If you’re still growing your Freelancer’s Thick Skin, this one’s for you.

You’ve all read the books about starting out in freelancing – the ones that discount the time spent “preparing and perfecting” your brand, as a means to avoid shouting: “I’m in business! Come and get it!”

I couldn’t wait to begin full-time freelancing, but dreaded the sales aspect. Loud announcements? Drawing attention to myself? Horrifying.

Cold calling? Are you even a little serious? I don’t even like calling for pizza.

Maybe I could just… get the world to come to me. Random girl typing away from random laptop… sure, they’d beat the door down any day. I settled on the lesser of two evils: I’d send emails. Continue Reading

There’s a telling scene in the TV show Scrubs where deranged Janitor shares his business cards—a ridiculous stew of ridiculous occupations he claims to do outside his real job.

Freelancers can relate. Despite all efforts and a scary attachment to color coding, your to-do list is eating your life. When the day’s actual make-money work is finished, your other 50 jobs await: internet marketer, bookkeeper, invoice-chaser, SEO, R&D, publicist, researcher…all-out superman?

It’s a frenetic, demanding lifestyle. Where our real work fills normal (normal-ish) working hours, running our businesses can become a panicked, haphazard afterthought at the end of a long day.

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