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Longevity with freelancing is entirely possible if youre intentional, adaptable, and development-oriented. Freelancers should think of themselves as a business of one as opposed to an outsourced employee for other companies.And its import to always be improving that business. As E-Myth Revisited author Michael Gerber once wrote, Most entrepreneurs fail because they are working in their business rather than on their business.Theres always going to be more competition, new technology, shifting market conditions, and stuff happening in your life that will impact your career as a freelancer. After nearly 12 years of freelancing, here are my recommendations on how to level-up your approach and ensure self-employment remains a sustainable option in 2025.Look for new sources of leadsYou dont need to be everywhere, but building a consistent flow of outreach from clients who want to hire you happens when youre visible on multiple platforms.Any marketing channel or relationship thats led to you landing a project will ebb and flow with time and at some point become less reliable as a way of attracting clients. To offset the risks of a downturn in client outreach, Ive found that actively using two different promotional platforms makes all the difference.A promotional platform could be a Slack community, social media network, local networking group, hosting a podcast, running a newsletter, or freelancer marketplace. What matters is that its a place where clients are looking for your products or services, and you can show up consistently to communicate the value of your offerings and expertise.Marketing yourself takes time and resources, so identify another promotional avenue where you dont need to start from scratch and could repurpose existing insights there.Provide certainty and reliabilityIts fair to feel like we live in uncertain times.Now more than ever, you can help offset this shared feeling by aiming to make your engagements and interactions with clients and partners frictionless. Showing up as a source of certainty and reliability can help others see you as a valuable partner whos easy to work with and makes their jobs easier.This can play out in small ways like always showing up on time or sharing meeting invites in a clients time zone to save them the effort, so engaging with you is seamless. And of course, this can be expressed in big ways like delivering outcomes youve promised on a project and when possible, exceeding those expectations.Getting hired again by a past customer is often because you were enjoyable to work with the first time, delivered as expected, and helped them look good for hiring you.Check-in with past clientsIts up to you to stay in touch with past colleagues and clients. Often thats the touchpoint needed for them to remember to hire you again and retain your services. Be intentionally persistent by following up with them in non-invasive ways like inviting them to a coffee, interacting with their LinkedIn content, or sending them an email.Sometimes youll pitch them on how you can provide them value through another project, but most of the time thats not the goal. Most of this outreach should be checking in on their progress, delivering them help like free advice or support of some kind, and genuinely maintaining the relationship.Long-term, these connections youve built can deliver more client referrals, provide partnership and mentorship opportunities, and help you grow professionally.Find your own networking styleNetworking doesnt have to be awful like many make it out to be. In fact, its one of the ways youll be able to sustain a business as an independent contractor when done right. But dont wait until youre between clients to startthats whats most important.It doesnt need to be cringy or self-serving: Just staying in touch with people you actually like or have common interests with, or ideally both.Its up to you to make it happen though. Most people put it off at all costs, so take the lead here.Dont have clients you actually like or have anything in common with? Put yourself out there and fix it so networking is more enjoyable and less of a cumbersome task.Reach out to someone connected to a colleague, attend a workshop in your area, or tap into your alumni network.Theres no shortage of options. Just get started.Befriend other freelancersWorking on your own brings a lot of benefits, like having more control over your schedule. But one downside is that you can feel isolated. Its helpful to connect with other freelancers.Whether they do the same work you do, or provide adjacent services and skills, these relationships can provide you with motivation, friendships, or opportunities to learn.Sometimes these connections can even refer you to relevant projects or keep an eye out for opportunities you should considerjust dont go into this looking for that directly.Re-examine your offeringsOnce or twice a year, I take a look at how Im framing my services in terms of the structure of packages, pricing options, and how Im communicating the benefits.Early in my freelancing journey Id set standards like, Im not taking on this type of work for less than this dollar amount or unless its a project of this kind of duration.It can be helpful to set limits on the kinds of work youre open to so youre not inundated with low-paying engagements or misaligned clients. But sometimes, these self-imposed limitations can be too rigid or misaligned to what the market is currently interested in. As a result, you could miss out creatively and financially.For a while, I only took on marketing consulting projects where I worked with a client on a month-to-month basis and partnered with their team to build out a strategy.Each month was centered on completing a set of agreed upon deliverables from making the marketing plan to training their team to execute on the programs over a few months.While this was a successful way to frame this kind of project for large companies with the budget and resources to collaborate in this way, many other firms couldnt afford to work with me in this capacity. To capture this business, I reframed this offering to include two options, one is high-touch and low-touch consulting.High-touch was the original offer where I worked closely with the company over a few months to build out their strategy, best suited to large, well-resourced teams. The new optionlow-touch consultingoffers similar support but at a lower cost and provides advice and counsel across a set number of meetings per month.Instead of working closely with the team on deliverables, Im providing them with strategic direction across select meetings, and its up to them to put our work into action.As a result, I was able to land more of these clients when I offered more options suited to businesses with a wider range of circumstances.And at the same time, Im protecting my bandwidth and ensuring Im not taking on more than I can handle by setting different constraints for these kinds of projects. Structure and limitations are essential to a smoothly running business, but get more creative with how youre framing your projects to adjust them to your clients circumstances.Look beyond social media Social media is often the go-to method of promoting your work as a freelancer, but its far from the only choice. More professionals, for a variety of justified reasons, are trying to spend less time using social media personally or for work.Theres many other options out there as long as you choose destinations where your audience is spending time and that align with the way you prefer to share your ideas.If youre more of a talker than writer, create your own podcast or become a regular guest of podcasts in your industry. If writing is your strong suit, you can contribute thought pieces to a trade publication. If you enjoy being in front of the camera, you could periodically host webinars.Look out for AI susceptible projectsAI hype is exhausting at times. Dont let it lead you to tune out. Whats important to focus on is areas of your work that are most likely to be disrupted by AI so you know where to scale back or adjust.Review what you offer to clients and identify any aspects of your work that are execution-based, repetitive, formulaic, or require a little active thinking. These are the types of tasks most likely to be entirely replaced or change significantly with the integration of AI, and its necessary youre not overly reliant on this kind of work.For a freelance web designer, this might be a task like creating the initial wireframe for a website, which is an outline of sorts that details a sites structure and hierarchy.While critical to the early stages of planning the design of a website, AI can create a comprehensive wireframe quickly and adapt it to a particular clients needs.Combining your expertise and AI might help you deliver quality wireframes at a faster pace and streamline the design process for clients in the process. However, if a majority of your freelance work is wireframing without AI, Id strongly recommend reducing your focus on this output and diversifying your offerings to clients.Thats one instance of the kind of work that is likely to dry up in the not so distant future, and the goal is to avoid being in that position.Instead, prioritize delivering work thats centered on strategic problem solving, leverages your unique perspective shaped by your experience and skills, taps into your relationship building capacity, and draws on your emotional intelligence. And of course, consider hybrid services where youre using AI-powered processes and your professional expertise to deliver outcomes with more speed, efficiency, and accuracy.Always be learningThe number one way to maintain a career as a freelancer, and really most career paths, is prioritizing ongoing skill development. No matter the industry, enhancing your existing skills and acquiring new, complementary ones is what ensures you remain relevant in the workplace.Change has always been a constant across industries, but the speed at which conditions are shifting is intensifying and requires you to make learning a regular habit. Direct your efforts towards passive and active learning, two modes of professional development thatll better equip you to stay ahead of the curve.Passive learning is one-way engagement with educational materials where youre not immediately applying the learnings, getting hands on, and engaging with others. This involves asynchronous courses, reading articles, listening to podcasts, and consuming newsletters, and should be a daily or weekly practice of absorbing new information.Easier to incorporate into your workday and completely self directed, you create the curriculum that aligns with your expertise as a freelancer.Active learning is two-way interactions with instructional materials through engaging with others by discussing, analyzing, and applying the lessons learned. More time-intensive, active learning happens in cohort-based courses, networking, masterminds, group workshops, coaching, and educational bootcamps.Its deeper immersion into the subject matter and focused on collaborating with other learners, instructors, mentors, or coaches to help explore and integrate the material. Aim to incorporate active learning once a quarter or every few months to explore new skills more comprehensively.Adding both to your routine will help make you a more adaptable and dynamic freelancer better suited to meet the ever-evolving demands of your industry.
