![How Jim Huffman, CEO and Founding father of GrowthHit, Went from Freelancer to Proprietor of a 7-Determine Company [+ Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs]](https://i3.wp.com/www.hubspot.com/hubfs/freelancer-vs-entrepreneur-1-20241021-8630800.webp?w=598&resize=598,398&ssl=1 "How Jim Huffman, CEO and Founding father of GrowthHit, Went from Freelancer to Proprietor of a 7-Determine Company [+ Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs]")
When you’re questioning what the key components is for going from freelancer to entrepreneur, then constructing a thriving enterprise mannequin, then reaching targets for that enterprise, I’d say to only ask Jim Huffman.
Huffman, the CEO and Founding father of GrowthHit, is aware of how you can personal his lanes. From proudly owning a high-performance company that focuses on net design and optimization, development advertising and marketing, and inventive companies to being a bestselling creator of The Development Marketer’s Playbook, he’s actually received his components for achievement down pat.
On this article, I’ll discuss Jim’s suggestions for uplifting innovation and creativity, scaling a enterprise successfully, and I’ll additionally share how he makes use of his founder’s mindset to steer GrowthHit.
Let’s get to the good things.
Desk of Contents:
From Freelancer to Millionaire Entrepreneur: Key Milestones
No matter the place you’re in your corporation enterprise journey, you’re sure to come across the usual steps of development – from the great to the not-so-good – particularly as you’re employed your means as much as issues like increasing your clientele or discovering your area of interest (Huffman calls this “horizontal focus”).
However if you happen to occur to nonetheless be within the very early phases of constructing your model, I’m right here that can assist you assault the fundamentals, and this begins with understanding how you ought to be self-identifying primarily based on the kind of work you do.
Whether or not you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, there are specific phrases and situations to both route. And though everybody’s journey is actually one-of-a-kind, right here’s a short preview of what you must anticipate as you progress down one path or the opposite:
Key Milestones for a Freelancer
1. You’ll land your first consumer (silent applause).
That is typically probably the most vital milestone you’ll expertise as a freelancer.
When this lastly occurs, it’ll provide a much-needed enhance of confidence and set up your credibility available in the market. It might probably additionally result in extra alternatives and referrals (which equals more cash, cha-ching).
2. You’ll get a gentle stream of shoppers.
As a freelancer, your success typically is determined by your capability to constantly entice and retain shoppers.
This may occasionally contain constructing a robust on-line presence (if you happen to haven’t already, getting began on LinkedIn is a compulsory platform to start out doing this on), networking successfully, and offering a complete look into your companies/what it’s wish to work with you 1:1.
3. It’s possible you’ll (or could not) select a distinct segment.
As you achieve expertise, you might determine to focus on a selected area of interest or space of experience. No matter your knack is, while you select to do it completely, this resolution will aid you stand out from the competitors and entice shoppers who’re particularly searching for your abilities.
4. You would possibly begin on the lookout for some backup.
As your corporation grows, you might want to rent further group members or collaborate with different freelancers to deal with elevated workload or provide a wider vary of companies. This may very well be a strategic transfer that serves you nicely; you would possibly be capable of scale your corporation and tackle bigger tasks.
Subsequent, let’s discuss what pivotal moments appear to be within the lifetime of an entrepreneur:
Key Milestones for an Entrepreneur
1. You’ll launch your first enterprise; you’ll really feel completely superior.
That is typically probably the most rewarding milestone for an entrepreneur, primarily as a result of it represents the conclusion of your imaginative and prescient and step one in direction of constructing a profitable enterprise.
2. Your small business will choose up some momentum.
As your corporation grows, you might face new challenges and alternatives. This might contain increasing into new markets, hiring further group members, or securing particular funding.
3. You’ll overcome some main obstacles.
I’d be mendacity if I mentioned entrepreneurship is with out challenges. Alongside the best way, you might encounter setbacks, monetary difficulties, or competitors. However the way you react – your capability to beat these obstacles and be taught from them – is what issues most relating to long-term success.
4. It’s possible you’ll determine it’s time to say goodbye.
In some unspecified time in the future, you might determine to be much less concerned in your corporation or transition into a brand new enterprise. This generally is a bittersweet second, nevertheless it additionally represents the end result of your exhausting work and dedication put in over time.
Now that we’ve lined many of the grounds for each freelancing and entrepreneurship, let’s subsequent evaluation just a few advantages and disadvantages of each:
Freelancing Professionals and Cons
Professional #1: You select how the cash goes into your corporation.
As a freelancer, you have got full management over your earnings. You may select how a lot you earn by taking over as many or as few tasks as you need.
This flexibility is extremely empowering and it means that you can set your individual wage/charges, prioritize tasks that align along with your monetary targets, and revel in larger autonomy over the work you create.
Professional #2: You get to level-up your ability set.
You’ve in all probability found this perk already, however freelancing gives a novel alternative for fast ability improvement. Since you’re always uncovered to new challenges and tasks, you’re additionally always studying new strategies, enhancing your current abilities, and staying up-to-date with business tendencies.
This steady studying is extremely rewarding and can even make you extra marketable to potential shoppers.
Professional #3: You are able to do issues while you need, the way you need.
One of many greatest perks of freelancing is the pliability it gives. You may set your individual schedule, work from anyplace, and select tasks that genuinely curiosity you. This freedom can let you obtain a greater work-life stability and pursue different passions or hobbies.
Con #1: You might need some bother amassing your cash.
As a freelancer, you might expertise the dreaded: Shoppers delaying funds. This could trigger some monetary difficulties, particularly if contracts state that funds are Web 30, typically even Web 60.
That mentioned, you will need to have a transparent cost coverage in place and (no matter how imply you would possibly sound over e-mail) comply with up promptly if you happen to don’t obtain cost on time.
Con #2: Freelancing is a dog-eat-dog world, which is one thing you’ll need to get used to.
Competitors appears like loads of issues while you’re a freelancer, so I gained’t drag this one out for too lengthy.
Nevertheless, I’ll say this: The freelancing market is a extremely aggressive house, particularly in standard fields like content material technique, copywriting, or graphic design.
This could make it troublesome to face out and discover shoppers. To fight these anticipated hurdles, I suggest constructing an beautiful portfolio that illustrates what sort of work you do and the outcomes it’s produced, get some consumer testimonials to function in your web site or LinkedIn, and create packages which are tailor-made to particular alternatives (i.e., if you happen to’re a copywriter, I counsel making a bundle of social media copy, a bundle for web site and search engine marketing copy, and so on.)
Con #3: You’re going to need to cope with shifting expectations.
As a freelancer, you’ll typically discover that the expectations of your shoppers will shift. Rather a lot. In all probability greater than you’d assume.
They could change their minds in regards to the scope of a venture, request further options, or have new concepts that didn’t happen to them initially. This may be difficult and time-consuming, requiring you to always return to the drafting board and make edits and changes as wanted.
Entrepreneurship Professionals and Cons
Professional #1: You may construct the work world you need to see.
Similar to Jim, as an entrepreneur, you have got the distinctive alternative to create an organization tradition that aligns along with your values and targets.
This could result in a extra fulfilling and pleasing work setting for each you and your group.
Professional #2: You may lean on a group that you just belief.
Constructing a robust group of gifted people can offer you the help, experience, and motivation it’s essential to succeed.
Plus (and extra on this later), simply as Jim has shared, a group that’s aligned along with your targets and values might help you obtain your corporation goals extra effectively and successfully.
Professional #3: You may make the investments you’ve all the time wished.
Being an entrepreneur means that you can put money into alternatives, partnerships, and folks that would put you and your organization on the map.
By constructing a fame for early adoption or risk-taking by means of the alternatives you make, each financially and strategically, you may place your organization for achievement.
Con #1: Greater obstacles to entry.
Beginning a enterprise typically requires vital monetary assets, which proposes a number of obstacles to entry for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Moreover, relying on the business, there could also be quite a few rules and permits that it’s essential to get hold of earlier than you can begin your corporation. This may be irritating and dear, making it harder in your firm to achieve a respective market.
Con #2: You’ll have to rent and, subsequently, hearth.
Hiring and managing workers will be time-consuming and difficult, particularly by yourself. You’ll must develop efficient hiring practices, present coaching, and handle worker efficiency.
…Or you may take Jim’s recommendation from above and discover a superb worker to do all of this for you. Both works.
Con #3: You would possibly burn out quicker than you’d assume.
As an entrepreneur, you’re going to get used to carrying a number of hats, juggling numerous duties, and dealing lengthy hours to get your corporation to the place it must be. And, you might not discover it weighing on you at first, however you’ll really feel it in some unspecified time in the future.
This relentless tempo might probably result in burnout, particularly if you happen to’re not taking good care of your bodily and psychological well being.
What’s GrowthHit?
GrowthHit is a development group specializing in working development experiments for companies. GrowthHit sits on the intersection of net design and optimization, development advertising and marketing, and inventive companies.
Though the GrowthHit group is small (at present, there are fewer than 50 workers, which is fairly rattling spectacular), its achievements definitely aren’t.
To this point, the GrowthHit group has generated over $247 million in income, and that’s simply from working exams for enterprises nationwide. A few of these firms embrace Panera, Sephora, WeWork Labs, Tech Stars, and Normal Meeting.
These names are only some out of the 114 companies that GrowthHit has been in a position to help by means of its radical strategies for, as Huffman places it, “main with technique, not execution.”
GrowthHit’s Playbook
In the case of “main with technique,” Jim has many guiding rules, most of that are anchored in how, as an entrepreneur, he chooses to method each organizational management and consumer acquisition.
Listed below are just a few of them that I gathered from his dialog, that I figured can be probably the most helpful and actionable for aspiring entrepreneurs and freelancer of us:
1. Rent senior individuals, not junior individuals.
“Junior individuals can work however they require hand holding,” Huffman advised Developments.co. And whereas Huffman’s phrases could seem harsh, they’re not as chilly as they appear when you unravel his logic.
You see, if you happen to break his philosophy down a bit extra, you’ll discover that Huffman’s concern shouldn’t be with, actually, junior workers – they’re not unhealthy at their jobs or something – it’s with the extent of labor they’re more likely to produce on the stage of improvement that they’re in all probability at.
“The correct senior rent will do your job 5 instances higher and develop income [at the same time],” he elaborated.
In keeping with Huffman, senior-level workers will take away issues out of your plate as a result of, contemplating the place they’re at of their skilled careers, they’re expert at doing so.
2. Leverage tech to be a one-person gross sales org.
Jim revealed considered one of his close-kept secrets and techniques for doing work nicely: “Construct a one-person gross sales group off of a tech stack,” Jim talked about to Developments.co.
If something, I feel this piece of recommendation could also be one of the crucial essential, particularly for my freelancers on the market. Don’t do extra work than it’s a must to, particularly if most of your power must be spent looking for the leads that matter.
Now, in Jim’s case, he makes use of Zapier, Superhuman, Qwilr, and Mailshake to assist him work smarter, not tougher. Each tech stack appears completely different primarily based on the wants of the particular person behind them. Nevertheless, beginning with a CRM could also be an excellent place to start out — I counsel HubSpot’s.
3. Tradition is the whole lot.
If you need the important thing to controlling work tradition, Jim says you must begin with the small issues, not the large ones. “Get tactical in regards to the habits that make up your tradition, then applaud them,” he beneficial.
Right here’s Jim’s particular information to creating GrowthHit top-of-the-line locations doable for his workers to work and, after all, produce high quality outcomes:
- No repeat work. (Jim says: “If we are able to automate duties, let’s do it.”)
- No jerks.
- Default to kindness.
- Present, don’t inform.
Plus, he added this gem: “The perfect factor that you are able to do for A-players is rent different A-players which are aligned of their values and purpose.” Jim’s perspective demonstrates that constructing a well-oiled firm begins with consideration to element and a dedication to making a supportive, inspiring ethos that workers can’t solely comply with however witness tangible affect from.
4. Embrace outcomes (not hours) and provides generously.
This tenet is instantly linked to the earlier one. In keeping with Jim, “If you need A-players, give them a way of life you’ll need.”
Honestly, you are able to do this nonetheless you’d like. Possibly this appears like paying for prime workers’ dinners, and even tacking on an additional distant day to their hybrid work schedule.
Nevertheless, for Huffman, this appears like “giving spot bonuses to workers that over-deliver and push the enterprise ahead.”
Huffman’s bible for delivering on issues like firm tradition, scaling, and ROI is actually stuffed with superior takeaways.
Select Your Destiny
Whether or not you determine to embark on a path just like Jim’s or not, each entrepreneurship and a profession as a freelancer requires one factor: Dedication to your dream.
This implies being devoted, persistent, and prepared to place within the exhausting work essential to attain your targets. Keep in mind: Success gained’t occur in a single day, so be affected person with no matter your corporation throws your means, and revel in as a lot of the method as doable.