What if the thing holding your freelance business back isn’t a lack of skill, but instead waiting until everything is perfect before you start?
If you’re stuck in perfection mode, you may be spending months preparing instead of learning what actually works, slowing down the growth of your freelance business.
This episode shows you how starting before you feel completely ready can help you gain real-world data, find better opportunities, and build a freelance business that gives you more money, flexibility, and control.
By the end of this episode, you will:
Learn how to treat your first freelance offer as a starting point so you can test, refine, and change direction with confidence to get more clients.
Discover how to break free from the corporate mindset that makes every business decision feel like it could determine your entire career in order to get financial freedom.
Find out how embracing “messy” action helps you gather valuable client and market data faster, avoid perfectionism, and move toward a more successful freelance business to live your dream life.
Play the episode now to learn how starting messy could help you get paid, gather valuable data, and move your freelance business forward months faster than waiting for everything to be perfect.
TRANSCRIPTSWhen you listen to this episode, you're going to be learning about why you need to stop treating everything like a corporate career decision, how the first offer doesn't have to be your forever offer, and even how to get rid of that need for perfection.
Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today we're going to be talking about starting Messy, and why I think that sometimes starting Messy can see greater success as a freelancer, and I know that a lot of people can get caught up in the perfection cycle, and I have a strong belief that done is better than perfect. I really, really do, and I think some of the best business owners and the most successful have realized that it's okay to be messy and start out. This podcast is giving you a bunch of tips on how to actually, you know, try to not be so messy so that you see better success as you go along as a freelancer. However, I do believe there's something to be said about just taking risks, or, as I like to say, being messy.
I think one of the big things is to realize that your first offer isn't your forever offer, okay? That's something I think people get, like, really hung up on, and I even had a student in my session the other day who's trying to find clients, and you know, she's like, but what should I do about my offer? Like, how should I present this? And I said, honey, Stop worrying about the offer. Like, just see what they want and cater to them. Of course we want to get our offers defined, but there becomes a certain point where the offers just don't matter as much. And especially if you're just starting out. You kind of want to figure out what offers are actually gonna get the most traction, what offers are going to have clients say yes to them. So if you're just locked into an offer, that's not something you wanna… you wanna be worried about. Start with something that you know how to do, and that someone will pay you for. You can definitely refine that service, you can package it differently, you can raise the price, niche it down, or even completely eliminate it and get rid of it later on. But your first offer is just to get you started, not to define the rest of your freelance career.
Number two, I want you to start recognizing that your business decisions are not corporate career decisions, okay? And that's hard when you come from corporate, right? When you change departments, or careers, or even industries, it can feel like this major decision that infects your entire trajectory. And you're right, that is absolutely true in corporate, and it's something that you need to think about. But freelancing and being a business owner is 100% more fluid, okay? You can test something out for 3 months. change it up. You know, it kind of goes back to the offer thing. You're making version 1, but it's not forever. And I think when we're in corporate, we tend to get, like, you know, is this a lateral move? Will this help me on my career path? Will this help me rise the ladder? What this one change I make could change my career, and that's not the case in freelancing, right? Another way that I think it's okay to be messy over is stop getting, like, hung up that you need, like, some kind of certification, or course, or lesson, right? Because I think that is something from corporate that's, like, it teaches us that you need all these qualifications before you can start a job, right? Maybe you need years of experience, a degree, promotion title before you can move on to something else, before corporate decides that you're ready, quote-unquote, right? you know, that's not the case here. Don't spend 6 months getting certified in something that maybe you've been doing for years, alright? You don't need that here in the freelance world. And I remember when I started out being like, do I need some kind of certification to show people I know what I'm doing and I can work online? And I opted not to, and I'm really, really glad I opted not to, because I think that it helped me later on to realize that, like, hey, I know what I'm doing, right? Like, and it gave me the confidence. I did have a student in my program once, who was hung up on the certification. She really wanted to get a certification to show that she knew how to do that. She thought it would make herself more sellable, but that's rarely the case. And if this is something that you're stuck on as well, and it's hard for you to break that corporate mindset, please sign up for a call. In the show notes, it's right there, free, we can chat about what's going on in your freelance business. Now, this is kind of surprising for me to say this, but I don't think you need to worry about your ideal client, your niche, and all of that when you're just starting out. Let it be messy. Talk to anyone and everyone. Trust… just try to get clients. Just try to get money, right? Because the person you may think you want to work with, or the industry you might think you want to work with, you might discover you hate it. And I've talked about this before, too. Like, when I started out, I have such a passion for, like, herbalism, acupuncture, yoga. alternative methods to strict doctors, right? Like, I do want to point out, I am not anti-vax or anything like that. I don't think I have to say that in today's world. But, like, that was something that, to me was a passion. So I wanted to join that industry in any way possible. So I was targeting and niching down for health and wellness providers that were in the alternative space. Really, really wanted to work with yoga providers, acupuncturists. And then as I continued to market, and I got some bites here and there, guess what? They couldn't afford my rates. The stuff that they wanted me to do was not something I was really good at, and so I was losing clients because I didn't have really good experience and ways to show examples of how I'd done it in the past. So that was really an eye-opener to me when I'd say, you know, my rates are this, or I can help you with this, and they'd be like, oh no, I was looking for someone more in, like, the $25 per hour range. And I was like, oh, yeah, not me. And then I began to also realize in that industry, like, the kind of stuff they were looking for was, like, newsletter help, social media help, and of course I did all that in the beginning. But it wasn't my passion. It wasn't what I loved to do. So, that was an example of, like, being messy. If I had hung on to that, I probably would have quit. Because I would have never gotten paid my rates, I would have been doing something I didn't like, and it would have just felt like an extra hassle and extra burden. And if you're working corporate, and you're not enjoying the freelance work you're doing, it's not lighting you up, it's feeling like it's dragging you down. Girl, you need to change. You need to figure something else that's not… because then you're going to quit your corporate job and just go do something you also hate. That's not the point of this. The point is to get financial freedom. The point is to get flexibility, control over your schedule, and call your own shots, and you can only do that if you're truly lit up. And loving what you do. So if you find this is also happening to you, please set up a call, link in the show notes, let's talk.
Now. Another way to be messy. Don't worry so much about the website. Doesn't need to be super polished. What I want it to do is just say what you can do clearly. And I want it to look somewhat presentable, I want it to be, you know, it would be great if it could be found by AEO and SEO, but again, people spend, like, such a long time perfecting their website, like. Picking out fonts, picking out the colors, changing the layout, trying to find the perfect theme, like, please don't do that. Just have a website that's basic enough And, of course, have your LinkedIn profile be as up-to-date as possible. And that's gonna be fine, for now. When you get further along in your freelance career, then sure, invest on polishing it, spend the time. Like, I remember once I spent 8 hours on a Saturday just redoing my website. Because it was so outdated, and it felt so good, but I had gotten far enough along that it was necessary. I didn't have… I had enough clients, right? I didn't need to be worried so much about perfecting it when I was in the beginning stages. And, finally, really, stop waiting for someone to tell you that you're ready. Like, I'm telling you right now, is this what you need to hear? Okay, you're ready. Go do it, right? Just get out there. In freelancing, nobody's gonna come and officially declare you a business owner, right? You have to decide that you're ready enough to begin, right? Okay, so I thought that was my finally. It is not, guys. I'm gonna keep going, because I keep thinking of things. So your early business, like, right? It's gonna be really simple, and that's okay. You don't need to go out. You don't need to go out and, like, have, you know, Dubsado, HoneyBook, all these automations and symptoms, just systems… not symptoms, my god, systems. Like, you could have one service. A Google Doc proposal, if you want. PayPal for invoicing, right? A basic contract, your LinkedIn profile. Like, complexity does not make your business more legitimate. Simplify, especially if you're in the beginning. Just go for it, right? And On that note, when you start messy, you get data faster, okay? So you can make more money by having more data, and I've talked about this. We can link in the show notes about an episode where I talk about having data and why that's so important to growing your business. But, you know, someone who spends 6 months perfecting their business has really just 6 months in theories. 6 months in ideas, right? But someone who starts selling and putting themselves out there right away has 6 months of information, even if you haven't landed a client yet. They understand maybe what people buy, why they're gonna sign up for a call with you, what objections they have, what they're willing to pay, and where your leads are coming from, what services people want to, like, you know, actually get from you. That's a huge amount of data. That's someone who's just fiddling around with their branding and their messaging and all that, is not going to Help, okay? What I think I'm trying to say here, at the end of it all, is, like. If you start before you're completely ready, quote-unquote, and you get a head start you're gonna be way ahead, make more money, and be more successful than the freelancer who's sitting there waiting for everything to be perfect, and for things to fall into place, right? Because if we look at 6 months, Freelancer A, Might have changed their pricing twice, adjusted their offer, worked with 5 clients, collected 3 testimonials, gotten 2 referrals, and figured out which marketing channel works. Freelancer B might have a gorgeous website, and a nice LinkedIn profile, and maybe a few social posts out there, but nothing really to show of it, right? So, it's important, like, to think about, like, imagine you and your friend were leaving corporate at the same time, right? One of you spent 6 months getting ready. And the other just starts going out there and selling and letting it look messy, right? And then before you know it, who is further ahead? Right? The person who just started Messy. They made more money, they have more clients, hopefully. And really, at the end of the day, the goal isn't to build your freelance business and make it perfect before you start. The goal is to start building, get paid, gather data, and let that data help you build a better business, alright? Make that progress faster.
I hope that helps you really think about it. To recap, we talked about how you… your first offer doesn't have to be a forever offer to stop treating business decisions like corporate career decisions. Don't let certifications hold you back. Don't worry about the niche so much. It's okay if the niche isn't perfect, right? be messy. Don't spend all that time on your website, right? And it's okay to not be ready, but to go out there and get that data as soon as possible.
Stay tuned, because next week, we're going to be talking about why your corporate experience actually makes you more qualified to freelance than you might think, alright? And you're going to turn those years of your corporate experience into a paying freelance business. So stay tuned for the tip of the week on Thursday, and then next week, our longer lesson is really going to go into corporate terms that you need to stop using in order to step into a business owner mindset. Alright, until then, as always, I would love for you to set up a call with me. It's in the show notes. It's completely free. Until then, keep flourishing.