According to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s June 2016 report, the Canadian economy has totaled 1.17 million employer businesses out of which 1.14 million (97.9 percent) were small sized businesses, 21415 (1.8 percent) were medium-sized businesses and only 2,993 (0.3 percent) were the large businesses. That’s an amazingly insightful statistic which reveals much about entrepreneurship and evolution of the small scale businesses.

One such business that requires little funding but boasts of a very high success rate is a Freelance Business. Freelancing offers an amazing opportunity for the hard-working, networked and skilled individuals to easily break into the business and relieve themselves from a 9-5 slog. It offers a great way to earn some extra cash, explore some new fields and remain your own boss. With that said, the freelancing business or working as a freelance business analyst has it’s own set of restraints, especially when it comes to scalability.

In my previous article, I have shared the 5+1 SuperTips to Start Successful Freelancing Business in 2017. This article, however, serves as a sequel and contains a list of a couple of steps that you can consider to scale up your freelance business and grow your income, without compromising your leisure time.

Building a strong Network

Without the comfort of the well-maintained offices and warm colleagues, freelancing business can be lonely at times. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t build a professional network of associates and collaborate with them. Start by connecting with the other freelance consultants. Connect them by taking part in relevant twitter or facebook chats, search them in the social groups and join them on various platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, joining various industry forums and commenting on their industrial blogs. Networking offers extensive benefits ranging from getting a community support to collaboration with the new freelancers. Sometimes you require the support of the other freelancers, for example, a designer and a writer often work together.

It is also a good practice to meet and interview few people regardless of whether or not you require their services. You never know, you might find the rockstar who can assist you in getting the job done or getting close to the employee you’re gunning for since a long time.

Communicate & Collaborate

Times change and so does the strategies. Yesterday your job was to develop, design or create about whatever craft you specialized in. But today your job is to effectively communicate with your subcontractors and clients. It’s time you should leverage all your expertise in your skill to form a constructive communication channel. You should properly pre-screen the skill set and the portfolios and then look for good communication and collaboration skills for collaborating with the candidate.  

Always consider the following traits when speaking to the candidate for the collaboration:

• They ask smart questions
• They are good collaborators and listeners
• They speak clearly with conversational rhythm
• They regularly update blog-site with insightful and well written content
• They have an updated resume with the concise and personalized cover letter

Well, if you find someone with these amazing C&C skills coupled with an amazing work portfolio, consider yourself lucky. But it’s not only about your collaborators! You must also perfect your C&C skills as you’ll be the one getting to know your team, doing the majority of listening, writing the project briefs and managing the entire process.

Branding your Freelance Business

It is estimated that in USA alone, there are around 54 million people are performing the freelance work. Now that’s a hell of a competition.

Well, worry not!

To compete and stand out from the rest of the crowd, you require to build a brand around your business. Branding doesn’t only refer to the colour used on the website. It encompasses the entire customer experience, right from the initial contact, tone of your emails to the work and everything in between. Creating and understanding your brand  will assist you in scaling the business and boosting the freelancing career.

With the modern day technology and advent of social media, it has now become easier than ever to connect with the like minded individuals. Networking and building a brand persona through Social Media can help you expand your freelance business and land you in the playground of opportunities. Brand building is a time consuming process. It’s not only about the number of followers you have, it’s about connecting and gaining interactivity with the people behind that number. It is better to have few hundred active followers rather than having few thousand bots. Trump card for the better branding is surrounding yourselves with people who are better rather than surrounding yourselves with slackers. By doing this, you are pushing yourselves to greater things and achieving higher grounds. ‘Give the followers a reason to follow you’. Share updates about your work  in progress and if you want to share some personal things, it’s okay. However, you have to strike a balance between becoming a regular person with a skill and a marketing automation.   

Investing in Professional Development

Modern day Freelancing Business consists of assembling several kinds of work, learning accounting and marketing traits, and juggling multiple clients. Basically, a freelance entrepreneur is required to be jack-of-all-the-trades. Investing in professional development is a step forward in this approach. To grow your freelancing business, you have to grow both professionally and personally which means learning and developing new skills, following the top trends, reading business books and using new tools. When ‘you’re really good at what you’re doing’ deploying precious time and money in professional development can turn out to be a daunting task for many. But only by new development and enhanced learning, you can get fresh ideas, plan for the future, and implementing the new approaches and system.  

Having your own freelance business may seem a lot of work, but with effective planning and constant commitment you’ll find it easier to take on bigger projects, more work and a good clientele. What strategies do you use to grow your freelance business? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section below.