Figuring Out Life After the Corporate World: Part 3
Nearly eight months into Freedom:
Eight months. You read that correctly. Three quarters of a year, eight flips of the calendar, over 20 clients later: here we are. I’m starting to wonder how normal 9–5 people get anything done without the flexibility to make appointments during normal business hours and have repair companies fix house issues whenever is most convenient. Working from home is starting to feel like the new norm.
The last few months haven’t been perfect (not in the least), but I’ve had time to reflect on some best practices that are making my day-to-day a little easier.
1) stop finessing your portfolio all the time
I have to confess, I’m absolutely guilty of tweaking my portfolio to death. And not in a good way- more like re-designing pages with slightly different visuals, but the same overall messaging. All of the visual massaging without much reward had me questioning my skills and honestly had me worn out.
But here’s the thing, clients don’t really care if your footer is a warm dark gray or a cool dark gray. They care if you have the specific skills that they need. Sounds obvious right? I mean, just think of when you go to a restaurant and their menu is 10 pages long. You have pretty low confidence that anything on the menu will totally blow your socks off.
Without knowing your true goals, niche, and audience, it’s nearly impossible to target your message. It took me quite a while to give up the idea of “pleasing everyone”. Despite the amount of articles I read that support specializing, there was a part of me that was worried that my niche market may not find my site, and in turn no one would reach out to my highly targeted messaging.
Once I let clients know in an intentional way that I work best in retainer partnerships, clients started chatting about the long-term, meaningful relationships that I was craving. Bringing the messaging I started sprinkling on my homepage into all aspects of my site only kept the conversation going with the right people.
I know the idea is totally scary- but believe me, it’s worth it.
2) keeping your availability open isn’t a commitment
For the longest time, I felt the need to close my availability as soon as I had my plate full for the week. I was terrified of turning away opportunities- almost as if I would offend clients if I was too busy to take on more work that week.
Once I braved up to keep my availability open and challenge the idea of booking in advance, my whole world changed. Often times, clients still need work immediately, and our schedules don’t sync, but by keeping conversations going I’ve been able to avoid gap weeks and fill spots that would have been blank otherwise.
At first, yes, it was overwhelming responding to requests continuously. But now that it’s a regular part of my workflow, the process is starting to feel less precious and more honest. The guilt of turning down opportunities is subsiding, and the reward from making connections with those who have flexible schedules is only growing.
I think I’m FINALLY getting a hang of the healthy workload thing.
3) working remotely is even more reason for routine
When I first started freelancing, I had this idea that working from home meant the ultimate opportunity to work wherever, whenever, and however I wanted. While all of that is true in a sense, without routine, it’s hard to come by success.
There have been more weeks than I can count that I’ve tried to work away from home, but it usually ends in distraction and disappointment. When I’m visiting with family, my work day is usually interrupted (all for good reasons- but I’ve learned that I have to be honest about my attention span). I may have my computer open 8 hours a day, but I can safely guess that only a third of those hours will be billable. In a lot of ways I don’t mind the interruptions because I love the quality family time, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather plan on fully enjoying family time rather than sharing it with work.
Overall, I’m thankful for the flexibility for extra vacation days, occasional remote work, and the opportunity to create my own timelines accordingly, but at the end of the day I don’t make money unless I’m billing hours.
I’ve found that I work best at my desk, with Pandora on, my pup on her office bed, and coffee brewing. Something about being alone at a desk gives me the motivation to focus on my Asana list and wrap up whatever it is that I’m working on.
4) self-care isn’t important, it’s essential
The last few months have been harder than anything I’ve ever had to face. I miss my mom like crazy, I’ve tried to be more flexible with my work schedule than I should have been (hello crazy combination of indefinite 12 hour shifts and frantic client recruitment), and just when I thought my hair couldn’t be any thinner, I started losing more. Like a lot more- think hamster sized hairballs type of hair loss.
The worst part is that even when I started losing my hair, I still didn’t want to change my behavior. I still wanted to be everywhere, for everyone. Yet all I was doing was letting the ball drop.
Im not going to lie and try to take credit for relatively mental breakdown-free last few weeks. That credit goes to my husband for continuously encouraging me to slow down. Everyone needs a cheerleader that reminds them that they can only do so much, to focus on priorities, and gives them back rubs after a really long work day.
As always, thank you for supporting this crazy journey, thank you for loving me when I’m bald, and thank you for reminding me that my best always is good enough.