Stages of a Freelancing Business

Stage 3:  Toddlerdom & Childhood

Every WAHM knows – or is looking forward to - how much fun this stage can be.  Watching a child learn to walk and talk can be both a relief and a whole new challenge.  I’ll never forget the first time my son said ‘NO!’  It was the moment I knew the rules had changed.  No longer could I assume that what I wanted to do was the right thing for both of us.  He was letting me know he had his own interests too.

Businesses Have Their Own Childhoods to Negotiate Too

This is the stage when you’re ability to express what you really do is being honed and becoming easy.  You’ve figured out how to bid freelancing projects and are landing them more frequently.  And your marketing is drawing people to you. 

At the same time, you might be noticing that the types of clients finding you may or may not be the same types of clients you’re seeking out.  For example, you may be focusing on websites and articles for freelancing projects, while clients seeking you out are requesting information on e-books.  This is all part of the process of a developing business.

How Do You Raise the Kind of Business You Can be Proud of?

Again, going back to how we raise our children through this phase will provide some valuable information.  For example, with my children, I find myself setting a lot of boundaries, while at the same time, pointing them in the direction I want them to go.  They’re open and flexible for the most part, but tend to act up the most when they’re feeling needy.  This is when I know it’s time to stop what I’m doing & just sit with them for a while.

A freelancing business is very similar.  It will always need periodic evaluation, refocusing and continuous marketing.  And like your children, it will change on a continuous basis – what works one day may not work the next.  To develop a mature business pay close attention to what your business is doing compared to what you want it to be doing. 

1.        Keep your VPV statement in front of you.  This will help you keep in mind what your goal is – your Vision - as well as helping you recognize when it might be time for a renegotiation of the rules.  For example, I began my writing career by creating templates for newsletters – doing both the layout and the writing - but as times passed, I realized I didn’t want to do the design work and hooked up with designers I could share projects with.  The newsletters were great because they gave me a place to start, but I knew it was time to transition when I lost interest in the designing aspect and my business wasn’t growing.  Creating the VPV statement helped me to recognize my strongest skills and more productively focus my energy.

2.        Know when to say ‘no’ and stay firm.  When I realized I wanted more time for the writing only projects, if I’d chosen to continue taking on the designing rather then referring it to someone else, I wouldn’t have been able to make the transition I wanted to.  I think of it like teaching my children how to behave.  If I reward the behaviors I want, I’ll get more of them.  If I detour the behaviors I don’t want, eventually they’ll stop.  The key was making sure I was as consistent with business as I try to be with my kids.

3.        Fill the needs before applying the expectations.  I expect my children to follow the rules, but find that they need me to specify what those are before they’ll know to follow them.  In my business, I have made the mistake of expecting it to pay the bills long before I’d taken the time to market it and allow it the opportunity to be known in the world.  It needed the chance to be found online and earn some name recognition before it could draw in the kind of business that would pay the bills.  At the same time, holding the expectation that it would at some point gave me the motivation to keep working on it. 

Young businesses need as much attention, guidance, and direction as young children.  Although it won’t take your business as long to mature as it does a child, approaching it from the same perspective will go a long ways towards building a strong, stable business that will support you too.