How to Give Yourself a Promotion as a Freelancer

All right, folks. Today, this video is for anyone who calls himself a freelancer, prelancer, creative entrepreneur, anything like that where you don't really have one boss, but many bosses, three or four or five or six, and they're called clients. And so, this is for those of us who really have a non-traditional career path. I understand what it's like to feel stuck, like you can't just ask for a promotion from your boss.

You have to go to your clients, and each time you have to say, "Hey, I'm changing my business. I need more money." Hopefully, you're providing more services, but sometimes it's it's hard to do that, and it's hard to feel like, "How can I get ahead as a freelancer, and how can I charge what I'm worth?" So, that's what we're talking about today. So, the first step in this process is a mindset shift. It's that you are not the main character.

You're not the hero of this story, and the client, instead, is the hero. You are their guide. You are helping them get to their destination, but you are not the person at the focus. And this is really borrowed from the StoryBrand by Donald Miller framework. I went through their training years ago, and really was foundational to me to figure out, "Who am I in this world? How do I talk to my clients?

How do I present my offering? And how can I help them get what they want?" So, really, that's the difference between just saying, "I know HTML, I know JavaScript, I know CSS" versus "I can help you get a website that lands more customers." People don't really care, frankly, about how much technical knowledge you have. They care about how that knowledge can help them solve their goals and get to a better place for them or their business or whatever with their boss.

That's what they're looking for. Reframe yourself from just a technical expert, but you have to connect the dots to how that works for the client. In practice, here's what that looks like for me. I listen much more than I talk when I'm on a sales call, and a client will actually give you what they're looking for. They'll tell you all the answers right up front. You just have to listen for them and let them tell you what they're looking for.

Some things they might say are, "Our last agency just took a long time to get all the changes back, so we're looking for someone that's a little more responsive." You don't have to say, "Oh, I took a certificate to be more responsive. I have these responsive credentials. That's not important. You can say, "Oh, yeah, great. I understand it." Just paraphrase and just remember that that's what they're looking for.

And then even in my proposals, what I'll say is, "I heard you say you're looking for somebody that's a little more responsive than your last agency. Here's my proposal to make that happen." That kind of thing is super powerful and it conveys that you pay attention, that you're understanding what they want, and that you're not just thinking about, "How do I insert this portfolio piece? How do I explain that I'm a Webflow expert and that I have all these skills?" They don't care.

They just care how you can solve their problem. So, remember that. For me, one of the things that's really important is to be honest about my limitations and what I do and don't do. I'm just a single person here. I'm a company of one. I don't really take on a lot of design projects because it's not my favorite thing to do. It doesn't get my creative juices flowing. And so, I'll honestly tell my clients and my prospects that if you need design, I might not be the right fit or I'm going to hire somebody else and work with a different collaborator to make this happen.

Honest about my limitations. And then that gives me a great position to say, "I am the right person if you need this." Because you haven't gone around just saying, "Yeah, I can do that. Oh, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. Sure." Everything you say, "What a miracle. Everything you want I can do perfectly." That's actually not true and a client might have a hard time believing that. I like to be honest about what is a fit for me and what's not.

Hand in hand with that, I always try to take ownership as much as I can of a problem. And what that means is that if it's in my world, it's my job to make sure that it goes right. So, even if I wasn't directly responsible, I can find some way to say, "Yeah, you're right. I should have checked in with this person to make sure that they had what they need from me." Or I should have followed up with you to say, "Oh, I'm still waiting for this deliverable." It's not their fault for not getting it to me.

It's my fault that I didn't over communicate and say, "Hey, I'm still waiting on this. Let me know how I can move it forward." I always try to take ownership. That allows me to then solve the actual problem instead of playing defense or playing the blame game. I don't want to do any of that with my clients. Taking ownership of the problem allows me to actually try to solve the problem and not just get mired in the mud of who said this, who said that, what I should have done, what you should have done.

So, the next thing is to raise your rates. Now, that may be a clear step because you are saying, "Hey, I need more money for the work that I do." But, it's important because it actually affects how you treat yourself and how you conduct yourself. It elevates your status in the market. So, that's important if you're trying to get a promotion. You don't want to compete on just the race to the bottom of I'm the cheapest person that can do this work.

How you position yourself affects your internal mindset as well. So, you don't just say, "I'm the cheapest person." You want to be the best person. The way that I accomplish this in my agency is I fire old clients rather than trying to renegotiate. I'm not the kind of person who wants to try to ask for more money for the same type of thing. Even if I have a couple of new offerings here and there, I've just never had success with that.

My clients are happy with the relationship now, and if I am not happy on my end because I want more money, it's better to just make a clean break and say, "Hey, I'm going to give my 30 days." or my business is changing, whatever it might be, rather than trying to renegotiate. That is very important because it gives you more margin to do things in your business to actually grow your business somehow.

Once you've gotten out of survival mode or once you have enough to cover your bills, that gives you margin to reinvest in things that are important to your business and helpful to your business like new software, new equipment, new office space, new employees, traveling, anything you can think of for your business is going to require some amount of margin to grow. One of the most important things that that does as well is it gives you some amount of freedom to be able to say no to things you don't want to say yes to, people that you don't want to work with, and it really is super freeing to not have to look at your phone every morning and say, "Oh, no, my client's cranky with me." or this person that I that's rubbing me the wrong way, I have some friction, I just don't want to work with them.

If you have more margin in your business, you have the freedom to say no to that kind of thing. So, that's super important. It may seem obvious that raising your rates is a great way to give yourself a promotion. There's a lot of other things that come along with that that are equally important to just the financial implications. So, the last thing here is to actually think of yourself as a company.

So, even though I'm just a company of one, I'm a freelancer, I have a company and I have professional invoice templates, I have proper branding. All these things make it easy to work with me, especially from an enterprise standpoint where they have multiple departments, procurement and legal, all these things that are working together. It's easy for me to just say, "Yeah, here's my paperwork, no problem." Don't make it hard for somebody to give you money.

It's also important to have good presentation. So, part of the branding, part of your logo and all those things is how you come across on camera. And I have obviously a camera set up here, but even just a laptop with good lighting, dress nicely, prepare yourself for the call. People make a first impression in just a few seconds and then they spend the rest of the time justifying that first impression.

You really have just a couple of seconds to make a good first impression and it's important that you're presentable and that you come across looking like somebody who they might want to work with. People want to work with successful people. So, if you don't look like you're successful or capable, there's a lot of subconscious signals that go into that. And again, that is made up in the first few seconds of the first impression.

If you can give off a good successful impression, positive first impression, that creates an emotional positive reaction that lets somebody trust you and even if they can't quite explain, they'll say, "Oh, I really like the vibe of that person or I liked something about them." And a lot is just based on that initial first impression and the presentation. Present yourself successfully, present yourself as confident and that goes a long way in the sales process to how you might make or break the deal.

So, for those of us who don't have a traditional career and don't have traditional bosses, I hope these are some ways that maybe have inspired you to think about improving your station and provide better for yourself and for your family. Thanks.