The Freelancer's Growth Guide: Beyond Financial Metrics
📓 Free Growth Template Included!
By Benjamin Rogojan - AKA (The Seattle Data Guy)
One of the many challenges you will face as an independent consultant is understanding if you’re growing or improving in your career.
There is no manager you can meet with to ask how you can improve; no performance review or bonus you’ll get from an external force.
It’s just you.
So how do you know if you’re growing?
Below, we’ll outline a framework and guide you can use to help know if you’re growing.
The Obvious - It’s Not All About Money
A lot of consulting and business books will tell you to increase your prices. That’s how you grow your business. You want to charge more so you can offer more.
Don’t get me wrong, if you’re making more money, that’s likely a sign you’re growing. However, it’s not a definite sign, especially early on. Early on, you may be able to raise rates without improving much. Clients might just assume that you’re charging what is normal or perhaps you’re actually worth a premium. But that doesn’t mean you’ve actually improved and learned how to offer a more valuable service.
So although increasing your income can be a sign of improvement, there are many other things you should consider.
Self-Review
The first step of many companies' review process is a self-review, and from my perspective, it’s no different for independent consultants.
The question becomes, What axis do you want to base your growth on?
If you’re a technical consultant, it’ll depend on the phase you're on. Perhaps you’re at the phase where you’d like to move away from being as hands-on and being more of a pure consultant.
You'll likely want to measure some of the following areas:
Influence
Impact
Complexity of project
Scope
Perhaps a few axis you create yourself
I’d recommend you don’t try to do a self-review all at once at the end of the year. I once worked with an engineer who kept track of their progress every two weeks because they knew they’d likely forget some of what they did by weeks 5 and 6.
Now, if your memory is sharp, perhaps you can wait until week 4 to sit down and do a small review of the past month. But if not, I think two weeks is a decent cadence. You’re not doing a full review; you’re merely writing down a few notes. For example:
Influence
Guided a new client to use solution x instead of y, saving $100k
Scope
Transforming data practices for a company of 1,000 people
Once you feel like you’ve done a thorough self-review, you can start seeking external feedback. Also I have created a template you can use to help track some of your feedback you get through out the process.
Client Feedback
“Feedback is a gift. Ideas are the currency of our next success. Let people see you value both feedback and ideas.”
– Jim Trinka and Les Wallace
If you can get client feedback, that is gold!
More than likely, if you have a good relationship with your client, they’d be happy to talk about how you could improve and what you’re doing well.
The question becomes, when? Personally, I find the best time to ask is once your first phase of a project is delivered (assuming it's about 2-3 months).
Probably the biggest issue many consultants face is asking. You don’t want to be a burden, you don’t want to risk your relationship, etc.
But if your client has truly enjoyed working with you, they’ll love to give you feedback! And honestly, if they don’t want to, your relationship probably was in a bad place (and now you know if you didn’t already).
Once they give you the feedback, RECORD IT. Don’t lose it. It’s always great to look back and see if you’re improving or if the feedback tends to line up.
But you don’t just have to limit yourself to clients.
Networking Accountability Force Factor
One of the other ways you can learn how to grow and track your growth is by having a professional network of consultants you can talk to. Some of the biggest moments of growth I had were when I worked with other consultants and saw how they were operating.
And in my mind, I was like, “I want that skill or that result.”
From there, you can either try to emulate what they are doing or ask them to help you get there. Truthfully, sometimes life is just like the 4-minute mile; perhaps the idea of charging X amount per month seems like a lot. Then you see another consultant do it, and suddenly something clicks. Before you know it, now you are too!
Or maybe you see how someone communicates and how well their clients respond to it. Little details like sending an onboarding checklist or weekly updates can set you apart.
It’s part of the reason I created the Technical Freelancer Academy. It’s been an excellent place for consultants to share their own problems and successes and grow together.
Set SMART Goals And Metrics
At the end of the day, you will likely want to have some metrics that you track to see if you’re really improving in more concrete terms. But you shouldn’t just create general goals, instead try to use a framework like SMART to create goals you can achieve and also be pushed by.
Here are some examples of goals you might set:
Increase the acceptance rate of proposals by 30% over the next 6 months by providing your prospect 3 possible pricing structures prior to writing a proposal in order to reduce the amount of unpaid work your team is taking on.
One quick tip here is to better qualify your leads. You don’t need to write a proposal for every prospect, only the ones you’re nearly 100% sure will say yes
Creating your own metrics and KPIs can be a great forcing function. You might not know how to get yourself to some of the targets you set. But once set, you tend to force yourself to solve the problem.
In the end, the numbers can help you be accountable.
Growth
It’s always challenging to measure your own growth. Perhaps it’s because we are scared that we are no longer capable of growth after a certain point.
However, I have personally found that taking a moment to reflect on where I am and have come from can feel very rewarding. Otherwise, you might eventually feel like you’re just floating through life–without any clear anchors or landmarks that denote your successes (no matter how small).
Thanks for reading, if you want to read some of the prior articles, then read these articles.
Starting Your Own Consulting Company Today
Looking to start your own data analytics consulting company? Not sure how to attract clients, partner with the best vendors, or choose projects you're passionate about?
I've been there. In my Technical Freelancer Academy, I share how I built a successful data analytics consulting business from the ground up. A business that made it possible for me to quit my data engineering job at Facebook.
See you there!
Great post buddy. I definitely spent far too much time in the early day sending out a proposal to everyone that requested one. Now it's probably 1 in 3 or 4 inbound contacts which receive a proposal.
I like tracking the no. of inbound leads, reach of content, client satisfaction scores, and the size of the projects we're taking on.