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This lesson is called how to grow your freelance business and is going to show you two different ways

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you can go about scaling your business.

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The first is how to charge expert level rates as a freelancer.

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The second way is to build a freelance team or a freelance agency.

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And then we will go over how you can skyrocket your success.

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The reason growing your freelance business is important is because of the freedom that a successful

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business provides.

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And that is, it helps fuel your why, which is your passion.

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The whole reason you're doing all of this in the first place when you have a profitable freelance business

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bill and running, you really have the freedom to control how you want to live your life.

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You get to decide where you want to travel, what days a week you want to work, what time of the day

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you want to work.

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And ultimately, it grants you the freedom to be the architect of your life.

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And that is the position I am so grateful to be in.

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I'm talking from experience.

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I went from working a nine to five where I felt trapped at to being my own boss with unlimited earning

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potential, as well as true freedom over my life.

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The first way you can grow your business is by becoming a freelance expert, a freelance expert is someone

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who can charge higher rates.

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And the reason behind that is because you were providing a higher level of value.

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So as you go along in your freelance journey, continue to invest in yourself and into your skill set.

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The more skills you learn and the more results you are able to get, the more chances you have for becoming

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an expert.

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And when you're an expert, you're able to charge those higher monthly rates.

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The second way to focus on becoming a freelance expert is to focus on quality instead of quantity of

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projects.

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You might think that it makes a lot of sense to get as many reviews as you can, which it does, but

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you also need to make sure you're focusing 100 percent on the quality of each project.

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Then you can move on to the next one.

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Once that first one is completed to the best of your ability, you do not want to spread yourself thin

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here, especially when you're first starting out as a freelancer when you're working your way up through

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the ranks.

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Keep this in mind, and it will help you have more success.

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Also, be more selective with your choices.

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I turned down a good amount of projects because I know they're not the best fit for me based on my skill

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set and my availability.

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So if something is below my skill set or below the rate that I want to charge, it doesn't make sense

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for me to work on that project or with that client.

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That is the time I could be investing with a more high tech, a client that makes sense for me.

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So don't be afraid to say no to specific projects.

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This all goes back to qualifying those clients if they're not qualified.

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You need to move on and be selective and find someone who is the best fit for you.

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Once you start to implement all of these different things, that is when you will start to have clients

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knocking on your door.

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And that means they're going to be finding your upper profile and they're going to be reaching out to

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you to see if you're available to work on their project.

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That's a great way to keep your pipeline full and to continue increasing your rates as a freelance expert

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once you become an expert.

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Upwork will prioritize you in the algorithm and continue to help you get more and more work.

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So on the screen right now are some examples of expert level copywriters, and as you can see, they're

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all charging over $100 an hour on average.

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And they also have jobs in the triple digits.

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So when you start to see this and you start to explore some of the top experts and freelancers on the

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upward platform, you'll see how much potential there is to become an expert and to charge those higher

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rates.

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Because those high ticket clients on the platform are looking to have their problem solved by the industry's

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leading freelancers and by becoming an expert, you can become their go to freelancer.

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Your second option when it comes to growing your freelance business is to build a team or an agency.

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This provides its own set of pros and cons, and it really all comes down to your personality type.

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Whether you want to become an expert in go more the consulting route or if you want to build a team

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and you're more of a leader if you enjoy building effective teams and you like working with people and

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managing people.

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Building a team or agency might be a great fit for you in the freelance world because digital teams

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and agencies have a number of advantages.

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Two heads are better than one when you're working on a team.

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You will always help solve more complex problems quicker because everyone has their own perspective

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in ways at looking at challenges.

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When you get multiple smart minds together, you can accomplish larger tasks and tackle bigger projects,

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a.k.a. you'll start getting bigger paydays.

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You can also hire for your weaknesses when you're building a team or an agency.

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This one is huge because once you have your skill set mastered, you can then focus on building a team

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that is good at your weaknesses.

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The skills you're not good at is something that you can hire for now.

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Always hire people that are smarter than you, and that can help you with areas that you are weak.

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So, for example, maybe you are not artistic, then you can hire a graphic designer to join your freelance

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team, or maybe you want to move your role to focus on large scale tasks.

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And so you hire a virtual assistant or someone to help you with the admin level stuff.

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The idea here is to build a team of people who all complement each other.

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After you've built a freelance team, it's also way easier to systemize that in scale than if you're

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just working alone, because once you have a team member roles established, creating a process becomes

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much easier.

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Everyone is assigned a specific task and everyone knows what to do.

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It's no longer all on you, which means you can now work on scaling your business with your efficient

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freelance team or agency.

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You also have the ability to leverage buying time when you're building a team and you're hiring people

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that allows you to gain more time, and we all know time equals money.

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So if you want to make more money, you need to find a way to maximize your time.

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You do that by hiring people and building a team when you have people working for you on your team and

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making you money.

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They are actually an asset and not a liability to you because they're helping you expand your time and

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get more revenue.

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This means you are buying time to make more money.

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And last but not least, when you're building a team, you have the ability to be agile in 100 percent

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digital, so you don't need to have any overhead.

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You don't need to pay any rent for an office.

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You don't need to commute anywhere.

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Everyone can be located in different parts of the world.

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It really doesn't matter.

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You have the flexibility to shift from project to project quickly because you have a tight knit team

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and you were the one that calls the shots.

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That gives you the benefits of having an agile agency and the flexibility as opposed to those bigger

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agencies that aren't able to be as agile and shift from project to project as quickly.

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That gives you all of the benefits of having a team and none of the cons of having a big agency that

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slows things down.

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When you go to build your team, a good way to do it is even using the upward platform, you can add

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your agency on there and you can post jobs looking for dedicated or long term work by using Upwork in

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reverse.

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You can use everything you learned about being a good freelancer to handpick the best ones to join your

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team.

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Another way that you can leverage a freelance team or hiring freelancers is by hiring for a short term

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project.

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For example, let's say you have a client, but you need help to complete the project.

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You can hire an expert level freelancer, pay them for an hour or two of their time, and then you get

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to use their expert level advice.

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This works extremely well because now you are basically getting paid to learn from the expert and your

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project gets to have a better chance for success.

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So you're doing multiple things that help move your freelance career forward.