Freelancing vs Business Building

If you’re on the journey to becoming an Authority Entrepreneur, you have to first cross the threshold into true business building.

This is a distinction I don’t talk about enough, but here’s a handy visual:

The difference between freelance and business building is that when you're a freelancer, you're responding to briefs. You are a malleable, smart, reliable pair of hands. A pair of hands who says “yes, sir”, or, “no, sir”, to your client. In doing so, you are ultimately making their business dreams come true.

Freelancing is an incredible opportunity for those who feel hamstrung by the traditional 9-5 and are ready to escape the confines of having the same employer, routine, fixed salary and office politics for years on end. For anyone craving more flexibility and variety of clients. I'm not against freelancing.

But there becomes a point in the freelancer’s journey, that they want more. They want what a business owner has: ownership.

When you own and operate a business, you are committed to creating a certain, defined, value in the world. A value that very often, the founder of this business finds personally significant. A mission, purpose or cause that you own and are committed to developing, and being recognised for.

Business owners have to choose what that value is. They must decide what is their lane is aka what is the product or service this value revolves around.

When you have a product that needs manufacturing or building, you can't just willy-nilly change your mind what you're building from one day to the next. You've already got the goods. You've got the warehouse. You've got the supply chain. The machine is built.

But when offering a service, this isn’t exactly the case. And so what happens too often, is that service gets chopped at and changed beyond recognition. Because it’s not easy or simple or flying off the proverbial shelves. Or a service gets offered alongside a raft of others… in the hope that something will land.

This happens because there’s no overt ‘cost’ to the person offering this service.

Except there is.

Because until you build a machine around your service, your business cannot compound. And if you keep changing the service, you never give that machine the chance to work. You’re not seeing the benefits of repetition.

Benefits such as:

• Deepening your expertise and practice, through repetition

• Streamlining operations and delivery

• Productising your methodology into scalable IP

• Increasing demand, referrals and fees

• Building brand recognition and authority

• Creating predictability and profitability

Freelancers operating entirely through custom client work rarely get the benefit of true repetition, because the work keeps reshaping itself around client demand.

And, until you’ve truly decided what that service is, you cannot develop the clear, repeatable message and marketing that creates predictable demand for it. That positions you as a true Authority worth listening to.

So until you decide what service you are repeatedly delivering, who it’s for, why it works, and why you are specifically positioned to lead it, you will stay in freelance territory (regardless of your income).

Freelancing is freedom. Business-building is commitment. And Authority is what you earn as a result of that commitment, and sharing your message outside of just the clients who you deliver value for.

If this resonates, you’re in the right place. This is the work I do day in day out with clients. So keep reading over the next few weeks as I’ll be sharing more about the conditions needed for material growth in your impact and income as a consultant, coach, advisor or blend of the three.

Share this with someone who needs to hear this today.

Oh and if you haven’t already - take this assessment I’ve designed to help you find out if you've actually moved the needle on your business away from custom, scattered work, and into the land of Authority Entrepreneur:

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.