Your Responsibilities As A Freelancer
There are countless freelancers out there who are bad at business. You don’t want to be one of them.
Many of these freelancers are good at what they do, be it graphic design, copywriting or web development. However, their general lack of business sense means that nobody will ever see how good they are.
You absolutely must treat freelancing as a business in order to succeed.
(Or, you can ignore me entirely and make it easier for people who do the above to out-compete you.)
In this article, I’m going to talk about why this is the case, what you’re missing out on if you’re not doing this and the potential rewards you’ll gain by treating your freelance work like a business.
Before we continue, I’ll give you a little reading.
Here’s an article I wrote about skills that freelance writers need to succeed at freelancing. In today’s article, I’ll talk in more general terms, but those nine things are basic skills that every self-employed person should have.
Also, this topic follows on loosely from yesterday’s “Questions to Ask Potential Clients.” I’ll tell you how in the next section.
Why Most Freelancer Questions Shouldn’t Even Be Asked
Let’s rewind to yesterday’s article. In summary:
- Don’t ask a million questions of a potential client
- You should know the answers already when it comes to how, why and for how much you’re providing your service
- Do your research before you ever reply to a query email (or send one out.)
Most of the questions in the article I pulled apart were bad because they smacked of a freelancer who doesn’t know what they’re doing. (I’m not saying the guy/girl who wrote it is, but the advice would make you come across as someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.)
If you come across as someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, then it’s unlikely that a business will have faith in you.
Think about your freelancing as a business. If you’re asking a client about things that occur in your business then you don’t know what you’re doing. For instance, “How many hours a day should I be working on your project?” is a terrible question. You should know that, and it has nothing to do with the client.
Your business == the client’s business. Do you think McDonald’s really cares about the working schedule of the company that provides their Styrofoam cups?
In that article, I said that you should know your business and you should address these concerns as statements. You set your own schedule. You set your own work process. There’s room to negotiate, but you’re in control.
Why You Have Responsibilities As A Freelancer
Most companies don’t know what they’re doing. They outsource the work because they need someone – or a company – who does know what they’re doing.
If a company emails you to ask about a job and you fire a million questions at them, then they are going to have no trust. Some people will say, “But I want to know what they expect of me!”
If they wanted to write the blueprint for every little task you’re going to do, and they knew exactly what they wanted, they’d hire an employee or get an intern to do it. They don’t.
Essentially, people who hire freelancers are putting an aspect of their business into your hands. Even if you’re a business-to-consumer freelancer, people are outsourcing parts of their lives to you. You cannot afford to mess them around.
I’ll use a real life example.
Why Not Treating Your Freelance Business Like A Business Is Going To Ruin You
I sort-of knew a girl who was a hairdresser.
In fact, she was a great hairdresser. She worked in someone’s salon and he had people specifically request him because he did a good job.
So much so, that she decided to start her own mobile hairdressing business.
It was terrible.
This girl would show up late. Sometimes, she’d show up four hours late. Other times, she’d not show up at all and then have to rearrange for another day. Sometimes customers would be sat waiting for two hours and then get a text;
“Hi… I’m sorry I slept in. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
…Only for her to be another two hours.
She’d change the prices based on whether he needed money or wanted to go out at the weekend. She’d cancel appointments and then put on her Instagram that she was at the beach.
Now you can probably predict where this went, but for anyone who might be tempted to think, “Yeah… it’s just a haircut though” there’s a laundry list of issues:
- Variable payments means inevitably people feel cheated
- Not turning up means that someone I know had to book a different hairdresser at the last minute because the hairstyling was for her wedding
- Also, Graduations, Birthdays, Anniversaries and the like… she ruined those in the minds of her customers
- People took mornings off work for their haircuts, or stayed in during a weekend specifically for an appointment that was never met
You get the picture. The point is that I’m not exaggerating when I say that people have a lot more riding on your service than just the service.
Needless to say, this hairdresser not only lost their business (she works in a shop now) but she also lost friends and caused other people to lose friends.
Now, this wasn’t a bad person – it was just a person who didn’t know what they were doing in terms of general business sense.
The Rewards Of Treating Freelancing As A Business
This section is more positive.
When you make a commitment to treat your freelance work as a business, everything gets better. Not least because by following basic rules like, “Do the work,” “Do it on time” and “Don’t make excuses” you’re putting yourself above 90% of competitors.
But also because your job becomes easier. It’s also easier to scale. It’s easier to offer new services and the extra skills you build mean you have more options and more leverage in general.
You can also see gaps in the market easily because you’ll easily be able to spot people who aren’t professional.
An example: A big irritation of mine is companies that offer web design and online marketing services that have terrible websites and no online marketing profile whatsoever. You can absolutely tell that they have no idea what they’re doing and if you were to actually call them, they’d be completely stumped.
When I look at starting a new service or creating a new product and I see things like that, I know that I can outcompete the competitors on a pure professionality standpoint.
In addition to that, the more professional you are, the more you’ll be respected and taken seriously.
Here’s another example; Two months into my copywriting adventure, I got an interesting email from someone who wanted to “join my team.” Shortly after this, more than a handful of clients referred to me as “a team” or “company” or various other similar identifiers.
Bear in mind that two months into my copywriting adventure, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Yet clients thought that there was a team of writers doing my job.
That comes from only a few things:
- Promptness
- On time delivery
- Well written communication
- Fast and efficient research and work
That’s what I mean – if you treat your freelancing business as the business it is, people will assume you’re a legitimate company. They’ll pay legitimate company rates and feel like they’ve gotten a great deal out of it.
Essentially, the bar is made lower by unprofessional people to the extent that if you’re even remotely competent, people will assume you’re much better and better-equipped than you are.
When the price of that reputation comes down to something like, “Do I really want to finish this work or should I play video games and do it tomorrow?” then you’ve got no excuses.
If in doubt, the answer is “Forget the video games. Deliver the work ahead of schedule.” In my experience, there is absolutely nothing that will get you as good a reputation as delivering things ahead of schedule. Nothing. (Topic for another day, maybe.)
Final Thoughts
I’ll wrap this up because we’re getting long-winded.
You need to treat your freelance work as a business. The reasons in bullet point form are:
- It makes it easier for you
- You’ll be better than your competition with even the slightest professionalism
- Your reputation will be better
- If you don’t, then people will dislike you…
- … and you’ll lose your business
- You’ll also potentially disrupt other people and their businesses
- It’s easy to do
- You’ll get better pay, more work and people will love you
- … Your dog will love you more too.
With those things said, I’m sure nobody needs any more encouragement.