Season “How to Make 250K Per Year” · Episode 6
My Start as a Freelancer
Where could I start from, and which goals came before 250K? · 3 November 2026
My first full year as a freelancer brought about 75,000 euros, and I know that was a privilege. I came out of the startup scene. So I did not start from zero, and that is the question every start begins with, yours included: where can you start from?
01
Where you can start
I founded my GmbH around 2018, in my mid-30s. Behind me were about ten years in startups, from about 2008 to 2018, and at home there was already a family with three kids, so starting from zero was not something I could do.
I didn't have to. My first freelance jobs came through the network from those startup years, mostly consulting. In that first year I was basically selling myself, the mix of tech, marketing and some team leading, to people who already knew what I could do.
So the first thing to get clear is where you can start, and for me that was a network and a consulting income. If you are younger, your costs are lower, and you can start from somewhere else.
02
What consulting can do, and what it can't
Consulting is what let me build my products, and today the sold hours still pay for building the income without hours. But I'm not a fan of it as the long-term path, because for me it doesn't lead anywhere further.
So if you start with consulting too, count it as the money that pays for building something else. The day it becomes the whole plan, you are back to selling hours.
03
Four goals that replaced each other
One goal is always to find a better goal, and mine have replaced each other four times so far. As a boy I only wanted tech, the endless possibilities of the digital world, and that still fascinates me more than anything.
From about 2008 I wanted my own start-up, a big business. Business interested me as much as tech did. I had my first WirtschaftsWoche subscription at around 17 or 18, when it was time to choose a career, and I read a lot about very successful people.
Around 2019/2020, with minimalism, the big business went. A billion would not have given me anything a million doesn't, and a start-up would have cost me what I want to keep, which is the decision itself.
In 2026 the goal became to stop selling my time. What counts now isn't the size of the business, it's who owns my hours, and that goal is this season.
If you wrote your own goals down like this, each with a rough year next to it, what would have replaced what?
04
This week
Write down where you can start from. Count the people in your network who could pay you for something this month, and put your monthly costs next to that number. In my case, back then, it was a network from about ten years of startups and a family with three kids.
05
The open question
Every goal so far has replaced the one before it. I have reached the number, around 250K, but not the shape yet: part of it is still sold time. If the pattern holds, this goal gets replaced too. The question is by what. By more, or by staying at 250K and putting my energy into something else? That is this season's decision, and I will only make it in the last episode. Until then, put your own list from above next to it: what replaced a goal for you, more of the same or something else?
Next in this season: “Taxes in Germany”. Why the tax system became one of my biggest levers, and what it cost me to understand it.