Starting out on a new career path can feel exciting, worrying, panic-inducing, but also the chance for a fantastic fresh new start. Feeling all these emotions and more can happen to even the most qualified professionals as they turn freelance. Sometimes, you may wonder if you’re making the right decision, but it’s important to remember that you’re focusing on this path for a reason and you have value to offer.

Renewing your career doesn’t have to be a process conducted in the dark, however. It may be that learning the lessons from your previous business experience and then infusing that into your own personal brand can help you gain further opportunities, push the envelope a little bit more, and use your reputation to enhance your trustworthiness.

Well – that’s a lot to take in. In this post, then, we’ll discuss how this process is more than possible with a little foresight and care, including what principles to take from your time in the industry moving forward. With that in mind – you can see how the divisions between personal and public brands are often less stratified than we imagine. 

Reputational Management

A business lives and dies by its reputation. Get bad enough press, and businesses can struggle to function. It’s why they continually seek good PR, appropriate marketing, and make public statements nullifying the most pointed criticisms when leveraged at them. Thankfully, you won’t have to fight for your public image the same way many public brands do. 

But it is true that you have a reputation that needs to be managed carefully. Often, this is contributed to by showing integrity, willingness, expertise, enthusiasm, and communication capabilities. It also means keeping good client/employer relationships and neglecting to burn any bridges, no matter how tempting that can be sometimes. There are also strong strategies you can use as a manner of principle, such as never using your social media pages to vent about topics when you also have that tied to your professional presence. 

While it’s true that you can hire reputational management firms for yourself, it’s best to exercise your wisest judgment and prosper as a result.

Test Before Execution

Any product launch or software release must go under rigorous testing to ensure that it’s safe, capable, and can handle pressure. In the tech world, these test automation tools are how firms strongly showcase their capabilities before expecting clients to onboard.

The same goes with your own approach. If going freelance, it’s important to think about how you’ll sell yourself to potential outsourcing agents. It means branding yourself appropriately, and learning how much you can reasonably quote for work, and what management process you go through in order to vet a job and deliver upon it.

You have likely already had to adhere to planning protocols when managing your own development, too. Keep that in mind when considering your own workflow, refining your own skillsets, and making the process of consulting with you or booking you for freelance work as streamlined as the best service could be.

Seek To Innovate & Grow

It’s important to innovate and grow as a firm, to take the reigns, to challenge yourself, to seek to take on bigger and better projects so that things don’t get stale.

The same is true of us. Even when working in a freelance capacity or running our own small firm, it’s important to challenge ourselves and to stoke those ambitions. It might be, for instance, that as a compliance expert you decide to widen your field of competence and focus on an adjacent industry to the one you’re skilled in. This might open you up to a new market that requires your transferable skill set. This way, you remain a hot investment, just as the best companies are able to cultivate their own services in this way.

Never Take An Audience For Granted

Even if you’re the most accredited, qualified, impressively organized person in the world, you must never simply assume that your audience will be there. You need to seek them out. Running your own website and social media marketing, as well as making the most of SEO practice or using firms to aid you in that approach, is key towards cultivating a worthwhile end result. 

If you can achieve that, then you can retain your edge and your competence, without expecting others to remember your name just because. After all, even Coca-Cola, one of the most recognizable names in the world, invests in constant marketing so you remember who they are. How can your clients remember who you are?

With this advice, you’ll be sure to renew your career using the most worthwhile business lessons to guide your approach.