Are these five common mistakes quietly keeping your freelance business from landing more clients and quitting your corporate job?
If you're working hard but struggling to gain momentum, attract consistent clients, or confidently price your services, this episode breaks down the habits that hold new freelancers back and shows you how to build a more sustainable path to growth without relying solely on social media so you can finally leave your corporate job.
After listening, you'll discover how to:
Prioritize client acquisition over perfecting your business setup so that you can increase your income.
Build a marketing strategy that goes beyond social media to land more clients, more quickly.
Avoid burnout by making sure you are avoiding the 5 mistakes that prevent freelancers from accelerating in their business and quitting their corporate job.
Press play now to learn the five mistakes you can avoid today to accelerate your freelance growth, attract better clients, and build a more profitable business faster.
TRANSCRIPTSBy the end of this episode, you're going to find out the 5 mistakes to avoid in order to see more momentum in your freelance business, why social media is not the best way to market yourself, and also how to get out of underpricing your services so that you're making the most money possible.
Welcome back to the show. You know, I was the other day watching with my daughter this show called Limitless. It's from National Geographic with Chris Hemsworth. I like to watch these kind of shows when I work out, like, I love watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians when I work out, it's But my daughter's home, she's 10, so I'm trying to find something, you know, she's home for the summer, so I'm trying to find something that's, like, a little bit more appropriate, and I used AI and came up with Limitless, and she's fascinated with it, right? And she's all like, I don't like documentaries, but Chris Hemsworth and how he pushes his body or his mind to the limit. Anyway, we're watching one about how to keep your brain active and how to challenge it today. And they talked about mistakes, and how important mistakes are. Because when you make a mistake, especially if you make one over and over again, you're creating new neural pathways in your brain, and your brain's learning something, and it's stretching, and it's actually really important To keep your cognitive abilities way later in your life by making mistakes now and challenging yourself and trying something new. And that stuck with me, because I think as we get older, we avoid mistakes. And I've talked about this before, in terms of, like, when we're younger, we have pencils, right? And we erase all the time. And now, as we get older, I mean, how many of you use pencils, unless you're an artist, right? Most of us do not, and we use pens, because we think we're beyond mistakes, or we cross out. It's not quite the same, you don't have to start over. What I'm trying to say is don't worry so much about making mistakes. But… At the same time, I know now I'm like kind of going back on what I'm, what I was, what I'm trying to say is like mistakes are important, but there are mistakes you can avoid in order to get where you want to be faster. What I did was compile all these mistakes into 5 common mistakes that I see with my program, the people in my programs, my private coaching and my group coaching, and how to avoid these. Though I do want to say your freelance business in general is you're going to be making mistakes and the mistakes are important and it's good, but I don't want you wasting time on things that could be easily avoided there. That's what I think I'm trying to say here. Like mistakes are important, you're going to make them. And I think the mistakes taught me how to become successful, but there are some that avoid these entirely because then you're not going to see success at all and they're going to just slow you down too much. These are the most common mistakes I see people make within the first 6 months.
Number 1 is a lot of people spend too much time setting up the business, and not enough time finding clients. Because the setting up the business part is really fun. And it is, right? You can choose a logo, you can design a website, you can perfect your LinkedIn profile, and you don't have a single sales conversation. No discovery calls, nothing. You're not putting yourself out there to try to get people to bite and actually be interested in what you want. You know, it's just so much fun to educate people as opposed to try to pull people in. And clients often don't care about your logo as much as you think. They probably don't care about your branding colors as much as you think. Like, it's important, trust me, on your website to give some kind of psychological effect to pull in the right clients. But at the end of the day, clients want to know, can you solve their problem? All that time that you're spending setting up the business is not getting clients. You need to be spending time finding clients as well. So that's mistake number one.
Second mistake comes with mindset, and I kind of just talked about this, or, you know, I talk about this a lot, what am I talking about? But, you know, waiting until you feel ready. You will not feel ready. There's no sign from heaven that's gonna open up in part, and the sun's gonna come down, you're gonna hear angelic voices saying, you are ready now. That is not gonna happen. Successful freelancers take action before confidence comes, right? Because that action is actually going to breed the confidence, alright? Get started prospecting, start pitching, market your business. People cannot work with you if they don't know you exist, alright? So stop waiting to feel ready at a certain point.
Mistake number three. This one makes me really angry.Assuming social media will get you clients. Ugh. Everyone, that is not all there is to marketing, despite what it seems like in today's world, alright? Social media alone will not get you, like, clients, alright? And I think this is something that, post-pandemic, I've seen a huge rise in. Because I think, especially with the pandemic, everyone went online, and they talk about their business success, and everything that they've gotten from their business success, and then that makes people think that posting online and social media will also get them business success. Y'all know this is not how it goes down. Content does help, but most new freelancers need a broader strategy that can be referrals, attending networking events, proactive pitching, direct outreach. You know, I love that partnerships, building or participating in a community, podcast guesting, SEO and GEO, all of that is what you need to have a robust marketing strategy, especially if you're new. Once you get to a point where you're not new and you have clients, then maybe you can just be posting on social media.
Mistake number four, don't do it. underpricing your services. I feel like there's a give and take on this, because at some point you need to get clients, so offering maybe a lower rate is a good way to see if you can get clients, or maybe if you've already been freelancing and people are not biting at your higher rates, you need to realize, like, okay, maybe there's a shift in something going on in the economy, in what people are looking for, so let me lower my rates and see if I can get more clients that way. But I think what I'm talking about specifically is new freelancers. A lot of them just want to get any client. A lot of you might have done this. You're like, I just want any and every client. It's the fastest way I'm going to get it is by underpricing my rates. I also want you to realize. That is the fastest way to burn out by underpricing your services, especially if you come from a corporate background and you're trying to replace that corporate salary. When you're a corporate professional coming from the corporate world, you often price yourself based on what you earn per hour as an employee, but that is the worst comparison you can make, okay? Freelance pricing needs to account for taxes, benefits, unpaid business development, software, marketing, and the downtime between projects. So, not only do you need to charge higher than you think you would, getting off hourly pricing entirely is the smartest strategy for the long term. Now, if you want to head to my website, I do have a freebie, a free training. on how to actually remove hourly pricing from your equation entirely so that you're just charging packages, which I highly suggest you do. I'm also available to talk about this in a free consult, so just use the link in the show notes and I'll talk to you about how to remove hourly pricing, okay?
Fifth mistake, number five, we're at the final one. New freelancers will get busy eventually with clients, hopefully, right? That's our goal. And you stop marketing, right? You just focus on client work. And that, my friends, is what creates that feast or famine cycle that you hear freelancers talk about. And it's so frustrating and it can be really, really a downer and make you want to quit or go back to a job. In my experience, the freelancers who create stability continue to market themselves even when their calendars are full. And if your calendar is full and you have enough clients, maybe you can hire someone to do that for you. Maybe you're at that point. That was the first thing I outsourced, was my marketing. I lie. The first thing I outsourced was my taxes and accounting. Then it was my marketing. And it was the best thing I could do. Because that is the difference between the business that survives and the business that grows, alright?
Let's recap these five mistakes. Number one, setting up your business is a lot of fun, but if you spend all that time setting the business up and not finding clients, that's not good. Number two, waiting until you feel ready. Number three, thinking social media is the only way to market yourself. Number four is underpricing your services. And number five is stopping marketing when you get too busy, okay? I want to reiterate, like making mistakes are going to happen in your business. And it is important for the brain, as I also talked about. And it's good for you to make mistakes a lot of the time. But these mistakes that I'm talking about are going to halt your progress or make you want to quit freelancing entirely. And that's not what I want. I want you to be able to. Build a business that gives you financial freedom, that lets you have a choice in your schedule, that helps you see. I no longer need to report to someone and your mental health is so much better. That is what you're going to get with freelancing. But avoid these mistakes because that's just not going to get you freelancing at all.
I would love to chat with you if you feel like you're stuck in any of these mistakes. Like I said, my link is in the show notes. Sign up for a free conversation. All podcast listeners get a free consult on their freelance business or how to quit their corporate job. Now we're going to be going into, on Thursday, the smartest way to start freelancing in order to see success fast before you quit your job, okay? So make sure you hang around for that, and until then, keep flourishing.