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When you first start out in the world of freelance, you may feel as if you’ve reached your career peak. Because it’s always amazing to leave the rat race and to be able to work for yourself. Even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard, you will always feel grateful for the freedom of being your own boss. However, sometimes, you will realize that’s not enough. Sure, you’re so happy to have had the opportunity to be a freelancer in your field, and that it’s worked out for you, but it can also be easy to want to take things to the next level. And sometimes, you will even find yourself being pushed towards the next level because things are going that well for you. So, how do you do it?
Because when you’re freelancer, you can get used to the rhythm. You get used to how well you can manage your workload and the set systems that you use to do it. So then trying to work out how you change that in order to accommodate a more professional business, can be tough. Or maybe this is the ultimate goal for you. Maybe you’ve just started out in the freelance world and you’re excited to take things to the next level? Then, you’re definitely going to want to know what you’re doing. So that’s what we’re going to talk through in this post.
1. Brand Yourself
To start with, you always need to make sure that you are branding yourself. Because if you want to grow and be taken seriously, you need to have some personal branding in place. So start to think about who you are and what makes you unique. Then work with a branding specialist to come up with an image for yourself that can help you to push forward and establish yourself as a serious authority.
2. Improve Your Website
From here, you’re then going to want to make sure that you’re able to get your website up to scratch. Even if you love it right now, you will want to make sure that you’re making changes and improvements that are going to take it to the next level. This could be something that you do alone and slowly work on yourself, or it could be something that you look to hire an expert for.
3. Audit Your Services
When you have fixed everything you can fix, it’s time to unleash the new and improved product, right? You should, in fact, try your luck on another prototype before you send off the final product; let the customers who answered your questionnaire be the lucky recipients, and let them know that you have taken care of whatever they pointed out.
3. Audit Your Services
Now, the next area of the business that you’re going to want to take a look at is the services that you offer. You will need to try and be as objective as you can here. Because it’s important for you to be able to consider what you’re offering, and then look to make it better. Compare what you offer with your competitors. See where there are any gaps. Make sure that you are offering the best possible services, and that you’re happy with the price points you’re charging.
4. Plan To Add More
And then, you need to add more. If you know that you are providing one or two set freelance services, then there’s definitely scope to add more. If you believe that you could give more options to your clients that complement what they are already buying from you, then this is perfect. Really think about your customer and what they made need from your services. Because this then allows you to make sure that you’re providing a full service to them that adds value.
5. Hire Someone
This is also around the time that you might like to think about hiring someone. If you know that you’re struggling to get everything done on your own, and you want to be able to move things to the next level, then getting your first team member could be really important. You might want to think about hiring a freelancer for this or even taking someone on as your first real employee.
6. Improve Your Skills
At this point, you may also find that it’s really beneficial for you to start working on your skills. You should always be looking to grow. But when you really want to transform your career and grow a business, you may need to really focus on this. It could be anything from learning a language to CPR training to starting to code. Just make sure you’re aware of the skills that you’re lacking and what could help you to push things forward.
3. Audit Your Services
Hopefully, they will be willing to give you some more feedback so that you can be absolutely certain that you’ve given them what they had in mind and ensured that successful product launch.
7. Up Your Marketing Efforts
Then, you’re also going to want to take a look at your marketing calendar and make sure that you’re doing enough. Do you have a strategy in place? Do you know what activity you should be doing, and when? Are you targeting your audience effectively? If not, then this is something you should be channeling a lot of energy into.
8. Increase Your Activity
You will also want to make sure that you’re doing more, work wise too. Because if you want to grow, this is essential. You need to be selling more or serving more, or generally looking to increase the activity you are doing now, so that you’re heading in the right direction.
9. Position Yourself As An Expert
Now, something that you might find proves really handy for you, is to start position yourself as an expert in your field. If you know that you want to grow, and become one of the leading people or companies in your set industry, then you need to become an industry authority. And to do that, you will need to start positioning yourself as an expert more.
10. Network In Your Industry
And lastly, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re starting to network. Because if you do want to position yourself as an expert and you want to grow your business, then you need to make sure that you’re starting to network. You need to put yourself out there. Connect with others. Really become known in your industry. This will then allow you to find new opportunities that wouldn’t have been there for you otherwise.