The Number One Skill Successful Freelancers Have
Freelancing isn’t a competitive sport, but sometimes it feels that way. In the course of looking up advice, information, or best practices you’ll inevitably run across someone’s power-hour success story.
The stories all seem to go the same way. “I was broke, homeless, and addicted to snorting prescription kitty litter when I got my first job. Forty-two minutes later I was booked up for three years and had a six-digit savings account. Sign up here to join my completely free course on how to make seven figures a month writing rehab brochures in the backseat of your car.”
Worse yet, it always seems the worst writers get the most work.
The kind of writers who write every paragraph on a new line.
Regardless of how venal a writing sin that is.
How do these sorts of freelancers stay buried in work, while other writers — potentially even better writers — grind out work at content mills for pennies a paragraph?
What’s the secret?
The secret is what your alcoholic business school buddies have been trying to say for years. Freelancing is actually only 20% based on the skill that you have. A fat 80% of that skill is networking.
Networking doesn’t mean sliding into an oily polyester suit and palming crumpled business cards into people’s hands at cocktail parties. Nor does it require you to even leave your house, lair, or backseat of your car. In fact, you network constantly whether you realize it or not.
Networking is actually two parts that you can divide into active and passive networking. Both are equally important, but it’s nice to know that you actually only have control over one.
Active networking is the act of reaching out through your social media or Rolodex of crumpled business cards and asking anyone who knows anyone if there is work to be had. This is the hard work, heel-sweat pavement pounding that starts the gears turning.
Passive networking happens without you realizing it. It’s a friend of a friend recommending you for work because they hear you’re pretty good. It’s an old customer bringing you up at a barbecue when their friend is starting a business. It’s your mother bragging to her hairstylist about what a fantastic writer you are and how you have just been buried so deep in work you can’t even spare twenty minutes for a FaceTime call.
The real reason that these freelancers stay buried in work while 80% of freelancers can’t find their first job is simple. They’re on the inside.
The reason for this is simple. People are comfortable with familiarity. They like things to be comfortable and they aren’t comfortable meeting someone new, taking a risk on someone new, or venturing into the unknown. When their friend recommends someone, most people will hire the recommendation over a stellar applicant.
Here’s the kicker. Even if that recommendation is less than stellar, most people will still continue to work with them even over a better candidate. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
How can you apply this in your career? If you’re having trouble nailing your first job, or if you’re struggling to keep the tap of work flowing, don’t despair. Polishing your writing is useless if no one is going to see it. Start going through everyone you know who might be interested in work. Be shameless. Market yourself to everyone you know, because if they like what you do, you’ll get recommendations.
And when you get recommendations, the result is fractal — infinite and exponential. You’ll go from completely offerless to swamped in less time than it takes for Romaine lettuce to turn into goo in your crisper. I should know. It happened to me. I mean the offers, but I guess the lettuce goo as well.
So stop obsessing over whether you’re dangling participles or murdering the paragraph as a form of language cohesion. Get out there and start pounding the pavement. Freelancing is a rain dance, but it will rain eventually.
