About the Episode:
In today’s episode, we’re talking to the founders of Working Not Working—Justin Gignac and Adam Tompkins.
We’re also hearing from their kick-ass Head of Growth and a good friend of mine, Emily Slade in this episode. Now, we’ve had a few recent episodes of the show talking with freelancers and consultants who’ve had experience working on the marketplace sites like Fiverr and Upwork.
Today’s guests run a company that’s pretty much the opposite of these other freelance marketplace sites. Working Not Working is a self-described community of more than 30,000 highly curated freelancers from around the world – people who’ve won awards for their work – and companies like Google, Apple, Facebook actively source talent from their community.
The way it works is not based on collecting commissions from every project that’s booked—and the Working Not Working team doesn’t even put themselves in the middle of the transactions.
They’ve built a community of the best, most experienced, talented, motivated freelancers and because that community is so high quality, they’re able to charge the over 2,000 brands on their platform—a flat subscription fee to get access to their pool of creatives. On top of that, it’s free for creatives to be on the platform and you can apply to join right here.
In Today’s Episode, We Talk About:
[02:41] What books my guests are reading at the moment.
[06:05] How the business model differs from their competitors.
[08:27] How Working Not Working operates.
[10:12] What they were doing before Working Not Working.
[13:04] If Working Not Working was a side project.
[16:22] When they decided to focus full time on Working Not Working.
[17:55] What Emily’s early days at the company were like.
25:20 The first major client that they brought on.
[27:58] Their advice to new freelancers.
[34:47] What’s next for Working Not Working in 2018.
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Resources Mentioned:
A Column of Fire (The Kingsbridge Novels) by Ken Follett
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie
Letting Go: The Pathway Of Surrender by David R. Hawkins M.D.
Connect with My Guests:
Freelancer’s Fund, financial tools and services for creative freelancers
Justin on LinkedIn and Twitter
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Great article! Never had much luck freelancing, might have to give it another shot!
Keep up the great content! 🙂
Hell yeah give it another shot, Roland! ✊
That sounds quite interesting if you personally asked me, Ryan. One thing many people fail to acknowledge is that there’s no get-rich-quick strategy for earning instant Millions online. Just like a traditional day job, people have to put in the work if they want to see their online side hustle work for them. I’m all for entrepreneurship over the traditional nine-to-five day job. Even with a master’s degree or Ph.D today, one is still not guaranteed job security. They can still be booted out of the door simply off of the strength of someone’s mouth or someone not liking the other for whatever reason. That’s a pretty sad truth, isn’t it?