Today we are talking about the 9 common mistakes freelancers make and how to fix them. I know I made so many of these mistakes and probably more than once. Working in the B2B space for over 6 years now, and for the past 2 years in my coaching, training and mentoring of freelancers, virtual assistants and service providers, I’ve seen it time and time again. The one thing these 9 mistakes do, is slow us down and make life harder.
In today’s episode I will take you through these 9 things so that you can make things easier in your life, get to your dream business and make things less expensive and less painful.
- Say yes to everything
- Based on scarcity, and people pleasing. Not knowing what your zone of genius is. And that’s fine initially to play if you’re unsure. But the quicker you get this sorted, the quicker you’ll grow.
- The problem with saying yes to everything is that you’re over stretched, you probably aren’t; charging enough, you have to keep learning things which means you won’t get the clients the best results. You’re a jack of all trades but master of none. It’s a massive mental load and you’re pretzel-ing yourself into what everyone else wants you to be – rather than honouring who you want to be. You’re basically running down the road towards burnout.
- How to fix this: Focus gives you speed. Determine one outcome for your ideal people. Make it the ultimate solution. Then get really really good at that thing. And then learn how to say no. And trust. Trust that if you stay in your lane you’ll go further and faster. Trust that if your energy is directed with a narrow focus, you’ll see better results.
- Undercharge
- Start off at an hourly rate.
- The problem is that you have expenses. You can only serve clients ¼ of the time. You’re capping your income. Your value is more than time for money. You are sacrificing your own goals for the goals of your clients.
- How to fix this – determine what you want to earn. Divide that by the amount of clients you want – and craft an offer that provides more value (not costs you more – but more value) than that number.
- Don’t niche
- Scarcity. Think we can help everyone.
- The problem is when we speak generally we speak to no-one. We don;t stand out. We dilute and delay and deplete our results. It’s like running up the side of the mountain through the mud and rocks and vines, when there’s a nice paved pathway 5 meters to the right. Trust me – i’ve done both, and I’ve coached 100’s of clients 1:1 at this point.
- How to fix it: Determine the problem you want to solve, for a group of people who will benefit the most from your services who can afford what you want to pay?
- Cobble together free software, for too long
- When we start off in business we have to choose to spend time or money.
- That’s fine but ultimately, you can make more money but you can’t make more time. Paying for software buys you back time so you can use it to make more money. Yes, some software might cost you $100 per month – but if you charge $50 an hour, or your staff do, then if it saves 2 hours per month – it’s worth it.
- How to fix it: Get software that will automate the repeatable tasks in your business, or make processes smoother. Check out freeceo.tech 😉
- Many of you will know I have an all in one marketing and sales CRM that my clients and I use. It’s all in one, and absolutely brilliant. If you want to check it out, it’s available at freeceo.tech – or via my website.
- Don’t have a people plan to grow their business
- I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face – people equal profit. Without people, your income is capped.
- When I hired my first full time role in my business, my revenue doubled.
- Your organisational chart now, and the organisational chart of your dream business are likely different. Draw up both – and make a plan and a timeline to move from one to the other. Know what the milestones are to hire that next person, and the next and the next. That’s your people plan.
- How to fix it: Reverse engineer your business. Start with what you want to earn, the amount of clients you need to make that work, and then determine the people you need to bring that vision to life.
- Don’t think big enough
- So many of the women I start working with have a goal that’s smaller than their real dreams. When we dig into it – what becomes apparent is that they allow their past to dictate their future. In fact – your past is your past. And it gets to stay there. Your future is whatever you decide you want to walk towards. You get to choose. And yes there are a whole lot of factors that influence the speed we get there, and how hard we have to work – but if you’re listening to this right now, you have enough privileged to be able to make some choices around your input and your output. And life goes fast, so now is the time to change course if you need to.
- How to fix it: Dare to dream big. Listen to that small still whisper. That pull. And do the thing. Take just the first step, and watch what happens. Then do it again.
- Don’t set aside MONEY FOR tax
- I made this mistake the first 2 years of my business. The second year taught me I needed to get smart, quick.
- Now I follow the Profit First methodology and I also add GST on top of this. So this process involves having different bank accounts for income, expenses, tax, and profit. For tax, I take 10% off the top for GST and put it in the tax account, and then work from the remaining number to calculate my percentages. I take 15% of that for tax, every 2 weeks and put it in another account. This means I always have enough to pay my tax bill and my accountant. It’s the BEST feeling to not even have to think about tax – I know I have a system and it’s sorted. This is the freedom that comes from having processes. The mental load is gone because this happens before anything else.
- How to fix it: Speak to your accountant then implement a process similar to this. If you pay GST (Or any other special tax) take that off first, and then pay 15% to tax every month.
- Try and do everything themselves
- OK this related back to having a people plan – but even if you know you want a micro business with limited people – you still will want to think about what tasks you can hire out.
- Remember, if you don;t have an assistant – then you are the assistant. That means if your hourly rate is $200 an hour, but you’re doing everything – you’’re effectively paying your assistant $200 an hour. Because that’s what you’re giving up for doing that assistant’s tasks, instead of having capacity to work with clients.
- In reality – it’s people that allow us to do the role we love in our business.
- How to fix it: Identify what drains you in your business, and ask Who Could Do This? With every task that comes across your desk.
- Talk about WHAT they do ,not the RESULT of what they do
- I see this as a major issue with freelancers. We know what we do, and they value of it so well, we kind of forget others don’t.
- We talk about the ads we run and the websites and the social posts – we don’t talk about the leads, the conversion rate and the bigger audience.
- When you design your offer, become laser focussed on the outcomes of your solution. Then talk about that. A lot. People don’t care about what the bridge is made of – they just know they want to get to the other side.
- How to fix it: Brainstorm the outcomes – the results – of your offer. Then make sure you talk about that everywhere. Website, socials, proposal … everywhere.
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