Building a Freelance Business: My 3-Month Journey

Building a business is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I can honestly say that as I was building it, I felt so many emotions and encountered so many challenges. Let's talk about some of the challenges I faced and how I overcame them.

Getting clients

When you first start out, this is the single biggest challenge.

Not only is this the biggest challenge, but every day that I went without clients, I grew more and more frustrated and started to second-guess myself.

I would want to change my business, offer different services, or just quit altogether. It also felt incredibly embarrassing because it really felt shameful.

What changed?

For me, the shift in my business came around the 3-month mark.

This was when many of the seeds I had planted started to grow. I like this analogy because this was exactly what it was like for me.

I felt like for the first 3 months, every single day I was doing something and deep down I knew it was right, but I wasn't able to see the results. Just yet.

Looking back, I wish I had just told myself to relax. I wish that I had known just in the way that I know when I plant a seed a flower will grow, that my business would eventually grow.

Some things that helped me continue to move forward:

• Blogging: If I am honest, my blog became almost a journal of sorts.

• Focusing on a few things: For me, this was blogging, YouTube, and TikTok.

• Having a numbers goal vs an achievement metric: This meant that instead of trying to achieve a certain number of views on a video or a certain volume of traffic to my blog, I instead shifted the focus to the doing.

  • I decided that I would write 100 blog posts before really looking at how much traffic was coming in.

  • I decided I would create 100 YouTube videos before making any decisions. So that is what I did. It was a day-by-day goal that brought my focus to the doing rather than the achieving.

Releasing fear of judgment

When I left the job that I left, I was leaving a very judgmental, gossipy agency.

I will just say it outright. I knew that I was being talked about and that bothered me. I did not feel like anyone was wishing me well.

Ok, that is not fully true, but the fact is the loud voices were loud and likely more in my head than anywhere else but they were ever present and it didn't feel very good.

I had to get over it.

The way I got over it was through visualization.

I continued to allow myself to get lost in the fantasy of my growing business.

I allowed myself to get lost in the work of what I was doing vs the result. I took it day by day and month by month and then one day I was able to see the success I craved so hard.

Constantly working with no boundaries

This was another really hard one for me. I found myself constantly working, and constantly worrying about business.

I never felt I was able to relax. This was hard.

I would still say this is something that I struggle with and I know that for this aspect, I have big plans to hire out certain aspects of my business.

This lack of boundaries and obsession got so bad that I decided one of the first purchases I planned to make for my business was a MacBook Air so that I could work more on the couch vs being in my office.

In hindsight, this was a really poor way to look at building a business and I feel like this put me in a place where I was cruising for another burnout episode.

I am not sure this mentality will ever change fully, but it is something I am working through as my freelance business becomes more predictable.

What I think now about building a business you luvvvv

Building a freelance business is hard, but it is also incredibly rewarding.

If you are thinking about starting your own freelance business, I encourage you to go for it!

But be prepared for some challenges along the way.

And remember, you are not alone.

There are many other freelancers out there who have faced the same challenges that you are facing. Just keep at it and you will eventually succeed.