In this article, we'll discuss how agile principles and values can be applied to the way you approach data science projects.

Project management methodologies are commonly used to get projects done or get a product (often referred to as a tool) produced. They are, in general, processes and frameworks which break down the overall objective to individual tasks organised on a timeline. This can be adapted and used to approach data science projects.

In the past, the traditional Waterfall methodology (dated way back to 1970) has been very popular. It defines all requirements and parameters of the product at the start, so that the project team can work towards this target in sequential phases.

This method has been successful in the manufacturing industry where product specifications seldom vary with time. It requires very extensive upfront planning, and ideally, the output product is exactly the same as specified in the beginning.

But the Waterfall methodology started to become unsuitable for software projects. Because of this, many popular project management methodologies have emerged over the years, especially in the software development industry. Let me share the most popular one.

Waterfall vs Agile. Figure by Author.

Agile Framework

Agile is a way of working developed in 2001, and is a widely used to manage software development projects. It is suitable for fast-paced development cycles and has provision for changing specifications throughout the design and build process. It is flexible, and strives for iterative incremental improvement in the product through team collaboration. In short, Agile is to plan, build, test, learn, repeat.

Agile teams are responsive to the unpredictable requirements as the project unfolds, through iterative work processes. Below are Agile principles which serve as a framework (guideline) to the way of working:

• Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery
• Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process
• Frequent delivery of working software, as the working software is the primary measure of progress
• Collaboration and interaction between the business stakeholders (client) and developers (vendor) throughout the project, including face-to-face communication within the development team
• Support, trust, and motivate the people involved
• Agile frameworks to support a consistent development pace
• Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility
• Simplicity in looking for solutions
• Regular reflections in the self-organising team on how to become more effective

Agile projects are characterized by a series of tasks that are conceived, executed and adapted as the situation demands. However, Agile focus is not on what to do, but how to think. Agile values and places priority on:

• Individuals and interactions (rather than processes and tools)
• Working software (rather than comprehensive documentation)
• Customer collaboration (rather than contract negotiation)
• Response to change (rather than following a predefined rigid plan)

Agile way of working. Figure by Author.

Agile practices and Data Science

While Agile principles and priorities are employed for greater productivity, most of them can be leveraged for data science (DS) projects.

Moreover, data scientists do not know how to schedule the project because it is impossible to determine a specific timeline for the type of “research” and exploratory work. Most DS projects require trial and error by going down different paths and trying different techniques. They do not have an element of certainty in the output, so Agile can be used to direct the workflow.

Most other projects deal with what customers want, what the developers want, and what the business seeks. When working with DS, another perspective is added: what the data is telling you.

Data scientists cannot make any sense out of the data unless they develop a basic understanding of it. There is a lot of investigation, exploration, testing and tuning. Agile uses the concept of iteration and constant feedback in order to refine a system under development, in order to move up the Data-Value Pyramid.

Data-Value Pyramid. Figure by Author.

When working on DS projects, insights are not immediately achievable. Multiple iterations are needed before any insights can be discovered.

How agile practices can be applied

I will explain the main Agile working practices (Scrum framework), and how they can be applied to DS:

Define the business need and the project objective. This is usually driven by the product owner who is responsible for the product features and quality. It is the big picture stuff, but this is the core belief that you will refer back to as you build.

In DS, the product owner could be the client, the business, or the end customer (for example, end user of a prediction tool). Understand what problems the product owner is facing and tailor the project proposal to meet their needs.

Build the backlog. Focusing on the user requirements (“user stories” in Agile), a list of tasks is derived that you need to accomplish to build product features or improve product performance.

The DS team builds the backlog together with the product owner to determine the product features and performance targets. The backlog could start from getting the data in the structured way before they can be analysed. Then it could be a list for feature selection or feature engineering, or a list of models to select, tune and optimise.

Prioritise the backlog, identify the backlog tasks which will bring the most value with the least effort.

In DS, not every approach is worth trying, so cover the most promising ones first. When the main ones are conveyed, you might find that the remaining others are not as important as initially thought.

Do a sprint (the actual development work). Sprints are usually two-weeks cycles where high priority tasks on the backlog are worked on.

In DS, each sprint could be two to four weeks depending on the team size. During the sprint, always complete the task with the highest priority before moving on to the next in line.

Have daily standups. Standup meetings are for team members to be accountable to one another on their progress in the current sprint. Each team member take turns reporting their status — what was done the day before, what to do today, any potential obstacles. The most effective communication happens when DS team members meet face-to-face to share their work.

Review the sprint output (sprint retrospective meeting). At the end of two weeks, there should be a functional output for the project team to demonstrate, with an incremental improvement in the product.

Data scientists should share the outputs before trying to perfect the processes. Get feedback from client stakeholders and prepare for the next sprint. Regular feedback is a key principle for the Agile way of iterative incremental improvement.

Prepare for the next sprint. Identify the tasks that are going well and keep doing them, and identify those that are impediments to be removed.

It is important to understand that, unlike software development, DS is more experiment-based than task-based. DS helps explore data so it should be treated as multiple research experiments. Once again, build and prioritise the backlog so that the next sprint can be carried out, to work on the next improvement areas.

Roll out the final product. When all stakeholders agree that no more improvement is needed in the product, it is ready for the final deployment.

DS projects follow the “law of diminishing improvement”. For example, if a model has achieved 70% accuracy, the next 5–10% improvement will take a lot more effort than before, and it also depends on the limitations in the data set. Decide in the team whether the efforts are worth the incremental improvement.

Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@youxventures" rel="noopener">You X Ventures on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Oalh2MojUuk" rel="noopener)

Challenges with the client

Besides having adequate communication between the DS team and the client, the client’s expectations have to be managed.

All clients generally love the idea that Agile is flexible, and that it grants them more opportunities to change their mind as the project develops. However, they might not realise that such flexibility is also costly in both time and money. Here are some things you should do:

The cost of flexibility

Get the client to understand that flexibility is inevitably expensive. It is like how a flexible full-fare economy ticket which allows itinerary changes will cost much more than the fixed one. Making changes also means that the client is paying for past wasted time and effort.

Set expectations

Set the client’s expectation to commit time for frequent sprint retrospective meetings (e.g. every two weeks) to evaluate the completed sprints.

On top of that, the client representative in each meeting needs to be (empowered by higher management) able to make decisions on product specifications. For Agile to work, the client needs to provide continuous feedback and priority setting to keep the project moving.

Trust is important

Earn the client’s trust and show them that each iteration is done with the best possible efforts to deliver value and improve the product.

While holding the decision making power, the client also expects an iteration to have tremendous improvement.

Such imbalance in responsibility in the client-vendor relationship should be converted to mutual trust and willingness to experiment together. Agile’s principle in collaboration means it is a team effort in both making decisions and delivering value.

Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@youxventures" rel="noopener">You X Ventures on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/6awfTPLGaCE" rel="noopener)

Minimum Viable Product

One key feature of the Agile way of working is the development of a minimum viable product (MVP). This is the most fundamental configuration of the product (or tool).

After the project objectives have been defined, the team makes a proposal regarding the approach to the problem. This includes building the MVP within the shortest possible time (like one month for DS projects). The MVP has only the most important functionalities, but its performance may not be the most optimal.

This might seem very risky – putting a less-than-finished version up for the client to test. So the team (including the client) has to be prepared for it. The purpose is to make the MVP work, test it, and see if it is really going in the correct direction of solving the problem and helping the business case.

The MVP will grow better, because the DS team is going to use what they have learnt from the MVP feedback to build an improved version. Agile is about continuously deploying and learning from your mistakes, and working with the client to make the product better.

_Iterative nature of Agile. Figure taken from TowardsDataScience._

Agile is to plan, build, test, learn, repeat.

DS project deliverable

The Agile way of working allows data scientists the ability to prioritize and create roadmaps based on requirements and goals. With each iteration, data scientists can learn something new, get more refined results, and ride on them for the next incremental improvement.

Below are some Agile project deliverables to shape and guide project process:

• Project vision statement: A summary that articulates the goals for the project.
• Project roadmap: The high-level view of the requirements needed to achieve the project vision.
• Project backlog: Ordered by priority, this is the full list of what is needed to support your project.
• Release plan: A timetable for the release of a working product (or tool), but not documentation. Projects should be self-documenting along the way.
• Sprint backlog: The user stories (requirements), goals, and tasks linked to the current sprint.
• Increment: The working product functionality that is presented to the stakeholders at the end of the sprint and could potentially be given to the client. The goal is not to deliver more but to get a higher value output.

Summary

Agile is going to be adopted by more DS project teams in the near future. Many data scientists have reported that it makes them more productive.

This is not because the data scientists have become more skilled, but because Agile can help them optimize their projects. Instead of spending time on models that are unlikely to reveal any productive results, it is better to spend that time for other result-driven purposes.

Being “agile” (flexible) means you need to adopt a dynamic approach in planning and be adaptable to the changing needs of the new situation when it arises.

The Agile environment appeals to quick action, fail quickly, discuss and evaluate, then try again using a different approach or an improved method. It works great in dynamic environments where there is a potential for changing or evolving requirements.

All the best to your DS projects!

Reference:
Data-science? Agile? Cycles? My method for managing data-science projects in the Hi-tech industry.

If you are a web designer/developer who currently bills per hour, I hope I can persuade you to change your pricing method to value based pricing.

In this article, I discuss both of these methods in detail and without the fluff so you can just get the nuggets and practical understanding to make an informed decision from there.

On a serious note, if you apply what you will read about today, you can really earn more, work less and be a more fulfilled freelancer - and I don't just say this half-heartedly.

Enough fluff, let’s get straight to it:

Billing By The Hour

I’ll start with this pricing method first because it’s the most popular.

I am well aware that there are many web designers/developers out there who make a very good living by using the hourly billing method, but in my opinion, value based billing is far better than hourly billing.

To explain why, these are some common truths about hourly billing:

• There are times when you argue over invoices and timesheets which wastes time for both parties (yes, there are software programs to track this, but even that can be disputed by a client).
• Feeling like you have to be “micro-managed” by the hour. Clients would often want an estimate of the total hours before the project starts. They would then make a decision to go ahead with the project based on the estimate and not the final cost.
• There’s no incentive to stay up to date with the latest technologies, software or tools to make your job easier because if you do, you get paid less.
• The longer the project is, the better it is for you (more income) and the worse it is for the client (more expense).

Billing Hourly is Harmful for Your Working Relationship with the Client

To illustrate this point, let’s say you wanted to build an additional room on to your house.

The builder tells you it will cost $75k based on his best estimates and you go ahead with the agreement.

The builder completes 80% of the project and then says it’s going to cost another $15k to finish the remainder.

How would you feel? Would you work with them again? Would you refer them to friends?

Probably not. And it’s the same thing with web design/development projects.

If the project is not planned correctly, things can really turn bad if you now realize you are losing money and then tell the client it’s going to cost 30% more because of “xyz”.

Hourly Billing Discourages Efficiency and Innovation

Let’s say that the same web design project comes to you and 9 other web designers. You each have different hourly rates that you decided would be fair for your expertise.

“John” charges $45 per hour and others charge $75 per hour and then there’s this one guy (who I’ll name Bob) who charges $150 per hour.

Bob, with his experience in finding better ways to complete projects, codes the website in 3 hours = total fee of $450.

John, with his lack of experience, knowledge and efficiency, codes the website in 16 hours = total fee of $720.

Hourly billing encourages you to not work smart and to drag the hours so you get paid more.

Look, some websites can be done in less than a day – even a few hours if you have all the info ready and you know exactly what needs to be done.

If you are charging by the hour, why would you rush to get this website done as soon as possible when you could delay it by a few days and get paid more for it?

Maybe there’s a snippet of code you can buy for $100 that can save you 3 days of coding time, but you are hesitant to do this because that means you lose out on getting paid more and you have bills to pay.

In other words, the client is paying you for 3 days extra (which would be more than $1,000) because you don't want to use a $100 code snippet as this means you lose out on $1,000.

Can you see why this is harmful to you and your client?

Here’s another practical example:

If you are working on 3 client projects (retainer or once-off) at the same time and it takes you up to 2 hours per week to track your hours, prepare invoices, process payments, organise the accounting/tax side, etc. that can take almost a full working day each week just to handle this boring administrative task.

This is beyond crazy. You are not hired as an administrator or debtors clerk or whatever else – don’t fall into this pit.

On top of that, you’ll deal with one or two clients who always question everything and this takes even more of your time. This leads to a lack of trust down the line and nobody wants to work like that.

I know these are very simple examples, but it still holds true in more complex projects as well.

Your clients need to know this. Use the same analogy above or something that makes sense to you, but this is very important in moving forward.

Your Income is Capped

There are only so many hours you can work in a year. Let’s say you are earning $60k per year.

If we work on roughly 250 working days, this is $240 per day and $30 per hour (8 working hours each day).

Firstly, not many web developers/designers are booked every hour for the whole year, but let’s say this is the case. What if you wanted to earn $100k next year?

That would mean you need to increase your hourly billing to $50.

Although it’s only $20 extra per hour, that’s $160 extra per day, $800 per week and over $3k per month extra for a client to consider. It can often be a deal breaker in keeping retainer clients or signing up new clients for weekly/monthly projects.

Unless your existing clients really value your services, they will not understand why you now all of a sudden value your services at almost twice the price for the same amount of work.

It’s very likely that they will start looking for other freelancers with a lower hourly rate.

New clients or prospective clients may not sign up with your premium service as you are almost double the “going rate” for other freelancers with similar expertise.

Bottom line: increasing your income is not easy. Although you want a higher income, the clients you work with really don’t care about your income desires and they don’t want a higher expense.

Bottom line of the bottom line: Guess who really makes the final decision at the end? (it’s not you)

The solution is not some fancy tool or time-tracking software.

Yes, these can help, but this is more like a temporary fix and it doesn’t deal with the main issues mentioned above.

Remember: It’s in the client’s best interests that you don’t bill by the hour. You just need to educate them on this.

Value Based Pricing

To avoid any misconceptions about this pricing method, it’s not a fixed amount that is calculated by your cost + your desired profit.

Here are some common truths about value based pricing:

• You don’t sell hours (like everyone else does) – you sell results (or the potential results).
• There’s an incentive to stay up to date with the latest technologies, software or tools to make your job easier and to become more efficient.
• It allows you to really create something amazing and not to worry about going over the client’s desired budget.
• There are no hidden financial surprises to clients. You take all the risk in delivering the project within the total cost you’ve informed the client about.
• You can work with less clients and provide a better service because you are often earning significantly more.

You are essentially providing a fixed amount based on the projected return or outcome of the project.

You must probably be thinking that this sounds all fancy, but how can it be applied?

Here’s a short summary:

Find out the potential value of the project to the client over a year. In other words, find out the potential increase in sales that the business could be making after you create the website.

Then base your price off of this potential return.

Example #1 – The Existing Business Website:

A business sells agricultural drones via their website. They ask you to create a website focused around getting more sales.

After you ask the basic questions (refer to the Prospective Clients Checklist), your 2 main questions should be:

• 1. How many sales do you currently get each month?
• 2. What is the average sales value of a drone?

They answer with:

• 10 sales per month
• $8,500 each

You then do simple math to figure out how much they make each month ($8,500 x 10 = $85,000).

You look at their current site and see where they are losing sales and you work on a low estimate of what you expect sales could increase by after you make a conversion-centred website.

In this scenario, let’s say you are confident it would at least be 2 sales extra per month.

This would mean the business would make an additional $16,000 per month and almost $200,000 after one year.

After informing the client of this in the proposal and why you feel this is a low and realistic estimate, you then give your website cost based on the potential annual return.

For this example, your price could be $10,000 - $15,000.

Would you, ‘as the business owner’ be willing to pay around 5% of what you could potentially make after one year?

Of course.

Example #2 – The New Business Website:

A business sells agricultural drones and they want a new website.

They ask you to create a website focused around getting sales.

After you ask the basics questions (refer to the Prospective Clients Checklist), your main question should be:

• What is the average sales value of a drone?

They answer with:

• $8,500 each

After doing further research about the market and their marketing plan, you are confident that you can create a conversion-centred website that can convert into at least 4 sales each month (or one sale per week).

This equals $34,000 per month and over $400,000 in a year.

Your price could easily be $10,000 - $15,000 and it would make sense to the prospective client after you have explained the value of the potential return.

Remember: your responsibility is to make the business see this as a necessary investment and not a cost. You need to explain why you are the right person for the project.

By breaking it down like this and being practical about it, you instantly stand out from the crowd of other freelancers who say things like, “I estimate that this project will take about 120 hours X my hourly rate of $45 = $5.4k”.

The bottom line is that it's a win for you and a win for the client.

By thinking about OUTCOMES, it shows you understand the project as the business does. You are not thinking about HOURS like everyone else does.

Now of course this is a very simplified summary. You would have to deal with the objections clients or potential clients may have like:

• 100% payment upfront

• Questions about pricing

• Doubts of the client

As far as I know, this method works in any product or service industry – even lawyers and accountants. The issue is not whether it works, but rather who is actually doing it effectively.

The truth is that this model is simple in theory, but in practice you might stuff up in a few areas.

That’s OK… don’t have a narrow mindset. You are running a marathon and not a sprint.

It takes a lot of trial and error and ultimately you will learn by experience about what, how and when to say the right things that will get you higher paying clients.

Learn from your mistakes, see where you can improve and each year you will become better in how you handle objections, how you communicate and more.

I hope this has helped you to rethink this topic.

If you’d like to learn more and improve your skillset and become a happier freelancer that earns more, make sure to check out my course.

Until next time,

Kyle

Referrals are the holy grail of freelance client acquisition. But they don’t come automatically, even for many experienced consultants. So, how do you get more referrals?

I’ve talked a lot about how word-of-mouth referrals have been a large part of my freelance business growth and success. Anyone who’s experienced freelancing for themselves — or has read about client acquisition strategies — will have heard that getting referral clients is the key to maintaining a pipeline of consistent work with less cost and effort.

However, as Abbey Woodcock recently pointed out:

Very few articles about getting clients really cover how to systematically generate referrals.

I’m guilty of that too. I’ve discussed client-acquisition quite a lot, yet apart from general terms like “building a strong reputation”, I’ve failed to go into detail about what steps you can take to encourage more organic referrals.

Challenge accepted! Today I will outline my strategy for how to turn nearly all of your clients into referral machines. And the solution may not be as direct as you’re expecting.

How do freelancers find clients?

Let’s take a step back and first consider all the ways freelancers may try to find new clients and projects:

• Referrals.
• Their own website/portfolio (through organic search or direct).
• Receive work as a sub-contractor for larger agencies.
• Other industry-specific showcases/directories (like Dribbble or Behance for designers).
• Cold outreach (email, phone)
• Social media groups or campaigns (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Attending live events (conferences, meetups, etc.)
• Gig Sites (Fivver, Upwork, Craigslist)
• Job Boards
• Paid traffic (google ads, facebook ads, etc.)

You may have a few more fringe channels to add to this list — depending on your industry, niche, marketing strength and preferences — but these tend to be the primary drivers of client acquisition for most freelancers and small creative service businesses.

I’ve ordered this list in the approximate order of importance for my own client acquisition pipeline. The percentage of success of each channel may differ greatly for you. But we’re here to talk about only one method, so let’s ignore the others.

Why are referrals the best form of freelance client acquisition?

Ease, and trust. Let me explain.

I’ve heard different numbers, but most people seem to agree that getting work from existing clients is about five times easier (faster, cheaper) than finding new clients. I hear you saying “referral clients aren’t existing clients!” and you’re right, but they come with most of the same benefits.

Referral clients come with the same ease of acquisition as existing clients. You could almost consider a referral as an extension of an existing client. You didn’t have to reach out or pitch to them, and they already know something about you and have some level of trust in you. More on trust below.

If you can cut your marketing efforts dramatically and still keep your work schedule busy with referral work, who wouldn’t want that? We all like it when good clients fall into our laps with very little effort on our end. That’s the freelance dream (really, the dream of all service businesses regardless of size).

However there’s a deeper reason to encourage referrals. Referral clients trust you more.

Trust is a hugely important factor is building client relationships. Trust helps grease the wheels of the creative feedback/revisions process, allowing you more freedom to use your skills and experience. Trust makes client communication more enjoyable and effective. Trust leads to long-term partners.

I consider building trust to be a key part of any client onboarding process, and it often takes the first 25% of a project to communicate expectations effectively and build that trust over time.

But referral clients come to you with a large part of that trust already baked in. Why?

When a friend, family member, or colleague — a person you already trust and respect — refers you to someone or something, some of that trust rubs off. It transfers to the thing they’ve recommended by good association. You think — with less due diligence than usually required — that you can trust this recommendation because you trust the person it came from. If they say something it good, it’s probably good, because this person has your best-interest at heart. And, making a good recommendation makes them look good too. It gives them extra social cred.

When that referral client comes to you, they come pre-loaded with trust. They already know you’re the person they want for the job before you’ve even tried to sell your virtues. Half of your trust-building has been done for you. Now all you have to do is meet or exceed that expectation.

With more freelance business experience, usually referrals grow too. You naturally establish a good reputation over time, and slowly grow a list of satisfied clients that refer you to others with little encouragement needed.

However I’ve heard from experienced freelancers who used to get referrals, now saying they’ve suddenly dried up. Or what about recent grads or new entrants to the freelance market who haven’t had the luxury of building a reputation over years?

It’s not magic. There are steps you can follow to accelerate the process of earning referrals, no matter what your experience level. Here’s my recipe.

How do I get more referrals?

If you search for “how do I get more referrals”, you’ll find plenty of scripts that would help you ask for referrals in a very direct way. They might tell you to email your client after a successful project, asking:

“Do you have names of three friends or colleagues that I could reach out to?”

And then you’d send something like this to those new contacts:

“I worked with [CLIENT NAME]. They were really happy with my service and said that you might be interested.”

Some people may have success with this method, but I don’t do it and I’m not aware of anyone else who does. The problem is that it comes across as too desperate. It’s not something that adds to a genuine relationship and interest in your client’s success. Immediately treating your client as a lead-generation tool feels sleazy. That’s not how I want to be remembered by my clients.

So I take a more indirect approach to encouraging referrals. I make myself as “referable” as possible. Then my clients refer me by their own initiative when it suits them best, without me ever having to ask.

Also remember that referrals don’t always come from clients, they can come from colleagues as well. When I’m too busy to take on a new job, I usually get asked if I can recommend someone else. You want to be that someone else.

Being more naturally “referable”

Being referable is a combination of a number of factors. Each is helpful on its own, but their true power comes in doing them all at once. You’ll find they snowball together to create a momentous effect if you complete the entire formula.

1. Establish a great reputation

This is the most important foundation, but also the most difficult step for new freelancers to achieve. The more experience you have freelancing, the easier your reputation will naturally build. So long as you’re doing the right things.

You want to be seen as the best of the best.

Building a reputation is simple. It takes only two thing: excellence and consistency. Be excellent at your craft, and do it consistently for every client and every project. You’ll quickly become known for your quality of work.

2. Be ultra-professional & build trust

Being good at your craft is only half of your job. Running a professional business is the other. The basis of any referral is trust. Your colleagues and clients must trust you enough to put their own reputation on the line by recommending you. You need to be credible enough that they feel elevated to be partnered with you. They need to feel proud to recommend your name, as it reflects back on them.

The way you communicate with your clients and set expectations will be just as memorable to them as the quality of work that you deliver. Be the freelancer they remember because you were so trustworthy, reliable and easy to work with, and your reputation will grow at twice the pace.

3. Overdeliver

I don’t mean the often-ill-advised “underpromise and overdeliver”. I never underpromise. I simply overdeliver, without being asked to.

Surprise your clients with a little something extra now and then. That can either be an added bonus on their project, or a thank you gesture completely unrelated to your creative work.

Maybe you go the extra mile to document a really comprehensive interaction styleguide for your latest UI design project, even though the client didn’t ask for it. Perhaps you deliver a framed print of your client’s new brand identity for them to hang proudly on their wall, as a gesture of your gratitude for a fun project. Or maybe you simply send a holiday card or some surprise chocolates because you know your client is a cocoa lover.

Remind your clients that you’re thinking of them and you have their business’s best interest at heart.

4. Build ongoing relationships

Even if a client is clearly a one-off project and there’s little potential for future work from them, it pays to stay in touch. I do my best to email all of my favourite (or most valuable) clients from time to time, just to check in and ask how their business is going. This is easy, because I don’t take on new clients unless I have a genuine interest in their business. So following up about their plans and successes is a natural step for that kind of relationship.

This follow-up communication may even result in more work directly from your existing clients, which is better than referrals. But even if it doesn’t deliver more work, it keeps you “on their radar” so when the right time arises for a referral, they’ll have you in mind.

5. Your website must back up your personal brand

If your colleagues or satisfied clients do recommend you to one of their contacts, the first thing that new contact will do is google you and check you out. Make sure you are easy to find when they do their due-diligence.

Once they hit your website (or any other online representation of you, like your LinkedIn profile) the messaging they encounter must match the expectations they’ve been given. Make sure there is no inconsistency or disconnect between what your carefully crafted reputation says about you, and what impression your website leaves on them. These touchpoints are all part of your personal brand, and like any other brand, the most important point is consistency in experience.

6. Reciprocate referrals

If you want a colleague or client to recommend you, one great way to encourage this is to recommend them! If you come across any of your own connections or other clients who could benefit from a relationship, help them make that connection with a personal introduction or referral. This is another way of showing your clients that you’re thinking of them, and that gentle reminder will encourage them to do the same for you.

Being a “matchmaker” can be a valuable tool for keeping yourself in your client’s awareness, and in their good graces.

7. Say thanks for referrals

Once you do get a referral, it’s imperative that you show gratitude for it. I make a point of asking every new person who contacts me “where did you hear about me?”. If they say they were referred by someone, I waste no time in contacting that person and thanking them for the referral. A simple email or phone call will do. Even of the referral leads nowhere and I’m not interested in the work it brings, I thank them for it just the same. Some people like to send small gifts, but I don’t feel it’s necessary. A simple thank you note will let them know how much the referral means to you.

Now you’ve built a mighty referral engine

All of these steps done together make it very easy for your colleagues and clients to refer you, without being asked or bribed to do so. And equally important, easy for those referrals to validate your value and feel confident using your services.

I won’t promise this formula will bring you overnight referrals. Like any business strategy, knowing the theory is one thing but successfully implementing it is another. You may have to refine things along the way to build a system that feels right to you. I’d be interested to hear what else you do that may work better.

This is part of playing the long game of freelance business success. If you’re a part-time freelancer side-hustling to make some extra cash, or a temporary freelancer filling “in-between” other employment, this may be too much of a commitment for your casual business endeavour.

If you’re a full time indie business owner looking to make a permanent career out of it, you can’t afford NOT to get referrals. Commit to doing these things for a few years — not just a few weeks or months — and watch your colleagues and clients spread around your good reputation for free. That’s when you hit freelance referral gold.

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This story can also be found on solowork.co