A recent “One Big Happy” cartoon had the character Joe shooting a dart at what looks like the door to a laundry chute and saying “Bull’s eye!” A friend says, “There’s no target there!” and Joe’s little sister Ruthie (I never let anyone call me that, but you can see why I like the cartoon) responds: “Just wait, he hasn’t drawn it yet.”
Something similar came up in a Facebook post about great commencement speeches. The post quotes Bill Watterson, creator of the “Calvin & Hobbes” comic strip, as saying: “The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
In other words, shoot for the stars and call wherever your arrow lands your (completed) goal, or don’t worry about aiming for success but know when you’ve achieved it. Mission accomplished. No muss, no fuss, no stress.
Hmmm. There must be a way we can adapt that approach to freelancing.
I think the freelancer’s equivalent of this concept is being contacted by a new client that you didn’t go after—and getting a new project that way. A bolt from the blue: a client who finds you through STC, or LinkedIn, or a colleague’s or client’s referral, or some other serendipitous origin. You get the contact and the assignment, and treat it as having hit a target.
The marketing and work-finding aspects of freelancing become more fun and less arduous when you can draw the target after you hit a bull’s eye. We can’t count on such unexpected successes to carry us solely or indefinitely, but we can make the most of them when they fall into our laps. Treating them as more than dumb luck or coincidence is one way of maximizing their impact on our freelance businesses.
This doesn’t mean limiting what you go after or no longer doing conscious, conscientious marketing for new projects. It means appreciating those lucky dips when they occur, in addition to setting and going after specific targets—a publication you want to write for, a company you want to work with, a specific project you want to get, a topic you want to cover. It’s worth celebrating even the goals you didn’t try to meet because you never set them in the first place, and using them to encourage yourself to move toward larger, more-conscious ones. You can use those unexpected successes to set your targets ever higher—continued assignments from current clients, higher rates from new clients, etc. They will be proof that you’re doing something right.
That “something” is that you’re building a reputation among clients and colleagues as a skilled, reliable freelance tech writer or editor. The building blocks are a combination of the work that you do and the presence that you have in STC and other professional organizations, and online in groups and discussion lists. That reputation will send arrows toward you that will create bull’s eyes you never expected to reach. Some of those arrows will represent topics you might not have tried to cover or clients you didn’t think you had a chance of working for. Some will be squibs—opportunities that fizzle out—but many, if not most, will be important points of success in your freelance business.
What arrows have landed in the field of your freelance business that match up with Joe and Ruthie’s shoot-and-then-draw-the-target or Watterson’s define-it-when-you-reach-it philosophy? Once you labeled such moments as targets hit, how did you make use of them to further your freelance business?
Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is a long-time freelance writer/editor and owner of Communication Central, which holds an annual conference for freelancers, this year September 26–27 in Rochester, NY (www.communicaton-central.com). She has gained unexpected new clients and projects through referrals and online or association visibility, including her STC membership.