“I can be my own boss and choose my own hours.”

“Today I’m not feeling it, I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“This person is making X freelancing. So can I.”

NO.

I’m sure these thoughts have crossed your mind a multitude of times, and i’m sure some of these thoughts have won over and have snuffed out your productivity for a day or maybe even a week or more.

This whole freelancing game is hard. It truly is a battle of self-discipline and focus every — single — day.

You know that adage “You are your own harshest critic.” This is 1,000% applicable to freelancing. Each day will be a new adventure with a test starting immediately when you first wake up,

Are you going to win over the day or is the day going to win over you?

Don’t get me wrong freelancing can be freeing and awesome under the right circumstances, but it is definitely not for everyone.

Here’s a few things that I’ve come across as I’ve started my freelancing journey.

Schedule and Plan Things Accordingly

Get a calendar that you take with you everywhere. Whether it be your phone or a notepad, writing things down can only help. I go more into the planning aspect in another post here.

If you’re a free-lancer, consultant, or part-time/full-time remote employee, write everything down. From deadlines of projects to lunch and coffee meetings, writing things down keeps you organized and reduces stress. Leave your brain to focus on the task at hand and cut out trying to remember 20 different other things that only suppresses your productivity. There’s a certain laser focus you get when you only have a couple things on your mind. There’s also a certain chaos that happens when you’re trying to remember everything in your head from grandma’s birthday cake to the proper technique to harvest raw soybeans.

I find that most (short term) things take longer than you think, so I try and budget ~20% buffer time for most high priority items (i.e If you think an important thing is going to take two hours, budget two hours and 25 minutes.) and ~10% for most medium priority items. Again, this practice reduces your stress and makes you more productive on the things that matter. Stress and productivity I find to be inversely correlated so the less stressed I am the more productive I can be.

Mindset is truly everything

Having a north star matters. Where are you going? Why? How are you going to get closer to that north star today?

Yes, even on the days you feel like doing nothing, when the world feels like it’s not going your way, even in the depths of a slump, having that north star solidified at your core will keep you going.

Make a vision board, ask a friend to help keep you accountable, read a self-help book, learn a new skill online, whatever it is (even if it is cheesy) keep that north star at the forefront at all costs. Have a bias towards action no matter how small. I find where the biggest growth is made is in the momentum that you accumulate over days, weeks, and months of continual progress.

Feed the momentum machine and become a force to be reckoned with.

Focus On Your BEST Strengths

It might be tempting to be a jack of all trades and say yes to every single opportunity you get, but here’s where I caution that — dilution.

People, clients in particular, only remember a small fraction of whatever you tell them. That being said, if you were to ask your current/past clients to explain what you do could they accurately represent what you do from top to bottom? Odds are, if the list of services you offer is like a short novel, chances are they won’t recall everything that you do. This in turn, dilutes the value of your work at large.

Let me give you an example —

I’m your guy for social media management, content creation, copywriting, photography, voice acting, SEO, folding clothes, this, that, and the other.

See how much this can turn into a word salad the more of a generalist you become.

Be known for a small subset of things that you are good at. I’m talking things that you are THE BEST at. Be the “go to” person for those things. Everyone will remember, and in turn strengthens your pitch to new and prospective clients.

Now after laser focusing on your best skills—

I create brilliant online shopping experiences through persuading copy and minimalistic photography.

See how much more refreshing and concise your pitch can be. Anybody can remember what you’re all about, plus it creates the building blocks for your story. Your story is the bread & butter of what makes you unique and is the main reason clients choose you! Without a compelling story, you fade into the sea of all the other freelancer’s with no story to tell that compete almost solely on price. It’s a race to the bottom.

Conclusion

Yes, freelancing is awesome, freeing and rewarding!

BUT…

It IS tough. With the right skills and mindset it can certainly be the opportunity of a lifetime. The world is truly your oyster with unlimited potential, go out there and make it happen!

Remember why you started.

Tell your story.

“Am I planning too much? Not enough?”

“Are there best practices when it comes to planning?”

“What is the right amount of planning?”

These are some of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves (some more than others) when it comes to planning.

Too much planning and there won’t be much room for the creative or spontaneous aspects of your execution. Too little planning, and you get full on chaos and frustration. I think, unfortunately or fortunately, when it comes to planning, each person thrives with their own “formula” or “secret sauce”.

I hope I can lay out a few tidbits here that you can put to use immediately!

Truthfully, I think Ben Franklin said it best,

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

1. Translate your plan into the best medium for you.

For some, that might mean writing down a list. For others that might mean using your phone to record voice memos that you can reference over and over. It might even mean getting out your selfie camera on your phone and recording yourself!

For me I’m a visual learner, so naturally I try to write my plans down. This can be either in a notebook I take with me on a daily basis or on Google® Docs so I can reference it anywhere.

Whatever it may be, do what suits you and your learning style best.

2. Keep your plan clear, concise, and measurable.

Start your plan first with the overall goal you are trying to accomplish. From there, you can further break it down into milestones to help you accomplish that goal. Finally, you can breakdown those milestones into metric based action items.

A simplified example, might look something like this:

Goal: Wake up an hour earlier than my current average wake-up time.

Milestones: Wake up at least 30 minutes earlier on average for 2 months. Wake up at least an hour earlier on average for 2 months.

Action items: For the next 30 days, I’m going to set my alarm 10 minutes earlier than normal. For the next 30 days after that I’m going to set my alarm 20 minutes earlier than normal… and so on.

Be sure to have your plan completed before you start executing. Changing a plan mid-execution is OK, but it’s imperative to start off on the right path. Be sure to not beat yourself up if a few of the action items in the plan don’t go exactly right.

That being said, it might be time to re-evaluate your plan if milestones are missed or many action items aren’t being completed.

3. For plans that are complex - try utilizing the Triage method.

The triage method is a great way to prioritize or determine prioritization of your action items within your plan. For plans that are simple and straightforward, this method is less important.

You can first start with defining the value of each of your action items. Be sure to take into account how long that action will take, how dependent or independent that task is compared to others (i.e. does this need to happen before that?).

In action it would look something like this:

Goal: Start a freelance business

Milestones: Find solution to a real business pain point, get first client, form business as LLC, setup business bank account…

Action items:

• Interview friends, family, and acquaintances that are business owners or individuals that understand a department of the business they work for really well.
• Ask questions and find their pain points as an individual in their business or pain points of a department in their business.
• Compare and see if any of your skills line up with any of their pain points. If so, GREAT you have a business. If not, learn a skill that lines up with a pain point and then GREAT you have a business.
• Prepare state and federal papers to form your LLC
• File state and federal papers
• Evaluate banks that have the best options for a newly formed small businesses

.…etc.

Make sense? It’s really hard to have a business without creating real value. In this case, it’s imperative to find if there’s value in what you can offer as a freelancer. There are some mission critical steps that should be taken before a freelancing business should be formed.

Don’t fret about the things that will work themselves out whether you do anything or not[i.e. coming up with a “creative” business name], as well as those things that cannot be resolved [i.e. focusing on learning skills that don’t have much value to a business].

Stay focused and good luck my friends. Until next time, I bid you farewell.

—

With that, I hope you learned something and had a take-away or two that you can share to your network. I would be overjoyed if you had any feedback from the good, to the bad, to the ugly.

Connect with me here: Twitter + LinkedIn

Let’s step back a minute and realize, constantly creating content for release not too far in the future is really just a transaction. Simplifying it further — A piece of content is created for consumption by an audience and the creator gets compensated for doing so, and the cycle continues. That’s all good and well and is a strategy that many people employ with good results. But dare I ask, where is the art, the creativity, the focus on the bigger picture, the development of the story, the value, in this strategy?

The way I visualize this strategy is by imagining a barbell (like the ones at the gym) with weights on the end. The more content that is produced the more weights that get added on the end of the bar. In essence, you are competing with everyone else that is also adding weights to the end of their bar to see who can lift the most weight. Seemingly, this is a never ending cycle…

However… let’s turn this idea on its head. What if instead of competing with one another about who can stack as much weight on the bar as possible, why don’t we re-invent the way the bar is used/looked at? Stay with me, let’s focus on making the bar to be more efficient, more ergonomic, more user friendly, provide more value, etc. All while collaborating for a common goal to make the content we create a relationship with the audience! Then we’ll be playing in a league of our own!

Let’s apply this idea to the entertainment industry, more specifically movies. Does everyone remember when Avatar came out, especially in 3D?

This was one of the first 3D movies to hit the box office that became an instant hit. No, it wasn’t world-renowned for its storyline or character development, that so many other movies have gotten right in the past. It was an instant hit for its sheer visual bliss. From the ultra realistic graphics to the intricate details on the characters and environment throughout the film. It truly raised the bar of the industry! It set a new standard of how movies should be thought of from a visual perspective. Audiences now expect movies to meet or exceed those that came before in this new realm of visual amazement. This monumental film did take time, a lot of it, to fully develop. More than 10 years to be exact. Don’t take my word for it, let’s take a look at the numbers — $2.7B Cumulative Worldwide Revenue on a $237M Budget… Talk about an ROI! Re-imagining and re-establishing industry standards take time but can pay in spades not just monetarily but also in overall innovation. In the end, everyone wins!

Looking forward, I’m optimistic for the future, especially in movies. Just one example that I think will have similar waves as Avatar… Incredibles 2.

Incredibles 2 looks to be developed with a similar formula: 10+ year development time, focus on extreme detail of the animations and soundscape, and an overall focus on exceeding what is the current standard in the movie industry. I hope we see this all come together as a masterpiece.

So let’s applaud those visionaries and industry shakers that take the time to completely upend the current “status quo” to bring about true change and raise the bar!

—

Let’s start a conversation! Do you agree, disagree, who cares? I’d love to know your thoughts.