Freelancing

Monday Spark: Creating a projection spreadsheet will make you feel better.

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hands on the wheelI’m not a big fan of paperwork. I don’t think most other freelancers much like it either.

But beyond the paperwork I have to do, there are one or two other things I choose to do.

Foremost among my voluntary pieces of paperwork is a spreadsheet that shows my income, month by month.

I fill in the months that have passed, and also make projections for three months to come.

Projections? That sounds like something that “real” companies do, not freelancers.

Well, I treat my freelance business like a real company. And I think you should too.

Here is what I do with my spreadsheet.

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Have a plan, but know that your biggest opportunities will likely be unplanned and unexpected.

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unexpected opportunitiesAs a coach I encourage my clients to look a few years into the future, decide on where they want their business to go, and then figure out how to get there.

Set the goal, figure out some way-points  and then work steadily until you have achieved the outcome you want.

It’s good advice, because most small businesses and freelancers don’t plan enough. They stumble forward, month by month, hoping things will work out.

So yes, I think every freelancer and entrepreneur should have a plan and stick to it.

Now for the kicker – Your biggest successes probably won’t be part of your plan at all.

Viagra was not the result of a plan to create the world’s greatest erectile dysfunction drug. Researchers were actually working on a blood pressure pill when they came across a rather interesting side-effect. Viagra’s discovery was accidental.

Alexander Fleming didn’t discover penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, by spending years looking for a drug that killed bacteria. He discovered it because of an accidental cross-contamination between two petri dishes in his laboratory. He screwed up, and found penicillin as a result.

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6 Questions freelancers ask me about my coaching service [VIDEO]

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coaching for freelancersMaking the decision to work with a coach is a huge leap of faith.

First you have to choose a coach to work with, without really knowing him or her all that well.

Then you have to pay them money.

And all this without really knowing in advance whether the coaching process will work for you.

It’s a leap of faith.

I have made that leap myself, when I worked with a coach about 6 years ago. Like anyone else, I didn’t really know what to expect.

I don’t much like putting myself in someone else’s hands. And I’m not someone who is quick to trust someone I don’t know very well. But to give that coaching engagement a fair shot, I had to let go of my usual constraints and allow him to do his work.

As it turned out, that experience was transformational for me, and I’ll always be grateful. (Thank you Alan Allard!)

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Monday Spark: Do you love your message as much as this guy? [VIDEO]

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eddie obeng enthusiasmRecently I have been writing and speaking about the power of loving your message.

Simply put, it isn’t easy to promote yourself when you try to sell your services on the basis of the sum of your expertise and experience. You’ll never feel totally confident, because you’ll always know that your knowledge is incomplete and that other people know more than you do.

But when you have a message you love, everything changes. Instead of trying to promote yourself, or the sum of your knowledge, you promote your message.

My message, back in the late 1990s, was “writing for the web is different”. It was a new and exciting message back then, and nobody else was saying it. And it built me a business before I had any kind of expertise or experience in writing for the web.

People hired me because they loved my message.

Now…to give you an idea of what loving your message looks and sounds like, check out the video below.

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Monday Spark: Get out and meet some people.

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freelancer meeting eventWorking from home, all of the time, without any contact with your peers, prospects or customers is a little unnatural.

For the last 100 years – up to about 10 years ago – most people worked side by side with their colleagues in office buildings or factories.

Before that, people worked within their communities, often within walking distance of their homes.

It is only within the last 10 years or so that the internet has allowed people work from home. (Actually, I can work from anywhere in the world, as long as I have an internet connection.)

Tens of millions of people now work in this way – relying on email, the web, social media and their phones to keep in touch with industry news, and with their clients.

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When cold-calling a prospect…give, don’t ask.

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cold calling with giftCold calling is hard.

Yes, a small proportion of freelancers find cold-calling easy. But for most of us, reading through our list of prospects, reaching for the phone, dialing the number, and then doing our best to pitch our services is one of the hardest tasks imaginable.

It’s hard because we know that more often than not our prospect will say no.

And when they do say no, we feel bad. We feel we have failed. And on a personal level, however professional we try to feel about the experience, we feel rejected. We are not good enough. Our prospects have found us to be inadequate and wanting in some way.

In a quite different way, it’s tough for your prospect as well.

First off, she has been interrupted. When her phone rang she was busy doing something else. Her mind was in a whole different place.

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