Freelancing: How to get work

There’s plenty of information out there on how to get work and be successful, but let’s be honest, they sound like a broken record. Find work on freelance websites, create a buzz on social media, build a website, curate your portfolio, and … pray.

Instead, here are some actions I took that worked. Try implementing these actionable (and free) methods to help you transform your career now, and maximise advertising and marketing efforts in the future.

Don’t Sell. Serve.

If you leave with nothing but this point, you will get work.

Take an authentic interest in other people, their business and their struggles. No one wants to be another sale. We want to be understood, to have genuine interactions, and to be treated with value. Too often, we impose our needs on others. We forget to serve people and instead try to sell a service (commonly a logo or identity) without any idea of the business’ problems.

Start with those close to you. Family members, friends, designers you know on social media, the owner of the coffee shop you visit frequently. Become part of a community close to you. If you already work with studios or have clients, double-down on helping them. If you’ve just finished university, get in touch with the entrepreneurial department and see if you can help the start-ups emerging there. Have genuine conversations and interactions, and if you can help them, sit down and work together. If you can’t, send them to someone who can.

Over time, this will lead to more long-term clients, more referrals, more trust and authority, and higher pay. Be in it for the long-term.

Show Your Value.

The quickest way to affirm your commercial value is to connect with those you already know and help them solve their problems. The next hurdle is how to show it to others.

Luckily, there are many choices available to you. Some are indirect, such as social proofing (worth researching), blogging, and an online portfolio/website. Others more direct, such as teaching, friendly debates among peers, and consulting.

Here are some things that have worked for me:

1. Share strategies, systems, frameworks, and processes among peers (and improve them with their feedback).
2. Strike up debates on design, business, technology with people far more experienced — and read plenty so not to appear foolish.
3. Review people’s portfolios, writing, and work, and advise them towards achieving their goals.
4. Design and curate everything on your website — If you aren’t good at something, get help.
5. Start blogging, writing, and sharing ideas out in the open.
6. Social media — self-expression / life updates / work showcases / quotes and ideas / etc.

There are plenty more actions you can take to show value. It takes research and some quality thinking time, but the more you can show it, the more people will trust you and get in contact.

Clarity is King.

Confusion around what you do is one of the quickest ways to lose business. Try to nail what you do in the most precise way possible.

We are narrative architects, eliciting powerful emotions through strategy fabrication and visual expressionism.

Uhm… what? Stop trying to impress people with fancy fluff. Simplify what you do so anyone can understand. Return to the cornerstone of all questions: who, what, why, when, where, how.

Who: Who are you? Who do you work with?
What: What do you do? What proof do you have?
How: How do you do it? How can I trust you?
Why: Why do you do it? Why should I hire you?
Where: Where are you based?
When: When have you done this?

Those are just a few of the questions you can ask to clarify the essence of you, your business, and the services you offer. If you want to go further, check out your favourite designers/studios website and see how they frame themselves and their services. Then answer all the questions yourself.

Be open about yourself.

People do business with people, and preferably people that they know something about. Allow people the opportunity to learn more about you. Find your balance of authenticity and professionalism, and represent it in everything you do. Have a section on your website that explains why you do what you do and why. If you’re active on social media, share what’s happening in your life. Just have something easy to find that resonates with people.

Here’s what I currently have open on the interwebs:

1. A short “who” section — an icebreaker
2. A “Why” section — a bunch of reasons why I do what I do
3. A brief statement on why I don’t have a studio
4. Personal Values — I’ve outlined 6
5. A design statement
6. A “story” section — Where I come from and how I’ve ended up as a designer
7. Social media posts — some arty expression, general opinions on life or Design, and showing what books I’m reading.

You don’t need to go to this extent, but I’ve had plenty of praise for my transparency, messages from people who’ve connected to something I’ve said, and I’ve won plenty of work for it. How’s this for a unique selling point (USP) — you. You, your story and experiences, and your opinions are a unique selling point.

Dual-Specialism

I promise you that if you go for the generalist route, studios will box you up as an Artworker and will cap your earning potential. So, you should be a specialist, right? Wrong.

A quality designer and a good friend of mine gave me some top advice during my first year of business. Specialise in two things. Now here’s where things get interesting: it doesn’t need to be in Design.

I bet you can list of a tonne of logo designers, but I bet you can’t name many scientist-designers. This is where the gold is. Exciting combinations of crafts, industries, and fields of study are where true value transcends.

Let’s take a real-life example. Neri Oxman: American-Israeli, a designer, architect, artist, with military experience, who leads a team of biologists and engineers. If you’ve watched her episode on Netflix’s Abstract, you know that combination yields some insane results.

Here’s one final part I want to add to this point of advice. General knowledge is essential to combine specialisms, but sole generalism or specialism will destroy you. It’s all about balance. Have general knowledge of multiple fields, so you have an idea as to what is possible, but ensure a domain of specialisms, talents, and experiences from which you can draw.

Build Bargaining Power

If you are struggling for work and the bills are creeping up, it’s pretty safe to assume you have little to no bargaining power. That is a significant problem considering this will dictate how much creative freedom you have, how much you can charge, the level to which a client will trust you, and the likelihood of a client working with you again.

You should give this a real look and do some further research into both bargaining power and negotiation techniques. But for now, here are some areas you can look into to boost your power:

1. Have a runway — money saved up for when things go south. This allows you to turn down work you hate and instead focus on what you like the work you’d like to do more.
2. Communication — When talking to a client, you want to make sure you have an air of confidence. If a client senses weakness or suspects you need the work, or that they are your primary source of income, they will have the upper hand and can squeeze you for more. Play it off like you don’t need the work, but would like to work with them. You are equal in this deal.
3. Introduction — By following point one “Don’t sell. Serve.” you will put yourself in a better position. If you try to sell, people will know you need the money. If you start with asking them how you can help, you have a more balanced beginning to your relationship. They provide a problem; you offer to solve it — equilibrium.
4. Authority — As freelancers, we don’t have the best of reputations. Unreliable, scrappy, disorganised, flaky. You need to establish authority. This is achieved through writing, presentation, consulting, confident communication, organised processes and acting as a studio or agency.
5. Social-proofing — When potential clients add comments like “it’ll be good for your portfolio” and “exposure” they are signalling that you look like a newbie, not a professional. There’s little evidence of your experience, and they have the upper hand. Take this as a chance to improve your credibility by researching and applying methods of social-proofing.

Hello Fellow Lancer

While there is a tonne of advice out there, I hope these points serve to be valuable and actionable to you, just as they have been to me. Every self-employed career is different with its own flurry of challenges and circumstances. Your experience will be unique to mine, and hopefully, a lot less painful, but I wish you the best in your pursuit of a thriving career and a fulfilling life.

Don’t be shy! For more design, ramblings, and weirdness, you can find me via:
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