Here’s what I’ve learned after 9 months of freelancing

Before I made the leap from full-time employment to freelancing, one of my friends connected his friend who had recently quit her job to freelance. Meeting her for coffee was one of the turning points in my decision to embrace self employment.

Her main points:

• If you’re self motivated, you should have no problem succeeding as a freelancer
• Worrying about the “what ifs” right now isn’t productive, just start working and the uncertainties will iron themselves out
• You’re probably more prepared for this than you give yourself credit for

She made me feel like none of this was as big of a deal as I was making it. I needed to stop seeking permission to be self employed and instead just get to work. She then proceeded to fill me with practical advice I could actually use versus spending the coffee date convincing me not to freak out, which would have been a disservice to both of us.

Now that I’ve been on my own for nine months (hah — so long, I know), I hope to do the same for people.

So here’s my practical freelancing advice.

Word of mouth comes from everywhere.

When I started freelancing I posted about it — only once! — on Facebook. Within a few days two people I knew only peripherally had referred work my way.

Anyone can refer business to you as long as they understand what you do, who you do it for, and why you’re really good at it. Don’t be shy about telling your network what you’re up to, including distant cousins, your tattoo artist, and the guy who managed the pizza restaurant where you worked in high school.

Get to know the people who can send you a lot of business.

Some word of mouth is just random and some of it you can control. The controlled word of mouth is called networking.

Make connections with professionals who have regular contact with people who are looking to hire a person like you. If you’re a graphic designer, get to know a few freelance marketing people. If you’re an event photographer, connect with some event planners. If you can refer work their way too, this feels less like gross, slimy networking and more like creating a supportive network. (Facebook groups are great for this, by the way.)

Don’t freak out when there are slow times. There’s probably a perfectly good reason.

There will be times when no work is coming in the door. This isn’t always a sign that you’re not doing enough. It doesn’t mean you should quit. All businesses, including your freelance work, are affected by seasonality.

Understand the business climate you’re entering so you won’t make panicked decisions about work. For example, a wedding photographer wouldn’t freak out and lower her prices in June because no one’s booking. She understands that, while June is technically “wedding season,” it’s not actually the time people book wedding photographers. People plan weddings in January, not June, so June might be her slow season.

You should know, or at least be in the process of figuring out, when people are likely to hire you. Maybe plan a vacation during the slow times.

It’s okay to take on bad clients. Sometimes.

Saying “no” is really trendy right now. You might feel the pressure to turn away paid gigs that don’t perfectly align with how you see yourself working as a freelancer because people tell you to do that, but you need to find your own balance between self preservation and hustling. You might decide to take on work that’s a bad fit if:

• You like the client (or referrer) and hope to form a relationship that will lead to something better
• It’s work you hate doing but know you can churn out fast
• It’s the slow season and you’re not on vacation

As long as you understand the risks of any imperfect projects you take on and don’t allow yourself to get frazzled, it’s okay to say yes to shit work for good reasons.

Don’t leave your clients wondering what the heck happened.

Realize that for your client, hiring a freelancer can feel risky. Any chance you have of demonstrating their return on investment, or your progress on a project, seize it. Create reports and presentations that demonstrate your value at every turn, even if it’s a simple review of work that’s already been done.

If you say no anything, say no to creating one-off reports and other customized deliverables.

Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you need to communicate to a client. As a freelancer you only make money when you’re billing for your time, so it benefits you to move away from creating custom proposals and reports for every client. Instead you want to offer a standardized thing built with boilerplate copy that fulfills 90% of their needs.

Custom work is hard to estimate. By standardizing as much work as you can, you free up your non-billable time so you can add more billable client work. If you your standard deliverables are high quality and demonstrate your value, clients are less likely to ask you to create additional deliverables.

Ask for what you’re worth.

I used to buy mid-century furniture at estate sales and thrift stores and then up-sell it on Craigslist or Etsy. When I know I paid just $300 for a dresser, it was hard to keep a straight face when I told someone it was $1,800. But I learned that confidently saying, “It’s eighteen hundred dollars,” without adding a question mark to the end of my sentence was the easiest way for me make real money. Saying, “well, I have it priced at $1,800?” could cost me $400 on the spot.

When someone asks for your hourly rate or project estimate, ask for what you’re worth. Be comfortable in the silence that follows. If you say, “My rate is $120 an hour,” and your client quiets down for a second, she may be quietly calculating the total cost of a project, not silently judging your audacity. Don’t undercut yourself out of fear.

Last, I suggest a few tools.

Get yourself an invoicing and billing software you trust. I use Wave.

Track the time you spend doing everything, even non-billable stuff. I use Toggl for this.

Find a way to communicate and share work with clients that is not email. This goes a long way toward managing client expectations. I use Basecamp.

Organize your to-dos in a way that makes you feel confident nothing will slip through the cracks. I use a combined system of Evernote, Trello and TeuxDeux to accomplish this and I’m still perfecting my system.

Like everything, though, it’ll get there. You learn by doing.

This is part 2 of a 3-part series I’m writing about quitting my job to freelance. Part 1 is about the plans I made (read: none, really) when I decided to start freelancing. Part 3 will detail what changes I’m making to how I do things based on everything I’ve learned.