Guaranteeing Freelancing Revenue

The hustler has been stealing the show.

When times are good, and there’s plenty of work to go around, you’ll be tempted to not ask too many questions of new leads, and certainly not to ask questions about your current clients. When times are good, it’s time to work.

When times are rough, and there’s plenty of time to ponder, you’ll be tempted to hurry to get the clients that are left standing. And the questions you might ask yourself will be coloured by the downturn. When times are rough, it’s time to find work.

In neither case were you in a position to guarantee revenue, per se. That’s because revenue is a consequence of your work. It’s a consequence of keeping your promises, of creating value, and of belonging to the future.

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A promise kept is an easy minimum. Two promises, ten promises, fifty promises kept, that’s a good stretch. But a streak of not breaking a single promise, for a long time, that’s difficult to reproduce.

You can’t guarantee your freelancing revenue, but you can guarantee losing a client by not keeping promises.

Creating value is better understood by talking about its opposite: creating costs. That’s because creating a cost is easy, but creating value requires understanding the buyer’s own desire for progress. “Because of my contribution, the client will get movement on this goal.”

You can’t guarantee your freelancing revenue, but you can guarantee losing a client by not keeping an ear out for value, and only creating a cost.

Belonging to the future requires having a good sense about dynamics. The world can go in any direction, but some things will always stay true. You can bet on certain aspects of the future if you like, but your ability to offer value where value never changes will offer a great deal of stability for you and your client.

You can’t guarantee your freelancing revenue, but you can guarantee losing a client by belonging to the past.

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Hustlers make promises they can’t keep, mistake price for value, and sell a future that might not happen. The hustler says “act fast”.

But you, you took the time to ask a few hard questions about your work. You then kept promises, avoided being a cost, and avoided belonging to the past. Then the revenue came.