As I write to learners in an announcement for my Freelancing for Editors course, I don’t believe in being unrealistically positive about freelancing. Freelancing is hard and it requires effort. Clients will not fall into your lap (or at least, they do so very rarely).
That said, if you don’t have a somewhat positive outlook, you will quickly burn out.
Freelancing is the sort of career where you have to be positive, but also not too positive. You have to be “just right” positive. Too much positivity or negativity will quickly lead to failure.
Here are two outlooks I frequently see:
Glenda: Freelancing is incredibly hard and I don’t know what I’m doing and all the good clients are already taken and there’s no way I’ll make money at it. Also, do I even know how to write a proper sentence? Because I don’t think I do and my clients are going to figure that out quickly.
This becomes what is widely known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because Glenda doesn’t believe she can be successful and thinks there’s no one out there who will pay her for her work, she’s already looking for reasons to quit. She’ll take the first tough encounter with a client as evidence of her worldview and is much more likely to give up without ever having given it a real go.
On the other end of the spectrum is Crystal: There’s a ton of money to be made in freelancing and I’ve been successful at everything I’ve done so far, so I have no reason to think I won’t be successful at this. Clients will be lining up to work with me once I launch my website and I’ll be a money-making machine. I can work from home, in my pjs, make a ton of money, and not really have to try.
Crystal will struggle the first time it becomes apparent freelancing requires hard work and has its challenging times because her worldview will be so shaken by it.
That’s why I promote a both positive and realistic view of freelancing. Yes, there are clients out there willing to pay us what we’re worth. Yes, you can make a really good living as a freelancer. Yes, you can spend days working in your pjs (I do on days I don’t have to have client meetings).
But…there are really hard periods, too. There are clients who will try to take advantage of you. There are clients who will refuse to pay or be an absolute nightmare to work with. There will be months when you have to hustle, hard, to make ends meet. There will be times you don’t listen to your gut and then you regret it.
Sunshine and unicorn dreams won’t pull you through those periods.
Unfortunately, these tough times can happen well into your career.
At the start of 2020 (when I’d already been freelancing for almost 15 years), I lost all my regular clients in one month, because they all panicked about Covid. I was able to build my business back up, but it was a tough (and scary, and stressful) few months.
Pretending those bad times don’t ever exist will set you up for failure. You won’t market yourself the way you need to, or you won’t save your money or take care of your taxes because you’ll think it’ll all be fine in the end, without putting in too much thought.
So, be positive that you can do this, but realistic enough that you’re prepared for hard times. Be prepared to push yourself outside your comfort zone and try new strategies to build your business. That’s how you’ll find the grit to keep going when others have quit.
Aside from the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful freelancer, you need to
Accept and acknowledge that there will be tough times
Be willing to new strategies
Embrace pushing yourself to be uncomfortable
Be open to learning from others (even if you don’t follow their advice, their stories often have wisdom for you to learn from)
Cheers to your freelance success,
Heidi