What are some freelancing pitfalls?

2 years ago
1

As far as freelancing goes, what are some of the pitfalls that you've come across.

So the big ones I would say are that first one we kinda talked about that
mindset shift to I doesn't need to chase every job. Right? Another big piece to that as they go in hand in hand is you don't need to do every type of job.
Find what you're good at. Right? Find the thing that you're good at, and do that thing. You may find you have other things you can do for that client, once you know them and you know their business, but start with the thing you can do. I have spent so much time in my life managing people's social media, but I'm not a social media manager. I'm not good at it, but people are like, oh, you're good at copywriting. Do you want to manage my social media? I'm like, my ego is so inflated by that compliment. Yes. Of course, I will. And then we're just all miserable. Right? So do your thing.

Do your thing. Do your one thing and do it well. And then maybe you find other things, but do one thing and do it well. The other piece to that would be that you need to remember that your clients, your best clients are not necessarily way out here, like, on the platforms or being pitched to? I mean, that's great. I think it's great if you want to go pitch to Netley or you wanna go pitch to a big fashion brand. If that works for you, that is great. I think sometimes we worry a lot about where we're gonna find a client, and so we try to go big, or we try to go within, like, again, we go back to our mom and our grandma, and we're like, I know you need my copywriting skills. Let's do this. Right? The big people are harder to get to. The people right around you, One they're not going to pay you what you're worth because they love you, but that's just not normally what they do. And two, there's a personal connection there that maybe you don't want to breach with work. I tell you what, the magic, like, the magic formula I found, is using those people you're close to, the people that trust you, whether it's personally that they trust you professionally, using them and saying to them, I'm doing this thing. Here's exactly what I'm doing. Do you know anyone in your circle who might need that service? So using your circle of influence to build bigger circles of influence. That to me has been so powerful because referrals are so important. The right referrals. I think we discount we either get MLM, right, where we're, like, you know, MLMs are always like, find everyone you know and send them an email, and I have nothing against MLM. I'm wearing Mary Kay right now. But they're like tell everyone you know what you're doing and then call them eight times
and ask them if they want to sign up. Don't do that. But again, I think we have these gifts and the people who love us and trust us, know we have these gifts and they can the fact that we have those gifts with other people they know. Right? So I think that that's an easy way to build our following and to build our clients through quality referrals from people we trust and who trust us.

So I want to add a comment to something that you said just a few minutes ago. And that is that you do the one thing that you do really well. and you don't do anything else. But on top of that, you make connections to the people that can do those things that you don't do so well. And you will see referral back-and-forth relationships with other businesses. We'll eventually get something that you do well and they can refer you back.

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