What I Learned from Having My First Oh-My-God-Why-Am-I-Doing-This Freelancer Meltdown
Last year in February, I started freelancing as a full-time digital content writer. Within one month, I had completed projects for a half-dozen clients and landed several long-term gigs, lining up several months’ worth of work. The work was balm to my (recently canned) soul. I hung up a shingle. Started an LLC. And batted 100: Every client who hired me for a project reengaged my services.
TLDR Summary: Do not peddle your services to people who look down on you, or freak out — eloquently or ineloquently — over text.
Since I’m not a man, I’m told that if I share my billings it will alienate women and appear as though I am flexing (boasting) so I won’t, except to say I billed over six figures in my first year as a solopreneur.
Freelancing is easy, I told my peers. Do it. It’s a side hustler’s economy.
But a couple of weeks ago, I lost a couple of clients. It came out of the blue, and I had not been filling my pipeline or hustling new leads. Ten days in, I panic-texted my friends (close friends, new friends, barely friends, and mom acquaintances) each some gently-tweaked version of the following lamentation:
I’m going to have to go have to get a job driving Uber (except Uber is leaving Minnesota, oh my God!, and my car is too old to drive Uber anyway) and start shopping at Dinted Cans R Us.
If you should happen to see me strolling about town one night — in fuzzy slippers and chocolate-stained satin curl rods in my hair with three-inch silver roots garishly aglow — remind me I have other marketable gifts: aging but (presumably) still fertile eggs, blood plasma, a spare kidney, and a home of pawnable goods.
Many well-meaning Facebook-mom-group friends suggested different versions of:
- “What about the internet? I hear a lot of people are using the internet these days to find a job.”
- “I hear the local Five and Dime is hiring.”
- “Pivot. Writing is dead. Robots can just do all the writing.” (Very loud choruses there.)
In the back of my head, I knew I should have been hustling non-stop and not turning down projects before because I was too busy. I should have been preparing for the inevitable lulls.
But there was nothing to do now but get out and grind.
The thing is, I’m horrible at networking. I excel at the awkward linger. After we discuss the weather, and then my kids and your kids, and the fact that I live in fly-over country, there’s nothing light and flimsy left to chat about.
But I’ve yet to find an elegant way to say, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” or “You’re making me feel weird now, goodbye.” So I just extend the sequence.
It doesn’t matter, however, if you're bad at networking. Bad at being gregarious. Bad at being charming. You have to do it if you’re an entrepreneur.
I reached out to my business contacts and ex-boyfriends and neighbors and old bosses and old bosses of bosses and dug through the back pages of LinkedIn and Indeed.
Two weeks later, things are looking up.
- I have landed three new clients and four projects — and I’m taking more.
- I’ve bid on a couple of long-term projects and more projects are percolating.
- I am changing up my biz dev strategy; I need to always be networking and always be asking for work and open for work.
- I finally put together a rate card.
- I’ve networked with people and contacts and friends I had meant to reach out to for the past 12 months. (Here’s looking at you, Make Good Lemonade.)
- I’ve taken on project work to train AI models through RLFH (reinforcement learning from human feedback). This is a way for me to gain expertise in AI writing tools, and get paid to learn about something utterly fascinating.
- I’ve taken the time to write content for my enjoyment for the first time in several months. I tested 10 different AI programs, giving them all the same task to see which AI program can write the best blog article.
And I reached out to an old boss (or boss of a boss of a boss to be more accurate), who had expressed some interest in my writing (“liking” articles I’ve written for news clients and shared on LinkedIn). I asked about writing content for their business and offered to do a free sampler article.
Shortly after they got the article — (the unpaid one, but you already knew that) — they asked about my rates and suggested a Zoom call.
The call was spectacularly awkward.
Legendary.
(Like worse than when I was at Affiliate Summit West to network except I’m terrible at it so I forced myself to work the room and tell every vendor “Oh that’s so interesting, tell me more!” even after one of the vendors flatly told me, “I sell penis enlargement pills.”)
The dubiousness of the boss, that a large, international software company (among other clients) was hiring me to write and edit articles and eBooks, was insult enough. Still, they felt it incumbent to tell me that for their website, quality actually matters as bad content is worse than no content, and it would take them personal time to fix my submission if they even published it. But, they would maybe hire me down the road for a friends-and-family rate.
…
Two Mondays ago, I had a less-than-full workload for the first time in 13 months and panicked.
Two Mondays in, I have more projects now than I’ve had in 13 months. This is damn lucky, and surely not the normal trajectory for solopreneurs. My biggest takeaways:
- Writing really is the only marketable thing I have to sell; body organs are illegal and with two small children and a dog and a step-cat, I don’t own anything nice enough to pawn.
- Always be hustling, no matter how comically bad you are at networking.
- Surround yourself with successful people who believe in you.
But most importantly, do not pitch your services to condescending people who do not value you, effectively sharecropping your soul to the lowest bidder.