The difference between a great freelancer and a stellar one
Alright alright alright, let’s talk about the difference between a great freelancer and a stellar one. In my HUMBLE opinion.
Because I’ve spent some time on the other side of the table, hiring creatives and bringing on freelancers, and now I’m six months into being the one getting hired. And let me tell you – the view is different, but the patterns are exactly the same.
Being a "great" freelancer is actually a pretty high bar. You’re a sharp writer, you actually give a shit about the business goals, you meet your deadlines, and you don’t throw a tantrum when you get feedback. That’s the entry ticket. If you do that, you’ll have a career.
But then there are the stellar ones. The ones where, as a client, you literally exhale a sigh of relief when they send an "I’m on it" email. It’s not just about the craft. It’s about the razzle dazzle. And no, I don’t mean adding glitter to your Keynote slides (please don't). I mean the invisible stuff that makes working with you feel like a warm breeze instead of a logistical puzzle.
Here’s what in my opinion separates the two:
The mirror effect
A great freelancer delivers a good text. A stellar one delivers a text that looks like it was born inside the client’s own ecosystem. If my client sends me a brief in Inter 12pt, I’m not going to return the draft in Arial or some weird proprietary format they have to request access to.
If I know they always put the links and hashtags in the first comment of a LinkedIn post, I’ll put them there in the suggestion.
It’s about being an extension of the team, not a separate island. When I match their "universe", the formats, the Slack channels, the tiny stylistic quirks, I’m removing the mental load for the client. I’m not just giving them copy, neigh, I’m giving them ten minutes of their workday back. Might not sound like much but sometimes it is.
The no ghosting policy
The biggest anxiety for a client isn't necessarily "will the work be bad?", it's "where is the freelancer?"... you’d be surprised about how low the bar is, at times. I make sure I’m easy to get hold of. Not in a notification slave way, but in a "they’ll never have to wonder if I’ve seen the message" way.
I communicate my blockers, personal appointments, or just "Hey, I’m deep in writing today, will get back to you by 15:00". The goal is to make them feel like I'm right there next to them. Silence is the absolute killer of trust.
The self-propelled engine
There’s a specific instinct for knowing when to push and when to park. I try to figure out the most efficient way forward for that specific company as quickly as possible, how my points of contact work and what they value.
I don’t wait for a permission slip for every tiny detail if I already know the answer, or can comfortably guess and easily iterate later on. But I also know when a project has hit a fork in the road and I need to stop and ask for a map. It’s that balance of being independent enough to get shit done, but humble enough to know when the client needs to make the call.
The emotional payoff
At the end of the day, we’re all just people trying to get through our to-do lists without losing our minds, right? A great freelancer does the job. A stellar one makes the client feel safe. I try to own my fuck-ups (because we all have them), keep people in the loop, and just be... easy to work with. A bliss, even, but yeah aiming for the stars and ending up in tree, kind of.
It’s like the difference between a guest who comes over for dinner and waits to be served, versus the one who instinctively knows where the glasses are and starts pouring the wine while you’re finishing the sauce.
Be the person who knows where the glasses are.
That's how you become indispensable and your clients will claw their way to the budget covering your fee.