Picture this: It's Sunday night, and you don't feel a sense of dread that tomorrow will be Monday morning. You used to spend half your weekend dreading the week ahead. Now, you spend it relaxing.
Come tomorrow, you will wake up when you feel well-rested, instead of when your alarm goes off. You sip your morning coffee instead of sitting in line at Starbucks. And you smile, because you no longer have to think of an excuse for being 15 minutes late (with a Starbucks cup in hand).
If this sounds like the kind of life you have been dreaming about – you aren't alone. As a society, our relationship with work, employment, and our careers is rapidly changing. People increasingly value their freedom and flexibility over supposed "job stability". Indeed, the whole 9-5 job in an office is starting to feel archaic and outdated.
In fact... it is estimated that by 2027, over half of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers. The gig economy is booming, and there has never been a better time to join in.
From the outside, it looks glamorous. You get to set your own hours. There’s no commute. You don’t have to go to an office. You don’t have to answer to a boss. And you don’t have to ask for permission to take the day off.
But make no mistake. Freelancing isn’t all glitz and glamour. It does take a lot of work. More than most people ever imagine. When you are first getting started, you will spend a lot of nights, weekends, lunch hours, and vacation time building it up. And there are, of course, other downsides that come with the territory.
Being on the hook for your own healthcare.
Having to handle your own taxes.
And making sure you can keep the bills paid.
When you're a freelancer, the buck starts and ends with you.
Sadly, these are often the hurtles that prevent many people from making the leap.
That was me, for years and years.
I loathed having a 9-5 job.
For almost 15 years, I found myself dreading Mondays, hating work days, and living for the weekends.
I knew something had to change. Life is too short to spend it hating 80% of your life, week after week.
But, I felt stuck. While I wasn’t happy at my job, I knew I couldn’t just up and quit. I had bills to pay. And "hoping" enough work would come in each month wasn't going to cut it.
I also wasn’t making enough where I could save 6-12 months of living expenses. So building a little nest egg to fall back on wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.
I started to believe that starting a business was only reserved for people dealt a better hand in life. People who had wealthy parents, or rich uncles.
The reality was, I knew that I had all of the skills necessary to go off on my own... but I just didn’t know “how”.
I started to lose hope. I began to believe that I would be stuck working for somebody else, forever. In a moment of desperation, I asked a colleague of mine for some guidance. A decision that, to this very day, was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
After giving me a little pep-talk, he offered to serve as a mentor, to help get me started. As long as I was willing to do the work and put in the effort – he was willing to help.
It was he who helped me to land my first couple of clients. And from there, it was off to the races.
It took me a little while. I spent A LOT of evenings and weekends working on my business. But, after two long and painful years, I was finally able to submit my resignation.
Today, I want to be the same mentor to other people as the one I was lucky enough to have. But my hope is that it won't take you years like it did for me.
Today, I am going to give you the first ten steps to start you on your way. Let's dive right in, shall we?
Step 1: Have a skill or talent that people need
To be a successful freelancer, you have to be good enough at something that people are willing to pay you for it. No matter what skill it is, people pay others for one of three reasons:
1.) Because they don’t want to do something themselves.
2.) Because they don't know how to do it.
3.) Because you can get better (or faster) results than they can.
If you are reading this, you probably already have an idea of what sort of service you will be offering. It also tells me that you have some level of talent for it.
But do you have enough talent or skill that people would be willing to pay for it?
To answer that, I strongly recommend doing a self check. Get the feedback of others (preferably strangers), and see what people have to say. There are countless online communities you can use to request unbiased feedback on your work.
If you get negative feedback – that’s okay. Don’t look at it as a personal attack. Recognize it for what it is – an opportunity to learn, and get better.
If you get positive feedback – that’s great! That’s probably a good sign that you’re ready to make a go of freelancing.
Don't get me wrong. There are A LOT of people out there who think they are much better than they actually are.
I don’t mean that statement to cause you to question your own abilities. I merely say it as a form of encouragement.
There are people who know less than you, and are not as smart or talented as you, who still succeed as freelancers.
Don’t spend your life second-guessing your own abilities. The only real way to get better at something is to do it repeatedly. And there is no experience quite like real world experience. So – whether or not you feel that your skills are where you’d like them to be... chances are they are “good enough”.
Step 2: Decide on a specialty/focus
Of all the steps on this list, this is likely to be the most challenging if you’re just starting out.
Early on in any freelancers career, it is perfectly natural to take work from anybody who is willing to pay you. That's what I did.
In hindsight however, I wish I would have specialized sooner.
By having a niche, you separate yourself from 90% of the competition in the world.
There are millions of freelancers in the world. There are millions of web designers, graphic designers, and developers in the world. There are millions of writers, photographers, and videographers as well.
That’s a lot of competition.
But notice what happens when you choose a niche. Let's use web design as an example.
Let's say there are exactly 1 million freelance web designers in the world.
In that scenario, you are competing with a million other people. There will be some who are better than you, and some who will be worse. But, you're all in the same pool.
Now – if you were to say "I only design websites for law firms", what happens?
Suddenly, the pool becomes a lot smaller. If there are 1,000,000 web designers total, of those million, there might only be 10,000 law firm specialists.
With just that single distinction, while you might have narrowed your potential clientele down... in the potential clients' eyes, you became more valuable.
This is true anytime somebody specializes in something. They are immediately perceived as being an expert. And when you are an expert at something – you can charge more for it.
That's who you want to be.
When there are a million people who more or less do exactly what you do – you're easy to replace. A law firm can likely find ten general practice web designers inside of ten miles. A law-firm specialist however... that's a different story. They will have a significantly more difficult time finding another law-firm specialist.
I know it may seem counterintuitive to limit your pool of potential clients. But what you are actually doing is giving yourself job security. Don't compete with a million freelancers that you could easily be replaced with. Instead, make yourself irreplaceable.
Also... make sure that the niche you choose can actually afford what you want to be charging.
It is noble to say that you only want to work with non-profits, churches, or people looking for jobs. Unfortunately, those audiences don’t really have a lot of money to spend.
The wealthier the client is – the easier your life will be.
Step 3: Develop a portfolio of work
Okay – you have a skill that people need. The next step is to develop a body of work as “proof” that you can do what you say you can. A lot of people overthink this. Don’t. The most important thing here is to be able to say: “I offer X, and here is the evidence that I have done it before.”
This is why it is so important to choose a niche before you build a portfolio.
To stick with the law firm example... you can't appear to be a law-firm specialist if you don't have any examples of work you've done for law firms.
I know this is a bit of a "chicken or the egg" scenario – but there is a way to navigate through this.
What do you do if you don’t have a body of work to make a portfolio? You make one!
You don’t have to get permission from Nike to “reimagine” their website. You don’t have to work for Apple, to create some new ads for a product of theirs that you love.
If you've chosen a niche, it should be easy to identify local businesses in that niche. Pick one or two of them, and do the work as though they actually hired you to do it.
This is exactly what you would be doing if you went to college. Most of the projects that students create are "mock" projects.
Once you have the work done, you have several options.
You could actually present it to the business you designed it for. In doing so, even if they can't use it, they may be willing to endorse you, or allow you to use it for your portfolio.
Alternately, you could swap out the branding, and simply keep it as a "mock" project.
The key takeaway here is that you identify the types of projects that you would like to actually land. If you aren't sure – you can always try a few different types of projects out.
However... and I can't stress this enough: Do. the. work.
Yes, it sucks doing work with no promise of payment. It's challenging to create a project based on guess-work. That is where research comes in!
If there is one true statement that I can make about running a business, it's this. The thing that makes business hard is the uncertainty that the time invested will pay off.
Get used to that feeling of uncertainty.
If you can't get comfortable with that – freelancing will always be hard.
But, if you're willing to do the work, and understand that no work is wasted time – you will do great.
Step 4: Figure out your pricing
With an audience selected and a portfolio built, it’s now time to decide what you want to charge.
It is imperative that you decide your prices up front, before you ever talk to a client. Even better if you have them printed out.
When a prospect inevitably asks what your services cost, you need to be able to give them a confident answer.
Nothing will kill a prospects confidence faster than you being wishy-washy on price. If you act unsure about what something will cost – no matter what number you come back with, it will seem too high.
When you act unsure or uncertain of your prices, it causes the client to feel uncertain. It can lead to the suspicion that you are ripping them off, or trying to get as much out of them as possible.
So, right out of the gate, know what your hourly rate is going to be, and what specific projects or tasks are going to cost.
But, how do you know what to charge?
This is probably one of the most common questions that freelancers have.
And honestly... it depends on a lot of different things.
Your experience. Your skills. Your competitors. The average market value. The complexity of the problem you're solving. Your location. What services you're actually offering.
The list goes on and on.
So – I can't tell you what you should charge for your services.
What I CAN tell you is – you should probably charge more than you think.
It is very common for freelancers to start out charging far below what they're worth. But, they "need" to do that, because it takes time for them to build up the confidence to charge more.
Ultimately – you can charge whatever you like, using the method makes the most sense to you.
The key takeaway here though, is to have your prices decided, before anybody asks. And be firm on them.
You can always adjust them later as needed.
Step 5: Be specific about what you are offering
Now that you've decided on what you're going to be offering, it's time to get specific about what that entails.
This was a mistake that I made early in my freelance career.
I started out offering website design, branding, marketing, and software development. But, the bulk of my clients were web-design clients.
But, because I failed to be specific about what that entailed, I soon found myself doing a lot of other things. Things that I really had no interest in doing.
Fixing Wordpress sites infected with malware. Troubleshooting web forms. Trying to figure out why people weren't receiving their emails.
I wasn't really qualified to be doing any of those things. But – somehow, it fell on my shoulders.
That could have been easily avoided, had I been specific about the services I offered, as well as those I didn't.
So, as you are preparing your list of services, spend some time identifying the things you love to do, as well as the things you don't want to be doing. For anything that you don't want to be doing, try to find businesses that do offer those things. This is a great way to establish partnerships and help other freelancers, who will in turn, help you.
Step 6: Decide who you want to do business as
At this point, it’s time to decide a name for your business. As you are a freelancer, you may just want to do business using your name. This has worked for millions of freelancers for as long as freelancing has been around. However, there are a few small drawbacks that come with doing business as your own name.
1.) If at any point you want to bring on more people – there may be confusion if it’s not you who shows up.
2.) If you get married and your last name changes – it can lead to headaches down the road.
3.) It can impact people’s ability to know what you do based on the name alone. In other words – there’s very little question about what “Picture-Perfect Photography” offers. That’s not quite as true for “John G. Smith”.
Another thing to consider before you choose a business name, is whether you can secure a good domain name for it. There is nothing more frustrating than thinking of the perfect name, only to find out the domain is taken.
Don’t drive yourself crazy with it – but do be mindful. Set aside some time to write down some names you like, and do a bit of research to see what is out there. You can use a tool such as “whois.com” to check to see if a domain is available or not.
The last thing I’ll say is this. Just because the specific .com domain isn’t available, doesn’t mean that you can’t get a little creative with it.
Put the word "my", "get", or "hire" in front of it. Add "llc" to the end of it (if you are registered as an LLC).
When I saw that “simpledash.com” was taken for an app I was building – I went with “mysimpledash.com” instead. It's just as memorable, and still allows me to get a domain I am happy with.
Step 7: Get Set Up
Alright. You’ve decided on a business name, and found a domain name that you like. The next step is going to be registering that domain name, and then setting up an email address with it.
There are a number of ways to go about doing this. I, personally, use GoDaddy to register all of my domains, but any registrar will do. Whatever service you use, I recommend using one that allows you to create email accounts.
For email, I recommend setting up a couple of email addresses, for different purposes. Any time I register a new domain, I always register:
- hello@thedomain.com (a general purpose address that people can use to reach out for inquiries)
- accounts@thedomain.com (a dedicated address to use to register for services. This helps keep spam out of your personal account)
- newsletter@thedomain.com (An email address to use for sending out newsletters)
- support@thedomain.com (A dedicated email for technical support)
- my.name@thedomain.com (A personal email address)
You don’t have to register all of those accounts, nor do you have to use the same naming conventions that I do. But, it is a good idea, just to keep spam levels low, and to keep things organized.
I also recommend you get a dedicated phone number for your business.
You don’t have to get a whole new cell phone plan, or anything like that. You may want to consider using a service such as "voip.ms". This service allows you to register local numbers and have calls forwarded to a cell phone. This approach is both convenient, and cost efficient. Alternately, you could also just get a pre-paid phone and use that. The main point here is to avoid having to give clients your personal cell phone number.
It might be convenient and accommodating to give your personal number early on. But, several years down the road, when people start overstepping boundaries... you will wish you had created more separation.
Step 8: Start spreading the word
At this point, you’re ready to start getting the word out about your new venture.
This is the time to put all of your contacts to use. Your friends. Your family. Your social media followers. Former co-workers. Phone contacts. Email contacts. Everybody you know.
Make use of all of the effort you’ve put in up to this point to make the announcement.
Tell them what you will be doing, and who you will be doing it for. Tell them who you will be doing business as, and any other details you have about the business.
Keep in mind, the objective here is not to get your friends/family/contacts to buy from you. This isn’t a sales pitch. This is a friendly request that if anybody knows somebody who could use your services, to send them your way.
When done right, this can be one of the most powerful things that you do in order to kick off your business.
Think about it this way.
Let’s say you tell 100 people about your business.
You have just opened yourself up to every single person that every one of those 100 people know.
If each of those 100 people knows 1000 people... there are now 100,000 people who could potentially hear about you.
It is important to understand that people talk about their lives with other people. You might be surprised at how often people talk about exactly what it is that you are offering.
So, take your time, craft your big announcement meticulously and thoughtfully... and get the news out in the world with confidence.
Step 9: Land your first client
If you did the previous step well, hopefully you won’t have to wait very long before somebody reaches out to you.
Brace yourself though.
Any time somebody announces that they’re starting something new, they will inevitably get a lot of tire-kickers, favor-seekers, and bargain-hunters.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do favors, or that you shouldn’t ever offer discounted pricing. Especially as you are first starting out. Sometimes getting some extra experience under your belt can be a good thing.
The key is handling those situations with grace and tact.
If you agree to do work for less than you normally would to help someone else – make sure they are paying you in other ways.
Request testimonials.
Ask them for referrals.
And make sure they are good with you using their work in your portfolio.
On the other hand, if you don't want to spend your time doing favors for people, you can still offer to do work... just less of it. If you charge $10,000 for a website, and a client can't pay that, is there anything you can do with the budget they have?
Step 10: Do the best work of your career
Once you do finally land those first couple of clients... now is the time to turn on the gas. Don’t just do the job they’re paying you to do. Do the job like you’re doing it for the most influential person on the planet.
Go above and beyond.
Do the best work of your career.
Give the greatest customer experience that they could have ever asked for.
Because when you do that – the client will be aching to tell somebody about it.
As I said earlier – people talk to other people about their lives. They talk about the great things that happen to them. They talk about the bad things that happen to them. And they talk about the mundane things that happen to them. You want to be one of the great things that people can barely wait to tell their friends about.
Let me tell you a little story about that.
Not long ago, I found myself breaking down a pile of Amazon boxes with a dull kitchen knife. After about the fifth box, I occurred to me that I should start carrying a pocket knife.
After a bit of looking online, I ended up buying a pocket knife from The James Brand.
When the knife came, it came in a really substantial box. On top of the box was a little envelope that was sealed with a little sticker.
Upon closer inspection, the sticker had a dotted line with the words “Your first test cut” printed on it.
Naturally, I used the knife to cut open the envelope. To this day, I don’t know if they found specially formulated tape that just happens to cut really easily, or what. But the smoothness of that cut, followed by the stickers inside was an amazing experience. I was THRILLED with my purchase.
And you know what I did next? I found myself telling anybody who would listen people this knife for the next several days.
I don't know if anybody went out and bought a knife from the James Brand after my story. But, I do know that when people experience something refreshingly great – they tell others about it.
Let that be you. Be obsessive about the small details. Give above and beyond customer service. As Bonnie Raitt once said... "Let's give em somethin' to talk about."
Conclusion
So there you have it. If I were starting over today... these are the exact ten steps that I would follow in order to get things moving in the right direction.
All of these tips have come from hard-learned personal experience.
Let my mistakes and experiences be the thing that helps you be successful much more quickly.
If you ever have any questions, shoot me an email at hello@solocademy.com. I love reading your questions and hearing what people are struggling with.
While I can’t promise that I will respond to every one – I do use these questions to form ideas for future articles. So, don’t hesitate!
If you need personalized help getting started, consider booking a session with me. In these sessions, you can ask any questions you might have. They are great for vetting ideas, getting feedback, or getting fast answers. (US only).