Before quitting your day job, you need to be earning a comfortable, consistent amount of money from your business. But it's pretty tricky to do that when you can only work on your business on the evenings.
You can't focus on your freelancing while you work full-time, but you can't quit your day job until you get more clients and more money. It's a never-ending, unfair cycle.
A recent reader said that her job often feels toxic and tends to mess with her creativity, which isn't good for freelancing. She wants to quit, but she has a mountain of bills that she can't reduce and not enough freelance income to cover them. She feels totally stuck.
Sound familiar?
A lot of the women I network with on social media have expressed the same feelings, and it makes me sad for them! Reeeally sad. Everyone deserves to do what they love. Everyone deserves to wake up each morning and actually feel excited to work. Everyone deserves to feel the satisfaction and fulfillment I feel when I help businesses transform their brands and websites.
A few weeks ago, I wrote of 3 things you can do while working full-time to prepare for freelancing. Today I'm here to sprinkle some hope on your day by sharing a few more helpful tips!
5 things you can do to quickly grow your business:
Plan. Did you know that businesses that plan grow 60% quicker than ones that don’t? I keep a simple business plan that I update and tweak all the time. And since I’ve been doing this, my business growth has rocketed. When you plan how much money you want to earn and how you're going to get it, business growth seriously speeds up!
Build connections. Without them, you’ll struggle to find clients. Connect with others in your niche, connect with ones on social media, and you’ll find that you’ll get clients referrals and friends from it.
Take on small jobs. You can't take on big jobs when you work 9-5, that’s just a recipe for burnout. What you can do is take on small jobs. They will still provide you with experience, and possibly recurring clients or referrals.
Collect testimonials. Even if you only do small jobs for people, collect their testimonials! When I was working full-time I designed Etsy banners for small businesses on the side, and I made sure to get a testimonial from all my clients. Testimonials are useful even if they aren’t for the kind of projects you want to be doing because people can still testify to how you work, how organized you are, how effective your communication is… This will help land you bigger clients in the future!
Join or create a mastermind group. A mastermind is a small group of business owners similar at a similar level to you, and you all get together maybe once or twice a month to support and encourage each other, usually over Skype or something. Your business can grow exponentially from a mastermind group because your fellow group members will help you, push you, motivate you, and even refer work to you.
Leave a comment and let me know- how have YOU grown your business quickly and effectively?
