10 Steps to start your successful freelance automotive business!

Maybe you won’t believe me but it’s true. You can take what you’re currently doing on a day to day basis as full time employee and start offering it as your professional services to different customers. Just like that! 🤗

✅ write down what you are good at, what’s at the core of your last years experience (for me it was „achieving ASPICE process compliance in automotive lidar“

✅ try to find others on LinkedIn that have already made the step into their self employed journey and ask them for advice on how to start, pitfalls to avoid, how to price your services 

✅ start writing a standard outreach message for „initial contact“ with potential clients. Keep it 400 characters, so you can use it when you press „connect“ when inviting a new connection. Only on web LinkedIn (avoid inviting via mobile) you can „add a note“. This filed is limited to 400 characters. This way you avoid having to pay for „LinkedIn premium“ and pay for expensive InMails.

✅ In the meantime register your business. In Germany it’s quite easy. Just register for „Einzelunternehmen“ and inform the tax authorities so they issue you a new tax ID for your business. There is of course multiple ways. If you want to limit personal risk start a „UG“ similar to the UK „Ltd“. Just google for it, there is heaps of tutorials and how to‘s.

✅ Decide if you want to go alone or through a "middleman". You can decide to sign a deal directly with a customer or freelance „through a consultancy. They will take a fair cut of the revenue stream (unusually 20-30%, sometimes even 40%), but therefore they have clients for you lined up. So you safe on the sales and marketing side. Not a bad deal at least for getting your freelance business started! Also they will have all the contracts, NDAs etc prepare for you. But in the end it's up to you, both ways have pros and cons.

✅ When you’ve found your first client it’s time to think about contracts, NDAs and rates. Normally your client will offer you standard contract, NDA etc. If you want you can run those by a lawyer, or for now just take them as is. Just make sure you don’t sign any agreements that will tie you down. You want to be able to have multiple customers at some point to avoid „Scheinselbständigkeit“ - google for it.

✅ Hourly rates - this really depends on your type of client, market, your potential role etc. expect sth around 80-100€ /hour for the start. Of course you can try higher but this is up to you. Definitely some freelancers do up to 200€/hour. All depends…

✅ Sing the deal

✅ Start working

✅ Write your first invoice

✅ Get your first self employed money transferred to your bank account! 💵💵💰🤯 this feels so good! 🔥❤️

✅Don’t forget to write about it on LinkedIn. That’s going to be your #1 Sales/Marketing Funnel

If you want to learn more join our LinkedIn Community: „Automotive Freelance Professionals“ : https://lnkd.in/e9iY3zQS

If you’re interested to learn more or need some guidance don’t hesitate to contact me!

Lust get in touch! Best, Lukas