Everyone has their bad habits when comes to personal lifestyles, your work style is not spare either. Meanwhile, if you are an employee, you probably will be told of your bad habits during appraisals but you won’t be that lucky if you are a freelancer. As a freelancer, one con to this career path is that you hardly get honest feedback because you manage everything on your own. Today, let’s have a chat about the bad habits I spot in both myself and other freelancers, the need to change or curb these habits that might just be the bottleneck that stalls your success as a freelancer.
Stop belittling yourself You can see this from either side of the coin, head or tail. Head – you are in charge of your own projects, you call the shots on how, when and where you do your tasks, you manage your time and you are a business owner. Tail – you deem yourself as a freelancer whom clients hire you just because you are cheap, you let yourself to be squeeze of your time and skills and you tell people that you are just doing this until you get your next break.
Don’t make excuses for yourself or your clients When I started out as a freelancer, I started out making excuses for myself and my clients to justify the work I do, the effort I made or even how much I was being paid. What I should have done is justify to nobody. If I want to exchange experience in learning a particular software in exchange for lowering my rates, it is my prerogative. If I want to break into a particular market and invest more of my time, it is my choice. If I want to redo my work to make it perfect, just because I’m a perfectionist, I don’t think I should make to feel bad. Like I’ve mentioned in point number 1, this is my business and no one should tell me how I should run my business.
Don’t shortchanged your services That being said, I don’t mean you raise your rates to skyrocket or lowered your rates to belittle yourself. Services are not always just being paid monetarily. You can barter with something else. Like exposure, good reviews, experience, network etc. The possibilities are endless if you and your clients are willing to explore. If you only think about doing each task and getting paid each task, it is the mindset of a mere employee, a freelancer. But if you treat it like your business, you’ll go the extra mile just to gain something even more precious than dollars and cents – you gain reputation and knowledge.
Be Adaptable Similar to what I have highlighted above, to survive as a freelancer, you need to be adaptable around your abilities and your time. It all boils down to what is your productivity rate, the perfection of your work and how well you relate to your clients and their consumers. Don’t say no, say ‘let’s work something out’.
Listen to Feedbacks Let’s be honest. Everyone loves to hear the good stuff but not the critics. If you close your heart and your mind to criticism, you’ll never improve. Like a business operation, you need to constantly keep up with the market wants and needs. You need not only to watch for the trend but be on top of the trend. The only way to do that is to ask for feedback and ask for help. I know my flaws and my strengths, and I always made sure for every of my flaws, I make it up with ten of my strengths.
These are tips on how I stay on top of my game and be a top range freelancer. Remember, there are thousands of writers, designers, techies, PA, sales, customer service so the key question is how can you stand out to make yourself indispensable?
Do you think the above advice is helpful? If yes, please do share among your circle and help more freelancers achieve their greatest!
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