Making the leap from full-time freelancer to full-time business owner

Remember the time when you made the leap from 9-to-5 employment to a full-time freelancing career? It was probably a bit intimidating, yet you pulled yourself together and managed to survive.

Now, your freelancing career has thrived and you’ve got to the point where you no longer can handle the workload on your own. So here you are thinking about scaling up and starting your own company. But before you make that life-changing leap, make sure to think it through and plan it out.

Once you are confident with your decision to start your own company, it’s time to make that jump and become a full-time business owner. Here are the first steps to take in order to make that transition smooth and successful, as told by BrightSpark Consulting.

Make a business plan

Having a great business idea will not suffice. You need to think about every aspect of your future business and put it down to paper. That’s right. You need to write a proper business plan before you register your company.

What to include in a business plan? Even the basic business plan needs to consist of several important sections that describe your business. Those sections usually include an executive summary, company description, your mission, vision, and long-term goals, industry insights, financial plan, marketing plan, operational plan, and your core team.

Create a brand

Think about branding right from the start. Imagine your company as a person. Who would that be? Is it a funky teenager or a smart businesswoman? Do you see them as black and white, or do they shine in bright colours? What makes them tick?

Once you know the personality of your brand, design your branding assets accordingly. Get a professionally designed logo, business cards, letterheads, website, social media profiles, and present your brand to the world in a unified style.

Secure funding

There is a fine line between dealing with administrative tasks as a freelancer and starting your own business. Either way, you get to keep business profit after you’ve paid tax on it. However, you need to think differently as a business owner and mind different kinds of corporate and employee taxes.

So you will definitely need a consistent stream of revenue. You can secure your funding through a crowdfunding campaign, you can pitch your business idea to investors, make sure to have several well-paying, long-term projects ahead, or anything else that will bring a steady money flow for the months to come. You don’t want to start a business and then file for bankruptcy in the following year.

Create a digital marketing strategy

Chances are you’d want to promote your company through social media, search engine ads, email campaigns, and other digital channels.

Let’s say you want to work your way with digital marketing. You might want to consider the market positioning of your products or services first. You might also need to do research on your competitors and target audience, find out about their online behaviours, habits, needs, and struggles.

Before crafting a marketing strategy, you’ll need to set short-term and long-term goals of your campaign, do keyword research, and find potential gaps that you could fulfil with your offer to start ranking higher in search engine result pages.

Consider hiring remote workers

Depending on your niche, you might want to think about starting a remote-friendly company. Also, keep in mind that running a fully-remote business could save your office rent expenses that you could invest in building a stronger team of talented professionals. The remote workforce is definitely on the rise. And this trend will continue to change the future of work in the upcoming decade.

According to Upwork’s Future Workforce Report, 69% of younger generation managers allow their team members to work remotely. They believe that 73% of all departments will have remote workers by 2028, with 33% of full-time employees working remotely.

Go for it

Being a full-time freelancer is an art of its own. It might be a feast-and-famine game, or it could lead to earning much more than you used to earn as a 9-to-5 employee. It depends on your industry, your mindset, and your skillset.

Being a full-time business owner, on the other hand, requires more commitment, accountability, and a higher level of responsibility. Once you set your business up for growth, it can be pretty rewarding, too.

So, if you have all these initial steps fulfilled, and you believe you’ve got what it takes to run a successful business on your own, go for it. There will never be a better time than – now.

More on starting up your business and starting a business that matches your skillset.