Why freelancers must be forward thinking and specific when setting goals

The perception of freelancing in the marketplace is changing and you must be aware of where it is heading before you commence your freelancing career. Starting your freelancing practice without being 100% clear on what your goals and values are, along with a concept of how you might evolve will simply guarantee disappointment and frustration in the future.

Don’t be limited by the old definitions of ‘freelancing’

Our career choices are wider than ever before and accompanying that are a number of work styles offering varying degrees of flexibility, financial compensation and work-life balance. Freelancing was traditionally chosen by those wanting greater work flexibility with an outlook to achieving a better work-life balance compared to that perhaps experienced by an employee in full-time employment. Freelancing was not intended to provide someone with greater wealth rather the benefit was to come from a better quality of life. However with trends in the workplace seeing organizations replacing full-time employees and requiring more project oriented labour freelancing has the potential to become quite lucrative for those willing to seek out the opportunities.

Creating goals for the present and the future

Today’s society is all about breaking down the barriers; there is nothing to say that you cannot work as a freelancer and have it all: greater work flexibility and the opportunity to increase your financial earnings. How you can achieve both is all about managing yourself effectively and ensuring your freelance practice is a well-run machine.

I now coach a number of freelancers who are simply not satisfied with working as freelancers because they want to increase their earnings capability and are unsure as to the best way to go about this. The challenge they face is (1) they haven’t created their business model to be capable of increasing earnings in any meaningful way and (2) their mindset and focus is still that of a small self-employed operator who never expected to be focusing on money and has never made it a priority for one reason or another. What I recommend to most freelancers is that they first must open their mind to the possibility that they can be someone whose career and professional aspirations are not limited to earning through the old time and materials approach. The second recommendation is to consider freelancing as a professional business venture with the same requirements as any small business.

Be specific when it comes to identifying your professional goals

Being specific in your professional goals means that your actions will be more specific – leading to the greater possibility that you will achieve what you set out to do. If you’re a freelancer that might like to run a business in the future don’t start off by thinking you can change the way you work at a later date to accommodate your business goals – it is better to establish a framework early on that you can leverage at a later date with minimal effort. Specific goal setting simply reduces unwelcome surprises and unnecessary effort at a later date.

Why knowing your business's CSFs must be a priority

Some of you might be asking, "what is a 'CSF'"? Second question might be "what are the CSFs for my business"?

CSF stands for 'critical success factor'. Put simply these are factors that are necessary to be in place, to be implemented, in order for your business to have any chance of achieving its goals. It can be difficult for a business to ensure that their CSFs are always in place but it does draw a line in the sand in respect to what they need to aim for, where their priorities should lie. Most of the time we only consider them as being attached to the business operations but what is often overlooked are the CSFs of the business owners themselves. These critical success factors that relate to the person are not characteristics or traits - rather I see them as behavioral tendencies that are relevant during a particular stage of the business.

I give you an example of a recent client of mine. His business had a dominant online presence however in order to continue being in a position to undertake the profitable jobs with corporates he needed to establish a high street presence. This also meant that he would have to give up running the day to day online operation and hire a number of employees which was going to be a challenge as he had grown his business from scratch.

The critical success factors, at the business and personal level, were:

1. Establishing a high street presence in a central location
2. Being able to delegate work and manage a number of employees who could multitask.

Put simply, without the two CSFs listed above my client's business would have no chance of operating in the way he envisioned.

There are long term and short term critical success factors - those that must always be in place and those that only need to be in place to achieve short term goals. A long-term CSF for the client above is that his company must be within the top 5 google searches, a short term CSF was that he had the initial funding for the shop (before it could begin to generate its own cashflow).

What wasn't critical was the size of the store, establishing an office for the employees or putting in place complicated operational processes. Expenses were kept to a minimum and all employees worked remotely. However without the store and the employees then the business would not have been able to develop - no matter how strong his company was online.

So have a think about the critical success factors for your company and whether you are undertaking those tasks that will let you achieve those factors.

Staying focused and motivated for your goals

How often would you experience the following:

'you have a great goal in mind, something you start off being extremely passionate about. You start with the research and make some good headway. You're still working to keep money coming in but this new idea should be ready to make money within 6 months and you could see it replacing your current full-time job within 12-18 months - that is also an important goal of yours. Some time goes by and you don't see to be making headway and your full-time job starts taking up more of your time. All of a sudden you wake up 6 months later and your great idea is no more. "Oh well", you say, "just wasn't the right time or right idea". Of course you might become disheartened and that's it - no more ideas'.

What I am framing is something that potentially affects many people who have ideas to start off a new project or business. Having an idea is the easy piece, implementing the actions that will progress you past the concept stage requires dedication. It also requires that you focus on the RIGHT PRIORITIES and make the RIGHT DECISIONS (or at least learn from the mistakes you made). It is easy for the brain to ignore pain and disappointment by focusing on something else. This is why if your idea/project is not progressing as expected it is far easier to focus on something else. However we often blame our environment for this 'failure' rather than ourselves. For many of us it is difficult to recognize your own personal biases when it comes to making decisions - whether that be the information you use for input, the experiences and assumptions you make when processing information and the fact that we rarely question our output.

Poor decision making combined with not knowing the tasks that should be prioritized because they offer most value to your project are two key reasons why many people lose focus and motivation. Not everyone is built to continually push past failure after failure and monetary wise many of us could not continue to do so. So what I am suggesting is that you become more efficient when it comes to making decisions and setting tasks. Doing this will result in more small wins and this progress will help you maintain your focus and motivation. So the simple steps to take are;

1. Ensure your idea is accompanied by a vision - supported by internal motivations/values

2. Don't keep your idea in your head. Write down what you need to do and if necessary speak to a business coach who can help you determine which tasks should be prioritized as they will lead to greater progress.

3. Be aware of your decision making biases - always look for independent feedback as well as analyzing why decisions made did not work out the way you expected.

4. Be conscious that you will fail only if you stop. Embrace the fact that setbacks are important but only if you learn from them.