The Principles of Successful Freelancing

Taking Time to Plan

“Failures don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan,” says best-selling author and business motivational speaker, Harvey MacKay.

If you are planning to start freelancing part-time, you should have the time to put together all of the plans and start saving for the just-in-case rainy-day money. On the other hand, if you plan to move straight into full-time freelancing, remember that you’ll have those looming deadlines as soon as you take on projects. Even so, it doesn’t mean that you should ignore planning or preparation.

For most people, the concept of business planning is likely to provoke a jaw-dislocating yawn. However, it’s much more productive to welcome this as an exciting time, where you start to understand where you really want to travel on this freelance path. The world really is your oyster—you’ve made the emotional commitment, perhaps you already have some prospective clients lined up, and you may have already done much of this planning work in the back of your mind. It’s invaluable to take a little time to write these thoughts and plans down, for future reference and as a way to refine and catalogue your thoughts.

Many freelancers and small businesses fail in their first few years, and it’s widely agreed by experts that the number-one reason for such failure is because those business had little or no form of planning. This planning document doesn’t need to be a huge tome of numbers and words; it really is the summation of what you have been thinking, committed to paper.

This document is where you start to list known and unknown areas of your plans, so you can elaborate on them over time. A good business plan is an evolving one, so don’t consider it a chore to be completed in an hour and then stuck in a desk drawer and forgotten about.

There is a myriad of web sites dedicated to sharing templates and ideas about what they consider a great business plan. Perhaps the most important element of a business plan is that you remain actively involved with it. Review it frequently, adjusting and editing it where required—especially during those first few months.

Your plan could be just a few pages, or it could be dozens, but unless you have grand plans to circulate it for investors or financial institutions to read, avoid using buzzwords and reams of useless blue-sky figures. The plan is for your eyes only, so keep it succinct and to the point, and an honest appraisal of the “who, what, when, and how” of your plans.

There are many elaborate methods for writing a solid business plan, but let’s start by creating a text document, and answering what questions we can from the list in Example 1, “Business Planning Questions”. For those questions to which you don’t know the answer yet, just write the question, reminding yourself to add that material as you go.

Remember, plans change, so at this stage your efforts are likely to be more crystal-ball gazing than actual fact. You’ll expand on the plan, filling it out in more detail as you work your way through this book and progress over the first weeks and months of freelancing. And it’s fine to add other notes besides the questions included here—even if they’re rough dot points, the more notes the better!

Creating a SWOT

The planning term SWOT first appeared in the 1960s. A SWOT analysis is really just a simple strategic planning method that helps evaluate projects and businesses. It’s based around a four-square grid, shown in Figure 1, “The SWOT grid explained”, which covers Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I’ve used it a number of times to help me make decisions around new products or service offerings under consideration, and it works just as well for business models.

Example 1. Business Planning Questions

summary

• What is the initial concept?
• What is your current situation?
• What will your key success factors be?
• What are your longer-term vision and goals?

market analysis

• What does the current market look like?
• What is your target market?
• What are the characteristics of your perfect client?
• What do your target clients require?

competitive overview

• What does your industry look like?
• Are there many competitors?
• Who are your five closest competitors?
• What products or services do they offer?
• What opportunities do you have to be unique? (Can you fill a niche or be different from your competitors in some way?)
• What are the risks and threats?

sales and marketing

• How will you attract clients?
• How can potential clients find you?
• What marketing activities would you consider?

plan of action

• What do you need to do in order to kick things off?
• What should you do in the medium term?
• What are some longer-term plans?

Figure 1. The SWOT grid explained