Leaders, following up on Maari of Uncompany’s Leader Portal, it’s rare to see entrepreneurs and business leaders in our space that have real freelance experience, not the ‘I freelanced for 6 months then started coaching’.
The result is that leaders have sexy decks, raise a bunch, but can’t get real traction outside of marketing walls.
Brooke isn’t one of these leaders, she’s a web dev freelancer at heart, and will bring us to the core of what’s most important to freelancers, what’s in the way for freelancers, and where the industry is going.
We’ll also hit on something controversial - the disruption of freelance talent marketplaces.
Specially we hit on:
What the actual purpose of a talent marketplace is, and why the current form of talent marketplaces won’t be what works in the next 5 years.
Why this transition away from talent ‘marketplaces’ and towards talent ‘partners’ is happening faster than we think.
How entrepreneurs can build for the next wave of freelance talent marketplaces.
Trigger warning: Some leaders will feel very uncomfortable as our industry was built on marketplaces, specifically Upwork (UPWK) and Fiverr (FVRR). Both were one of the first, both have clear strengths, yet both were built for an industry that is quickly and fundamentally changing. Specifically, freelancers the past 10 years look very different than freelancers entering today.
Enjoy!
*Paid readers find this at the bottom.
Why did platforms introduce the freelance economy in a transactional way?
“the way that a lot of platforms and freelancing gig economy had been set up to this point up to date are very focused on transactional.”
“the marketplace concept was so focused on fulfilling the needs of quote unquote, the employer that it really wasn't supporting the freelancer and the Freelancers have more power now and they'll continue to gain more power and they should, because they're providing the work.”
“if you've got millions of people on a marketplace? How is there any sort of real, like, vetting process or anything there.”
What is the future of freelance talent marketplaces?
“I definitely think there's an end to them as we know it now.”
What will companies always need?
“There’s always a needed element to help manage in between. If you look at corporate America, there's always a third party in there. It's managing there's a whole HR department, there's you know, there's always a manage management element in between.”
Where will disruption come from?
“People are really looking towards more curation, more niching, more support, that they're not getting in a marketplace setting. And so that's where I see that there's going to continue to be that disruption.”
Companies need full time talent dedicated to just managing freelancers
“I see one path that that could continue to develop is the HR departments having a specific person or team that is associated with these marketplaces or these freelancers.”
“there's going to have to be literally employees at these companies that are managing the freelance talent.”
What do both small business owners and corporations need?
“They love reporting, both small business owners and corporations.”
“They want quality, they also are not exactly sure how to get fully set up with freelancers.”
“They want someone to manage it, they just want it to be taken care of, they want it to be, you know, handled smoothly and work with them.”
How can companies support freelancers? Onboarding!!! And empathy.
“letting them do their job and not micromanaging them, because they've got it and you're gonna waste your own resources trying to micromanage them.”
“Let them do their job and make sure that you've set that scope successfully at the beginning, and expect that the Freelancer is going to let you know if they're going out of that scope.”
“It's just like having an employee, usually they're going to be a little bit more independent and able to handle everything that's coming at them, but make sure that you make room for them”.
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