7 Ways to Toughen Up Your Freelancing Game
Working as a freelancer may not conjure up images of being a tough cookie, but being a one-person show at your own business takes remarkable creativity, discipline, and good old-fashioned moxie. The Atlantic called freelancing the “next industrial revolution” of our time.
Freelancers, from independent creatives to technical consultants, juggle multiple clients, spearhead their own marketing efforts, and work tirelessly at their network of mobile offices from the home dining table, coffee shop counter, and coworking spaces.
So if you want to boost your mettle as a freelancer, here are seven ways to toughen up your freelancing game.
1. Kill All the Distractions
Stop wasting time on things that distract you. Digital distractions, in particular, can hypnotize you for hours, eating into your precious time that you could be using to market your services, work on projects, streamline your business branding, and so on.
From Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets to e-mail and Zynga games, we all have our addiction triggers. Minimize the temptations by cutting them off at the source. Try to self-police the time you spend on certain sites and focus the bulk of your day to working on current projects and cultivating new ones.
2. Stop Holding Unnecessary Meetings
While there’s always a case to be made for convening with your client (e.g. at the outset of a project to go over a contract and the expected deliverables or when deliverables need to be drastically changed), meetings can be big time-wasters. Having regular meetings for the sake of ‘touching base’ can feel superfluous and even distracting.
If you must have regular meetings, keep them short and sweet, and stick to a set agenda.
Resources need to be spent preparing for the meeting, holding the meeting, and then doing a post-meeting assessment. In many cases, they turn into a bureaucratic nightmare where no real work actually gets done and you’re left spinning your wheels.
Most of the time, a weekly status-note or quick phone call on an as-needed basis is just as effective. If you must have regular meetings, keep them short and sweet, and stick to a set agenda.
And avoid holding meetings to do some group brainstorming at all costs. This type of brainstorming session has proven to be wildly unproductive, with individual ideas being stamped out by “group think”.
If your client wants to “think out loud” for half an hour, politely steer the meandering conversation to a close, say that you’d like to dedicate some research time to fleshing out your ideas on paper, and that you’ll send him a 1-2 page proposal by e-mail. Done. Now you can get back to work.
3. Learn How to Say ‘No’
One of the biggest mistakes freelancers make is to work with clients that pay rock-bottom rates for work that doesn’t add any value to their portfolio, inspire them creatively, or challenge them in some way. Sometimes, we end up doing free consults with a prospective client even if we know we’re out of their price range to begin with.
Don’t feel guilty about being upfront with your expectations when it comes to a project. You are, first and foremost, a business. Why don’t freelancers say “no” enough? We’re hardwired to show deference toward the client. Indeed, client relations is the heart of freelancing. But there are many instances when saying “no” to a freelance job is advisable.
In a recent FreelanceSwitch post by Melanie Brooks, saying “no” is not about slacking off but knowing your personal limits as a freelancer. “My goal is to choose to do what is important to me and what I enjoy, while not slacking on my other commitments. Saying no is a freedom I can now employ without feeling guilty or bad,” she says.
4. Stay Disciplined
If you’re juggling multiple projects, start a weekly calendar and designate certain days for certain projects. This ensures that you devote enough time to every project in your pipeline on a regular basis. Also, figure out your “dead zones” during the day and use those time slots to get the routine, repetitive work done.
Use your off-peak hours, like during your mid-afternoon espresso break, to attend to administrative matters, or low-intensity marketing and promotion (e.g. putting together invoices, posting articles on your blog, responding to work-related Tweets and Facebook comments). Finally, stay on track with your freelance workload using these time tracking tools.
5. Always Be on the Offensive
Spend a couple hours each week to focus on the business development side of things. This means committing the time to explore and tap into your existing networks to secure potential avenues of new work.
You might want to send out a personal note to existing and past clients. Consider joining a networking event to put yourself out there. Call up a few local firms or check out an agency to add yourself to their roster of freelancers. Read “101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads” for more strategies.
6. Be a Ruthless Boss
You’re working for yourself, remember? Freelancers sometimes take a soft approach to dealing with errant clients and suppliers. Chase invoices when they are due. Giving too many extensions or long grace periods on deadlines for payments can be disastrous for your cash-flow situation. You can be tough on tardy clients but always stay polite and professional.
A quick phone call is often the best means of getting their attention. Be assertive when making your demands and collecting your bills. For specific strategies on how to handle client penalties, reminders, and escalation, read “What to do When a Client Doesn’t Pay In a Timely Manner“.
7. Forget the Work-Life Balance
Many freelancers boast about the freedom and personal autonomy their work affords them— but actually do very little to change how they work to reflect these values. In fact, I know many freelancers who make it a point of conforming to the business-as-usual, conventional 9-5 office setup. Personally, I don’t like squeezing work into an 8-10 hour time period. That’s corporate clockwork.
So, I’m a big advocate of blurring those sacred work-life boundaries. Don’t try to compartmentalize how you work— this means mixing to some degree work and leisure during your day and evenings. If you feel like tinkering on that website after dinner, go ahead. If you want to curtail your work day at 3pm to go for a run in the park, don’t feel guilty. Freelancers waste a lot of time and end up feeling unduly frustrated because they force themselves to do certain tasks when they are not at their most productive.
There’s no benefit in slogging through work when your energy is at half-mast or if you just can’t concentrate at your desk. It’s equally confounding to stave off work when inspiration strikes just because it’s the weekend or after 6pm. Sometimes I do my best writing on a Saturday night, for example. Instead, trust your instincts and put that manic energy to work.
This isn’t a license to slack off or work yourself to death, of course. Give yourself specific, reasonable deliverable for the day (e.g. “Finish editing client X’s report” and “Finalize content strategy proposal for company A”) and make sure you burn through them— but also maintain a healthy outlook and take time to blow off some steam.
Enjoy your life as a freelancer.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by mtkang.
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Genevieve, very good points here – especially the first two.
Social media can be a huge time suck, so sometimes it’s best to set aside a block of time just for doing that, or using social network blocking software (i.e. Anti Social for Mac OS X). My other tip to add would be to even reduce the amount of social media accounts one has (many of us have more than the standard three these days) to simplify one’s life and schedule.
As for meetings, not only is the brainstorming an issue because of “group think”, but that too becomes a time suck – what was planned as a 30-minute meeting becomes a 90-minute meeting because the ideas start flowing non-stop.
Mellissa,
Thanks for the tip on Anti Social. There’s also Freedom and RescueTime, too– all great tools to help staunch the dreaded social media time suck. I especially like your idea about streamlining social media accounts (do we really need more than 2 or 3 accounts anyway?). I’ve also started limiting my social media activity to certain times of the day. Not more than 20 minutes a day. It helps tremendously…
Meetings are so anachronistic! Most things can be solved with a quick e-mail or phone call.
-Genevieve
All good points, and I’m an especially strong believer in the power of “no” for freelancers. I have a post here on Freelance Switch that’s another slant on that topic, “Do You ‘No’ Your Way to Greater Success?” at http://freelanceswitch.com/clients/do-you-no-your-way-to-greater-success/ .
As for meetings, that can be a pricing issue, that is, give the client a certain amount of in-person “face time” included in the project bid, but charge an exorbitant, and discouraging, rate when they go over that. You can always waive the fee if they come up with a good reason for a meeting, but it eliminates a lot of meetings that you are automatically, and thoughtlessly, included in, to no one’s benefit.
Hi Kenny,
Thanks for the link to your post. And great title, by the way…
Knowing how to say ‘no’ is such a delicate art. I particularly like your suggestion here:
“Some prospects will talk to you long and often, and that feels great. But if they don’t have the resources to hire you, or never seem to move beyond ‘picking your brain,’ it’s time to move on.”
I’ve definitely experienced that many times!
-Genevieve
Really great article! I waste so much time doing things I dont need to and dont stay organised. I will defintely be rethinking the way I work and try to create a more professional working environment.
I find saying no to low paid work is a problem especially when i need the work, I have had a £300 a day photography job knocked down to £150 a day as I need the money and the work, But what do I do when work picks up again and dont want to work for this price, any tips?
Here’s a great article about how to raise your rates without scaring away clients:
http://freelanceswitch.com/money/how-to-raise-your-rates-without-losing-clients/
I’ve also written an article about pricing and client intake here, if you’re interested: http://freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/price-freelance-rates/
If you’re giving a deep discount on your standard services and rates, make sure your client knows that… And don’t advertise those discounted rates. If you do advertise your rates (on your website, for example), I would make sure you use a standard rate (make sure it’s a good baseline for negotiation).
It’s a slippery slope when you start lowering your rates to make clients happy. I know it can be tough when you’re chasing down work to get experience and to make ends meet, but I would focus instead, as a long-term strategy, to finding good-paying clients.
-Genevieve
Great article. I tried to make sure I set the work/life boundaries once. It didn’t work. At all.
Oddly, I tend to be the most productive from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. – 2 a.m. This frustrates my wife to no end, because sometimes I don’t come to bed until very…very late. It’s just when I get the most work done, so I use it as much as I can.
And I’ve definitely learned to say “no” over the last few years. One project in particular started to make me have a breakdown, that’s when I grew a backbone and started “fighting back.” I know what my time is worth, even if a couple of my clients don’t.
Hi Josh,
I’m also an early afternoon and late evening kind of person when it comes to writing and editing! I reserve the mornings and early evenings for downtime or light work, like reading and research. If I force myself to work when I’m not feeling it, I just sit there spinning my wheels. Very frustrating. Go with what works, right?
I think it’s important for people to find their ideal schedule — figuring out the hours where they are the most productive…Now, how to harmonize different schedules with a spouse or partner is a whole other article!
I had a few projects last year that were also excruciatingly demanding. I slogged through it, but told myself afterwards, ‘never again!’
-Genevieve
Some really great advice in this post, thank you, and certainly food for thought. There are a few aspects that I should be implementing more, especially limiting the social. It’s amazing how much more I get done when Tweetdeck is closed! However because I tend to write about social, I need to stay on top of it too.
Hi Philippa,
I know what you mean. I do a lot of my research on the Web and it can be hard to ‘get off the grid’ when I need to focus and just write or hunker down with a manuscript.
So I try to designate my low productivity periods (mornings for me) to doing my online searches, reading, and downloading. Then, by early afternoon, after lunch, I close down my browser.
Maybe you can do something similar…staying on top of social media tech and industry news during low productivity periods, and then shutting down Tweetdeck, your browser when you need to grit your teeth and work.
-Genevieve