Growing your freelance team can be complicated. It’s not as simple as bringing a few new people on board – in fact, there can be a lot of trial and error before you find the right teammates. However, it can also increase your earning potential exponentially. In many cases, far beyond what you could earn on your own.
In this article, I’ll walk you through three major benefits and one important challenge of hiring other freelancers. By the end, you should have a good idea of whether this is the right path for you. Let’s get started!
3 Major Benefits of Scaling Your Freelancing Business
Scaling your freelancing business may sound intimidating, but there are plenty of upsides for those who decide to take that step. Here are three major reasons you might want to expand your team.
1. You Can Increase Your Income
As a freelancer, you need to be more careful about your finances than other people. After all, your income wholly depends on your performance and how many projects you can fit into your schedule.
The math here is simple! The more freelancers on your team, the more work you can take on together. The more work you do, the more money that goes into your wallet.
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’re probably familiar with Tom Ewer and his freelance writing business. As a single unit, he did well financially, but even more so when he started bringing more writers into the fold (myself included!).
When you follow this path, you’ll personally earn less per team project, but overall you can take on significantly more work. This nets income you wouldn’t see otherwise. It’s a pretty good deal, if I say so myself, as long as you can find trustworthy, reliable people to work with.
Plus, working as a team can make you more attractive to clients. Some businesses may be wary of assigning contracts to a solo freelancer, but once an entire team is involved it starts to sound like a business. A business you are in charge of.
2. You Can Handle More Clients With a Team
When working on your own, your options become limited as your schedule fills up. You can postpone new projects for later, let them go, or collaborate to take extra projects on as a team effort.
Naturally, those two first options aren’t what you’re looking for. Good opportunities shouldn’t go to waste! Plus, many clients don’t like being turned away. If they’re in a hurry, they might just take their business elsewhere, never to return.
However, with an entire team ready to go, you’ll be able to take on significantly more work at the same time. Your only limitation is how much you and your team like to sleep, eat, and enjoy the sunlight from time to time.
As for me, I’m part of a team of writers and editors working for a lot of major WordPress blogs. Through this team, I’ve received opportunities I probably would’ve never been considered for otherwise. It’s a pretty sweet deal for everyone involved.
If you’re still building up your client base to the point where growing your team is a valid next step, the Paid to Blog jobs board can be a great place to find them.
3. You Can Outsource Work that You Don’t Want to Handle
So far, we’ve talked about the most obvious upsides to scaling your freelance business, but we haven’t gotten to the best part yet. One of the best-kept secrets about hiring new people is that you can actually have them do the things that you hate.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not telling you to have your freelancers scrub your pots or take out the trash, but you can have them handle scheduling and editing for example. This way, you’ll have more time to focus on the areas of work that you actually enjoy and your productivity should get a boost as a result.
Personally, I dislike editing. I can sit down and write a great article in no time if I know the subject, but editing that same piece can take me hours. Luckily, I’m part of multiple teams where top editors help me out. When you’re scaling your business, you can seek out freelancers who complement each other’s skill sets. This way, you’ll work more efficiently as a team.
The Hardest Part of Scaling Your Freelance Business
Unfortunately, growing your business isn’t all puppies and rainbows! Depending on your situation, there can be several roadblocks to scaling your freelance business. However, as far as we’re concerned, this is the major one you should consider before moving forward.
Scaling Requires Management Skills
As a freelancer, you manage your own schedule, billing, and workload all while attempting to leave time for your personal life. When you build a freelance team, all that work gets multiplied for each member… and you’re the one who needs to organize it all.
You can certainly outsource your least favorite parts of the job, but as the leader of a team, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on. It’s not a good idea to simply pawn off all your management duties. Otherwise, you’re merely collaborating with other people on occasion rather than scaling up your business.
The good news is you don’t need to jump off into the deep end right away. You can grow your team in baby steps, one freelancer at time. This gives you the chance to adjust to your managerial duties, growing only when you’re fully equipped to bring on the next member. I recommend starting out by supercharging your own productivity, so you can implement a tried and true system for your new scaled business.
Conclusion
The idea of ‘scaling your freelance business’ may sound like a far-fetched scheme from a business book. However, it simply means hiring other freelancers to help you take on work you can’t handle alone. It requires you to flex your management skills, but you don’t need a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) to pull it off.
You can always opt to keep working on your own if management isn’t your style. That being said, scaling your business is worth considering because:
- It can increase your income.
- You can handle more clients with a team.
- You can outsource the work you don’t want to handle.
What questions do you still have about scaling your freelance business? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
Image credit: Pixabay.