What
Create a portfolio of your work, so that you have a small collection of examples of your services, product or impact you created.
Why
Creating a portfolio of work will help you save time when having conversations with prospective customers - as you’ll have a number of examples you’ve already pulled together, and key selling points about each piece of work.
You can use this portfolio to start considering building your marketing materials such as a website or sales deck, but also for when you create profiles on freelancing platforms like YunoJuno
Despite what many articles might say, you don’t need a flashy website or a full portfolio to start freelancing - however, having a clear set of stories you can share or examples of your work, can help your prospective customers understand the work you do.
How
Reflect upon the work you’ve undertaken in the past few years, and identify a number of key projects or products which you feel best demonstrate your skills and the impact your work has had. Go for quality over quantity.
Select the work that aligns with what you identified as your offering, in the earlier task.
Write up each project, with some insightful information around what you did, how you approached it, and what impact it had - try to include any positive feedback or testimonials from the people you worked with.
When you’re starting out as a freelancer, your portfolio may also include work you did whilst working for or with another organisation - but you’ll need to label it as such, and may need permission to show the work.
You might want to include personal projects to show a range of your work, especially in the early days if you don’t have any examples of work for a customer or client yet.
Consider putting the portfolio into a single PDF which you can share, or building a website which you can point clients to.
