Riding the Rollercoaster of Owning a Writing Business
Even when it seems like your business is on the up and up…something strange or out of the ordinary happens. Maybe it's exciting and new or your biggest client drops a huge “we're out of budget” bomb. No question that sometimes your freelance writing business can feel like you're riding a rollercoaster and building the track at the same time. This week, we're talking about how to handle that without hitting burnout or driving yourself nuts.
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Hey, all welcome in. Ooh, we've got some people already here. Hey, Vicky. Welcome. And I'm sorry, I'm late. We, you know, I'm just like, I'm not going to make any excuses. I'm just late today. I'm sorry. Uh, but thank you, Vicki for held on in there. Uh, welcome in and today we are talking about the rollercoaster that is your freelance writing business. So what that means is sometimes you have the highest of highs, right? You have like a 30 K month or you have a 20 K quarter or you get that dream client that you've always wanted. Right? You, you end up getting these really cool things in your business, but sometimes you end up having the lowest of lows. And this isn't just with money, right? This isn't just with the feast and famine cycle, which you can still avoid. Right? Um, there's a video on that in here, but, um, the other piece is that it's still going to have highs and lows. We're still going to ride peaks and valleys as freelance writers. That's part of running a business. So one of the things we're going to talk about today is how we handle all of these different things. Hey, Vicky, woop. Um, we're going to talk about how we handle all of these different things. Uh, we're going to do a quick pup date because we're just going to do something a little celebratory, just because we were a little late today. So we're going to have them be on camera. Oh, it's time. Time to do a little. So
Here you go, buddy. Good job. You're doing great. You're doing great. Good job. You look like a bat
Boy. Good boy. Everybody gets treated. I was cause they're good. Pets. All right. Good job guys. You guys are great. So, oh, Vicky, it wasn't a camera connection issue. It was a trying to round up everybody and get everybody in the room and have the dogs in their places. And you know, all that stuff issue. It was, I, I think sometimes people watch the live stream and they think that my dogs are really well behaved. They're like, oh my gosh, your dogs just sit there the whole time. And it's like, no they're saying there, because like I give them treats in that only in that area. Um, but also sometimes we have a dog, our, our neighbor's dog, they just like to have, we just call it a Fiesta. They like run the fence together. So we share a fence with our neighbor. Um, and one of their dogs runs the fence with our dog.
We call it a Fiesta. Sometimes they get into a little Fiesta outside. We, we have to go get them and bring them in and get them, um, to be here where they're supposed to be. So yeah, sometimes it's, it's not connection. Sometimes it's straight up just trying to get our dogs stop to stop Fiesta, ING next door with our other neighbor's dog or, um, they're just, you know, it, sometimes it's a whole thing. So I know they look really well behaved with, look how cute they are. They're like, we're going to get something. I know it. We need you on treat. She was like, yes, please. Own starving bear. You look a little blown out today. I think it's just the way the lights hitting you.
Maybe where the camera is. Maybe if I move the camera. No, it didn't really help. All right. Oh, it appears to be a camera issue. Oh, okay. Hmm. Well, I don't see anything on here, but let me know, Vicki, if you see a camera issue and there's let me know what the camera issue is, is, is it because I'm blurry if I'm Lori, I'm just standing in the wrong spot, so, okay. Um, sometimes if there's a camera issue, if you just refresh the live stream, sometimes that helps. Cause I don't see anything here. Yeah. Both the cameras seem to be okay. So, um, I don't know. We'll have to roll with it. So on topic now, um, after we have our dog fiestas, we get them in, get them in here and now we're going to be on topic. So we're going to talk about the big bigs and the low lows of being a freelance writer.
And this kind of goes into combination with our mental health history lens writers. And it also goes into combination of just kind of realizing that owning a business, a small business, like becoming like a freelance writing business, or if you decide to become an agency later on, or if you decide to become a consultant, you know, you kind of do very little writing and mostly consulting. Um, these are kind of things where you'll be able to see, well, not see, but you'll be able to kind of smooth it out a little bit. It won't be so extreme feeling. So when you first start out as a freelance writer, there's kind of this stuff where you just get all these, you know, you get some clients or you're kind of in the low lows where you're like trying to figure things out, trying to put all the pieces together.
And then, you know, you're just kind of like dealing with the low part. You're trying to, you know, build the framework of your business. And you're like, what am I going to get to? Like the high part, the peaks part. So when we start our business, there's a bunch of different things, right. We were trying to get clients, we're trying to make some money. And we're also like sometimes getting really great clients. So I'm, we're kind of dealing with this. One of the things that happens is we get a client and we have them for a month or two. And then all of a sudden they're out of budget. You know, they didn't plan very well. Or they ended up in a situation where they thought that man, like we would have more budget, but they just slashed our budget for the year. You know, maybe they don't do their planning for budgeting is December.
Maybe they do it, you know, after Q1, I don't know. It just depends on the business. So sometimes what happens is we have the highest of highs. We get this new client, we're like sweet. This is like the best, um, you know, rate that I've written at. They w I signed this, you know, 30 day or, um, this 90 day contract with them. This is going to be great. And then all of a sudden they kind of drop that. Like, we don't have any more money bomb on you. Right. And that's something that goes from peak to valley real quick. And that's happened to me. That's happened to me where, where you're writing on something and they're like, we don't, you know, we're getting our budget cut or, um, they're just like, oh, we're switching to this lower cost thing. Right. They're switching to, um, farming it out through an agency or there's, they're going to do, um, some other type of like Upwork situation or something where they can get the work cheaper.
So they start shifting their priorities too, which you can't control. So we kind of emotionally go from this place of like peak and valley, but they're kind of running on a different ship. Right. So we kind of have to remember when we're shifting from peak to valley or when we're handling all these things that our clients are on a different roadmap. Like sometimes when we sign on with a client, their whole thing is that they're looking for budget-friendly work. And at the time you were the most budget friendly, they just didn't say that. Right. And then they run out of budget. So the next time they end up getting a writer, they need to go lower because they ran out of budget or their budget got slashed. So they can't afford you anymore. Or they end up going with a writer on a platform or at an agency because the agency charges less.
So it's all of these things that we can't control, but we're still kind of riding the rollercoaster. One of the things that helps kind of smooth that out, especially when you go from the highs of highs, the lows of lows, which I've done many, many times is just kind of remembering that we can only control our part. We can only control our reaction. We can only control how we do our work. Excuse me. We can only, excuse me. We can only control the quality of our work, how we're doing our marketing to make sure we get more clients in the door. We can only control, you know, like how we really deal with that. And we can't control how our clients spend their money. We can't control how our clients are, um, how their business runs. We can't control if they're very budget first. Um, okay. Vicky says it's flashy pixels. Okay. That's weird. Um, let me check the other camera and see if it's on there. I don't see it on there.
I don't see anything. Oops. Can we switch it back now? Whoa, there we go. Oh, okay. I didn't see anything Vicky, but let me know if you still see it and see if you can refresh the page and see if that does something. Um, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Um, so anyways, when we're kind of going through this, um, we can only control our stuff, right. And one of the things that I do to kind of smooth it out is just understand that this is part of business, right? You're your client. Isn't always hello, your client. Isn't always going to tell you what's behind the scenes, right? They're not going to tell you that they're really looking for the boasts, but budget-friendly option. And it turns out that you're that person they're not going to come and tell you and say, Hey, by the way, we're going with an agency because of cost or we're going with an agency because they're us a deal, or we're going with an agency because we don't want to handle, like, we just want the writing given to us and we don't want to do anything else.
They're not going to always tell you all of those things. So what you have to do is kind of just be like, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. I know I'm doing good work. Hey Marie, welcome in. Okay. So Maria says nothing flashing. Okay, good. So I think the flashing thing might just be maybe just a connection thing. I don't know.
So we have to remember that we're doing our best. We have to remember that we're trying our best and that, even though, like, we have to remember that we got that client. It's not an, even though we got this client, now, everything sucks. It's like, Hey, I got this client. I got this client. I made a huge pile of money and I can't control how they spend their money. Like I ended up charging professional rates. I ended up getting the work and doing the work and they ran out of money. And now I need to find a new anchor client basically, but we can't control what they're doing, but we can control that when we want to make sure that we take that wind that we got from getting the client, doing the work. Um, before we got into the, oh crap, I need to find new client part before you get there.
You need to remember, you need to incorporate that when put it in your mind, write it down. This is something that freelance writers don't do. They just go from, they just ride the roller coaster. Whoa, the whole time they just keep it's the same thing. Like, um, they ride the roller coaster of the emotional part of running a business. And then they ride the feast and famine cycle. Like they, they put them together, right. They ended up getting the peaks and valleys with the highs and lows of the feast and famine cycle. And we can kind of separate those out because the feast and famine cycle part, we can totally eliminate that and have money coming in all the time. But we're still going to have the emotional peaks and valleys of running a business. Um, money just will be kind of removed from that a little bit.
The emotional part will still be, oh crap, I need a new client. It just won't be, oh crap. I need a new client. And maybe I can't pay my rent or my mortgage this month. Like that will be a different, you know, that would be a different thing if you had, um, the feast of famine cycle going on. But when we're in our highs and lows, you have to remember our highs, write them down, keep a list. I have a list. I have a list. Um, I have actually multiple different lists. So I have lists from clients who liked my work. I have lists of testimonials. I have lists from core students who have said really nice things like Marie for example, has given me a ton of really, really wonderful testimonials that I plan on putting out soon I'll fancy and gussied up. And, um, that has been something that I've been very appreciative of.
And I save all those things for nice things that like people have said or done or helped me with. And that really, when I'm feeling in the lows, when I'm in the valleys part of my business, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember all these cool things. I did remember all these cool things that, that I, my work helped people get results, or I helped my coaching student get over this thing or get a client or get their first client. Um, all these things really kind of helped me, you know, when I'm in the valley part, even if the money part isn't a factor, right. Even if I'm like, yep, my mortgage is paid. I'm all good. Um, the peaks and valleys part, when you're in the valley, you have to remember all the peak stuff. So when you get to the peak part before someone says, we don't have any money or before someone drops you and they're just like, you know, we're not a fit.
Write that down. I got this really great client. I made some money. I made some money. Um, I got a really cool byline. I ended up getting my dream publication. I went on a really cool trip. Uh, write all these things down. This really helps to kind of deal with the emotional part. It kind of brings you back up and re and, and reminds you, um, of this quote that I've been kind of mulling over, like this quote, that, that someone it's not mine, just FYI. It's not mine. Someone else said, uh, basically, just because of where you are now, it doesn't negate all the things you've done, just because you're in like a tough part now, just because you're in the hard part or the low part or the mentally straining part or the tough part now, just because you feel bad now doesn't negate all the wins that you got, right.
Just because you, maybe aren't making as much progress right now, or you're feeling challenged right now, or your, all your clients dumped you at the same time, which has happened to me multiple times. Right? This is part of it. It just so happens that your client's contracts all end in April and you're like, Aw, it. You know, like you're like crap. And you know, you have to go, you have to deal with that. Right. And maybe you forgot, or maybe you were doing stuff or maybe you're like sweet. Even if they ended April, I've got work for June, July, and August. But you know, you have to kind of pay attention to these things. Um, you have to kind of get in this place where you keep stock of all the good things you've done. And just because things are hard now, it doesn't negate all of the good stuff you've done.
Like I often say this for, like, I've said that. I said this yesterday. Um, I did a little, um, pricing, a pricing workshop, kind of thing with the freelance writers den yesterday. And I did a live with my core students yesterday where we did Q and a, um, and this is the, what have you done for me lately? Right? The, what have you done for me lately is different depending on where you are. And sometimes what have you done for me lately means remembering the wins that you have is not necessarily like, what did you do in the last 30 days to make you good again, right. Make you a good freelance writer or make you good at your job sometimes you're what have you done for me lately? I was like, oh yeah. And the last year I did all these cool things. You have to remember that, put that in your brain, write it down.
Because sometimes what ends up happening is writers skip that they just get in the valley partner. Like I'm never going to be able to do it again. They do that whole thing right there. Like, oh my God, no, no. You know, and it's this, it's this giant mess. And they just forget all the progress they've made all the wins. They've gotten all the cool stuff. They've done all the money they've made. Um, all of the, the great people they've worked with, the results they've gotten, the people they've helped. They forget that whole thing. They forget it all. They're just like, oh, you have to find a client. I'm done. You know, they just, they erase it and that's not good for your mental health. It's not good for your confidence either. So one of the things I want to talk about when it comes to peaks and valleys is the emotional changes in confidence.
I find that writers particularly because we get very wrapped up in our work and our words and how we deliver for our clients and what our byline looks like and what the magazine looks like or what it looks like when it goes to print basically, and print, I could, it could be online for business. Um, we don't incorporate all those things into our confidence. We're like sweet a clip, put it in there, put that in the portfolio, suite a clip, put it in the portfolio, weight. It just bypasses this whole thing. We don't actually put that into our confidence saying like, no, I did all this cool stuff. I did all this cool work. Like look at my portfolio. Now I have 20 clips. I started with one, or I started with zero. Like everybody on the planet, everybody starts with zero clips. We just forget it.
Right. But we don't put that into our confidence. And then when we hit the valley part, we're like, I can't do this. I suck at my job. I'm a bad writer. Right? A lot of people go there and it hurts your mental health. It gives you anxiety. Um, it, it can make you feel depressed. It can put you in a, to a depressive episode. It can trigger a whole bunch of other stuff. Stress, um, poor sleep, poor nutrition, poor exercise. Uh, the first don't get walked as much. There's only one for cause this, the other one's over here by me. Um, but the thing is that if you don't end up putting those peaks and your confidence together, you just become this totally. Um, you become this writer who, every time you get a new client, you panic, you become this type of writer where you get a new project.
You've done this project 10 times. And you still question your ability to do the project. That's a big problem. That's a big problem. And I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen to course students. I've seen to having to coaching students. I ha it's happened to me many times when I didn't learn how to actually put this into my brain. When I didn't learn how to build my confidence through these wins, your wins, don't get erased. Okay. They're written in permanent marker. So that means when you're having a tough time, when things are challenging, when you're in the valley of your business, when your clients all dropped you at the same time, which has happened to every writer, I know there has been a time. Um, I'm pretty sure every writer, I know where all of us like their client contracts just ended at the same time.
It just, it there's sometimes where it's a random roll of the dice and your contracts just end. Or you had a contract maybe that was, you had a couple of contracts were longer term. And they were like, Nope, we got to cut it off here. And you're like, oh crap. Now everything's happening at the same time. But the difference is you have to, to put those things into your car, you already have to have your confidence being like, ah, well, that sucks, but I'm confident enough to keep going. I know I've done the work. I know I have the clips. I have the niche expertise or at least like, I know I can figure it out. This is a concept that Brendon Burchard talks about a lot where, um, he equates confidence to basically believe in your, in your ability to figure it out. So if you feel like you're in your freelance writing business, you're in a valley and you're like, I can figure this out.
I can figure out how to get more clients. I can figure out how to make more money. I can figure out how to get a clip. In my ideal magazine, I can figure out how to replace my clients that that ended their contracts. I can figure out all this stuff. That's good enough for building confidence. And we're saying, if you're a newbie, excuse me, if you're a newbie and you haven't done this for a while, just believe in your ability to figure it out. That's good enough. If you've been writing for awhile, you have to remember. There is no eraser. All of the things that you've done in your business are permanent marker. You can't, they don't get erased. When you get to a hard part in your business, which you will, everybody gets into a hard part in their business. And a lot of times people want to think that hard part is money.
It's not, it's not very, uh, very S specific subset of problems or money for writers, but right. Money is always this very easy thing to kind of squish the accordion, right? We were just like, oh, money. Like they make more than me. Or they make less than me. It's instead of opening the accordion and being like, oh, here's the 25 things they did to make that money or build their confidence or deal with the valleys. We just squish it and we're like money. And that's a big problem. Right. So when we're thinking about these things, we have to remember, you can't erase anything. So you can't erase all the wins. You've gotten, you can't erase the clients. You've had the clips you've gotten. Um, the, the things that you've overcome your personal roadblocks, right? Like for me, I struggled a lot with burnout and that was that's.
I still struggle with it just straight up. Um, I still struggle with it because I, I has, uh, a personality, like a business personality. I like to have my finger in a lot of pies. So like I have my finger in a lot of pies right now. And that's just what I like to do. It's why like freelance writing, I like the flexibility of working with a ton of different clients. That's a really cool thing for me. And that's having your finger in a bunch of different pies. And I do that across my business. So I do that across coaching courses, my freelance writing business, my cool project that I'm launching at the end of the year. Uh, my, uh, um, template pack that I have, which you can get below the template pack is, um, Mandy ellis.com/bundle. It's all the marketing things that you need for your business and the contract. Cool. Um, but all of these things, right? I still struggle with burnout. It's still, I struggle with, but I don't erase all of the lessons I learned from when I burned out in 2018 and I wanted to work at dairy queen and everything was horrible. And I cried a lot and one quit freelance writing forever.
When I feel burnout coming on, when I feel like my mental health and I'm feeling very anxious or stressed, or, um, I, I just feel like I, I just don't give to get very good sleep. I don't forget all of those things that I learned during burnout. They're all in my mind. And they're all written down in permanent marker. They still exist. They can still give me the confidence to keep moving forward. They can still give me the confidence to be like no mandate. You don't need to work at dairy queen. Although dairy Queens were right place, right? You don't need to work there. You can still be a freelance writer. Look at all this cool stuff you did remember. Remember, don't forget, you don't get to erase it. You don't get to erase all the cool stuff you did. That's the big mistake you get in these valleys.
And people are just like, they just live noodle you, right. They just limp noodle. No, everything's terrible. Right? And you're like, Nope, Nope. Wake up, wake up. Remember we have all these permanent marker things that we've done. And sometimes like for me, when I first started out, one of the things that helped me out of valleys was just remember one of, one of my permanent marker things was just that I did marketing straight up. That was it. I was so scared about doing marketing because I didn't want to be annoying. I didn't want to be a pest. I didn't want people to think I was salesy and sleazy. I didn't want to bother people. And one of my big wins, just my permanent marker. Things was just like, I did some marketing today. That's it? And it really helped me keep moving forward because I was taking action.
So don't forget your confidence can keep building, despite the peaks and valleys of your business. One of the things that helped smooth it out, right? You're still going to have peaks and valleys in your business, no matter how much money people make, no matter what, where they are in their business. They have peaks and valleys because humans, aren't robots, humans, aren't robots. They have emotions, right? As much as I would love to be a robot and just crank out a ton of content and, um, and never sleep and just be like, yes, and that we're doing this, I would get so much done. If I was a robot, it would be great. We're not a robot. We're human beings. We're not human doings. So everybody that, you know, every business owner has emotional parts of their business. They have peaks and valleys because we're humans.
It's just different people think, you know, there's still that concept that like money is going to solve everything. It doesn't, it doesn't, we're still humans. Um, that's why, especially when it comes to mental health, there's this really big misconception about like, um, people who are wealthy, who commit suicide, right? They're like we have, they have everything, right? They have every thing, things, but they're emotionally in the wrong place. Right? The suicide part is the emotional mental health in the wrong place. That's why I often say like, it's not the money part. The peaks and valleys are normal. Part of being an emotional human being, as we all are, as much as I would love to be a robot, which would be great because then I get so much done. I would love to get so much done. Um, but that's normal. But remember the way we smooth it out is we have confidence.
We remind ourselves, we can do cool stuff. Um, if you have eliminated the feast and famine cycle from your business, that helps a lot when you have kind of a money part too, but don't forget that this is a normal part of the process. I think normalizing the peaks and valleys of your business. And especially after COVID right, there are a lot of writers who I know who have kids. And then they're all of a sudden their 40 hour work week, or they're 50 hour workweek or the 30 hour work week became all of this childcare. Cause their kids came home from school and now they're dealing with like, how am I going to meet my deadlines? So they have to cut their workload down and still make some money and deal with their kids. Right. And if anything, if they that's a big valley, when your, when your whole world is turned upside down, right.
I don't have kids, I have dogs. So they are they're home all the time. So my situation was different, right. But my freelance or friends who I saw who had kids and dealt with that, right? They didn't forget that they knew how to make money. They didn't forget that they had great clients. They didn't forget all of the good things they've done that didn't kill their confidence. That just made them be like, all right, we got to reorganize some here and figure it out. We got to figure this out. So if anything, take away things from the pandemic where everybody's riding an emotional roller coaster because we're emotional human beings. We're just regular. That's part of being humans. Right? So when you're thinking about all of these peaks and valleys of your business, I have one more thing. But if you have questions, if you have questions, pop them in the chat.
I'm happy to answer anything about freelance writing. So any questions that you have about freelance writing or mental health stuff with, in relation to your business or anything I'm talking about now, feel free to pop questions in the chat, happy to answer them. Um, if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about, um, building confidence as a freelance writer or making more money or getting better clients or all the cool stuff that comes with the flexibility of building a freelance writing business, make sure to subscribe. I'll do a quick update before I hit my last point. So we'll see if we can get Charlotte back in her little Hobbit hole over here.
Charlie, can you get in your habit hole? Can you get in your habit hole? Good job. Good job there. You already in your Hobbit hole. Good job, Joe. Are you in your private hole? Good job. Good boy. There, just as a quick note
To everybody, um, Charlotte is eight. Is she eight and a half? Yeah, Charlotte's eight and a half. She's starting to get some snow on her. Jowls. Her jowls are starting to get all white and it's really weird for us cause she's a black dog. So when they start turning white, they look very old. They're not old yet. So it's like this weird thing where like how old is she? Um, and Barry's a little blown out right now from the light. So that helped a little bit. Oh, I think it's just the camera. Anyways. Barry is his normal, normally a caramel and white dog. Um, and he is almost 15 years old, so he's really getting up there, but we're proud of him every day. You guys can have one more treat. Okay.
Because you guys are great. Good job. Just as a
Quick note though, even though that he, even though he's 15, he, um, he can still jump on our counter and get food off our VAR counter. I was hoping that by the time he turned 10, that would stop, but he's almost 15. He's like way into geriatric land and we still have to protect our food on the counter. Like I really hope I really wished it was done by now, but that's okay. I'm glad that he's still healthy and I'm glad that he can still jump around and be wild at his old age. So the last thing, the last thing that we are going to talk about is driving yourself, dance. One of the things I think people forget and by people, I mean writers, one of the things I think writers forget is they drive themselves nuts with the idea that their business goes up and down like this that hits the peaks and valleys and that their business does this.
A lot of writers, including myself. I did this a lot in my first few years, maybe even like my first half. So I've been a freelance writer for almost 10 years, basically, basically 10 years by now. Um, and I, this drove me nuts when I was building a business. Like I didn't get it. A lot of writers start out and they're like, oh, I saw this other writer made their first, you know, 50 K in the first six months of their business. My business should just be like this. It should just be a linear growth. Whoop. There we go. Right. Linear is the right word. Okay. Sometimes I get trouble, have trouble with a math things. So it just should be a straight line. That's just how it works for other people.
Hey Getty. Welcome in.
So, oh, is it Vicky's birthday? Oh, did I miss that happy birthday? Vickie, I missed that. Sorry. Happy birthday. I'm glad you're here. Where was that? Okay. Anyways, they think their business should be linear. Um, they think their business should be this line. It's not it isn't, I don't know anyone who makes huge piles of money or anyone. Who's building a freelance writing business whose business went like this. And even the people that ended up making good amounts of money in a short period of time, their business ends up doing this too. Nobody's business as a straight line. Because even if you track your success by money, even if your money keeps going up, even if you're going that way, there are other things that happened in your business that change the line of your business. Your business is not linear. There'll be a lot of times where you're like sweet.
Everything's going great. Oh crap. It's getting messed up. Oh no. All great. Oh, never going up. That's normal. That's normal. I want to tell you that because I feel like a lot of writers think that just because the money is going up, everything's going great. But what happens is, um, what I found is they ended up getting outdated. They ended up making money and they just are like repeating their process. Oh, we'll just repeat this. They just keep repeating it. And what ends up happening is like, they're not paying attention to content marketing. They're not paying attention to SEO. They're not taping attention to topic clusters. They're not paying attention to all these important things. And then they're like, oh, well I'll just tell my clients. I don't do that. But you can't really do that nowadays. Right? You can't really say like, no, I won't incorporate your keywords and no, I won't do this.
Um, I know I won't do that. Right? Like it doesn't really work like that. And I find that when we kind of just pay attention to this line and we think the line is how it's supposed to work, it drives us nuts. It makes us crazy. This isn't normal. This might be normal for money. Some people, some people who get into freelance writing have been pitching for years, understand the marketing game, understand how to work with businesses, understand strategy, understand, um, how to work with magazines. Like they understand everything. I didn't understand anything when I started. And I just thought like, sweet, everything's going to go great. But you actually have to learn the business first. And learning is always this way. It's always some weird kind of gobbledygook of stuff. It's like some big mess. That's just how it is. And it doesn't have to be a disorganized mess.
It's just that you have a bunch of things going on and that's normal. And your birthday was yesterday. Well, I'm glad you're here Vicky and happy birthday. I hope you had a good birthday yesterday. So when you're thinking about your business and I hope that you kind of always keep this together. If you try to focus on these kinds of linear things, I think is going to drive you nuts. I think it's going to make you crazy because that's just not how it is. You'll start thinking that you're failing all the time, because the line isn't going straight up, you'll start thinking that you suck at your job or that you hate freelance writing or that writing's not for you because it's not going in this straight up direction. And that's just not how it works. When you think about your business, your business should be an opportunity for you to do cool stuff and learn along the way and help a lot of people.
That should be your business. Your business should be helping people, not just creating content because you like it. But because it's actually going to help people do stuff like even if you're doing a regular blog post, right, just a basic blog post, that's like five design trends to look for this year that helps people that's information they need. Right. And when you think about these things, when you think about your business, whoop that's normal, and this, this is a sign you're learning and changing and growing and making the critical, you know, these critical junctions where you ended up going backwards and then shooting forwards. Those are usually the most important points in your business. So when I think about all the times that I like when I burned out in 2018, when I think back to those times, that's when I like went back really far, but then I ended up shooting forward way, way quicker and way faster and figuring a bunch of stuff out because I burned out.
That was a really, um, a really critical point for me. And I think that if I had hung on to that, right. And, um, it's just driving me nuts. I'm going crazy. I'm just like, oh my God, like, I can't do this. I just, you know, give up what you did right. At that time, I wanted to just give up on freelance writing and work at dairy queen and do something like I thought would be easy, you know, make some ice cream move along with my day. Oh, we got to switch beds now. Okay. We're getting fancy over here. Um, I think that, you know, it's this thing where we try to like, over-complicate it, we try to make it seem like everything should be like everybody else's you have to build your own business or else you're gonna drive yourself nuts. You're gonna drive yourself nuts.
You're going to get into this place where you think your business should be linear. Your business should be like everybody else's and you won't learn. You'll just keep repeating all these things. And what happens with that is like people get outdated. That's why you see a lot of people really struggling to switch to content marketing. They like robotic it out. They're just like, and now I do this and I just do this forever. And now I'm a freelance writer and I'll do this for 10 years. It doesn't work like that. You have to keep learning and growing. And in order to learn and grow, your path is going to look like this. That's part of it. It's going to be loop de loops. It's going to look like a rollercoaster. It's going to look like it's out of a Dr. Seuss book. Like it's going to look nuts, but it doesn't have to drive you nuts.
It doesn't have to make you crazy. This is part of it. I just want to kind of normalize that because I feel like a lot of stuff in freelance writing. And a lot of times like you can make huge piles of money. I just want to put that out there. There are people who are seven figure, freelance writers and freelance copywriters. There. You can make a lot of money, but the path to that money is not a straight line and the path like I want to normalize the learning part. A lot of people learn along the way. They just don't talk about it. They just make videos. They make blog posts. They tell people like, oh, make your first 5k in five months and do this thing and get the best clients and do this stuff. But all of those things take trial and error.
When you're building a business trial and error, peaks, and valleys, building your confidence, dealing with the emotional roller coaster that is running a business is all normal. We're human beings. We're trying to figure it out as we go along and, you know, try to incorporate some new lessons along the way. I think the best writers that I know, the ones who have really kind of evolved over time have prioritize this. They prioritize this. They're like, yep. I know this is normal. And how am I going to deal with it this time? It's not this thing that like drains them and it drags them down. And they're like, I can't do this. I can't go on. I'm failing. They've normalized it. And they keep learning and growing. And they learn from people who are ahead of them. They learn from people who are behind them. They learn the lessons.
They actually need to learn regardless of who they come from. Right. They're not just learning lessons from people who are like higher up than them or making more money than them. They learn lessons from people who are giving them lessons, right? Like I've learned some of my best lessons from new freelance writers where they're like, oh yeah, I thought about this. And I was like, oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way. Or they asked me a question and I'm like, oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way. And that really taught me something. And I've been doing, I've been a freelance writer for like 10 years. And I still learn things from people who are getting into the game. I think that's really important to stay open to that and to, to realize that that this, the emotional roller coaster is normal.
Um, you being a human being and not a human doing is normal. It's normal for everybody to deal with that kind of stuff. So it doesn't have to drive you crazy, you know, work on some self-care things, work on writing down your, your wins and permanent marker things. You can't race. Right. Um, right. Work on all the things that you can do to prioritize the things that matter to you. So for me, walking the dogs is really important, getting a lot of sleep. And when I don't get enough sleep and I feel really groggy and tired, then I have trouble walking the dogs and I have trouble doing my work. So sleep is a big one for me. Or maybe nutrition or, um, maybe it's exercise, right? Maybe you don't walk the dogs, maybe like lift weights. Um, maybe it's talking on the phone with your friends, um, maybe it's, you know, going to, going to the movies.
I think the movies are open now, but go, maybe it's going to the movies. Right. You kind of have to figure those things out. And there's kind of these things that can kind of calm you down. And remember, this is normal. So any questions I can answer those now, happy to answer them. I don't see any in the chat so far. No questions do do do. Um, all right, cool. Yeah. I don't see any questions. So if you have questions, you pop it in the chat, but I hope this was helpful. I, I, it's really important to me to normalize these things. Cause I don't feel like people talk about them enough. They talk about the functional parts of their business. They talk about the same kind of topics over and over again. And they don't really address the things that make a difference in terms of running a business, right.
Running a business is an emotional journey. We are running a freelance writing business and that's an emotional journey. And there's going to be peaks of like the best clients and the best clips and the best magazines and the best editors, the best, um, marketing directors you've ever worked with. Then there's going to be valleys. There's going to be times when all your contracts end, there's going to be a time where you sign a deal and then they don't pay you on time. There's going to be a time where, um, you kind of have to start from scratch again. You're like, I don't want to do blog posts anymore. I only want to do case studies and eBooks, and then you have to, you know, figure it out. I just want to normalize that because I think a lot of times the learning part right, is secondary to people being like, this is how your money works, make money, right.
But the money part, right? That's not always going to solve all the problems. There's a lot of people who make ton of money and they, you know, they get phased out. They don't actually learn, they don't grow with it. They don't learn content marketing. They don't learn, um, how to write for businesses and magazines. They don't write, learn all these different things. Um, they don't keep it a priority to put those wins into their confidence. Right. So I hope that this part was helpful in terms of, you know, mental health. Like this is how we do with emotional stuff. This is normal. I hope this was helpful in terms of, you know, thinking about building your confidence and then, you know, taking a little bit of power away from like just the money part of freelance writing. Um, I hope that this was helpful in terms of, you know, remembering that like you taken a step back or going on a different path is good and normal.
Um, building your own business is very important. If I plopped you out of this, your business and plopped you into someone else's business, chances are, you'd really struggle with it. I know if I plopped myself out and put myself in my, one of my friend's businesses, I would struggle and it'd be a disaster, right? You have to build your own business. You have to do your own stuff that works for you. There are certain repeatable processes that we can learn from, right? There's certain repeatable process, processes, templates, systems, things that we can do that are more robotic, but you still have to learn like what types of personalities you work with, how you personally are going to deal with peaks and valleys, how you're going to deal with keeping, you know, returning to learning and keeping learning as you go along and dealing with the fact that your business isn't going to be linear, all that stuff.
Um, yeah, I think that part's really important. Ooh, Vicky says this was awesome. Thank you, Vicky. This is a really important topic to me. I think that a lot of people, you know, I think we don't talk about it enough as freelance writers and I think it's really important. So I'm glad that you found value in this that's thank you for saying that. Oh, and Getty says great insights, Manny, all too often, we negate talking about emotional ups and downs. Yes, yes. And I did this for a long time. I would like not talk about, I'd be like, this is how we do it as a freelance writer and like ignore the hard parts of freelance writing, where we all have hard parts in our business. It's just, they're different. So build your own business. Rollercoaster. ING is normal. That's normal. The emotional part is normal.
If you're in the feast and famine cycle, that's a different ball game. But we have to kind of talk about these things because they help us move forward. They help us build confidence. They help us make more money, get the clients who really value our work. Um, they help us get to a place that if you want to work part-time hours, right? Like you want to work 20 hours a week. All these little things that we do along the way, the learning, the growing, the dealing with the emotional ups and downs, all that stuff matters to the end result of where we want to go. It matters to cutting your hours. Like all this cool, all the cool things we want to accomplish. So I hope this was helpful. And I will see you next week at 12:00 PM central we're in talking about a new topic, but, um, just as a quick FYI, I'm happy to answer any questions. So if you ever come into one of the live streams, um, you're welcome Tracy, welcoming Tracy. And thank you. Um, if you ever find that you have questions about freelance writing, you can bring any questions you want to, any of my live streams, I'm happy to answer anything. It doesn't have to be on topic. Um, I think sharing the knowledge in our industry is really important. So I hope you guys have a great Friday and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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