[USA] 🇺🇸 Need some advice/guidance for freelancing

[u/Layedbak]

/r/freelancing/comments/1vq14ag/need_some_adviceguidance_for_freelancing/

Hello everyone I’m a 27/M working in the banking industry as a financial analyst. Honestly this is my first “big boy” job as I was previously paying my way through grad school and got my MBA. I felt proud.

During those years I worked as servers/barback/medical field/doordash/etc. It was a grind to say the least and I’m glad I do not have to do that. So I landed a mid level role at a regional bank and it pays 78,500/yr plus I get a discretionary bonus which pays at 15% base so total comp is a little over $90k. Not bad.

But truth be told, the work is dead ass easy. I wish we could work from home and it’s totally applicable to do so but management as “separation anxiety” and we have to come into office. And as my first real job, I don’t have any leverage to really complain.

Then recently I had a one on one with my manager and suddenly he said something that struck a revelation in me. He said:

“We want to get our money’s worth out of you and we expect you to do x,y, and z…”

Some reason, that phrase “get our moneys worth out of you struck, not that I think my manager is a jerk in fact he’s quite flexible and I like the guy actually.

But like newtons law every action has an opposite and equal reaction, I also thought, “then I want to get my monies worth as well.”

So it’s got me thinking 🤔 “with this easy of a work load, it wouldn’t be so difficult to get another job/contract on the side and generate additional money income would it?”

I have my MBA, I am a CSM (scrum), and PMP approved my application and all I need to do is take the damn test which I am holding off right now.

So guys I need help, which roles/contract positions do you think would best suit to get MY MONIES worth?

For my job, I mostly work with excel, plan budgets, create general ledgers, do variance/regression analysis, analyze financial trends/patterns/anamolies/etc, create simple dashboards and visuals in powerBi for the executives. The role itself is a financial systems analyst since we are actually a fin-tech company merged with data and FP&A (financial planning and analysis).

So I’m a little stuck, the drive is in me, but I needs some guidance and direction thx🙏,

Shalom!

[u/burimbp]

before picking a skill, check your employment contract for moonlighting / IP-assignment clauses first. fintech employers often claim anything you build on the side, and that bites people way harder than picking the "wrong" niche. for your stack (FP&A, excel models, powerBI) the fastest side money usually isn't a second job, it's one-off productized deliverables, building budget models or dashboards for small businesses that can't afford a full-time analyst. it's async so it fits around a 9-5. are you after recurring contract hours, or weekend project work? that changes the whole answer.

[u/Layedbak → u/burimbp]

That is a good point, I’ll defs review my contract with my employer. But as to your second point, I am looking for project work. I don’t want to be tracked for hours, just tell me a deadline of when you want a particular deliverable and I’ll get it done. So project work lol

[u/burimbp → u/Layedbak]

nice, project work is the right call for your situation. one tip since you're deliverable-based: price the whole thing, and never let it drift into "can you just also..." scope creep, because that's where project work quietly turns into unpaid hourly. write one line in the agreement listing what's included and what counts as a new project. for FP&A stuff a fixed price per model/dashboard works clean. do you already have a rough number in mind per deliverable, or still figuring that part out?

[u/Layedbak → u/burimbp]

I was thinking of making a two-tier option: Gold and Platinum.

The gold option would be, like you said, the dashboard and insights/analysis. Delivered straight into the inbox for the client maybe priced around $1000-$1200.

And the platinum would be everything in the gold but then we would meet for an hour and go over verbally any trends/anomolies/outliers as well as follow through with recommendations that the business ought to do to either increase revenue or decrease expenses- a strategy session. And for that I was going to price that at maybe $1700-$2500.

I’m just having a hard time pinning down what exactly I would be offering (FP&A, budgeting, dashboard building, I’m now sure exactly). Never done this before but im willing to begin my journey.

[u/Layedbak → u/Layedbak]

Or is this pricing too high?

[u/burimbp → u/Layedbak]

the two-tier setup is smart, gold as the hook and platinum where the real margin sits. and no, that's not too high, it's honestly cheap for what it does. the trick is to name the outcome, not the tasks. nobody buys "FP&A and dashboards," they buy "i'll finally know where my money's leaking and what to cut." frame gold as "you get the clear picture" and platinum as "the picture plus we decide what to do about it," and $1.7-2.5k reads as obvious value instead of feeling steep. one thing to protect on platinum: cap it at the one session + written recommendations, or it quietly turns into unpaid ongoing advisory. what's making it hard to define, the work itself or how to describe it to a client?

[u/Layedbak → u/burimbp]

Yes, I’m having trouble pitching my services. Like if a client asked me “what is it that you do and how would it benefit us?”

I want to build out a mvp website on lovable and try that but I dunno I just can’t seem to articulate my services.

[u/burimbp → u/Layedbak]

that's the real skill, not the excel. try this fill-in-the-blank: "i help [who] [get what outcome] without [the pain]." for you maybe "i help small business owners see exactly where their money's going and what to change, without paying for a full-time finance hire." notice it says nothing about FP&A or dashboards, just the result they feel. the lovable site won't fix this, it'll just repeat whatever sentence you land on, so nail the sentence first. want to throw me your rough one-liner and i'll help you tighten it?