Don’t Pivot Your Freelancing. Do This Instead

Pivoting is having a moment right now, in a way that it hasn’t since the early 2000s when Ross, his friends, and a sofa were trapped in a stairwell. There are some great examples of businesses pivoting to respond to the crisis. For example, one friend’s whiskey company, Whiskey Stories, adapted through market-driven pivots, including one to produce hand sanitizer. Their proceeds also support people in Brooklyn who are most vulnerable to the virus. Many others followed suit. Another friend at a healthcare and hospital services network in Baltimore developed a textile facility in one week that eventually partnered with Under Armour and now makes 10,000 masks a day. These are great pivots. Freelancers reading this might be inspired to follow their examples and pivot their own business models, but I would caution you not to do so.

Why? These businesses have repurposed their existing resources or added new ones in order to meet new demands. Being able to adapt to new circumstances is a large part of what helps businesses—and people—succeed. The markets have certainly changed and pivots are needed to respond. But for freelancers, perhaps more important than the actual pivot is cultivating the ability to pivot by increasing your resilience and your versatility.

Freelancers should use this time to develop what April Rinne elegantly describes as the “flux mindset”. Shifting your mindset can set you up to thrive throughout the waves of change that will inevitably arise. How can you make yourself—and your work—more resilient to change? I suggest you start by doing two things: 1. diversify your career, and 2. learn to cross-sell.

Diversify Your Career

Rinne argues that, in today’s environment, a career should look more like a “portfolio” than a “path”. In the old days, people would choose a specialty. They would then try and work their way up the corporate ladder, either within a single company or industry, by building and developing that core area of expertise. That was the career path approach. Today, with a career portfolio approach, one person can develop different bubbles of expertise. For example, you may advise tech startups and also nonprofit organizations. You may be a consultant and also an actor. This is more than just a side hustle. You diversify your career to grow outward in addition to forward.

How do you do that? By taking on projects that provide something different: a new skill, exposure to a new industry, a different source or structure of income. This ability to diversify is a key reason Hayden Brown, the CEO of Upwork, says many feel safer freelancing than in a traditional job. Having multiple streams of income or multiple areas of expertise reduces your exposure to each one. This means you may be less vulnerable if your company goes under, a new innovation disrupts your industry, or a global event impacts the market.

Learn To Cross-Sell

You may ask, “Won’t taking on different kinds of projects make me look scattered?” Or you may be wondering how to branch out from your core expertise in the first place. This is where the art of cross-selling comes in. One of my favorite sales books is How to Interview Like a Top MBA by Dr. Shel Leanne. Throughout the book, Dr. Leanne explains how to identify and articulate the value of transferable skills when you try to land a role working in a new industry or performing a new function. One of the most memorable examples comes from an interview of Susan Kim, who was a math teacher, but got a job as a financial planner at American Express. She emphasized her analytical skills from solving math problems, as well as the way connecting with students was similar to developing relationships with clients.

Dr. Leanne describes a long list of transferable skills, but some of the key ones are: communicating effectively, solving problems, making presentations, driving workflows, and managing people. These abilities are almost universally useful. Learning how to identify them in your own work experience will open you up to new opportunities and help you thrive through the many changes you will face, whether they are market, technological, or otherwise.

By all means, respond to the crisis. Be sensitive, thoughtful, and timely with your work. But don’t think of it as a pivot. Instead, recognize how expanding your reach creates one more asset in your portfolio that will stay with you throughout your career.   

Thumnbail photo by George Keating from Pexels.