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How to Benefit From a Freelancer’s Mind-Set

November 11, 2009

After watching longtime colleagues get laid off during a painful downsizing, a friend of mine is putting together her résumé. She realized she could be next, and she wanted to be ready.

“It’s scary,” she confided in me. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the hunt, interviewing, marketing my skills. Even though I’m still employed, I’ve got to stop being a company woman and think more like a freelancer.”

Layoffs or not, any career-minded employee can benefit from having a freelancer’s mind-set. I’m biased, of course: I’ve been a self-employed freelancer for almost seven years now. The idea of looking for work isn’t scary to me, even during a recession, because that’s what a freelancer does all the time. Even during the fat times of a long-term, well-paying contract, as a freelancer, you’re still always on the lookout for what might be next.

Here are a few more ways a freelancer thinks and works that can benefit traditional employees.

Freelancers know how to hustle. As a freelancer, you can’t afford to become irrelevant, because that could mean that the next gig will never come. Freelancers are constantly networking, marketing, and staying on top of the latest and greatest tools and news in their field to make themselves the go-to person for a certain kind of service or expertise. Good freelancers live on their toes. They’re adaptable to changing opportunities, and can quickly shift gears, evaluate different jobs, refer potential clients to their freelancer friends, and chat at the virtual watercooler about who needs what. Freelancers know when it’s time to pull an all-nighter and when they can take an afternoon off to catch a matinee. Freelancers don’t put their careers on cruise control for long periods of time because they’re setting the course — not their boss or company.

Freelancers are acutely aware of costs in time and money. The phrase “time is money” doesn’t hit home until you’re sitting at your desk, goofing off, and realize that you’re wasting your own money by doing so. A freelancer has his or her hourly rate top-of-mind at all times. Any project a freelancer works on has a price and a number of hours attached to it, and that awareness makes for a more efficient and productive workday. A freelancer is less likely to waste time on things that don’t matter because they can’t afford to. As an employee, do you know what your hourly rate of pay is? Have you thought about how much of that time and money you spend putting cover sheets on your TPS reports or letting that meeting drone on 30 minutes longer than it should?

Freelancers do work for reasons other than money. Freelancers don’t just get paid in money, they also look for gigs and affiliations that will create connections, get them experience, and open doors to more work, expertise, or contacts. A freelancer might turn down an okay-paying job that’s just not that interesting, but opt to speak at a local event and write a daily blog for free to get their name out there. A freelancer is always looking for the “good” work, the interesting contracts that will pack her CV with marketable experience, which in turn differentiates her from other contractors. In my experience, there are two common kinds of freelance work: the well-paying tedium, and the underpaying interesting jobs. The first funds the second. (The third kind, the well-paying interesting contract, also comes along once in awhile, and getting one is like hitting the lottery.) Freelancers choose what contracts to work on based on several factors, not just monetary compensation. So, the next time the boss is looking for someone to join a committee, head up a task force, or lead a new initiative? Even if it’s more work that won’t get you a salary boost, think like a freelancer and choose based on what other benefits might be in store.

Freelancers build (and risk) their reputation with every job. When you’re an independent freelancer whose name is attached to everything you produce, there’s a higher level of accountability than when you work under the umbrella of a larger team or company. Freelancers — especially the perfectionist types — strive for a higher level of excellence because they own every single thing they do, and every job is a stepping stone toward the next. If your name appeared on every single thing you produced every day at your company, would you feel differently than you do now?

A big part of being an independent contractor is the need to constantly market oneself, and that requires a level of ego-centricity that won’t work in a team situation. When you work in a group, it can’t be all about you — but in the larger spectrum of your career, thinking like a freelancer can make you more efficient, marketable, and able to weather a storm.

Gina Trapani is the founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Her book based on the website, Upgrade Your Life, is in its second edition.

This article is about MANAGING YOURSELF
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