After a year in freelancing, I’ve picked up a few ideas that, had I known before I moved into freelancing, would have made my life a great deal easier.
Friday that the week is over, freelancing means everyday is a workday or a weekend.
Im certainly not saying I have all this great habits that I’ve found on the internet, but good habits that successful freelancers are forced to develop in order to build a network, manage clients, and take care of themselves are an essential starting point for anyone considering leaving regular pay..
Here’s my top ten tips on how to ace becoming a freelancer, and revealed ala David Letterman from number 10.
10. Curate your network.
Find a way to be publicly linked to the right people for your area of expertise. Whenever you apply for a job, the hiring manager’s going to look on LinkedIn, or elsewhere for the connections you share, and the connections you have. Don’t be indiscriminate about who you link to (or friend on other sites). Remember your connection or connections who you share with your client can make or break the job.
9. Learn to love “networking”.
I hated it, what i saw as a pointless meander getting and giving out cards at social engagements.
But done well, with a purpose and a plan, it can be invaluable. IN my own small way I’ve become a linker, trying to link people in my network with skills to those in my network in need to skills, so I have a focus to networking- finding out about new projects and what skills (other than mine) are needed. Understand that networking is as much a part of your next job as the skills you’ll display when you are there. Only rarely will the jobs come to you, and if they do its because typically of who you know rather than what you do.
Think of it as a professional exchange of ideas rather than seeing it as meeting people who potentially give you work.
8. Generate to “horizontal loyalty.”
One of the keys to getting ahead is taking care of the people that are at or below your level and uses a phrase from Radiolab host Rob Krulwich: horizontal loyalty.
Instead of zeroing in on building relationships with just the head of the company, build bonds with your peers, since they will be in business a long time, and you never know.
If you’re planing on a long freelance career, everyone is (potentially) an important person. When you connect at a peer-peer level, rather than trying to prove how great you are to someone who’s 5 steps above you in the hire-archy, it’s easier to forge a relationship that’s real rather than one based purely on “let me tell you about my work and why you should give me money for my work.”
7. Be aware that opportunities can come from anybody.
The next stage of horizontal loyalty, is the realization that the person you employ now could give you work sometime in the future. Quite a bit of my ongoing work is sourced through people who have I have worked with or who have worked for me in the past.
6. Make friends with rising stars.
And taking horizontal loyalty and thinking ahead, when you meet a real star, anywhere in an organisation — somebody who’s destined for big things though they haven’t been around for a while — befriend them. People tend to remember people who took an interest in them when their title wasn’t flashy
5. Take care of your relationships.
Its where your next job will come from.
Plan to meet people for lunch, for coffee, for a weekend meal, to keep the connections fresh. Don’t pitch for work at these meetings, discretely ask about their work and lives and discretely update them on what you are doing. In the end it pays dividends. I’m now catching up on 20 years of eating lunch at my desk, in trying to cultivate a network after leaving work.
4. Set boundaries.
That midnight call from a client, well the key of keeping your freelancing self sane is to “gently re-educate” your clients so their requests are manageable.
When you worked for that big organisation, it was called managing up: making sure you and your boss/client are on the same page about their expectations of your hours, timeframe, and feedback meetings.
3. Keep updating your skill set.
For people within organizations, the skills keep changing, and companies spend a lot of money keeping their people’s skills updated. Maybe your freelance role is to provide these services.
If you are freelance marketer keep up with the latest ideas, trends and buzzwords to engage clients. Involved in service training take time to survey the literature and attend a few open enrolment courses- the networking opportunities are great. When I left employment I completed two skills courses to provide necessary qualifications and to build out a network.
If the skills you offer are shifting you need to constantly be brushing up and be at the top of your game and shift along with it.
2. Stay social.
Physically isolated in a home office staring into a computer all day can get mentally isolating.
To prevent isolation (island fever) deliberate creating “points of human interaction” regularly, whether its through meetings, lunches, or cups of tea are essential. Even taking some work to a coffeeshop to indirectly interact with people is a necessary part of maintaining sanity.
Use these times to share experiences and even overcome mental blocks or work troughs. When you get stuck getting other peoples’ experience is invaluable.
1. Respond (rapidly …. no) appropriately.
OK, maybe responding rapidly isn’t number one, but as a high D, i like receiving feedback quickly, so I pride myself on my Responsiveness. Plus i seek out clients who value this trait.
But as a person that prides myself on trying to understand behaviour preferences, lets amend this to respond appropriately. That delayed response to a High C is merely the time and effort required in creating a perfect response. So if you have a Hi C client, don’t rush to push SEND, take some time, re-read it, and maybe a couple of days later press send, you won’t have done any extra work, and they will value that you have not just fired off a brief from the hip. (Even though you may have).
And if the client is a High D, don’t over burden them with detailed proposals they won’t appreciate- remember to plan for a quick and brief response to meet their expectations. Track down these does and don’ts either by contacting us about a short seminar on DISC personalities or just click here.
Demonstrating that you understand the clients definition of responsiveness and that you care a great deal about them and their success makes you look good.
So what do you think didn’t make my top 10 and should have? Please leave your views in the comments, I’m sure they will be instructive.