6 months in
September always feels like the start of the new year so it’s become the natural time for me to slow down, reflect, and regroup.
Therefore this month’s blog post is going to be a little different.
I’ve put together a little recap of some important things I’ve learned in my first 6 months of starting my creative business.
managing myself
Being able to make my own schedule has been far and away my favourite thing about working for myself. After being in hospitality and retail for over a decade it’s the first time I’ve had my weekends available. It’s given me much needed flexibility and allowed room for a lot more enjoyment in my life.
On the flip side, everything I’m doing is entirely self motivated so if I procrastinate or slack off, I only have myself to answer to.
In order to mitigate future stress and stay on top of my workflow, scheduling has been imperative. But, since I’m still a newbie (and a human being) I’ve failed at this numerous times. And it’s resulted in many days of working later hours then I’d planned to, working on weekends and during vacations or - and this is the worst one - seeing parts of my business suffer because I haven’t put in the hours.
I’ve learned that when it comes to managing myself, nothing is more crucial than self accountability and motivation.
getting back on the horse
Going into this journey with the mindset that I’m going to fail 1000 times or more has been so key to how I’ve been able to manage my expectations of myself. Being okay with failure and knowing that in the end it will be consistency that will eventually pull me through to success has been an important realization.
Not gonna lie, some months have been pretty slow and it feels like I’ll never have clients or new work again. But just continuing to just yell into the void, whether or not I hear anything back, has been an important practice in patience.
finding a rhythm
Nowadays you can’t run a business without having a social media presence. And while I’ve learned the importance of consistency and good content, it’s also been a struggle to balance the time it takes to create that content and keep up engagement while also making enough time to find real paid work.
There’s a lot of pressure to stay relevant with trending reels or to be posting on your feed everyday but what I’ve learned is that putting the pressure on myself to maintain a certain level of engagement and posting rate isn’t always worthy of my time. It’s okay to go through ebbs and flows, especially when my active or potential clients are keeping me busy.
Finding a rhythm and a schedule as well as being conscious of how much time I am spending on my social media has been key to my relationship with it. In no way have I perfected this or even been able to handle managing it every week, but having a set expectation for myself helps me be realistic with how much time I’m putting into Instagram and Facebook.
what am i worth?
The one thing that has caused me the most stress and headache has definitely been trying to price my work.
At first everything feels like an exorbitant amount. Sometimes after I send out an invoice I’ll have a moment of panic in which I’m sure I’ll be receiving a follow up email saying that this must be a mistake, I can’t possibly expect this much money. Other times I think I’ve undercharged and I quote a project for less than I probably should have.
But with every project I gain a little bit more assurance that what I’m asking is the right amount and some of that self-doubt and constant questioning melts away.
Learning how to quote my services has been a big lesson in confidence and trust. I know that I’m not going to price everything perfectly the first time, that I will make mistakes and all I can do is learn from them and move on.
It’s also so much easier to price for clients once you have a body of work behind you, so every time I finish a project I know that I’ve gained so much knowledge and insight into the kind of time and money it takes and I can use that expertise for pricing in the future.
fake it till ya make it!
It sounds so cheesy but the sentiment is true - believe in yourself! Another thing that I’ve learned this year is the importance of trusting myself and my work.
I started this business because of the faith I have in my performance, my work ethic and my creativity. I was tired of feeling like I couldn’t live up to my potential, in jobs that were only 20% creative work. I felt like I was spending most of my time doing something I didn’t particularly enjoy and it wasn’t taking me anywhere. So I took this leap of faith and here we are!
As I’ve progressed during these last 6 months and I’ve received confirmations that I made the right choice, I’ve begun to trust myself so much more and realize how vital that is to my success.
Before you ask a client to believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. And yes, often that means blind trust.
Fake it till you make it baby!
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