How to Grow your Freelance Business & Drive Better Outcomes

It is possible to start a thriving business as a freelancer, gain new clients and earn a decent income but, to build sustainable success, you have to learn the secret strategies to grow your freelance business consistently.

The reason is not farfetched. Starting and growing a successful freelance business is not a walk in the park. A lot of aspiring freelancers have gotten their fingers burned. And In fact, it gets even more difficult in some countries, compared to the others.

Regardless, when you’re able to get your hands on the right strategies, you find that it gets easier as you get to find your way to building a thriving business as a freelancer.

As someone who once started out as a freelancer, many years ago; in this guide; I’ll be sharing with you some of the growth hacks I learned and the strategies that shaped my business to success.

Outline your Growth Goals

The first step to grow your freelance business is to identify and write down your growth goal(s).

This step is very crucial because you can’t really build realistic success when you don’t have a clear idea about where you’re going or what you plan to achieve at that destination.

Even if you’ve already started your business some years back, creating a realistic set of goals will get you more inclined to achieving the goals compared to starting out with none.

So, you want to get started by defining the things you want to achieve with your business over a specific period. This could be things like the kind of visibility you want to reach, number of new clients you plan to achieve, expected income etc.

Furthermore, go ahead and define the kind of clients that can help you to achieve those goals, the services you’ll offer in return and the resources you’ll need to pull that, among other things.

No, you don’t have to set too many goals at a time, so you don’t get overwhelmed. Start with the most important goals that will lead you to achieve your first few significant successes.

To make things easier, you can have an overall goal and then divide this into smaller and easily achievable goals or steps that will lead you towards the overall achievement of your primary goal.

Preferably, start with 1-3 goals. And then as you get on to achieving those ones, you will be motivated to set more and more goals.

Create a Game Plan

To grow your freelance business and make the best out of this year, the next thing you want to do after identifying your goals, is to set out your plan.

Your plan is all about the steps you want to use in achieving your set goals. Supposing your foremost goal as a new freelancer is to start earning in 5-figures before the end of the third quarter of the year…

Your plan will have to cover the steps you’ll use in earning that amount.

Your business plans should cover significant details on how you want to go about achieving the set goals you created in step one, the services you’ll offer, number of target clients and other business details etc.

The more detailed you make your business plan, the better idea you have on the things you’ll need to do to achieve your goals.

Remember, while setting out your plan, it’s possible you might not have a complete understanding of all the steps you’ll need to take, to be able to achieve your goals but this is not a problem.

You really can start with the little idea you have about achieving what you want to achieve

So, if you really want to grow your freelance business more faster from the scratch, do not bother about all the detailed steps from the onset.

While writing out your game plan, you may want to skip some minute details if you can’t figure them out clearly at the time.

Focus on writing out the rough idea as it is, then with time you will evolve your business plan to meet up with your current realities.

Use a Realistic Model

Another important step you can take to really grow your freelance business, is to work on evolving or adapting a business model that will deliver on your expected outcomes, repeatedly.

A business model is a company’s operational action plan. It outlines the company’s services or products, its target clients, how it operates and how it generates income.

As a new freelancer, it’s possible you may not have a full proof business model as soon as you get started. In fact, you’ll most likely start out with popular models currently working in your industry.

But, regardless of what you’re getting started with, remember there’s always a chance to evolve and adapt your business model to meet with your own business realities, as your business continues to grow.

Yes! Because as you engage in this business, over time you’ll learn new things about the industry, your clients and even the services or products you’re offering.

If you plan to grow your freelance business, then it is critical you use the insights you gain from your business and the industry itself to shape your product offerings and get it towards delivering evolving a model that delivers on your expected outcomes.

Build a Reliable System

A system is a set of principles, procedure or steps that are applied to a specific activity, to get a specific outcome.

One of the best ways to grow your freelance business is to create systems. Building systems gets you to achieve specific results over a specific period, using a specific procedure.

You want to create systems because it gets you to achieve more productivity in less time. Instead of having to evolve strategies to carry out a business task at all times, with a system in place, you can always use procedures you’re sure will deliver same outcomes.

So, let’s take content creation for example. If you usually take five steps before creating a good quality content, when you want to create a content creation system, you can document these steps in details and then use it in creating your content as expected, whenever you want to.

This can also be repeatable in your marketing and customer acquisition, business promotions, service delivery etc.

The good thing about creating and evolving a business system is that it streamlines the process while getting you to achieve the same outcomes, especially as a freelance business, with a potential for a large volume of work.

PS: Keep in mind, you can edit, trim down and evolve your systems overtime depending on your business realities.

Consider Partnerships & Collaborations

Collaborating with other businesses in creating business solutions, servicing clients or providing extra value to a target audience can serve as an effective strategy to grow your freelance business.

This is so because as a small freelance business owner, there will certainly be times you’ll run out of resources to carry out certain jobs etc. At such instances, instead of rejecting the jobs altogether, you can partner with other clients to create the results.

Considering that a lot of your achievements will depend on your efficiency and ability to create faster results, you want to pay attention to collaborating with others effectively as this can improve your efficiency and productivity.

Another way partnerships and collaborations can help you really well is in the area of building visibility. Instead of depending on your audience and reach alone, you can partner with other brands to create visibility by co-hosting events, sharing links or creating other mutually beneficial opportunities.

Be Innovative

Being able to evolve, innovate and stay relevant is one of the most important steps to build businesses whose growth will defy time and the dynamic nature of the tech world.

Whether you’re using technologically driven tools or not, the fact you’re a freelancer means that you’re going to be creating solutions in a very dynamic environment.

The fast pace nature of freelancing business makes it very important that you stay innovative, arm yourself with the latest skills and get yourself prepared to evolve with the latest industry developments, if your really want to grow your freelance business.

Instead of doing things the way it has always been done, find out; are there new or better ways to create results for your clients? Are there newer ways you can get your business to attract more visibility, new customers or make more profit?

Where it’s possible to create a better result, or additional value, find out ways to do this consistently. Learn more about how to be more innovative with your business here.

Build Resilience

Entrepreneurship is not a sprint. It is a marathon.

Just as with any other entrepreneur, as a freelancer, there are times things will not exactly go your way no matter how much effort you put into things.

So, as you’re aspiring to scale your freelance business, instead of feeling discouraged whenever situations take a different turn, stay resilient.

If you come across instances where you don’t get expected results after putting in your best effort, try to analyze the situation at that point and find out what went wrong.

Evaluate both the possible and actual cause of the downturn. This will give you an idea on how to avoid such outcomes in the future.

Of course it might get really difficult to stay resilient or continue putting in the effort when things don’t turn out the way you want but, throwing in the towel is never always the first thing you want to do.

Go back to the drawing board when you have to. Find out your WHY all over again when it’s important.

As part of staying resilient to grow your business, evaluate your business at intervals. Check out your goals, business plans, models etc. confirm if they are still generating expected outcomes.

Remove or edit what is not delivering your expected results. Keep everything that’s getting you your expected outcomes.

Final Words

With what you learn today, you’ll find that there are many powerful strategies you can use to grow your freelance business and get better and more satisfying results but you’ll always have one of the biggest role to play if you’re ever really going to scale your freelancing business.

So, as you work on using these tips to expand your business, you also want to to continuously analyze your outcomes, embrace change while consistently putting in your best to get the result you want.

Now, there you have the key strategies to grow your freelance business. Of course building a thriving business can get really lonely but you can get all the help you need from our team here.

Now, it’s over to you. Which of these strategies is the most significant for you? Drop your comments below.