**EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION**
If you’ve been following me for a while, you will know that I started freelancing about a year ago now. I started with just website design, moved into more consulting, moved into more of an agency model, and now I am dedicating some of my time to actually helping and supporting other freelances that are trying to start to build consistent cashflow and clients within their business also. I’m sharing my knowledge around how I was really able to create a freelancing business and then move into an agency and how I was able to sustain that and really build up consistency in quite a short period of time. If you’re a freelancer, I want to share five traps that you want to avoid within your freelancing business that I had to learn the hard way, things that you want to avoid.
1. Trying To Do Too Many Different Things
I’m a big believer that in the first six to 12 months, you should be saying yes to as many opportunities that come your way, because that is going to allow you to learn and discover what you’re good at, the value that you’re providing to people and actually what you enjoy doing as well and what you actually resonate with. But when I say trying to do too many different things, it’s more so you’re trying to be a generalist in providing all of these different services just to try and get all these different clients in. You’re better off picking one to three core areas that you want to focus on, getting really good at those, and then discovering what clients, what type of clients you want to work with and what value you’re providing to them. Don’t try and do too many different things, but definitely say yes to as many opportunities that come your way.
2. Working On Client Work 24/7
It is obviously super, super important to be providing an amazing experience for your client and making sure that you’re getting them the results that they’ve paid you for. But what is also important for the actual sustainability of your business is spending time working on it. This is things like marketing, sales and systems. Because generally, what will happen with freelancers in particular is they go through these feast and famine stages, because what happens is they get on new clients, they take on projects which take up all of their time, and what happens during those projects is they forget to work on marketing and sales, which means once that project is wrapped up, they find themselves in a position where they don’t have any new incoming leads, any incoming inquiries and no new projects coming on. In which case they then have to scramble to try and get new clients and end up taking on projects that maybe they aren’t that passionate and about either.
It’s this inconsistency that a lot of freelancers will experience, but it generally comes down to the fact that they haven’t found the balance between setting up systems in their business to give them consistent inquiries and balancing client work with working on the business itself.
3. Not Knowing Who Your Ideal Client Is
Now, a lot of us have done ideal client activities, but I’m not talking about surface level things like demographics. You shouldn’t be writing down that you want to work with 25 to 34 year old females who live in California and drive a red car and drink this type of coffee. It’s more about what problems people are facing, their challenges and struggles and what their goals and desires are and how you are actually providing a solution to those problems and the value that you’re providing. Don’t think about the surface level things. Go deeper than that and look at what problems you’re solving because every business just comes down to solving problems. If you can pinpoint that and then start to understand what your ideal client is based on that, you’ll be successful and you’ll work dream clients all the time.
4. Not Treating It Like A Business
If you have aspirations to grow your freelancing gig into an actual business, if you want to achieve consistency and sustainability, then you have to treat it like a business. Going back to what I mentioned in point two, around having systems and strategies in place for your marketing and sales, you also need to implement this into your entire business strategy along with how you are actually structuring your projects, how you’re setting up these systems within your business in terms of operations and actually not just going from job to job.
You want to set it up so that you have a plan in place for what you want to achieve. You want to track everything from where your leads are coming from, what your conversion rates are, feedback from clients so you can improve on your actual product or service as well and really just treating it like an actual business rather than just taking off tasks for clients or going from job to job.
5. Not Charging Enough
The last and final number five trap to avoid in your freelancing business is not recognizing the value you are giving people and as a result, you are undercharging for your services. There’s a few different things here, really comes down to your mindset and confidence. But once you are clear on who your ideal client is and really what value you’re providing to them in the shape of the problems you’re solving, you’ll become more confident and realize how much impact it actually makes on people to work with you.
You need to understand also that there are additional expenses with running a business. You don’t get the benefits of employment. All of these things need to be taken into account. As well as that, you need to also have the time and resources to work on your business if you want to make it sustainable. You need to take all of these things into account when you’re pricing, but really start with being becoming confident with the problems that you’re solving and knowing the solutions you’re providing to your ideal clients. If you aren’t clear on your pricing yet, go and download my Freelance Income Calculator. It will give you the exact number that you need to be charging per client to reach your income and lifestyle goals, how many hours you want to work and how many hours it takes to deliver your services. You won’t have to spend hours trying to price up projects and spending time on proposals that you aren’t confident in. It will just tell you exactly how much you need to be charging in your freelancing business.
But all of these things that I covered today are things that I’ll be addressing in my upcoming course, which is called 60 Days to $5K. The white list will open on Monday so if you are a freelancer, if you’re someone that wants to achieve consistent clients and cashflow, you want to achieve consistent $5K months and build up reliable, repeatable and scalable marketing systems within your freelancing or independent service-based business, make sure you keep an eye out for when the waitlist opens on Monday because you’ll get access to a ton of extra bonuses and pre-launch pricing as well. But in the meantime, go and download the Freelance Income Calculator. I’m getting a heap of really good feedback about this free tool, and it will only be free until the end of the month so go and grab it now. Reach out if you have any questions about anything that I’ve gone through or any questions about my course.