Today I want to share with you how I was able to ALMOST double my income year two in freelance, after having made $55,000 my first year and then shocking even my own self when I made $85,000 in 2020, among covid.
Hi, I’m Elizabeth and I do freelance bookkeeping and forensic accounting and if you’re new here, I have another article explaining how I got into freelancing and exactly how my first year went and you can find that article here if you’d like that backstory!
To jump in today’s enthralling content, I want to focus on year two. To start with, I’ve always been a goal setter and I do a tedious amount of planning, foreshadowing, dreaming, daydreaming, etc. I think all of these things are great benefits to actually helping you get across the finish line!
Client Retention
One factor as to how I made $85,000 my second year freelancing, is realizing in a business where your gross monthly income exactly equates to not only how much work you’ve accomplished but also how happy your clients are, client RETENTION is #1! You want to keep each and every one of those clients you worked so hard to win! You started out in a sea of thousands competing and you landed the client and you did the work. But KEEPING that client can sometimes be as hard as getting it.
A tip for client retention is to treat them like family, not that toxic family you only see on holidays but the ones you love who make you feel warm and fuzzy. You want to handle what they’ve hired you to handle but you also want to ask about their day, their life, their personal life, their spouse, kids, etc. Take the time on work calls to just be a human for a moment and check in, human to human. By taking the time to do that regularly, you are forging a personal relationship that isn’t only professional and you are not just a purely replaceable person to them. Over time, you become a friend to them and they value you and your work even more.
Fortitude
As in, don’t be so quick to give up when you don’t get instant gratification! Today in our modern society we are bogged down by false idols on social media and the instant gratification of growing up with the internet and cell phones. When you do freelance you are operating YOUR OWN BUSINESS. RUNNING A BUSINESS IS NOT EASY. Granted, we have days that things go great, the to do list rapidly shrinks, we complete work from the beach via laptop while on vacay, we can pay off large debts and travel in luxury.
But most of the time, we have our heads down focusing on work. When we aren’t focused on being productive and getting the actual work done, you’re MANAGING your business by invoicing clients, following up, networking, looking for new clients, checking in on goals, financial planning, goal setting, etc.
How I made $85,000 my second year freelancing is because I had the gumption to not give up! So you aren’t going to make it as a freelancer turned business owner if you don’t have the personal FORTITUDE to push through the hard stuff and put in the real work!
Quality over Quantity
Another tip on how I made $85,000 my second year freelancing is that I chose quality over quantity! Since I’m coming to work everyday facing my emails, taking calls and scheduling zooms as if each client is a dear friend or family member, I’m taking my time to do what I was hired to do…WELL! I tune out distractions, I take my job seriously, I take each task seriously whether it takes 5 minutes or 2 hours.
Not only do I offer my clients superior service and a quality of work but in that same regard I value quality customers over having a huge customer list. There have been times I had opportunities to grow my firm but I just didn’t have the capacity to expand at that time. I knew if I tried to force it it’d only cause me additional stress and I might not be able to provide that same superior level of service, so I didn’t do it. So rather than focusing on having 10 clients, if you have 8 AMAZING clients, be good with that for now until it’s easier to scale, when the time feels better to do so!
But if you want to learn even more on this topic, you gotta check out my book that recently launched! Plus the ebook is on sale right now for just $2.99 on Amazon!
After 4+ years in freelance and growing a successful small firm that has made over 6 figures multiple years in a row, I wrote a book! I wanted to help other people who feel trapped by the 9-5, who yearn for time freedom, or who have a creative skill they’ve been wishing they could turn in a full time gig!
So being as I’ve been a writer since I was a pre-teen, I wanted to share everything I learned in written form, to try to reach as many people as possible! You don’t have to be a mom, don’t have to be 34, you could be a 19 year old young man or even a 60 year old woman looking to supplement income!
The thing is, if you’re looking for some time and financial freedom, then you should give this book a read because what do you have to lose? It’s less than $10 and will likely take you less than 3 hours to read cover to cover and best case, you’ve learned amazing new skills and tips on how to hit the races running!
You can check out my book on Amazon here, it’s a very quick read!
If you’re just curious though and not ready to commit, I’d like to offer you the first 5 chapters of my book for free when you opt in to join my reader newsletter! You can find the link on my website https://booksbyelizabethrichey.com/ on how to sign up with just your email and then the pdf of the book will be emailed to you! If you go this route, please do let me know what you think of it!
Review from Amazon
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and if so why not give me a follow or subscribe, as I’m always sharing more about great places to eat, Airbnb recommendations, traveling, health tips, recipes and more! Thanks for the read!
If you’d like to read my personal story, you can find it here!
xoxo,
Elizabeth Richey
About the Author: Elizabeth Richey, living and thriving in rural Arkansas, Aquarian and iced coffee enthusiast. When she’s not writing, gardening, playing with her chocolate lab Maple or sharing videos on YouTube (Elizabeth’s Many Adventures) you can find her enjoying time with her family or traveling somewhere new! Most of the time she’s dreaming of being kicked back in her hammock in her cottage garden listening to the birds sing.
