4 Reasons to Diversify Your 'Workfolio'

For years now, we’ve seen a slow and steady rebellion against the traditional 9-5 way of life. Society has started to realize the impacts of an increasingly demanding work schedule on mental health, quality of life, and home life.

Not everyone is cut out to spend 8 hours a day behind a desk, and the stats back that up. According to Upwork, a leading global freelancing platform, 34% of the US workforce are freelancers. And they contribute a total of $700B to the US economy. But as a freelancer, it’s important to mitigate risk. Diversifying your clientele is a great way to do just that.

Here Are 4 Reasons to Diversify Your ‘Workfolio’

1. Create Your Own Path

To some extent, you lose control over the projects you work on and how you progress in your career when working for an agency or single employer. Having a project put on your desk that you are just not interested in or passionate about is disheartening to say the least.

As a freelancer, I have the choice of what types of projects I work on. Each time a project is completed successfully, I am essentially being promoted. My project experience is used to attract bigger clients, higher paying clients, or more strategic projects. While my path is not the traditional climbing of the corporate ladder, I feel highly rewarded by knowing I have the freedom of choice in what I do.

2. Have a Varied Workday

If you’re like me, then working on the same exact projects every day for months on end is exhausting, monotonous, and oftentimes daunting. Something I have learned to love through my experience freelancing is having an incredibly varied work day. I never get bored.

There are so many benefits to having a varied work day, but my top two are being able to create balance in the types of work I do and learning something new every day. Having worked on projects in industries from finance to home appliances, I am exposed to the ins and outs of so many more ways of thinking than if I focused on a particular niche. My clients also benefit from the repository of knowledge I gain from being exposed to so many different industries.

3. Stability on Your Terms

For anyone who is into investing, you know the common advice to diversify your investments to protect you from overexposed risk in a particular type of investment. You wouldn't put all of your eggs in one basket and hope for the best, you create a strategy for success. The same logic should apply to freelancing, as well.

When you have clients spread across multiple industries, company sizes, and even geographies, you are much less susceptible to the ups and downs of one specific industry or city. The same applies for reaping the rewards of growing industries. If you can work with clients in proven and emerging industries simultaneously, you get the benefits of stability and innovation all on your terms.

4. Freedom to Try New Things

With a diversified clientele, you may find opportunities to stretch your skillset. Say you are working on a project and the client asks if you can design the final deliverable in addition to providing the content, which is your usual scope. You do a great job on the work and the client loves your final designed deliverable. Well, it looks like you’ve just found a new service to offer!

Without the boundaries of a department or specific job title, you can follow your skills and interests where they lead you. Each project is an opportunity to expand your skill set, and you have the freedom to choose which new things you want to try.

Freelancing is the Future

Aside from the fact that over ⅓ of Americans freelance, freelancing as a career is gaining in demand and respect. The four reasons I’ve explained as reasons to diversify your ‘workfolio’ is definitely not exhaustive. While knowing why you should diversify who you work with, it’s also imperative to know how. Read ‘4 Ways to Diversify Your Workfolio’ to learn how!