This lesson is called how to grow your freelance business and is going to show
you two different ways you can go about scaling your business.
The first is how to charge expert level rates as a freelancer.
The second way is to build a freelance team or a freelance agency.
And then we will go over how you can skyrocket your success.
The reason growing your freelance business is important is because of the
freedom that a successful business provides.
And that is it helps fuel your why, which
is your passion.
The whole reason you're doing all of this
in the first place.
When you have a profitable freelance
business built and running, you really have the freedom to control how you want
to live your life.
You get to decide where you want to
travel, what days a week you want to work, what time of the day you want to work.
And ultimately it grants you the freedom to be the architect of your life.
And that is the position I am so grateful to be in.
I'm talking from experience.
I went from working a nine -to -five
where I fell trapped at to being my own boss with unlimited earning potential as
well as true freedom over my life.
The first way you can grow your business
is by becoming a freelance expert.
A freelance expert is someone who can
charge higher rates.
And the reason behind that is because you
are providing a higher level of value.
So as you go along your freelance
journey, continue to invest in yourself and into your skill set.
The more skills you learn and the more results you are able to get, the more
chances you have for becoming an expert.
And when you're an expert, you're able to
charge those higher monthly rates.
The second way to focus on becoming a
freelance expert is to focus on quality instead of quantity of projects.
You might think that it makes a lot of sense to get as many reviews as you can,
which it does, but you also need to make sure you're focusing 100 % on the quality
of each project.
Then you can move on to the next one once
that first one is completed to the best of your ability.
You do not want to spread yourself thin here, especially when you're first
starting out as a freelancer.
When you're working your way up through
the ranks, keep this in mind and it will help you have more success.
Also, be more selective with your choices.
I turn down a good amount of projects
because I know they're not the best fit for me based on my skill set and my availability.
So if something is below my skill set or below the rate that I want to charge, it
doesn't make sense for me to work on that project or with that client.
That is the time I could be investing with a more high ticket client that makes
sense for me.
So don't be afraid to say no to specific projects.
This all goes back to qualifying those clients.
If they're not qualified, you need to
move on and be selective and find someone who is the best fit for you.
Once you start to implement all of these different things, that is when you will
start to have clients knocking on your door.
And that means they're going to be
finding your Upwork profile and they're going to be reaching out to you to see if
you're available to work on their project.
That's a great way to keep your pipeline
full and to continue increasing your rates as a freelance expert.
Once you become an expert, Upwork will prioritize you in the algorithm and
continue to help you get more and more work.
So on the screen right now are some
examples of expert level copywriters.
And as you can see, they're all charging
over $100 an hour on average.
And they also have jobs in the triple digits.
So when you start to see this and you start to explore some of the top experts
and freelancers on the Upwork platform, you'll see how much potential there is to
become an expert and to charge those higher rates.
Because those high ticket clients on the platform are looking to have their
problem solved by the industry's leading freelancers.
And by becoming an expert, you can become
their go -to freelancer.
Your second option when it comes to
growing your freelance business is to build a team or an agency.
This provides its own set of pros and cons and it really all comes down to your
personality type.
Whether you want to become an expert and
go more the consulting route, or if you want to build a team and you're more of a leader.
If you enjoy building effective teams and you like working with people and managing
people, building a team or agency might be a great fit for you in the freelance world.
Because digital teams and agencies have a number of advantages.
Two heads are better than one.
When you're working on a team, you will
always help solve more complex problems quicker.
Because everyone has their own
perspective in ways at looking at challenges.
When you get multiple smart minds
together, you can accomplish larger tasks and tackle bigger projects.
Aka, you'll start getting bigger paydays.
You can also hire for your weaknesses
when you're building a team or an agency.
This one is huge because once you have
your skill set mastered, you can then focus on building a team that is good at
your weaknesses.
The skills you're not good at is
something that you can hire for now.
Always hire people that are smarter than
you and that can help you with areas that you are weak.
So for example, maybe you are not artistic.
Then you can hire a graphic designer to
join your freelance team.
Or maybe you want to move your role to
focus on large -scale tasks and so you hire a virtual assistant or someone to
help you with the admin level stuff.
The idea here is to build a team of
people who all complement each other.
After you've built a freelance team, it's
also way easier to systemize that in scale than if you're just working alone.
Because once you have team member roles established, creating a process becomes
much easier.
Everyone is assigned a specific task and
everyone knows what to do.
It's no longer all on you, which means
you can now work on scaling your business with your efficient freelance team or agency.
You also have the ability to leverage buying time.
When you're building a team and you're hiring people, that allows you to gain
more time.
And we all know time equals money.
So if you want to make more money, you need to find a way to maximize your time.
You do that by hiring people and building a team.
When you have people working for you on your team and making you money, they are
actually an asset and not a liability to you because they're helping you expand
your time and get more revenue.
This means you are buying time to make
more money.
And last but not least, when you're
building a team, you have the ability to be agile and 100 % digital.
So you don't need to have any overhead, you don't need to pay any rent for an
office, you don't need to commute anywhere.
Everyone can be located in different
parts of the world.
It really doesn't matter.
You have the flexibility to shift from project to project quickly because you
have a tight -knit team and you are the one that calls the shots.
That gives you the benefits of having an agile agency and the flexibility as
opposed to those bigger agencies that aren't able to be as agile and shift from
project to project as quickly.
That gives you all the benefits of having
a team and none of the cons of having a big agency that slows things down.
When you go to build your team, a good way to do it is even using the Upwork platform.
You can add your agency on there and you can post jobs looking for dedicated or
long -term work.
By using Upwork in reverse, you can use
everything you learned about being a good freelancer to handpick the best ones to
join your team.
Another way that you can leverage a
freelance team or hiring freelancers is by hiring for a short -term project.
For example, let's say you have a client, but you need help to complete the project.
You can hire an expert level freelancer, pay them for an hour or two of their
time, and then you get to use their expert level advice.
This works extremely well because now you are basically getting paid to learn from
the expert and your project gets to have a better chance for success.
So you're doing multiple things that help move your freelance career forward.