The #1 Reason Why Your Freelance Business Is Failing And Not Getting Clients [ Freelancing to Financial Freedom ]
What if your freelance business is failing for the same reason big-budget movies flop, despite all the effort you’re putting in?
If you’ve yet to see consistent clients (or any clients), this episode hits directly at that frustration. It uncovers:
The number 1 reason your business is failing, and why you never identified this reason before
Understand what exactly you need to be focusing on to make a business profitable
Discover how to break the cycle of overthinking and start creating real momentum in your freelance career
Press play now to learn the one mindset shift that could turn your freelance business from invisible to in-demand.
Connect with Kiri, the host:
Corporate2Contract
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00] Stay tuned for this episode to find out the number one reason why your freelance business is probably failing. 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. Let's dive in.
[00:21] By the end of this episode, you're going to find out how the entertainment industry can help you in your freelance business, why distribution and marketing is so important, and why you need to be ditching productive procrastination and AI in your process. Welcome back to the show today. I want you to think about your favorite movie. Alright? Think about it. Maybe it takes you back to your child.
[00:44] Maybe the visuals, the special effects were amazing. Maybe it's talked to you, you know, spiritually, something inside of you that completely changed everything about the way you view the world, which was Star Wars for me. Maybe it's just a really good story that you could watch a 100 times. Right? Whatever it is, you think about that movie. Now imagine you're inclined to make your own movie, and you're like, wow.
[01:06] I have an idea too. I can do this or write your own book. Whatever it is. One of those. Maybe I feel like some of you in the audience are definitely more inclined to write your own book. Okay? So you start getting really excited about it. You start playing the story. You write it out. You do the script. You're imagining the scenes.
[01:23] Right? You're you're thinking about, okay. How would I edit this and make it really killer? And maybe you start hiring people to help you out with the production side of it, and it starts going all, like, just as you want it. Right? But here's what it comes down to. At the end of the day, a movie is not successful or a book because it exists.
[01:44] There are plenty of people out there who have written books and maybe who have made movies. But in order for it to be successful, people need to hear about it. They need to buy tickets. They need to watch it, and they need to start spreading the word. Right? And that last part is really important because you could have a movie that you poured tons of money in, and we've seen this in
[02:05] Hollywood. They get the best actors. They get a director. They pour tons of money into the movie, and it flaunts. Why? Because people leave the movie, and they're like, wow. That sucked. That was really not that good. I expected more of it. Right? The trailer made it look so much better. And if no one's gonna spread
[02:23] the word and no one's gonna buy tickets, you're not gonna have a movie. Same as a book. If if you put all the money in the world into his book and then no one reads it, maybe you'll feel some personal satisfaction, but it's not gonna be a success. It's not gonna actually bring you any money. Right? And the only way this happens is through marketing and distribution.
[02:43] Okay? And I want you to realize your freelance business works exactly the same way. I have been seeing a trend lately in my group of people who love to do what I call productive procrastination. And I've been guilty of it too. A 100%, I understand. Right? Because there's a lot of fun parts about building a business. Right? It's, you know, the services and packages and figuring out what it is,
[03:13] the making your website beautiful, thinking about what you wanna offer. Right? But a movie that nobody hears about that doesn't sell tickets or worse people hear about and they're not interested in is the same as a business that nobody hears about. And because that's not gonna get you clients. Alright? And this productive procrastination, especially with AI, is starting to drive me nuts.
[03:35] And, basically, that means what you're doing in your freelance business is you're using AI as a sounding board to help you work through your offers, your packages, your pricing, your marketing, all of that. But, really, you're not taking that information and doing anything about it. Right? In order to have that marketing distribution, you still need to put yourself out there. This productive procrastination with building your website and figuring out your offers
[04:05] and working with AI only gets you so far. That only gives you the shell. Or maybe I shouldn't even say the shell. It gets you something. You have something. You can legitimately say, I have a business. You've registered it, hopefully. It's legal, hopefully. And now you have a website, and you've got your social media channels set up and you're, you know, gung ho about it.
[04:28] But now you actually have to do the hard work of convincing people that you are worth investing in and your services are worth investing in. And that's a little tricky. Right? That's like writing the book, but then deciding, you know, I don't actually wanna send it to publishers. I don't actually wanna get it published. And then we're not talking about self publishing right now, so don't get out
[04:48] my case about that. We're just talking about publishing books or even like a movie. You create a movie and you're sending it to different like, a demo reel maybe or, like, when I was doing meteorology, I had to send demo reels. But I think in the movie industry, it's more like scripts that you send. So it's really the beginning process. But suppose you make the whole movie and then
[05:03] you're sending it out and you're putting it to theaters and no one's interested in it. Right? That's the same thing. So so I'm just trying to help you with your mindset a little bit here because I'm getting really frustrated as a coach and seeing what I'm seeing with people spending too much time in the AI world and too much time in productive procrastination and not just actually putting it in front of
[05:24] audiences. That's what you need to do, and you need to do it consistently so that eventually word-of-mouth grows. So let's take a look at my favorite movie, Star Wars, which I mentioned earlier. If you've been following me for a long time, you know I love Star Wars. It's just amazing in so many ways. So many ways. And, hey, yesterday was May 4. So, hey, happy May 4.
[05:43] May 4 be with you. Good timing on this. Right? And I did not plan that, I swear. But let's talk about my favorite movie, Star Wars. Alright? I have delved deep into George Lucas and his life before Star Wars opened in 1977, and his journey really was a step by step process. Right? He learned to be a filmmaker at school. He even cofounded a film production
[06:01] company, and then he finally released his first feature film, THX eleven thirty eight. Very weird movie, can tell you. But that bombed at the box office. Okay? Bombed. But then from there, he learned, okay. Well, I'm gonna make instead a movie that speaks to the nostalgia of our high school days. Right? And he created a film called American Graffiti, which people don't know as much
[06:23] unless they're film buffs. They know Star Wars as it's, like, big and Indiana Jones as big movies. Right? But American Graffiti received five Academy Award nominations. It's it's actually quite a good movie. It's about, like, the last is it the last day of senior year? See, like, I haven't seen it in so long. But it's like the last day of, like, senior year before everyone goes to college
[06:43] or maybe it's the last day of school before graduation, something like that. And it just follows these kids in that last night, and there's, like, some drag racing on the street. It's really fun. And when I say nostalgia, keep saying that, but it really does make you feel like, ugh. I wanna be in high school again. Right? And you would think George Lucas would stick to high school nostalgia movies.
[07:00] Alright? But instead, he went in a wildly different direction, decided to create Star Wars. It was turned down again and again by studios because people were like, wait. What? You created this movie that was really good about, you know, high schoolers, and now you're going in this, like, space opera? What? Fox ended up picking it up. Movie was delayed. It went over budget. Everyone thought it would fail.
[07:21] Alright? And it didn't. Even Lucas. Okay. So finally, movies released in theaters. Right? And he decides in 1977 to pack up and go to Hawaii when it's released because he did not wanna be on the Mainland knowing that he invested so much and that it probably was going to bomb. Alright? So many movies look like a mess again and again.
[07:43] Right? Like, they just look like while they're being made that it's gonna bomb and it's gonna be horrible. Okay? And every director and filmmaker also though have learned from their previous mistakes, and they keep creating something they love until the audience gobbles it up. Lucas could have stopped at American Graffiti, but he didn't because he's like, I have this passion and this drive in me. I need to create this movie that's
[08:07] a space opera that no one's interested in, which actually, if you look at, like, the subconscious, he was basing it off of these, like, Flash Gordon series, which were in the nineteen fifties, which were also nostalgia and also what he had grown up with, right, in terms of, like, TV serials that he had seen on TV and that were a part of his childhood. So he was speaking to that nostalgia still,
[08:26] but people couldn't see it. Right? So these filmmakers, including George Lucas, he kept filming. He kept editing and showing up day after day until the movie was finished. He didn't sit there and productively procrastinate. He went in the trenches, and he started making that movie. And then he went out there, and he tried to make sure that a studio was interested in it and that they would distribute it.
[08:46] And guess what? They did not distribute it to many theaters because they thought it was gonna bomb. Right? But I want you to realize, like, your freelance business is no different. There's gonna be stretches where you feel like no one is watching and marketing feels invisible. And you'll start talking with Chad GBT again or Claude and start saying like, okay. What can I change? Should I go in a different direction?
[09:04] Should I do this? You're gonna be like, maybe this whole thing was a mistake, and I should pack it up and I should go home. That's the moment where people walk off set and where the movie stops being made or when the author's three quarters of the way through the book and can't figure out how to end it and decides I'm not gonna write it anymore.
[09:17] Alright? But those who stay in, who keep pitching, refining their offers, learning what works, what doesn't work. Because of that, they're gonna finish that film. And when they do, something incredible starts to happen. They're gonna start distributing it because they love it. They're gonna start marketing it because they love it. And your freelance business is going to start to work.
[09:39] Right? It begins with the client wanting to call you and then another. And finally, the word-of-mouth spreads. These are the people who went to see Star Wars and were like, holy shit, I'm going and buying another ticket because I'm so effing amazing. I got to see that again. Like, literally, are reports of people who went in the movie theater, left and bought another ticket, went right back in.
[09:56] Right? Your income is gonna start becoming stable. And then the freedom you imagined is actually gonna start being real. So the reason to bring it all full circle why your freelance business could be failing is because you're stuck in productive procrastination. You're stuck making the things that aren't actually being the things that get you money, which is the marketing, the sales, the getting clients. You're just stuck in producing the
[10:23] movie and making the movie instead of actually having the movie go out into the theaters and telling people and insisting on people understanding that this is a great movie. This is a great book. Right? JK Rowling, do you think that she was sitting there on Harry Potter and being like, oh, you know what? I'm just not gonna ship it to publishers. I'm not gonna do that.
[10:44] No. She decided to keep sending it out over and over again, and tons of people rejected it. Okay? So it's the same thing with your freelance business. Most people throw in the towel because they're not consistent. They don't push themselves or see how they can improve from the mistakes that they're making. They never pitch their services, so they just do passive marketing or all of
[11:04] the above. I want you to, like, to realize and I wanna encourage you that for every hit movie out there, there's been a lot of learning, a few struggling premieres and messiness where the movie was almost not made. Put yourself out there, stop procrastinating, and just get going. Alright? The reason your business is failing could be because of the consistency, because you're
[11:25] not pushing yourself, because you're not watching the data, because you're just not pitching yourself either. So just get out there, make the movie, write your book, and let your freelance business succeed. That was a long one, guys. I was I was really like, this is very passionate to me lately because when I see something coming up over and over again in my group, I feel like this has got to be a
[11:45] trend for other people too. Right? It's not just my group. Like, stop productively procrastinating and get out there. Alright? We're gonna have a tip of the week coming up, and we're gonna be talking about mornings. I know all the morning people are like, yay. And all the people who are night hours are like, no. Don't talk about mornings. Don't go into this, please.
[12:03] And then next week, our lesson is going to be how to stay motivated and how to stay consistent when freelancing so you can increase the number of clients. My name is Kiri Mohan. If any of this resonated with you, I know. I know because I've been there too with the productive procrastination. And I wanna talk to you, and I wanna encourage you to get out of
[12:20] that loop that you're in and start doing and less procrastinating. You can find a link to talk to me in the show notes, and it's gonna be great. I promise you. See you for tip of the week coming up and then next week as well for the next lesson on staying motivated and consistent. It's gonna be tying back into this all over again.
[12:39] Until then, keep freelancing, everybody. Are you 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 and a SEP IRA. Head to the link in my show notes to calculate what you should
[13:04] be earning to start increasing your income.
