Daily Freelancer: Don't Forget to Work ON the Business

This is my first blog in a few weeks, and you know why? I’ve been busy! Like, busy working. Like, I’ve had lots of freelance work to on, which is great!

But it’s important to remember that while you’re working IN the business, you can’t forget to work ON the business. Especially as a freelancer.

What does that mean? When you work for a company, you don’t have to worry about marketing, promotion, work flow, budgets, invoices, all of that. You just have to work on your projects. But when you run your own business, and especially work as a freelancer, all of that is on you — both completing the projects and running the aspects of a business.

What are some things you need to do to work ON the business?

Pipeline

The focus of a freelancer’s life and income is having that client pipeline filled, which means putting out feelers, pitching to jobs, and cultivating future work, even if you have present work. I haven’t done this for very long, but I’ve seen three buckets of work that we freelancers need to plan for:

The first bucket is one-off projects. These are the projects you get, you do, and you submit. They’re great, because sometimes they’re high-paying gigs, and they’re fun ways to try new things and connect with new people. But they don’t typically last long, and when they’re done, you need to start from scratch and find another project.

The next bucket is long-term clients. I’ve been starting to do occasional work for some clients, and when you can build that relationship and prove your value, it’ll pay off. You can rely on work from them, even though it may not be steady. And if it’s long-term steady work, fantastic!

The third bucket is what keeps you on your toes: the potential long-term clients that dry up. Maybe their budget changed, or the scope changed, or something like a worldwide pandemic shifted business needs. The curve ball here is that these are clients that you thought you could depend on for income, and then suddenly you can’t.

That’s why you need to keep cultivating your pipeline, even if you have work now.

Marketing

This relates to the work pipeline, but it’s also about keeping yourself in front of people’s eyes and attention, and growing your exposure and reputation. This includes things like posting on social media and writing content — like blog posts — to keep yourself and your content and knowledge out there. It also communicates that you’re consistent (and therefore trustworthy!).

Another important thing that falls under marketing is keeping your profiles updated. Especially now that I’m freelancing, I’m cycling through a lot of different projects, and haven’t necessarily been keeping those projects updated on my website, my LinkedIn, and my Upwork. It’s necessarily to keep tweaking and updating as you go, because you never know which of your materials potential clients are going to look at.

Finally, a lot of working on the business is thinking about what’s next, and setting goals to get there. Do you want to start shifting into different clients? Raise your pricing? Start a newsletter or a podcast? When you’re working in the business, you don’t necessarily have time to even think about those things, much less execute. But they’re needed as much as landing new clients.

Time Management

One of the things I’ve been waaaay thrown off with in this new freelancer world is time management. A lot of it has to do with anticipating how long projects are going to take, and I’ve found myself significantly underestimating how long it’s going to take me to get something done — sometimes I’m off by ten or fifteen hours. But for someone who never ever had to think about my pace before, I’m just learning as I go, and budgeting my time will definitely get easier.

But in regards to working in your business and on your business, it just means scheduling your time out so that you have a bit left over to post on social, or write a blog post, or do something now for the future — ideally everyday.

Of course, all these things are things I’ve neglected for the past two weeks. But I’m only a few months into this journey, and learning how to swing the pendulum!