Working from home can be a very liberating experience. It rids people of the hassle of commuting from home to work and back. It also gives most freelancers the feeling that they are their own boss. In a way, instead of just being another employee, freelancers are actually entrepreneurs. They basically sell their skills. Working from home also gives freelancers the chance to decide how their area will look like so that it’s conducive for a work at home setup. Altogether, these possibilities give freelancers the chance to envision how they want to be successful using their own skills.

Once clients are in and the projects are piling up, the next thing to do is to make sure that clients are happy. For which there are three very helpful basic principles: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind and Put First Things First.

1 Be Proactive

To be proactive means taking the first step to engage and communicate with the client. Discuss details, ask for information, and be available for feedback. It is important to be available to do these things because details, information and feedback are what make a project successful. Of course they are also the tools which help in keeping the client happy because knowing these things serves as guide in producing the client’s preferred output.

2 Begin with the End in Mind

To begin with the end in mind means internalizing the client’s expectations and feedback and letting these guide one’s thought process and output design. It means keeping details in mind so that outputs looks just the way the client envisions it to be. It is one thing to be available for feedback and it is another to actually apply feedback, make the necessary changes or, for example, use the appropriate vocabulary to match the client’s goal. Even if the client changes his mind sometimes, it is important that a freelancer keeps the client’s preference in mind. This makes the client feel that the freelancer is working with him on the project and is working to help him achieve his goal.

 3 Put First Things First

Finally, putting first things first means making sure that the projects or tasks with the highest priority are really put up on the list. Although it is alright to want to have more projects, there must be a scheduling system to be followed so that a freelancer knows which deadline with which client is coming up. Clients will not want to feel that they are not being prioritized. However, clients are also not the same in dealing with their deadlines. Some clients allow for longer turnaround time while others need work submitted early. That is why a scheduling system will help to keep track of expected work progress.

Overall, despite the liberating experience that freelancing may give people who work from home, it is still important to not forget that this is still business and therefore a degree of professionalism which is helped by the aforementioned principles is still needed.