Freelance Leaders, 10 More Ways to Grow Your Business

If you’re a freelance startup team worried about short-term success and hoping for some relief from investors, it’s time to consider Plan B. It is unlikely that the VC will come to your rescue. According to Crunchbase, global startup funding is at its lowest level in five years, and startup M&A is down significantly.

But the global freelance economy is a treasure trove of opportunity if you’re informed, creative, and customer-oriented. In a previous article, we discussed ancillary ways for freelancers and their marketplaces to increase their income through more robust services. Suggestions included interim and partial roles, ad-supported podcasts and newsletters, online education, and participation in professional networks.

For marketplaces, their leaders, and investors, this is a transitional period in the freelance revolution that requires creative thinking and thorough self-examination. If, as Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living,” then there is also a problem with unexamined markets.

With this in mind, here are 10 ways freelance leaders can leverage relationships, expertise, and community to achieve more success for themselves and their companies.

1. Build a stronger community

Too many freelance communities offer only asymmetrical communication, with an explosion of information flowing from the center outward. Even with Slack channels, it’s not easy for freelancers to regularly meet and interact with colleagues on the platform. Groove, a relatively new startup, has solved this problem and taken community to the next level by creating a 24/7 virtual meetup space. Josh Greene, formerly on the WeWork team, is an expert on subscriptions that allow freelancers to easily connect with each other, build working relationships, mentor each other, and prototype new products and services. built his community. This should be of keen interest to his community manager.

2. Use challenges to test, certify, and develop talent on your platform

Mike Morris, former CEO of Topcoder and current CEO of Torc, is famous for creating technical “challenges” (think “contests”) to hone the skills of members of the Topcoder technical community. Since acquiring TopCoder, Wipro has continued that tradition by providing challenges to solve coding problems, complete software, and help engineers and developers increase their technology and product proficiency. We offer a helpful “skill builder” contest. But challenges need to be considered in all communities, not just technology. This builds skills, helps the platform attract talent and weed out disinterested freelancers, and provides a place to test and certify their abilities. Challenges also inspire the talent community to work toward the future. It’s sticky, fun, and helps you build a reputation without spending too much money.

3. Become a player in the private talent cloud

Bubty, Gigged.ai, and Talentpools are some of the well-known companies that work with enterprises to create private talent clouds. Private talent clouds, such as PWC’s Talent Exchange and EY’s Gig Now, allow large companies to build occasional talent communities and give managers easy access to vetted talent. But this has value beyond businesses. Large venture capital portfolios, hedge funds, and private equity firms should be interested as well. Private talent clouds are on the rise, according to MBO Partners and research partner Emergent Research. Does your company work with talent pool builders to help businesses fill and manage their talent pools? Provide education and advisory services to small businesses to help them build contingent talent communities Are you doing it.

4. Help freelancers become entrepreneurs

HumanCloud works with early-stage CEOs and discovers that CEOs are eager to meet with other leaders, share leads, test strategies, seek referrals, and explore joint venture opportunities. Did. What makes Platform Talent different? Smart Her Marketplace is exploring ways to offer more ways for freelancers to find partners interested in collaborating. For example, Adeva’s monthly fireside chat brings together members of her community to learn and share. Fring’s platform connects innovative companies directly with creative, digital freelance talent. Fiverr’s “studio” brings together experts to collaborate on larger projects. Honeybook sponsors regular local or virtual monthly meetups for members to coach together and brainstorm ideas, and Contra’s two-sided marketplace allows freelancers to share their past, offerings, , you can refer your services to each other and to clients outside of the platform.

5. Explore adjacencies for growth

Codemonk is a UK-based marketplace for technical experts. Now, by partnering with Innovaify, a shared ownership design studio, we have freelancers on one side and an intact innovation team and project management services on the other. With independent management consulting platforms such as Catalant and Redegate increasingly seeking interim or partial roles, Expert Powerhouse discovers the value and synergy of an expert network that connects clients with a wide range of technology experts. Did. Codementor was created by Arc’s Weiting Liu after discovering a strong client interest in technical coaching for young developers and teams. Supportwave realized that it was perfectly positioned to serve corporate employees working from home. Growth Collective, a marketing services platform, works with other member companies in the Legion Works network, including Subscribers, Dealify, and Hellobar, to identify significant growth opportunities.

6. Skate to where the puck is

Growth isn’t hard to find, but you have to look for it. For example, using the graph below (thanks McKinsey & Co), it’s relatively easy to see what’s growing fast, what’s stable, or what’s slowing down. can. What is important here is the extent to which the company is aligned with areas that are expected to have higher growth potential. How well are your customer mix, marketing and customer communications, and freelance talent recruitment efforts looking to the future rather than the past? G2i’s Gabe Greenberg has significantly increased his work stack and acquired new clients. contributed to. To paraphrase an old Wayne Gretzky line, “Are you skating to where the puck was, or are you skating to where it’s going to be?” The same analysis can be done from an industry-based, geographic perspective. from or within your local market or community. If you don’t welcome the future in its place, it will abandon you.

7. Turn talented “tourists” into passionate and engaged fans

The famous freelance marketplace has 60,000 tech professionals advertised. The problem is that he only has 6,000 active experts. Of those who remained, many registered but did not return. This is an issue that is almost universally reported by his leaders on this marketplace as well as on the platform. Let’s call these freelancers “platform tourists” and look at them from their perspective. Those who visit the marketplace see little value in completing their profile, interacting with the platform’s team, or contributing to the platform’s blog. Instead of blaming them, let’s reconsider the situation. What if you view “platform tourists” as wasted opportunities, lost assets? What can you change in the way you engage and support them in the first place? Don’t blame them for how they feel. Instead, make it more valuable. They want interesting work, fair pay, assistance with business tasks and continuous development. Do you deliver?

8. Is the future beyond human resources?

We’ve learned from The Information that Alphabet is cutting back on “moonshot projects” and encouraging staff to “seek outside capital and leave Alphabet’s corporate umbrella.” In other words, go for it. Can marketplaces act as incubators for new businesses, connecting and supporting professionals who can discover a common passion or vision? To capture the interest of freelancers and decide which projects to support Organized properly and perhaps partnered with a pre-seed and seed-focused firm like VC Big Sky Capital, it could be an attractive business. Honeybook is in the game in partnership with Honeybook Capital. CrediLinq works with both gig and e-commerce platforms to offer embedded credit for sole proprietors, and the company’s AI appears to be able to assess creditworthiness better than other players.

9. With a little help from friends

Last year, a number of Spanish freelance platforms, led by Outvise, came together to share insights and develop plans to grow the Spanish freelance market. UK freelancers have come together to form the Association for the Future of Work, led by Underpinned’s Albert Azis-Clausen. Oro’s Freelance for Latin America, led by Karina Lejavia, brought together Latin American freelance leaders in 2023 to identify ways to benefit from U.S. nearshoring. This year, the leaders of the German freelance platforms Code Control, Uplink and Freelancermap are organizing German freelancers for a national conference to be held in Berlin this spring. Increasing your freelance visibility and value is an important and necessary task.

10. It takes a village

The 15 CEOs who formed the first Freelancer First Study Group demonstrate the power of regional and global collaboration. Maari Casey’s Uncompany has partnered with Ollo (Latin America) and her Indielist (EU) to serve the needs of one of her biggest customers. It led to important new work. Khibraty co-founders Abeer Qumsieh and Caroline Ayoub have found a strong niche as a connector and trusted partner between clients and freelance platforms such as Catalant and Talmix in the Middle East. Babti has developed a strong working relationship with Indie List on joint projects. The second study group, which has been in operation since October, produced similar results.

Vivara revolution!

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