How to Hire Freelancers for Your Creative Business

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our discussion on how and why you might want to hire freelancers. If you believe that successful people, including creative professionals and entrepreneurs, did everything on their own, you are mistaken, and if you believe that you must do everything on your own, you are making success more difficult than it needs to be. I’ve been running my business alone for five years, and people often tell me that I should hire more freelancers.

Wow, look at everything you’ve accomplished on your own. I reply, “Well, yes, but actually no. There have been a lot of people who have helped me do what I’ve needed to do to get where I am today.” Being independent does not imply knowing how to do everything, but rather that you are resourceful, capable, and aware of how to enlist the assistance of others who can. Some of the assistance you need may be long-term.

I have a virtual assistant named Josel Tech from the rolling media who helps me repurpose my content and actually edit my videos, but short-term assistance really looks like this in the form of freelancers and consultants. I run what I like to think of as a virtual agency where I put together subject matter expert teams to work on projects as I receive them.

The clients get a very senior team, excellent work, and only pay for what they actually need. They don’t pay for a lot of overhead, vacation time, or full-time staff who might be idle while we work on their project. Project-based freelance help that I use includes writers, illustrators, web developers, user researchers, email list experts, and other professionals. Now, the thing you need to keep in mind is that the workplace environment

We truly live in a gig economy, and Covid has accelerated this trend. Studies indicate that by 2024, 35 percent of the workforce will be independent contractors, and there is an increasing amount of work for independents every day. Companies and agencies are actually reducing their internal full-time staff in order to save money, and using external partners more frequently. I observed this when I worked in global marketing.

Why should you work with freelancers? Well, they allow you to take on projects that you can’t fully handle, projects that may have aspects that you can’t actually do, and so it allows you to accept those types of projects that are outside of your skill set. They also allow you to be more flexible, and you end up paying for only what you use. I did it from the client side when I was in charge of an in-house department.

If you need something when you need it, you can use a virtual assistant, content marketing partners to repurpose content, or something similar. You can also build project teams for your clients’ businesses. Here are some additional reasons why you might want to work with freelancers: According to a recent Hubspot survey report, freelancers are more up to date on new ideas. 70% of independent contractors have finished

many forms of lifelong learning compared to 49 of full-time employees who have taken any new training in the past six months, freelancers have received some form of training in their field in that time. Freelancers also tend to have more varied portfolios. In fact, 61 percent of freelancers have two to three speciality skills now, according to reports, so they have a greater range of expertise and client experiences.

Because they don’t have to maintain full-time internal teams and because 83 percent of business leaders believe that freelancers are more productive than their salaried full-time employees, many businesses prefer working with external partners. So why is working with freelancers advantageous for your business? For one thing, you can save money because you don’t have to cover full-time benefits, vacation, or have the financial burden of caring for full-time employees.

Employees When work entering your business may be light, you can turn projects around very quickly, get new ideas, solutions, or technologies, get specialty skill sets that you don’t personally have, and you can flex personnel up and down as needed. Additionally, to a certain extent, you get more flexible work schedules because you can work with people who are nearby.

You may use different time zones throughout the world to have others work on your projects while you sleep. So where do you discover freelancers? On websites like fiverr, upwork, or guru.com, you may locate freelancers. On those websites, you can read ratings and reviews on how other people felt about working with them. You can also search on websites with portfolios, many of which also have job listings, such as Dribbble, Behance, or Website creativehotlist.com

How to Hire Freelancers for Your Creative Business

What should you do when you’re ready to hire a freelancer? First, request and review their portfolio of work. Does their style or skill set actually fill the need that you have? You want to also check out their linkedin profile or any kind of upwork reviews if they’re on there. There are also professional career sites where you can network with people and find partners sites like linkedin or gig posting sites like craigslist.

You should check out a freelancer site to see what results for their name appear when you search them on Google, and you should have prepared a small test project that you can give them. Although it’s not required, I recommend paying people for test projects that take no more than two to three hours. After that, you should ask them about their current project workload to see if they have the time to work with you.

Finally, once you hire a freelancer, make sure to get them to sign a legal document called an nda non-compete, which is a non-disclosure agreement and a non-compete agreement. If you were to hire them on a project, you should also interview them on Zoom to see how they speak, how they communicate, and what they’re like in terms of personality. You should also try to get references or testimonials from previous clients.

If you hire an external or partner freelancer, you must ensure that they sign two legal agreements: a non-disclosure agreement to prevent them from discussing your clients’ projects with anyone else, and a non-compete agreement to prevent them from working for your clients without your knowledge. If you plan to pay them more than $600 per year (at least in the United States), you should make sure they sign both of these agreements.

Finally, if you’re going to post a project on a freelance website, make sure that you include all the information necessary for them to do a great job, such as the project details, project strategy, project scope, what the deliverables are, any kind of skills that are required, any kind of software, or anything else that would make it easier for them to complete a 1099 form for tax purposes.

File formats that you’ll require Finally, you want to ensure that you’re crystal clear about the aesthetic style that’s required because it can be really helpful in choosing a freelancer as well as for the freelancers when they are executing the work. On a side note, if you are hiring freelancers, make sure that you include the project timeline or calendar and any kind of hourly rate or project fee that you’re willing to pay.

I provide coaching for creative professionals and entrepreneurs. We can concentrate on things like getting clarity on what you want or need from your professional life or what you need to do to get there. We can also focus on things like building a freelance business or starting a new startup business continuing or getting your current business up and running.

Enhanced ability to develop your personal brand If you’re interested in coaching, visit philippvandusen.com. We address topics like networking, how to get new clients, and creating new business. That’s all, thanks for watching this video on how and why to hire someone one-on-one. Reach out to me, and we’ll see what we can do to take you to the next level.

Freelancers, if you enjoyed it, subscribe below. Also, click the notification button to be notified when I post new content or go live. If you need assistance with your brand strategy, your professional creative career, or any type of design for your company, contact me at philippvandusen.com. Together, let’s see what we can do to advance you With that.