Beware the thief of joy

In your freelance adventure, you will hear from people who will steal your joy.

They’ll tell you that you’ve priced yourself incorrectly, that you should offer different services and that you’ve somehow lost credibility by being a freelancer. You’ll have to develop the ability to discern between 5 minute experts and useful advice.

You’ll have clients that just don’t get it. You’ll have a gap of understanding between you and friends about what it entails. You’ll have to pick and choose your battles wisely as some will never get it.

The ATO and all other kinds of situations may come knocking. In which case, always ask for time to pay, get a good accountant, and work through the process step by step.

But oddly enough, the two biggest thieves of are:

• Your fellow freelancer

• You

I’ve already written extensively on the freelancers who steal your joy. You can gain some advice at through the following blogs:
When is it OK to ignore your fellow freelancer?
Be a friend to your fellow freelancer
Climb out of my ear. I’m doing stuff!
In business, you can’t please everyone. So don’t try to.
Self employment myths
More self employment myths
6 freelance myths that make life suck
Why MMA is like freelancing

But the main two things to remember when other freelancers decide to spray their toxic stink on you are:

1. They don’t pay your bills. So screw their opinion. If they want to invest their opinion in your business but they aren’t a financial stakeholder in it, it doesn’t mean squat.

2. The Polish proverb “Not my circus, not my monkeys”. Their special brand of crazy is theirs alone. Don’t let it bother you.

You’re not in competition with other freelancers. You don’t have to keep up with whoever has the best Facebook rapport or gets the most guest spots on other sites.

You are always in competition with you. Because you’re the only one who has to deal with your clients, pay your bills and stand behind the quality of the work. Make buddies with other freelancers to share work and alleviate stress. But don’t let them design your business adventure.

I’ve seen some freelancers heckle others. I’ve seen those that have been heckled get it in their head. I’ve heard from countless freelancers (women mostly) talk in glowing terms about the other freelancer they admire and have on a pedestal. They fall flat on their own face when the person on the pedestal slips.

And I have seen a lot of freelancers take their business too seriously, start using it as their identity, and end up anxious, unhappy and depressed when celebrity and hype don’t equate to practical, financial reward.

Don’t let any of these situations be yours.

Exercise:

• Write down why you kick arse over other freelancers

• Practise a few non committal, non confrontational responses to freelancers who try to help you improve your business who have missed the mark

• Build yourself a watertight quip that reminds you not to take your freelancing too seriously. Hang it on the wall where you work

Dealing with yourself

I had a coaching client recently who was shocked and horrified to realise I too have doubts. I think it’s the nature of creative process that we do. You can’t hope to be intelligent, empathetic and sensitive enough to the world around you to be driven by entrepreneurial spark and somehow manage to skip the doubt factor.

There will be times where you worry where the work might come from, if you are charging enough, if you’ve done the best you can, when a clients mean comments will seep into your bones or when another freelancer fills you with an unhealthy dose of envy over something cool they’ve done.

You’re human. It is that simple.

Oh, and your challenges are also your boring story.

What’s a boring story?

You know the deal; the situations where a friend won’t shut up about their stupid boyfriend or dumb boss but won’t change the situation for the better. Or when everyone else is causing them continual grief, but they can’t help going back for more drama; the friends you see but secretly love to talk about behind their back, the family member who wants you to get your shit together or you’re desperate to inspire to get theirs together, the neighbour who does whatever to disrupt your peace. These are the boring stories of life.

There are boring business stories, too.

The client you hate but refuse to fire, the collaboration partner who seriously sucks to work with, the bills that never get paid on time that you don’t chase up, the jobs that go to somebody else, the freelancer with the awe-inspiring social media you covet, the freelancers who don’t know half as much as you do who make more money, the people selling education that are stuck in the 80’s, the existence of attire and lipstick metaphors in women’s business that throw feminism out the window with every pink encrusted logo, the bank that won’t give you the loan, the parents who think you should get a real job. And so on and so forth.

Snore, snore, snore.

The truth is we’re all not getting some aspect of our life right. We’re all at the mercy of the whim of others. And things often are not fair. The only thing you can change is the way you respond in a lot of cases. But once you do, things will start to improve.

A couple of common cry-baby moments I hear need their myths busted outright:

• The government will never step in and save you from eBidding sites.

• You are not entitled to work simply by existing.

• No matter how shit your client’s attitude is or how many times you cop that attitude as you go, you cannot adopt the same attitude and expect to succeed.

• There is no 1-2-3 punch in marketing or freelancing that will fix your business outside sweat and hard work. And even then, a lot of us still fail.

• A lot of people will ask a lot of things from you. You will also ask a lot of others. If you feel like a lending library that has nothing left in the tank because people take and don’t give, that’s your problem. It’s not up to everyone else to guess what your boundaries are.

You and your head will be best friends and worst enemies. Probably daily

To protect your mental health and your ability to take all the knocks on the chin, you need to ditch your boring story. Or at the very least, stop trotting it out.

And at the risk of sounding like your parents or doctor, you also need to ensure you rest, eat well, exercise and spend time on the weekends and evenings not working.

There is a productivity cost to stress that will catch you in the end. You chose to be a freelancer to gain freedom. Don’t piss all over that by tying yourself to a life of servitude to your Inbox.

And make sure you talk to other freelancers on a regular basis. It helps to share information with others because it shows you how much you know when you help others plus gives you a feeling of being useful. Gaining help from others also helps you avoid making mistakes and helps when the isolation sets in. Plus, it’s great networking and for finding out clients you should avoid as they get named and shamed on the freelance grapevine.

Here is a little inspiration for you and a little education to help you understand why self-care is so important:
Swapping the jailers: In business for yourself
The best time to be in business is when it all blows up
The line between business you and your creative pursuits
Working for balance
A freelancer’s guide to ongoing happiness
Using your misery to motivate you
Why working too hard impairs your thinking
Why writers need to maintain their mental health

Exercise:

• Write down your 3 most boring stories

• Look at them in the cold black and white

• Choose 3 ways to solve the problems OR 3 alternative positive stories

• Activate

Your next lesson is your last. Are you excited? Happy? Sad?
For your next lesson, you use me as an agony Aunt and ask me a question. I’ll do some research and come up with an answer and an action plan for you to follow based on that question.

It can be a problem, an extension of our previous calls, more info on a topic here or perhaps something you’re looking to launch in the future that needs a second pair of eyes. Email it to me.