How to: 10 steps to bootstrap your freelance career

Posted in: How-To

Growing your business has never been this easy. Knowing what to do ahead of time can greatly increase the chance of success with your new business venture. In any freelance career you choose, bootstrapping can greatly increase your chances of profiting and growing your small business as large as your wildest dreams. Bootstrapping is essential to every freelancer and an avenue you should not overlook. I know every freelancer reading this article right now can say yes to the following question: “Would you like to grow your business at little to no cost?” Well, bootstrapping is your answer.

In essence, bootstrapping is building your business with little to no start up funds. I’m sure we’ve all been there or are currently in a place to want to grow your freelance business but do not have the funds to flourish like you would want. Below I will outline ten steps to bootstrapping your freelance career that will definitely get you going on the right path.

1. Study Your Market - This might seem like a no-brainer but most people skip this entirely and find out weeks or months down the road that they’ve missed out on a chance to learn ahead of time if their market is going to work or not. Why spend your time and money building a product or service in a market where it’s not needed or wanted? You also need to study the habits of your potential clients/customers. What are they into right now? Where do you normally see them or is there a place you know you can find them? These are key elements in your market studies. Don’t be lazy; take your time and make sure you’ve got a solid outline here.
2. Study Your Competition - This is one thing I made sure of when I started my blog design business. Looking at what your potential competition is doing right can let you know what you should be doing. Alternately, finding cracks in their marketing or their business in general can really give you a heads up on how to make your business stand out. Use key points from your competition and build on it to be one step ahead of your competition.
3. Outline Your Plans - This is by no means supposed to be a business plan in the sense of sitting down and writing 200 pages on what you’re going to do, how much money you’ll be making 10 years from now and so on. This should be a simple paragraph or two at most that outlines the following: the purpose of your marketing, how you’ll achieve this purpose, your target market, the marketing weapons you’ll use, your niche and your position and what you stand for, the identity of your business and your budget which should be displayed as a percentage of your projected gross revenues.
4. Get A Website - If you’re an on-line business or a business that functions solely off-line, it doesn’t matter. You need a website. In my Small Business Blogging article, I mentioned how on Duct Tape Marketing they discussed and posted an audio tape of an interview they did with a company selling Fishing Lures who used the power of the web to jump leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. The owner credits the website to changing the way people find out about his business. It’s such a powerful statement, I had to mention it again here.
5. Get Promotional Materials - You’ve got your marketing plan together right? I mean, it was step #3 so I hope you do! Now you’ve got to gather the promotional materials it calls for. Anything from business cards to flyer’s, t-shirts and web banners. These are your weapons and without them you will never win the fight.
6. Call Call Call - If you’re selling a product, calling potential customers is the perfect way to find out if they’re interested. You don’t need to sell anything on the first call (or maybe you will) but getting your voice out there and making yourself accessible to the potential customers is desperately needed. Estimate around 100 calls per day because out of those 100, a seasoned bootstrapper who knows how to sell should make 10 sales.
7. Email Email Email - So you’ve got a business that functions on-line? Well, make sure you email around 100 people per day. It is not that hard. If you’re targeting a specific service, (for this example we’ll use my blog design company) you can go to Google and type in “Fishing Blogs”. Replace the word fishing with any other word and you’ve got an infinite list of blog owners you can email about designs or redesigns. It’s that simple.
8. Delegate - So you’ve got the point now that you’re a selling machine but you can’t find the time needed to create your products or deliver your services properly? Pass the selling aspects of your business along to someone else. DO NOT do this until you’ve become a selling machine yourself because if you can’t sell your product, how can someone else?
9. Expand - Anything from office space to employees. This goes hand in hand with Delegate at #8 but is a vital aspect of bootstrapping your business. You’ve got to know when it’s time to expand. You can’t be a one man/woman show forever. You can’t work out of a 6×6 space in a spare bedroom forever. Give yourself room to breathe and your business will flourish.
10. Reward Yourself - So you’ve been working your fingers to the bone for almost a year now? Give yourself time to relax, spend a little bit on “you” and not your business. Go ahead, you deserve it!

 

• Better your business with customer feedback
• Monday Marketing Tip: People buy benefits, not features
• Small Business Blogging: 10 reasons why its essential to business growth
• Word of Mouth Marketing: Thank your referrers
• Simple bootstrapping tip that costs you nothing

 

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8 Responses to “How to: 10 steps to bootstrap your freelance career”

• Paul Singh

  May 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 am

  Don’t forget to line up a mentor. You’ll inevitably hit some bumps along the way and it’s always useful to be able to bounce your thoughts off of someone else.

• Mike Smith

  May 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 am

  Hi Paul,

  I think a mentor is a great thing to have, but I don’t believe in my own personal opinion that it’s definitely needed in order to bootstrap your small business / freelance career. I would advise to gather 5 friends who don’t run their own businesses and 5 friends who do, and have a round table meeting once a month to bounce ideas around with each other for that effect, but I don’t even think thats a definite NEED-TO in order to begin your freelance career.

  It’s definitely something to look into and utilize, but not something I feel is needed in order to start your career.

• Martha Retallick

  June 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm

  I strongly agree with tips 5 and 6. Getting these things into high gear has really paid off for my design studio.

  If you’re going to do the cold calling thing, I highly recommend Dan Turner’s Freelance Workshops website. URL:

  http://www.freelanceworkshops.com/

  And, if cold e-mailing is more your style, check out:

  http://www.hochstadt.com/how-to-get-new-clients-using-email

• Mike Smith

  June 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm

  Hello Martha,

  Thank you for the comment. and yes, cold calling and emailing will work if you put the right amount of effort into it, and tackle it the right way. Thanks for those links as well, I’ll be checking them out tonight.

Trackbacks

1. Financing Freelance On A Shoestring | Freelancing Online and Blogging Tips from Pro Freelance Blogger
2. Working at Home on the Internet
3. LINKSWITCH: For Bootstrapping Writers and All Their Friends - FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog
4. Get a Better Life - Freelance Style » Complete Kaizen

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