Be open to new opportunities

An interview with Adrienne J

Hi Friend,

One thing that many successful freelancers do well is spot gaps in the market they can fill. Often, these opportunities are subtle at first—you need to pay attention to what your current and prospective clients are telling you. But if you do pay attention, you’ll find ways to grow and evolve your business.

In this Happy Freelancing interview, we hear from Adrienne, a writer who discovered an untapped opportunity in the market and turned it into a thriving business. By focusing on helping people develop their Substack newsletters, Adrienne has carved out a unique niche and built a career around guiding others. Her journey is an inspiring reminder that spotting a gap, being willing to try something new, and leaning into your strengths can lead to incredible opportunities.

Adrienne enjoying nature (from personal photo collection)

Describe how your career has unfolded, how you identified your specialties, and how you wound up where you are.

I’ve been a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother for 15 years. While this was a conscious decision my husband and I made, it was very difficult financially and required a lot of sacrifices. As my children reached their teen years, and schooling became less hands-on, and more online, I had more free time and realised that when they graduated, I would effectively be “retired”, with little to fill my time, and still dependent on my husband's wage. In time, I decided to follow my passion and become a Herbalist. 

I didn’t want to take away from the household finances to pay for my schooling and decided to put up a couple of gigs on Fiverr for proofreading and for copy-writing, both things I had done as a volunteer in the past, skills that I felt might be marketable since those I volunteered for mentioned that I was good at. 

At first, I was lost in the sea of copywriters and proofreaders on Fiverr, but I had said one thing that made me stand out: I had mentioned in my bio: “To read my writing style please visit my Substack”. It was 2022 and I was the only person on Fiverr that mentioned Substack. People started contacting me asking if I could help them with their Substack, and after several requests like this, I set up a gig to assist people in setting up their Substack. 

Now, 2 years later, that gig is still going strong, I also have my own website, and I’ve reached a level of workload and income that I’m comfortable with.

What can freelancers do to see opportunities (or gaps that they can fill) in front of them?

I think one of the things we don’t really understand is what our marketable skills are. I was reluctant to “put myself out there” because I wasn’t educated in a specific field. However, I’m organised, reliable, able to stick to a timeline and follow through. I have a good eye for detail and aesthetics, and I understand the technical side of platforms relatively quickly. 

Another example: recently I’ve been working with my almost 16-year-old, on how she can freelance. She loves creating digital art, but hasn’t enjoyed making logos for clients… but she also loves reading. Can reading fantasy books be a skill that’s marketable? It is if you market yourself as a Beta Reader. 

What do you love about freelancing?

I love the fact that freelancing doesn’t take me from my home and that I don’t have to choose an expensive area to live in because that’s where the jobs are. Instead, I can live further from urban centres in an affordable area of Canada, and make good money online. I can also be at home for my teens, continuing to homeschool them, and teaching them life skills they wouldn’t learn if I worked full time away from home, and they were in school full time. 

Finally, I love being in charge of my own schedule. My clients are happy if I meet their deadlines. They don’t notice if I do the work at 8 am or 3 pm. This means I can arrange my day around my own studies as I work towards my Herbalist certification and my children’s homeschooling schedule and activities. If I need a day or an afternoon off, I don’t have to ask permission from a boss, I simply let my current clients know that I won’t be available that day, and will be catching up the following day. 

What challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them?

For the first year of freelancing, my biggest challenge was learning the different freelance platforms and how best to use them (Fiverr, Upwork, etc), and understanding that it takes time and dedication to take off as a freelancer. It was also difficult to learn how to price myself high enough that the time I spent was worthwhile, but not so high that I would get no work. 

Now I find the difficult part is to learn how to say “No” to clients and work that I don’t want, and to navigate difficult clients; ones who don’t take no for an answer, and ones that are just difficult to work with for a variety of reasons, perhaps too demanding, or not understanding the limitations of the platform they work with, or being too needy.  

What advice would you share with other freelancers?

Don’t be stuck on that one thing that you want to do. Be open to new opportunities, new requests from clients. Things that you didn’t think of, skills you didn’t know you had–or that you didn’t recognize as marketable skills–these may be something that evolves into just the right opportunity for you, or a niche market that you didn’t know existed. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

My sister-in-law, who does beautiful artwork for clients once told me that it took her a year to start making any money, and another year after that to be making a good amount. At the time we spoke, she was doing really well designing custom websites for clients. Without this advice, I may have given up long before I started being successful as a freelancer. It really did take a full year of occasional orders until I got to the point where I was seeing income every month, and it was another year until I was working full-time. 

Is there anything else you want to share with the readers of Happy Freelancing that we didn’t go into?

Freelancing can be one of the best ways to achieve work-life balance and an affordable lifestyle. It can also be difficult to get started. Having the support of a spouse/partner or parent, and the mentorship of someone who’s been down this road can be so helpful when you’re starting out. 

Adrienne’s contact info

If readers are interested in my Substack coaching, they can find me at substack.coach. If they’d like to follow along on my journey as a Herbalist, they can follow me here on Substack at fierceandfree.substack.com. 

** Note from Heidi, Adrienne’s post One Step at a Time is a fantastic exploration of uncovering ingrained behaviours and committing to self-care. I highly recommend giving it a read:

When you’re raised to be compliant, nice, and self-denying, it can take years to understand true self-care, and to implement it. I may “know” what I should be doing (or should not be doing) but that doesn’t mean it is my first instinct to follow through on that. And by self-care, I don’t mean getting my hair and nails done, or going shopping for new clothes (though those could be part of it), but I mean doing my own healing inner work, and creating healthy routines and good habits for myself—not just for those I love.

Here’s to your ongoing freelance success,

Heidi