Habits are important to form in order to reach your goals and to create a daily healthy routine that will lead you to success. There are three crucial habits to form when it comes to being a successful freelancer. 

The first habit of any successful freelancer or entrepreneur is consistency. To be consistent means to always show up and make the necessary sacrifices to get to where you want to be. That is how successful people get known, to where you know their name, and you know their story. Every successful person out there who's ever started a business from zero and sold it for millions of dollars or anyone who's become famous didn’t just become successful overnight. They became successful due to being consistent. A lot of times it's easy to compare ourselves to others and to think that they just got lucky and that we are unlucky. I’m here to tell you, that's not true because a lot of times you don't know the full story behind what got that person to where they are and how many failed business attempts they tried, or how many years they put in before they reached any level of success. 

“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”

-Anthony Robbins

This quote by Anthony Robbins is true because being consistent every day will lead you to form good habits which are the key to success. There will be days where you just won't feel like working and will take the whole day off. While it's okay to take a mental day off, you must decipher between if you're really looking to recharge, or if you just want to be lazy that day and not put in the work. To create success, you must push through these feelings and stay consistent.

Once you start forming the habit of not showing up, you’ll then start to form the habit of making excuses. This happens by not being consistent, and there will be days that test your consistency where you don’t feel like studying at all, then another day comes and you put off studying, and this turns into an everyday-thing. Before you know it, you put off important things, and you won’t drive the results you’re looking for. Don’t let this happen to you. make a plan and stick to it, and eventually, you will get there. It might even take a year, or longer, but by showing up every-day you will see results, and start measuring success.

The truth is, once you fall into doing the bare minimum to pass, you will never separate yourself from the competition. To get to that next level of being a successful freelancer, you must be consistent, always grinding, and on the hustle. You do this by waking up early, putting time into working on your passion. It’s important to keep your life balanced and to spend your time doing other things as well, but it’s important to make the necessary sacrifices so you can be consistent every single day. Instead of saying yes to going out late, you chose to spend that time doing your passion, and instead of sleeping in, you’re getting up and planning out your next steps before the day begins. By forming the habit of being consistent, you will see great success with clients and your overall work routine.

The second habit that successful freelancers have is over-delivering. This means that you are providing more than your original promise or offer. What this does is it sets you apart from the competition because you're not just doing what you promised, you're going above and beyond that next step. You can over-deliver by staying in contact more often and delivering better results. By over-delivering, it will help you retain clients and have them come back to you over and over again because they know that you are someone that is always going to do more than you promised. This makes the client feel like they are spending money on the right person to help them and they're getting something out of your service. Clients will likely always hire a freelancer who they know will over-deliver on their promises every time, rather than only when it may be convenient for them.

“Formula for success; under promise and over-deliver”

 -Tom Peters

By always putting extra time and work into a project for a client, you will see that the client will be more than happy to pay you because you over delivered and helped them with more than they thought they needed. That makes you appear more reliable in their eyes and increases the chances they will turn into a repeat customer of yours. Over-delivering is crucial to winning clients and helps to build loyalty.

When you are over-delivering, it will open up a whole world of different referrals and different connections because if one client has a great experience with you and you help them out they're going to tell their friends, colleagues, and their family. This will lead you to more chances of getting more clients, who will give you a shot. When you begin to over-deliver and you're consistent you're going to start to see how these habits will help shape you into the most successful version of yourself that you can be. Whether you're freelancing or you started your own business in another area, start to look at where you can over-deliver because that's going to do a lot of different things that will help you have more success.

The third and final habit that can make you a successful freelancer is by finding and following your passion. By diving into working on different types of projects and different types of skills, you will start to see what you are most passionate about and then lean heavily into that. The beautiful thing about freelancing is you're never stuck in a little box that society or the corporate world puts you in because when you’re freelancing, this gives you the ability to have the flexibility to work on different projects that interest you most. The best part about this is you're not tied down to just one thing and a lot of times when people are starting their journey they just go all-in on one thing and I would advise you to be hesitant before you go all in on one thing. 

You can find your passion by experimenting and testing different things out. If you, for example, want to be a website designer but you’re still in a 9-to-5, instead of quitting your nine to five and going all-in on doing website design, first before you drop your current job, start to dabble in website design on the side. Start to look at graphic design, and copywriting. Get different types of clients and different projects under your belt and then you'll know whether graphic design is a great path for you, or you found out that you just want to test it out a little bit more to see if it’s a good fit for you. By experimenting first with your passions, it will help you find what you are truly most passionate about. 

"Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you."

-Oprah Winfrey

You must be passionate to be successful because passion is the driving force behind success that allows us all to live better and happier lives. This is what’s going to be helpful for when you want to over-deliver because you need to like what you're doing to be passionate and you can only fake it for so long. Anyone will see through the false persona after a while. Once you create healthy habits when you are working and surrounding yourself with ideas, projects, and people you are passionate about this will give you the motivation to wake up earlier and work harder on things that make you happy. By forming this habit you will be much more satisfied with the work you are doing and much more motivated to continue evolving as a successful freelancer.

If you want to become a successful freelancer, form these three habits of being consistent, over-delivering, and having passion. When you form healthy daily habits, you will start to shape the reality around you.

Paul Mendes | Profitable Freelancer