My road to be a contractor and company owner over full time employment

I won't lie to you and say that being a contractor has been all roses for me. It hasn't! My reasons for making the move are both simple and complex. The main driving factor behind this leap is that my family's health requires flexibility that is difficult to find in the market of full time employment. This has been a slow learning process over my last 3 or so full time positions. And with this understanding we have struck out on this trajectory of independence.

The road has been slow to start. I worked my known contacts for available work. I reached out to the recruiters who were open to this kind of referral. I even registered to Upwork and a couple of other similar freelancer sites. At first I got no bites or work. I did lots of bids and proposals for various people and agencies. I also prepped my business site, portfolio, as well as a bit of spit and polish in my online profiles. Then I went exploring the avenues that I could think of.

My first breakthrough happened on Upwork. I landed a pair of contracts for work on some data mining that turned into a fairly major contract for updating some old website software for longhorn pedigrees ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sharpsoftware.longhorn ). I loved working with the client, and he reciprocated ("Brandon you are basically the strongest asset anyone could have", "Man this is amazing. I'm over the moon with your work!"), which made for one of the most fulfilling projects of my career.

Since then I have had some minor contracts but the more interesting avenues are that I have found a couple of needs where I can build my own products rather than just doing work for others. And these avenues are quite appealing to my soul.

My lessons learned so far. This is a train that takes quite some time to really get moving, and not a casual move I can turn on and off like a job. It is highly rewarding personally to perform the work, much much more so than the full time employment work I have ever done. I enjoy interacting directly with my customers. I do look forward to the challenges and rewards that will result in my upcoming efforts.