I know the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I am a huge fan of it. But recently, I am trying to spice it up a bit – not because I need more work (I don’t) but because I want to push my limits and do more for my clients and for myself as a client. The best way to do that is through experimenting. See why in the video below.
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Today I’ll give you some food for thought about experimenting and how it can boost your freelance success.
I get it – you are at a stage of your freelance career where things are going well for you. You get invited to projects on a regular basis. You have a couple of long-term clients whose workload is enough to make it through the month. You are so familiar with the projects you work on that anything can hardly ever surprise you. Guess what!
You are stuck in your comfort zone and that could kill your freelance career.
If you do too much of the same thing, it will become routine. While that is a good thing when developing new habits, it is absolutely not good when your job becomes just a tedious chore you have to do yet another day.
If you don’t challenge yourself, you’ll start hating what you do. And if you hate being a freelancer, you won’t be a successful one, I promise.
The best way to challenge yourself as a freelancer is through experimenting.
And I don’t mean run experiments at your clients’ expense. I mean develop new skills. Try new things to improve your existing skills. Employ new tactics and techniques to improve your performance and your clients’ campaigns, sites or businesses. Strive to excel and improve, every day. Win new clients just to bring variety in your work.
Although I try to read many of your posts, I don’t comment often, but with this one you really gave me something to think.
I always thought that we shouldn’t jump here and there and try to learn every skill because there is simply no time to do that, and I always say that we need to concentrate on one narrow field and become experts in it.
And with this post not that I have just changed my mind, but it gave me a reason to do small research about my field of expertise (C# developer – WinForms) only to find out interesting sub-field to expanding my skills and yet not to jump into something completely new and unfamiliar to me.
Thank you for encouraging to check new things and good luck to you with the new things you are trying now: Video and audio in your posts.
Hi, Alexandar – I couldn’t agree more with your comment.
I too am a firm believer that one should specialize, especially when starting. Pick a niche and become an expert in it. This is the better way to break through and make a name for yourself as a freelancer.
As time passes and the number of complete projects grows though, you can (and should, if you ask me) branch out into related fields to cater to larger audience, or to offer more complete array of services to your target audience, or just to bring variety in your work.
I am so glad you picked up my key takeaway message and that this post found you at the right time and gave you good food for thought.
Happy freelancing 😀
~Diana
Hi Diana,
Thanks for the challenge! Our success are determined by our willingness to do and try new things. It seems every week there is something new to do and I love it!!!!
It really is about comfort zone and shifting those comfort zones and getting into the habit of doing new things.
Thanks again for the inspiration!
~ Don Purdum
Awesome, I am glad this post inspired you, Don – keep on experimenting, trying new things on a regular basis is a fantastic habit! 😀
~Diana
Very insightful post Diana. I have learned to push myself in order to get out of my comfort zone. Recently, I started marketing my services on Fiverr on something entirely different from what I do – social media marketing. I’m loving the challenge and my clients are loving my work too. And I agree that it gets to a point where you are so familiar with your projects that you are almost do them in your sleep!
Great news, Sheeeroh – pushing your limits and enjoying the challenge is a great sign. A somewhat unrelated question – how do you like Fiverr? I have heard only bad things about it (low-paying gigs and all) but I have never used it myself so it would be interesting to hear first-hand feedback and experience 🙂
~Diana