Set a course for your freelance writing business, with a clear destination.
Prepare yourself for an extended “navigating a boat” analogy.
The majority of freelancers launch their boats (aka, freelance businesses), raise their sails and sail around in various directions, hoping to find some work.
The approach is fine if your ambitions are limited to picking up some part-time income.
But if you want to make six figures as a freelancer, you need to do better than that.
Before you raise your sails, spend a little time with your chart.
Decide on where it is you want to go.
What does your destination look like? Where do you want to get to? What is it going to take to get there?
You need to plan your trip, just the same as if you really were going to set sail on an extended ocean voyage.
If this sounds a little fanciful, here is how I might describe where I’m sailing to over the next three years:
“I will at least double the income I make now as a freelance writer, author and coach. At the same time I will pay special attention to growing more sources of passive, residual income.”
I have an objective, a goal. I know where I’m going.
I can mark that destination on my chart. But, as with planning a sea voyage, marking where I want to get to isn’t going to mean anything unless I actually figure out how to do it.
I need to figure out what actions to take, and then act. I’ll also need to use various tools to help keep me on course. So I’ll create milestones or waypoints for myself.
This means that although I won’t achieve my goal for three years, there are plenty of waypoints I need to aim for, reach and sail past.
Once you have a destination, and you know your waypoints, your entire approach to work will change. And for the better.
When you consider taking on a new client or project, you’ll first look at your chart and make sure that accepting this particular work is going to help you move forward in the direction you want.
Being able to see your destination in your mind’s eye enables you to make much smarter decisions about your business, day after day and month after month.
And if you do veer of course from time to time, that’s OK. Just make the necessary course adjustment and keep going.
That’s the key to this process.
When freelancers with no plan and no destination veer “off course”, it means nothing. They have no course mapped out, so they don’t ever know what they should be doing, other than saying yes to any and every job that comes along.
Once you have your course mapped out, it’s easy to make corrections.
This is truly the difference between making a part-time income and making a strong six figures.
Decide on your destination.
Establish your waypoints.
Understand the actions required to get from one way point to the next.
Make corrections if and when you are blown off course.
Job done.
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