If you started out in a 9 to 5 corporate job before starting your freelance journey, there are likely a few mindset shifts you’ll need to adopt to boost your new career as a successful freelancer and small business owner.
This is because running your own business is typically quite different from working for a big, established company in a regular salaried position.
Here are 4 mindset shifts to consider.
Know what you can do (and what you can’t)
One of the great things about running your own freelance business is that you get to decide how you run it, the hours you work, how much you’ll charge, and who you do business with. But the flip side to this is that you are also responsible for everything that happens in your business. This perspective can seem overwhelming, but there are things you can do and processes you can implement to help.
An “I can do it” attitude is great. But you need to know where to turn when you can’t do it, too. Therefore, it makes sense to outsource things that are time-consuming or tedious or that you are not an expert at.
While you may be an expert at your craft, you’ll also need to know the ins and outs of actually running a business, what admin needs to be done (when and by whom), what taxes need to be paid, regulations complied with, deadlines met, and more importantly, how and when you are going to be paid.
Unless you worked in finance or accounts, you may be unfamiliar with invoicing, the terms used, and the items that need to be on an invoice for you to get paid on time.
Why spend hours compiling invoices, tracking hours or inventory and emailing clients when you could simply sign up for free invoice software and get it all done at the click of a button?
Invoice Ninja is a leading free invoicing software for small business invoicing, online payments, tracking expenses and billable tasks. It also includes attractive, professional invoice template designs you can customize with your logo and brand colors.
Try it for free here.
Don’t be backwards in coming forwards
If you want to win clients and keep your sales pipeline full to avoid the freelancer feast and famine cycle, you are going to need to know how to best market your services. No one else is going to do it for you (unless, of course, you outsource this to someone else). However, this might not be viable or desirable at the beginning of your freelance journey.
You don’t have to be a super show-off extrovert to market and sell your services, but it’s helpful if you know what your offer is, who you are marketing to and the client problem you are solving.
Sales and marketing are often something those new to freelancing struggle with, so you need to have an idea of how you’ll market your services and win clients before you begin.
A helpful mindset for this is to remind yourself that your clients need you – you are the prize – by helping them or providing them with something they want or need. Not sharing your skills with the world would be a disservice to those clients who need to benefit from them.
Take care of your time (and money)
Freelancers need to take time out and have planned holidays to avoid freelancer burnout.
Nobody can work 24/7, 7 days a week. Not without detriment to their work, health or well-being (or all three!).
As a freelancer, you’ll likely need to plan for time away from your business in advance. You can read more about how to take time off as a freelancer in our article here.
Another time element to consider is what your contactable hours will be and client boundaries, i.e. when are the acceptable times for clients to contact you.
While you are no longer subject to the 9 to 5, you could find yourself working long hours or feeling you have to account for every hour spent working on a client project. This can be further exacerbated if you are charging by the hour. This can be a challenging mindset to shift away from.
Depending on your business and how you price your services, you may want to consider package or project prices in return for a set of deliverables instead of hourly rates.
This way, you are not stuck to set hours and can manage your time accordingly (especially if you are going away on vacation or need some time off).
Either way, good time management is essential when freelancing, and you need to adjust your mindset, see your time as valuable, and take good care of it.
Know when to draw the line (and have business buddies)
As well as having business goals, it’s also important you know when to draw the line if things aren’t going as expected.
Otherwise, you could end up doubling down and making your situation worse. To know if you are on the right track with your freelance business, you could set yourself a timescale to get X number of clients/projects by a specific date, or you could set yourself a monetary goal to reach.
It could be that your business just needs a few tweaks, or you could need to pivot or change your entire business plan. You might find that freelancing isn’t for you, so you return to a salaried position working for someone else again. And that’s perfectly okay, too.
You are allowed to fail and try again! This is where the benefits of networking and having business buddies really come into their own. Business buddies can be people in the same industry or niche as you or a completely different one, but having a network around you of like-minded folk who have experienced the same or similar business issues can be of great support – and boost your freelancer mindset.
Your freelance business will evolve and change as you grow – embrace the journey!
