Real Life People Were An Absolute Game Changer For My Freelance Business

I gave a talk to a group of freelancers last week and a common theme kept cropping up. Many of the freelancers there felt isolated, and one of their main goals for this year is to socialise with more freelancers and build up their networks.

This works wonders for two reasons:

• You avoid going stir crazy sitting at home all day on your own (trust me, I’ve been there, and having NO ONE to talk to about a crappy email from a client or a project you’re so done with can really wear on you)
• You get more work — it’s as simple as that

Being part of a pool of freelancers is a great way to get referrals.

Say, for example, you’re a designer and you’re a part of a freelance community of other designers. One of those designers might get passed a project that’s not a good fit for them, or they might be at capacity with their workload and need somewhere to offload a new prospect to.

And hey, there you are waiting to save them!

I can safely say that building a network of awesome fellow freelancers was an absolute game changer for my business and helped me land better quality clients in a number of ways.