12 Steps to Quitting Your Shitty Agency Assistant Job
If you work at a Hollywood agency as an assistant and don’t want to be an agent, this post is for you.
As you probably know if you’ve read this blog for awhile, I started my career as an agency assistant. I regret taking the assistant path and now spend my spare time teaching writers how to become freelancers so they can make well beyond their assistant salaries, travel the world, work remotely, and pursue their creative career on their own terms.
I’m a produced TV writer with projects in development, and I also am working on high-end creative writing projects for clients in the metaverse and tech spaces that allow me to make anywhere from $10,000-$30,000 per month. I’ve also spent most of my career meeting with assistants for coffee who want to get out of their abusive jobs, so I’m all here for helping you brainstorm your next steps. (Just email me and I’ll help you too!)
I do all of this free of charge for current Hollywood assistants because I see how writers get exploited by assistant jobs and I want that to stop. Your skills and youth are valuable — don’t waste it working for manipulative bosses who will string you along and promise the world, only to pay you barely above minimum wage and never truly support you.
I wish someone did this for me, so this is how I’m paying it forward!
So, here’s my 12 step guide to quitting your shitty Hollywood agency assistant job. I hope this helps!
Step One: Realize Assistant Jobs Are Dead-Ends, Not Ladders
Becoming a working writer from an assistant job is an exception, not a rule.
If you work at an agency — or in any assistant job — you’ll notice how often they pick a few examples of staffed assistants who got to where they are based on their assistant status.
But if you look closely, you’ll realize that most working writers — and most writers on your agency’s roster! — got to where they are because they were professional writers first.
Showrunners love hiring playwrights, journalists, novelists, and other writers with professional writing experience.
So if you want to be a professional writer… you need to write. Not get the showrunner coffee.
Even if you do land a lucrative writers’ assistant job, most show orders are so short that you are unlikely to get a script. Even if there is a script up for grabs, it’s going to go to someone who the showrunner has owed a favor to in the past, or a more senior assistant. I’ve met hundreds of writers’ assistants, script coordinators, and showrunners assistants who have spent over a decade in the industry being strung along with the promise of a script or staff job, only to watch their 20’s and 30’s slip by before they either quit or fall into a complacency of being a career assistant. You learn to be a writer by writing, not by spellchecking or taking notes in a room.
The writers who do succeed make their own luck by making their own content — beyond being an assistant.
Furthermore, agencies are abusive environments that will not allow you time to write and make your own stuff. You can’t change a toxic environment, so don’t try. Instead, quit. Tomorrow.
Here’s how.
Step Two: Realize That Talented Writers, Directors, and Creatives are In-Demand — Especially Now
It is February 2022 and I make $350/hr as a freelance writer and have more incoming work than I could ever take on. I have friends who are freelance videographers, graphic designers, voiceover artists, and they’re all making six figures a year (or close to it) and some only work part-time.
Your creative skills are valuable. Your agency assistant job teaches you they’re not, because that’s how they get you to work for almost no money.
I remember when one of my assistant jobs ended, I went full-time freelance for only a month and made over $4,000 after just getting started. I was shocked — that was way more than I made at my agency assistant and showrunner assistant job, and for doing way less hours. I saw how I was able to do creative writing jobs and kill it for cool clients all over the world.
You need to know that there is a high demand for creative talent, and your skills are worth real money. Seriously. Especially now, with The Great Resignation and a huge number of people quitting their jobs and companies scrambling to find talent.
Once you believe that, you’ll be able to jump into the freelance market and get started.
Step Three: Pick a Niche to Get Started With
A niche is a type of freelancing. For example, if you love social media, consider a niche like managing TikTok accounts for e-commerce clients.
Or, if you’re a freelance writer, consider picking a niche in tech. Anything in tech makes a lot more money because that’s the hot industry right now. One of my niches is creative writing for NFT and metaverse storylines, but you can start out with something simple like writing blog posts for tech. I’ve also ghostwritten memoirs and business books and done a whole lot of other jobs.
Generally, you want to avoid any freelance jobs that are Hollywood-specific: don’t write people’s screenplays for them, don’t do coverage, don’t do anything directly related to your craft in this way. You’re going to want to save that creative energy for your own projects, and most of these jobs don’t pay well. Try and pick something marketing-adjacent, as everyone is always down to spend marketing dollars on things that will drive sales. So, if you’re a director, shoot advertising or brand videos. If you’re a writer, write any kind of copy.
Consulting freelance roles are also cushy. This could be something like being a brand or content strategist for different companies, advising them on how to lay out their website or speak to consumers from a story perspective.
What you want to do is find your interests, lean into them, and find a niche that is both profitable and fun for you. Because if your work is fun, you’ll be a super competitive freelancer.
Not sure where to start? You can always just create a freelance account on a platform like Upwork and dive in.
You can have multiple niches, but to begin I would recommend to start with just one or two. I started off as a copywriter and blogger, and I wrote marketing video scripts as some of my first jobs.
Step Four: Assemble and Create Your Portfolio
Upload your scripts, blog posts, school assignments, or anything else that showcases your writing. Create a free squarespace website and make a portfolio and start a blog. My blog has helped me land a ton of jobs, and so you should strive to create awesome examples of what you can do for clients on your own website.
No worries if you don’t have experience: just write samples of what your work would be for fictional companies. Clients just want to see you can do the job you say you can do.
As you gain experience, keep updating your portfolio.
Step Five: Get Yourself Out There on Upwork, Fiverr, Contra, and/or LinkedIn
Now, it’s time to get your work out there on a freelance platform and on LinkedIn.
I created this course on Udemy on how I’ve made over $100,000+ on the platform Upwork, my platform of choice. In this course, I have about 2 hours of content on how I set up my profile, how I wrote my cover letters, how I bid on jobs, how I work with clients, and more. Udemy is usually running a sale, so you should hopefully be able to get this course for like $10 or $15. I highly highly highly recommend all new freelancers to check out this course because it truly is a ground zero, basic course.
Fiverr is a bit of a pit of low-paying clients, so I would avoid that unless you’re able to offer a very specific skill you can do at scale for a low rate. But generally, people on this platform have to outsource their work to make any money, so I would say avoid!
Contra is brand new and I just started playing around with it, but most serious clients are on Upwork and LinkedIn.
For LinkedIn, make sure you put in your headline that you’re a freelance writer (or whatever your specialty is!) and put your niche in your headline. People search with keywords on LinkedIn, so think about what your ideal client is searching!
I also get a lot of jobs directly in through my blog, so if you write blog posts about the services you offer, your clients are able to find you more easily.
Step Six: Market Your Skills
Every day, apply to freelance jobs on platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, or Upwork, and cold email companies you want to work with. Market your skills through a combination of SEO (blogging about what you do as a freelancer!) and reach-outs. You can also talk about your niche on a platform like TikTok to attract potential clients.
Never pay for marketing. It’s not worth it! Instead, build up channels so that motivated, ideal clients can find you.
Step Seven: Create Your Plan to Quit
Now you’ve probably dipped your toe into getting started, and created a solid portfolio and channels for ways to find clients and have clients find you. Amazing!
It’s time to create a plan to quit. It’s very unlikely you’ll be able to build a successful freelance career working as an assistant — trust me on this. I spent a lot of my early freelance career working as an assistant while trying to balance my freelance workload and it was awful and inefficient. When I went full-time freelance, everything clicked into place much faster! Agency assistant jobs are all-encompassing and soul-sucking, and there’s no way you can build a great freelance career while working in that environment.
Here’s what you need to include in your plan to quit:
Decide when you’re going to quit. Create a timeline for yourself. When do you want to quit? Tomorrow? Three months for now? Generally, the sooner the better. I say this because I know your assistant job is NOT paying you enough to have clarity and peace of mind and positive emotions. You can’t build anything in the headspace of that kind of assistant job. Quit tomorrow — you don’t owe your employers anything. (They paid you for your time. That’s the only transaction where anything was owed.) That way, you can truly start fresh without someone yelling at you for messing up one of the thousand emails you have to send each day.
Figure out your financial situation. Create a list of the “bare essentials” of how much money you need to make per week and per month. Rent, bills, etc. Be realistic about it, and add money to put away for emergency funds and other savings. Set up your hourly rate or fixed-rate packages based on what you need to make to cover your costs. Keep raising your rates after every successful job. I started at $20/hr as a freelancer and raised my rates after each and every job.
Optional: line up a part-time “day” job. If you’re really worried about money, you can do a part-time job at a coffeeshop or something as you build up your freelance career. Places like Starbucks are now paying $25/hr in reaction to the Great Resignation, and other employers are doing the same. I drove around Los Angeles the other day and saw so many “hiring” signs everywhere. Just be sure to pick something that is easy, close to your house so you don’t have to commute, and doesn’t have any toxic bosses. I don’t recommend this step unless you absolutely have to. I never needed to do any part-time jobs as a freelancer, and don’t want you to get distracted, but know that this is always a safety net option. So many people are hiring, you have options.
Figure out health insurance. It’s easier than you think, especially if you’re in California. I pay around $330 for Covered California’s Blue Cross insurance, I have an HSA (a tax-deductible health savings account for medical expenses) and you can even lower your monthly payment by submitting your annual income if it’s less than around $70k. Look into your state’s programs. You absolutely 100% need health insurance and it’s an annoying expense, but definitely required.
Create a LLC for freelancing. This LLC will help shield you from liability and also allows you to open up a business bank account for tax-write-off-able items like office supplies, your home office (yes, you can write off rent), and other things. You can actually pay less in taxes than you did as an employee which is a sweet perk of freelancing and starting your own LLC, and it helps to offset other costs. You don’t have to do this right away, but I do recommend to do it as soon as you can. You can start an LLC through LegalZoom. (Just do NOT use their accountant 1-800 accountants — it’s not worth the cost and they’re awful.) I would recommend spending a bit more to have a lawyer set up your entity, though. In California, you’ll also need to pay a $800 franchise tax every year. Yes, expensive, but also very worth it for all of the perks of an LLC.
Consider business insurance. Once you get an LLC, consider investing in business insurance. On the rare occasion a client may sue you for something, it’s good to have insurance. Like I said, very rare (in my five years as a freelancer I’ve never had any legal troubles with clients) but worth the peace of mind as soon as you can afford it. Ask a CPA or lawyer you trust for recommendations.
Get help from a CPA. For your first year as a freelancer, you can always do your own bookkeeping with Quickbooks and just hire a CPA for tax season and for general advice. I would recommend getting an accountant who can also be your bookkeeper and business manager at some point so you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff.
Take it one step at a time. Getting started can feel overwhelming, and you can and should talk to other freelancers to get help!
As always, this isn’t financial advice, just stuff I’ve done. Always be sure to hire an accountant (worth every penny!) to do this right.
Step Eight: Quit and Start Your New Freelance Life
Quit. Just quit. Don’t worry about what people are going to think, what your boss will say, or what magical promise you might be missing out on.
Quit for yourself and for your dreams. Quit because you deserve to be treated better. Quit because your creative projects are more possible when you’re not working 12+ hour days at a job that’s eating away at you and your sense of self-worth.
Freelancing is hard in its own ways — you won’t get rich quick, it will still be hard work! — but compared to the hard work you’ve had to do at your agency assistant job, it will be a walk in the park.
Financial freedom is closer than you think. Even if you charge $300 per blog post you write, that’s 15 blogs a month to make $4,500, or around 4 blogs per week. I started out writing a lot of articles and blog posts, so that’s a very doable number even if you’re getting started, and you can easily knock out a blog under an hour or so, which comes out to 15 hours per month. Add in another 10 hours for finding those clients and doing business management stuff, and that’s 25 hours per month to make more than what you made if you were paid the average agency assistant salary — for less than half of your average work week as an assistant.
Or, if you choose to go the route of being a social media manager, you could just get 5 clients that you charge $1,000 per month to manage their social media feeds.
This stuff takes hard work, but the point I’m trying to make is that it’s beyond doable to smash through your income goals right out of the gate of committing to being a freelancer.
Step Nine: Create a Daily and Weekly Routine
Self-discipline is about keeping the promises you make for yourself.
You’ve probably had to cultivate self-discipline at your Hollywood assistant job, now it’s time to leverage those skills for yourself. When you leave the highly-structured routine of being an assistant, it’s time to create that routine for yourself. Create daily routines, block out your daily work time, and even consider going to a coffeeshop or co-working space if you need to have a different place to remind yourself to focus and not end up on the couch in front of the TV.
Make sure you’re integrating things like daily workouts and meditation sessions in your routine so that you can maintain ways to release stress and keep your energy and morale up. Trust me: learning how to freelance without these things is about ten million times harder. Make taking care of yourself a key part of your job!
Here’s a post I wrote back when I crossed my first $10k on Upwork on how I pick projects, clients, and managed my time back in the beginning of my career. I also wrote this post about the importance of building habits. Here’s another post about one version of my daily routine as a freelancer when I got started.
Step Ten: Create Weekly Income Goals and Track Projects
Getting organized is really key to your success. What gets tracked, gets handled. So, every time you book a project, estimate your income for hourly projects, and note fixed-rate payments so you can see how close you are to your income goals.
Set weekly and monthly income goals, and make sure you’ve set high enough goals to give yourself vacation days, time off, and so that you can only work when you want to.
When in doubt, raise your rates.
Tracking invoices, deadlines, and meetings can be a bit daunting to begin, but know you can start super simply and just work on Upwork to begin. When you get clients not on freelance platforms, you can just send invoices through Paypal’s easy business invoice system. Make sure everything is connected to your business bank account if you have one.
Check out my non-Upwork billing and client management system for more tips and tricks on how to track clients and projects and easily handle meetings and invoicing.
Step Eleven: Meet Collaborators and Continue to Make Creative Work
As you continue to grow your freelancing business, don’t lose sight of your creative work. That’s the core of who you are, and should still be a major part of your schedule and world. While you may need some time to get your freelancing up and running first (be kind to yourself!) just make sure you’re keeping your expenses low so you have the freedom to work on your creative projects each day.
Keep seeking out peers and fellow creatives you admire, and make cool shit. I founded a scripted podcast company Kingdom of Pavement to do just that. I also collaborate with amazing directors and producers whose work I admire.
Step Twelve: Undo the Agency Assistant Programming and Be Happy and Successful
The greatest revenge? Living a happy, successful life.
When I quit taking assistant jobs in Hollywood, I started traveling the world, working remotely, and funding my own creative projects. I created a sci-fi scripted podcast called The Last Station about the last radio station after the apocalypse. I’m being hired to develop film and TV projects. My episode of the show CONDOR aired and is giving me royalties. My freelance career has given me more gifts than I could have ever imagined.
All of your creative goals are so much more real if you don’t go the assistant route.
Just think about all the showrunners you admire. They didn’t start out as assistants. Gillian Flynn was a novelist. Jia Tolentino was a journalist and essayist. Awkwafina created her own content and music for YouTube. Michaela Coel was a playwright and actress. Go ahead: look up the names of TV writers on your favorite shows, or even clients at your agency, and see how many of them were assistants. (Spoiler alert: not very many.) And even the ones who did climb the ladder probably did it before series orders shrank way down and showrunners stopped promoting from within.
Your creative career begins the moment you reclaim it for yourself and begin making your own content.
So find your own sense of agency, stop looking for an agent or representation, and create the life and career you want for yourself. You can make gobs of money and travel and do everything you ever dreamed of while simultaneously putting up a middle finger towards the establishment of Hollywood that wants creatives to think that the only path into their dreams is one of being exploited by soul-sucking, abusive assistant jobs where cycles of abuse are simply perpetuated.
It’s not. Tell your boss to fuck off, quit your awful Hollywood assistant job, and watch your life improve dramatically.
Free and Low-Cost Resources + Links
I made a Freelancing 101 Guide that covers some of what I put in this post, but it’s a good refresher with more links to my blog posts.
Check out my book called Freelancing for Creatives that goes more into detail on all things freelancing for creatives :) It’s short, sweet, to the point, and no-fluff.
Here’s my course on how I made over $200,000+ on Upwork as a freelance writer. Udemy is usually running a sale and it will hopefully only be $10 or so.
I also hire amazing creatives all the time! You can follow me on TikTok or Instagram or my newsletter here for future job opps.
And like I said earlier, if you’re feeling lost or stuck in your assistant job, I’m happy to meet up or at the very least hop on a call, just reach out!
Happy writing!
