10 Unexpected Lessons Learned From My Six-Figure Freelance Writing Business

From the very first time I found out it was possible to create a six-figure freelance writing biz, I've had it on my must-do list. Over the past several years, I've learned some unexpected lessons from reaching one of my biggest goals and in this Friday's livestream, I'm giving you all my ups and downs and secrets. I gave a little away in this email, but if you're trying to build up to six-figures, don't miss out on this one :).

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Well, hi there. Hi Annie. Welcome in. Hi Tommy. Welcome in happy new year. Welcome back to live stream. We haven't had the live stream in a little while because I've been off. I've been having some time off so I can actually sleep and get back to my regular perky, upbeat self. So that's been fun. Now we're gonna go over a bunch of cool stuff. So we're gonna go over 10 unexpected lessons that I learned from hitting six figures in my business. So I finally hit that milestone. It took me fricking forever or, well, it feels like it took forever to me. So we're gonna go over all these lessons that I learned and some of them you got in the email. So if you were if you subscribe to my newsletter, you get these things kind of early. So some of them were in the newsletter, but I added a few more that I think are really important to know, to grow your business to a better level, to make more money, to find the right clients.

Hey Marie, welcome in. And then of course, if you always have questions, like as we're going along, pop 'em in the chat, we'll answer 'em at the end. I have a couple that came in through the hopper. So I also have a form. So if you ever have a question or you want a topic covered on the livestream, you can go to Mandy s.com/question, and then you can just pop it in there and I will put it in the livestream. So we have a couple that came in that are, they came in through the form. So we'll go through those at the end, but this is this is gonna be those 10 things first, then we'll do the questions. Cool. all right. People. So we're gonna go through and I'm gonna number them. So I didn't put them in here, which I should have, I guess, but I'm just gonna do my little numbering system and we're just gonna hop into it.

Oh, we have to do a pop date. We have date. We haven't done a date in a long time. So here they are. Bo's in his blanket. Be's wrapped up. So if you only see part of Bo that's because he's wrapped up in his blanket <laugh> and Charlotte's, you know, in a little tiny bean ball. Good girl. So they're really cold. It's been really cold here. And like yesterday it was, we had like a wintery mix, you know, it was almost snowing basically. So it's been really cold. I think it's in forties right now. So it's not so bad, but they're, they wanna be bundled up, but they <laugh>, they wanna be warm. Maybe we'll give 'em, we'll give 'em something later on. I don't wanna disrupt 'em now. Cause they're being all calm and quiet. Cool. All right, let's keep going. So number one, I'm gonna put my number one up.

Where is it there? It's that's two, get it together, Randy. <Laugh> all right. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about is that when you're reaching six figures, these are the unexpected lessons. I think a lot of people talk about clients and making more money. And we'll talk about that too. But for me, I kind of came across the idea that you're gonna struggle at some point. I struggled at lots of points. It took me a long time to get to six figures, or at least for me it took, took like in my mind, it took me a long time and it's a good thing that you're gonna struggle. So the first thing is that you're gonna struggle at some point, and that's a good thing. So when you're kind of moving along there was this study that was done that said humans, when they reach $75,000 they don't feel any happier.

Like when they get to $75,000 in income, there's no extra happiness that comes from that. They always think there will be right. They think that when they make more money or when their circumstances change, that they'll be wildly more happy, but they aren't. It's just not how humans work. So for me, I kind of always had this idea that when I hit six figures, I would feel different or that I wouldn't struggle as much or that hitting a number really made a big difference in my business. Hey V. Welcome in no worries. VNA it's okay that you missed. We had a live Q and a for my core students yesterday. It's okay. VNA. It's totally fine. We're gonna have more live Q and A's totally cool. So basically it's like, we always think that when we hit this number that we're like, oh, if we just do X, Y, and Z or that we just do all this stuff that someone said it's gonna magically just, you know, work out.

Someone just needs to give me the steps. And then I will magically just, everything will fall into place and there will be very little struggle. And it's just not like that for me, when I started talking to more six figure freelance writers, and I started talking to more people who had diverse businesses, like they weren't just doing freelance writing, they were starting podcasts or live streams, or they had downloadables or they were building email list, or they were speaking at more conferences or whatever. When I started talking to those people, their journey was so different. Hey, Diana, welcome in. I'm I'm glad, you know, it's nice to have everybody back too. I missed the live sessions too. It's nice to see all the comments and it's nice to be able to have like a place where people then ask questions. I know that I've gotten emails where people were like, ah, have questions held and I just didn't have a live stream going on.

So it's nice to like, be able to have our little community back. So the more I talk to those six figure writers, the more I realize that there's a lot of different struggles. And for them, sometimes it wasn't business struggles for them, their life, their personal life was Hey, Getty, welcome in their personal life was more of the struggle, right? Like they dealt with a lot of things behind the scenes that yeah, they made, you know, they climbed basically the freelance income tree really quickly, but their personal life was really rough. They had a sick family member, or they had relationships, stuff that they were dealing with. They had things with their kids. They had things with our pets. They had all these different other things going on. So for me, I often thought that it was going to be just this struggle, where it was only my business or that other people not struggling in their business meant that I was doing something wrong.

And that's definitely not the case. It's just that everybody struggles in a different area. So this is the interesting thing. When you think about hitting six figures, you're going to struggle. Like, I think that's something for me, that's more of like a freeing thought now is like, when I used to think I was failing or making mistakes and no one else was, it's just part of the process. You just struggle in a different area than other people, like where I struggled, where I struggled, other people didn't struggle. And it all has to do with kind of personal experience and how you're building your business and what you want your business to be. And when I really kind of review basically my, my last period, right? Like I kind of figured out, I learned like deep into my freelance business that a lot of people can make six figures.

I was like, once I found that out that I kind of glomed onto that idea. So when I, when I figured that out in like 2016, I had already been freelancing for, it might have even been like closer to 2017. But when I figured that out, I was just like, that's what I wanna do. But then I realized throughout my little journey to hitting six figures, that the tough stuff, all the things that forced me to make choices or forced me to make decisions or put me in situ I didn't wanna be in that I just kind of needed to grow through to build my business. Those were the most important things. Those struggles, like when I burned out in 2018 and when I kind of had like a partial burnout in 2021, and all of the different changes that you arrive at, right?

Like your life is kind of this amount of the, of choices. A lot of people I think when I talk to other writers and when I talk to other business owners, it's all about choices. And sometimes you get put in like a wed where you have to make these choices you don't wanna make, but you have to make them, right. Like there's no other option. You know, you have to deal with the difficult client or you have to with a missed payment or you have to deal with the assignment. That's not going well. Or you have to deal with refunding someone or getting off platforms. I know that I have a few students who are getting off platforms. There's all these different things where you have to make a choice, but all the times you make those hard choices off a times that ends up working out a lot better.

Like there's all of these tough things. That shift the way that you kind of move through your business. Diana agrees. Yeah. I, I didn't know. This was a thing like other people knew this. I knew I've talked to and known a couple freelance writers that like when then they started freelance writing, they started freelance writing in college and they already knew people could make six figures. And I was like, I started at much after college. Well, not much but slightly after college. And I did not know that was a thing for a long, long time. I had no idea. So I'm glad that someone else was surprised that it was a thing. Yeah. So when we're kind of going through all these tough moments, I don't want you to kind of think about it as like you failed or you made a mistake or that you are consistently all the time or that everybody else has it easier than you, or that you do this kind of compare and despair thing.

Basically, you're going to struggle. It may not be in your business. It may be in your personal life, or it may be some other type of thing that comes along, but you're going to struggle at some point. And that's okay. Those are all kind of turning points. Like all the major points that I look at in my busy business that I really struggled. Like I had some I had some in 20 14, 20 15, 20 17, 20 18, 20, 21, obviously everyone had 20, 20 all of these hard points that I had in my business. Those were the things that really made me pick a better path at the time. I was just like, this path sucks. Why do I have to do this? And I didn't really wanna make the choice, but I had to, I didn't really have another option I had to. I, I, you get to these kind of crossroads moments and it's okay.

It's okay. That's part of building your business and it's learning what you want and don't want in your business. Like, there's a lot of times where we think that learning what we do want really helps us a bunch, but what really happens is like a lot of times you learn what you don't want, and then you start avoiding that. And then as you start avoiding all the things you don't want, you actually start learning, oh, I want all these things over here. That's kind of how I learned. I struggle through all the things I don't want. And I still do it. I still struggle. Now, I don't wanna have this like, magical fairy disillusion that I don't struggle. Now. I still struggle now. Things like it's just different things, right? Like it's like that quote, when they say like new levels, new devils, right.

It's just different things. I think is interesting that Getty, you said you made six figures, but you're not expecting to return to that earnings milestone. I think that's an interesting mindset thing that you achieved it before, but now you feel like you can't, I would noodle on that. I would think about that a little bit about like, why you think that you wouldn't be able to get there, you know, like in a certain amount of time, like for me, I think of the six figure freelancers that I know it took like three to five years or more for them to get to the six figure level. Once they started kind of like chugging along in their business. So that's interesting. I would noodle on that, get in and see like, why you think you may never get back to that earnings milestone. Well, think about that.

All right. So let's move to number two. I think that was enough on number one. We're gonna move to number two. So this one's gonna be a little bit of a long one today, just cause I have 10 things to talk about. And I think it's really important. I think these things are really important to explain what six figures, what happens along the journey to six figures, right? It's a lot more than just like you hit this magic number and like everything works out. It's about all the steps that you have taken to actually get there. So let's talk about this one. This one is support matters. So I've talked to plenty of freelance writers where their family or their friends don't support their business. They don't understand it. I I remember a long time ago I had a friend I still like she's, I still talk to her from time to time.

And her family just like interrupted her day all the time. Like they didn't understand that she was working. They were just like, oh, you're just like writing. Right. So you can just stop and go off and do this other thing. Or they would volunteer her for things they would just be like, yeah, she can totally do it. All she does is write all day. So she can totally like leave the house and go do this other thing. And it just was this big thing of disrespect and not understanding her job. And even when she tried to explain it to them, like they were not supportive and they didn really get it. So I think for me, support has really mattered along the journey. So I have been very, very lucky in finding other freelance writers, not only who make more money than me, but also freelance writers who like get my business and understand me as a writer and a person.

So I have a bunch of different friends who are in all different stages of their careers. Like I have friends who are newbies, who are just starting out and I have people who have been freelancing for like decades and their business is at a different place. Right? So I think having the community piece and having other writers who get your business really, really matters. I think having the support network of someone who gets your business really makes a big difference. There's a, there's a, there is only so much I can do to explain my business to like my partner or my friends, but someone who's deep in the weeds with you, they actually get it. They're like, oh my gosh, I totally understand. I was so stressed. I ended up talking to my red flag client about leaving. And like, there, you can't translate that experience to someone else who hasn't lived it sometimes.

So I think having the support of other freelance writers, having a community or a Facebook group or some group of friends, or at least one accountability buddy, where you can go to them and, and tell them about your business and get help and understand, right. Like where they can understand where you're coming from and all the things that have been going wrong with your business, or they understand when you say like, oh my gosh, my invoice is one day late. Like what the hell? Right. And everyone else is like, oh, it's only one day. And you're like, no, this is how this works. So there's a lot of different things that I think support is really important. When you get down in the, like, down in the hole, right? Like I have spent a lot of time down in the hole and I always kind of talk about it as this.

Like I made a joke in the email that like, I've fallen in the hole so many times, like my face is imprinted on the bottom and it's true. I've spent a lot of time, like in this dark hole trying to figure out like, how do I actually figure this out? How do I like build a ladder and get outta here? And when you're in the dark hole, that's kind of, when you start figuring out like your friendships are actually helping, right. You get to this place where you're in this hole and you're like, oh my gosh, what do I do? And your friend's like, oh, well, I had this problem. I tried this. And then you try it. And you're like, oh, thank God. I'm so glad you suggested that. But if you had gone to a different friend, a friend who did wasn't a freelance writer, or you didn't, you had a family member who kind of like, like PPO your ideas.

That's not, that's not gonna help. Right. We need someone. Sometimes who's been there before us or someone who can just say like, yeah, this sucks. And give us some empathy about our T situation. But I think support is really important. And finding that to continue on with your journey is really important. So as you move along, look for other freelance writers to be friends with, like, I always connect. I, well, not everybody, but pretty much everyone on LinkedIn where I, where they friend request me on LinkedIn, I connect with them as long as they're in content marketing or writing, or they're doing freelancing. Because it's like better to have a bigger community of writers. It's better to have more people who understand your journey, or you may be surprised at who you connect with, who actually gets it, or who is someone that you end up becoming really good friends with.

Like I've had I've had a bunch of friends that I connected with on LinkedIn that are like all across the world where I never would've met them otherwise. Right. Like I never, would've met them in less we're in the same industry. And then you get to become friends with them and you learn about their markets and how freelancing works for them. And I think that kind of input and that kind of friendship really matters. So Maurice says I don't have family, but my cat totally understand. Whisper does understand. But my writer, friends get my business on deep level. Yeah. So like, I, I have talked to my pets or like cried in front of my pets many, many times. Like here they are sleeping. Charlotte's looking suspicious. Why you look at suspicious today? She had her jammies on, maybe she's upset. She doesn't have her jammies on.

Cause she's cold. She can't be cold. It's hot in here. I'm not gonna give you anything right now. But you do look cute. You look like a mermaid. <Affirmative>, I'll give you something later. All right. So yeah, the thing is, is that there's a big difference. Like if you don't have the support network of family or you don't have a ton of friends who get your business or get how your business works or what your're really building towards, then having a bunch of freelancers, right. Really, really matters. It makes a big deal. Friends in getting support or help or answers or, oh, hello. I see. We're just making noises now. And, and really kind of, sometimes they help you edit your work. Sometimes they help you get clients. Sometimes they send you leads. Sometimes they end up doing all of these things that are really useful.

And obviously support can mean a bunch of different things. Right? They can support you when you're down. They can cheer you on when you're up. They can give you advice. They can pass on leads. They can pass on clients. They can say like, oh yeah, I remember when so and so reached out to me, don't work with them. It was terrible. Like there's a whole bunch of different things that I think are really important in the support part. So number two, support matters. All right, let's move to number three. We have tent. So we're almost, we're not halfway, but we're getting there. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, make sure to subscribe below. If you feel like this has been useful in terms of getting advice about moving your more towards six figures, give it a thumbs up and we're moving onto number three. So this one was a really, really hard one for me to accept. This took me many, many years to get onto it. Number three is sometimes your work sucks. Okay. This is for all the perfectionists. This is for all the people that think that you have to be like a grammar, crazy person or that you have to have everything perfect to turn into your editor before you do anything. Yes. Hello? I don't want, I don't. <Laugh>

Hello? Hi.

Okay. Just because you did that, you could get something. Okay. So if everybody, last time we had a live stream. I was teaching mini how to do a high five and now we've become an expert. Can you go back to your ha hole? Go to your ha hole, go to your ha hole. Nope. You gotta go all the way back to your ha hole back up, back up. All right. Bear. You just look cute bear. So I'll just give you one

Good job, buddy. All right, Charlie. You ready? High five. Good girl. Other one. Good girl. All right. Wanna try one more time?

Hold on. We gotta give, bear his chair because he looks cute in his blanket.

Good job, buddy. All right, Charlotte, back up. Nope. Nope. You gotta wait back up, back up. <Laugh> Charlotte, back up. Good girl. Sit, sit. Hi five. Good girl. Other one other one. Good

Job. Good job. That took me forever to teach her how to do that. So we are gonna delete this. I don't know how you delete it in here, but maybe I'll delete it later. I don't know. Anyways. So it took me forever to teach her how to do that. So we finally did it all right back to my list. All right. So sometimes your work is gonna suck. This is for your this is for all of your times when you're looking at your work and you're just like, well, this sucks. Like, what am I gonna do? Sometimes your work sucks. Sometimes what ends up happening is that you are going to, oh, thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom, Tom. Sometimes you're going to get to a place where you're gonna turn something in and you just have to kind of deal with it in edits because sometimes what you think sucks.

Sometimes other people love it. And sometimes what you think is really great. Sometimes other people suck. They thinks it, think it sucks. So your work is gonna be terrible. Sometimes this is just kind of part of being a writer. It's like that idea of right, like like Tom Clancy when he did hunt for red. My dad told me this story so many times. So when Tom Clancy wrote hunt for red October, he took it in and they were like, this is great, but you have to rewrite the whole thing. So he finished hunt for red October, write the novel and he brought it in and they loved it. And they were like, well, you have to rewrite the whole thing. So he had to go back and rewrite the whole novel, even though they liked, even though you know, there was a whole bunch of things.

They were just like, you have to restructure it. You have to rewrite it. And this is just kind of part of it. This is part of the writing world where your work sometimes sucks. Sometimes you're really tired and you have to finish an assignment. Sometimes you miscalculated your time and you end up with a lot more work and you're just kind of craming it all in be, cuz you have to get it in on deadline and you have to deal with the edits. Sometimes you turn something in and you're like, sweet. This is gonna be great. And they get it. And they're like, oh my God, why did you send us this dumpster fire? You're like, oh crap. Sometimes it's just gonna happen. There's miscommunications. There's mistakes that we make. We're human beings, not human doings. There's times when we are being perfect opportunistic on our own terms, which means that we are making the piece, what we think is perfect and not what our client thinks is perfect.

And so that ends up crossing all of the, all the streams and getting all messed up. There are times when we turn in our work and we just kind of like, half-ass it, there are times. I mean, I hope you don't turn in half-ass but sometimes to hit a deadline, sometimes you gotta mush something together and then you're like, I'll figure it out in edits. I think sometimes there's all of these things that come together, especially when you're kind of trying to make six figures and you're moving up to better clients and really working on honing your craft as a writer. Sometimes you're gonna think that you're better at something, but you have to get worse first before you get better. And there's a lot of writers, including myself who have learned a lot more from edits than we ever have from writing by ourselves on our own.

So I think when you think about the times when your work sucks, it's gonna be very small most of the time, like a, if you're putting in good work, if you're paying attention to writing better, if you're paying attention to the examples your clients give you, if you are really working on making your work better and trying to improve your word choice, improve your sentence, variety, improve your grammar, improve how you speak to that audience. What you kind of how structure your pieces, how you organize things, the quotes that you get, the questions that you ask. I think eventually, you know, your work just gets better. Sometimes it gets worse, then it gets better. Sometimes it's helpful. I think for me, sometimes I think about it as like painting. Like sometimes people paint something and it's just garbage, right? Like nobody paints like no famous painter has ever painted everything they've ever made is great.

You only see like their highlight reel, right? They've done tons of things that are terrible, that would never see the light of day. And maybe now they see the light of day because they're like hundreds of years old. And they're like, this is an original in, they're famous now, but there's lots of times where we end up doing something the same way we write a garbage draft, we edit it. And we're like, I'm too far in the weeds. I've done this a ton of times where that's one of my major writing issues is like I get stuck in the weeds. A lot of times I get a lot of research, a lot of data, a lot of quotes. And then I like, you know, what ends up happening is like, everything kind of gets disconnected. Cause I'm like, oh I need this or I need that.

But it doesn't actually make sense. Right. As a whole flow. You're grumpy today. No, thank you. No thank you. All right. Why don't you lay down? All right. There you go. Why don't you lay down and then we'll do it later. We'll show everyone your school's later. So <laugh> hi. So sometimes your work is just gonna suck. And this is something too that I have worked with with my freelance writer, wealth lab students, and with my coaching students was like, this is just part of it. Like sometimes you write a garbage. No, no, no, no. We're not gonna have this wild and crazy mini day. Like sit good girl. All right. Now you can just stay there. All right. So sometimes your work is gonna suck. Sometimes you're gonna write a garbage draft and then like you turn in something and you're like, well, it wasn't that different than my garbage draft.

It just kind of happens. I think it's something that you have to come to terms with as a writer it's like I said, should be really small. Sometimes your work is gonna suck on a really, really small level. Like it shouldn't be all of your work where like you're getting a ton of edits or you're making a lot of mistakes. Like that's like a diligence and a conscientiousness problem. But sometimes especially if you're a perfectionist, sometimes you just kind of have to accept the idea. And I found it kind of peaceful after I accept that your work is just gonna be terrible. Sometimes it's just gonna happen. So I think if you kind of just remember that your work is always the product that you're creating and that it's not like you as a person every time, like sometimes your work is just a product that you're creating.

It's a product of your skills and your knowledge and your expertise and what your client asks for. It's not like one piece reflects on you as a whole. I think that kind of separates you too from getting too personal with every single piece and then worrying about everything sucking and when someone asks for edits or changes, then you're like, no, we can't do that because of this, this and this. It's just a product some and times that you create Getty says right now, I'm struggling with getting my life back these last 15 months. My main family. Yeah, that's right. You have been a, a big caregiver for a family member. I need to set boundaries and move my professional life put forward. Yeah. Sometimes that happens though, right? Like that's kind of part of number one, right? Like sometimes you're just gonna struggle with personal stuff.

And it takes away of the time and effort that you can put into business stuff and that's okay. Sometimes that's just gonna happen. Setting boundaries definitely helps or at least giving yourself some time yourself. So you're not 100% being a caregiver. But there's like, I don't think you should beat yourself up too much. I know Getty, you've had a lot of things going on. And I also think that sometimes that's just part of the flow. Sometimes the flow is that you spend a lot of time on your personal life cause you have to deal with personal issues. And then sometimes it flows back. Once those things kind of get solved or helped, or they kind of move in a different direction, then you have space and time and effort to put into your business and then you really get it going.

I think it's kind of like this ebb and flow thing sometimes. All right, let's move to number four. I'm going to move that off a let's move to number four. All right. Number four. So this is an interesting one too, that I fought with for a long time. So you have to clear your own path. So number four is it's kind of like that that Robert Frost thing that we've all heard a thousand times, right? Like two roads diverged in a wood. And I, I took the one less traveled and that has made all the difference, right? So that <laugh>, we have to clear our own path. You have to get your own machete. You have to chop down the jungle. You kind of have to go on your own way. This was something that took me a long time to figure out because I would try to like build my other friends' businesses.

Like I would ask for advice and they'd be like, oh, all you have to do is this, this and this. And I would go off and do it. And I'm like, it's not worth. Or like I would end up getting a client and I'd be like, this is the worst I hate working in this niche. Or I hate doing this work or this is really boring. So I think you have to just kind of like deal with the idea that you have to clear your own path and you have to build your own business. This was something that I had a moment years ago with what, to my friends, where I was like, oh, you're right. I just have to build my own business. Duh, like I have to stop worrying about what you are doing and seeing if I can just replicate that there are certain fundamentals, right?

Like there are certain frameworks and systems and processes and fundamentals that we have to follow as freelance writers in order to build the right framework for our a business. But eventually you end up getting to this point where like, you don't want the same paint color as your friend, or you don't want the same aesthetic or you want different furniture for your house. Like you built, you know, the foundation, but you know, you want a different house design. There's all of these different things that end up happening when you're building your business that make you forge your own path. So of course there are lots of things that are really helpful, right? Like you can take a course, like I have a course, right. Freelance writer, wealth lab, and that kind of helps you set the foundation and start making your own choices. Right? So as we go along, we have to make choices for our own business.

Like the choice that I would make is not the same choice that some of my friends would make. That's part of building your own path or like blazing your own path. There are lots of things that we can follow, right? There's lots of steps that we can follow, but at some point you're gonna get to this place where you have to, the only way that I always think about it is like, it's like Jumanji where you have to like, get out your own machete and like, just get through the jungle part. Like there are times when that's just part of it. Like, I think it's just the accepting of the idea that at you're gonna verge off of the basic part, right? There's basic parts that we need to pay attention to as freelance writers, there's basic formulas, but then you kind of have to work in your own niches and you kind of have to have your own idea of who you wanna work with.

 Work with, right. My ideal client is probably not the same as yours. And there's a big difference too, because sometimes people are working in big niches, right? Like health and healthcare or SAS or FinTech that covers a bunch of different things. Like I work for FinTech companies that are actually in the real estate space, right? Like they do certain things in real estate, but they think they're a FinTech company. But to me they're a real estate company. There's a lot of different things or like they could be Bitcoin or it could be FinTech is so large. And the same thing happens when you have all of these different pads that you can take in different niches or pads that you with different clients. And I think you have to kind of decide on your own and accept the idea that it's like, okay.

Sometimes to go off the beaten path and that it's something that will be more helpful to you as you grow as a writer, is that you're gonna end up in this place. That really is your own business. It's like this custom created thing at, out of all the choices that you've made along the way. It's not that you have just copied and pasted someone else's business. And then you're like, now I've made all this money. Everything's great. The people that I know that tried to copy paste a business and the people like the writers that I know that tried to basically just replicate what someone else did. They either didn't make any money and didn't work for them. Or they ended up making some money and then they hated it. And they were like, freelance writing is not for me. And then they left just because they didn't build their own business.

They built something that doesn't make any sense for them. They built something that made sense for someone else. So it's okay. Right. It's okay to blaze your own path, okay. To learn the fundamentals and the make your own choices. You don't have to copy paste exactly what someone else's business is and you shouldn't you should be trying to find the things that make the most sense to you because that's how you end up making a bunch of money, right? That's how you end up making six figures is that you are building the thing that makes sense to you and makes sense to the life you wanna live and the content you wanna write and the client you wanna work with. And sometimes people don't wanna make six figures, right? Sometimes people just wanna make 50 K they're happy at that level. And they wanna spend half their time, you know, running their farm and half the time writing, like there's all these different goals that we have.

So I think when you think about hitting six figures, I think you kind of have to blaze your own path. There, you have your fundamentals, you have your building blocks, you put all your Legos in to get the general idea of like how these things function in the freelance business world. But then you kinda have to make your own customizations. Maurice says, I wrote a great priest and a great piece, and I was proud. My clients fixed it with bad grammar. I could have spent days upset talking to everyone at the wealth lab. Yeah. In our wealth lab community. I was, it was easy to reset and move forward fast. Yeah. So sometimes you write something that you're really proud of and you end up having a client who either thinks they're like a better writer or they're better at grammar. And then they make all these mistakes.

Right? Like they end up putting all these things in there that you're like, why did they do this? And that's just part of it. Sometimes that happens, you know, sometimes that's just part of it. But yeah, like when you have a community and you have people to talk to, like, we have our wealth lab community, that is part of my course. Then you can kind of like reset and be like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. And then you could go back to blaze your own path and be like that client just wasn't for me. Move on. All right. Let's move to number five. Do do, do all right. New number, new number, number five. Yes. Would you like to lodge a complaint? We have a, we have a complaint department, Charlotte, but the complaint department is closed right now. So we'll just do, we'll see if you'll do a high five for everybody while we do a quick pop date. <Laugh> hi bear. Bear. You're just like chilling today. You're just having a great day in your little blanket. All right. You ready? High five. Good job. Other one? Nope. Other one. Good job. All right, Barry. You ready? Here you go, buddy.

All right. Ready? High five. Good girl. Other one other one. Nope. There we go. Good job. Oh my gosh. Best thing I ever did was teach her that. I don't know if you guys can see it. Cause I keep adjusting the camera cuz she keeps moving. Charlie, can you high five me? Oh no, not lick me. High five high five high five. Good job. Good job. All right. You get one more. Cause you did the high five. Oh, go back, back, back, back, back, back up. Good job. All right, bear. Can you catch 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, you're so close buddy. So close it's over here. There you go. All right. All right. We're gonna move on to number five. But first Annie says, I spent most of my life trying to find some perfect life or business or person to replicate and it's scary, but it's also so freeing and exciting to finally wanna build my own thing.

Yeah, exactly. It is scary to go off on your own path, right? It is scary to be like, oh crap, crap. Now I have to make all these choices or I have to figure it out by myself or I have to do all these things. It is scary. But the problem is when you start building a life or you start building a business or you start trying to copy other things, then you start realizing that like, it's not gonna work for you because no one person is identical to another. Like not in a family, like no matter how many times people are like, you're just like your dad. <Laugh> you're not, you're not. So every time when you start doing these things, this is how we end up a lot of times with like this is anxiety producing or it gives you depression. You're like, why is this working it for everyone else? And not me. Or it, you know, it just illuminates a lot of different things in your life where you're like, everything's going wrong. It is scary to do your own stuff. It totally is. And then I have a point about this in like further down, but

It also gives you a lot of potential and a lot of options, right? There's a lot of things that we get to end up doing because we're blazing our own path because we're adding our own customizations or instead of like working ourselves to the bone, you know, we're doing this other thing where we have a more flexible schedule. So for me, a lot of times the conversation I am to having is like, I like to work a lot. I have a lot of different projects running because I like to do those projects. Do I overdo it? Yeah, I overdo it. And sometimes that really bites me in the butt, but a lot of times I like to have those multiple different things going on for me. That's really interesting. And it it's really exciting. So I work more hours than most people like the most other writers.

I know, like I know other writers who work 20 hours a week or 30 hours a week. And I know writers who work more hours than me. But it's just kind of, it, it's this thing where when you have your interest and you have this potential and you have all this stuff that you get really excited to about, then you have all these things that like, keep the ball rolling. Right? You have all these things where it's like, oh crap. Like I'm really tired or I've worked too much, but you've had all these things that move along that keep you interested and excited. Cause you're blazing your own path. Instead of doing all these repetitive things that you're just like, this is boring. I don't want this same life as everybody else. Like why do I keep doing this? That kind of stuff.

Cool. All right. So we're gonna move to five. Five is there's more to life than work. So we have a nice transition here. This is something that I used to write down. I had, you know, like I would write down things I'm grateful for. And then I would write about like goals that I had or things I wanted to remember, like things I wanted to remind, remind myself of every single day. And I used to write this down. There's more to life than work because I like to work. I like to do, like, I like all of my clients that I work with. I am at a really great place where like, I love all the people I work with. I love my students. I love running my course. I love running my community. I like all, all the things that I'm doing.

It's just more that like, you have to remember like work is not the whole pie. <Laugh> there's like these guys, which like she's sitting here right now. Wa in her tail being a Uber. Can you go back to your Hava hole? Go back to your Hava hole back up, back, up, back, up, back up all the way. All right. Good job bear. Good job. All right, Charlotte. You ready? Yeah. I know you just wanna <laugh> other one. Ow. Other one. Good job. All right. You gotta work for it, Charlotte. So like there's these guys, right? Like they wanna go on walks or they need to they need exercise or they need play time or back up. Thank you. They need exercise. They need play time. They have allergies. So they have to get bath. They need, they baths. They need like weekly baths.

We don't always hit it. <Laugh> we try and do it every other week. They need a bath right now. Actually. That's why Charlotte's not very shiny. She gets super shiny after a bath, but anyways, <laugh> they have to go to the vet or there's all of these things. Right. And we have to exercise, right? Like we need to do other things outside of work. Work is not the only thing in our lives. And they have that long term Harvard study. Right. There's that term Harvard study that I don't remember how it's like the longest running study and it's a study on happiness, right. Or maybe it's Princeton. Anyways, there's this very long study it's been going on forever. And what they found was like, relationships are really what give people the most happiness or make their life the most fulfilled. So when I remind myself of that, oh yeah.

Remember, there's more to life than work. There's more to life than work. I have to remember that sometimes that yes, as exciting as it is and how much fun it is and how much I find fulfillment and joy in building my business and working with my students and doing all that stuff and seeing them succeed. Like <laugh>, that gives me so much joy. Like when I get notes from my students about them overcoming roadblocks or them like like I know, you know, just like me, like I've talked about this before. Like I have anxiety, I go to therapy, I take medication, I deal with it. But when I hear about other people being like, I, I struggled so long in just your encouragement to do X, Y, or Z, or I found this community and they really helped me do this stuff. Or I got this new client, like just hearing their wins and the things that they did to work really hard to get to where they wanted to be.

Like, that gives me so much joy, but there's more than that. There's more than all the work, like the relation I have with my students or relationships I have with friends and family or relationships that I have with these guys. Even as grumpy, as many looks right now, and now she's like, oh, I should get something. Cuz you send my name. That's a hard one. Right? Like it's really fun. It's really fun to work on your business and build your own thing. But there's more than that. There's rest time. There's exercise time. There is, you know, mental health time. There's all these other things, friends and family time. Like there's all these things that we need to put in our life to make it fulfilling and well rounded. Right. And it's not just well rounded to like meet the social media requirements of like what should my life be?

And tell me all the things. And I wanna be a lifestyle person. Like it's about, of the things that actually fill in all the other holes. Like work can't fill all the holes. It can't, it can't fill all the things in your life that make you feel good. Like if I didn't have these guys right, like I didn't have these guys. Oh, here you go. I have one right here actually. You know? Then like when they come check on me, when I've been working for a long time, there you go, buddy. Right. Ready? If I good girl, other one, good job. Other one other one. Good job. All right. Like if I, these guys that come check on me when I've been working too long or like all the little funny, weird things that they do, right? Like that gives me so much joy. And I find that sometimes when people are working towards six figures, they think if they just grind it out, like they just grind it out for a few years, they'll hit six figures and then they're like, then I'll go do this thing.

Once I hit six figures, then I'll go do this. Once I hit six figures, then I'll go do that. Or I'll be happy when this is something that that, gosh, I've talked about a bunch, like you can't live a life of, I'll be happy when, and I do this too. Like I have been guilty of this many, many times. You can't say I'll be happy when I hit six figures. I'll be happy when I get this client, I'll be happy when I do this, I feel like that just kind of robs you of all the joy, right? Like there's certain things, right? Like there's certain things where it's like, okay, I can feel relieved when I get the check or like, I feel like I can celebrate when the thing is completed. There's that? But you can't just wait, you can't just say I'll be happy when, because then you're never happy.

Cuz the goal post just keeps moving. You just keep saying like, I'll be happy when my business hits this amount, I'll be happy when I get this type of client, I'll be happy when this many pitches gets accepted, you have to move beyond that. And that's the piece that connects with there's more to life than work. You can be happy hanging out with your dogs, right? Hi bud. You can be happy hanging out with your dogs. You be happy when you take a break. Like I just came back from a month off, which was a big goal of mine. That for me was a, a big separator in finding more peace in myself and a big separator in like there's more to life than work. When you think about it, a lot of times, like it's such a small amount of time in your life, right?

Like took a month off. But every pretty much everyone is taking two weeks off for like winter holidays and new year. So really I only missed 10 business days, right? Like I took two weeks off after that. So like 10 business days is so small. It is so minuscule to your entire life or even the year. And it was worth it because I like that moment. I needed that peace. Like I needed peace to be by myself to do stuff other than work, to like just watch movies and loaf and scroll Instagram and watch funny dog videos. I just needed that. And that's part of realizing there's more to life than work. There's more to life than making six figures and yet making six figures is super cool. It's a very big bio sound. It's it's really awesome. But you often just get robbed at all these things.

Oh my, you gotta back up, go back to your ha hole. It robs you of a lot of these things that when you think I'll be happy when right. I'll be happy when or I'll oh, I just have to work my off. And then I'll just hit six figures. If I had told myself that I'll be happy when I hit six figures, which I did for many years, many years, I was like, oh, I'll just be happy. When I hit six figures, you can't do that. What are you gonna do? Be miserable for like a like five years. And then be like, finally, I can be happy. But the, the deal is you've already built all these habits and all these thoughts and all these like mindset tricks that by the time you get there, you're not happy because you built all these things of like, I can't be, I can't enjoy anything until I do this thing.

And you never know when you're gonna hit that thing. Right? You never know when you're gonna hit six figures. You never know when you're gonna get that client. It's out of your control. Like you can control how much marketing you do. You can control how much work you do. You can control what you charge. You can control, like who you have on your roster. You can control the types of stuff that you end up doing or the types of projects. But you can't always control like all the things in the, you just can't. And if you end up being in this position where you like, think about all your stuff is work or you can't be happy when then you're just like, you're missing the point, right? Like you will lose years of your life. And I have like, I've lost a ton of time being obsessed with work and being like, oh my gosh, I just have to do all these things because then I I'll be happy cuz I'll be, have hit this, this milestone.

But it just doesn't work that way. Your brain doesn't work that way. And when you train your brain, like so much delayed happiness, right? Like the marshmallow test, like you, you have to get back to your hot hole. Sit, sit. Okay, wait there. So there's the marsh marshmallow test, right? You leave a kid in the, in a room with a marshmallow and you say like, you can have the marshmallow now. Or if you wait however much time, it's not a long period of time. We'll give you two marshmallows. Right? You can't keep waiting for two marshmallows. They go stale. Right? Like I'm definitely the, the, here's like a big difference. Like I'm definitely the person that will wait to get two marshmallow I 100% as a kid. I like, I definitely would've done that. That's like, I'm okay with delayed gratification in that way, but you can't wait so long if they go stale and by the time you eat them, you're like, these are gross.

Like why did I do this? It doesn't work like that. You have to live a regular life. Plus do your work. There's more to life didn't work. All right. Business says be made a good one. She said, that's me. And it does Rob you. I also say that I can have fun when the work is done and the work is never done. Exactly. This was something that I thought about. Gosh, five-ish or more years ago, I had this idea and I'm glad you brought the sub-business. I had this idea about like, there's always more to do. Like I, I felt like I was really anxious and I couldn't calm down cuz all it would be like, I was like, there's always more marketing to do. There's always more clients to reach out to. There's always more deadlines to get. There's always more invoices to pay attention to.

There's always more contracts to send or proposals. There's always something more to do in your finance writing business. When you're running a business, there's always forever on a continuum of things you could be doing, but you can't work a hundred percent of the time. We are human beings, not human doings. We're not robots as much as it would be fun to be a robot. Cause then you get so much done. I, I keep coming back to this and it, you just get so many things done. But there's a big difference between worrying about like being productive or like saying like, okay, well I have to do all these things. And then it's just, there's so many things. There's so many things, right. Even if you you're like, oh, I should like, and comment more on client posts or I should do this. Like there's so many things that you could just build in of things to do.

But the deal is you could still have fun at work, but you can also have fun outside of work. Right. It doesn't have to be this whole thing where it's just a delayed stale, marshmallow. Right. We can have fun at work, but we also have to kind of like, remember like the work is like never done, right? Like in personal development talks about this all the time. Like your growth and your mindset and all these things and the way that your moving on, like the work is never done. You're a always kind of like moving along and changing things and, and becoming different people. Oh, we need to delete that comment, but I can't do it right now. All right. So just remember the downtime matters. There's more stuff to do outside of work. Six figures is cool, but it's not everything. It's not who you are.

It's not like when someone gets to know you, the fact that like you have a business is a part of you. It's not all of you. All right. Let's do number six. So now we're a little bit past halfway. So if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a high earning six figure writing business subscribe. All right, let's talk about number six. So you need to value relationships, systems, processes, and quality over quantity. So this is what I was talking about when it comes to putting all of your building blocks in place. So I won't repeat it too much, but the systems in processes that you have, the, there are basic ones that we need to have as freelance writers to run our business. We need to learn how to do proper marketing, send a good LOI, send a good pitch, write our stuff, have a process to write each type of piece, right?

There's a process that I do. That's a blog post. That's different than a reported article. That's different than a white paper, different than a case study different than a content strategy package that do. So all of those things are different. We need systems and processes for that. So that's really important to become more efficient and more productive and reduce the amount of admin that we have to do. You need to have templates. You need to have ways that you can kind of cut down on things once you kind of learn the basics. So for me, that really helped, like I have a template for a contract, multiple different templates. I have multiple proposal templates. And they go for different niches. I have multiple templates that I send for Lois. And I have actually, you can get them. I don't even know if I have them in here.

Mm oh I do. Yeah. So like, if you want, I don't know if I've ever shared this on here, but my LOI templates and all of the marketing templates that I use, that you can customize and make your own, you can get 'em at Mandy ls.com/bundle. It also includes contract templates and some legally stuff, some other cool things in that bundle. So if you wanna go there, you can check it out. But when you have all these systems and processes and templates in place, it cuts down on overwhelm. It cuts down on trying to reinvent the wheel every time. It makes it a lot easier to run your business. But the other side of that is that you have to have good relationships. So even as much as we have, like all of these robotic processes and systems and templates, we also need to have a human connection with people, right. We need to make sure that we have a quality number over a quantity number. So lemme take a drink real quick. Hold on, let mute myself. So you don't have to look.

All right. So when you're kind of building these really there's a lot of times when people say like, oh, I have 10,000 LinkedIn connections, but I can't get any clients. Well, that means that you don't have quality connections. It means you have quantity connections. And also as you go along, I have had editors change positions all the time. They change magazines, they change industries. So, so they go from working at a top tier magazine to working as a content marketing manager at a business like at a startup, they change positions so much and you need to build these relationships with them. So that means like actually having a human connection with them, right. Having conversations with them or making jokes on email, or like having calls with them or building a relationship by turning your good work in on time, making sure all you're diligent about all your stuff, listening to their feedback, listen, doing the edits on time, all that stuff.

That's really important. And those relationships build over time. So what we wanna do is have a bunch of quality relationships. And I often get messages from writers being like, well, I don't have a li LinkedIn network or I don't have a bunch of connections from my previous job. Like I didn't either. I had 71 LinkedIn connections, I think when I jumped off like when I went full-time freelance, I think I had 71 LinkedIn connections. Like I had no network. I didn't understand like the whole value, like creating valuable relationships thing. It takes a long time. So you're building these connections. Yes. Would you like to submit a complaint? Press one. Seems like you can't press one. Okay. <laugh> so all of these connections that we have, they're really important to making sure that long term, we have a bunch of different things that we can turn to or people who can recommend us.

You good buddy. All right, Charlie. Ready? High five, one. Good job. All right. I make sure that you know, we're getting connected with other people who could use our help or we're getting connected with other writers. The relationship part is a long term strategy. It's a very long term type thing. So it's not about building relationship to get an immediate payout. It's a building relationship with someone over a long period of time where you kind of like pop in and out or you end up commenting and liking their stuff, or you follow up with them because you send in LOI and they were interested. Or you end up meeting other writers who introduce you to other clients or who be end up becoming really good writer, friends. And then you guys build a relationship basically on like being friends and then they can send you qualified leads or potential clients or whatever.

There's all of these things that happen when you build quality relationships, all of that stuff though, isn't immediate. Like when you start building your LinkedIn network and when you start like building relationships, this is something too that has really impacted me. Making six figures is building the right relationships with the right people. Like people who we get each other, like actually being humans and being friendly and being nice, not just like building relationships with people that get something, this is something I think writers sometimes make mistakes or like, oh, I should just only build relationships with clients because I can get something right. I can get work or I can get higher rates or I can get whatever, or I can get this like very specific clip. Like that's missing the point. The point is that we're building relationships so that people can then, you know, you get to know them, you learn, learn more about their business.

You learn more about them as a person, you make friends and then maybe they recommend you or maybe they work with you or maybe they share something with you that's really relevant. Or I don't know. There's all the good stuff that comes later. I think the important part is always like you have to build relationships with people to build friendships or learn about them, or be curious about them or be interested in them. It's not about what you get out of it, all of that good stuff that comes later that's because you've spent time building actual valuable relationships. So for example, a lot of like, I've had several opportunities that have come because I built relationships with other writers. Like I was friends with them first. Like I wasn't trying to get anything out of it. I wasn't trying to get leads or clients.

I was just, you know, we were just friends and then they were like, Hey, by the way, I know you write about PropTech. Here's this thing. Maybe you're interested in it. Or I got this lead and I don't write about I don't write about travel. Can you, you know, maybe you can do it. Those are the things that are like all, all the good stuff later. I think that when we kind of prioritize this idea that we're getting something out of it or that, oh my gosh, like then the client will do all this stuff. Like you can't control other people. Number one, but number two, it's kind of like you have the wrong intention. The intention should be that you are building connections with people like actual human connections. And then that leads to good stuff later on like those types of things, right?

Like I've had many editors like who moved on from magazines, work on big projects at content market. Like they're the content marketing manager at a startup or, or a business. And they moved away from magazines and that really helped me get more work. But I had already built a relationship with them before that years, before that I think that's the important part. You have to like be a human with people and you have to be looking at it as like we're making friends, we're growing our network and yes, everything as potential, right. We get more money or clients or leads or whatever. But the important part is that like we're human beings connecting with other human beings. I think when we end up, you know, doing this kind of weird sketchy hold on one second. When we end up doing these weird sketchy things for just trying to get something out of it, like there's times when people are like, oh, we'll just connect with everybody at every company.

And then I'll just get some leads like that doesn't feel very like authentic or like true to who you are. I think that you kind of have to go about it as like what kinds of things will be kind of like people that are interesting people I can connect with, but also, you know, maybe we will end up working together or maybe something will happen, who knows. But the valuable relationships that takes time to build takes time to build up a network, but don't go at it as like everybody you're connecting with will give you work or whatever. I think it's more important to, to be kind of like a huge being with people. All right. That was number six. Getty says finding the right work life balance or is an ongoing journey it's yeah, I think it's always that way to me. It's always that way.

I actually kind of for me, I kind of have given up on the idea of work life balance. Like I think a lot of times people think work life balance is like 50, 50. It's just not, I don't think it will be that way for me. I at this stage, at least maybe later on I'll do less work and you know, maybe have more lifetime, but for me, the work is just so interesting and I really like doing it. So I think for like, when you think about work life balance, it doesn't have to be 50 50. It has to be like the right balance for you. Getty also says in the distant past I was consumed by my work did not have a personal, the personal life I wanted now I need to work. And, and, and to have a life that being gr you go, yeah.

I mean sometimes when you're overly, right? Like when you're overly consumed by work, right. This is the same thing as number five, right? Like there's more to life than work. There's more to life than work being consumed by your work is okay. As long as you still make time to have the right balance, right? Like, or, well, not balance, but like you have time to build personal relationships or at least have time off. So I don't think we need to beat ourselves up if like some P portion of our life is more about work. Sometimes that's just how it is. Like sometimes part of your life is more personal stuff. You have to deal with family things. And sometimes you're, you're doing more time on work, but at least there has to be some kind of offset. I think that's more helpful having the offset part is like, your time that you spend working is offset by the time that you get quality life, like you get quality downtime or family time or friend time or dog time. Like this one, you look so suspicious. <Laugh>.

 But I think for me, the balance has to be personal. I don't think 50 50, which is like, or 60, 40, or whatever. A lot of people strive for that. But that just for me, that's not a thing. Here you go, bud. All right, Charlie, you ready? Show your skills. Hi, five. Good girl. Other one. Good job. Good job. All right. Cool. All right, let's move on to seven. Welcome Vicky. It is Friday. All right, let's do seven. Where's my seven. Here we go. Number seven. All right. So number seven is if you only focus on income goals, if that's the only goals you have and you only focus on income numbers, what ends up happening is you're gonna be unhappy. This is something I found with myself and with other writers is if you only focus on how much money you're making, you're gonna be unhappy, cuz you're missing all the good stuff that you've done to get there.

So what ends up happening is you're like, oh, well this last year I made 10 K like I just started feelings writing. I was doing it as a side gig. I only made 10 K and then the next year you make 50 K and you're like, oh man, I really wanted to like replace my full-time salary of, you know, 65 K or whatever. And I only made 50, well, like that's a big jump from 10,000 to 50,000, but if you only focus on the income goal, you missed all of the good things that got you from 10 to 50,000. Right. You've missed all of the important parts that actually helped you make more money or get better clients or charge more like charge what you think your work is worth or all the good mindset changes or all of the good things you did to make, you know, like five extra income.

Right. I think a lot of times when we only focus money, right? Like we only focus on hitting six figures or we only focus on income goals. Right. We don't have other goals. Like I wanna exercise every day or I want to make sure I work less and have bigger projects or we have other goals outside of straight money and it's gonna be, you're gonna be unhappy if you don't have something outside of money, you're gonna be unhappy. I've seen this time and time again with freelance writers, with other people in different industries. But man, it's just like you, can't only focus on income. Hitting six figures is a big deal. But if I had spent the last few years only focusing on income and not focusing on other things that I've done, I would be way more unhappy. Right? Like I spent a bunch of time only focusing on income and missing the fact that I was making all these strides in other places.

And it really kind of like messed me up. I think that's one of the reasons why I ended up burning out in 2018 was like, all I was really focusing on was like making more money or changing how I wanted to like kind of structure my business and just kind of like falling into everything when I was kind of working on like, I, I would get all these opportunities and I would just end up doing a lot of stuff all the time, but I wasn't really paying attention to the actual function of that stuff. Like how many pieces I was writing per month and how I actually felt about that and what I wanted, like my business to actually look like. I was just like, I need to make more money. So I should just take more gigs. It was kind of that idea where like I, I used to run on this idea, right?

Like if I just, oh, if they'll give me a hundred dollars, right. And if I do 10 of them, that's a thousand. Instead of saying like one, $1,000 gig, right. Instead of doing 10, $100, things do one, $1,000 thing that kind of is a transition, right? Like that kind of stuff is a transition you have to make. And it's something that you should celebrate. Right? It's something that's really important. <Affirmative> but if you were only focusing on money, you would miss all that stuff. I think that it's this thing where we think that if we focus on money, like right where like we have this idea that if we focus on money, we'll just make more money if we focus on that. But there's so many things that go into making more money. This is why it was, it's kind of like an unexpected thing for me, because you think that if, excuse me, you think that if you focus on making six figures that you're like gonna make it like, oh my gosh, that's my main goal.

It's my focus. I'm paying all my attention to this, but there are so many different milestones and so many different things that happen on your journey to making six figures like there's mental health stuff or there's mindset stuff, or there's client stuff or invoice stuff or processes and system stuff, or relationship stuff or personal stuff. There's all of these different things that happen on the way. And if you only pay attention to numbers, that's it, then you're gonna be really unhappy. And this is the same thing. Why I switched from number of goals to, to effort goals when it came to marketing. Because when I said like, I wanna send a hundred Lois in a month, I could just never do it. I just, I couldn't do it. I, the most Lois I've ever sent in a month is 75. And I normally hover, like when I do a ton of marketing, it's like between 50 to 75, that's it?

I've never hit a hundred in a month. And I think it it's just like when I focus on the number, I always felt like a loser always felt like I was doing it wrong because I could never hit a hundred. I was like, oh, I hit 75. But because I didn't hit a hundred, then I started feeling about myself, right? If I'm only focusing on numbers, then it's not working. So then I switch to effort goals where it's like I'm spending an hour every single day, Monday through Friday on my marketing that made me feel motivated to keep going. Cuz every day I completed the hour and the hour was more than just sending Lois or sending pitches. It was connecting with people on LinkedIn, liking and commenting things, sharing things posting up. Dayss like following up, there was all these different other things that you need to do besides just send a hundred LOI or send a hundred pitches.

There's so many more other activities that need to be done. And for me, when I switched to that effort goal, rather than focusing on a number, it really helped. And sometimes I think when we only focus on income goals or only focus on six figure stuff, we end up missing the process and we end up missing the things that really worked for us. Like if I had continued on with number of goals in terms of marketing, I probably would've given up or I would've burned out again or I would've been really sad and unhappy, but it, once I kind of figured out what worked for me, then the train kept going and that it was fine. Like a boom, boom, boom, boom, everything kind of continued on and I'd get better clients. And I think that is a lot more hold on.

I think that's a lot more important. Like when we focus on what works like the effort goals, or we focus on things that keep us motivated, that's more important than so focusing on income goals and numbers, income goals are important. It pushes us. Right. It gives us what we're shooting for. It kind of moves us in the right direction, but it's not the end all be all. Okay, let's go on to number eight. So we're almost done. We have the last three points here. If you feel like this is and helpful, give it a thumbs up. I know this is a long one today, but thumbs up. If you feel like it's been helpful, subscribe below. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a high earning freelance writing business. All right. Number eight. And if you have questions, pop 'em in the chat.

We'll answer 'em at the end. We have two questions in the hopper from before that have been put in through the little sheet little form. We'll get to those at the end. All right. Number eight. So if you seek out how to fish you, that will always work for you. Okay. So if you're always seeking out how to fish that works out, if you're just seeking out, like someone just giving you fish or just like saying like do this all the time. It doesn't work. Yes. Yes. Would you like to submit a complaint? All right. Let's do a quick pep date, but bear, I feel like you're just like melting forward. You're like continuing to move forward. You go. Good job buddy. All right, Charlotte. You ready? High five. Good job. Other one. Oh, good job. All right, we'll do one more.

Good buddy. All right. Back up, back up. Uhoh we're we're losing all of our puck brain high five. Good job. Other one. Good job. Good job. All right. So I think this for me, a lot of the times is about being a constant learner. So when you are seeking out how to fish, right, you're seeking out how to fish. You're thinking about how you can learn. Like you're keeping that student mindset. And for me, that has served really, really well. Being curious and being interested in learning more about building a freelance writing business or learning from people are ahead of me or learning tips and tricks. Sometimes like people who are just starting out, they find these cool little things, these tools that I don't know about, or these techniques, they're like, I tried this, it worked really well. You should try it. I try it.

It works really well. I think that is more important than seeking out someone saying like, do this step, do this step, do this step. I think that's something that I really try to impart in my course, like with my core students. So freelance writer, wealth lab is more about like teaching them how to fish, not teaching them, like do this, do this, do this. It's teaching them more to like, think about the are problem solving and how they wanna build their own stuff, because they've all done different things. That's, that's like the interesting part about it. So when I go look at all my students, they all are going in different directions, but they're all kind of like solving their own stuff. So yes, we come in and ask questions in the community, but they're building a framework of like how to actually troubleshoot things or how to actually build things or how they can actually put all their own building blocks together.

It's not so much about like step a, do this step B, do this. It's not like this rigid thing. I think a lot of times there's mistakes with teaching someone how to do freelance writing and like telling them directly like a, B, C, D, if you just do a, B, C, D, everything will work. And it doesn't a, B, C, D doesn't always work for everyone. There are of course fundamentals that we all need to do, but it doesn't mean that you have fundamentals are like, they have to be done this way, or else it's like the idea that like, once, you know, the grammar, like once you understand grammar, you can break the rules, right? Like if you understand the rules, then you can break them. And this is the kind of thing where grammar is this interesting little thing, right? Like as long as you understand how to use it, that's why when you read through books and you're like, oh my gosh, like Faulkner, or like people who had crazy grammar, like, that's why you're like, but it's still grammatically correct.

Right. You read through all this stuff and you're like, how does this work still grammatically correct. But they understand how to break the rules. So this is that principle. It's like, if you're always learning, if you're always thinking about how you can kind of like make a better system for yourself, or if you're always kind of learning new things, or if you're open to new ideas or if you're staying curious or if you are, are always thinking about new ways to do things or interesting ways that work for you, or if you are not just looking for someone to like spit out steps a through B, like a through Z, right. I think that serves you well. And it served me really well in getting to six figures is like, I've always been of kind of looking for new techniques or new ways to do things or how I would put things together or how I would customize something for my business.

And I was always seeking out ways that other freelance writers did things. And I was like, well, how would I do it? How would I put that in my business? How would I kind of like sort all these things together and make them my own, that's the, how to fish part. You're always kind of looking for places to end up being like a foundation that you can build off to blaze your own path. Right. It's kind of what we talked about before, but I think that's really important if you're always, if you're just, you know, like sometimes people, I end up talking to writers and they're like, just tell me what to do. It's like, I could tell you what to do, but it's not gonna work. Like I could just tell you do a then B I could, you know, it's not Ikea furniture, but leave freelance writing business is nothing like Ikea furniture.

And most of the time we all know that Ikea furniture gets the wrong it's, it's always difficult. Right. But I think when you kind of like keep that learner's mindset and you're always seeking out, how do I kind of do this or why to do this? Or what steps do I take to end up doing this that really serves you well to getting the six figures? It, it really helps in increase your income because you're not like trying to copy paste. You're actually to learn the fundamentals, customize them for yourself. And you're keeping that learner's mindset, which I think is really important. All right, Annie says, and when you're happy and healthy, you probably more likely, you're probably more likely to attract good money and people and opportunities. So in a way, the money is almost a byproduct of taking good care of yourself and your business.

Yeah. That a really good point, Annie. So for me, the more that I have kind of like paid attention to taking time off or being more diligent about my stuff. Like every, you know, I make mistakes. I end up working a lot sometimes and burning out and whatever, but the more I pay attention to how I wanna structure my business and you know, feeling good about it and who I wanna work with and not be miserable with like red light clients and whatever. Then you like end up making more money. Like there's people I know who worked less hours than ever and made more money than ever. So they worked less hours than they ever have. And then they made more money than they ever have. It's a part of like structuring things and taking on the right projects, understanding what kind of shifts you want.

Right. And the happier you are and the better you feel about your business, then you end up ending, you end up having these conversations with, with potential clients or you end up having this outlook where you're like, Nope, that's not a fit. Nope. That's not a fit. Oh yes. That is a fit. And it's a lot clearer to figure out which direction your go for me. The, the more I have kind of figured out what I want and what I don't want. Then it's a lot easier for me to say like, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no. Like I say no a lot more often, but I feel better doing that. Cause I don't feel pressured into taking stuff right. That I don't wanna do. I have like a better outlook on how, how I want my business to run or how I want things to kind of come together.

You are great at building Ikea furniture. That's true. Usually when I build Ikea furniture, it ends up being built wrong. <Laugh> okay. Number nine. All right. Okay. Number nine. Oh no, I messed up my list. Hold on. All right. Yeah. Charlotte, would you like to, I, I bet you guys can hear her like grumbling over there. She's making all this noise cuz she's like, I should get something. Hey Barry, Barry, you're being nice and good and quiet. You're the best. You're the best high five other one high five. Good job. This is why I make her work for it. You gotta make her work for it. Cuz otherwise she'll end up grumbling and she just, you gotta learn Charlotte, you gotta learn. You're doing great. You're doing great. All right. Number nine. We're almost, we're almost on the last one. All right.

You know what? Maybe we'll do the questions for next time since this one is an extra, extra long one. So I think next time we'll end up doing the questions on the next one. Yeah. Okay, cool. So number nine, you're not ready and you won't ever be. But it doesn't really matter because nothing is as scary as you imagine it to be. So lemme say that again. So you're not ready. You're not going to be ready. You're not gonna feel ready for anything, but it doesn't really matter because nothing is as scary as you imagine it to be. This is something I talk to a out with my students or with coaching clients or other freelancers is fear. And we always feel like, oh, I have to be ready for the next level. I have to be ready to hop in and you know, do all this stuff.

I have to be ready to work with this magazine. I have to be ready to do this thing. I have to be ready to hit six figure. I have to be ready. Blah, blah, blah. You're not ready. You're never gonna be ready because if you're really moving at the speed of your potential, you're not ready. Cuz you're trying to reach the potential. Right. This was something that I really, really struggled with was like, I have to be ready. I have to be ready to start coaching people. I have to be ready to start. My course I have to be ready to, to work with this client. I, you won't feel ready. This is part of like pushing yourself to the next level. This is part I think of hitting six figures is that you're not going to be ready. You're never gonna feel ready. You're never gonna feel like it's going to be this magic moment where you all of a sudden hold on one second.

Now what are you doing? <Laugh> there's not gonna be a magic fairy dust moment where like, you're gonna feel ready to move to this level or ready to do this thing. It's just not gonna happen. It's there's this there's this quote. I forget who it's by, but they talk about how like, if you feel ready, you've already made the boat. Like you've already missed the opportunity. You're too late. So if you already feel ready, you've, you've waited way too long. And this is a lot of times where people talk about launching products. Like if you talk about startups or you talk about people putting their business in place, like if a hundred percent of the things were ready or if they were a hundred percent done, you know, then you've already missed the boat. So a lot of times it's not that it has to be perfect.

It's not that you're gonna feel ready. There's a lot of things like when I started this live stream, like a long time ago, whatever, it was like a year and a half ago now I was not ready. And if you go back and watch my earlier live streams, like they're way worse than this one is. And when I'm a year from now, when I come back and look at this live stream, I'm gonna be like, wow, that was not as good as what I'm doing now. Like you're not gonna feel ready. You're not gonna feel like things are just magically kind of falling into place. You kind of have to move forward anyways. Right? Despite the fear. And the other thing is like a lot of times when I've taken a leap in my business, it has worked out way better than I ever thought it would. Like I that's one of my things I don't do it as much anymore. Oh my goodness gracious. Go back to your Haba hole. I don't do it as much anymore, but I used to catastrophize a lot. I'd be like, oh my gosh, if I do this thing, everything's gonna be terrible. And editor is gonna put me in their black book and like, oh my gosh, no, no, it's never as scary as we imagine it to be. We always kind of like build, well, I have to cough.

It's never like this big, complicated web of like horribleness. It's oftentimes a lot better than we think it's gonna be like, I would take these leaps in my business. And I'm like, well, I guess I'm just gonna fault on my face and it's gonna be horrible. But what it ended up happening was it wasn't that scary. I really built it up to be all of this like horrible stuff was gonna happen or I, or my everyone's gonna think my work is terrible or I can't do this. I would build it up. And it was never that bad. It was never that bad. I always got through it. And then on the other side I'd be like, oh, I'm really glad I did that. So instead of worrying about being ready and instead of focusing on the fear and instead of like thinking about how horrible the end it is, just think about like how much better you're gonna feel on the other side.

This is something that I've kind of like trained myself as like when I do all this hard stuff I know from experience of all the other hard things I've done that I'm gonna feel better. On the other side that I know that I've learned something, I've gained something. I have all of these things in my arsenal now that I can use and then didn't feel ready and I was scared. But on the other side I feel a lot better. And this live, stream's a good example. I'm really glad I started this live stream. I think it's fun. I like having everybody here. I like answering questions. I think it's fun to like share knowledge. That was something like, I wish someone had something like this where I could come in and ask questions whenever I wanted, when I was starting freelance writing. It's just, it's just not something that I ever felt ready for.

And I was scared, but I'm really glad I did it. And on the other side of it, I'm glad that I have this live stream. I'm glad that I did all this stuff. I'm glad I have, you know, a ton of videos. I think <affirmative> that for me on the other side, that's way. That's way better. So try to focus on like all the good things that can happen instead of all the horrible things. Think about like, what if it turned like that, that quote, right? Like what if it turns out better than you think? Right? So what if it turns out even better than what you thought? Like, let's say you imagine your best case scenario. It ends up being way better than that. Right? So you're not gonna feel ready, but that's okay. Cuz nothing is really as scary as our fear makes it out to be.

Our fear makes it seem like this big giant dragon monster and it's horrible and oh my gosh, that's, everything's gonna be terrible. But what ends up happening is you realize you have a lot more stuff in your pocket, right? You have a lot more things in your arsenal than you thought you did. So you end up feeling a lot more ready once you start actually putting things together. So don't let fear drive the bus. It's gonna be all right, take the leap. Every time I've taken a leap in my business, it's turned out way better than I thought it would. Especially when it comes to making more money and six figures like take the leap, take the project. Not a project where it's like obvious, like the it's not a fit. And like, you're just like, let's just take a leap. No I'm taking like smart leaps.

Like where you're like, I think I can do this, but I don't think I can do this. And I'm scared and I'm not, I don't feel right. Like the things where you really should take the leap that actually those things turn out really well. All right. Last point, our last point. And we're gonna do a update cuz everyone's not in their seat. Everyone's around here. All right, let's go back to our little ha hole boat. Can you vote back to your ha hole? Oh no. Crush it. Here you go buddy. All right, buddy. Ready? All right. Go back to your little ha hole here. Charlotte, go back to your ha hole. Sit. Good girl. All right here. Go buddy. Bless you. Hi. Five, another one. Ow. Oh, hold on. We got an aggressive high fiber here.

All right. So our last point, our last one, Annie says that she waved by to a lot of boats. You kind of have to, sometimes you have to say goodbye to a lot of things. When you kind of like start figuring out what works for you and what doesn't are you looking for bits back up, go back to your ha hole, go back to your ha hole back up. Good job. All right. So our last point, our number 10 here is losing a client and having to start over may be the best thing that ever happened to your growth and your business. This is something that we often panic about, right? We often panic. When we lose a client, we often panic. When we feel like we have to start over, I have lost many clients or I've, you know, like we have parted ways or we stopped working together or you end up finishing the project and then that's it.

And I've started over many times. I've talked about this before. Like I started my business totally over in 2015. I started my business over when I burned out. I've like started over a ton of times trying to get trying to like figure things out. So why does it says, why does Charlotte have a lunchbox on her collar? Oh, here Charlie, go back over here. Come here, Charlie. So I'm gonna give you like a little side story before we go on in number 10. Okay. Come here. It, so Charlotte has a, if you see this green thing on her collar, it's called whistle. Like, you know, like the whistle. So whistle <laugh>. We had an incident where our front door was open and Charlotte just bolted. She just ran out of the house and then we had to go catch her. And that happened more than once.

So she's a runner. And when you open the door, she will just like run out. And we've been, you know, working with her and training her. But just in case this green thing that she has on her collar is a tracker. So if you go to whistle, it's just like a GPS tracker. It tracks like when, when I take her on walks, it tracks her health and fitness. It also tracks if she's like scratching too much or licking too much. But mostly it's so that like, if she gets out, like we have time to find her and we can know where she is. So yeah. That's why she has that. Bo has one too. If you can, you can kind of see it on his collar. His is gray. It's on the left side of his collar. He's like Bo you're like blown out.

Right, right now on the camera go. We go buddy. But they have those as trackers because char cause Charlotte likes to run away. All right. So let's go back to our thing. So number 10, when you lose a client, it's it's going to happen. Everyone's gonna lose a client. Everyone's, that's just part of the process. But if you lose a client and you have to start over, sometimes that can be really good for me. Every time I've done that in my business, it helped me grow a lot and it helped me shift my business in a better direction. So when I've ended up losing like a big anchor client, or if I've ended up having to start over, those have been the biggest shifts in my business. I either ended up with more money that, that year, or I ended up with better clients or better clips or better projects.

Every time something happens in your business, whether it's unexpected or not. Like those are times when you have to make certain choices. Like if you have to start over, right? Like there have been times where I have to cut all my clients. I just cut all my clients and start it over. And you kind of just have to do that sometimes. Like you end up with all these clients and you're like, wait a minute, this is not right. Like I'm doing all this work that I hate, or this is all low paid work or like a couple of my students left platforms. Right? Sometimes like that's one of the things I did was I cut all my clients from the platform I was on. I guess it's Upwork now, but it used to be Esk and Elance. So I was on those platforms and I just deleted everything.

I was like, Nope, I'm done. I'm out. Those types of things have to be done sometime you have to start over. I freelanced for a long time before I knew any of the real fundamentals, I basically just freelanced, like it was my full-time job. Like I treated like a full-time job. Like I would go look at job boards or I would look, I would say like, who needs freelance? Right? Like that's a question that I get often is like, how do you find who needs freelance writers? It's like, Nope, that's the wrong premise. It's not that you wanna be on a cattle call where everyone's like freelance writers. <Laugh> no, you don't want that at all. You want to be basically like the only person in their inbox. You wanna find specific clients for you, right? This is why we talk about making a list and finding up and coming businesses, finding people, getting and funding, finding companies in your niche that like makes sense for you.

It's not about like, how do you figure out who needs writers? Like, Nope, Nope. You can't, you can't figure it out unless you're combing job boards, which is not what you wanna do. Or if you're on platforms where it's like a lot of times they are going with the lowest rate or oftentimes it's not high paid work. Even if it's not a lowest rate situation, it's not high paid. It's oftentimes like they're when someone wants a specific writer for a specific thing, they're not going to platforms or Googling around, right? Like they look for like Austin freelance writer. They want someone locally or they look for someone who's like FinTech, freelance writer, they're looking for specific. So if you end up starting over or losing a client, or if you end up having to make big shifts in your business, that's really good. That can be a really good thing.

Sometimes losing a client is really hard, but it doesn't mean that everything's gonna be hard forever. So there have been times when I've lost a big client and that was like a huge portion of my income. And that was really hard for a while, but it turned out. I ended up getting a better client after that, or I ended up building a better business, which meant I understood how to market my skills better, or I understood how to write a better LOI or I understood how to write better content for that niche. Or I ended up building a relationship with someone that in a few months time, it ended up being a really good project. There's a bunch of different things that kind of happen and it's not this end all be all right. Like if you have to start over, you have to start over.

That's kind of par for the course for building a business. Right. So if you're starting over, that's sometimes you just have to clear the decks and start over. This is just kind of part of the process. For me, I think building up to six figures starting over has really, those have been like the biggest jumps. Every time I've kind of like had to do that where I've been forced basically to like make a jump or forced to make a bunch of hard decisions or forced to rebel the way how I run my business or how much time off I get or what types of clients or projects I, I get that has always been a big thing. It's always been a big shift. And I think there's a lot of things where like, we think six figures is just like, you just keep doing the same thing and then eventually you make more money, but it's not every six figure writer I know has gone through kind of like skin shedding situations kinda like molting, right?

Like they're, they're kind of like chameleon changing along the way. So it's not just like repeating the same thing over and over again. And then you just like make six figures. Like I don't think the best way to make six figures is like doing tons of work all the time. I just don't think that's really effective. I think it's better to do kind of a mix of things like you have bigger projects and smaller projects. But I know that some people make six figures. They write, you know, like 50 articles a month and they do that for a long time. And that just, that's not my thing. I just don't think that's as effective as getting bigger projects or working on more in depth stuff. I think repeating it over and over and over again, that leads to burnout. And it leads to situations where you just end up hating everything or you wanna take a break or a lot of people end up going back to full-time work because they're like, this is hard, but it's about the shift.

So when you're thinking about making six figures, when you're thinking about moving along, you're going to lose clients. You're gonna have misunderstandings, you're gonna have a client. That's not a fit for you. You're gonna have to fire clients. You're going to have to re move around your client list. You're gonna lose, like you're gonna lose your best client. It sometimes, sometimes they have a shift in their organization and you end up losing their clients. They're like, Hey, we're moving away from this. We're doing more video content. And we don't need a script writer. We already have someone or they end up shifting their business. They're like, well, we were fo focusing on this product. Now we're focusing on this product and we don't, you know, we need a different writer or we need something else. That's just kind of like, it's gonna happen.

It's it's, it's not the end of the world and starting over and figuring out how you're gonna fill that hole. That's the other piece about building your business with those foundational blocks, right? Like if you're marketing all the time, then losing client, isn't a big deal. Cuz you've always been market. You should have warm leads. You should have a bunch of things that you're following up with. And you know how to get more clients, right? You know that doing a certain type of marketing or that upping your efforts or asking for referrals, all of these different things can help you get a new client. So it's not really the end of the world. And for me, it was like, when I thought about losing a client, I thought that that was like, you failed. Like you should have these clients for like forever. When it first started freelancing, I thought you just had clients for like forever.

You would just like get a client and they would just stay with you forever. Which, you know, obviously doesn't make any sense. But for me, I just thought everything was like a long term thing, right? Like it was like becoming a contractor where like you just work at this place full time, but you're ha you happen to be a contractor, but that's not really how it is at all. Like a lot of times your clients are like three months. Sometimes they're a year or two years. Sometimes you have clients that stay with you for several years. But a lot of times your stuff is short. It could be three to six months or it could be, you know, like something that you do just like a trial and the trial doesn't work out. But this is just kind of part of it. I think it's just part of the natural evolution of your business and think of it as an opportunity.

Every time you lose a client, every time you start over, you get a chance to like take what you've learned and now you get a chance to do better. You're like, all right, this didn't work out. Maybe I'll do this next time. Or this type of client isn't really working for me now I'm gonna go after this type of client or it turns out I really don't like writing that many blog posts. Now I wanna do this. So I think take it as an opportunity and look at how you can grow at, grow through it and how you can change your business rather than worry about like, oh my God, I lost a client. I have to start over over it's. It is never as like this big drop. And remember if we keep our marketing going, we have our pipeline. We should always have kind of like warm leads to follow up on clients to reach out to.

And we should always have kind of like opportunities under our belt. All right. So that was number 10. So this was a super, super long one. We're we're gonna do questions next time. So I have these, I have questions in the hopper and if you wanted to submit a question or a topic for the live stream, you can go to mans.com/question, and you can put it in there. If you feel like this has been helpful, given a thumbs up, if you feel like you wanna learn more about building a high earning freelance writing business subscribe we will do questions. So like I have Diana's question and Celia's question. So we'll do those next time. Cuz it's been a long one. But I hope this was helpful. I hope this was helpful in terms of learning that like, for me, these were a lot of things I didn't expect to learn on my journey to six figures.

Like I really thought that getting six figures was kind of like this repetitive process where like, you're like, all right, take a project, raise your rates, get a new client, take a project, raise your rates, get a new, like it's this continually wash and repeat type process. But it's not. There's a lot of things that end up happening and changing you along the way. Hello? I see you there. You look like a sad pay. You look like a sad Panda. I don't think you're on the camera, but you look like a sad Panda. All right. There's a lot of things that end up happening on my way to six figures that ended up really changing. You gotta back up. You gotta go to your hot hole back up, back up. Nope. Back up, back up. Good job. Here you go. Mary. 1, 2, 3 dog. Yes. You got it. Good job buddy.

All right. Ready buddy. We're gonna try again. 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, so close. All right. One more time. 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. Get you in the head. Here you go. Did you get a bear? It's way over there. Oh, on bear. Let me help you. There you go, buddy. All right. We got it. <Laugh> so there's a lot of things that ended up changing me a lot as a writer and as someone running a, a business. And I think that that's important. The amount of change that happens from when you start freelancing to when you make six figures, I think is an important thing to pay attention to. You're not really gonna be the same writer or the same type of person, or have the same mindset when you get six figures and you kind of have to make all of these choices, right? Like we are an amalgamation, like we're I always kind of think of it as like a homeostasis of choices.

So like you are running on the average of the choices that you're making. So this is why sometimes people are like, you know, they end up in places where they're like, how did I get here? Well, it's like the homeostasis of your choices, right? Like you, you are the average of the choices you've made. So all the choices that you've made have, have landed you here. And it's the same thing with making six figures. It's like, it's the amalgamation of all the hard choices that I've made over these last few years. And it's the amalgamation of like all the things I've learned and all the things I've had to do. And all the times I had start over or learn lessons the hard way or all the good things that have happened, right? Like all the friendships I've I've made or my friends supporting me when things were hard or the times when, like I burned out and I needed some time off all of that different stuff really impacted like me hitting six figures.

And I think a lot of times people think it's like this magic journey or that they end up making six figures and they're like, my problems have been solved. Everything is great. Like you just have different types of problems and different types of things that go on. Yes, like money becomes kind of less complicated, right? But it's not, it's not this it's, it's an important milestone to get to, but it's not your end all be all of becoming a great writer and becoming someone who really helps your clients and helping their audiences. Like that's something that really helps you, right? Like really changes through the transition of making more money. I feel like if you're really striving to hit six figures, like you're gonna have to do all these things. You're gonna have to make all these like little changes over time, but then they combine you end up making six experience.

Right? The result the byproduct is making more money. All right. Cool. Thanks so much for showing up. I'm hope you enjoyed theup dates. I'm so glad that everybody found it. Great. Thank you guys. I'm so that you guys could hear them making noise while we're on here. We'll do, this is our last one. Then we're gonna hop off. So all right. Back up, back up, back up all the way. Good job. All right. Ready? Hi. Five. Good girl. High five. Good girl. All right, buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, that was a bad throw buddy. It's in your paw. It's right there.

Hold on. We need ancient dog assistance doing here. Here we go. All right. So we'll go through questions next time. So Celia and Diana's questions will be answered next time. And then also I did have something come through in the form where someone asked if we could do like a live walkthrough of Duba. So we will do that. I am gonna do like how I use Duba as a freelance writer. I just need to create like a duplicate brand. So in, in Duba like I just have one brand, which is just like how it basically you start a brand in Duba and then you run everything in that brand. I just need to create a copy of that so that I can run it on here. So it's not like there's all this like crazy personal stuff on there. Or like client things. So I'm gonna do that and we will do a Duba walkthrough, so. Cool. All right. Well, I hope everybody has a good weekend. Thank you for hopping in and I will see you next Friday. Bye.

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