Starting and Growing Your Freelance Business

Marketplaces seem like they’re giving you a great deal.  They promise to take the uncertainty out of running a freelance business.  Where there once was nobody to pitch to, sites like Upwork make potential clients easy to find. Better still, these clients are actively looking for freelancers like you. Their wallets are practically out!

Their websites and systems have a nice familiarity about them too.  They play to the logical side of our brains that tells us, “If people are looking to hire someone, they’ll post about it here,” in the same way a company would post about a new sales assistant role on Monster.

There are no barriers to entry and you can begin pitching for new work right away. The chances of landing new work are high, and as Brennan points out here, you can quickly start to make money from them.

But do these marketplaces really live up to the hype, and are they a good foundation to build your business upon?

Have you ever hated yourself for never having any time to work on your business?

I have.

More often than not, I get to the end of the work week and think, “Wow. I got nothing done this week.”

(Which is always a lie. I get plenty done. I work with clients. Support customers. Manage the team. Busy work.)

But I don’t always have much to look back on.

In a way, I envy construction workers. When they’re done with something, they’re able to step back and look at what they created. And it’s there long after they’ve left the construction site.

I often feel like I don’t get as much done for my business as I should.

I constantly feel behind, even though I get a lot of comments from people who say that they don’t know how I’m able to do so much.

But it seems like, even though I’m busy, I don’t have much to show.

I fixed this once for a previous business of mine.

And I’m going to fix it again.

And you’re invited to follow along—especially if you plan on doing the same for your business.

(This is a guest post by Ed Gandia, a speaker at the upcoming Double Your Freelancing Conference. Don’t have your ticket yet? Buy your ticket while they’re still available and join Ed and 13 other speakers in Norfolk, Virginia, this September 16th – 18th)

Time management is… well, a waste of time.

And the more you try to apply that kind of mindset to improving your productivity, the more frustrated you’ll become.

Let me explain.

Time is a constant. You can’t store it or make more of it. You have to work with what you have.