I was talking with a freelancer the other day who explained how he was working with just two clients who had been giving him almost all of his work over the last 3 years.
In one sense, that feels like a dream situation for any freelancer. He has a constant, reliable source of work, every day. He doesn’t have to spend time marketing his business. He doesn’t get stressed about finding new work each month.
Perfect!
Not so fast.
If you think about it, he’s actually in a horribly vulnerable position. I have had clients like that myself. Sometimes they stay with you for a year, or maybe 3 years, or even 5 years. But they’ll never stay with you forever. Companies are bought and sold, key staff change positions or employers. And so on.
In other words, no client lasts forever. And that means that if all or almost all your income is derived from just two or three clients, you could lose half or a third of your income overnight.
It may feel comfortable to have just two or three clients, but it puts you in a very vulnerable position.
I don’t want to be comfortable. I would far rather be agile, responsive and prepared to deal with just about any circumstance. I want redundancy in my freelance business. I don’t want the loss of any one client or project to threaten my overall income.
When something disappears or fails, I want to be able to fall back on something else.
In part, this is about planning. It’s about making sure you don’t put your income at risk by having too many eggs in one basket.
That’s the easy part.
The hard part is about your attitude and state of mind.
I think most of us default to wanting to feel comfortable, to feel safe. But as we have seen, feeling safe is actually a pretty good indicator that you are at risk.
Instead, I work hard to remain uncomfortable.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like stress any more than the next person. But at the same time I know that I can’t fall asleep at the wheel.
I try to anticipate both risk and opportunity. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it wrong. That’s the way it goes when you try to look into the future.
But here is the thing. Because I maintain a state of mind that is always alert and looking out for both risk and opportunity, it means I am light on my feet and ready to respond as and when I need to.
By way of contrast, if you are immersed in the comfort of two or three clients, and something bad happens, you are in the wrong mindset to respond. You haven’t been studying other possible opportunities, nor have you built a broad network of contacts which might be able to help you with a quick change in direction.
In other words, comfort today translates into risk in the future.
But by being alert, light on your feet and a little uncomfortable today, you create an environment in which you can substantially reduce those future risks.
So here is the question: Just how comfortable do you want to feel?
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