There’s lots of reasons:
- You’re just not that good at what you do.
- You’re not very good at dealing with people.
- You picked the wrong market and services to offer.
I could go on and on.
But, by far, the #1 reason freelancers fail is they never learn how to consistently get clients. They rely on luck or “word of mouth”. They try this and that, but never learn and apply anything consistently.
They constantly worry that one day the clients will dry up.
And, if that does happen…
They have no idea how to fix it.
That was me the first few years of my freelancing career. I’d gotten a few clients by pure dumb luck. I’d picked a few up off Upwork. But, I really had no idea how. I didn’t know what to do to get more.
And, I clung to those clients like a vegan to her tofu.
And then, one of them decided to move on from me.
It was going to be a huge hit to my income.
And, I had no plan.
All the crazy thoughts kicked in. What if I never get another client? What if I can’t pay my bills? What if I have to go back to a regular job? What if my wife and kids see me as a failure?
On and on and on.
The silver lining is all that gave me the motivation to figure this out.
And, I did.
In fact, I built a system so powerful that I was turning away 4-5 clients/month because I simply had too much work. Several of those were high profile clients I’d have killed for just a few years earlier.
Of course, I’m no genius (just ask my kids).
This stuff really isn’t all that hard actually.
In fact, I basically just took what other service businesses had been doing for hundreds of years and combined it in a unique way. Something, I’ve never seen anyone else talk about, but based on well-established, tried and true business principles.
So, it’s no big secret.
Or, overly hard to implement.
You just gotta know what it is.
In any case, that’s what I teach in my Beginner’s Guide to Freelance course. And, you can get access to it for nothing over on SkillShare. All the details on the course and how to get no-cost access are here: https://johnmorrisonline.com/freelance.
Later,
John
