Ankit Taneja, who joins to talk about Salesforce freelancing, is the content producer at Forcepreneur.com, founder of BlazeNewTrail.com, an active trailblazer in the Ohana, and of course a Salesforce freelancer.
Main Points
- Ankit’s self-introduction
- Ankit shares What freelancers actually do in their jobs
- How to start as a freelancer job?
- What Skillsets are required for freelancers?
- Why would Ankit want to be a full-stack freelancer?
- When is it a good time to be a freelancer?
- How to acquire clients at the beginning?
- How to excel and stand out in the freelancing competition?
- What are the pros and cons of a freelancer according to Ankit’s experience?
- Ankit’s online Salesforce job-hunting site – blazenewtrail.com
- Speaking the local language as a freelancer
- Ankit’s new podcast Forcepreneur – interview entrepreneur in the Salesforce ecosystem
Links
- Ankit’s LinkedIn
- Ankit’s Twitter
- Ankit’s online Salesforce job-hunting site
- Ankit’s new podcast – Forcepreneur
Video Teaser on Salesforce Freelancing
Contact Me
If you enjoy this podcast, please reach me out to let me know your thoughts or simply say Hello. My (Xi’s) contact info:
Take care, until next time :)!
Transcript
AI-generated, unedited.
[00:14] Hey everybody! This is Xi Xiao. This is yet another episode of Salesforce Way podcast. Today I'm sitting with a new guest. His name is Ankit Taneja. Hello, Ankit. Hi Z, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. So, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, my name is Ankit and I am currently working as a Salesforce freelancer in Berlin and I'm co-leading the Berlin Salesforce Developer User Group and yeah, I used to run the Hamburg User Group as well. Cool, nice to talk to you. You know your your role is really fascinating. Freelancer, you know a lot of people. Thinking about that title, and then thinking about how much money you get every month, and how much freedom you have in your life, you know that's always the thing that really attracts people. You know, so I would like to have you here to talk with me. What are the challenges you have during your work, and what are the good part, what the bad part? You know. Yeah, so a lot of people ask me about freelancing and how to get started, and you know what is it like? And basically, freelancing is like you know at least for me that you are a programmer, and then you have that extra edge that the other people don't have. And what do you bring to the service? What is that special thing that you have? You can have a specialization in Einstein, or you can have something, you know. And the other thing is as a freelancer. You need
[01:44] to be. It's you are a developer or a consultant, and then you need to be a salesperson. And the thing that you need to sell is yourself or your services, so to say. So it's not just providing developer services, but it's also like you know, what do you bring to the extra to the table? What do you have in there? That's a really good advice. Yeah, I can put myself into the shoes. Is that I'm a consulting, part of a consulting company. All the project I'm doing now, those are the sold project. We have marketing team, we have sales team. They have already done their wonderful job. The project is is sold. So we now are charging the customers. For what I need to do, just the coding, right? Implementing the solutions. So as a freelancer, what you need to do is much more. You have to cover much bigger scope. Exactly. So you know, not every as I said again, not everyone is cut out to be a freelancer. You need to do your own marketing. You need to have your own brand, which is something what David Louis also kind of touched upon. You know, you need to have something that extra edge. Why are people coming to you? And also, it's like business. You know, you have a solid job and. You know, you you you get provided your salary. You know, it's always said in freelancing world, you need to have at least six months of salary saved somewhere, or six months of your monthly earnings, just for that rainy time. That's like a pro tip. Okay, good. We will discuss more in the coming content, but let's
[03:14] start with like how could people start if people think that they are really cut for a freelancer title? How should we start? So let's say if you want to start freelancing, I would say the first thing you need to identify is okay your market where you are. Let's say you are in the UK or EMEA or there, and start getting involved in the community. And I will think the best place to start is developer meetups. Simply go there, hold presentations, work out of the box. And do a presentation that nobody has done before, or think of something you know that attracts people. Like for example, I did a talk in Paris at French Tech Dreaming, where I connected a coffee machine to integrate Salesforce with other system because that's what we are doing on a daily basis, right? We are connecting Salesforce through different APIs. And I just did a coffee machine because I like coffee, you know. So so try and come up with these ideas, and see that you know. And then the people will see, oh, this guy knows something, you know. So I think the developer meetups are your first and foremost hunting grounds, and in your local community, you know, that's where you are first. And then of course there are dreaming events where you can go and hold a presentation, and that's like that's the way you can go forward. Yeah. It sounds like one stone with multiple birds here. So you're not just doing your branding to multiple people on stage. You're also sharing the knowledge, right? You kind of get potential customers coming to you. Exactly. Well, you're also showcasing
[04:44] your skills, and of course, then the people in the crowd can see, okay, this guy knows this, you know, and then they can come to you. Yeah, this makes me thinking that if I'm a developer who really just like coding, sitting in a basement, don't want to chat with people, maybe it's not so good for me to start freelancing as what you did. No, because you need to like if you're the kind of guy which is also sometimes that I like to do is I just like to get my task, put my head down, go something out, and get out of the office. Then that's fine. And it's it's hard to find clients like those because today in Salesforce world at least they are mixing the lines between developers and admin. Like slowly you are seeing with process builders and flows and everything, it's getting more towards point and click. A future Salesforce guy looks like who knows both the things in five years, you know. So the developer who just likes to go ahead and develops is, I would say you need to have some a little bit of customer interaction. And if you don't like interaction, then. That will not float. Like like like you need to interact with the customer. You need to set expectations and stuff like that. Yeah, understand. That's a good lesson one. And you mentioned as a freelancer, you probably need multiple skills. You need to wear multiple hats. And does that mean if I do freelancing, then I should? Be good at more skills, so not just coding. I need to be
[06:14] maybe know some admin stuff. You also mentioned your integration with different systems. Maybe I should be also having some knowledge on those parts as well. So the more, the better, of course. Right. So I would say, like previously, at least five years ago, it was like you are a freelancer, admin consultant, or you are a freelance developer. And I have worked in teams. You know, again, it's it depends on what you are looking for. You can work as a freelance developer if you want to work for some big consultancy where you just get your task, do your thing, and you have very less interaction with what is really happening. How I like to work is I like to provide my customers full service. So I am like doing the requirement gathering, and I'm also doing the admin stuff where I'm helping them with different kinds of flows. And I'm choosing the I'm choosing the best solution that is there for this problem. If the code needs to be written, I will write code. If it is can be done with a point and click solution, I will do point and click. So I do requirement gathering, I do the admin stuff, and then I do the developer stuff, and then I do the testing, and then I also do the user training. So, so, and you know, because then these guys are offering same roles, but by different people. So, you know, that's the benefit for the client that. And the other thing is, if anything goes wrong, it's easier to find where the problem is because you know the whole thing. Sometimes in bigger teams, it happens. It's hard to figure out who did the problem, and then it's a lot of finger pointing. Okay, it sounds like you you want to be a full stack freelancer.
[07:45] You want to cover all the stages for a solution. You offer it to the customer. Yeah, well, that's the whole idea, right? That's how I pitch myself to my customers, and I'm like, I want to know the business. I then I really get into the customer, like I'm one of them, and I understand why do they want to do this. And what do they want? And many a times it has happened. A customer said to me, "I want this exactly like that because he saw that a sales guy saw it in some other client." No, this is not how it works. Tell me what the problem is, and I will make the solution for you. No, same solution works in same place. You know. Think a lot of customers nowadays do want to hire people who can think. Individually, instead of getting task assigned and finish the task, they want people to start really thinking and even challenge their ideas. At least in the European countries, we're both living in the Europe. We know that's the kind of a culture here in the Western country. We we do want to you know collaborate and get the inspiring ideas coming out of conversations. Yeah, and also I interact very well with the in-house teams of the of the client, and you know, and try to help and work with them what they have built until now, and what I bring to the table. And if you want to talk a little bit about freelancing, I think one has to gain a little bit of experience and exposure by working at multiple clients, and then you are ready to be a freelancer. You cannot
[09:15] just finish a college degree and be like, I want to be a freelancer. You need to have that experience. Right now, I have this. Huge experiences. I've worked for big giants like Fortune 500 companies to smaller clients, and now I know what worked, what did not work, and I can bring a combination of that to my new client. So you need to have some experience in order to be a freelancer. It's not like getting out of college and now I want to be a freelancer. Hmm. Okay. As now you have couple of years with experience and in your reference you have big brand over there, so it's easier and easier for you to get new customers. But thinking about people who just started Financer, how would they start to acquire customers? What are your tips? So first of all, don't go for a high daily rate just because you know you cannot just say I'm a freelancer and I'm going to charge three digit per hour. Take a lower rate, you know just because your client was charging big money doesn't your you know your employer or someone else was charging. Start slow, build a repertoire, build a portfolio, have that. I also started at a very low hourly rate of 60, 70 euros an hour. And you know, start over there, build a portfolio, and you know, and then my dad always says, if you do good work, good work will come to you. Touchwood. Until now, I didn't have to look for work. I finished a project, and somebody heard about me from some other project that I did, and came to me, and then it happened, and then that happened, and then that project
[10:45] finished, and something else came up. And that's how it work. If you do good work, good work will automatically keep coming on you. You know, it's it's like that. So two keywords: good work, and the patience. That's what I heard. Yeah and yeah exactly and don't try to oversell yourself. Okay, then let's say we get some customers as you mentioned. So we did good work, we did hard work. We get customers. Then how do I really excel in my journey? There are some other freelancers with me, are competitors, right? So how can I really stand out in the crowd? Well, one thing again would be keep updating yourself, and you know, and keep updating yourself. And after a while, like I've been doing this for more than five years now, I have an arsenal of code, and I don't mean that I just copy paste the same code, but I have very nice written code. Or there are also plenty of libraries on GitHub that I use. That you can use for you know writing a REST client or writing a so you know writing a batch job and stuff like that. So see how you can optimize most of the work that I do. It's kind of repetitive, but at a different scenario and like a batch job. Not many different ways to write a bad job. Let's call it like that. You query, you make a big query, you process some results, you finish it. You know. So to excel is to see how you can optimize stuff. So maybe you can take more work. You know. Maybe you can handle
[12:15] multiple clients at the same time, and that's how you can optimize it. But it's also very important. In the initial days, this is something as a learning lesson I can give. I took a lot more work than I could handle, and then it was weekends and everything there. And it's also because I was a little attracted by the money, to be honest. And it's not the best way to do it. Okay, and I learned the hard way. Yeah, okay, and I learned the hard way that that's not how you do it. And now I just work with two clients, and that's enough. And you should also not, because if you take too many clients, you also have to deliver, right? And then it. Kind of, yeah, piles up. I see, I see. I worked late hours and I finished, and I made a lot of money. But I learned the big lesson of life: you make the money, but you also need the time and the freedom to spend that money, right? Yeah, you might also get the burnout, and you know, psychologically, you feel bad. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. So go for a balance. Okay.
[13:24] Hey, thanks for listening to the show, Salesforce Way Podcast. It's all the time looking for both guests. And topics. If you have guest recommendation or any topics you'd like to listen to, don't hesitate to let me know. My Twitter, LinkedIn, and email information is at the end of the show notes of each episode. You can also find it on the Salesforceway.com website. I really, really, really need help from you on this matter because only you, my lovely listeners, know what yourself want. So please help me invite great guests to talk on great topics so that we spread great knowledge. Now let's get back to the show.
[14:20] Um. So we we covered a lot in our conversations. We started from why we talk about how, and then like along the journey, couple of years, we how to really acquire the customers. I really want you to just concisely summarize what are the pros, what are the cons as a freelancer from your experience. Could you are you able to give us like a bullet points? Sure. So, should I I start with the cons first? Let's say okay. Okay. So the cons are: if you are new in a city, if you are new in a city,
[14:58] And if you work as a freelancer, you're kind of the external guy, and you know he gets more money than us. It's hard to make friends, especially when you're new in the city, because most of the time you spend time at work, and your first friendships start at work, and then you kind of keep moving from from project to project within three or six months. So kind of those connections don't build, you know. So it becomes a little hard. Then, if you are sick, the thing is that you lose money. But losing money is not the more important because you know when you're sick, at least you don't get sick days here. Like like you cannot go to work, so you cannot write the invoice. That's one of the part, but the other part is when you work as a freelancer, at least like me, you have your work chalked out week after week after week, and if you get sick, things get pushed further and further, and it's a ripple effect, and then you have to work hard the next week. It's nothing against it, but it's it's just it kind of piles up. That kind of gets troublesome. I want so that's yeah, that's one of the thing, and what else is a con? High taxes, high taxes. So you know, yeah, taxes are pretty high. I paid one time forty two percent income tax man because I'm single and you know it was just like I was like, wow, I should get married because I want to save tax. So so yeah, taxes are one of those things. Yeah, that's I would say are the cons. The
[16:28] pros now are. First and foremost, you can choose the projects you want to work on. You can, if you're good, you can choose, you know, you can choose whom you want to work with. And many a times, I turn down projects which are offering me big money, but I take projects where there's a small client and they want to make an app on the App Exchange, and I like the idea and they're a startup, so I would work for them for less money because you know it brings me joy and I like helping startups. And the other pro is one that does not. You can choose your you know working hours. You can say, hey, I want to work four days a week or three days a week or you know six days a week. You can you can and then you can invoice the client kind of and every hour is kind of invoiced. You know, kind of. So that's like a pro. So yes, money's there. The other pro, which does not work for me, but for work for many other people, if you build a good relationship line, you can work from anywhere and be this digital nomad kind of thing. But I personally, when I'm in Thailand and I'm on vacation, I want to enjoy the beach. I don't want to work. It just doesn't work with me personally. Okay, I see. I see. Thanks a lot. I mean, all these things I really see that it's from the person who has multiple years of experience of freelancing. I could also say this. I also didn't. I tried to build a website or brand around me, but it didn't work out for whatever reasons. And a lot of think people say that it depends on your
[17:58] brand. I think you, of course, having an online presence and GitHub profile definitely adds to it. But just being in your local Ohana and just talking to people around there's enough work there. You know, like like having an online brand is very important thing, and I agree to it. And I'm working on it now, but. Also, you know, it's not the most important thing. I see. So to say, talking about online branding, I understand you also have a job hunting website. Is that a side project you are doing? Yeah, and yeah, very good. So the other pro of being a freelancer is when you have free time, you can do several other things that. That you might not find time, and I I don't know how you find time for podcasting, man. But I you know so yeah. So I made this website called Blaze New Trail. So the thing is, I'm very active in the local community, and a lot of people call me and write me, "Hey, I need a job," or a lot of people say, "Hey, I need someone. Do you know someone?" And I'm always writing WhatsApp messages or emails here and there. And I was like, "There needs to be a central directory about all Salesforce jobs." It has a simple bulletin board. So I created something. It's called www. It's blaze new trail. dot com. So it helps you blaze a new trail, and basically, it's a job board. And where the employers are looking for someone, they can just go ahead and put their job ad over there,
[19:28] and the guy and people like us who are looking for work can just go and apply. Like it's just a simple bulletin board, no sign up required, nothing. You can subscribe to a newsletter as a developer to be notified about new jobs that are coming up in your area. So I'm still working on how to release it, but yeah. So freelancing gave me the opportunity to use my free time and build something like this. Good. So thanks for for doing this. I'll put your website on our show notes of this episode. People will definitely go there. Thank you. Yeah. And one last question. I still want to ask you. It's a short question based on your background because you're Indian. Maybe German language is not the strongest language for you. Is it? Doc, doc. I can speak pretty good German. Oh really? Okay. Yeah, yeah. I I I got the citizenship. Yeah, you. I learned, and I mean, it was my decision to come here. So I am, I am very German. I am more. I would say I am more German than I am Indian right now. Oh, really? That's so cool. Okay. Yeah. So now everything clicks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be honest, if I would move to Finland, I would be. But this is just my personality, you know. If I would move to Finland, then I would. Be like that because you know. So I get. It's important to know the language where you are because you get integrated in the society. You see what is happening in news. You, I want, I live here. I want to know what's happening around me, right?
[20:59] You know. So, so that's important. And I'm also dating a German girl. Oh, that's so nice. You're using the girl to learn the language. I yeah yeah. That was kind of the idea. All right. So I see that as a freelancer, your personality really fits in here. You're curious about a lot of stuff. And you're stretching your comfort zone. You're stretch stretching the the boundaries. Let's say you really handle a solution from the start to the end. Yeah, and one thing people forget to treat freelancing is they just treat it like a job where you get paid more. No, it's a business, and I also bring the creative aspect to it. So even if I'm writing the same Apex class, you know, for a different customer, I try to see what. I can bring where is my sign in it you know good code is like poetry it just flows and you read it and you're like wow you know it has indentation and nice variable names you you know how good code is, and and I always try to see what I can bring to this work you know because otherwise it's just another Apex class no so I try to see what this user has and what this customer wants and what I can provide in return. All right. Thanks, Ankit. It's really nice talking to you. I see your passion. I see your curiosity. So good luck to your long journey in the future. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you for this. And before I finish, I just want to say, getting
[22:29] inspired from you, I'm also starting a podcast called Forcepreneur, and it's starting in January. And it's about entrepreneurship in Salesforce, where we will go deeper. And I'm going to interview entrepreneurs. You know, I would not take names. I would like to keep that secret. But these are people who have started some kind of enterprise in Salesforce. You know, and now they are in a successful place, and there are a lot of people who also want to start their own companies, and it can be a consultancy, it can be an app exchange partner, it can be an ISV. And you have been very, really helpful and instrumental in me getting this, and you have been a big inspiration. Up at Forcepreneur. dot com, and it says what it is. And yeah, I'm looking forward to start that. And if people have any requests on whom I should interview, that would be really nice. Yeah, just really good pitch here before we close, and really good to have you. I will put that into our show notes definitely. Again, you know all these things. We are always welcoming more podcasters to create more content to help people and. And I mean, sure, man, that was a pitch, but I really mean it that you have been really helpful to me. I I mean it from bottom of my heart. Thanks, thanks a lot. All right, that's the end of our episode. Thanks, Ankit, and we will chat another time. Bye bye.
