Are you a freelancer stuck earning more or less the same income month after month - unable to break through an income plateau and reach the next level? You may have tried things like offering more services, working longer hours or reaching out to a broad range of new potential clients. Well, instead of offering more services, the secret to reaching your next income milestone might just be to offer less.
To better understand this concept, let’s take a look at a classic example of income disparity.
Doctors and Brain Surgeons
You visit your family doctor for a wide range of ailments and health conditions. These types of doctors are able to diagnose and treat a wide range of illnesses and can serve many different types of patients. They are generalists -- they know a little about a lot. When more specific care is required beyond their skillsets, doctors will refer patients to a specialist. If you need wrist surgery, for example, you’ll go to an orthopedic surgeon. Brain surgeons are (obviously) extremely specialized. They only do one thing (brain surgery) and by nature of this are limited in the types of patients they see. You don’t go to your local brain surgeon if you catch the flu. However, these specialized doctors often make 5x-10x as much per year as generalists. Patients will pay top dollar for access to a brain surgeons expert set of specialized skills, and with good reason. This income disparity between generalist and specialists can be found again and again in almost every industry and line of work. But why do specialists make far far more money? Because people who are great at something get paid far more than people who are good at it.
You Can’t Be Great At Everything
We all have the same 168 hours of time each week. No one has any more or any less. How we use that time dictates what our results will be. Let’s say you want to become a professional soccer player, but you also enjoy football, baseball, golf and tennis. Because you like many sports, only 60% of your time is spent practicing soccer and the other 40% is split among the other sports. With that mix, can you realistically expect to compete with the athletes who spend 100% of their time practicing soccer? Probably not. The best of the best are laser focused exclusively on their craft, nothing else. The same goes for freelancers (or almost any profession). If you offer web development, copywriting, marketing, sales and branding services - you might be able to serve a wide range of clients and have multiple ways you can work with each one, but being as skilled in marketing as freelancers who exclusively focus on marketing would be quite a challenge. Any time you spend improving your skills in one area is time you’re not spending improving your skills in another. If you try to excel at five different services, you’ll never be as good at any one of them as you would if you focused exclusively on that one thing.
Be The Best At One Thing
There are many people, in almost any industry, who are good at what they do. They can earn a comfortable living and succeed in their field. There are a much smaller number of people who are great -- the top performers, the best of the best. These are the individuals who are hired by the top companies and clients who have the means and are more than willing to pay top dollar for top results. Just like you’d want to use the best brain surgeon, Apple wants the best designers, Google wants the best engineers, McKinsey wants the best consultants, etc etc -- because they demand the best results and will pay accordingly. The difference in pay between the best 5% in a given field and the next 10% is staggering. The numbers vary depending on industry, but professionals in the top 5% often makes 4x, 5x, even 10x as much per year as individuals in the next 10%. The first step to making more money is asking yourself, “what am I or could I be the best at?” You might enjoy web design and also be good at marketing, but doing both is holding you back. Period. Identify what niche is making you the most money, or which one you think you can excel the most at, and focus exclusively on that. You Only Have To Be A Little Better Than The Competition To Make A Lot More This all may seem a bit daunting, but excelling in one area isn’t as difficult as you may think. For one, many people still find themselves playing generalist roles. But more importantly, the difference in skills between the top 5% earning 5x as much as the next 5% is often much smaller than the gap in pay. The top 5% of freelancer jobs might pay 5x more than the next best 5% of jobs available. So even if you’re in the top 6-10% of all freelancers in a specific niche, you would still make far less because you’re not in the top 5% who are landing those coveted ultra high paying gigs.
Pick Your Niche And Laser Focus On It
Examine the services you offer as freelancer. What do you want your niche to be? Once you think you have your niche selected, zoom in further and see how you can further focus your efforts. Instead of “marketing”, how about “experiential marketing”? Instead of branding, perhaps “corporate rebranding”? A corporation looking to do a rebrand is more likely to hire someone specializing in corporate rebranding than a general branding expert, all else equal. You see where I’m going with this. Don’t feel like you have to know what the perfect niche is right away. Nothing is set in stone and you can (and should) pivot as necessary. But by “niching down” and getting focused on one thing, you can start yourself on the path to breaking through your income thresholds towards reaching the next level and beyond.
Andy Fine
Andy helps people start and grow successful freelancing careers. He is an expert at helping people get clients using online methods and making things super simple to understand. If you're interested in starting your own freelancing business or scaling up and getting clients then definitely reach out and request a free strategy session today.
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