3 Corporate Mindsets You NEED TO BREAK In Order to See Freelance Success NOW [ Freelancing to Financial Freedom ]
Are your old corporate habits secretly making it harder to land freelance clients and build the freedom-based business you actually want?
If you’re transitioning from a corporate job into freelancing or running your own business, this episode hits directly on the mindset traps that keep talented professionals overworked, overly available, and stuck waiting for permission instead of confidently attracting clients on their own terms.
By the end of this episode you will:
Learn how to stop one small (but bad) email habit that drains time and energy.
Discover how to confidently break away from the corporate hustle mentality and run your schedule like a business owner.
Walk away with practical mindset shifts and ready-to-use email response templates that help you appear more experienced and in control.
Play this episode now to learn the exact mindset shifts and communication strategies that can help you attract better clients while creating more freedom in your freelance business.
Connect with Kiri, the host:
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00] Stay tuned for this episode where you will learn three corporate mindsets you need to break in order to have more freelance success and get some clients. Welcome to the Freelance to Freedom podcast. This podcast helps early freelancers learn how to get more clients with clear strategies that help your freelance business make more money in less time. I'm your host, Kiri Mohan, founder of Flourishing Freelancer.
[00:23] Let's dive in. Jump right into this episode where you're going to learn three mindsets you need to break in order to get clients, why you need to find motivation yourself, and a really handy template that you can use when responding to emails. Hello, and welcome back to the show. Today, we're gonna be talking about corporate mindsets. And I work a lot with corporate people. In fact, that's, you know, generally who
[00:50] I market to. And I come from a corporate past, and I know what it's like to build a business while working in corporate. It's hard. It's rewarding. It's fun. It's all of those at once. But one thing that held me back, I think, for a long time were the corporate mindsets that were hard to shake, not only when I was building my business,
[01:11] but also when I went full time with my freelance career. So I wanted to get into that a little bit today and see if this kinda resonates with any of you and you feel like, alright. Yep. That's me as well. Number one, and I work with this with my students so much is responding to emails right away. Because as you know, if you have
[01:32] a history with corporate, they expect you most of the time to be available between like 08:30 and 05:30 or nine to five or whatever the hours are. Even if it's like seven to four, you have to be available in those hours. And technology is wonderful in the sense that, yeah, we can work from home or anywhere or even work from your phone. And that's where I think a lot of
[01:54] people get tripped up. You put your email account on your phone. Right? And you start responding to emails right away. And this can be your client's account. This could be your own business account. Whatever it is, you're responding to emails too quickly. And that is something from corporate, which you just don't need that anymore. Okay? And what I suggest to my students is like, if a client wants you
[02:16] to have their email account on their phone, if there's for some reason, you're dealing with a client who has a lot of sensitive and personal stuff that needs to be done urgently, then you need to charge more for that. Okay? Because they're having greater access to you and they're taking away a little bit of your freedom and flexibility, which could be why you signed up to be a
[02:34] freelancer and work on your business to begin with. Right? One of my students did have a lot of trouble with stepping away from that mindset of, oh my gosh. I need to be available all the time. And she was an executive assistant background. And my fellow EAs out there, you know what this is like. Like, you have to be always on time and always on
[02:57] point and always getting back to people right away. But you don't have to, especially not as a freelancer, and you can figure out how to do that. So what I gave her was this template to step back from that. So she just couldn't let an email go unread and not respond. It was really, really hard for her, and I remember what that was like for
[03:15] me too. The template that I gave her was when the email came in, she would just start saying, I got this email. I will respond in a few hours. Or thank you so much for the assignment. I'll be able to get it to you by x date. Does this work for you? And through those templates that we worked on, think we had, like, three to five of them, she was able to
[03:38] send those so she'd satisfy her need, like, respond right away because she couldn't quite break it. Right? The the feeling of I have to respond. So she couldn't quite break that corporate mindset. But using these templates, she was able to take a step back and be present in that moment for her children. Number two, something you really need to think about as you build your business and
[04:01] even as you have your business is you are allowed to schedule calls on your own time, and you're allowed to reschedule calls. Alright? That's okay. Now if it's a prospective client, be careful. That's a little sticky. You don't wanna lose out on them by pushing out a call, but you can ask to schedule calls at a certain time. Right? So when I was working corporate,
[04:24] I would sometimes take a call in the car or when I was on a walk, especially if it was an intro call. And I would ask them if they were okay with a call instead of a Zoom, which Zoom was, like, barely done back then. But I know post COVID Zoom's doing done all the time. But keep in mind, this is your business. So if you wanna even ask them
[04:40] for an 8PM call, you are totally okay to do that. Okay? And, no, you don't have to tell them you have a full time job unless you want to. But I recently hired a subcontractor because I had heard great things about her. And she had and only had 8PM calls because she is also working full time. And that was fine with me because I really, really liked her,
[05:01] I'd heard a lot about her. And I think what you need to realize is you own your schedule, and this is really hard for me too. So I still cling to this corporate mindset where I can't reschedule calls. I will be so sick and be like, I have a call. I need to get to it. And it's ridiculous because most people are super understanding.
[05:23] Right? And now I've slowly been breaking that, and this is crazy because it's been twelve years, right, that I've been doing my own business. But I've been breaking that bit by bit by bit to the point that I'm even able to reschedule calls now. If I wanna go take a walk or go to the beach or play hooky or whatever I wanna do, I just want don't
[05:41] wanna deal with work that day. I will reschedule calls now, and it feels so good. And I know that is lingering from my last corporate job, which was so long ago. For you, you need to think about breaking that because it's gonna show you and your potential clients that you own your business and you are calling the shots, and it sets off the relationship in a really good way for you to
[06:06] have more success moving forward. Because it's a simple mindset hack that you just just break it. Just break that, and you'll be able to get a lot further. Number three, and I think this is something that's so important, especially if you come from any kind of job background. This doesn't even have to be corporate. Okay? The first two were really corporate centered. This can be any job that you're
[06:27] you're working in right now or have been. No one is telling you what to do. So you need to get over the whole, let me learn from other people online. Let me observe people online. Let me wait for some sign from the universe or something like that. I'm all about manifestation. I will link that episode in the show notes. But you need to get to a point to understand that no one
[06:51] is telling you what to do. And this relates to so much in your business moving forward. So this also means you have to put yourself out there. Right? You need to go out there and say, this is what I offer, and this is what I can do for you. You need to find the motivation, right, to get out there and push yourself every single day.
[07:11] It's different when you have a job. Because when you have a job, you just show up and then you're you do your role and you get paid. And hopefully, if you do your role well enough, you continue to get paid. Right? I'm not saying a job is more stable than a freelance career. I'm not saying that at all because we all know you can be let go
[07:28] suddenly with no severance. Right? Or severance depends on the company you're with. But what I'm saying is, like, you show up to work and your assignments are handed to you. That's not the case here. Right? You don't have a job. You need to find your own motivation. You need to put yourself out there, and you need to do things like choose your rates. You need to choose your own
[07:48] pricing strategy. It's it's crazy when you think about everything that was chosen for you at corporate or any job. Right? You might have gotten in and been able to negotiate a little bit. But when you're a freelancer and you own your own business, you can double your prices when you want. You can lower your prices. You can do whatever you wanna do with your pricing.
[08:05] Right? No one's telling you what to do. You can increase your rates. And I guess another good point is, like, you need to know when to work and when you can off. Right? Like, in all honesty, that's a hard thing to go around. Because I think a lot of people come in and they just work long, long hours because they're they were trained in their mindset to sit their butt
[08:26] in a chair and to work. Right? Or, you know, be at a retail store for a certain amount of hours. Like, you had to work during those times. But there's also the other side that once you start working for yourself, you're like, woah. I'll just take the day off. I just won't market myself. Or I won't do this. I won't pitch. I won't.
[08:41] It'll all work out. I'll figure it out. And then you just continue to fuck off, and you're gonna lose income, and you're not gonna get clients. Right? So that's a mindset that you need to understand is, like, where's that balance? Because no one's watching you anymore. Right? And it comes back to no one is telling you what to do. So you better know when you can take that time
[08:57] off and afford to versus when you need to buckle down and work. Right? You could work all day if you wanted to. I mean, I remember pre kids, I would have days where I I was like working 07:30AM to, like, 06:30PM because I had so much work. But you could also not work at all, which is dangerous, and you need to
[09:15] be able to find that balance. I think it comes back to the two big corporate mindsets that you are allowed to break, and you'll get more clients and see more success when you do this is don't respond to emails right away. And it's okay to reschedule calls or choose calls on your own time frame. Right? Your own windows of availability. And clients need to understand that.
[09:37] Once you get a shift that mindset, you're gonna look like a more experienced freelance. You're gonna look more in control, and the relationship will be much better for you in the long run with any client that you take on. And number three is, like, no one's telling you what to do. So this is this is any job that you've had.
[09:54] That mindset is gonna be there no matter what. Or even if you're in college. Because in college, yes, you have to have a balance of, like, doing your homework, but you still have to show up for class, and there's some kind of rigidity and structure there. This is not the case when you own your own business. You are the one that needs to be motivated. You're the one that has to
[10:11] put yourself out there. You're the one that chooses your age. Everything comes back to you. Alright? So these are just three that I found that as I worked through ten years of owning my own business, just felt like, man, to break these, you'll see more success because everything's gonna come back to you. You're the one that's gonna be going out there getting clients.
[10:32] You're gonna call the shots from the beginning. You're not gonna respond to emails right away. You're going to choose to reschedule calls if you wanna go have a day outside in the beautiful sunshine. Please remember this moving forward. If you find yourself on your phone ready to respond to an email, just wait a few hours. Use one of the templates I suggested, and then you'll be much
[10:52] more present and much more in control of the situation. Tip of the week is coming up on Thursday. We're gonna be talking about a visibility strategy that's so important for your marketing in order to get more clients. And then next week, the lesson's really important for you to tune into. It's talking about how are you how do you get clients when the economy is
[11:12] bad? Right? I've been hearing this a lot in circles. The economy is not as good as it once was, and the economy is horrible. How do you actually get clients in an economy that's not so great? Alright? So stay tuned for that. My name is Keery Mohan. I'm the founder of Flourishing Freelancer. I would love to talk to you about your
[11:28] freelance business so you can set up a free call with me. Link in the show notes. Until next time, keep struggling to get the income you desire as a freelancer? Download my money mapper for a clear view of the earnings you need to achieve your dream salary. It calculates monthly income while factoring in taxes, expenses, and the best part is that it grows with your business to include contractors
[11:52] and a SEP IRA. Head to the link in my show notes to calculate what you should be earning to start increasing your income.
