Ed Gandia shares advice for freelance writers stuck in slow periods: disengage briefly and trust solutions will come. The episode focuses on shifting your mindset when client work dries up and business feels stalled.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, this episode is much shorter than usual. Rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the audio insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday and I thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go. Hope you enjoy it. I don't know anyone who hasn't been in this situation. So business starts slowing down. At first you're not too worried, but it keeps getting worse and before you know it, you're down to almost no work. You're not sure why it happened. Everything had been going great for months, even years, and suddenly everything just kind of aligned the wrong way. The client just left. Another one is in limbo. Maybe because your main contact is no longer with the company. Another client has put your projects on hold and prospects who said they were ready to move forward with you are now ghosting you. You work nine day to prospect for clients. You leave no stone unturned. You make prospecting your full time job for two, three, four weeks and still nothing. It's like the Twilight Zone. What in the world is going on here? At some point in this rough patch, it's very common to start questioning everything and drawing conclusions. You might tell yourself nothing's working. It's like I'm cursed. And you know what? It certainly feels that way. I've been there and it feels that way. Especially if most of your colleagues seem to be fine or even doing better than ever. So it's not kind of a blanket situation. I recently had a coaching client tell me that the last 12 prospect opportunities all either ghosted him, decided to work with someone else, or decided not to move forward with the work. We're talking 12 very qualified prospects with well defined projects and budget. So these were not just kind of flaky or unqualified or just kind of an inquiry. I mean, these were conversations, they had gone pretty far. What do you say to that? Right? Yet it's during these challenging and desperate moments that you have to be the most careful about what you tell yourself, because the internal conversation you have with yourself has an effect on your results. I don't know how much of an impact it has, but it definitely has an impact. And that impact compounds on itself. Because as you tell yourself that you're doomed, you continue to get poor results, which creates even more anxiety and desperation. When you hit this kind of bottom, one of the most important things you can do is the opposite of what you might normally do. You have to disengage for a bit. You have to get out of your environment, you have to clear your head, and you have to give the problem to the universe to solve it. You've done your part, you've done all you can, and yes, there'll be more to do. I'm not suggesting that the work is just going to end here and that's it. Just sit back and relax. But when you're definitely stuck at the bottom, solving this problem is now above your pay grade. So take it off your shoulders, give it to a higher power. Go do something fun. I mean, you now have the time to do that, right? To disengage and just trust that the solutions and the results will come, because they always do. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in less time. The proven mindset, strategies and action to prosper as a freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
