My Story pt 2: Four big lessons I’ve learned from my journey (learn from my mistakes.)
In my previous post, I shared the story of why and how I became a content strategist and copywriter. I learned a lot of lessons along the way, big and small, and now I’m sharing the four biggest lessons I’ve learned. (Perfect for service providers and coaches)
Learn from my mistakes below!
Do work that aligns with your interests and strengths.
If you’re just starting out, you need practice to build your skills. During this time, it’s good to be open-minded about the types of clients you take on. But after you’ve worked with enough clients that you’ve gotten used to doing the work (meaning it doesn’t feel new and strange anymore), it’s time to get picky.
By then you’ll have done enough work to have a sense of what kinds of clients and niches you like and what you don’t. Find clients who fit your interests. I like to work with clients in business, the arts, wellness, and personal development. What do you like? My advice: Stay focused! Don’t be all over the place trying to do a bunch of different things.
Going along with that, do work that aligns with your strengths. I’m good at being imaginative and thinking of ideas, and I’ve had a love of words ever since I was a child reading book after book from the library. So it’s not surprising I became a content strategist and writer. We all have strengths — lean into yours. Again, stay focused. Don’t waste time forcing yourself to do work that doesn’t align with your strengths.
Okay, that one wasn’t a mistake I made, but the next three are…
Don’t take on more work than you can handle.
You have to be honest with yourself about how much work you can handle. Sure, it’s normal to have a heavy workload sometimes. You can’t always avoid it. But those heavy workload periods shouldn’t last long.
I had periods of burnout that lasted for weeks and sometimes months. My mistake was telling myself it was just about to get better because I was just about to get on top of my work and handle everything. “As soon as I finish this assignment, everything will be fine…” I thought that over and over again. There’s optimism and then there are unrealistic, unhelpful expectations.
If you’re going many weeks at a time with a heavy workload that’s causing burnout, there’s something wrong with the way you’re doing business. Maybe your skills need improvement so you can go faster. Maybe you need more organized processes to simplify your workflow. Maybe you’re doing a type of work that doesn’t fit your strengths and interests – that is definitely a cause of burnout.?
Or maybe your rates are too low, which is a very common cause of burnout among freelancers/business owners. Most of us have such a hard time getting this through our thick heads, lol. Our rates aren’t high enough for the amount of time and effort we’re putting into our work, which means we take on a lot of work to make more money, and we get burned out. It’s amazing how many of us make this mistake and we’re too dense to realize it.
Get coached!
Coaching is sooo important. Courses are great too, but it’s especially helpful to have someone to talk to about your specific business and your specific problems. And to be honest, I like the attention. Any time I’ve received advice from my coaches, it was such an amazing feeling to have a more experienced person pay attention to me and care about my specific business. I had this warm and fuzzy feeling deep in my heart… okay I’ll stop.?
Looking back on my journey, I realize there are times coaching would’ve helped me. The biggest thing that stands out to me is late 2022 when I resented my freelance work for burning me out, and I felt like my only option was a part-time employee job. I soon started majorly rethinking my business in a lot of ways, which was exciting. But doing all that rethinking and planning took a very long time, so I was still in the job, and having a job didn’t feel right. After half a year of rethinking and planning, I finally started working with Vicki to get some help. I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d worked with her in late 2022 when I was burned out and considering the job. Maybe I would’ve figured out how to make changes in my business much faster and wouldn’t have done the job.
So my point here is that coaching can help you make more progress in your business faster. It’s not that you’re incapable of succeeding without a coach – it’s that business is full of frustration and heartache, and if you work with a coach, you can avoid some of that frustration and heartache and save time. Just like we all have our strengths, we also have weaknesses, and coaches can help with those.
You can benefit from coaching whether you’re a business beginner or you have years of experience. I want to say something to all the beginners out there: It’s smart to invest in coaching early on. I didn’t do this, and that was a mistake. I believe I would’ve had more success in my business earlier if I had gotten coached earlier. Being a beginner is tough. Having guidance and support will make a huge difference.
I know what you’re thinking: Coaches are expensive! What if you can’t afford a coach? Here are some ideas:
领英推荐
And here’s the single most important thing I’ve learned from my journey…
Never assume you can’t achieve something.
Please pay attention to this.
I really want you to take this lesson to heart.
When I started out with freelance writing, I knew there were some highly experienced, successful experts out there who were freelancing full time. I assumed I would never be like them. I was so far away from their level. I was just making a few dollars here and there, with a tiny portfolio of not-so-great writing samples that made it hard to find clients. It didn’t occur to me that I could become one of those successful freelancers.
I made the mistake of thinking that becoming a highly skilled, successful freelance writer was not possible for me and it was just for people who had lots of years of experience and knowledge and some mysterious rare, special talent I didn’t have. So I didn’t have high expectations. I didn’t take it seriously and try my best. That’s why my result was that I made a few dollars here and there but nothing much.
Then I gradually took freelance writing more seriously. I went from “Cool, I can make a few dollars sometimes” to “Okay, I can make a few dollars consistently” to “Actually, finding clients isn’t as hard as I expected, and I can raise my rates a little and still get clients” to “Wait a second, I actually have skills and experience now and I have real potential to make a lot more money. I just have to structure my business in a way that works for me.”
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I have an impressively high income. But I make much more than in the early days when I wasn’t even making $100 per month freelancing. The biggest difference between then and now is that I see my own potential now. I didn’t see it before. The experience I have now, the clients I’ve worked with, the money I’ve made… all of it would have surprised me had I known from the beginning that this would happen. I didn’t expect that this would be me, that I would be in this place. I didn’t think I would get to this point.
I started having better results when I started putting more consistent effort into looking for clients and learning about business, branding, selling, etc. Getting to this point took gradually working with more and more clients, gradually raising my rates, gradually learning more about the online business world, gradually realizing I wasn’t a beginner anymore, and gradually realizing I wasn’t intermediate anymore.
I wish I had thought from the beginning that becoming an expert copywriter was possible for me. I could have made faster progress if I had believed in myself from the beginning, and also if I’d invested in coaching/courses sooner (which would’ve happened had I believed in myself from the beginning).
How this applies to you: When you see other people who are more successful than you in some way, whether it’s money, skills, achievements, experience, whatever “success” means to you… don’t assume you’ll never get to that point. You need to see those people as your future instead of seeing those people as some kind of different, elite group of people that’s separate from you. I can’t stress this enough. Don’t assume you can’t make those big achievements you feel are so far away!! They may be far away now, but keep working toward them!
Those are the lessons I’ve learned from my business journey. Want to know about the non-professional side of me? Take a look at my Facebook post for some fun facts.
Check out my services guide to find out how you can work with me.
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