Freelance To Freedom: The Roadmap For Creating A Side Business To Achieve Financial, Time And Life Freedom By Vincent Pugliese

This book is legit! If it does not become a NYT Best Seller, I will be shocked. It is so genuine, real and most of all RELATABLE. So many of us are or have been in the ‘rat race’, doing the same thing day in and day out. We cannot see any other way to do work and life. After reading this book, you will hear Vincent’s voice in your ear with your decision making process! Vincent is a great coach and a wonderful guide for this next journey in your life. He is a normal person, like you and me, that took the time to share his journey and wisdom with us all. I am grateful for this book and will continue to reference it as long as I need to. Aside from being full of real life experience, Vincent is an excellent story teller. You will feel connected to each chapter of the book. The way it is broken up into Sections makes it easy to reference when you need a refresher. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of this now AND one for your closest mate!

I haven’t even finished reading the book and it already helped me a lot! Great read for someone who wants to exit the rat race and follow their own path.
It was recomended in the Choose FI Podcast and they were so right! 🙂

“Freelance to Freedom” does a brilliant job of intertwining humor and personal stories that take us down the road of a photographer who leaves a full-time photojournalism job to freelance his way out of debt. With a kid on the way, and being in a low-paying job as a newspaper photographer, Vincent Pugliese realized he needed to start hustling his photography to get out of debt, and be in control of his life financially.

Encouraging the reader to take their own steps to financial freedom, he simply states that if you do not know where to start, start by being better than yesterday.

Personal stories intertwined with cold hard facts make this a quick reading book for those who plan on leaving their job, or those who already have. Based on the numbers he states in the book, that number looks to increase within 10 years of having 50% of the work force being freelancers or self-employed.

Vincent details through five steps how to build your freelance income from a side-hustle business to where you can be your own boss, call your own shots, and have the ultimate reward by being able to spend more time with your family after becoming debt-free. “The greatest thing you can give your children is wonderful memories,” explains Pugliese.

With some financial coaching and a hard work-ethic, you will learn that you too can freelance your way to freedom. He explains that yes there will be rookie mistakes, pricing blunders and other missteps, but “Being in debt has become so universally accepted that you are considered weird if you go against it. So let us be weird.” And with that, his motivation to be in complete control of his life takes root.

By working harder and fostering more relations with successful people, more opportunities grow. And those opportunities can also help the reader to achieve debt freedom. He says, “Debt robbed us the ability to live the life we wanted because we were paying for a part of our life we already lived.”

His new schedule allows him to work around family events with the greatest reward of having more family time together.

Vincent shares his personal struggles and details basic steps he took to realize his dream and explains how you can do that too. Simple daily patterns of his life that have worked, and he passes on his successes to others like starting with a morning JEM (Journaling/Exercise/Meditation) or even simply, just smiling more.

Smiling seems easier for the author by the end of the book as he has broken from the ranks of the 80% of employees who are unhappy with their jobs. He explains that there is hope. There is a way out.

You do not have to be 100% debt-free to attain all of his goals, but the more you are the more you can grow your business. Once your business grows, it is easier to give back, something he highly encourages.

By the end of the book, it seems as though we’ve actually known Vincent like he was a classmate of ours years ago. In his pages of personal stories, humor, wit and wisdom he keeps your mind working to get the most out of your talent. He describes talent as drive, passion, grit, determination, and motivation.

The book culminates when the author, Vincent Pugliese, finds his freedom. In this case, freedom is the freedom of debt so you can do whatever you want.

By sharing his story to success, he encourages everyone to follow a similar path to their own freedom.
“If our story can help any family change course and start building the life and family of their dreams, then this is all worth it.”

I can’t say enough good things about this book. I bought it and didn’t put it down until I finished it.

I love how Vincent keeps it real, he talks about the struggle he and his wife, Elizabeth faced and what they had to sacrifice to get to where they are.

But more importantly he talks about the possibilities.

I had so many aha moments that I lost count and will have to reread this book to learn more lessons.

When he broke down how much money we actually need vs how much money we think we need, I realized I have had it all wrong. Financial freedom is much closer than I thought and now I feel like I have the steps to achieve it.

I’m inspired and motivated.

Spoiler alert number 1: There’s a happy ending, great lessons learned and he shares them all in-easy-to-digest steps.

Spoiler alert number 2: Make no mistake, if you are in any significant debt, then you have a lot of relearning and bad habits to overcome.

We are all the result of our own decision making, for good or for bad. Let’s face it, we can all use some help, and who better to learn from than someone who has faced self-made disasters at every turn, but actually learned from his mistakes.

What Vincent has written is basically a fiscal autobiography where the lessons aren’t saved for the end, they are on every page, in the form of personal, sometimes funny anecdotes. More importantly, he presents a step-by-step formula for success, modeled on his own experience.

Now a successful, award-winning photographer and business coach, he was once on the fast road to oblivion. As a teen, his know-it-all attitude led to constant frustrations and bad choices. Like many of us, he struggled with direction in life until he finally found his passion – photojournalism.

But, as he shows, you can’t live on passion and credit cards!

When circumstances (expanding family, job frustrations, home improvements, etc) started to weigh down his ability to enjoy life and get ahead, he and his wife were forced to reckon with their relationship with money.

To get out of debt, you have to do a major gut check and commit to breaking bad habits. And his short book lays it all out in easy to follow steps.

There’s no sales pitch here, people. No overnight success. Truth be told, the deeper your hole, the more digging out you’re going to have to do. But it is so worth it and Vincent makes the journey a little less painful!