Freelance or Full-Time: Choose Your Best Fit

Choosing between freelancing and a full-time role can feel like a high-stakes fork in the road. We take the pressure off with a five–mile marker roadmap that helps you define what matters most right now and match the path to your life, not your LinkedIn headline. Instead of arguing labels, we ask better questions: Do you need stability or flexibility? Variety or consistency? Specialist depth or broad systems thinking? How much risk can you hold in this season—financially, emotionally, and logistically?

Before you hit play, grab a notebook. We’ll guide you to write your top three non-negotiables and circle the one that becomes your compass for offers, scopes, and role fit. If this resonated, share it with a designer who’s weighing freelance vs. full-time, subscribe for more practical career design, and leave a review to help others find the show.

🔗 Episode Links:

Please check out the resource mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

Best-Fit Roadmap: This interactive roadmap breaks down the pros, cons, and “hidden realities” of freelancing and full-time roles—plus bridge paths you can test before making a big switch. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Framing The Question

Jackie Pelegrin 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Designing with Love Podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, instructional designers and educators. Welcome to episode 103 of the Designing with Love Podcast. In this episode, we're exploring a question I hear all the time. Should I go freelancing or should I stay or get into a full-time role? We'll walk through the pros and cons of each path, and more importantly, how to choose the option that fits your life, goals, and season right now. So grab your notebook, a cup of coffee, and settle in as we explore this topic together. And just a quick note before we dive in. This is not a one is better episode. This is a best fit episode. Because careers aren't one decision you make once. They're something you design, test, refine, and redesign as life changes. Today we're using a career roadmap lens, and we'll move through five mile markers to help you get clarity on whether freelancing or full time makes the most sense for you. Alright, mile marker one is all about clarity. A lot of people start with, should I freelance or go full time? But the better question is, what do I want my life to look like right now? Because here's the truth, freelancing can be amazing. Full time can be amazing, and both can be stressful depending on what you need in this season. So I'm going to share a few prompts. If you're listening while driving or on the go, just think through your answers. If you've got your notebook, feel free to pause and jot these down. Prompt one, do I need stability or flexibility right now? Stability might look like predictable pay, benefits, and structure. Flexibility might look like choosing your projects, clients, and schedule. Prompt two, do I want to grow as a specialist or a generalist? Freelancing often nudges you into specialization faster. Full-time roles can build deep systems thinking and long-term ownership, depending on the organization. Prompt three, do I want variety or consistency? Variety can be energizing or exhausting. Consistency can be calming or limiting. Prompt four, how much risk can I comfortably hold right now? And I don't mean are you brave. I mean financially, emotionally, and logistically. What's realistic? Sometimes the best career move isn't the most exciting one. Sometimes it's the one that supports your life. So if you take nothing else from mile marker one, take this. Don't choose a label. Choose your priorities. Now that we've got priorities on the table, let's talk about the freelancing lane. Mile marker two, freelancing. Freelancing can feel like the dream. Control your schedule. Choose the work you love. Build your own brand. And yes, there are real pros. Pro number one, flexibility. You can choose when you work, where you work, and what kinds of projects you accept. Pro number two, income potential. Many instructional designers can earn more per project than they would in a salaried role, especially once they're positioned well and booked consistently. Pro number three, your portfolio can grow quickly. You get exposure to different tools, industries, timelines, and deliverables. So your skills sharpen fast. But here's the part people don't often say out loud. When you freelance, you're not only doing instructional design, you're also doing marketing, sales, client communication, project management, contracts, invoicing, and scope management. Believe me, I've done this before in a sense where I've actually done freelancing. So I know how this goes. So yes, you might be freelancing, but you're also running a mini business. And the hardest part of freelancing is often not the work, it's the inconsistency and the admin load. And I can speak from experience here as well. One month can feel like I'm on top of the world. And the next month can feel like, why is my calendar empty? And why am I suddenly questioning everything? Believe me, I've been there before. So here's a reframe that helps. If you freelance, you're not just an instructional designer, you're running a tiny learning business. So the question becomes, do you want that right now? Okay, now let's look at the full-time lane because I've been there as well and I'm currently there right now. Mile marker three, full-time roles. Full-time work gets a bad reputation sometimes, like it's less free or less creative. But a good full-time role can be incredible. Pro number one, predictable income and benefits. That matters, especially if you're supporting a family, paying off debt, or simply wanting less financial stress. Pro number two, built-in collaboration. You're not alone. You have SMEs, stakeholders, a manager, peers, maybe a whole LD function. Pro number three, you can build deep expertise. You get to see how learning impacts performance over time. You can improve programs, you can iterate. And here's an underrated pro. A strong full-time role can be a paid residency program. You can learn tools, facilitation, strategy, stakeholder management, and performance consulting while someone else pays for the software and the experiments. Now, full-time has downsides too. Sometimes you have less control over priorities, timelines, and workload. And some environments move fast with a lot of we need it yesterday energy. So again, it depends. The question isn't is full-time good? The question is, is this full-time role aligned with how I want to work and grow? Now let's do the comparison people often skip, the money and lifestyle comparison. Mile marker four is the reality check. When people compare freelancing or full-time, they often compare salary versus hourly rate or salary versus project fee, but that's not a fair comparison. You want to compare the whole package. If you're full-time, you might have healthcare, retirement match, paid time off, professional development, and a predictable income that helps you plan. If you're freelancing, you might have a higher earnings ceiling, but also self-funded healthcare and retirement, unpaid time off, taxes you need to plan for, and admin time that doesn't get billed. Here's a quick checklist you can use. One, benefits. What would healthcare and retirement cost out of pocket? Two, taxes. Are you ready for quarterly payments? Three, time, meetings versus client acquisition versus admin. Four, energy, context switching, uncertainty, decision fatigue. Five, savings. Do you have a runway if you want to freelance? And here's a one-liner worth writing down. Your best path is the one that pays you in money and peace. If you're thinking, I still don't know, that's okay. Let's talk about bridge paths. Mile marker 5 is about taking the pressure off. You don't have to choose freelancing or full time as a permanent identity. You can test a lane. Here are a few bridge options. Option one, freelance on the side, small and contained. One clear project a month, not five clients and burnout. Option two, land one retainer client. A retainer gives you consistency without constant marketing. Option three, contract a hire, a great way to test culture and role expectations. Option four, internal freelancing, volunteer for projects inside your organization that stretch you. Option five, seasonal switching, full time for stability in one season, freelancing for flexibility in another. And I want to say this clearly, changing lanes is not failure, it's strategy. Careers evolve, your needs change, your life changes, you're allowed to evolve too. And I also want to mention this. I've actually been doing option two, where I have landed one retainer client. So I still work full-time and I teach part-time, and then I also do freelancing on the side. And I have one large retainer client, so it doesn't burn me out. So that's something you can try as well. So feel free to contact me if you have any questions about that process and what it looks like for me. So let me share a quick story that brings this to life. Let's say we have an instructional designer named Taylor. Taylor has a full-time role at a healthcare company and genuinely loves the mission, but the schedule is packed. Meetings are constant, and growth feels slower than Taylor expected. Taylor starts doing one small freelance project per month, something contained like a storyboard and voiceover script package. After three months, Taylor notices two things. First, freelancing is energizing and helps build confidence and niche. Second, many side projects get exhausting fast. So Taylor adjusts. Instead of one-off projects, Taylor lands one retainer client for a predictable monthly deliverable. Now Taylor has stability, a controlled freelance lane, and real data about whether a bigger pivot makes sense later. And that's the key. This isn't about choosing a label, it's about designing a life. Alright, before we wrap up, here's your quick call to action. If today's episode helped you, take five minutes to do this. Write down your top three non-negotiables for your next career season. Maybe that's stability, flexibility, growth, impact, income, time, or peace. Then circle the top one. That circle is your compass. And if you know another instructional designer who's wrestling with freelancing or full-time, send them this episode. It's a simple way to support someone, and it helps the show reach more designers. If you're the kind of person who likes visuals, I made an interactive roadmap for this episode. It's like a quick career GPS. You can use it to decide whether freelancing, full-time, or a bridge path fits you best. You'll find the link in the show notes. As we close, I want to leave you with this reminder. No matter which path you choose, freelancing, full-time, or a blend, you're allowed to change your mind. Your career is not a one-time decision. It's a design process. You try a lane, gather data, adjust, and keep moving forward with intention. Here's an inspiring quote by Howard Thurman. Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do it. Because the world needs people who have come alive. Thanks for spending time with me today. Until next time, keep designing with love. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review, or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference, and I'm truly thankful for you.