Considering Beginning to Freelance? 5 Reasons You Should Find Your Superpower Before You Start
Most people who go out on their own compete on doing more and end up blending in. The ones who make it build the whole business on the one or two things only they do best. Here is how to find yours before you start.
96% of customers said Pigment read them accurately, in a survey of 800+.
When I started freelancing, I spent my first full week choosing a font for my invoices. Not finding clients. A font. I told myself it was branding.
It was avoidance. The scary question underneath was one I could not answer yet. Why would anyone hire me over the ten other people who do the same thing?
If you are about to go out on your own, that question is coming for you too. It is worth answering before you quit, not after.
Here is what I wish someone had told me. The people who make it freelancing do not do more than everyone else. They build the whole thing on the one or two things they are genuinely best at. And they can say what those are in a single sentence.
That sentence is the hard part, and it is the exact thing Superpower gave me. In plain words I could actually use. In a survey of more than 800 people, 96% said Pigment read them accurately.
So before you pick a font, here are five reasons to find yours first.
You are not competing on doing more. You are competing on the one thing only you do best.
Reason 1: Win more clients by knowing what you're best at
When you freelance, your competition changes overnight. Suddenly you are up against a hundred other people whose resume looks a lot like yours.
You cannot out-work all of them, and you should not try. What sets you apart is the specific thing you do better than they do. The whole game is being able to name it.
Superpower gives you that in plain language. Not 'hardworking' or 'creative,' which every profile on earth claims. The actual, specific shape of what you do best. Here is what it hands you:
- The one or two things you do better than almost anyone in your field
- The kind of client and project that plays to that, so you stop taking work you quietly dread
- The plain words to say it in, so a stranger gets why it should be you in a single line
Mine came back and said I take something tangled and turn it into a version simple enough for other people to hold. I put a line like that in a pitch now. Vague pitches lose. Specific ones win the room.
Reason 2: Build a team that amplifies you
At some point you stop doing everything yourself. You bring in a subcontractor, a partner, a first real hire. This is where a lot of good freelancers quietly trip.
Hire someone exactly like you and you double your blind spots. Hire your total opposite and you spend every call grinding gears. Neither one actually amplifies you.
Superpower shows you the kind of person who does. The one who is strong right where you are thin, so the work gets better instead of just louder.
I know now that I need a partner who guards the strong version of an idea. Left alone, I will sand the edges off it to keep everyone comfortable. Knowing that changed who I choose to work with.
Reason 3: Delegate efficiently and find effective thought partners
I know how this is starting to read. This is the part where you brace for the sales pitch. Stay with me, because this next one is the reason I actually recommend it.
As your business grows, jobs start coming in that sit just outside what you are great at. Now you have a choice on every task. Do it yourself, or hand it off.
Get that wrong in either direction and you stall. Superpower is blunt about where your time is best spent, and where you are better off delegating or asking someone smarter than you.
Finding those smarter people is easier than it used to be. Every Superpower comes with free access to a group coaching community. So when you are stuck, you have a whole room of people to think out loud with.
Reason 4: Reduce the likelihood of failure by seeing your blindspots clearly
We all have blind spots. They are not a problem on their own. They become a problem when you cannot see them, which is sort of the whole definition of a blind spot.
Mine is that I care so much about everyone agreeing that I will quietly water down the best idea in the room to get there. Superpower named that for me on a page, in writing, before a client ever had to.
Most freelancers do not fail on the work. They fail on the stuff they cannot see about themselves. Catching it early is the cheapest insurance you can buy.
That was the part that surprised me most. It read me back accurately, blind spots included, and did it in a way that felt honest instead of harsh.
Reason 5: Give your freelancing business the best shot at success
Most people get one thing backwards about freelancing. They think the risk is whether they are good enough at the work.
They are almost always good enough at the work. The real risk is getting in their own way.
They second-guess every call. They try to look like every other freelancer instead of like themselves. And slowly they lose the exact thing that made them worth hiring in the first place.
Superpower takes that risk off the table. It builds your whole business from the thing you are best at, the advantage that is genuinely yours. You start from strength instead of from a font.
It is $99.99, once, and takes about twenty minutes. It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if it does nothing for you, you get every dollar back. Set against what a wrong first year of freelancing costs, that math is not close.
If you are getting ready to start, it is worth twenty minutes to find yours first, before you build everything on a guess.
Why you can trust this /
- Built from your own answersThe read is built from forced-choice trade-offs across dozens of traits, scored against a reference sample of thousands of people who reported how they actually work. It names the specific shape of what you do best, not a mood or an adjective. The method is a procedure you can look at, not a label you take on faith.
- GuaranteedIf it does not give you a clearer read on what you are best at than you walked in with, you get your money back. Thirty days, and no form to argue your way through.
- Customers say it is accurateWhen we asked Pigment's customers, 96% said it read them accurately, in a survey of more than 800 people. The line people repeat is that it named the thing they had been circling for a year, in words they could finally use out loud.
Before you decide
- “Isn't figuring out my strengths something I should just know already?”
- Most of us are the worst possible judge of our own strengths. You are too close, too modest, or too used to the thing you do easily to notice it is rare. This hands you the specific words for it, so you can sell from it instead of guessing at it.
- “I haven't even started. Isn't this backwards?”
- It is the opposite of backwards. The freelancers who struggle usually built their business on a guess about what they offer, then spent a year correcting it. Twenty minutes up front is a lot cheaper than a wrong first year.
Find the thing you build the whole business on
$99.99, once. About twenty minutes. Your read in writing, yours to keep. Use code WR5010 for 10% off, ends this week.
Backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee: if it does not give you a clearer read on what you are best at, you do not pay.
Work Review published this piece in partnership with Pigment, the company that makes Superpower, the product it points to. Alexandra Martensen's review is her own. We tell you about the partnership plainly, because a recommendation you cannot trust is not worth reading.