For many full-time employees, millennials in particular, joining the gig economy is an alluring prospect. Understandably so.
Being a member of the gig economy, while potentially risky, affords many of us the opportunity to quit our “real” jobs and travel the world while earning a living with unparalleled flexibility. Or, it can create a more appealing work-life balance of collaborating only with the clients we choose.
To shed more light on why so many of us are making this shift, I recently reached out to ten millennials who left their jobs to join the gig economy and asked them to share exactly how (and why) they made the leap. Here’s what six of them had to say.
1 & 2. Selena Slavenburg & Jacob Taylor
In 2016, Selena Slavenburg and Jacob Taylor left their jobs in Los Angeles and set out to travel Europe for what they thought would be a few months. They used their writing and photography skills to document their adventures on Instagram. Fast forward nearly a year later, the couple now live in Amsterdam where Slavenburg is a part-time marketing consultant and Taylor freelances remotely as a videographer and photographer.
With more than 36,000 Instagram followers, they’re now confident in their decision to leave Los Angeles, but it wasn’t that easy at first. Slavenburg shares, “We love traveling and knew if we had the opportunity to move abroad or travel and be financially secure, we’d take it. I was working full-time out of an office in Los Angeles, so it was a scary thought for me to just up and leave. Finally, we both reached a point where we said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ My biggest fear was putting ourselves in a situation where we’d be desperate for work, but that never happened. I truly believe if you’re passionate about a lifestyle change, you can make anything work.”
The need for new skills has been their biggest hurdle, shares Taylor. “Growing our blog, Instagram brand and freelance work has required learning new skills that were at one point completely foreign to us. Things constantly change and develop, so we’ve had to redo a lot of the original work that we spent long hours on. We’ve had to find a balance between wanting things to be perfect and being pragmatic — it’s a lesson we’ll carry as we continue to grow our business.”
3. Talia Koren
This influencer marketing consultant, freelance writer, and former Elite Daily staff writer is based in New York — not a cheap city to live and work in. She writes about personal finance, healthy habits and content trends.
Unlike many other freelancers, Koren didn’t land herself in the gig economy completely by choice. “I started freelancing after my whole team was cut from a large online publication last year. I plan on freelancing for as long…