Freelancing Platforms

Another thing that people do when they start their freelance journey is they go to the big platforms. They go to Upwork, they go to Fiverr, they go to freelancer.com, and there are all kinds of other ones now. And I wanna say this as a caveat, those freelance platforms were started to match talent with people who needed it. Mm-hmm. What they've become is a place for businesses of all sizes to go to find the cheapest, most efficient way to get the job done, right? So if you think about, uh, when you need something done really quick, uh, maybe it's like a little graphic or something, you go, oh, I'm gonna go to Fiverr and have someone do that for me really cheap. So again, it comes down to mindset. I think platforms are a great way to kind of boost your ego a little bit, maybe pad your resume a little bit, or your your portfolio. But my brand of freelancing strays away from those and actually goes more towards building, again, building your brand, finding your people, and advertising, marketing yourself as a business. So I think there are, there are a lot of people, don't get me wrong, who are very successful on those platforms. And I've been successful on those platforms, but I've also, Dotty, let me tell you a little secret. I guess I'm telling the audience, I got fired from Fiverr. Oh, that's awesome. I did. Isn't that awful? Like, I was like this big dramatic thing. So I was on Fiverr and I had all of these amazing repeat clients and I was doing all this work. And one of my clients hopped in and mentioned that he'd seen me on Upwork. And he, he somehow put, he put in a phone number or something and it took those little bots maybe 3 minutes and my account was shut down and his account was shut down. And I lost every review I had. I lost every contact I had. And so my— it was a big, like, gut-wrenching moment. It was embarrassing, right? We hate to fail. But it did this great thing for me. It made me square my shoulders. Like I tell my kids every day, we're gonna square our shoulders. We're gonna face the day and figure out what's better, right? What we can do best. And so it made me re-evaluate the whole way I did my business. And that's when I said, okay, I'm not going to depend on platforms. I'm not going to depend on chasing the job. I'm a business. I have a skill I wanna share. I can help people and I'm gonna keep my audience in my space. I'm gonna email them, I'm gonna reach out to them, um, and keep them in my, my circle. And so I do appreciate the platforms. I encourage people to get a little business that way and maybe get their feet wet. But in my brand of freelancing, I love to take people off the platforms and help them build a brand and then find their audience and bring them into their space.