7 Phases of Running A Freelance Business

November 20, 2019 Leave a Comment

Freelancing is a decent alternative if you’re a self-driven person who is a fast learner. Some people are well-organized, can use Google (or Stack Overflow, or other resources) quickly, read fast, and are not afraid of experimenting. With the right attitude through freelancing, you may improve your technical and business skills that you will need to start a freelance business.

The caveat is in finding the right process for handling activities. Growing your freelance business often revolves around marketing and sales, negotiations, project planning, documentation, delivery milestones, financial management, and even legal cases.

If you’re not passionate about any of those (or struggle with most), it may turn into a bitter experience, not to mention that a good chunk of your time may go into marketing and prospecting instead of hands-on.

There are 7 phases of running a freelance business that you need to know in order to successfully grow and scale further. In this article, we are going to discuss the key areas to focus on during these critical phases.

1. Creating Your Business Plan

If I have to narrow them down to two essential requirements:

Strive for mind-blowing service quality
Prepare to run an entire business with all-encompassing activities

Most people get stuck on one of those and tend to develop it more zealously. That’s a mistake.

Essentially, becoming a freelancer is a form of starting a business. You sell your time and skills and build solutions. This is the service quality aspect.

What Running A Freelance Business Requires

Payment transactions require some tax management: enter accounting. This usually requires registering a business – and dealing with legal activities. Landing clients depends on sales and marketing. Juggling with several ongoing clients is contingent on your project management skills. And that’s running business and management operations.

Sure, you can start small at first. Build some projects for friends and acquaintances after hours or over the weekend. Sign up for any of the freelance networks out there and pitch for new projects every now and then.

This could be done as a hobby of a sort – as long as you deliver what you’ve promised within the time frame agreed upon.

A full-time freelance career would inevitably lead to hustling more and struggling to generate sustainable ongoing revenue at first. Excelling at all relevant activities is definitely not trivial. Be prepared to collaborate with others who can help out and have your lawyer or accountant on speed dial.

Failing is easier than making it work. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try or it’s all causa perduta. But incomplete solutions result in dissatisfaction. Postponing deadlines builds pressure. Failing to manage your energy and revenue leads to burnouts. There are traps and challenges behind every corner.

Carefully write your business plan before you start and prepare a set of processes for the separate activities. Then combine them all in a flow chart, a mind map, add them in your calendar – whatever is easier for you.

The more “cheat sheets” and “how-to” guides you have, the easier would it be to follow a sane workflow and cover all areas accordingly. Create repeating tasks or recurring events for sales calls, project overviews, handling invoices. The staggering volume of activities can trigger a mental block and lead to missing important aspects of your work.

2. Finding Your First Clients

First off, we don’t tend to work locally. The local market is small and the problems we solve are beyond the low-level issues businesses around deal with.

This wasn’t the case in the early days, though.

I’d have to reach out to my network, announce my availability in forums and on social media, and spend time bidding on oDesk/Freelancer.

More importantly, I spent nearly a year bidding and studying freelancing before I went all in. I worked evenings and weekends, building my portfolio and rating.

The first memorable customer I have in mind was a local reference. An experienced Flash freelancer had a lead and saw my message. The client was smaller and the tech stack wasn’t something he was comfortable with, and that’s how we started.

I had a couple of similar leads in the interim. It was extremely challenging dealing with the scope creep most of all. Small businesses rarely understand the dynamics of digital and what goes into a project, and the number of assumptions was extreme.

I did not communicate that properly, meaning that “what goes in the contract is what you get”, which led to several months in additional fixes.

It went well after all, but I learned some valuable lessons after several tough contracts!

3. Working With Other Freelancers: Benefits vs Drawbacks

Weighing the benefits and drawbacks that come with working with other freelancers can guide you in your decision-making process. I have outlined some of the top pros and cons.

Benefits

You can scale your workload twice (after a certain period of training and onboarding)
Offload the most tedious activities
Focus on productive tasks instead of multitasking
Excel at what you do best instead of covering numerous areas
Limit distractions by offloading support or running outside errands

Drawbacks

Hard to find decent talent
Loyalty and retention are often a problem
Onboarding will cost you a lot. You need to work twice as hard handling training and getting the job done in the meantime.
Recurring costs are frightening
Management is increasing business complexity
Extra time in quality assurance

Once you start scaling, you start incurring monthly expenses. Incurring new expenses monthly is massively risky and challenging. Clients may delay paying for an invoice. That’s why an office is rarely a good investment early on.

Even co-working spaces may be too much, starting from a university’s library or coffee shops is a fine starting point during the bootstrap phase.

4. Surviving the Feast and Famine Cycle

Scaling your freelancing business depends on your workload.

If you are still going through the feast and famine cycle all the time, consider one of the following two strategies:

Switch to some form of a recurring revenue model (or at least a longer-term contract to keep you safe for a bit)
Save enough cash for both you and your future hire as you don’t want to end up delaying a paycheck

There are different ways to actually accomplish this. Some examples:

Build a network of freelancers first to ensure you can scale the workload.
Poach some of the freelancers for a half-time or a full-time role once you know they can deliver and know the projects (plus you’ve tested the working relationship).
If they can’t/aren’t interested, look for a hire that could offload some of the freelance work and bring it home.
If you don’t have freelancers around, look for an experienced hire who can deliver and asks for less than what you charge. Otherwise, you will never make as much from clients as they ask for (wage-wise).
If you can’t find someone (or afford them), hire a junior. Start with tedious and recurring tasks. It will be tough, you’ll work twice as much, but this can scale if they are a good learner and eager enough to stick around and learn the ropes.

6. Growing Your Freelance Business: Organic vs Fueled Growth

Should you aim for organic growth or fueled growth in a business?

A healthy mix of both would be the best compromise.

What Does “Organic Growth” Mean?

It’s the general sales/marketing mix excluding expensive ad campaigns, rapid funding cycles, insane growth. This also includes occasional press releases or other campaigns aiming to spark extra interest.

Add in some references, testimonials, help from existing connections in your network.

Small businesses can benefit from slower growth when it comes to scaling the company.

Rapid growth is stressful. You’ll hire quickly. Making some compromises and filling in gaps just because you really need to. Cut some corners here and there and skip important onboarding cycles.

Otherwise, your culture may be affected big time.

But fueled growth can help when contained properly.

Slower growth can also damage your business with unpredictable revenue and failing to make payroll on time. Pulling some tricks from under your sleeve can speed things up without affecting your sanity.

Some angel investing or collecting cash from friends and family for strategic campaigns can pay off.

Figuring out a successful lead generation channel and doubling down, too.

Making your way to a TV appearance or a session at a key conference for your industry.

If you play it safe but smart, you’ll find the right pacing to push your company forward.

7. Upkeeping Your Freelance Business’ Processes

Yes, several times a week (on a good week), I feel like I am out of my depth in terms of the skills required to run a business.

Running a business requires hundreds of instant decisions every day. You rarely get the opportunity to plan too far ahead of time.

I’m not as worried about solving every individual small case. I try to be as cautious as possible not to take a serious of decisions that would have consequences in the future. Poor investments, hiring against our culture fit, announcing a partnership without considering nuanced cultural implications.

Building a moral compass in the form of business and culture code often serves as the last line of validation for quick assessments every day.

Bonus Tip: Scale Your Business in Just 8 Weeks!

And learn the following with actionable steps.

How to establish a solid business foundation

How to set up an effective marketing strategy

What’s the difference between an entrepreneur and intrapreneur and who to hire

How to unite your team around the company’s goals and culture

How to push your sales to the next level using technologies and way more

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