The ULTIMATE Blueprint for FREELANCE Success: 8 Achievements of Flourishing Freelancers

In the video above, I'm going to dive into the eight achievements you must accomplish to earn six figures as a freelancer while working part-time. You may not start part-time; you might have to start full-time, as I did, and then work your way towards part-time. These eight achievements are from my book called Path of the Freelancer.

Not only have I earned six figures as a freelancer, but I've also earned $1.5 million since I started freelancing in 2014. If you want to dive deeper, you can grab your copy of the book here or get the book on Amazon. These eight steps will give you a summary of what the book's about, so you can figure out if it's a good fit for you.

This video is for you whether you want to explore freelancing, are already freelancing and it's not going well, or it's going okay and you want to make it awesome.

As a freelancer, I work with small business leaders to help them amplify their influence and income by growing their audience, nurturing their leads, and cultivating loyal customers. I became a freelancer after closing my marketing agency. As a freelancer, I've been able to earn more money and work fewer hours with less responsibility as a freelancer than I ever did as a marketing company owner.

My success as a freelancer is based on the following blueprint. If you follow the footsteps, you can live the life that I've crafted.

Achievement 1: Fully Committed to Freelance

Our first achievement is to be fully committed to freelancing. It means you're all in. For some, freelancing isn't even on the radar because the focus of life is on survival. Perhaps you have a job and you're just trying to make enough money to pay your bills.

Others dream about freelancing, while some abandon it because of the bundled difficulty. It is the few who fully commit, pushing beyond these difficulties into a life of flourishing. A quick way to test our commitment is to ask what we will do when paying projects disappear. Will you look for a job, or will you seek out the next paying client?

Achievement 2: Your Offering is Packaged in a Compelling Way

The solution you're offering to solve a problem must be packaged compellingly. A strong freelancing foundation is built around knowing our financial goals, what solutions we offer, and how we'll work with our customers.

Once we know these details, we'll refine them in the publishing and promotion process.

It's hard for people to hire us when they don't know how we can help them. Can you concisely communicate what you do and who you do it for?

Achievement 3: Building a Steady Stream of Paying Clients

I am now in year 11 of my freelancing, and I have had a steady stream of clients for probably seven or eight years. The first handful of years were a little more spotty, but building this steady stream is an amazing feat with incredible benefits.

When you're an employee, you get a regular salary, which gives you a glimpse of this. The problem is that it's a single source of income. I work with a dozen clients at a time, so if one of them has to stop working with me, I might lose 10% of my income, but I have another client ready to start. That's the power of building a steady stream of paying clients.

Finding the first client can feel like a difficult task, and it is. Tapping into a constant stream can feel impossible. In this achievement, we must find new work consistently while also building a community of advocates to help share the burden. When the rubber meets the road, do you know how to drum up new paying clients? This tends to be the achievement that most freelancers struggle with. It's why I've created a course to dive deeper into the topic.

Achievement 4: Active Clients are Maximized

The highest-impact, least-effort activity we can do to increase income is by maximizing the paying work we are doing with existing clients.

Here, we build agenda-free relationships, passive income streams, and ongoing client engagements towards a place where we only work with sweet-spot clients.

Are you providing the most value possible to your customers? Could they be paying you more?

Achievement 5: Unaffected by the Roller Coaster

Feast and famine are a common occurrence for freelancers, especially in the early years. It doesn't have to be this way.

We can build a system that helps us prevent and respond to the financial and emotional ups and downs that come with freelancing.

Are you riding the roller coaster, or have you made the wise decision to step off?

Achievement 6: Wise and Precise Financial Management

We can quickly go from success to failure with a few bad financial decisions. Independent freelancers need to get legit, track what matters, get paid on time, and proactively manage taxes. Do you have the financial visibility to make wise decisions?

Achievement 7: Unified Personal and Work Lives

Our work quickly becomes a burden when it is no longer enjoyable or lacks meaning. When we're drained, it affects our health, family, and friends.

To sustain our vocation over the long haul, we need to adapt, communicate with those we care about, and live a healthy life.

It's not easy to bring our personal and professional lives together, but it's well worth it. Is freelancing driving you towards or away from your values and goals?

Achievement 8: Share What We've Mastered

The final achievement is sharing what we've mastered. Others benefit from us sharing with them. In our journey, we glean wisdom from lessons learned. This is valuable insight to share privately and publicly. It is the process of teaching what we've mastered that helps us fully understand what we know and why we know it.

It is the final and most important step in our journey to success. Who are you helping?

Conclusion

Content like this, and my book, are part of that eighth achievement—taking my success and sharing it with you so you can have the same success. You can go on those vacations you don't have the money for, or spend more time with your family because you're only working part of the week, when you're flourishing as a freelancer.

To reach my high-level goals, I only have to work between 20 and 25 billable hours each week, and I make a six-figure income from that. This gives me a ton of flexibility to create content like this and do other things. Freelancing can empower you to live the life you want, earn the income you want, work the hours you want, and live the lifestyle you've always wanted.

This is all in Path of the Freelancer, a blueprint to help you flourish. Check out the book at pathofthefreelancer.com or on Amazon.

As you look across these eight achievements, which of them do you feel is your strongest, and where do you feel you're the weakest?

The weak points are your growth opportunities to take your business to the next level.

I look forward to hearing from you when you've done that.