Observing a few things that start emerging as the freelance time goes past.
Freelance naivety is protective
There’s a confidence that comes with naivety that you never quite possess after your knowledge grows. When you first start, your ambition will outstrip your ability with freelance mechanics otherwise you’d probably never get off the board. You don’t know what you don’t know isn’t something to lament later when you know the difference. Savour it!
Don’t trade convenience for power
A lot of freelancing is “monkey see, monkey do”, however this doesn’t get you as far as you think. If you price according to other freelancers but don’t know why they price the way they do, if you replicate style over develop one, or use templates but don’t understand why they work, you won’t be able to spot the problems, make changes, and pivot when necessary. Get comfortable with learning by doing.
Competitiveness has limits
You can declare another freelancer to be your competitor. You can cringe every time you see a post or make shots across the bough in your marketing. But that competition is paying homage to that person by defining everything you do in reaction to their existence. The better competitor is you bettering you.
We want something better
Freelancers take the risks and create the jobs we do for a variety of different reasons. It can be motivated by family, health, safety, ambition, travel, location, money, opportunity, and a whole bunch of other things. But we’re all unified by the desire to have a better working life than the one we had previously or the ones we’ve seen around us.
Skill isn’t the only factor
Skills are great. But clients benefit from our ability, reliability, adaptability, and attitude to the work. The weight of importance for each is made up of a bunch of different factors within their organisation and for the project itself. Learning which two are your strengths in the freelance arena can be life changing.
Money is a lure
Money and earning well and consistently is a great way to lure you into spending money on someone else’s courses and ideas. And money and analytics are an easy selling tool to get you interested. But you can’t fix how you make money with moneymaking techniques alone. Choose wisely.
You are a client manager
Clients want less headaches in their life. It is why they chose you to do the work for them. But clients can also be chaotic, disorganised, confused, act out of fear, bully, micromanage, ask for unrealistic things, and difficult to wrangle. They can allow fear to be their guide. It is part of your job to allay that fear and be a client manager.
Idea development can be a crutch
A lack of confidence in your ideas can lead you to overthink, overdevelop, and spend a lot of time planning and preparing ideas you rarely execute. This is a form of avoidance and procrastination. Stop fiddling and get your ideas out there. You need to respect your business and your ideas enough to leave them alone on occasion.
Ideas need audience input
You can try and mitigate the risk of your idea failing. You can pre-empt rejection by building all the bells and whistles. But you won’t know if your new service, special offer, or big idea will fly until you see how the audience reacts. You are far better off building something that is unfinished and nimble enough to take their feedback on board.
Get comfortable with no
Know your limits and what you don’t want. Write your anti goals and use them to guide you. Practice saying no to friends and family so it becomes easier with clients. Only take the work and opportunities that fit. Create a velvet rope around your business. Use yes strategically, not to avoid unhappy feelings or unpopular outcomes. Learn to love no as a word that empowers your focus and clears the way for higher quality work.
Common sense is a lie
Your clients do not come pre-installed with common sense. They do not know how you do business, what kind of project manager you are, or how to do business with you until they get there. You and the client are a patchwork of good and bad habits, maladaptive and positive coping strategies, assumptions, useful and out-of-date information, and the sum total of your working experiences to date. There is no common baseline. Only teaching each other how to collaborate.
Good is an abstract concept
You don’t have to be good at everything. You don’t have to be a good person in the eyes of the client. You don’t get good vibes off every job or client. You don’t have to be a good person to excel at creativity at freelancing. But life is easier if you get good at failing with grace, making a case for your ideas, and good at managing client expectations.
Comparison is a double-edged sword
You can compare yourself to other freelancers to learn and motivate yourself. You can use it to your advantage by seeing the inroads and changes they make and adding to their ideas and advocacy. Or you can compare yourself to other freelancers and torture yourself, endlessly viewing their progress as a personal injury and allowing yourself to fill with doubt. Only you can decide if that comparison is helping or harming you.
Freelancing is easier with friends
No one quite gets freelancing like other freelancers. Finding the right friends for your journey is lifechanging. You know you’ve found the right freelance friends when they accept you where you are, buoy you up when creating, help you through the tough times, make decisions easier, and help you feel less alone and more capable in this freelance world.
Be your best boss
Deciding the kind of boss you are going to be to yourself is the most powerful decision you can make. And the decision to be a better boss is something you can make at any time. Don’t be the freelance boss who looks, sounds, and acts towards your best employee the way your worst boss has.
Put the project first
If you’re always working with the best outcomes for the project at the centre of how you work, you’ll be able to sleep at night. No matter how much the politics, personalities, and peculiarities reign.
We shape the freelance community
The responsibility for making sure that freelancing is safe, welcoming, and productive lies with freelancers. If we want a freelance scene that is free from racism, ageism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and exclusion, we need to create it. And we create that by reducing harm, saying no to drama, not engaging in gossip and bullying, not forming cliques, and avoiding the high school posse mentality that often recreates the previous traumas underrepresented and marginalised communities have experienced.
It’s your freelance career
Others may have opinions on how you work, why you work, and who you do with the work with, but only you know what you truly want out of your freelance career. That knowledge is empowering.