You became a consultant or a freelancer for the freedom it promised. You can create your own schedule, choose your own clients, and be your own boss, all great things. But what happens when you've run out of hours to bill and you've maxed out the money you can earn? What do you do when you've hired all the clients you can handle yourself and you're tired of trading your time for money? It's a wall that many freelancers and consultants, even very successful ones, run into at some point. If this is where you're at in your entrepreneurial journey, or you feel like it's fast approaching, it's time to scale up your freelancing or consulting business. Read on to find out how. What does it mean to scale anyway? “ Scaling a business ” is a term so often used that we have all developed our own interpretation of its meaning. For the purposes of this blog post, scaling a business refers to setting up infrastructure so that your business can expand its reach and increase its profits without sacrificing quality or requiring more time.
In the employee email database case of a service business like freelancing or consulting, think of it this way: if you had an influx of 10 new clients this week, could you handle it? If the answer is no, your business is not scalable. This would be true for most freelancers. When there is only one of you and 24 hours a day, you can only take a certain number of customers. Your income is limited. it's too much This is perhaps the biggest criticism of service businesses, especially those of independent or solo consultants: "They don't scale." But, as you will see below, that is not true. EXCLUSIVE FREE TRAINING: Successful founders teach you how to start and grow an online business3 ways to scale a freelance business Option 1: Outsource the work Outsourcing work involves delegating tasks to someone other than yourself or outside of your team. This can be done in one of two ways: outsource administrative tasks to a virtual assistant or online sales manager, or outsource your core services to another freelancer.
Outsourcing of administrative tasks If you're considering outsourcing admin tasks and wondering where to start, start with the tasks you hate doing. This could be customer service, accounting or billing. As a general rule, these are the tasks that are not the daily bread of your business. You need to specialize in providing a particular service to your customers and outsource everything else. Gretta van Riel , founder of SkinnyMe Tea, is a good example. When she first launched her e-commerce business, she tried to control everything. "I wouldn't even let anyone touch customer service for the first six months," she told Foundr. "I was in customer service like eight hours a day answering every email because I thought it made me a bad founder if I let anyone else do anything." Eventually, however, as she grew her business, she had to learn to let go and delegate tasks to her team. Thanks in part to this decision, she was able to grow her business to earn millions of dollars in annual revenue. The same goes for your business. While you may think you need to have a hand in every part of it, a crucial part of scaling a business is learning which tasks you should n't handle yourself.