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Want to Become a Successful Freelancer? Get Rid of the Employee Mindset

So, you decided to become a freelancer. It may be because you want to earn more money by working less, because you’d only work on the projects that you really want, and or because by freelancing, you’ll be able to design the life of your dreams. Being a freelancer appeared as the answer to what you were looking for.

But sometimes this doesn’t translate into reality.

Either as a beginner or experienced freelancer, you often find yourself overworked, underpaid, and frustrated.

You even experience fear, uncertainty, and unhappiness at your freelancing career and sometimes aim for your previous employee life.

Or maybe you’re OK but you’d like to make more money and work fewer hours and don’t know how to achieve that.

Why is this?

It’s usually because although you are or want to become a freelancer, you still have an employee mindset.

Freelancing is not just different from being an employee because you get to work from home.

In fact (and especially during this past year), we’ve seen how tens of thousands of employees started working from home due to Covid 19 pandemic.

If you’re unhappy as a freelancer or think it’s not much of a difference from being an employee, it’s probably because you’re still an employee working as a freelancer.

Or put another way, you’re a freelancer with an employee mindset. If you want to become a successful freelancer, you need to drop the employee mentality.

In this article, I’ll give you 8 tips to get rid of the employee mindset so you can succeed as a freelancer.

1. Design a Work Schedule

By learning how to organize your workday as a freelancer you’ll be able to achieve much more in much less time.

Have clear working hours, with blocked and defined times for meals and rest. Define when you’re going to stop working on a normal day.

Set a specific time for the activities you want to make. You surely imagined an ideal life when you became a freelancer. Think about an ideal normal working day and make it happen by scheduling those activities throughout your day.

Work by time blocks: Time blocks work really well when you need to get things done. Assigning certain time blocks at the beginning of the day (and, ideally, at the beginning of the week) allows you to have control of your own time and work on what you’re supposed to do, instead of letting circumstances decide for you.

One of the benefits of being a freelancer is that you usually won’t need to stick to other people’s schedules unless the kind of work that you do requires it.

Because of this, you can evaluate your day, identify your most productive hours, and set your work blocks during those hours. That will guarantee that you do what you need to do when you’re at your best energy.

2. Set Clear Terms for Your Freelance Services

Even when you work with someone you know, or a friend’s friend, you need to set clear terms for your freelance services.

This is not only to be prepared in case of a problem or to have legal stuff in order but because it will set a good framework for you and clear boundaries for your client.

These terms should include:

• Communication: how you’re going to communicate with clients (via email, skype, messaging app, or phone, although I don’t recommend the last one) and how often. Let’s say that your client calls you three times a day and interrupts your activity. This is not going to work, so you need to set boundaries when it comes to communication. Maybe you could ask your client to send you an email telling you that they’d like to talk to you about something, and tell them that you check it twice a day at x time, so they know when they can find you.

• Revisions and changes: be specific about how many revisions or changes you’re going to make free of charge. This way you avoid working on the same thing over and over again for weeks and you also get your client to be really clear about what they want. Nothing worse than a vague client with loose ideas that pretends the freelancer to tell them what they want.

• Times: deadlines can vary depending on the task and the revisions but you can establish a general time that will take you to finish a certain job. And it’s really important that you respect these deadlines.

• Rates: your prices for each thing. So, for example, if you’re an interior designer, and your client wants you to help them choose their new office (the one that you’ll be working on), make sure you set a separate rate for that. Imagine your client and every need they could have, and then set rates for each one of them.

During a project, assign a certain amount of hours to work on it, and schedule them in advance on specific days and times.

Finally, you need to be responsible and respect the deadlines. In fact, try to surprise your client by exceeding their expectations.

Give them something more, like an early delivery or an aggregate that makes a positive impact on the final result. That way, they’ll remember you and will probably recommend you to other people.

3. Define Your Rates and Stick to Them

If you don’t know how much to charge, and especially if you’re a beginner freelancer, you may feel inclined to undercharge your services.

It’s ok to set slightly lower rates when you’re starting, but make sure it’s just on the first couple of projects and that it doesn’t turn into a regular way of working. Because the result will be that you’ll be overworked and underpaid.

How to Set Your Rates as a Freelancer

There are several things that you need to decide when you set your rates.

• Are you going to charge in advance? All at the same time? A percentage at the beginning and the rest when the project’s finished?

• Which is your cost of living? That will give you a clue on how many hours and resources you’d need to use for client work. Is it viable?

• How much is your competition charging? Is there a minimum in your field?

• Are you a Senior or a beginner in your field?

• Check if there’s a fare system or table of rates for your field.

Don’t be afraid to charge what you should, even if the work’s easy for you and it only takes a few minutes of your time. That’s what you prepared for, and you’re providing value to someone that’s willing to pay for it.

4. Your Client Is Not Your Boss

This may be the number one reason that keeps freelancers from success.
If you behave with a client as if they were your boss, you’re giving up the leadership of your freelance business.

Take any trade job as an example. You call a plumber or a locksmith and they tell you “Ok, I can go to your house this day, at this time, I charge this amount and you can pay this way.”

As I mentioned above, you’re the one that sets your schedule, your rates, and the terms of the agreement. You’ll determine how long it will take you to do the work, and how often and in which ways you’re going to communicate with your client.

Especially, and this is very important, remember that you don’t have to be available for your client all the time, or do a certain task that wasn’t agreed upon before from one minute to another.

And this doesn’t mean that you’re not flexible or that you’re neglecting your client when they need you.

It means that you won’t let the client call you at all times and mess up with your schedule, because it will prevent you from delivering the best results for them.

Have you heard about the concept of educating the client?

If your client has a habit of calling you several times a day and you always take their calls, what you are implicitly telling them is that they can call you as many times as they wish and that you are going to take their requests at any time of the day, any day of the week.

And this goes against the objective of working in an organized way that we talked about in the first section of this article, a key aspect if you want to succeed as a freelancer and deliver the best outcomes possible: organization. This is how the client’s chaos turns us into disorganized freelancers.

When you’re a freelancer you can refer to the terms of the agreement whenever the client wants to push the boundaries. Because some of them will.

Of course, you need to be flexible and you can always negotiate the terms, but at the end of the day, you have the final word.

I know this sounds kind of relative because, in an employee-employer relationship, there’s also the possibility of quitting if you can’t reach an agreement with your boss, but as a freelancer, you always decide which projects you take. As an employee, unless you want to quit all the time, you can’t always say no to a certain task or project.

Also, bosses can ask you to work with a group of people that you don’t feel comfortable with. As a freelancer, you decide who’s your client and if they are disrespectful or don’t stick to the terms of the agreement, you can choose to end the business with them.

Another important thing: Employees don’t decide when they charge.
Freelancers do.

You, as a freelancer, must have your rules on when you’re getting paid. Believe me, you need to be very clear on this at the beginning of the agreement if you don’t want to keep chasing some of your clients for payment.

Which takes me to the next point.

5. Don’t Work on a Per Hour Basis: Set a Project Fee

Employees sell their time, freelancers sell their services.

If the agreement is that you charge per hour and the client provides you any work they have, let me tell you something: you’re not a freelancer, you’re an employee under contract.

As a freelancer, you’ll probably work with several clients at the same time. So, as we already said above, a good and clear organization is a key aspect if you want to succeed instead of being overworked.

If you’re being paid per hour and your “client” (ahem… boss) gives you different tasks every day, there’s no way you can organize your work for the day in advance and combine it together with other clients’ projects.

It will soon get difficult to focus on and give the best of you on each project.
If the work’s very specific, set a personalized fee for your client, that covers all the items in the project.

6. Search for Work Proactively: Don’t Expect Work to Come to You

When you’re an employee, you probably have tons of work already waiting for you as soon as you arrive at your workplace.

When you’re a freelancer, even if you’ve spent five entire days sending proposals, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have lots of answers the following week.

You may receive none.

And you need to be prepared for that. When you’re an employee, there’s a company behind expecting you to do your job in a certain way at a certain time.

People are relying on you for things to get done and for work to move forward. As a freelancer, you need to create the work.

So don’t expect emails asking you for your services. Search proactively. Think about what you’d like to do and then (thanks, internet!) look them up and contact them. Send your potential clients irresistible pitches. Every day.

You’ll see how the wheel starts rolling.

7. Don’t take on Every Project: Say “No” More Often

You may feel tempted to take on every project. This might happen for two reasons:

• Fear: Of running out of money or losing the client.

• Commitment: You think you owe your client and that you have to take everything they give you. But you know what? It’s the other way around. As long as you only take the projects that you want to work on, you’ll be able to deliver the best results, because you’ll be passionate about what you’re doing, and you’ll be happier, hence your mind will think clearer and the work will automatically flow.

One thing is that you take on a project because it pays well and you know how to do it, and another thing is to take on any project that a client gives you because you think you owe them and you have to do it.

In the first case, you’re already filtering: you decided to take on that project because you’re attracted by the fact that it pays good money.

In the second example, you are only taking that project because a client that you work with (not for, with) asks you to do it.

And this is not about ego. It’s much deeper than that. You’ll only be able to build a good reputation as a freelance professional if you focus and decide to work on a very specific kind of project.

Spanish Entrepreneur, business and life coach Sergio Fernandez, founder of Pensamiento Positivo Institute says in his Best Selling Book Vivir Sin Jefe that you need to be able to define what you do in a short and simple way.

This short sentence should contain keywords that resonate in your client’s head when they (or someone they know) need a person to take on a project.

If you do everything, you won’t remain in anyone’s mind by a particular aspect or worse: you’ll be this person who does everything and you’ll keep taking on projects that you’re not excited about, forever.

The only way to avoid this is to define very clearly what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for.

If a client asks you to take on a project that doesn’t fit you, you can kindly decline, tell them what you do, and even introduce them to someone else that could perform the job, if you know them.

8. Always Remember Your Why

Why did you choose freelance life? If you’re tired and think you’d like to go back to your employee life, it can be either because you’re a freelancer with an employee mindset or you’re just not cut out for the freelance life.

If it’s because of the first reason, try to ponder.

Was it because you wanted more flexibility? Did you think you were earning too little compared to the hours and effort you put in? Did you want to design a life that fits you?

Thinking about the reasons why you became a freelancer in the first place will motivate you to change what needs to be changed to succeed as a freelancer.

Freelancer vs. Employee Mindset

So, to sum up, I would like to go through what we’ve talked about in this article.

And I’m going to do it by opposing some aspects of the employee vs. freelancer mindset.

And by this, I’m not saying that one is better than the other.

But the aim of this article is to help you become a successful freelancer and for that, you definitely need to get rid of the employee mentality.

So, let’s start.

Organization: Freelance Work Routines

Employees usually have established working hours. They work 8 to 9 hours a day if they’re full-time employees, and it’s often on a fixed schedule. From 9 am to 5 pm, for example.

When you’re a freelancer, you work according to certain criteria, such as your most productive hours, your other obligations and activities (trips, kids, house, issues, life in general), etc.

Employees organize life around work, freelancers organize work around life.
Being a freelancer can be difficult in this aspect because you have to be really disciplined and organized in order to be productive and make a living as a freelancer.

Come up with a schedule that works for you and stick to it.

Rates: Selling Your Time vs. Selling Your Work

Employees sell their time. Freelancers sell their work. If your client pays you per hour and gives you different tasks every day or week to work on during those hours, you’re not a freelancer, you’re an employee under contract. A precarious contract.

Freelancers set their rates, not their clients. Then they can negotiate. But unlike employees, freelancers have the power to say how much they charge for their services.

Analyze your cost of living, make research on the market rates for your field, set your fees, and stick to them.

Freelancer’s Terms of Agreement

Employees have bosses. Freelancers have clients. When you’re a freelancer, unlike employees, you set the terms of the agreement.

Usually, bosses set the terms by which employees work. Freelancers work on their own terms. Big companies may set some rules when they hire freelancers, especially when it comes to payment times. But freelancers have the freedom to not take the project if they can’t meet the clients’ demands.

Clients vs. Bosses

When you’re an employee, your boss tells you more or less what to do (depending on your position and your everyday tasks). You set the goals and steps to achieve them together with them and according to the company’s interests.

Maybe at a certain point, you’ll have to participate in a project that you don’t like so much or work with people that make you uncomfortable.

As a freelancer, you have your own goals, and you sell your services in order to achieve them. They are yours, and you decide them. You manage your time and decide when you work. Which days, at which times in which place.

If you don’t like a project, maybe you decide not to take it. And if your client doesn’t behave respectfully, there’s no reason to continue to see their face every day, which is not an option when you’re an employee with an awful boss.

One of the main things to think about if you’re not happy with your freelance life is whether you’re behaving as a real freelancer or as an employee.

Payments: Hourly vs. Project Fees

Employees sell their time, freelancers sell their services. If you’re a freelancer, it’s best to have fixed fees and set personalized budgets for each client and project.

If you’re paid hourly, you don’t have that much control of your time and therefore you’re not as independent as a freelancer should be.

Proactive Job Search

When you’re an employee, your tasks are already defined by someone else and written in your job description. Work comes to you every day, you don’t need to start thinking about how you can gain more work.

That doesn’t mean that as an employee you shouldn’t be proactive and bring new ideas, but you already have work coming to you.

When you’re a freelancer, that’s different. You need to define your potential client, search for them, and then make a pitch that makes them want to hire your amazing services for their project.

This effort will depend on your field, the competition, and the marketing that you do to promote your services (because at some point, work will start coming to you, and you’ll need to filter and decide which projects you’re going to take).

So, remember. Every time you complain about your freelance life and think that you’d like to be an employee again, check out if you ever actually stopped being an employee.

I hope these tips are useful. Did you feel identified with any of the items? Were you letting the employee mindset take you away from your freelance life? Let me know in the comments!

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