Hi, my name is Awan from Indonesia 
I got into freelancing world by accident.
On my teenage, I played a basketball a lot.
One day I played on a game and got injured on my knee.
I thought it was just usual injure that will heal quickly.
But after that my knee is not feeling normal.
Years and years later after I graduated university and already getting a job,
finally I met one doctor who told me that I lost my Anterior Cruciate Ligament.
On 2010 I had to do knee reconstruction surgery.
After the surgery I have to stay in the bed for 6 months to let my knee heals.
I don't want to become burden to my family so I try to find a way to support myself.
There's only two things that I can do at that time: reading and browsing as the tv is full of junk show ;p
Then I read Thomas L Friedman book called The World is Flat.
On that book I heard about crowdsourcing and online freelancing site like odesk and elance.
It's like a goldmine to me because that way I don't have to get up from my bed to get money.
But I have problems: my english is not too good and I don't have technical skill required.
After thinking sometime, I decided to choose to go for it.
I learnt about wordpress, themes development, plugin, designs and all related things.
Then I applied for job on odesk , failed, sent again failed again go on and on.
I decided that if I got rejected once then I will applied 10 more 😀
Finally I got my first client from Australia, really happy about that.
I do my best to satisfy him, while I learn more and more until I received my first testimonial from him:
I highly recommend this guy. He's hard working, enthusiastic and a constant communicator. I will defiantly hire Awan again and again, however I will have to wait in a que as others begin to realize his attributes. Speak to you soon my friend. Karl
My heart is full with joy when I read it just to know that I can benefit others from my services
Then partner up with my friends to be able to give more diverse services.
My next client was from Switzerland, he first order logo, then he order stationary design, then he order website, and from there all of his clients was being handled by our team.
After that I got scholarship to study in Netherlands.
This is one of my dream because as an Indonesian who are not grow up in rich family I always dream about studying abroad.
After 6 years got rejected from many scholarship opportunities, finally I got Netherlands Scholarship Award to study on program Master of Information System Development.
Netherlands and Europe is really interesting. I was living up my dream there by meeting lot's of different people, tasting different music and dance style, backpacking to Czech, Belgium, Slovak, Germany and other countries.
I got back to Indonesia in late 2012 and continue again my freelancing activity.
Now I'm serving clients mostly from Canada.
On my second freelancing edition I started again as wordpress developer/designer, but then I always focusing not just on technical work but also on how I can serve more on the clients business side.
Then slowly my client started to discuss about their business process and I'm no longer only doing the technical task but also conducting interview, screening contractor, hiring and also leading team and become project manager to make sure that every projects went smooth.
I'll do my best I can to satisfy clients and few weeks ago I'm hitting 1000 logging hour on odesk http://bit.ly/12y0zQo
This is quite an achievement for me not because of monetary reward but also because I'm able to push myself from lazyness, head full of ideas stagnation, and forcing myself to think about what's the best action for my clients.
MJ book is one of the books that opening my mind about FastLane business.
I'm really thankfull for his creation and I pray that he will be blessed with knowledge, health and inspiration so that he can have more and more opportunity to share it to all people.
I also learn a lot of people on this forum and really thankfull for all of you guys that sharing your minds, ideas, thoughts, wisdom, actions in here.
Now I'm creating this thread to keep track of my progress from Freelancing to Fastlane.
The creation that I'm focusing right now is to develop website that consist of great services from freelancers. The USP of this site compared to odesk is: all the services and freelancers is already verified. The client doesn't need to do job post and screening 50-s candidates.
I want to built this website by start on helping one client at a time, with one services at a time, done by one freelancer at a time.
For now, I will try to offer this services:
- Wordpress Installation
- Wordpress Fix/Help/Troubleshooting
I will use this thread as a way to record my journey that might be benefit to others, and give value to this community in return of what I have received from all people that has sharing on here.
I'm sorry if my english is not too good as it's not my mother tongue, but I'll keep learning it time to time
If any of you happen to go to Indonesia, please hit me up.
I'll be glad to show you many exotic places as we have more than 18.000 islands https://url.odesk.com/~7801vk
That mean if you go to one island at one day, you'll need more than 49 years, so you'll better start now! 😀
Cheers from sunny Indonesia,
Awan
I got into freelancing world by accident.
On my teenage, I played a basketball a lot.
One day I played on a game and got injured on my knee.
I thought it was just usual injure that will heal quickly.
But after that my knee is not feeling normal.
Years and years later after I graduated university and already getting a job,
finally I met one doctor who told me that I lost my Anterior Cruciate Ligament.
On 2010 I had to do knee reconstruction surgery.
After the surgery I have to stay in the bed for 6 months to let my knee heals.
I don't want to become burden to my family so I try to find a way to support myself.
There's only two things that I can do at that time: reading and browsing as the tv is full of junk show ;p
Then I read Thomas L Friedman book called The World is Flat.
On that book I heard about crowdsourcing and online freelancing site like odesk and elance.
It's like a goldmine to me because that way I don't have to get up from my bed to get money.
But I have problems: my english is not too good and I don't have technical skill required.
After thinking sometime, I decided to choose to go for it.
I learnt about wordpress, themes development, plugin, designs and all related things.
Then I applied for job on odesk , failed, sent again failed again go on and on.
I decided that if I got rejected once then I will applied 10 more 😀
Finally I got my first client from Australia, really happy about that.
I do my best to satisfy him, while I learn more and more until I received my first testimonial from him:
I highly recommend this guy. He's hard working, enthusiastic and a constant communicator. I will defiantly hire Awan again and again, however I will have to wait in a que as others begin to realize his attributes. Speak to you soon my friend. Karl
My heart is full with joy when I read it just to know that I can benefit others from my services
Then partner up with my friends to be able to give more diverse services.
My next client was from Switzerland, he first order logo, then he order stationary design, then he order website, and from there all of his clients was being handled by our team.
After that I got scholarship to study in Netherlands.
This is one of my dream because as an Indonesian who are not grow up in rich family I always dream about studying abroad.
After 6 years got rejected from many scholarship opportunities, finally I got Netherlands Scholarship Award to study on program Master of Information System Development.
Netherlands and Europe is really interesting. I was living up my dream there by meeting lot's of different people, tasting different music and dance style, backpacking to Czech, Belgium, Slovak, Germany and other countries.
I got back to Indonesia in late 2012 and continue again my freelancing activity.
Now I'm serving clients mostly from Canada.
On my second freelancing edition I started again as wordpress developer/designer, but then I always focusing not just on technical work but also on how I can serve more on the clients business side.
Then slowly my client started to discuss about their business process and I'm no longer only doing the technical task but also conducting interview, screening contractor, hiring and also leading team and become project manager to make sure that every projects went smooth.
I'll do my best I can to satisfy clients and few weeks ago I'm hitting 1000 logging hour on odesk http://bit.ly/12y0zQo
This is quite an achievement for me not because of monetary reward but also because I'm able to push myself from lazyness, head full of ideas stagnation, and forcing myself to think about what's the best action for my clients.
MJ book is one of the books that opening my mind about FastLane business.
I'm really thankfull for his creation and I pray that he will be blessed with knowledge, health and inspiration so that he can have more and more opportunity to share it to all people.
I also learn a lot of people on this forum and really thankfull for all of you guys that sharing your minds, ideas, thoughts, wisdom, actions in here.
Now I'm creating this thread to keep track of my progress from Freelancing to Fastlane.
The creation that I'm focusing right now is to develop website that consist of great services from freelancers. The USP of this site compared to odesk is: all the services and freelancers is already verified. The client doesn't need to do job post and screening 50-s candidates.
I want to built this website by start on helping one client at a time, with one services at a time, done by one freelancer at a time.
For now, I will try to offer this services:
- Wordpress Installation
- Wordpress Fix/Help/Troubleshooting
I will use this thread as a way to record my journey that might be benefit to others, and give value to this community in return of what I have received from all people that has sharing on here.
I'm sorry if my english is not too good as it's not my mother tongue, but I'll keep learning it time to time
If any of you happen to go to Indonesia, please hit me up.
I'll be glad to show you many exotic places as we have more than 18.000 islands https://url.odesk.com/~7801vk
That mean if you go to one island at one day, you'll need more than 49 years, so you'll better start now! 😀
Cheers from sunny Indonesia,
Awan
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