. My parents took care of that. I was very blessed by that, but freelancers really understand that they're working for their freedom. They're working for purpose and fun. So large expenses really don't serve them. Going to a bar and dropping $20 on one drink is not so fun. That doesn’t mean freelancers don’t drink, and I’m not looking to put a stigma on drinking or not here, but bottom line some of these flashy or more expensive ways of spending money just really aren't what they do.

3) Freelancers Are Looking to Create a Great Life Inside Work and Outside Work

Whether someone is a teenager who’s working just to make some extra money, or whether they have a so-called normal job, the overall focus for freelancers is still the fun. It's not as much about how much money they make, how many things they accumulate or any of that.

Employee Mindset vs Freelancer Mindset

Think for a second about what sort of mindset you have, and, even more importantly, how that impacts how you're able to enjoy life and what you're doing.

Say you’re an employee. You’re hired by a company, and you’re doing well in that organization. Guess what? You can still have the freelancer mindset. You can have this mindset wherever you are. Let’s look at the differences between employee mindsets and freelancer mindsets.

1. Employees are primarily paid for their time. If I ask some of my friends if they can play volleyball at the beach on a Friday, they'll say they can’t, because they need to get some more hours in. However, it’s not the hours that they actually need, but the money they’ll get paid for those hours. Since they're paid for their time that's how they understand it.

In contrast, a freelancer might say, "Well I need to get more results if I want to make more money," and a freelancer really is looking at being paid that way.

2. An employee is looking for job stability, whereas a freelancer is usually looking for a challenge. Once again, this is a matter of mindset.

3. Employees look to avoid change, whereas a freelancer wants to grow, they want a challenge, and they want new things happening.

4. Employees usually hate accountability because that means they're being kept score on, which they don’t like.

However, a freelancer loves accountability for a couple of reasons. It means they're going to get paid more. Secondly, an environment of accountability means to a freelancer that they're not going to have to work with people who have lower competence levels.

That's one of the things that frustrates competent people and people with a freelancer mindset the most: having to work with other people who drag their feet. If you're in an environment of accountability that usually doesn't happen. That's something to consider, whether you are the freelancer or whether you're an employer looking to hire people who have a freelancer mindset.

5. Employees do not like being rated because that might lead them to feel how they're being measured. The freelancer loves being rated, but more than that, they're not afraid of the process. If they're not doing as well they'll say, "Okay great I just need to step up my game," and they will actually go to the person or people that are doing better than them and see what they can learn from them.

6. For an employee, a job review is a painful process because it highlights the fact that they're not really that committed. They're not really giving their all. They're not really doing what they can or they're just not good at what they do. Once again, I’m talking about a mindset here. I don’t mean that if you're an employee you necessarily have an employee mindset.  

People with a freelancer mindset love work reviews because usually they mean if the freelance has been doing well, and kicking butt, they could get a raise, whether that’s in salary or commission as an employee, or as a rise in hourly income as a freelancer.

Overall, it’s the mindset that matters, whether you’re a freelancer working for yourself and being hired out to people, or an employee working directly for someone else.

7. The employee just wants to survive and pay their bills. They just want to get by without ruffling feathers, without making too many things happen.

The freelancer wants to thrive. They not only want to survive, they not only want to succeed, they also want fun and flexibility. They're not just looking at the money, they're looking at creating a great life. They acknowledge that work is part of that, but again they're keeping their expenses low so they can have freedom.

8. The employee works for money. Anybody who's ever done that and worked just for the money knows it's certainly not a sin, but it's not as fun. It's not as engaging as when you're working for your own freedom and you can see the connection between what you're doing and how it's helping your freedom, whether or not you really love what you do.

Employees Can Have a Freelancer Mindset Too

I own a software business that I've had almost for 20 years now. The software helps business owners to compensate their team members, and one of the most important things we do is try to help the team members develop this freelancer mindset, or an entrepreneurial mindset.

One of the ways we do this is to ask the team members what their personal goals are, and then look at how then can excel in their positions at the business in order to achieve their personal goals: they might want to buy a car or a house, or save for a trip. Whatever it is, we look at how much time it’s going to take, and how to make it happen.

Above all, we want to align with their dreams with their freedom and everything that’s important to them, so that they're really still working for themselves.

Nobody really wants to work for somebody else. Everybody would rather work for themselves if they could. Indirectly, even you're an entrepreneur or a business owner, we all work for somebody because we all have clients that we need to keep satisfied. But this idea that people want to work for somebody because they want to be leveraged or that they can become a cog in someone else’s machine, so the other person can make a lot of money, nobody really wants that.

Sometimes people will settle for that, or sometimes people will find their niche within a business and say, "You know, I like doing this and I certainly like being able to get done at 5:01 and go home and do my stuff."

But at the end of the day, we all work for ourselves. We work for our families, we work for our dreams and we really do work for our freedom. However, in this mindset, it's really about looking to make the change, and make your goals happen. If you’re looking to make something happen, at least you stand a chance of it coming true. If you don’t even try, there’s no chance.

Moving Forward

If you need to create your plan to start thinking like a 4-Day Work Week entrepreneur, a 4-Day Work Week freelancer, 4-Day Work Week business owner, or even a 4-Day Work Week employee working in somebody else's business, go to 4daygameplan.com where you can start creating your free 4-Day Work Week Game Plan.

It took me 22 years to create my own, but I didn't have a roadmap. I'm giving you a road map with training videos, tools, and templates. These will help you to figure out how to match your expenses, how to choose which projects to focus on, how to map it out, and, above all, how to make it happen! If you have any questions on any of this, just let me know.

As always, I look forward to helping you make more money in less time. Do what you do best, so you can create the life you most want for you, your friends, your family and your loved ones.