E-commerce venture to support freelancers
dubai — Entering the freelancer market with a comprehensive set of solutions, Businessmentals, an e-commerce business venture led by Steve Ashby, promises a new level of professional support to this largely disorganised sector.
BusinessMentals will offer business know-how by world-class experts, templates and advice that will give freelancers a much stronger foundation for their businesses. “BusinessMentals is designed to give freelancers the confidence run their business efficiently and profitably,” says Ashby.
More than 34 per cent of US workers in 2017 are engaged in some form of freelance work, according to Forbes magazine, with this number predicted to reach 43 per cent of the entire workforce by 2020. Over onethird of UK workers will be freelancing by 2022.
In the UAE, numbers are harder to come by, but companies in the business licensing and set-up sector estimate there are over 100,000 licensed freelancers. Add the growing horde of ‘freelancer incognitos’ who have jobs but also have their ‘side hustles’, and the real number of full and part-time freelancers is probably closer to 250,000.
Ashby quotes a recent World Bank study that showed the single largest reason why 85 per cent of freelance startups collapse within 30 months is because of “business incompetence”. Changing that statistic is the main reason he launched Businessmentals. “You cannot be consistently profitable if you’re not competent at running a business. You might get lucky a few times, but that’s not sustainable.”
The freelance sector is unregulated. Standards of performance, reliability and ethical behaviour vary wildly Steve Ashby, Founder of BusinessMentals
The freelancer types he’s identified are freelancer classic, freelancer incognito (someone who has a day job and a “side hustle”) and freelancer and friends (the freelancer who has won bigger jobs than they can handle themselves and thus needs to hire other freelancers).
“It is also a fact that the freelance sector is totally unregulated. Standards of performance, reliability and ethical behaviour vary wildly. At the same time as the segment is growing, the push-back from the clients of freelancers is growing too. Dissatisfaction with work ethic, concerns about poaching both work and clients are just a few of the many reasons given by clients,“he says.
“But like most things, this cuts both ways. Freelancers often battle to get paid or have impossible deadlines placed on them at the last moment, or find the client simply refuses to deal with them after they have done the work. For every egg, there is a chicken and vice versa.”
Ashby’s lighthearted approach to the issue belies how serious he is about creating the proper work environment for this segment and making it more productive. In his view, working out who to blame is futile. It’s much better to establish good working practices and ethical standards of behaviour by both parties and to build relationships based on mutual respect.
— business@khaleejtimes.com