As a freelancer or consultant, it's important to know how to scale to having multiple clients if you want to be profitable. The whole essence of building a profitable freelance business or building a lucrative side hustle income depends upon your ability to create multiple flows of revenue from diversified sources. Each new client you secure can have a multiplier effect on your income if you leverage it right and it also adds a layer of security and predictability to your yearly and monthly salaries. Scaling takes proper planning and execution to get the most for the time and energy you put in. If you're not able to eventually take your freelancing business to a handful or a dozen of clients then you're not going to be able to have the most success possible.

If you want to do this on a full-time basis, that is what is required because only having one or two clients will not scale you. One of the best things as a freelancer is to have multiple streams of income because when something happens to one of your clients, you still have the clients to support you. Unfortunately, as we have seen with the year 2020 a lot of people relied on only one stream of income that they thought was ‘reliable’ but now they're unemployed. Keep reading down below where I go over three actionable ways you can scale your freelancing or consulting business to multiple clients to put you into the most secure position possible. 

1. Build Effective Systems 
2. Leverage Your Existing Network
3. Over-Deliver On Value
   

1) Build Effective Systems

The first way you can scale to multiple clients is to focus on building out effective systems and effective processes. An effective freelance system is relevant in every stage of your freelance client life cycle from when you're prospecting, to when you're on-boarding clients, working with clients, communicating with them and sending them reports, all the way to the time when you’re finishing that project.

An effective system allows you to approach every client project the same way. If you want to be a successful freelancer, you will need to build out an effective system by having a consistent set of tools and have an effective process for each client you will work with. In order for your freelance business to scale, it needs to be able to function on its own without you because If everything relies on you, then your business is going to be limited. This is why having a freelance system is important because it will help you grow your business without needing you to constantly be involved. 

Benefits of Having an Effective System are:

• Helps you be productive and more profitable
• Helps your work more enjoyable and less stressful 
• Helps you be more organized and collected
• Helps you scale to more clients more efficiently

You can also build out effective documents that you can copy over and duplicate and edit for different clients, which can help for any ongoing task you’re doing so it runs more efficiently and saves you time. Pro Tip: The next time you do a project, save everything you do and make it into a template you can replicate for the next task. You can also make scripts for phone calls and save questions to ask. When you have a repeatable set of actions that you can take for every step of the process, it will help you save hours of unnecessary work.

 Example of an Effective System Structure:

1. Qualify and land the client
2. Reuse your templates, notes and tools
3. Gather up information
4. Sign and contract
5. Create and deliver results
6. Review with client

What ultimately matters is that you create a personal effective system that works for you and use it to keep your client's work organized. Having effective freelance systems in place will keep you from overworking yourself. In addition, it allows you to foster better relationships with clients because you’re able to dedicate your time towards what matters and not just busy work.

Having pre-defined processes also make the entire journey smoother for both parties. Being organized and having the proper tools to succeed as a freelancer or consultant is not only going to help you land more clients but it's going to help you deliver the best quality of work overall. This will help assure you that you’re putting your energy towards the most productive tasks and not just doing busy work because you skipped building out an effective freelance system, so do not skip this step if you want to scale to multiple freelancing or consulting clients. 

2) Leverage Your Existing Network

The second way you can scale to multiple freelancing or consulting clients is to leverage your existing network. Your existing network is with clients you already worked with and clients you've worked with in the past. An existing network can also be friends or family members. Many freelancers tend to overlook this step because they don't want to talk about business with friends and family, or they hesitate to ask their client for a referral.

This is not going to cut it if you want to scale because in reality you need to market yourself with clients and with friends and family because when you have a freelance service or you're a consultant and you know that you can help businesses, you must go out there and help them. You can’t help anyone if they don’t know who you are or what you can do for them, so you shouldn't feel bad for trying to leverage your inner circle network and see what kind of referrals you can get.

You can start to see who's starting a new business that you can help with and get yourself in the door. Leverage your network every time you get a new client, try to get a referral as soon as you bring them on-board and then every month after that you can try to figure out different systems that work for you to get more clients to touch base with that network. As a freelancer, you should always be looking for strategic ways that will help grow your business. If you aren’t looking for ways to leverage your freelance business, then you’re not going to scale. 

“Your workforce is your most valuable asset. The knowledge and skills they have to represent the fuel that drives the engine of business, and you can leverage that knowledge."

 -Harvey Mackay

The main goal as a freelancer is to deliver as much value as possible and gain the most trust possible with your clients so all your work pays off in the long-term. Once you get recurring clients it opens up a door for additional opportunities as well. This is why you should leverage your network for referrals, because word of mouth marketing is the most effective type of marketing. People are going to trust their friends and their family members and what they hear much more than a stranger they met online as a freelancer. Having trust through referrals will lead you to more opportunities to get more clients who will be more likely give you a shot and even become long-term clients down the road (which is the ultimate goal). Remember that you're not just a freelancer or consultant, you're in the people business and you need to connect with people and leverage those connections and relationships within your network if you want to be profitable and get multiple long-term clients.

3) Over-Deliver On Value

The third way you can scale the multiple freelancing clients or multiple consulting clients is to deliver extremely good value. When you have that first client or you have a couple of clients and you're already asking yourself "how can I scale to having more clients?" First, ask yourself these questions:

• "How can I maximize the value I'm already delivering to my current clients?”

• “How can I go so above and beyond that the clients I'm working with now start to leave me amazing reviews and provide me with numerous referrals?” 

• “How can I help more and go above and beyond?”

If you have a couple of clients that are somewhat satisfied and then you try to immediately get more clients, take a step back and focus on the current clients first by always putting extra time and work into every project you work on. You will see that the client will be more than happy to pay you because you over delivered and helped them with more than they thought they needed. When you start to think about how you can over-deliver in value to clients, you will start to be able to leverage that credibility and build a case study to show future clients that you go above and beyond with all clients and that show that this is the type of value you bring to the table. Having a good case studies in your portfolio and positive reviews is going to help you land more clients in the future. That makes you appear more reliable in their eyes and increases the chances they will turn into a repeat customer of yours.

The goal as a freelancer is to get long-term recurring clients, not find a client and do a one-time project and move on to the next. When you are over-delivering, it will open up a whole world of different referrals and different connections because if one client has a great experience with you, they're going to tell their friends, colleagues and their family. The better service you provide, the more your clients will want to stay with you over the long-term. High-level value is what you should always focus on providing to your client to show them you understand their business and their goals. Working to increase the level of value you provide and building strong relationships will pay off in the end.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, these were three helpful tips that you can use to go out there to start landing more clients. Follow these three tactics that you can build your foundation on by first building your effective systems so everything is repeatable, second to leverage your existing network especially when you get new contacts in, and third to focus on the value you're providing because that is going to pay off for itself in the long-term.

If you want to watch my video on how you can scale to multiple clients, click here to watch it now!

- Paul Mendes

 Founder of Profitable Freelancer