Freedom has a business model

In 2018, I made a decision that looked brave from outside but felt deeply unsettling from inside.

I chose to step away from a corporate job and move toward an uncertain, open-ended life as a freelancer.

I was excited. And yes—fearful at the same time.

Excited about freedom. Fearful about whether I’d earn enough to sustain the lifestyle that years of corporate work had shaped.

That mix stayed with me for a while. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying—or hasn’t lived it.

When the salary disappears, a simple but uncomfortable question appears:

What exactly am I good at—without a company name behind me?

Not designation. Not hierarchy. Not experience written on paper.

Just skills that people would actually pay for.

After honest self-reflection, I identified three strengths—not theoretical, but lived:

• The ability to teach and share acquired knowledge
• The ability to translate experience into mentoring and training
• And one strength I had long underestimated—writing

Writing didn’t feel like a career skill earlier. It felt personal. Private. Almost indulgent.

Ironically, it became impossible because of corporate life— and inevitable after I left it.

I began with what I loved most : Teaching.

I started visiting universities as a guest faculty. Classrooms felt like home again. Not because of authority—but because of dialogue.

Students didn’t care about my past titles. They cared whether what I said made sense.

That honesty was refreshing.

Parallelly, I started sharing experience through training programs, mentoring, and career counselling.

Not as “sessions”. As conversations.

And slowly, something interesting happened.

My thoughts started demanding a longer form.

That’s when writing stepped forward.

Post-2018, I became an author.

Books that were next to impossible during corporate life found space, time, and courage to exist:

• The Corporate Hanuman
• TESOL
• Ab Krut–Krutya Bhayau Mai Mata

And more are already in the pipeline.

Writing didn’t just add another income stream. It added depth to everything else I do.

Teaching sharpened my writing. Writing refined my mentoring. Mentoring clarified my teaching.

That’s the real magic of freelancing— skills start talking to each other.

Was there a moment when I thought “Maybe a salaried job was safer”?

Absolutely.

Especially in the early days— when income was uncertain and the pressure to maintain a “respectable life” was real.

But another realization arrived quietly and firmly:

If I return to a salaried job now, I may never come out again.

That clarity changed everything.

Safety stopped being about salary. It became about self-direction.

Today, if you ask me who I am—

Mentor? Teacher? Career architect?

I don’t separate them anymore.

A good mentor is always a teacher. A real teacher shapes careers—directly or indirectly.

So yes, I see myself as three-in-one. And I’m at peace with that identity.

Freelancing didn’t make life easier. It made it honest.

No hiding behind systems. No borrowed credibility. Only relevance, responsibility, and rhythm.

And while I may not yet be a “big brand”, I enjoy my work—and my life—far more than I did in a salaried role.

That joy is not accidental. It’s earned.

If there’s one quiet takeaway from my journey, it’s this:

Don’t search for new talents. Revisit the ones life has already trained you in.

Your freelance frontier is not a leap into the unknown. It’s a return to what you already are—without filters.

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💬Comment your freelance niche idea.

Say it out loud—even if it feels incomplete. That’s how clarity begins.