7 Things They Don’t Tell You About Freelancing
There are a million pieces about “how” to freelance. Very few about what it actually feels like.
The stuff you can’t prepare for. The emotional rollercoaster no one brags about on LinkedIn. This piece is about that.
Here’s a list of the things they don’t tell you about freelancing. You’ll either learn now or through your own experience:
1️⃣ Prepare for a lot of uneasy feelings.
Doubt, feelings of not-good-enough, a low-grade hum of anxiety… these feelings of discomfort are both inevitable, and positive signs:
That you’re stretching into something bigger than you’ve done before.
That you’re on a completely new, untrodden path – your path.
That you’re building something that’s true to you, without a roadmap.
2️⃣ There is no “right” way.
Some people may try to tell you that they have the one, true way to success – and they’ll sell it to you in their course for 4 payments of $395.
And maybe their path to success works, but it isn’t the only one. There is no single path to building a successful freelancing business – and that’s what makes this journey both so rewarding and anxiety-producing.
So don’t go looking for THE “right” way, it doesn’t exist.
Instead, look for the right way FOR YOU.
3️⃣ It’s unpredictable by nature.
If uncertainty makes you uneasy, welcome to freelancing. You should expect that…
There will be major income swings.
There will be clients who ghost you.
There will be times that all the work in the world comes in at once.
The longer you’ve built your freelancing business, the easier it is to mitigate or prevent this unpredictability. But it should be an expected, inevitable part of the journey.
4️⃣ You’ll never be good enough.
Every new level brings a new round of doubt. That nagging voice that says you should be further ahead by now? It never shuts up completely.
Don’t wait until you feel like “expert” enough. The edge is in action, not preparation.
5️⃣ It’s not a failure. It’s a data point.
That offer that didn’t land, the client you lost, the pitch that bombed… these aren’t failures, they’re simply experiments.
The feedback is what helps you iterate toward a version of your business that both fits you best and ushers your most unique gifts to the world.
6️⃣ It’s not going to happen overnight
And you’ll probably doubt you made the right move.
It’ll probably take a decent chunk of time to scale back up to your prior income, especially if you were in your career for more than a few years before moving to freelance.
You’ll likely feel a strong urge to try to make things happen overnight, but that’ll probably lead to shoddy work. So my recommendation is…
Do good work in a brisk, but NOT rushed way. Growth (any change, really) feels slower in the moment than we’d prefer, when we’re in the moment – so zooming out when reflecting on your business is important, to recognize how far you’ve truly come and how much you’ve grown.
7️⃣ That expectation in your head? Not happening…
That mental picture of how freelancing “should” go? Throw it out.
Any sort of daydreamed idea of how freelancing will go for you is based on someone else’s experience. But freelancing forces such a unique path, you simply will not be able to replicate anyone else’s – and so, it won’t be anything you ever could expect.
Your actual path will be messier, stranger, and probably better for you than what you had in mind.
This post isn’t meant to condemn freelancing in any way. It’s simply to set expectations.
The other side of freelancing – the doubt, unpredictability, “oh shit, what have I done?” spiral – seems like a turn off. But this side actually contains many of life’s most profound lessons.
Maybe this struggle is simply proof you’re growing into the type of person who can handle the freedom, responsibility, and weirdness of this path.