Ed Gandia explores whether switching directions in a freelance writing business actually helps. He argues that refining what you're already doing often beats starting over, and that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
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 finding 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. When your business gets really challenging, it's very common to feel like you need to move on, move on to a different target market or maybe start offering a totally different set of services, or move out of freelancing altogether and go into a traditional job. Those are really common feelings, I gotta tell you. I feel this way at least two or three times a year. Okay. So if this sounds familiar, just know that you're in good company. It's a very natural thing to feel. And I certainly go through this quite a bit, which is why I'm talking about it today. Sometimes I get so frustrated, I just want to burn my business to the ground and build something completely different somewhere else. Or maybe go work full time for a friend in order to shed some responsibility. That's just become too much to bear too often. The grass looks so much greener on the other side, doesn't it? When you're going through these challenges? It certainly does. But here's what I've learned over the years from my own business and from watching others. And very importantly, talking with some very wise men and women who've struggled with the same challenge, because I find this fascinating. The grass is greener where you water it. So believing that a full pivot is the answer, that's a cognitive trap. We feel that it's the easiest and best way out. We feel that way at the moment, but in an overwhelming number of cases, it takes way more effort, time and resources to make that work way more than we think. There's also greater risk in making a big, big move like that. More unknowns than we had accounted for originally and the things we thought would be clear advantages aren't as advantageous as we originally believed. I'm not saying you should never pivot or that you should never make minor adjustments throughout the year over the course of your business lifecycle? Not at all. Those are important and you should make those changes and adjustments and refinements. I'm merely suggesting that in the overwhelming number of cases, you're much better off improving in refining and building on your current situation where you already have momentum, than you are starting from scratch somewhere else. Too often we forget how good we have it now, how much momentum we've built over the years, and how that momentum helps us get results quickly. That's just become our new normal. And we re, you know, we don't really think about it, how easy it is to get the results we get today. Of course, we might be going through a rough patch, but we quickly lose sight and we lose perspective. It's not only after we've made a drastic change that we see how truly green the grass was where we were. So before you make a rash decision about anything in your business that's not working out, and it would involve a massive, massive change, recognize the psychological trap for what it is and look at ways you can improve your current situation. 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 Right Earn more and less time the proven mindset, strategies and actions to prosper as a freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
