Written by: Flexing It
19/09/2024
7 minutes read
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Starting Your Freelancing Journey: A Beginner's Guide
While it is exciting to take your first step to becoming an independent consultant, it is also essential for you to have an action plan on how you will grow your consulting business. Unlike a traditional career, you will have to actively work towards both quick success & long-term sustainability as you take your first few steps into the great unknown. Building short measurable goals tied to your long-term objectives is often considered a great kickstarter.
In this article, we will work out a general outline so you can plan & build your freelancing business.
How do I start as a Freelance Consultant?
- Define your Niche: Most businesses are looking to onboard Independent Talent like you for specific projects. Simply put, there is a demand for talent who can hit the ground from day 1 and start delivering with their previous relevant skills & industry experience.
Here’s how you do it:
- Identify your core expertise & go a bit deeper: Are you good at marketing? Great. Evaluate whether it would be better to focus on a specific niche of your skillset, like social media marketing or keep it broad as a marketing generalist.
It’s recommended if you are just starting to focus on a niche skill vs being a generalist after working for a couple of years. The keynote would be to focus more on value creation than skill expertise.
- Leverage your industry-specific knowledge: This is especially relevant if you have a few years of experience under your belt. Clients value professionals who bring technical expertise and nuanced understanding gained from working in their industry.
- Think of yourself as a product: This might seem obvious, but it's surprising how many people fail to do it. A good starting point is compiling your achievements, experience, skills, and education to market yourself effectively. Just like an SUV is built and packaged to cater to a specific audience of long-distance travellers or people with family, you need to package your skill set for clients who will find you relevant. Then, pitch yourself to these relevant clients instead of spending time on companies that may not be the right fit.
For an oversimplification of the previous 3 points, here’s an example
Don’t Write: I am an expert with 3 years in Data Analytics.
Write: I leverage 3 years of experience in assisting FMCG companies to design and optimize data pipelines, enabling more accurate consumer insights for informed decision-making.
In the better version, you are actively using your existing experience in a specific industry on how you can bring value to a client.
As a bonus point, Flexing It helps simplify this process for our registered consultants with an extensive skill profile, which helps them get matched to specific projects based on your skillset & industry provided.
Here’s your cue to create your account with Flexing It and build your skill profile if you haven’t done it already
- Don’t undersell yourself
It’s a daunting process to quote a fee to a client to be met with blank stares, or worse get ghosted forever. When you're new, it's tempting to undersell yourself as you might also worry about overpricing your services.
Setting an accurate price point is also key to maintaining good client relations & propping yourself up for future collaboration & work.
So how do you price yourself?
One way to do this would be extensive research on what your fellow freelancers are quoting through their portfolio websites or through freelance marketplaces..
At Flexing It, we developed FeeBee, a product designed to address this pricing challenge. FeeBee offers a range of fee estimates tailored to your specific skill, industry, and experience level based on thousands of benchmarks from real project quotes.
This data-driven tool empowers you to negotiate your fees more effectively, backing your pricing decisions with reliable estimates.
- The Importance of personal branding
You must have heard the concept of personal branding in whispers or loud announcements in the alleys of Linkedin & why it is important. However, it is more often than not a vague concept that is difficult to define. It is also challenging to build metrics to measure even a commercial brand, let alone a person like you.
But there are actionable steps you can take to start your journey. Here’s how you start
- Working with established brands & organisations puts a tag of trust in your profile. Future employees understand that past experiences with a global brand require a level of expertise & professionalism, which helps you get your foot through the door.
Flexing It offers you a plethora of global clients ranging from top conglomerates like Hindustan Unilever, Schneider to non-profits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helping you access the top projects that the freelancing world has to provide.
Is It The Right Time For You To Start Freelancing?
In 2023, the global freelance market was estimated to reach $455 billion, with a 41% growth in freelancing among skilled professionals - a significant shift in how people work.
If you have 3-5 years of experience in your field, freelancing could be an ideal way to broaden your skills, gain diverse work experience, and grow your network.
What that means for you is, for better or worse, there is a large number of professionals shifting to freelancing & taking charge of their careers. Post-COVID also saw a large shift of professionals moving away from the concept of salaried professionals to growing their career as a business, preferring value creation & flexibility over a typical work environment.
What are some of the key factors professionals are shifting to freelancing?
- Flexible Schedules: You get to decide when you work, allowing you to create a better balance between work and life.
- Pick Your Projects: You’re in control of your work, allowing you to pick projects considering factors that matter the most to you.
- Work with Different Clients: Freelancing lets you collaborate with clients across various industries, helping you grow your skills and network.
- Work from Anywhere: Many freelance projects allow you to work remotely, meaning you can work from home, a café, or even while traveling.
Dive into our in-depth report on freelancers across industries
Freelancing may not be everyone’s cup of tea but there are also indications of a large shift of professionals choosing to opt or explore the concept with an estimation of the growth of a billion dollar industry of professional freelancers working with multiple organisations in a single year, growing their income as a business instead of a career leaders coupled with the fact of a shift of priorities in younger generations.
The answer is clear. The professional world is changing and the question is ‘Will you be a part of it or will you find a different path?’
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