Hi Friend,
Settle in for short story time.
A few years back I had a nightmare experience with a client. The kind that still makes me a little queasy when I see his name on social media. He ran a law firm and wanted his website redone. He was very specific in his mind about what he wanted on the website but was terrible at answering my questions or sharing information.
Click the arrow to hear this article.
I’d email him to get information on his specialities and he’d give one-word answers that he expected me to magically turn into pages of engaging and exhilerating copy, as though there was a wizard in my pocket who could tell me that “yes” actually meant “write a list of all the relevant laws and how they affect drivers and also include all the possible injuries anyone who has ever been in a car accident could possibly sustain and the ways I’ve represented each of those clients. But I haven’t actually represented clients in that area yet, so don’t be too specific.”
After my second set of revisions he sent me an exasperated email that read, “You’re not getting it and I don’t have time to redo what you’ve sent me. It’s easier for me to just do it myself than redo your work. I’d like my deposit back and for us to just go our separate ways.”
In a word, oooof.
I broke my “no refunds” policy because it made sense (yes, there are times it’s perfectly acceptable to break it). The hassle of arguing with him about money wasn’t worth the joy of cutting ties entirely. Then I spent an evening feeling like the worst writer in the world.
Until I reviewed my emails with him and realized that I had done everything possible to get the content written—he just hadn’t given me what I needed to do my job properly. Our relationship not working out wasn’t because I’m the worst writer in the world (though maybe he thinks that) it’s because we weren’t a good fit.
He didn’t want to answer questions but wasn’t paying enough for me to put a psychic on salary so she could read his mind and tell me what to do. I, not being a mindreader, could do no more to help myself than ask questions and hope he answered.
A fast path out the freelance door
Personalizing your outcomes is one of the fastest paths to leaving this career because there are plenty of opportunities to feel personally rejected.
Every time someone says “no” or “no thanks” or “we’ve decided to go in a different direction” you’ll feel like a failure. You’ll feel like the worst person to pick up a (metaphorical) pen ever in the history of the world. You’ll want to curl up in bed for a month eating ice cream and binging “The Golden Bachelor” (or so I hear). You’ll tell yourself you’re an imposter and the people who said no to you saw through you and ran away faster than a horror movie character who’s just seen a ghost.
Rejection is everywhere in the freelance world:
You send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn that goes ignored.
You publish a post you think millions of people will engage with but only two people like it and one of those is your mom.
You send a quote for a project and the client decides to go with a different freelancer.
You submit what you think could be your greatest work ever only to have the client rewrite the entire thing.
After agonizing over making a client happy, you open your email to find out you’ve been fired from the project.
An editor turns down your pitch for a magazine article (or just doesn’t respond).
And of course you’ll personalize those things. They feel personal. It feels like they’re rejecting you and that sucks. The more rejected you feel, the more disheartened you’ll be. And then you’ll start to give up, which means you won’t market yourself, because why bother? And then you’ll have to find a different job because you aren’t making enough money.
It’s a terrible, awful, no good, very bad cycle. And it’s one to pull yourself out of as quickly as you can.
There’s rarely any evidence the “rejection” has anything to do with you
In almost all cases, there’s no evidence that anyone is rejecting you personally. They don’t know you well enough to reject you as a person. And they have a million other factors in their life that might make you not the right person for them at this moment.
Consider the long list of additional reasons (that have little to do with you) that any of the above could have happened:
The person you sent the connection request to is almost never on LinkedIn.
An algorithm means your post was only shown to 10 people.
The client’s budget was lower than you quoted, or they already had someone in mind for the project, or they need someone with a bit more expertise than you.
Your client loves editing things. They’ve never seen a sentence they couldn’t rewrite (even if their rewrite made it terrible).
You and the client aren’t a good fit.
They’ve already covered that topic or already assigned that topic to someone else or just don’t feel it’s the right fit for the publication.
There’s a meteor hurtling towards the earth that could wipe out all life as we know it and that magazine lifestyles editor has been tasked with saving mankind but she can’t tell anyone about it, but saving the planet is definitely her first priority right now, not responding to freelance pitches regarding the best ways to save $50 on your phone bill.
Even situations that feel personal usually aren’t
It’s not your personal responsibility to be a good fit for every client. Not every quote or pitch you send out will be accepted. It happens to all of us.
It doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad writer or a bad editor. It doesn’t make you a fraud.
My former client wanted me to create reams of content from nothing. That’s not my skill set and it doesn’t need to be. It might be someone else’s skill set, in which case he is the ideal client for them.
Asking ourselves to be perfect at everything is like asking a pianist to automatically be good at the flute and then being angry at them when they aren’t. Being good at the piano and not the flute says nothing about their abilities as a piano player or musician, nor does it say anything about their work ethic or their personality. All it says is that they don’t know how to play the flute.
Just because you can write or edit doesn’t mean you have to be amazing in all areas of writing or editing. And it doesn’t mean you personally are responsible for getting along with all potential clients. It simply means you need to find clients who can use your specific skills and who you work well with.
Protect yourself from personal rejection
To protect yourself and your precious sanity, focus on depersonalizing your outcomes. Rather than taking a negative outcome or a rejection as a sign that something is lacking in you, recognize the following:
You can only control your process, not your outcomes.
There are a million reasons for any response or outcome that have very little to do with your worth or your competence.
Every client is different and what didn’t work for one client will likely work well for many others.
Acceptance of quotes, connections on social media, and online engagement do not signify how likable you are.
Humankind does need that lifestyles editor to save us, so that really should be her first priority.
It’s okay to be upset or frustrated when things don’t go well. It’s also important to reflect on them to determine what happened and how you can protect yourself in the future. But don’t let a negative experience with a client derail you or shatter your confidence.
It’s very rarely about you, personally.
Cheers to your freelance success,
Heidi
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