A Guide to Running Your Freelance Business Like an Executive

You’re the CEO of your freelance business…but that’s just the beginning.

Before we dig into this, I need to clear something up.

One of my pet peeves is people tossing around a “CEO” title when there aren’t any other “executive officers” around for them to be chiefly to. That said…

Putting yourself in the CEO role can be ridiculously helpful in simplifying your work as an indie professional⁠—calming a ton of the chaos and stagnancy that plague so many of us.

And that’s what I want to explain today.

I’m going to lay out your responsibilities in the most important roles as the person in charge of your freelance business. There are multiple CXO jobs in large organizations, but I’ve pulled out three that are the most critical to freelancers.

Before we get started, know that understanding and growing in each of these is part of the process⁠—so move at your own pace, make it enjoyable, and have fun learning as you go.

Personally I set aside time to check in with each of these every month⁠—rotating through them all once every quarter, focusing on just one at a time. You might find a different rhythm works better for you. Just make sure it’s not too short or too long (e.g. daily or yearly). You need time to reflect and see results, but don’t want to let things lag.

Ready? Let’s do this!

CEO-Chief Executive Officer

As CEO of your freelance business, you’re responsible for things like strategy, vision, values, and general business performance.

It’s your job to lay out big-picture plans and changes, create a vision, and make it a priority that your employees (you) have a healthy, happy, sustainable work experience. You’re also tasked with making sure your business is socially responsible, ethical, and profitable.

On a practical level, this includes things like:

Deciding what purpose your business will play in your life and establishing short- and long-term objectives
Choosing a niche that will be profitable and enjoyable and making adjustments in the face of economic and social challenges
Identifying opportunities for professional education and improvement, rewards, and perks that align with your business goals
Making sure you’re not exploiting workers who you outsource tasks to and that you’re not taking advantage of existing social inequalities (this applies to yourself as a worker too)
Making decisions like when it’s time to work with an accountant, change your tax status, open a business bank account, take out a business loan, or bring on a virtual assistant
Monitoring cash flows and expenses to make sure you stay solvent, can pay yourself, and cover your expenses
Identifying red flags and opportunities for growth in your market

That might sound like a lot, but thankfully for us as freelancers, these decisions are relatively straightforward and efficient with just one person.

CMO-Chief Marketing Officer

The work of a CMO doesn’t get much shine in the public eye⁠—which is wild since we’re exposed to so much of the results of their efforts on a daily basis.

CMOs are responsible for a LOT. They manage the activities that deliver value to a market, including clients and business partners. This includes product development, pricing strategies, market research, and in a lot of cases, sales. All of this applies to us as CMOs of our freelance businesses too. Meaning that, when you put on your CMO hat, you’re going to be responsible for things including:

Profiling your niche, figuring out its needs and what it finds valuable
Deciding how much you charge for your services
Figuring out how you position your services in the market, differentiators, and the best messaging to inform prospects of what you do and the problems you solve
Narrowing down what services to offer
Deciding when to offer new services and when to retire old ones
Advertising and sales to create awareness and encourage clients to work with you
Using customer marketing to retain clients, get feedback, and use insights to improve the services you offer as a freelancer

COO-Chief Operating Officer

Chief Operating Officers are usually right under CEOs and are responsible for keeping a business running day-to-day⁠—making sure all those big ideas are bubbling up into reality. As a freelancer, this includes everything from tech decisions to monitoring productivity to making sure you’re getting paid. When thinking of your responsibilities as a COO, you’ll be looking at areas like:

Establishing work schedules, email policies, and communication standards
Deciding the best platforms and software for email, client communication, billing, and production
Opening and maintaining business bank accounts and credit cards
Choosing productivity software
Monitoring and improving production rates
Making sure your tech is updated, secure, and functioning properly
Creating and maintaining strategic partnerships with other freelancers
Invoicing, contract creation, client management

How to get going

You definitely don’t want to take all this on at the same time.

Personally, I like to start with listing out a few of the responsibilities in my business (because every freelance business is different). Then I look for the “fires”…areas that are red flags that need to be handled immediately. After that, I move on to areas of opportunity for improvement/prevention and then growth.

So for example, let’s say I’ve laid out my responsibilities and know that I have an issue with cash flows because of clients lagging on payment. That might mean I’ll dedicate my week or month (or whatever) to work as a COO⁠—making sure my processes are set up to trigger when invoices should be sent, that I have the right software to make it as seamless as possible, and that my clients are happy with the experience. I might also circle around and check my contracts to make sure they clearly and simply inform clients of when they should be paying and how they might be penalized if they don’t pay on time.

Between reviewing my current workflows, evaluating new software, talking to other freelancers and trying things out, this would likely take me a whole month of admin hours. Then I could let it run for a quarter and see how things have improved once I roll back around the next cycle.

So let me know what you think! And make sure to come by the page often. I’ll keep it updated with content that can help you in all these areas…your feedback will be super helpful here. Thanks and talk to you soon!