Over the last few years, a new trend in the world of business has started to take off. More and more people are dedicating themselves to finding ways to be their own boss, choosing to work as freelancers rather than seeking formal employment.
Of course, while this sort of work is great, there are certainly some downsides, and not being able to grow is certainly one of them. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring the differences between working as a solopreneur or a freelancer and running a bigger business. Thus giving you the chance to prepare yourself for the next stage in your company’s life.
Expanding your small business is sometimes a need and sometimes it is just a personal decision to do so.
Security
When you are working as a freelancer, it will be hard to keep work going all the time. You have lots of things to do to keep things ticking over. As one project ends, you will need to have something new to take over, and this can sometimes make things feel very insecure especially when you have bills to pay. You have to balance doing the work whilst also selling and promoting your service or business to ensure there are more jobs come in.
If you decide to grow your business, you will have the people behind you to be able to remove some of the jobs from your plate. Sometimes you can choose to use other freelancers. My favourite site is Fiverr where you can find people to take jobs off of you for a reasonable rate. It is also a great place to advertise your services.
You will be probably be able to take on more than one job at once too, giving yourself the chance to keep the jobs and money flowing at a steady pace.
Background Work
Along with security, it’s also worth thinking about the new background work you will have to do when your business grows. Hiring employees will be the largest part of this. You will have a responsibility for them and need to adhere to the rules of your country when hiring and firing staff. You may have machines that you use in your business and they will need to be tested to the PUWER standard to keep them safe. The welfare of your staff will be a constant issue. To make this easier, a lot of companies will hire a dedicated employee to handle all of it, especially if you have many employees, but this may not be possible when you are starting out and have limited resources.
Freelance Human resource specialists can be found to help you out in the interim.
Trust
It is time to look at things from a customer’s perspective. Most people will struggle to trust an individual over a business. Rightly or wrongly this is a subconscious decision most people make.
When you grow into something bigger, it will be much easier to convince people to trust you, in turn enabling you to make money from a wider audience. As a big part of this, though, you need to make sure that your brand is strong enough to back up your work. A logo is the equivalent of a face to an awful lot of people.
As A Freelancer thinking of growing you need to ensure your branding across all of your online presence, whether that is your website or your social media account.
Expectations
Finally, as the last area to think about, I want you to know that trust isn’t always a benefit. Along with helping you to secure new customers, it will also have a huge impact on the expectations those new customers will have of you.
They will want their work done quickly, effectively, and to a very high standard, even if they pay very little for it. People are much more forgiving when it comes to a freelancer, and this is something you can take advantage of before you decide or need to grow.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start thinking about the idea of expanding your freelance venture. This sort of effort can be a great way to push your company forwards, especially when you are getting more work than you can handle. Of course, though, like any type of company, it will always come with some challenges along the way.
I hope you have found this post useful and given you some food for thought. If you have please give it a share on your favourite social media platform.
As ever if you have any questions or just want to share your thoughts, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
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