Finding work – the elephant in the room

October 1, 2023

Your Pipeline

I think it’s time we addressed the elephant in the room. One of the scariest things about working for yourself is ensuring you have enough work. We’ve all got bills to pay and perhaps families to look after. Freemeup does a lot of things to make it easier for you to work as a sole trader. However, there is no escaping the fact that you need to develop your own client relationships and job pipeline.

Maybe this is old hat for those of you who are already comfortable getting work for your company’s pipeline. If so, please feel free to scroll on. But for those of us who haven’t had a major business development role (and I’d challenge you to consider that all roles involve some degree of BD) then the first thing that comes to mind is the terror of cold-calling someone to ask for work.

For me, my first contract came by finally getting up the courage to ring someone I already had a relationship with and just asking if there was anything I could help with. It was (and still is) a great start but once it was established, I really needed to turn my mind to how I was going to sustain and build on it. I needed to think about marketing buzzwords like brand, service offering, and point of difference.

You are your brand

At the moment, I am partway through and enjoying “I Am My Brand” by Kubi Springer. Kubi Springer is a branding expert who has worked with huge brands like P.Diddy, Rio Ferdinand, Justin Timberlake, and Mariah Carey. Developing your brand is especially relevant to sole traders where the product is you.

According to Kubi Springer a brand is “an emotional connection with your target audience”. In other words, what do you want people to feel when they think of you or engage your services? The book includes lots of exercises that get you to think about this and other questions such as

What problem are you trying to solve?
Is it needed?
Where is the evidence that you are the one to solve the problem?

All of this deep thinking also opens up other questions like what abilities, interests, and values do you have? What kind of work do you want to do? Who do you want to work for and with? And what would success look like for you?

The idea is that once you are clear on all these things you can focus your efforts in the right places.

Another person I follow on LinkedIn is Alicia McKay who is on a mission (like us) to empower people to take charge of their careers and life. Alicia posts lots of content like this LinkedIn post which asks similar questions for you to get clear on the value you are offering.

“an effective personal brand is an authentic expression of the individual and a personification of who they really are”

Kubi Springer

So, there is loads of advice out there. You could read a book or blog posts, go on a course, or engage someone to help you. If you are struggling to know where to start, you could pick up the phone and talk to someone you trust and ask them for advice.

I think the hardest part sometimes is just thinking about starting.

Start small, with the relationships you have, put yourself out there, and see where it leads. The NZ market is desperate for good, experienced professionals, so what could you achieve by putting yourself out there? You could be doing the work you love with people you enjoy working with. You could be earning more while having more time for yourself.

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