Matt Gartland the CFO and COO of Smart passive income shares his thoughts on what to do if you are interested in using this moment to start up a freelancing business.
- Organise your thoughts
- Develop a business model
- Present a professional image
- Track your prospective clients
- Consider joining a a freelancer marketplace
- Join a community of freelancers
- Demonstrate your expertise in content form
- Collect and incorporate testimonials into marketing materials
- Prepare to be surprised, prepare to adapt
- Don’t quit.
1. Organise your thoughts
What languages do you like, good at. Front end vs back end. Map out ideas.
Give some shape and form to your ideas.
Mind map / brainstorm. mindnode.com
2. Develop a business model
The business model canvas – a 1 page sheet with very useful prompts.
What do you do? Who do you help?
Specificity and niche down.
3. Present a professional image
Create marketing assets.
typeform.com
squarespace
leadpages – marketing landing pages
quickbooks – invoicing
legalzoom – contracts
4. Track your prospective clients
What do you do with the interest?
Google Sheets for tracking interest. Last contact date, etc
Customer Relationship Management mentality
Does not need to be complex
Digital systems tend to work better
5. Consider joining a freelancer marketplace
Can be used to supplement lead generation.
Upwork is the biggest and most established
reedsy is a platform where freelancers around books and book publishing can look for work.
6. Join a community of freelancers
Social components are big
Freelancers may have more business than they can handle or may wish to partner.
Unreal collective community
7. Demonstrate your expertise in content form
Create a manifesto. Can be a free ebook or pdf download. A podcast.
Take the case studies and make a piece of content around it.
8. Collect and incorporate testimonials into marketing materials
Ask while it is fresh in peoples minds
9. Prepare to be surprised, prepare to adapt.
You will have disgruntled clients.
Your most lucrative project may be on your easiest to manage client.
Both positive and negative surprises.
Clients that pay late and never pay.
10. Don’t quit
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