So, you want to become a successful freelancer in 2023 and you don’t know where to start. Well, it comes down to what you want to see happen in your career and how much time you are willing to dedicate to this effort. There is a saying that one of the biggest hacks to developing financial freedom is having a 9-5 and working a 5-9. This in essence means you keep a job that works for you or some sort of consistent mainstream of income while leveraging your off time to treat your side hustle as a second job. To do this, you must take yourself seriously enough to create structure in your free time and work towards your goals, remember we all have the same 24 hours.

In that time, you have an obligation to yourself to make the best use of your time by “designing your life”, a term I came across after being exposed to the works of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans who wrote Designing Your Life. This masterfully written self-help book teaches you all about the wonders of leveraging design thinking to not only solve design problems in work but also in life, configuring your most optimal operating Environnement. I spent years learning design but never thought to apply its principles in a different perspective that would affect my life outside of the visual art application until reading this.

This brings me to another point of prototyping at scale what you want to manifest by testing in controllable environments what you want to see happen. Work out the kinks in our approach through testing until you feel strongly enough about your performance to bring it to the market. All the while you are researching your field, making connections with your work, and others related to it so that you can perfect your strategy which will always be an ongoing process. There will always be something that can be done better or improved upon, but the goal is to get to the point where people don’t notice the minute imperfections you do and learn from the people who do and constructively discuss resolutions.

Try working with family, at school, your job, or even church but places where people can give you honest opinions about your craft, but it won’t crush your career goals if things do not work out right away. There are also pages on social media and sites that have challenges and prompts for work you may be interested in pursuing in your freelance career that you can participate in to build your portfolio, test your skills, as well as gain nearly infinite amounts of inspiration (I will list these platforms in a future piece dedicated to the matter). All of these varying points of view will help you to start small and grow big and not the other way around. In other words, DO NOT expect to start freelancing and get rich quickly landing you on the cover of Forbes within the first year of operating. Take time building your brand, perfecting your craft as best you can, and nurturing it so it can become a tree that provides fruit for years to come.

Ask the Right Questions

Before talking about the big bucks, we must ask questions like “What is success”? A quick answer for many is getting rich, traveling a lot, having fancy clothes and cars, or having a luxury lifestyle but as we previously discussed that isn’t the best option for most anyone. Many people have things and still are stressed or are living check-to-check with no true happiness. We must then ask ourselves the right questions when beginning this journey of entrepreneurship and subsequently self-discovery, either for the first time or the umpteenth time. “What does success look like for someone that has done what I want to do and what will success look like for me”? We must all follow the footsteps of our forerunners, there are clues in every blueprint to success. Sometimes we have to puzzle it together enough to paint the picture we needed to see to be inspired, but in the end, it is up to us to be fulfilled.

It is important to understand that becoming an overnight success is rare and if you want to reach success you have to mimic what it looks like. Do this long enough to find a sweet spot you can operate in that still yields the results you are looking for. You have to replicate the process regularly enough to create the best odds of seeing it happen for yourself, so really it is all a numbers game not a matter of luck.

Do Research

Thankfully we are in one of the greatest times in human history to learn from other great minds through our limitless access to knowledge. An excellent place to start connecting with like-minded pros and experts is platforms like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube to start. People go to great lengths to create a knowledge base that showcases the information they have gathered and how it impacts the world. They do this in hopes of helping others and marketing what they do on the internet (a prelude to SEO talk we will get into later).

This means it is all there for you to engage with should you search in the right places. Eliminate anxiety and don’t be afraid to ask questions, comment, direct message and reach out to people whose skills you admire. Celebrating others is an awesome way to spread love, show support and be a positive light in communities you wish to be a part of. This is an excellent opportunity to gain insight and guidance on what your interests are and how they can yield more fruit later. Whether it is how people define what you do or how you want to redefine your place in the market. The insight is essential to identifying your core value and values, I.e., what makes you special.

Network with Grace

Find people and groups where you can exchange notes about your goals and developing talent. I often look to places like Facebook marketplace and Reddit to find groups of industry genies that are lurking for opportunities to flex their knowledge or just genuinely help out. It is important in this stage to realize you are building a brand and putting yourself out there in a way to become more of an authority in your niche and industry. Being of service to others will always be more beneficial to you than demanding a seat at the table. Always find ways to add value and aid others where it makes sense. on their journey as we must pay it forward.

Do it humbly and with an open mind as you don’t always know what will come your way. Sometimes it’s love and other times it feels like hate as the internet can be quite the unforgiving place in general. So be ready for all forms of critique and opinions. A great quote I use to thicken my skin is “Eat the meat and leave the bones”, meaning take what you need out of what is being said and throw out what does not help you.

Build an Identity

After identifying your tribe and figuring out what it is you want to specialize in. You need to take your professional branding seriously by displaying the work you have done in a variety of places making yourself accessible to potential customers. I am actively working on a guide that will help you better execute all the steps needed to develop a professional brand so subscribe below to stay updated. First, make sure you have an original name you think is suitable that speaks to your heart as well as the audience you want to reach about what you do. After identifying a name and brand mark that represent you well check to see if your name or pseudonym for your business is available on all platforms using this site to check its availability across all platforms called namechecker.com. Acquire your branded domain by registering with Google Workspace so you can get a professional email to go along with your website like name@yourdomain.com. Along with the email and domain you get access to all of Google’s wonderful tools and apps that help level up your efficiency online. Then acquire all of the usernames you will use on the social platforms and you will be good to go.

After getting all names synched, and your logins saved, you need to set up a venue to display your portfolio. Keep it simple as your starting out and use a platform that is easy to navigate. One I always suggest is Koji because it is quick to set up, easy to deploy changes, and later monetize. Begin uploading content that shows the use cases of your work and skills. Display work so clients can see themselves in what you create and see how it applies to their needs. Address problems they will face and become the solution they need in your offer.

Understand Your Offer

Using traditional psychology and the rule of 3s create packages that speaks to your target customer personas and their typical needs. When you bundle offerings, people feel they are getting a better deal than if you break up the offerings individually. Use this to your advantage to make more money at once for bundled products and services. Make complimentary micro-offerings and deluxe offerings so that people can pair your main offers with them to maximize the value they feel they are getting within your value ladder. Not to mention this boost how much you can make per client.

An example of this is selling a brand design package where you get a brand style guide bundled with a logo, business cards, letterhead, and social media graphics. I typically upsell this with a done-for-you service where a social media page and google business manager is set up, so your brand is consistent throughout. Although these are different services, they all complement and add to the main offer, which in the end benefits the client the most.

Getting in the habit of bundling and pricing your services competitively will help you sell more in the long run. Always factor in the time it takes you to complete the work you do and sometimes it may be more time dedicated than you feel like you are being paid. Account for that in the work you do to make sure you are making more than what your hourly wage is. As a rule, I know exactly how long it is going to take to finish each one of my standard offers so there is a premium hourly wage factored in based on the skill being sought after. When clients try to lowball, reiterate to them the skills you have and the uniqueness of your offer as well as bringing to perspective all of the software, equipment, and additionally cost they are forgoing when working with you as opposed to doing things yourself. Not to mention all the time and effort you spent perfecting your strategy that they did not go through, that they are also getting included. But usually, try to avoid clients that would argue that they could do a better job themselves, in that case, let them and walk away. That is because oftentimes they will not be satisfied with anything you produce.

Prepare for The Flow

You can find a myriad of client after making yourself available on certain directories that will enable you get job offers regularly as wells bid on projects for income. A platform that does this exceptionally is Fiverr which is a freelance platform that allows you to post yourself as a freelancer and display your past work. If you’re looking for a consultant or some help with projects, it is also a great platform to network with pro talent as well. It brings credibility through the ability to display reviews and showcase your ratings. As an added bonus it provides excellent project management capabilities that allow you to communicate with clients, exchange files, and update them on progress with ease. All while enhancing your visibility, giving you an advantage over those only promoting through one stream and juggling multiple software to do the same thing. But keep in mind it is a big world out there and it can become difficult to make yourself standout amongst the rest so make sure to always analyze what the market is demanding, what competitors are doing, and how you can become different while staying true to yourself.

After putting yourself out there and the invoices start rolling in you need to make sure you are factoring in proper accounting. This doesn’t just mean saving receipts and tracking miles but also managing the basic tracking of your credits and debits as it relates to your freelance endeavors. This can be done for you and automated using powerful accounting software that allows you to manage your own bookkeeping. One that I use to manage the money is Wave Financial, which is a free to use accounting software that links to your bank(s) and allows you to create notes, categorize transactions and even send invoices. Highly rated and very versatile this software will take you far as you scale up your freelance operation. As robust as this software is, be sure to explore the market and see what can work best for you.

In Conclusion

At the end it is important to realize I am not a financial advisor and the advice I give is strictly on how to help you jump start your journey as a freelancer in this day and time based on some of my own experience. Should you decide to go through with some of these offers, I would get a commission after your continued use. If you subscribe and join my community of creatives and entrepreneurs, I can offer you discounts on some as well! So please let me know how these resources work for you and any tips or tools you come across that also add value. We all have to work to build a foundation of support and knowledge that benefits our collective growth one way or another. It cannot happen alone, and I did not get where I am at just from my experience but being a student of others, as will you. Make sure to take notes on this journey and practice as often as you can to hone your crafts because it can be of use to those that come after you. Let me know how some of these tools and advice helps as you progress. And as always, stay tuned for more great tips, stories, and tools for the everyday entrepreneur.