How I quit my retail job at 21 and started my own freelancing business using Twitter
This is a post I've wanted to make for a long time, but imposter syndrome got the best of me. I didn't think I had enough experience or advice to offer.
Now, with my 1 year anniversary approaching of starting my own business, having moved out, and worked with big companies and best-selling authors, I think this is the perfect time to give back and share how I started.
No one really knows what I do for a living, I hardly talk about it. I haven't felt the need to. Yet people would be surprised if I said I started freelancing because of Twitter, and it is where my first client found me.
I worked minimum wage jobs most of my life. I worked at clothing and grocery stores since I was 16, the average minimum wage job, but I always enjoyed storytelling, creating content, and building communities. So while I worked, I used platforms like Instagram to build an audience.
I would post IGTV videos, stories, photos, and long captions to attract an audience. I even started a blog and a podcast with my sister-in-law.
The graphic for our podcast
Instagram wasn't the only thing I experimented with. I wanted to know what the possibilities were for monetizing the content I created. I started dropshipping, and that involved building a Shopify website.
I burned through many forms of creating and nothing seemed to stick. I was even briefly on TikTok. I didn't understand what God was trying to teach me or where I was headed, and why nothing I tried worked out. I felt defeated.
As young people in the modern world, we have the least amount of job security and financial security, and money can be a stressful thing to deal with. You're constantly worried about how you'll move out, how you'll pay off student loan debt, or whether you'll even find a job after graduating. Aside from that, the cost of living has never been higher, and even people with normal office jobs are struggling to pay bills. I knew I didn't want to stay stuck working minimum wage jobs for the rest of my life, and I knew I didn’t want to live stressed out about how I was going to pay for things. Plus, I wanted freedom and job security.
At the same time as I was dealing with unfulfilled hopes, I started building an audience on Twitter by telling my own story. I was following people like @viziandrei, @edlatimore, @AJAC_cortes, and @wizofecom and studying how they created content.
Initially, I didn't know anything about tweeting. I was using Twitter for fun. But somehow I ended up on a side of Twitter that took life very seriously, and that motivated me to make my life better too. I started sharing things I had learned and observed.
I'm a psychology student, so this is something that comes naturally to me. I liked talking about relationships, lifestyle, religion, etc. And for the first time, it felt like I had the space to do that. I didn't use Twitter with the intention of making money. I had given up any expectations that I could. This time I used it because I enjoyed it. I made genuine connections. I learned from others. I started transforming my life. I began to appreciate beauty, I started working out, I gave thanks to God more, and my general attitude towards life changed.
With my newfound inspiration, I tweeted about things I found beautiful. One of them being my parent’s relationship. One day as I was standing in the kitchen watching my parents have breakfast, I realized that I had seen that exact scene for the past 10+ years of my life. I crafted this tweet:
It went viral. At the time all tweeting was for me was dopamine hits. There was no money coming from it, but I was directing traffic to other projects hoping something clicked.
Then, in late May, my first client reached out to me. He said he had been watching my tweets for a while and wanted me to do what I was doing for my Twitter for his brand. Now, this was no small client. This was an individual with big hopes and dreams and plans, and they had picked me out of the crowd simply because I was posting some tweets on a platform? This felt unreal.
I knew I wanted to work for something that was bigger than me, and working with this client would give me the opportunity to do so. Of course, it was no easy task. When you work with a client, you need to understand their mission and adopt it as your own. You need to empathize with the work and care they’ve put into what they have created, and be ready to help them advance it to the next level. As a newbie, you need to be willing to do above and beyond regardless of pay. In the next posts, I’ll talk more about choosing people to work with and client relations.
Anyways, my point here is that - this wasn’t something that happened in a few months, it was a culmination of everything I had worked on in the years coming up to it. Remember when I previously stated that I didn’t understand where God was taking me and why nothing I tried worked? It’s because he was molding all the skills I would need to take on this role with my new client. I will also discuss the types of skills you need to learn to be successful at freelancing in future posts. I had to prove to this client that I had the skill to create content. This meant knowing how to Copywrite, design graphics, and engage and build audiences. Luckily for me, these were all things I had done for my own brands in previous years.
In a few days, it seemed like everything I had worked towards had come together all at once. I went from making $12/hr to being able to decide my own pay and hours. A week later, I gave in my 2-weeks notice at my minimum wage job. Of course, this was an entirely different world I was entering, and I had a lot to learn. Even if I had done these things for my own brand, I had to learn and incorporate strategies that would apply across all niches. This is a never-ending process. Even a year in, I am still learning.
I won’t go into too much detail in this post. For the time being, I just want you all to know my story, and I want readers to understand that it is possible to make an income through Twitter. It seems like it all came together randomly for me, and truthfully it did, but it was a huge learning process. It helped me understand all the things I did right that led up to the very moment I broke free from all my struggles.
However, it was only the beginning of my story.
I will be writing many more posts weekly, sharing what I have learned and what I am learning. If you are interested in embarking on this journey with me, hit the subscribe button below.
Thank you for reading.
Roobz