They tell you to niche down. But wait! Not too much. Let’s talk about really niching down. As you start your freelancing journey, you can really do that however you want. The sky’s the limit and that can be really overwhelming to narrow down what you would like to do. 

Here’s what I did. I took an inventory of all of my skills and listed them all out. What I found was that I could be a virtual assistant, project manager, social media curator, and the list goes on. I realized I didn’t want to niche down. It overwhelmed and scared me because then I would have to put myself in a box and I didn’t want to be put into a box. I want to do as much as I can because I needed to make money. There was no other option and this is what I needed to do to put food on the table for my kids. 

I didn’t really have the time to focus on what I wanted to do or what I could do. I just started applying. Looking over all my skills I applied for this virtual assistant job and applied to that project manager job. As I began closing those jobs and making steady money, that's when overwhelm and burnout came in. What I did was spread myself way too thin. Not thin as in the number of hours I was working, but in the amount of brainpower I was expending over so many different types of tasks. 

What I needed to do was take a step back and reevaluate because my bandwidth and brainpower were at capacity. I realized that what I was doing was not fulfilling. That’s one of the reasons I started freelancing was to make money and have a laptop lifestyle. It was time for me to identify now what kind of jobs I could get, what jobs I wanted to do, and what jobs brought in the most income. That’s where I began to niche myself down. 

By being able to niche down to things like Kajabi projects I could still stay on top of the marketing trends for other things like email marketing, and course development, and membership development.  All those things that I could continue learning because those things are always evolving. Then when I come into those new projects I’m able to raise my rates because now I bring to the table my Kajabi expertise, my confidence with that platform, and being able to stay on top of the trends in other areas that can serve my clients. My value proposition that I bring my clients is very high vs if I wanted to be a virtual assistant that is really spread thin. So now I’m niched down not in a way where I feel boxed in but I’m niched down in a way that my brain doesn’t want to explode. I’m not completely and utterly exhausted anymore. 

The cool thing is as you freelance on Upwork there are plenty of jobs you can apply for. So if you have a skill that you’re good at and you’re interested in, you can take and accept jobs based on those skills. Take your skills for a test drive! See if you can overdeliver with your clients and meet all the requirements that you feel confident in what you’re doing. When you bring confidence to the table as a freelancer it makes your positioning that much better. 

Just remember you don’t have to be super niched down but you don’t want to be overwhelmed at the end of the day. You still want to maintain some type of work-life balance. But, what can you do during your workweek to save some of that brain space and optimize it and your time on the projects that you love to do and will give you the greatest return on your income? 

So now it’s your turn. I would love to hear if you’re niched down? Or are you at your bandwidth? I’m interested to know if there are other people out there that have been in a similar situation in tweaking your skills a little bit or narrowing yourself down. And, did You give yourself an increase that way? You can contact me here on my website or dm me on Instagram @leahmmeyers.