Here's how I'd get to 10k per month in 2 years instead of 7

Ten grand in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) has become a popular benchmark for freelancers to achieve “success.” First, this is silly. If you make a couple grand a month off of only what is in your brain and your grit, you are kicking butt.

But I get why it is such a common figure; in the U.S., it puts you securely in a six-figure income, and it usually is enough to live quite well in all but the most expensive areas.

Getting there

But if you have just now made your first dollar or two online, congratulations! This alone makes you a unicorn. Now that you know it can be done, you must learn to scale. Believe me when I say that I understand how unachievable this part feels. Like, how exactly can you go from $200 a month or so, to a liveable wage? And then, from a livable wage to a ridiculous wage?

That’s tough. I’m not going to BS you; most people will not stick with this long enough to get to the big leagues.

The first characteristic you must embrace is perseverance. You absolutely must be willing to shout into the void over and over and over and over in the small hope that someone will listen.

And I cannot guarantee anyone will. But the actual level of risk is low; if you shout into the void forever and no one hears you, you still lost nothing. We are talking about Twitter, LinkedIn, IG, FB, etc. You don’t have much skin in the game, so you really have nothing to lose.

NICHE. DOWN.

But more to the point, how will you get out of the swamp of low-paying clients?

I’ll tell you how: niche down.

What?

Niche. Down.

That’s how I did it. And that’s exactly what I would have done to hit $10K MRR in two years instead of seven. I wouldn’t have done anything else differently.

I should have committed myself to extensive market research to determine who had the money in the industries I write in, especially aerospace and aviation. Looking back, it was so dang obvious all along. The problem was NEVER the industry; it was always my understanding of how to find the money.

I can only imagine where my business would be now if I had learned to target clients back then on LinkedIn & Twitter. But as it stands, I am certainly proud of where it is.

If I had understood the importance of seeking out clients and building my LI profile and Twitter profile to find these clients, I could have shaved years off of my journey.

So, in short, the answer is simply volume. See, in those years, I operated as a reactive freelancer, hoping that anyone would find me. But they rarely did, beyond lowballers on Upwork.

I wasted years of valuable time as my 9-5 just doing piddly little jobs when I should have used that time on the clock to ravenously cold pitch and build my brand.

Lessons learned.

If you have a 9-5 that you can at least tolerate, stay there a little longer. Take that time and build an optimized profile on the social media service of your choice. Get that email list going. Build those courses.

But most of all, either crap or get off the pot. If you want to make it as a freelancer, or any entrepreneur, it's all gas and no brakes all the way.

That's it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk! Lol, but seriously. The takeaway is to make it your priority. If you do that, you will probably succeed. Persistence pays off. So gut it out, set your chin, and dig deep because this will be hard and will suck for a while.

And, as always, check out my book on how I made my break using Upwork. Like them or not, I wouldn't be where I am without them.