Going freelance is a beautiful opportunity to leave red tape and bureaucracy behind you, but there are some big business practices that you can and should scale down to your little business.
One thing every freelancer should do is a periodic performance review.
Really? Yes, really.
Many folks in 9-5 jobs dread the annual performance review. It’s just an excuse to get you to work harder for the same money, right? Not in a healthy workplace. It should be an opportunity to identify your strengths and development needs and to do something about them.
Here’s the take-away from that — freelance careers need to develop too. The key to that development may be conducting an annual performance review – on yourself.
An appointment with yourself
The first thing your review will need is some structure.
“My strategic meetings tend to involve me staring at an empty diary and panicking,” admits Gary Marshall, a freelance journalist and tech columnist, “I think I’ve fallen into a fairly common freelancing trap, which is that when you’re busy you don’t think you have time to sit back and look at the bigger picture.”
The answer is — you make time. Open up your diary and start by clearing a morning or afternoon to review your business. Don’t put it off or postpone it. Treat it like any paying deadline.
The next step is prioritise what aspects you want to review. No one from Human Resources is going to send the form back and tell you that you forgot to fill in box 7b, but there are a few headings you can jot down.
- Performance
- Markets
- Training
- Goals
These are deliberately broad categories, designed to trigger your thinking. In each case it’s good practice to identify elements you’re already super-pleased with and some that might need a bit of work.
For example, in the performance category, you can come up with a list of things you think you’re doing well already and a second list of things you’d like to improve. For example, you might think you’re pretty good at hitting deadlines. That goes in the first list. You may not be making as much money as you expected. That goes in the second list.
Sara Tieger is a consultant and trainer at Monkey Puzzle. “Make sure you measure performance in more than numbers,” she said. “Step into the shoes of your customers and your competitors, how do they perceive you?”
That could mean taking a bit of time to contact your clients and ask for feedback. It all helps.
No train, no gain
The markets category is for you to think about the clients you already work with and those you’d like to work with.
Begin by listing the clients that you have in order – best to worst. How you measure that is up to you. The best could be the dudes who give you the most creatively satisfying work. It could be the ones who pay on time. However you decide on order, the clients at the top of the list will be the ones you nurture; the clients you stay in touch with and pitch to. The ones you invite to lunch.
The next stage is to identify markets that you don’t yet work with, but would like to add to your portfolio. Make sure you have the skills to pitch to them – or can acquire them through training.
That’s the next step — and it’s one that freelancers are most likely to neglect: skills acquisition. Teieger suggests that it’s important to think about this area holistically.
“Where is your training time best spent? Working on developing weak areas or making the most of your strengths?”
If you can acquire or improve upon a skill relatively easily, and it will enhance your offering, then it’s worth doing. For example, if you’re writing content for online, it’s always worth beefing up your HTML skills. But stick to what you’re good at and outsource what you can’t do well. Don’t forget to factor in the cost, both in time spent and profit spent.
Setting goals
Finally, go back over the elements you’ve identified and set some goals. A goal should be an achievable thing, with a deadline. Some of your goals can be very short term; best practices that you can adopt day to day. Others — acquiring specific new clients, for example — may be more long term.
Tieger has one last strong piece of advice in this department.
“Make sure the goals are stated in positive language. Be brave and also realistic.”
For example, saying, “I will invoice clients first thing every Monday” is much more motivating than the rather maudlin, “I won’t let my invoices pile up any more.”
A performance review like this will help you decide what’s working in your freelance practice and what isn’t. It helps you to look ahead and plan for the future. More importantly, it makes sure your business actually has a future.
Image courtesy of morag.riddell/flickr