You Don't Have to Pay Your Dues in Freelance Writing and Here's What to Do Instead
How many times have you thought (or heard from others) that you must “pay your dues” as a freelance writer to get to the top? To write for the publications you want to write for? To get the high-paying, ultra-amazing, superstar clients? To live the freelance life? It's just straight up not true.
This week's livestream we're going over why you don't have to “pay your dues" to get great clients and work as a freelance writer, where this idea falls apart in our day-to-day freelance life, how this mindset affects your business long term, and what to do instead starting today.
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You Don't Have to Pay Your Dues in Freelance Writing and Here's What to Do Instead
This is a bunch of bss. You don't have to pay your dues as a freelance writer. And I think this is one of the biggest myths and misconceptions about being a freelance writer just across the industry. It's this thing that we keep perpetuating right between ourselves, between these weird job ads that we keep answering and between internships and all this other stuff.
So today we're kind of breaking this down because I think it's really important to understand that this is like not a thing. It's just like a belief that we keep perpetuating, right? It's kind of like that idea that I've talked about on the livestream before with, uh, Anri Meger, where it's like the starving artist thing.
Or if you've ever read, uh, Jeff Goss's book, real Artists Don't Starve. This is a similar thing, right? Like there's no magic person, there's no magic like entity. There's no like weird blackballing that happens when you don't pay your dues. So I think this is just a really interesting thing that we are perpetuating, but also like, it's like an industry thing where people are like, oh yeah, you have to pay your dues as a freelance writer, or you have to pay your dues before you blah, blah, blah.
No you don't. No, you don't. So we're gonna go through a few things that I think are really important when, oh, we've got a buddy. We've got a new friend. Hi friend. Welcome. We'll do a little Charlie update in a bit. Hi Charlie. How you doing? Peanut? Oh, good girl. Charlie had her dental. So we'll do that little update in a bit, but let's go through some things first.
Hey sweet pea, why don't you lay down? Why don't you lay down a little snug? Good girl. Good job. You look super cute today. Good girl. All right. Let's go through some things first. Uh, especially when you're going through, uh, trying to pitch publications when you're trying to get high-end clients, when you're trying to, um, basically, you know, get into all the publications or get the kinds of clients that you want.
Yeah. Thank you, Julie. Julia, she, uh, we'll talk about Charlie's Dental in a little bit. So she had a dental at the vet, so, we'll, I'll give a little pup update on that. First, let's get to some stuff. So here's the deal. Um, why, why are we doing this, right? This is one of the things that I've been trying to figure out for years.
Why are we telling other writers they have to pay their dues or they're not allowed to get this rate yet, or they're not able to, blah, blah, blah. Like they have to do X, Y, Z, which are made up things. They're made up things. So there's, here's a few examples. I think. That kind of fit this great clients, great work, great publications thing.
So I've talked to students, whether they're wealth lab students, like freelance writer, wealth Lab students, or they're runway students or coaching students who have said, oh, I thought I needed X amount of clips. Right? And they just pick a number. They pick a number, which is the craziest thing to me.
They're like, oh, I thought I needed 20 clips before I do this. I thought I needed a hundred clips before I do this. Hey, flower power, um, thank you. It's nice to be back. Uh, I need X amount of clients, right? I thought I needed at least 50 clients, or I needed at least blah, blah, blah. Or, um, a lot of times when I talk to students or when I just talk to writers who send me emails, uh, they're like, oh, well on the platforms, you know, you need this kind of rating or this kind of thing, or people won't take you seriously.
And it's just like, no, no. So when we're kind of thinking through this stuff, Here's a couple of other examples I think are useful. One, I know writers who got their very first clips. I've said this a bunch, so burn it in your brain. I've met writers, talked to writers, right? Heard about writers. All this, all these people who have gotten their very first clip, their very first writing clip, they weren't even writers in the top publications, okay?
I have friends who have pitched the New York Times for 18 months or two years before they got a New York Times piece. And I know other people who their very first pitch was accepted by the New York Times, right? They didn't pay their dues. There wasn't some like magical writing God, that like came down and was like, you'll be in the times.
That wasn't a thing. So there's this idea, I, I just don't think there's this, um, there's not enough people talking about how many people actually get all this stuff. At the very beginning, like they haven't paid their dues, they haven't done all this magic stuff. They don't have any clients. They're, they're sending pitches or lois, right, or letters of introduction and they're getting stuff that's literally because they're going after it, right?
Maybe they got guidance, maybe they had someone help them with their pitch or help them with their lois. Hey Vicki, I always love the wave. I'm glad you're here. It's good to see you. Um, they're getting guidance on stuff or maybe they just figured it out, right? Maybe there's something, and this is, I think, a really important piece too.
There are people with really great ideas, right? They have really great ideas or a really unique idea. And that pitch may not be super awesome, but the idea is really good. So the editor will work with them on that idea. Or what ends up happening is, um, someone will have just started writing, just started freelance writing.
And they'll send an l o i to a company in their niche, right? But they have like 35 years of experience working in that niche, right? So that isn't paying their dues as a writer. That was all their full-time experience and their full-time experience had nothing to do with writing. Right? Now they're transitioning into writing and getting a reply on their l o I.
'cause they have a ton of experience. So there's also this piece where you have to realize, like some people have been working in a job, right? A full-time job for 35 years, okay? And they're ready to go after their dreams. So they're finally leveraging their knowledge and buy luck of the draw. Someone answered their l o I and they got a great client, right?
So there's all these different factors that go into it. A lot of times people just make stuff up. They just make things up that they're like, oh, I, I have to send this many lois, or I have to do this amount of stuff, or I have to like pick your, pay your dues. Like I usually hear the pay your dues as like, you can't get this client until you do this thing, or you can't charge this rate until you do that.
Um, your rates are your rates. And I've had many people, right, I've talked to lots of writers and this is a weird thing that happens that I didn't believe it until it started happening. To me, as someone who coaches freelance writers and teaches freelance writers, I was told many times like, oh, you know, like a lot of writers who are very skilled, they are the ones who hold themselves back the most.
The writers who are. Really good at their craft and do really good work. They're the ones most paralyzed by fear. They're the ones thinking they're incompetent. And there's some study that says that, right? Like the more, the more intelligent you are. Or there's some study that talks about, um, like people who are more qualified, like are, are more afraid of like not, uh, meeting all the qualifications or, uh, they over criticize themselves 'cause they're more intelligent.
I don't know. But I didn't believe that. I didn't believe that. 'cause I was like, that would be silly. Like you're, you have all this talent and it's obvious that your writing is good. It's not like, once I started coaching writers and teaching writers and talking to them like more in my inbox. Um, and in communities I realized that was the truth.
Like the writers that I have come across my students or people who email me who are like, Hey, can you read my samples? The people that are most talented think they're a bucket of trash. That's what I think is so crazy. Like the people whose work I think is so good and I'm reading it and I'm telling them like I've read a lot of stuff like this is really great.
They're the ones who don't believe in themselves the most. They're the ones who think they have to meet insane metrics, insane numbers. Like, I have to send 10,000 Lois before I get a client something crazy. And it's just like they're the most talented, but they're most afraid, so they don't go after it.
So we're doing this kind of pay your dues thing at different tiers. That's the crazy part, right? Like some people are like, oh, as long as you have a clip, you can go after anybody. Right? And other people are like, you need a hundred. This is an, this is like not a thing, right? I think bringing this piece to light, That these things are just random numbers, right?
And everybody has a different one. That's the weird thing is like when we're talking about paying your dues, there's also this idea, right, of internships. So when I, um, this is when I was in school, um, I did an internship that was class credit. So like I've never worked for free. I don't think that there's any ever been a time in my career where I worked for free.
Uh, you don't have to work for free. You never have to work for free. Even my internship was, uh, class credit, like course credit. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't paid for it, but I got course credit. So that worked. Um, and I think a lot of times these internships, you know, at magazines or whatever, you just work for free, right?
You do all this stuff. You have to get the coffee for a while and then you have to do, that's a bunch of bss. Like that is a perpetuated kind of unfortunate stereotype slash. Mechanic in our industry, it's not a thing. Like, I also know people who started freelance writing in college and they never worked for free either.
They started getting bylines when they were like 20 years old in big magazines. And that was because they had an internship or their professor, um, or whatever. Like even if they weren't in college, someone encouraged them. They went after it, right? So this idea of paying your dues is on this weird scale that has no meaning in reality.
And then also it all, it depends on like where you are thinking about yourselves in terms of your career, how much confidence you have in your work, how much confidence you have in your ability to figure things out or to move forward or to, um, really become a writer versus like really hold on to a ton of safety nets, right?
So I think it's just this weird. Like I, I, you don't have to do it. There is nobody who's gonna be a gatekeeper or a random, like, there there's no, there's nobody who will say like, you haven't done X so you can't do y. I've talked to too many writers in too many different scenarios, in too many different age groups to realize that this is just arbitrary.
Like they're making their own mindset blocks, they're making their own hurdles. You don't have to do that. Just start sending pitches, start researching your clients. Start moving in the direction of Lois. Right? Oops, I'm gonna knock my computer down. That would be, um, but I, I just feel like there's, once you kind of uncover that there's this big giant.
Pool, like this pool of randomness, right? Then you start realizing you don't have to pay your dues, just go after it. Send the pitch. Work on your pitches. Read resources, right? Learn how to send a good l o i If you wanna send a good l o i, I always tell people you can get my bundle. Those are my l o i templates.
It also has contract templates. Uh, it also has LinkedIn marketing templates, so you can get 'em at mandy ellis.com/bundle. But every single time it's just this random thing like, oh, you can't get in the New York Times until you pitch 'em, you know, 25 times. You can't get into this thing until you do X.
There's also, um, some weird things that editors will do. So I do wanna talk about that just a little bit. So, um, the, there are editors who have said yes, hello. Hi. You look super cute today. I like your lip gloss, very shiny. So there are editors, you look so cute, who have said that you have, they will like ignore your pitches until you pitch them like 10 times.
Like this is, I've heard these stories. Um, and it's not, most of the time the stories aren't at big publications. They're at kind of like smaller magazines, but, oh, can you give us a high five? Good girl. Can you eat that? I don't know if you can. It's a little hard. Yeah, it's a little hard. Bean. They'll say you need to pitch them X amount of times before they'll even look at your pitches.
So they'll see your emails come in, right? They'll see 10 of your emails come in. They'll just ignore them. They won't even read your pitches. And then by the time you, you write the 10th one or the 15th one, they'll read them. That's just bad business practice. What if there was a great story in there and they just ignored it?
So for me, what I've seen, what I've seen is, um, I. A lot of times those are like local publications or smaller publications that do that. Like bigger publications are always looking for good ideas and they're always looking for good writers. So you wanna make sure you really hone that pitch. But I just feel like, like there's these crazy things that happen that are personal preference that you can't control, right?
Sorry, I have like a hair that's poking me in the air. Um, there's a bunch of weird things that editors will do sometimes that are just outta your control, pitch what you wanna pitch, go after it. These pay or do thing, do things, I think is a, a very outdated mindset. Hurdle, mindset fuck kind of thing. Like it's not real.
I think that whenever you're kind of going for what you actually want, you really want it, you should just go after it. There's nobody there who's holding you back. There's nobody there. Hey, s Silver Rabbit. Um, there's nobody there who's gonna blackball you or say you have to meet some weird metric. And if they do, why do you wanna work with someone who's like, Blocking you out for no reason.
Silver Rabbit says so true. Helping someone in need is fine, but working for free, uh, with big companies is being exploited. Yeah, I, this is actually a good point too. So Silver Rabbit brings up something that, um, I should share on this live stream. I, one time many years ago, I was talking with a company that had, it was a, I know, hello.
It was a multi-billion dollar company. Okay. They had multi-billions, right? They had many billions of dollars. Like it was low billions, but it's still billions of dollars. It was like 4 billion or something. And I was talking to them about working with them, right? And they were like, oh, well this is, you know, like they're basically trading it for exposure.
And I'm like, you have billions of dollars. Like you can definitely pay someone to do this, right? But they're still kind of talking about it as exposure, or they were talking about it as like, oh, well if you work for free for like, You know, for this thing it'll really work out in your favor. And this is just insane stuff.
Like there's no reason that they shouldn't have paid someone for that. I know, cutie, you look so cute today. Um, but that's like the range. People think that that often happens with like smaller companies or that working for free is something you just have to do to get X, Y, z. It's not true. And there are plenty of companies with all different revenue ranges, even ones who have giant marketing budget budgets, like I know looking through their website, looking through their other content that they had plenty of money in marketing.
They were spending stuff to do other things, um, and they just weren't spending on content. So there's lots of times where weird stuff happens where. People will ask you to do stuff for free, even if they have a budget. You don't have to work for free. You don't have to meet some kind of pay your due things.
And that's something too that I get a lot of, um, emails about where they're like, oh, I know you have to pay your dues, but no, you don't. There is no, but just go do it. Right? So that's the first thing. That's the first kind of category two. First, let's do a little Charlotte update. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up.
If you wanna learn more about building, um, a high earning freelance writing business or just building a freelance writing business. You love, subscribe. Can you back up? Good girl. Good job, Ian. Yes. What a good beans. Can you eat these? So here's the deal with Charlie. So Charlie had a dental, uh, appointment with the vet, uh, um, about two weeks ago.
So here's she, a couple things happen. So Charlie has been really sensitive about eating her food since then. When we were bringing her in, we brought her in for an appointment because her tooth was turning gray. And we were like, that's weird. And so they were like, yeah, the tooth is dead. So they're like, the tooth is dead.
We need to remove that. But when we adopted Charlie, um, she was about three and a half years old. So Charlie was about three and a half years old, and she had a couple of broken teeth. So when we adopted her, um, that was like her previous situation. Uh, we don't know what happened to her teeth or why they were broken.
Um, but she, we had her checked out when we first adopted her, they were like, these teeth aren't bothering her. Like they've been broken for a really long time. You know, it doesn't seem like it's a big deal. So turns out when we brought her in for the dental, these broken teeth that she's had for many, many years, Charlotte is um, gonna be, she's about 10 and a half now.
So she's had these broken teeth probably for most of her life. Um, they had kind of the gingivitis thing. So Charlie ended up getting four teeth removed during her dental, and we also found out that her teeth are mineralizing. So what that means is that when she was a puppy, she wasn't, she didn't have proper nutrition, like someone really didn't take care of her.
So her teeth are actually really soft and what that means is she'll have to have other teeth removed throughout her lifetime. Just she has to have like a regular dental every year now because her teeth are very soft and sensitive. So we learned a lot from the dental. And so now that she's been healing one, she really hated, she really hated being on the drugs that they give you after the dental because getting teeth removed, especially she had two canines removed.
And those are really big teeth with really big roots. They have three different roots. Um, so if you've ever had a human tooth removed that has one root, this has three. And uh, yes, I know. So she's been really sensitive about eating and she really hated the drugs. Um, but she seems to be improving now. Uh, she still kind of like wants to be hand fed all the time, which we're fine with hand feeding her.
We just wanna make sure that she's doing okay. She's just been kind of like somber and um, it's just a lot. We've just kind of been, yeah, good girl. We've just kind of been, um, you know, monitoring her, but she had her dental was like a big deal for her. So I know I mentioned it before, but, so if you see her open her mouth, you'll notice that she's missing her.
What is that? Is that your left side, your right side? I think it's her right front bottom canine and the middle, one of her middle little teeth. I know, I know. Yeah. Um, But she's a trooper. She's a super strong little bean and uh, she's been doing pretty well. We'll have to see how things go or we might have to, uh, check in about her eating 'cause she just seems kind of suspicious and worried about eating.
Just 'cause I think her mouth is still pretty sensitive. Her stitches are still there 'cause she has those kind of disappearing stitches. Um, so we're just kind of monitoring her, seeing how she, she does. Oh my gosh, why do you look so cute today? You look so soft. Yeah. Still smell like the ocean. Silver rabbit says Charlie's just gorgeous.
Glad she found a loving home with you. Yeah, she is gorgeous. She's getting a lot more salt and pepper on her jowls. So she used to be totally like just everywhere was black. But now that she's 10 and a half going on 11, she's getting a lot more, uh, salt and pepper. So now she has distinguished jowls.
They're turning all silver in the front. Yeah, so that, anyways, I know that sometimes I get emails or things about how Charlie's doing. Um, Charlie's still kind of going through, you know, uh, if you've been on the livestream, you know that we lost Bo about two months ago-ish. So Bo passed away. He was her companion, um, for, gosh, for a really long time.
Like they were, it was like seven and a half years or so, I think, or yeah, about seven years. Um, so she's still kind of sad about that. She's still kind of going through a lot of stuff, so we're monitoring her, but I just wanted to give everybody an update that she's doing good. Um, she is, she is grumpy sometimes she has her in the right to be grumpy.
Um, so she's doing good. Yeah, she's getting lots of pets. Lots of loving, lots of RITs. She looks like a superstar. And I just wanna give you guys an update 'cause I know I get emails, I do get emails asking how she's doing or like how things went. So she's doing good, right? You feeling good? Yeah, kind of.
You're just like, more snacks. Okay, so let's talk about two. So two here is when we're doing our day-to-day work. So here you go, B. All right. When we do our day-to-day work, this is how kind of the whole, um, paying your dues strategy doesn't work every single day. The mindset that you should have in your business is, I'm taking a step forward every single day, not the weekend.
Don't be crazy. But, um, you should be thinking like every single day, how do I take a step forward in my business? Do I need to follow up? Do I need to connect to someone? Do I need to finish my work and turn it in? Um, do I need to follow, like, answer my editor? Do I need to read my emails and get through those?
Do I need to, um, do X, y, Z? Like, think about how you need to take a step forward in your business every day. If you're thinking, and this is the crazy part, if you have this in your mind that you have to pay your dues. You take a lot less action. You do a lot more stuff that is very small. Like you keep yourself very small, um, and you don't actually go after what you want.
'cause you're like, well, why would I do X when I have to do Y first? Or why would I have to, you know, why would I pitch this publication instead of this one? Or why would I go after this big company instead of this other one because I have to pay my dues? It just keeps you in this very small, um, fishbowl almost, and it doesn't allow you to go after the things you want.
It doesn't allow you to keep motivation. It doesn't allow you to be excited. It just kind of makes you feel like, oh, I can't do this. I can't do that because I have to do this. You don't, you don't have to do any of that stuff. So every single day when you're taking action in your freelance writing business, I don't care what it is, you have to have the idea that you are taking a step forward.
You're taking a step forward. You're, we're forgetting about the dues, we're forgetting about these weird ghost metrics that don't exist, right? And we're just moving forward. What do you actually wanna do? You need to write down some goals or you need to have some kind of idea of like, where am I going? Am I going to go after businesses and write this type of content?
Am I gonna pitch publications? How am I putting this together without the blanket of like paying my dues and I have to be published here? I have to do this first. I have to, um, make X amount of money first. Like, I've heard all of it, all these weird excuses. They're not even excuses really. It's more like people are, they, they just don't know that they're fencing themselves in.
So please don't fence yourself in, okay? When you're going through these things, your day-to-day freelance life just breaks it down. And this is something that I think a lot of veteran freelance writers have as a regret of their early days. They had these ideas, the same thing, right? Like I talked to other, like, I've been a freelance writer for over 10 years now.
And I've been a writer for more than 10 years, but I've been a freelance writer for more than 10 years now. Um, and I just, I talked to veteran writers, they're like, oh yeah, I thought I had to do this thing. But then once I kind of got outta my own way and I stopped kind of fencing myself in, it was fine.
Nothing happened. Like, no, no one's going to email you and be like, did you do X, y, z first? Like no one. That's the thing. Nobody's going to do recon on you on a, like a a a C i a level of recon, right? No client is going to. Go back so far in your history, right? They're gonna talk to you and they're going to basically feed off the confidence, the knowledge, um, and all the kind of good qualities that you can bring to the work and what you can explain how you can help them with, right?
This is the same thing where I tell people all the time, someone will take a chance on you. Someone will, even if you have no clips, no experience, no nothing, someone will take a chance on you. And I also wanna let you guys know, I've had high schoolers, okay? I've had high schoolers get freelance work, okay?
Sometimes I talk to adults who are like, I can't do this until this, I have taught high school students, okay? And they have worked for companies. They have hired a high school student to work for that paid work, not an internship, a real legit job, okay? There are people with zero, like zero work experience.
They, they're in high school, right? Or they might have worked at, um, Let's see, let's, they might have had kind of a different, like, um, kind of a, a job that's more, um, like physical labor or something where they're kind of like doing retail or something like that. They might have had more of like a general job, like an overarching job, but it's not like a full-time job.
So when I talk to people who have, who have got a lot of life experience, or they went to college or they've already been working in X, Y, Z or they've already been doing all these things, right? All this stuff has happened and I'm teaching high schoolers who are getting paid clients, right? They have this confidence where they're like, sure, let's just try it out, right?
And I know that there's a difference there, right? If they're in high school, obviously, um, their bills are null, right? Their bills are not the same. Um, so there's a little bit more pressure on us as adults where we have to pay a mortgage or we have to pay our rent or we have to pay utilities. So that's adds to kind of the.
Pay your dues fear. But I'm telling you, like these things are just a mindset. Like I've, I've talked to people who are, what is like 16 to 80, okay? And they, there's a, a very common thread here. So the day-to-day life pieces, you have to go after it. You have to keep doing all these things to move forward.
You have to take an action every single day. I don't care how small it is, right? Have you ever heard that quote that says, like, it doesn't matter, um, if you're going fast in the wrong direction, right? Like, if you're going fast in the wrong direction, you're doing it wrong, right? If you're going slow, but you're moving in the right direction, that always wins.
It's kind of like a tortoise versus hare situation as long as you're going on the right road, right? So that piece is really important. Taking an action every single day. And this is the other thing, um, I think a lot of veteran freelance writers, Talk about is like what we, I wish, like this is my own personal thing.
I wish I had known, like I wish someone had told me back then that like, I should just go after it. Nothing's gonna happen. Like there's no magic freelance God that's gonna like sprinkle shit all over you. Like it doesn't happen. The best things that have happened in my business is when I just, either I experiment, I try stuff, or I just get after it.
I just go do it. I, yeah, it's scary and I feel a lot of fear sometimes. And sometimes my stomach is upset and sometimes I wanna cry a lot. And sometimes things are really difficult. Like sometimes you really feel the squeeze and it sucks a lot. But every time you're taking action and moving forward, that's the piece that matters.
That's the piece that makes the biggest difference in you building a business. You like getting away from this mindset where you have to do X, Y, Z before you get d e F. Right? I think it's just this, I wish I could go back and tell myself like, you don't have to like do everything. You don't have to fence yourself in by everybody else's kind of like mindsets.
Right. So like you talked to, I've talked about this before. I had, when I was working on the platforms a long time ago, I had a client where my hourly rate at the time was like $35 an hour. Which is terrible. So, so, um, I had an hourly rate of 35 bucks an hour. Also, I don't recommend hourly. This is just a story.
And she asked me to work at $15 an hour, and I was just like, okay, don't do that. That was kind of like, I thought I had to pay my dues. This was the first time I was kind of working on website content, so I was like, oh, I have to take a pay cut because it's my first website. I, I earn 20 less dollars an hour based on this mindset of paying my dues or having to meet some kind of weird thing before I got this other stuff.
Or I have to do this before I can charge real rates. It's just not a thing. Um, I also met plenty of writers who were just like, I wanna charge a dollar a word. I'm like, go for it. If you feel like confident in that and you feel like that's the value of your work, do it. And they, they get it right. They don't have any experience.
They're just confident in charging that rate. They find a client who works right, who that works for them, and they move on with their lies, right. Um, Vicki says, people who aren't your client will go that far back. I don't think they will. Like I, what do you think, Charlie? Charlie's like, I just look cute. I look like a little tiny mermaid baby.
You do look like a little mermaid. I like your little fish tail legs. I don't think they do that much recon, I think, but I know this is a joke, but like, even if someone goes back the, this is the other weird thing that happens that I think is a good point. Vicki's bringing up what we think they care about is not always what they care about.
Okay? So when we're kind of starting out, or we're building a business, like we haven't been through the ringer of being a freelance writer for a while, we think our clients care about A, B, C, and they care about a t and u, right? I'm hoping those are not like weird letters. So they care about different things than we do.
We have this idea, and this is the same thing that we work on with assignments, right? Like even if we get a content brief, and even if we know what the story's about, right? Um, even if we're doing all that stuff, we can have an idea of what it is and our client can think of it very differently, and we could still have an outline, we could have a content brief, whatever, and we end up creating something that doesn't match what they think, right.
That it doesn't match what they wanted. And this is just part of being a human. Sometimes we kind of miss the mark, but this is the idea where it's like writers are in their own heads, right? We spend a lot of times in our own heads and we kind of make up what our clients are gonna do. Oh my God, they're gonna call four of my ex bosses and figure out if I'm like this person and oh my gosh, they're gonna do all this stuff.
They rarely do that. They might look at, like, let's say they're gonna look at your clips and your clients and talk to you, right? But there's a lot of times, like I said, I've gotten on a call with someone. I didn't have a clip in their niche. Uh, I didn't have a ton of experience and just talking to them about the project and how I can help or how to do the project, or how I, we could work together, that was something that they were like confident in working with me.
That's something I think is really important. Connecting with other people, answering questions, being thorough. Being detailed. Right. Versus having all of this stuff where you're just like, they'll just accept me. 'cause they won't, that's the queer, that's the crazy thing is like when you become, like, when you have all this experience as a freelance writer, you realize like, I, there's plenty of times this year, right?
I had a, I've had clients this year where they're like, Hey, you're not a fit. Like, I've worked with them and they're like, Hey, this isn't working okay. Like that. There's this thing where we think as writers that we have like that by, by the time you get to where I am, right? You have like 10 years of experience.
You think everybody just says yes. They don't, there's still plenty of clients who realize you're not a fit for them. There's still plenty of clients who you send an L o I and they're like, Nope, this isn't right. There's still plenty of times where you're just not getting a hole in one. Right? There's this myth that happens where people think that it's just, oh, well you, you have all these clips, you have all these clients, you have all the, like, right?
They're, you've already paid your dues. It's just not a thing. It's not a thing. Um, it ends up being this kind of, um, hold holder backer kind of mindset. It's just a hurdle that you're putting in, in place, right Charlie? Is that what you think? She's, she agrees. She says Stop putting those mindset hurdles in place, right?
Yeah. High five. Good girl. You guys can still see her little shaved arm. Oh, sorry, me. There you go. Good job. Her little left arm is still has that little shave mark. So that's the thing is like a lot of people like to look at, like, I used to do that too, and by like a lot when I'm saying a lot of people, this is like people I've talked to, I've talked to writers for years, and this is the same thing.
Someone's like, yeah, but someone in your situation or someone doing this, or I looked at this writer doing that, that doesn't apply. Like there's still people who turn me down. There's still times where I make a ton of mistakes. There's still times where I mess up the work. There's still times where I get let go, right?
Where they're like, Hey, this isn't working. Where're not the right fit. Goodbye. Right? These things still happen. There is no magic number of anything, right? There's still these things that pop up where every single day in your day-to-day life as a freelance writer, you continue to have hurdles, but your hurdles shouldn't be, I have to pay my dues to get X.
It's just not a thing. And the more you, you grow as a freelance writer and the older I get as a freelance writer, I just wish I could have gone back to my, my previous self 10 years ago and been like, Hey, Stop this shit. Like just go after what you want. Just send the pitch. Just send the pitch to this great magazine.
You don't have to write 85 clips. You don't have to work at a lower rate. You don't have to cut your rates for this. You don't have to give discounts. You don't have to do any of that stuff. You don't have to. You have your own business. Right. And I think once you kind of get in this mindset of realizing like you can just go after it and you can have confidence in yourself, right?
And you can work on your craft and you can work on all your stuff. Versus saying like, I have to meet some random thing, right? Flower power says, sorry, flower power says, oh my God. Yes. That difference between what I'm stressing versus what I realize they're focused on. That's something that has put me back in my head.
Maybe for better or worse, I still do that. So flower power, I still do that where I think. I'm like, oh, this makes sense. This assignment totally makes sense. I go off and do it. And then they're like, what planet are you on? And you're like, no. Like, that still happens. There are still times where you just make a mistake, like you think you understand the assignment, you think you're on the same page, and you're straight up not, you're straight up not on the same page.
So this is something that just is occurring, right? Sometimes we make mistakes. We're human beings. Writing is a, it's not, you know, you can't just plug in a formula and get it out like you. It just doesn't work like that, right? So the things that we're worried about, oh, hi, will you feeling spicy today? You making noises.
So the things that we worry about with our work and the things that we are concerned about with marketing or pitching or publications or editors or clients or lois or whatever kind of clips, right? The things that we stress about are not necessarily the things our clients stress about. And often I've found the things that I worry about are way different than what my client worries about, right?
So there's this idea where we're also kind of putting those things on our client, right? We're kind of projecting our own insecurities and worries onto our client. Oh no, client X isn't gonna like this. I won't pitch them. Or, client Y isn't, you know, they're not gonna accept me, or they're not gonna blah, blah, blah.
So we, or we we're doing work right? You end up doing work and you're like, oh, well I think it's gonna be this, and you go off and do it, and you're like, oh shit, I made a huge mistake. So sometimes we have to do rewrites. Sometimes we, I still do this stuff. It's still a mistake, right? There are normal things that happen, but you have to remember that like you have your own things.
You think about your client has her own things they think about, and just because you guys work together doesn't mean you're on the same page. Right? This is the same thing as like paying your dues where you don't have to like, make up all these things. You don't have to guess what other people are thinking, right?
You just kind of go off and do your thing, right? You learn, you do, you get experienced. You do the best you can. Okay. Um, let's talk about three real quick, but I just wanna make sure that this, I wanna make sure that you, that the important thing here is that. Very easily your day-to-day life as a freelance writer, every single day, you're taking a step forward.
I don't care how small, it's, I don't care if you follow up with one person, you send one connection request. You, you have to move forward. And this idea that there's some imaginary fence or some invisible fence that you can't reach, right? That's what it is. Paying your dues is like this invisible fence where like you can't see it, but you feel like it exists and you have you personally, right?
Yours is different than mine. So some people are like, I need 200 clips. Some people are like, I need one. So this invisible fence, right? That you're trying to hop and eventually what ends up happening, right, is that by taking action every day, you start building a lot of trust in yourself and your ability, um, and your quality of your work and the stuff you're able to do, and you, that fence just kind of disappears, right?
It's already imaginary, but you're not holding yourself in. So I'm hoping that. By understanding, by taking action, by doing things every day. This idea of paying your dues just evaporates. It's not a thing. And as someone who wishes, I could go back to my younger self and be like, Hey, stop making imaginary stuff.
Like you don't have to do that. Right? I wish I could've done that. So I'm hoping that you're taking this now so you can go off and do amazing stuff in your business without feeling like this weird fence exists. Okay, let's talk about three real quick. Charlotte, what do you think about that? Would you like to comment on that?
Oh, what a nice little ham leg Are you displaying? The ham leg. That's a really nice display you've got there. Oh, you look so sweet today. Are you just feeling sleepy and, and stuck? I've been a little cautious about giving her like hard and crunchy treats just because she's been so sensitive about her teeth, but she seems to be taking them okay, like she seems to be interested in them and.
Eating them fine. What do you think? Yeah, you're just like, more snacks you wanna lay down? There you go. Good job. You look like a fuzzy little. A fuzzy little penguin. Okay, let's talk about three real quick. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a hiring, freelance writing, writing business, or a business you adore, or just building your freelance writing better subscribe.
Flower Power says, sorry, I don't know why I'm coughing today. She says, that makes me feel so much better to know other people are experiencing this. As the flashbacks of these past failures rush through my head. Oh my gosh. I love that. Gaining confidence is hard, but so important. The best way to gain confidence is just taking action.
This is something that I think is really important as you move along. As a freelance writer, the best thing you can do is just take action. Because the more times that you take action, the more you build trust in your ability to do what you say you're gonna do, right? That's like a common thing that people talk about is like the more you do the thing you're say you're gonna do, the better you feel.
So this is kind of that thing where, for me, the most confidence I've gained is just by doing it, just do it. Just get outta my head. Stop getting so anxious. Stop catastrophizing. Literally just do it. Stop being so foamy about it. Like I get real lathered up about it. Sometimes I get really high anxiety and the best things I've done is just move forward.
Just try stuff. Stop putting so much pressure on myself to get it perfect when it's a new thing. Give myself several months to kind of get on the bus, right? We need time to kind of like ramp up. There's always these. I think the other thing too is there's stories, right? We've all read these freelance writing stories where someone's like, my first day as a freelance writer, I made $10,000.
And you can too. Like they, it wasn't their first day as a freelance writer. It was, they were doing other stuff. They knew how to pitch, they had confidence in themselves. They knew how to do the basics. They didn't just start day one and get magic stuff, right? There's all of these little kind of, um, like cards that kind of stack up, right?
And they all kind of, or not stack up, but you know, that thing where like you hit the card and they all fall down. You know that, I forget what it's called right now, but you know what I mean? Like the, like the domino effect. Um, it's kind of like that you, you are going through like each time you. Do something you're building confidence in like, Hey, I can trust myself, like to do the thing I say I'm gonna do.
And then you eventually get better and then you're like, why was I worrying about that stuff? And then you already have all these cool things. You've gotten the bylines you want or the clients that you want, and it's literally just because you kept doing the thing you said you were gonna do and improving that process.
There's like this domino effect. And as you go along, those dominoes get bigger. The other thing too, I think is really important. Um, I've told my students this too. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut when I got in. The worst times, like when I'm in the worst mindset and I, I just wanna cry and fall into a hole of Ben and Jerry's or, you know, poofs, like cheese, cheese, poofs, I'll, I'll tell myself like, even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
They do. Because every single time I've thought like this is the end. Like this is literally the end of my career. I've done something horrible, or I've made a huge mistake, or everyone's gonna know I'm an idiot, or I've thought something horrible. Literally someone gives me a chance. Like it's because I was taking action.
It was because I'm doing this domino effect. It's because I'm continuing to move forward even when it's hard or scarier or I wanna throw up. Um, those things. End up turning into some kind of opportunity. Like if you send Lois, someone will answer you like, the statistics are in your favor. Lois are a numbers game.
You have to send them, you have to send a bunch. That's kind of how it works. Pitches are the same, right? You have to send a number of pitches to hopefully get something right. And I'm not saying a number of pitches to one magazine. 'cause you could send one pitch to a magazine and they say yes. And then there's a different magazine where you've pitched them for like two years and you don't get a yes.
Right? So there's like these things where you, you will eventually get it. There will be some point if you keep working at it, where someone will, will take a leap of faith on you. Someone will say, Hey, I just like your vibe. Let's work together. Let's figure this out. Um, someone will say like, this is something cool.
Uh, editors will be like, Hey, I see you've pitched me 25 times. Here's some advice on how to fix your pitches and how to kind of get in this magazine. And then you're like, oh. So it's just that. Consistency and that kind of drive to continue on. I think that's really important. Someone will give you a chance, hi, woo, you wagon someone will give you a chance.
Somewhat. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. So if you're feeling shitty, I'm telling you like the thing that made me feel great was that's what my dad would always say. My dad would say like, well, like, you know, when something would happen. Like, he never had very good luck. Like we always have a family football pool.
And he lost for my whole life, like the whole, he never won a football pool. And then now he's, uh, he's won like the last two or three. Um, and uh, anyways, he would say like, yeah, even a blind squirrel finds a nut. That's what I always think to myself. Like, something's gonna work out if, if I'm doing this stuff, I know that needs to be done.
If I'm planting the seeds, I don't get to decide when those seeds grow. Right? You don't go outside and you're like, my broccoli's not coming in today. I planted it yesterday. Right? You're like, oh, the growing season for broccoli is this, so I need to plant it during the growing season, and then the broccoli needs to be watered and every two days, and then it's gonna bloom three months down the road, right?
Or it's gonna grow. But that's what you kind of have to think about is like it's a blooming process. It's this, like, even if your broccoli didn't work out, you wouldn't just be like, I'm giving up on broccoli forever. Like that wouldn't happen. Right? You would probably try it a few times, right? And you'd be like, okay, this broccoli is just not working.
Maybe it's the seeds, maybe it's the soil. Maybe I just buy broccoli from the store. It would, right? Or you would end up getting advice from someone to make sure your broccoli works, right? Your broccoli plants are getting all the nutrients they need. But you would kind of do these things and eventually, right, if you kept trying, if you kept working at it, if you kept like honing the process, even a blind squirrel's gonna get some broccoli, right?
We're gonna figure it out. Uh, chain reaction. Yes, it was domino effect, but yes, chain reaction is probably better than that one. Okay. Let's talk about three real quick. What do you think? Would you like to say something to the people? Oh, look how funny you, you look like you're like sitting up, like you're like going to a banquet or something.
Charlotte. I really like your bow tie effect of your little thing. You're so cute. Why are you so soft today? You feeling snugly? Yeah. Aw,
you look super cute today. Okay, let's talk about three last thing here. Um, when we're thinking about our business in the long term, right? Imagine like this is something right that, um, is like kind of a phrase, which is like play it forward. So imagine if, okay, here's a good example. If I had taken the pay your dues mindset up until my business now, I wouldn't be here, right?
If I had kept myself in the cage of having to pay my dues, I wouldn't be on this live stream. I wouldn't have started my courses. I wouldn't have helped other people. I wouldn't have worked for cool clients, like really on cool projects. Like I would've been just fenced in by this thing, right? It was really scary to get on here and do this live stream.
The very, like, if you go back and watch my first couple of live streams, it's terrible. Like, it's terrible. I just, I was sweating a lot. My mouth was dry. I was just like panicking. I don't, I don't know if you can tell that from the video, but it was a lot. And I was really scared. But it's, if I had kind of thought, I need to pay my dues, I need to do like 40 videos before I do a live stream, or I need to do all of this stuff before I hop in and just, you know, do this thing every week that I never would've been here.
All of these things kind of cage you in, right? They kind of keep you in this mindset that is, that will long-term hold you back. And this is something that I think is a heartbreaker for me. When I talk to someone who's been in a business plateau for five years, 10 years, like I'll have a student, um, coaching student wealth lab student, runway student, or someone who just sends me an email, right?
Sometimes writers just reply right to my weekly emails. You can get 'em if you just grab my pricing guide mandi.com/pricing guide. It's free. If you grab my, uh, pricing guide for freelance writers and content strategists, you'll get my weekly emails. I will get replies to those emails where I'll get things from students.
They're like, I'm in this plateau that's X amount of years, not plateau of like months. It's like five, 10 years. And that breaks my heart because I feel like this is kind of the mindset that keeps them back. They think they have to do X, Y, Z to get to the next step. They think that like this, they're, they've been writing for the same local publication for like forever.
And it's not that that's bad, it's that they haven't gotten a pay raise, they haven't gotten more assignments, they haven't gotten any referrals. Like they just keep repeating the same thing over and over again on the hamster wheel. That kind of thing is more like holding yourself back, right? That's kind of the thing where you're like, oh, well I have to do X in order to get this thing, or I can't do these things 'cause I've only written for local publications, or I've only done this other stuff and I think it's just this really.
Self perpetuating cycle where you're just like, oh, like you just realize years have gone by and you're still making X amount of money, or you're still working with the same clients and you really wanna work with this other type of client. Um, or you can't figure out how to do X, y, Z. Right? There's no magic fence.
Like, that's the thing is like, there are lots of times where I get emails about food and travel, right? I started in food and travel and um, I just started in that 'cause I had personal experience, right? I didn't have bylines, I didn't have like magic stuff. I just, you know, had, I was obsessed. Like, I just loved reading about restaurants.
I loved recipes. I love reading about different cuisines. I loved traveling. I liked going places and learning new stuff, and I just relayed that into my career, right? There's a lot of times where we just forget that we're just like, oh, you have to pay your dues. Like, you have to do this stuff, or you have to blah, blah, blah.
There's also these things where, Even if you're a travel writer, you can be a local expert and still be a travel writer. That's the thing is a lot of times people think travel's just a good example, but a lot of times people think like, oh, you have to travel all the time to be a travel writer. You don't, there's plenty of travel writers who are just experts at Austin, or experts at Boston, or experts at Denver, right.
But they're writing travel content for people who are visiting that area. Right? So I think a lot of times when we're moving over this play it forward, um, how will it affect you long term? Right. Then it kind of makes it obvious like, oh, I should stop doing this now. Right? Like, imagine you kept that same idea for 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years.
Right? When would you stop having to pay your dues? Right. If you start thinking about when would it end, you start realizing how arbitrary that pay your dues thing is, right. You start realizing how crazy it is that you're like, oh, I, of course I would have a hundred clips by X amount of time. Right? Well, what if you don't.
What if two years go by and you have 47 clips and, but you're making the money you want, or you are building the business you want, or you have freedom or you can spend time with your kids or homeschool or whatever. What, right. All of those things don't make sense then, 'cause you're building the thing that you want, right?
So play it forward. How is this thing holding you back from your future self? When will it end? This is something I used to ask myself. When will it end? Right? When will there be a point where, like, this, I've met this magic thing and I don't have to pay my dues. That's the thing is like, it doesn't exist, right?
There is no point where you just, even if you have the thing, right? Even if you have a hundred clips, you don't feel like you, there's no like parade, right? There's no like parade where they're like, hooray, you've, you've paid your dues. You can move on. Like that doesn't exist. It doesn't happen, right? It is the continual action taking, it's the continual moving forward that builds the confidence in you to be like, oh, I don't have to do this.
I don't have to. Fence myself in. I don't have to live by these weird guidelines. I don't have to, um, worry about being blackballed or something or blacklisted or whatever. Um, I think that's just kind of a, when you think about it in those terms, it just seems so silly. Right? It just seems so random that you're like, why would I have to wait three years when so and so got published in New York Times yesterday?
Right. You don't have to wait. That's the crazy thing. Or you would say like, oh, well, uh, she has so and so amount of experience. I have to wait until X time. Y why do you have to wait? There's no reason for that. And I also get, I think this is another good example. I will get emails from people who are like, Hey, so-and-so, blah, blah, blah, charges this.
They have more experience than me, or they have more niche knowledge, or they've been doing this longer, or they've been blah, blah, blah. Some random thing. I can't charge X until I meet so-and-so's. Baseline. Right? That's just crazy. That's just crazy. So if someone's charging like, I don't know, 500, 400 bucks for a blog post and you don't have the same experience, but you are like looking at all their work, that doesn't mean you.
That doesn't mean that you have to start at $200 a blog post and work your way up to 400. If you read their work and your work is similar to their work, or you just decide you wanna charge $400 a blog post, do it. I think you should charge what you think your work is worth in the niche that you're in, in the quality of work that you're giving and the help that you're providing that your, to your clients, right.
I think that's really important. And here's a dirty little secret. There's lots of writers who have been writing for many, many years who grossly undercharged. This is one of the things why I created the free pricing guide, right? This is why I created it and why I update it. I'm constantly asking people, what are you getting?
What are you charging? And I'm asking people across the spectrum. So I ask new writers, I ask my students, I ask my friends. I ask people who make six figures. I'm constantly asking people, what are you doing? So I can update the guide because there's lots of times where I will see someone who's been writing longer than me, who charges 50% less than I do, and that's just like they haven't raised their rates or they're working for an agency and the agency's not gonna pay them anymore, or, um, they end up just being comfortable with a client or whatever.
That doesn't mean that I should charge less. Like there's no, there's no police that are gonna come by and tell you that you have to charge less than someone who's doing X or Y or that you can't start at some number that you wanna start at. And especially with pricing, this is something I think is important.
Pick a number. This is, I tell this to, I, I think this is the thing, the, one of the most important things I tell writers, pick a number that makes you feel a little bit nervous. Okay? So when you're pricing your work, pick a number that makes you feel a little bit nervous, that gets you closer to where you should actually be.
Most writers, almost all the writers, I talk to undercharge. So if I'm telling them to pick a number that makes 'em feel nervous, they're like 80% of the way there to what they should be charging, right? So they'll say, oh, I think I should, you know, oh, $400 makes me nervous. I'm like, okay. So you should probably be charging five to 600.
Like, you're, you're, you're still undercharging, but at least we're getting there, right? So that's a thing I think is really important. Pick a number that makes you a little bit nervous, then you're getting a lot closer, right? There's, there's also like a scale, right? Like you wouldn't go in at like $4 a word for something for, uh, that's just like a basic blog post.
Like, there, it's not no research, no interviews, no nothing. Like, so, you know, obviously we wanna do reasonable pricing based on value, but I also think a lot of times writers are just in this mindset where they're like, I can't charge this, or I can't do this until this happens. Or, um, I just feel like there's a lot of different things that kind of impact pricing or mindset or this dues thing.
Oh, hello. You've moved. Oh my gosh, you're so squirrely. I think that's important. Uh, Vicky says, my local community has a culture of underemployment that I have to keep out of. Yeah. And there's, that's. There's a lot of things that impact this, right? So the paying your dues thing can be your friends, your family, your community, the environment that you're in.
It can be this thing that you really have to actively work on your mindset, right? So this was something like, when I think is a good, uh, example, I have a friend who, um, when she was coming up as a writer, like the first few years of her business, hi, woo. She had family members who were just like, oh, but you're just like doing that little writing thing.
And they would like ask her to do stuff while she was working. So they'd be like, can you come pick this up? Or Can you go do that thing or can? 'cause they were like, but it's just writing, right? Like, they would totally disrespect her career and her time and her work and all this stuff. Like she would tell them many times, try to set boundaries with them.
But that's part of like learning the mindset and getting out of this kind of like, pay your dues. I have to do all this stuff. I'm responsible for X, y, z, random, random kind of task. So think, make sure that you're kind of protecting. Not only like your mindset of moving forward and building your confidence, but you're also kind of protecting it against like this idea that you have to work for free or you have to charge less than someone who has more experience than you, or you have to do this thing.
And I'm telling you, I know writers who have more experience than me who charge less than me. And I'm like, you should be charging twice what I'm charging. Why are you under charging? Right. Hi Will. Hi Will. I think that's a really important thing. Um, so, okay, hold on. There was like one more thing I wanted to say, but as we're kind of moving forward, really try to do that.
Try to play it forward. Like at what point, at what magic metric, you know, would it be five years before you feel like you've paid your dues? That would be a crazy long time, isn't it? Would it be? I will. Um, would it be like a year, would it be like when you start playing it forward of like, well, how am I gonna get 20 clips?
That seems like a long time. How am I gonna get 55 clients? That seems like it'd take forever. Uh, right, because a lot of times, like there, once you start doing your day-to-day, you realize like you basically only need two to five clients. I like three to five. But basically in your business, you need three to five clients.
You need to kind of be getting clips, right? That you can put in a portfolio and you need to be kind of marketing and moving forward. If you kind of start thinking about all of those, like, um, those little metrics, 55 clients would be like an insane amount of time. Like, I don't even know if I've had 55 clients in the 10 years that I've been a freelance writer.
I'm, I might have, but it's a lot. Or you're like, like I, it took me years, years to cross a hundred clips. Like I didn't, I had like, 10, 20 clips for a long time. Um, and then sometimes you end up doing work that you can't publish in a portfolio that's protected by an N D a that's ghost written or, or some kind of like thought leadership that, you know, you need to keep under wraps.
So there's just a lot of stuff where like when you play it forward, like at what point am I gonna get there? Wow, that sounds like a long time. Right? Like, you don't have to do that. You don't have to wait until that happens. You don't have to pay your dues. You don't have to, you don't have to meet these weird, invisible fences.
Right. Uh, flower power says, I just had a brain blast. I like that brain blast. You should TM that. I just had a brain blast realizing all the biz things I've been planning for three to five years from now, because, well, I just can't do, I can't just do it. I have to wait or else the police will get me.
Exactly. This. This is what I wish I told myself when I started, like, I wish I told myself. Like, just do it. Just do it. Like, instead of playing the game of like, oh, I can't just do it. I have to wait or I have to do this thing, or someone will, someone will find me. Right? That's kind of imposter syndrome.
Someone will come find me and tell me I'm not allowed, right? Like, I'm not capable or I'm not qualified, or I don't have X, y, z, blah, blah, blah. Right? I think that's just this like, if, if I can prevent you flower power from having to wait as long as I did, I would like to do that. Right? So don't, don't think about like really think about, right.
Why would you wait three to five years? We're gonna be living anyways, hopefully, right? We're gonna keep living. Uh, I, when you play that part forward, you're just like, well, I have to do this, or this thing will happen, or someone will know, or the imposter syndrome or self-doubt or whatever. It just really opens your eyes to like how long that is, right?
How long three to five years is, or how long X amount of clips is, or clients or whatever. I think this is just like moving forward, moving forward and going after the things that you want. It's, yes, sometimes it's really difficult and yes, sometimes it's frustrating and yes, sometimes you're just like, where is the nut?
Where, where I am the blind squirrel. I need the nut. I will, you're barking now. Um, you're, you know, you're like, where's that nut? Right? But that, searching for that and doing stuff every single day to get what you want is more useful than waiting or thinking. You have to meet some random benchmark of some kind.
So I'm glad, I'm glad that you're like, yeah, play it forward. I think that's the most important thing. Play it forward and remember like, Everybody's things are different too. That's the crazy thing is everyone thinks there's like a different number. Some people think it's one, some people think it's 200, right?
That's kind of your mindset thing you have to work on. Okay, so I hope this was helpful. Woo. Go back to your hva hole. You sass woo's over here. Like barking at me at a licking my pants. 'cause she wants more snacks. I don't have any more snacks. Minnie. We're kind of out of snacks. They're all downstairs now.
Here you go. Those are like little bits of snacks. Okay, cool. I'm glad that this is, um, it seems like this has been helpful. So if you feel like it's been helpful, thumbs up. Uh, we'll give it a thumbs up if you feel like you wanna build this, uh, freelance writing business or kind of move beyond some mindset things.
Subscribe. We're here every Friday at noon Central time. Um, you can find all the other episodes just on my channel. And, um, I think that. Just, just build that confidence in yourself every single day. Take that action, move forward, keep doing stuff, stop living in this like weird fenced in imaginary area. It doesn't exist.
Um, I think building that, that belief in yourself and like actually doing what you say you, you say you're gonna do that is what really helps with confidence and helps you get away from kind of this, I have to do X in order to get y mindset. So, um, what do you think? You, you look like a sad stuffed animal.
Like you're just to you just like a little eor stuffed animal. You just totally folded in half, like a little chair. Oh, mini. All right. So I hope this hast been helpful. Um, uh, what I, I already said when we're gonna be here, but, um, I think this was an important topic and, uh, if you ever have any questions or topics that you want me to cover on the livestream, you can put 'em in at mandy alice.com/question.
This was something that I just have been getting a lot of emails about recently, so I felt like we needed to talk about it. Um, I hope everybody has a really good Friday and a good weekend. I will see you guys next week and uh, yeah. Have a great day. Bye.
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