When you work in a team, you’re in a position where you’re frowned upon if you’re not a team player. You feel like you need to be a team player in order to get by.

When you work as an independent, you don’t need to be a team player—you might not even have a team! What you don’t realize is, you do have a team, they’re just not literally your boss, your co-workers, and such. 

When you’re independent, you define who your team is, and you define what work needs to get done and who will do it for you. 

You may not have a sales team, but if you have a popular client who was very happy with the work you did for them, you’ll get a steady stream of referrals. If you build a relationship with an adjacent independent, you’ll similarly be able to vent and bounce ideas around each other and hopefully recommend each other some business.

Contrary to what you may think, even though you don’t feel pressure to be a team player, you need to be a team player more as an independent. You won’t get by very long without one.