Korean dramas are on a league of its own now.
I just finished watching Start-Up. It’s a hit Koreanovela from last year (2020). Years of watching serialized TV made me hate waiting weekly for new episodes so we’ve decided to binge-watch everything in one go during the December holidays. Perfect timing as well since that’s when all episodes completely aired.
Korean TV shows aren’t new to me or many of us. They started creeping in our TVs more than a decade ago. What particularly drew me to them are my love of historical and period dramas. But the current content they produce now is just top-notch; it keeps evolving!
Earlier in 2020, we binge-watched Crash Landing On You, a politically inclined current event rom-com drama packed all in one show. It should be on your must watch list as well. It humanized a picture of normal North Koreans away from their dictator’s face always on the news.
You don’t see these types of fresh content and ideas in our local mainstream media, sadly.
But I digress, you came for the hook in my title. So let’s serve the dish fresh (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD).
I just finished watching Start-Up. It’s a hit Koreanovela from last year (2020). Years of watching serialized TV made me hate waiting weekly for new episodes so we’ve decided to binge-watch everything in one go during the December holidays. Perfect timing as well since that’s when all episodes completely aired.
Korean TV shows aren’t new to me or many of us. They started creeping in our TVs more than a decade ago. What particularly drew me to them are my love of historical and period dramas. But the current content they produce now is just top-notch; it keeps evolving!
Earlier in 2020, we binge-watched Crash Landing On You, a politically inclined current event rom-com drama packed all in one show. It should be on your must watch list as well. It humanized a picture of normal North Koreans away from their dictator’s face always on the news.
You don’t see these types of fresh content and ideas in our local mainstream media, sadly.
But I digress, you came for the hook in my title. So let’s serve the dish fresh (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD).
1. You don’t need a college degree to start freelancing
Much like the lead actress Seo Dal-mi (the ever beautiful former Kpop idol Suzy Bae), who didn’t finish her studies after her father died, she decide to help in her grandma’s corndog business instead. She entered odd jobs but still became a successful CEO of a tech startup!
She doesn’t have CEO or tech skills at first but because of her perseverance to begin, she eventually learned everything required to become successful. It’s the same in freelancing. Lucky are those who have prior training, educational background, or experience but even if you don’t have these, the right attitude and mindset to start and persevere to learn will take you there.
2. You need to market your skills correctly, or else no one will find you!
On the contrary, Nam Do San the lead actor and his gang of other nerds were experienced programmers with relevant degrees to back them up but they chose to become business owners without successful breakthroughs since their startup was founded.
Their startup Samsan Tech (a play on their surnames all ending in San and there being three of them. “Sam” is the number three in Korean), promised to launch an AI service that can easily identify any face instantly even if there’s a bunch of them in a single area covered.
The only problem is that they haven’t earned real money at all. And they showed exactly why!
They’re locked up in their mini-office, they just code and code, join contests, and expect clients to come. Their only marketing material is an old-fashioned business card with three colors (mocked by some to be like a traffic light).
The moment they decided to join Sandbox, a company helping startups achieve their dreams, they learned the ropes and eventually became successful developers working for a global company -- something they despised doing that’s why they started Samsan Tech.
As a freelancer, it becomes our responsibility to not just learn skills that pay but also find people willing to pay those skills for us. You do that by joining job platforms, offering your help in forums, or even scalping clients in social media. Align your services with your expertise and portfolio and begin with a mindset of helping first.
Here is a free masterclass on Youtube to help you get started on marketing yourself comfortably by starting with a mindset change.
3. Give yourself a powerful "why" besides money
One of the quotes that struck me while watching was this:
“As long as they know why they do it, the rest will follow” Ms. Yoon, the CEO of SH Venture Capital and Sandbox said this to Ji-pyeong discussing a proposal from a CEO who doesn’t seem to know her “why” in doing their business.
It will keep you intact, and firm when obstacles come your way. Knowing your why will keep you going.
My why has always been financial freedom to establish my own family and help my current one, time for my side hustles/projects or passions, stay at home and enjoy working without ever going out.
Whenever I get obstacles, problems, or anything that would bother me, these things always come back in mind. Maybe yours could be: to erase office drama in my life, or to not anymore sacrifice hours of my life wasted in traffic jams day in and out or better health. What’s yours?
4. Risks are necessary for progress
“Instead of looking for answers, make choices. Whatever you choose, you will be criticized. You can’t make any decisions if you’re afraid of consequences” One of the other leads Han Ji-pyeong said this to Dal-mi.
I interpreted it as make actions now with your choices, take risks. Take for example this simple analogy:
You said you will find clients daily = but you didn’t. In a year that’s 365 days wasted.
But if you actually did find at least 5 to 10 clients daily or even doubled in some days, you would have achieved more than someone who’s just all talk EVEN IF IT’S SMALL.
In 3 months you would have contacted 300 individuals! You sure would have converted some of them already by then. DOING is better than TALKING. Commitment to something like freelancing needs your action. If you’re currently underemployed or undercompensated, the risks you sacrifice include an hour or two finding your perfect client and nurturing your leads but in the end, this would help you get stable paying clients and your flourishing freelancing career.
Much like the lead actress Seo Dal-mi (the ever beautiful former Kpop idol Suzy Bae), who didn’t finish her studies after her father died, she decide to help in her grandma’s corndog business instead. She entered odd jobs but still became a successful CEO of a tech startup!
She doesn’t have CEO or tech skills at first but because of her perseverance to begin, she eventually learned everything required to become successful. It’s the same in freelancing. Lucky are those who have prior training, educational background, or experience but even if you don’t have these, the right attitude and mindset to start and persevere to learn will take you there.
2. You need to market your skills correctly, or else no one will find you!
On the contrary, Nam Do San the lead actor and his gang of other nerds were experienced programmers with relevant degrees to back them up but they chose to become business owners without successful breakthroughs since their startup was founded.
Their startup Samsan Tech (a play on their surnames all ending in San and there being three of them. “Sam” is the number three in Korean), promised to launch an AI service that can easily identify any face instantly even if there’s a bunch of them in a single area covered.
The only problem is that they haven’t earned real money at all. And they showed exactly why!
They’re locked up in their mini-office, they just code and code, join contests, and expect clients to come. Their only marketing material is an old-fashioned business card with three colors (mocked by some to be like a traffic light).
The moment they decided to join Sandbox, a company helping startups achieve their dreams, they learned the ropes and eventually became successful developers working for a global company -- something they despised doing that’s why they started Samsan Tech.
As a freelancer, it becomes our responsibility to not just learn skills that pay but also find people willing to pay those skills for us. You do that by joining job platforms, offering your help in forums, or even scalping clients in social media. Align your services with your expertise and portfolio and begin with a mindset of helping first.
Here is a free masterclass on Youtube to help you get started on marketing yourself comfortably by starting with a mindset change.
3. Give yourself a powerful "why" besides money
One of the quotes that struck me while watching was this:
“As long as they know why they do it, the rest will follow” Ms. Yoon, the CEO of SH Venture Capital and Sandbox said this to Ji-pyeong discussing a proposal from a CEO who doesn’t seem to know her “why” in doing their business.
It will keep you intact, and firm when obstacles come your way. Knowing your why will keep you going.
My why has always been financial freedom to establish my own family and help my current one, time for my side hustles/projects or passions, stay at home and enjoy working without ever going out.
Whenever I get obstacles, problems, or anything that would bother me, these things always come back in mind. Maybe yours could be: to erase office drama in my life, or to not anymore sacrifice hours of my life wasted in traffic jams day in and out or better health. What’s yours?
4. Risks are necessary for progress
“Instead of looking for answers, make choices. Whatever you choose, you will be criticized. You can’t make any decisions if you’re afraid of consequences” One of the other leads Han Ji-pyeong said this to Dal-mi.
I interpreted it as make actions now with your choices, take risks. Take for example this simple analogy:
You said you will find clients daily = but you didn’t. In a year that’s 365 days wasted.
But if you actually did find at least 5 to 10 clients daily or even doubled in some days, you would have achieved more than someone who’s just all talk EVEN IF IT’S SMALL.
In 3 months you would have contacted 300 individuals! You sure would have converted some of them already by then. DOING is better than TALKING. Commitment to something like freelancing needs your action. If you’re currently underemployed or undercompensated, the risks you sacrifice include an hour or two finding your perfect client and nurturing your leads but in the end, this would help you get stable paying clients and your flourishing freelancing career.
5. Practice your elevator speech, and be proud!
This is episode 14’s title and it says everything you need to know.
Elevator speech = a rehearsed or prepared one or two lines worth of words to properly describe what you do for a living that even a 5 year old would understand.
It was coined elevator because elevator rides are short and if you meet strangers here who begin asking you about your job, you can answer them quickly.
Here’s mine:
I work online as a virtual assistant helping small and medium businesses here and abroad. Normal tasks include social media, writing, and admin management.
Nagtatrabaho ako online bilang virtual Assistant or VA. Tinutulungan namin mga small and medium enterprises local or foreign sa mga tasks tulad ng social media, writing, o online admin work.
Develop yours so that whenever someone asks you what you do, you have one on the ready.
6. Security is your best friend
Avoid any unnecessary attacks on your online profiles, projects and the like by always securing your workplace.
In episode 13, Dal-mi’s self-driving car system got hacked (done by their own devs to sabotage the company!). All of them were clueless until savior of the day arrives (Do-san). How do you become the lady in distress in such situations? Prevention is always better than cure because sometimes cures can be too late.
As an online freelancer, it’s your duty to always use methods to keep your and your clients accounts secure. For client login and password credentials, it pays to use password managers like Lastpass. It keeps all necessary information secure and for the client's eyes only.
If you are on major social media networks, it pays to have your phone numbers connected for 2 factor authentication. This means regardless of anyone trying to access or hack your account, they would first need to confirm it through a verification code sent to the number you will set up.
This is standard practice for most accounts, especially financial ones like bank or Paypal. Any other services or apps that require use of money or digital wallets (for example, Foodpanda, Grab etc) should take precautions such as this.
Also, always change your passwords regularly. Use the password manager to generate secure passwords and never forget them again.
7. Pay it forward
Freelancing can be a lonely world if you only work at home alone. Remember, when you were starting in this line of work? You’re clueless. How did you find help? Probably Youtube or some online course. In the past, it wasn’t that easy.
I had to take a job, get training in there, meet people, get trained by clients, and search for so many articles. Youtube wasn’t as popular a method for training as it was now but the point is: you learn from someone, some place, not everything is achieved by you alone.
Pay that forward by helping another person who wants to become a freelancer free of charge.
Or if not, donate to charity, volunteer, or create products/tech/services that serve the needy and those who can’t pay you back.
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for free tips we strive to update regularly (my way of paying it forward).
This is episode 14’s title and it says everything you need to know.
Elevator speech = a rehearsed or prepared one or two lines worth of words to properly describe what you do for a living that even a 5 year old would understand.
It was coined elevator because elevator rides are short and if you meet strangers here who begin asking you about your job, you can answer them quickly.
Here’s mine:
I work online as a virtual assistant helping small and medium businesses here and abroad. Normal tasks include social media, writing, and admin management.
Nagtatrabaho ako online bilang virtual Assistant or VA. Tinutulungan namin mga small and medium enterprises local or foreign sa mga tasks tulad ng social media, writing, o online admin work.
Develop yours so that whenever someone asks you what you do, you have one on the ready.
6. Security is your best friend
Avoid any unnecessary attacks on your online profiles, projects and the like by always securing your workplace.
In episode 13, Dal-mi’s self-driving car system got hacked (done by their own devs to sabotage the company!). All of them were clueless until savior of the day arrives (Do-san). How do you become the lady in distress in such situations? Prevention is always better than cure because sometimes cures can be too late.
As an online freelancer, it’s your duty to always use methods to keep your and your clients accounts secure. For client login and password credentials, it pays to use password managers like Lastpass. It keeps all necessary information secure and for the client's eyes only.
If you are on major social media networks, it pays to have your phone numbers connected for 2 factor authentication. This means regardless of anyone trying to access or hack your account, they would first need to confirm it through a verification code sent to the number you will set up.
This is standard practice for most accounts, especially financial ones like bank or Paypal. Any other services or apps that require use of money or digital wallets (for example, Foodpanda, Grab etc) should take precautions such as this.
Also, always change your passwords regularly. Use the password manager to generate secure passwords and never forget them again.
7. Pay it forward
Freelancing can be a lonely world if you only work at home alone. Remember, when you were starting in this line of work? You’re clueless. How did you find help? Probably Youtube or some online course. In the past, it wasn’t that easy.
I had to take a job, get training in there, meet people, get trained by clients, and search for so many articles. Youtube wasn’t as popular a method for training as it was now but the point is: you learn from someone, some place, not everything is achieved by you alone.
Pay that forward by helping another person who wants to become a freelancer free of charge.
Or if not, donate to charity, volunteer, or create products/tech/services that serve the needy and those who can’t pay you back.
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for free tips we strive to update regularly (my way of paying it forward).
8. There’s nothing new to be discovered, you copy and improve
During demo day in episode 10, In-jae and Dal-mi’s companies competed with the same technology but with different real life applications. We knew they were both using AI tech that deciphers handwriting back in episode 5. In-jae’s team though uses it to create web fonts and make them simpler and less costly. Dal-mi’s team made a different version that helps prevent forgery.
The lesson here is that despite all the topics in the world, they chose the same thing but what mattered was how they used the data they gathered. This is the same in freelancing.
If you want to become a successful writer or designer, there will always be those who are miles ahead of you and you’ll be like one in thousands. Your task then is to make sure you shine above the rest. HOW?
Let’s look back to Another lesson from episode 5 “Hackathon” when Suzy or Dal-mi presented their product which in my opinion is a masterclass in how to introduce anything really.
Structure (according to Dal-mi’s remarks):
Offer your freelancing services in the same structure and you will never be lost in the ocean of online work.
During demo day in episode 10, In-jae and Dal-mi’s companies competed with the same technology but with different real life applications. We knew they were both using AI tech that deciphers handwriting back in episode 5. In-jae’s team though uses it to create web fonts and make them simpler and less costly. Dal-mi’s team made a different version that helps prevent forgery.
The lesson here is that despite all the topics in the world, they chose the same thing but what mattered was how they used the data they gathered. This is the same in freelancing.
If you want to become a successful writer or designer, there will always be those who are miles ahead of you and you’ll be like one in thousands. Your task then is to make sure you shine above the rest. HOW?
Let’s look back to Another lesson from episode 5 “Hackathon” when Suzy or Dal-mi presented their product which in my opinion is a masterclass in how to introduce anything really.
Structure (according to Dal-mi’s remarks):
- Premise (No humans are born with the same handwriting, even identical twins!)
- Main problem (Many orgs use it to identify people such as banks and tax services however signatures can be forged easily and there aren’t enough forgery detection specialists to properly do the job for millions of Koreans)
- Target market (She mentions the banks, National Tax Service, National Forensic Service, and the Prosecution Service -- all of these are instant markets which could become their path to profitability)
- Solution (AI-based forgery tool that recognizes forged signatures in seconds with a 99.8% accuracy rate which if implemented can effectively make forgery specialist jobs obsolete in the country and abroad!)
- How their company can do it (They plan to make their tech learn different types of authentic handwriting, and forged ones through machine learning to come up with patterns. They first analyzed Jeonghan Bank’s data set of 10,000 signatures to find patterns to determine forgery)
- Future use (Dal-mi mentions that there are many other possible uses for their technology which creates profitability beyond the target market she initially mentioned. This includes Security, medical diagnosis, smart factories, and self-driving cars)
Offer your freelancing services in the same structure and you will never be lost in the ocean of online work.
9. Keep networking, always be in the know and strive for excellence!
When you’re freelancing, you rely on your own wits and strategies to survive.
Ji-pyeong’s assistant was a stark contrast. In one episode towards the end, he got presented by a reporter with a known reputation of shooting down startups and he was clueless.
In corporate setups, you become a manager not just for your skills, leadership, or values BUT ALSO your know-how. This is why it’s mostly given to senior officers or those who have been in the company/industry for years because by then, they would have met the relevant persons, talked to hundreds of employees, knows the management style of the executives, and should have built a considerable amount of network opportunities inside and outside the office.
The assistant lacked all of these but somehow he got promoted!
As a freelancer, you either earn more or less directly due to your ability to solve an expensive or paid problem. Imagine solving more than one at a time! Then doubling that up with high quality output, punctual delivery, and smooth client relations, you’ll be set for life.
Freelancer = skills 1 + skills 2 + skills 3
Add HQ output & On time deliveries & client communications/expectations reached
EQUALS === more money, stable income
This is also the secret sauce to referrals. Your current clients will love you so much they’d refer more business to you because they know the quality of your service.
You also earn referrals from co-freelancers, people you meet in real life or virtually or those you have worked with. Thus it’s important to not burn any bridges. Whenever a client eventually decides to leave or a co-employee gets fired, keep lines open. You will never know what kind of opportunities are in store for you in the future even if you don’t need it yet now.
10. BE KIND
In our world full of violence, and hate, choose to be kind. Like Dal-mi’s grandma Won-deok, who helped young, orphaned Ji-pyeong expecting nothing in return except that he calls her not when he’s successful but when he’s weak, and full of problems. Be the Won-deok in this industry.
Show your prospect clients you care by giving them free tips and advice EVEN if they don’t hire you or are not yet keen now. This leaves a lasting impression, a good one, that will be with them long-term. You can even turn current NOs to big YESes in the future just by doing this. Adopt a mindset of help first, work later.
Parting words...
You also learn something new every episode! They literally explain startup terms that may not be familiar to everyone. I worked with digital start ups since 2012 but I still learned something new.
And may I add that the soundtrack is also amazing. Search for the music used throughout the series and they’re beyond amazing.
Itaewon Class is next on my list after Start Up. I heard favorable reviews and it’s about another topic I’m wildly interested about: marketing and business. Might as well write some lessons about it too if time permits and if you liked what you read here.
To more authentic and original Kdramas in 2021?
Notice: All images are screen-grabbed from the Netflix series.
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