At the start of my business journey, I was like most other creative freelancers. I was decent at my craft, but I had no clue about how to run a business. Opportunities came because I could do the work, but I knew if I wanted to grow beyond being a “pants-on-fire freelancer,” I was going to need to figure out the business side of things.
I dug into business book after business book, extracting a little gem here and a little nugget there. That question for self education, combined with consistently documenting my personal business learnings, helped me turn my solo freelancer business into a thriving agency. I learned what a successful business has and I saw plenty of examples of unsuccessful business missing these key things.
Is Your Business a “Real Business” or Are You Still a “Pants-on-Fire Freelancer”?
My book education plus my “real world” MBA helped me organize this list of things that your business needs to have in place to become a “real business.”
- Vision of the business you are trying to create
- Defined business goals and objectives
- Financial plan for sustaining your business
- Defined target customer
- Understanding of customer’s common problems
- Products/services that solve customer problems
- Knowledge of industry trends
- Positioning strategy against top competitors
- Marketing taglines, statements, and messages
- A style for your visual brand (logo, colors, etc.)
- Marketing materials to gain exposure
- Sales strategy to find and sell clients
- Process to track opportunities and clients (CRM)
- Strategy for pricing your products and service
- Proposal templates to use in sales
- Contract templates to close deals
- Production task lists for each service you offer
- Production software to manage projects
- Post project review and upsell process
- Financial management software and processes
- Strategy for tracking and analyzing business data
- Strategy for hiring and scaling your business
- An exit strategy
Carefully analyze the list. What are you missing? What can you improve? Great success awaits you as you get these things in place.
