[00:00:00] Why is it so hard for us as creators to give our subs the credit that we deserve? We step into uncertainty. We build our businesses from the ground up, and we figure out most of it as we go, but yet we still question are we enough? My guest today is Georgie Darling, a freelance writer turned coach, helping creators work through imposter syndrome, find their ideal clients, and get paid what they're worth.
We're talking about everything from marketing to client, red flags, but you'll wanna stick around for the easy confidence boost Georgie swears by. It's something so simple, you can start using it today. Welcome to the Creators That Crush Podcast, the show that helps creators go from crushed to crushing it.
I'm your host and certified high performance coach, Shawn Buttner. Let's begin. Hey, Georgie, I'm so excited to have you here today.
Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm very [00:01:00] excited to be here.
Today we're answering the question, how do creators stop undervaluing themselves and their work?
I love that you're asking this because it actually reminds me of the whole reason that I started my business, and mostly that was because people kept on asking me questions about how they could grow their freelance businesses and how they could stop being taken advantage of by their clients and how they could assert their boundaries without feeling rude.
So I think the main reason why people. Struggle to find those high value clients and the clients that respect them and pay them the amount that they deserve to be paid. I think it boils down to confidence. I think it's having low confidence in maybe themselves in the industry. I think often, I mean.
Virtually all of us have some kind of proper job, let's call it, before we go into, um, creating and all of the fundings that we do nowadays. And I think there is no roadmap for that either. So when you, when you transition into becoming a creator or when you have that as the full focus of your business, there's no roadmap.
There's [00:02:00] no directions that say when a client does this, this is how you should act. Or when you start quoting rates, this is how much you should charge. Mm-hmm.
And
because we have to make it all up as we go along, I think people often second guess themselves. And that's when you can fall into this trap of thinking, am I working with the right people?
Should I be charging more? And is this a normal thing for someone to ask me? And all of those, all of those spirals that I think we go down a lot in the beginning,
I identify with those myself. For me, I'm a coach first and foremost, and the podcast and YouTube and all the other things are to support that business.
And so I never thought of myself as a creator starting off. You know, and that could be really trippy when you're like, I don't want to do, I wanna do the coaching. I don't wanna do all the things that help support it. And there's this almost like second project to the main thing you wanna do that we all forget about, which is how do you promote yourself?
How do you get your ideas out there? How do you connect with an audience?
Yeah, it's really interesting to me because I came into this from the opposite perspective. So now I [00:03:00] would say about 50% of my business is coaching, but I started out as a journalist and then moved into freelance writing. So I guess I kind of started from one type of creator and then transitioned into a different type of creator.
So I actually, to some extent, think I had the opposite problem of knowing. How to create content from a, a freelancer perspective, but then transitioning into a coach as well and not necessarily knowing how to position myself and what sort of content I should be creating. And yeah, just all of the things that go in line with creating stuff that your audience want to read
right on.
How did you man navigate that? Right? Because I think the idea of, you started with confidence and expertise in one thing, and then you're surprised with, oh, I gotta, I've figured this new thing out. How did you navigate that? Go from freelancer to coach to I'm guessing to, to get those clients that respect you to I diversify a little bit of what you're doing in your creative business.
So how I think I transitioned from one to the other [00:04:00] was very much following a mindset of two things. One, what is the worst that could happen, and secondly, transitioning that into what is the best that could happen. I like to remind myself of both of those things when it comes to creating content, making decisions.
Navigating all of those things that come with transitioning your business from one thing to another. In the sense that often if I wanted to, I dunno, hold a webinar or do an Instagram live or start sharing content on LinkedIn, and if I found myself struggling with that imposter syndrome of thinking like, oh, I'm a bit too scared to do this.
I would think to myself, what is the worst thing that can happen? Because nothing that we do here is life or death. So that was one of the things I tried to remind myself of a lot. And then also flipping the coin on that and thinking, what is the best thing that could happen? So if I take that step, if I hold that webinar, if I record the video, that I find quite intimidating, the best case scenario is that my ideal clients could watch that and then will reach out to me.
I can work with these people, help them to grow [00:05:00] their businesses, and ultimately, maybe it sounds dramatic, but help them to change their lives. So I think those are the two things really that I always keep in mind. When it came to diversifying my business and also when I'm trying to grow my business since then.
Awesome. I love that. You know, as a certified high performance coach, I often coach people through fear. A lot of times when people don't take action, they're afraid of what happens. If I reach my goal, you know, like I wanted to do this, I did it. Maybe it's not as great as I thought it would be. Maybe I'm afraid of how painful it's gonna be to get there.
Yeah, and the main. Thing is to help people find like, what do you gain? Like that, that phrase I use particularly in the coaching and it's so powerful because it makes the fear kind of seem a little bit diminished.
I. Yeah. One thing I really like to remember as well, which is something that a business coach told me a few years ago, is that our bodies see anticipation and anxiety and excitement all in the same way.
Mm-hmm. So when you have [00:06:00] those feelings of your heart pounding and you know, like sweaty hands and feeling very on edge, often your body can't actually distinguish whether what you're feeling is anxious or feeling excited. And I think it's very easy to mm-hmm. Assume that what your, your body is feeling is anxiety.
But actually when you think about the thing you're about to do, actually maybe deep down what you're feeling is excited. And I think just because something's new doesn't mean you can't do it. It means that you are feeling these things because it's because it's new, because you haven't tried it before.
And actually I think that can be part of the fun, like thinking if I do this thing, even if it does scare me, then it's really gonna help to broaden my horizons and expand my comfort zone and do all of these things that are really gonna help me take my business and potentially my life to a whole new level.
Right on. Do you have a particular example that you faced in your journey that looking back, you know, that was really scary, but I'm so glad that I did that. It really changed my life in a way I wasn't expecting.
Yes. So when I first started coaching, I did one-to-one coaching for almost a year, I think.
[00:07:00] And the business coach I was working with was like, you should start doing group coaching. Maybe you can hold a free webinar and give a people like a taster of your coaching. And then at the end of that webinar, you can pitch your group coaching course and. I was like, Hmm, in theory this is a lovely idea, but I can't hold a webinar.
I can't talk to a crowd. And it's funny because day-to-day life, I'm one of the Chattiest people. I could talk to a brick wall and still not run out of things to say, but the thought of hosting some kind of webinar was terrifying. And I cut it off for, yeah, I guess maybe about six months. It just, it seemed like one of his distant dreams that.
Just never would actually come to fruition. And eventually someone I was speaking to was telling me about opportunity cost in the sense that if you put something off for a very long time, you may still get there eventually. You may still, you know, reap the benefits of that thing, but you might be missing out on say, six or 12 months worth of progress because you've been putting off for so long.
So the opportunity cost of doing something sooner is that you then get to reap the benefits of those six to 12 months of, [00:08:00] I don't know, better clients, higher income, more freedom, whatever it is that you are working towards. And that was one of those things where when I eventually did bite the bullet and held one of these webinars, it was fine.
The world did not collapse. I got some really lovely feedback and I finished it and just thought, you know what? I should have done that six months ago 'cause it would've been completely fine. I'm very frustrated with myself, but glad that I got it out the way.
That feeling of I should have done this six months ago, I think is a hallmark of anyone that's been highly productive in their business.
In that it's like, why did I wait so long for this? You know? So getting back to how creators stop undervaluing themselves and find the, uh, high paying clients. I'm curious when it came to, okay, I'm gonna start focusing on building my Creator business and thinking about the outcomes you wanted that business to have for you.
How did you think through that? 'cause I think. At least for me, I'm like, I'm just gonna do coaching. I wanna do everything to support that. [00:09:00] That's gonna be my life. And like saying that out loud, I'm like, that doesn't seem a lot like a lot of fun. Like there's other things I wanna do in my life and I wanna have space for that with my personality.
I will just ignore if I don't have a lot of calendar, you know? So, yeah. Could you walk us through how you designed your business to serve the lifestyle you wanted to have?
Yeah, this is a brilliant question because everything I've ever done in my business has boiled down to freedom. Mm. So when I first started my freelance writing business, my main priority, I.
Which did take a while to come to life was, was basically just that I wanted to have more freedom. So before I went freelance, I worked full-time as a writer and an editor in London, which was fun. Cool. But I was doing the typical nine to five Monday to Friday office job. There was always a joke in the office that every weekend I was offered to a new country.
This was one of the, the few perks of growing up in the uk. It's very easy to leave. Um, but it was one of these things where the whole time I worked full time, I was. [00:10:00] Trying to navigate one way or another, how I could then move away from the typical full-time setup into a business that was more freedom based.
Whilst the first year and a half of growing my freelance writing business was definitely not very freedom based as, as I imagine quite typical with anyone growing a business from scratch. It was always the end goal. And what I've done since then is when I grew my freelance writing to the point where I felt like I couldn't really work with that many more clients without then giving up more of my time.
I started to look into how I could transition that business into something more scalable, which is when I then ended coaching to my business and then turned that into its own separate business as well. And with that, I had the advantage that because I already had this foundation of my freelance writing, I could really look at my coaching from more of a, a macro perspective and think, how do I want this to fit into my overall business?
And how do I want this to fit into my overall life? And I worked backwards. I thought, I want to prioritize travel. I want to prioritize freedom. I want to make sure that I've got a [00:11:00] schedule that allows me to go to the gym, whatever time of day I want, and allows me to go for a sunset beach walk each day and allows me to, I don't know, go on a random Tuesday scuba diving trip if I want to, rather than having to, you know, say like, oh, I can't because I've got work.
Ultimately, I wanted to build a business. That allows me to work around my life rather than scheduling my life around my work. And I think when I had that end goal, I could just really reverse engineer what my day-to-day looks like in terms of the time that I set apart for creating content versus the time that I spend holding my coaching calls or doing the work for my freelance writing clients.
And just really segmenting things in a way that works best with my brain and just keeps that end goal of freedom just really at the forefront of everything that I do.
Awesome. Okay. I love, love that idea. So having designed your business intentionally, which is amazing, with this idea of freedom, of, you know, being able to schedule your life.
Yeah. Your life around work, not [00:12:00] the other way around. What is one of those things that you are like, man, I wish I would've implemented it. This thing earlier in that year of grinding. As you're like, I know this is the goal, but I gotta build this. Is there anything you would've done differently or anything, any advice you'd give to someone that is in that like build mode?
Yeah, so two things I wish I'd started doing earlier. One is consistent marketing, and the second is being Hoosier with my niche and the sort of clients that I wanted to work with. Hmm. I say those two things because when I think you do both of those together, I think success is. Pretty much inevitable. I think when you have got quite clear on who it is that you are talking to.
When you're creating this content, who is it that you want to consume? What action do you want this person to take? Having consumed your content? When you've got a very clear idea of who that person is, you can speak to them on a nice, consistent basis. Mm-hmm. When you're speaking to that person consistently.
You are gonna be, I mean, I don't really like to use marketing phrases, but like warming the mark. That person is gonna be consuming your content and [00:13:00] thinking. Yes. Like for example, Georgie's content speaks to exactly what I'm struggling with. Therefore, I trust her that I can reach out to her and maybe she can help me solve this problem that I'm struggling with.
And I think consistent marketing can be quite difficult to do in the beginning. Because either you fall into that trap of thinking that no one's listening to your content or watching your content, reading your content, and then you think, what's the point in me doing this? I'm just screaming into the void.
Mm-hmm.
Or I think if you haven't quite decided who it is that you want to speak to, what your audience is, what they want to learn from you, then I think it can end up that you are producing the content, but the content you're producing is quite vague. And it's that whole thing of if you're speaking to everyone, you're speaking to, no one.
And those are the two things that I think really did make me take the slow path when it came to growing my creative business. Just because had I spent a bit more time getting really clear on what exactly those two things looked like, I think it would've sped up the process a lot.
I giggled when you mentioned that because that, uh, defining like my audience and the people I wanted [00:14:00] to help in a way that allowed me to communicate in a way that's much more clear.
I've been a coach for like 10 years now. The first eight, nine years of it, I was of the mind of if I create stuff, the audience will just magically reveal itself. But, um, as I've been on my creator journey, like defining that avatar so you can understand like the pains and the struggles and the aspirations and all the, the marketing stuff.
It's really hard when you're very vague on all of it. Yeah,
and I think what I really noticed is that my audience grew so much faster when I did get clear on that. Mm-hmm. I use LinkedIn as a perfect example. So one of the platforms that I would consider myself a creator on is LinkedIn and. At its peak, I was gaining, I would say, about a thousand followers a month.
And that was purely just through really taking the time to think, who is this avatar? Who is the person that I'm helping with this content? What is it that they're struggling with? [00:15:00] What can I create that's gonna be easy for them to digest? It's gonna encourage them to take action. It's gonna be motivating.
And I think when I really nailed that, yeah, I mean, I grew my audience to. Just under 20,000 people on there so far, and wow. Lot to brag, but it hasn't really taken me that much effort, which is the best combination in my opinion.
That's like the secret sauce is like, how can I get results with it? Feeling effortless?
So that's amazing.
Thank
you so. Switching gears a little bit. I noticed in your, your bio that part of what you help your audience with is overcoming imposter syndrome, like the fear of pitching and and whatnot. I imagine you've struggled with these yourself. Yes. Could you quickly share how your journey through it and how that informs you on how you help your audience?
Yeah, so I feel like I've struggled with imposter syndrome for as long as I can remember. I think back to when I was about nine years old, I remember I got this opportunity [00:16:00] to go on our local radio station on Christmas Day and I, I mean, I don't think it was anything particularly fancy, but at the time it would've been a very cool experience and I didn't go for it.
'cause I was like, Ugh, I could never do that. And then when I was. 17, like through a family friend, I got offered work experience at MTV. Hmm. And I got an email from the person who would've, you know, I guess mentored me there. And I never replied to it because I was like, I'm gonna get there. And they're gonna be like, why have we taken her on?
Like, she's clearly not good enough for this. And then when I started my first proper job in London, I spent the entire first year waiting to be fired for literally no reason. I think I was, you know. As good as you would expect someone to be for their first year of a proper job. That anytime I got an email from my manager, anytime they called me in for a meeting, I would walk into this meeting and be like, cool, guess this is it.
I'm gonna be fired now.
Mm-hmm.
And it's just something that I can just remember struggling with for. Yeah, as long as I can remember really. And it's interesting because I wrote a statistic that said that 70% of people [00:17:00] struggle with imposter syndrome, which is ridiculous because it means, I'm sure there's a lot of people.
Who I look up to who also struggle with imposter syndrome. And similarly, I reckon there's people in my community who look up to me and they struggle with imposter syndrome and they want to be like me. And it's one of these things where it just feels like an endless cycle of something that we're all struggling with and we're all looking up to each other and all of us are just wanting to be like this person, not realizing that this person is also struggling.
And that, I think gave me quite a lot of confidence, both in. Learning to do it with my own imposter syndrome, and then also helping my clients with it as well, because I think when you understand that everyone else feels not necessarily exactly the same, but on a very, very similar mindset.
Mm-hmm.
I almost think that helps to take the pressure away from thinking like, okay, if I'm nervous, this other person's probably nervous.
We're all nervous, so you know, we're all in the same boat here. And I think that was probably the main thing that. Made me start approaching things with a bit more of a, a positive and [00:18:00] confident outlook, we'll say.
Yeah, I love that. You know? 'cause if you care enough about the things you're doing, you're going to get over your skis as they say.
And I love, I let that switch and that. Human connection of we all go through this. Like it's so much easier when you can get out of your head and be like, oh, okay. Like shared experience. Like I'm not the only person to ever feel like I don't belong in a job.
Yeah, exactly. I think just remembering that everyone feels the same way.
I remember when I did this past webinar that I'd been putting off for six months, it almost felt like I had an out of body experience. I remember talking to this crowd of, I think it was about. Maybe 50 or 60 people on this first one. And I kind of remember just like watching myself do this and I was talking and simultaneously watching myself and I was like, what are you even saying?
And it just, it felt ridiculous. I was kind of looking at myself thinking, you're doing quite a good job of this, but you're also very consciously aware that you are doing this. And it was the same when I started coaching. I remember. The first few people who paid me for coaching [00:19:00] calls, I was like, wow, this is such a, an unusual concept.
These people are paying just to hear my thoughts. And that in itself was very intimidating. But then you, you start to get this really lovely feedback. You start to get people commenting on your posts and sending you messages and saying things like. That video you did really resonated with me, or you know, I took the advice that you shared in that post and it worked, and now X, Y, and Z have happened.
And I think when you can prove to yourself as well that you can do the things that intimidated you, I think that's brilliant for overcoming that imposter syndrome or learning at least to acknowledge it and push through with it anywhere.
Yeah. The, the resilience to sit with it Yes. And move forward.
Mm-hmm. You know, I think is so important with so much of being a business owner, you know, there's gonna be tons of crazy things you never imagined happen that you're just like, okay, like this is what we're dealing with today, and. Talking about imposter syndrome, do you have any favorite techniques for overcoming it?
Is it those two questions you mentioned before? Is it something else?
One thing I like to [00:20:00] do, and I wish I'd named it something better when I first created it, but when I first started freelancing on, I guess one of the first occasions when I did have a day when I was like, I can't do this. What am I doing?
I don't deserve to be doing this. I made something called a nice things document. And a nice things document was a Google document called Nice Things and it had all of the copied and pasted client feedback that I'd got. So any, any nice words that a client had sent me, anything they'd commented on some of my work, I would take a screenshot of it, I would paste it onto my nice things document.
I see people nowadays calling them things like a SMILE file or like a, a Sunshine document 'cause it makes you feel warm and all of these kind of things. Um, and it's something that I've continued building throughout. However long I've been doing this now five years full-time and a couple of years before that part-time.
And it's something that I encourage everyone that I work with to do as well because I think on those days when you do have imposter syndrome, if you've got this lovely document of really nice feedback, if people were saying like, you're brilliant at this. Thank you so much for this. You really helped me with that.[00:21:00]
I'd just love to read through that on those days when I do struggle with imposter syndrome and just remind myself, this is completely normal, but look, you are good at this. Here are some nice, you know, physical evidence that you are good at what you do.
Awesome. About how many times do you, or how frequently do you go back to that document outta curiosity?
Less so nowadays, the times that I go back to it nowadays are things that, let's say that I'm sending a proposal to a client and I want to send them a higher rate than I would typically send, or if I'm taking on a new project, if I'm doing something else that's a bit, a bit more outside of my comfort zone than usual, I will refer back to it then.
So I would say on average. Maybe like once every six to eight weeks, but when I was in the earlier stages of growing my business, I would probably read through it. Like once a week. I think I had it bookmarked for a long time, and sometimes if this was a particularly nerve wracking period, I would just keep the, the tab open and then every time I needed to refer back to, but I just open the tab, have a quick skim read of all of these [00:22:00] lovely things that people said and then continue with my day.
That's amazing. I love the, the habit of what I need to shift my energy. Yes. That you have like, oh, I got this thing that I can actively do to stop the negative. Not the negative. Stop the unhelpful feelings. Yes. And get back to a place where like, okay, I'm good. I can. Get back to what I need to do.
Yeah. I also like to give myself an actual pep talk.
And this is maybe not something that is wise or sensible to share publicly, but sometimes I just talk out loud to myself. So sometimes I will just walk around the house and if I'm having a day where I'm feeling very nervous, I would just give myself a pep talk out loud, which has been hilarious sometimes I'm sure for people who've like walked past my window and had me muttering away to myself.
But I find that really helpful as well. 'cause I think sometimes I think growing a creative business can be. Yeah, it can be a bit lonely I think, if you don't have colleagues in the traditional sense. Mm-hmm. And I think whereas if you were in an office environment and I dunno, you have a bad day, whatever that [00:23:00] looks like, you can just turn to the person next to you and probably runt away about it to them.
They can probably turn to you and be like, actually you know what, Georgie, you are great at what you do. Here's some evidence, you know, go off and do the scary thing. Whereas I think when you do just have you by yourself, I think sometimes you need to give yourself that pep talk. Mm-hmm. So sometimes I will just do that.
It's the same if I'm. Getting a bit caught up in what my direction is, or if I'm lacking clarity, I will just pace around the house. I will ask myself questions and I will get to the bottom of whatever it is that I'm struggling with.
It's amazing you bring that up and cannot remember the study, but there's a po I think a positive psychology like research article on how talking to yourself.
Is more effective than just like thinking it or reading it. So there's something behind there like with research backed that, um, it's a highly effective or it's more effective to speak to yourself in the mirror or at large than to not. So just wanted at perfect.
I'm gonna hunt this study down and, and quote it next time [00:24:00] someone catches me talking to myself
right on.
In your current version of your business, right? So you've had this intention to design it, you know, for freedom and for these other things. I'm assuming you probably achieved that. What's next? Is it just maintaining or how do you think through like, okay, I achieved this thing and maybe you haven't achieved it.
Maybe I'm making an assumption here, so correct me if I'm wrong there too, but you know, how are you thinking through like what's the next. Like greater version of my life.
Ooh. Yeah. This is pretty interesting. And it's interesting because the whole time that I've been growing these businesses, I've. Never really had a very specific end point.
And I think that's mostly because like for example, when I first quit my job in London, when I went freelance, I said to myself, you know, you're not gonna earn as much as you were earning in London, which spoiler alert was not very much. But I was like, it's fine because you [00:25:00] get that freedom. And freedom has always been more valuable.
Mm-hmm. And
then it completely scaled and now I earn. I would say almost four times what I was earning when I was in London, which was a really lovely surprise. Hmm. So I did have an income goal that I wanted to hit at one point, and then when I hit that income goal for the first time two years ago, I did kind of get to this point of being like, Hmm, what now?
And it did really make me think what would actually be more meaningful to me in my life? Like what are the next steps? And for me. I think the main thing I'm focusing on this year is reducing my working week to three days per week because last year I did 3.5 days. Mm-hmm. This year I would like to get it down to three days and therefore pick up one or two new hobbies as well.
So I think for me, I'm very bad at switching off. Um, I have a terrible attention span. There is an ongoing joke with my friends that if you mention a film there is a 99% chance I have not seen it. So I need to find things that allow me to switch off because when I switch off. Ideas, and I think that in turn then powers me to keep doing more things.[00:26:00]
So one of the things I think I'm focusing on next is actually not necessarily scaling things down, but refining them in terms of my systems and processes and in terms of the days of the week that I take calls and things like that. On the other side of things, the next goals that I have for myself are to do more kind of community building things.
So. I want to look into holding like one retreat, possibly two this year for freelance creators. Um, I also want to be holding, well, in fact, I will be holding an online summit in we march, um, which will be for lance writers. So really more community building, like helping people find those connections, helping people to help each other to grow their businesses as well.
And yeah, more in-person connections and. I think that's kind of the goal for now.
Right on. Cool. I was curious about that. Okay, so to get back to the question, how do we help creators stop undervaluing themselves and find [00:27:00] their audience that's respectful and high paying and all that? Do you have like a framework or do you have a way that you think through it or is it kind of like a one-off for each creator?
So with the nature of my coaching, it is very bespoke. It is very one-to-one, but there are some foundations that I do take everyone through. Okay. One of the things that I like to get people to do is write out what their goal is for the 12 months ahead in terms of what their ideal day looks like, so that they can reverse engineer that to start building out the client base and the projects that will help them get to that point.
One of the initial things I also get people to do is write down a boundaries list. Mm. So the things that are important to them when it comes to working with new clients, when it comes to, you know, deciding what you say yes to, what you say no to, where you focus your efforts, because I think. One of the things I really struggled with at the beginning was people pushing my boundaries because I didn't really know what my boundaries were.
So it wasn't just a case of saying yes or no to things because I didn't really know what I was happy to do, what I wasn't happy to do, and so on. So when I get clients to [00:28:00] do this early on, it's very useful because I can say to people, or rather I can say to my clients, who can then say to people. You know, this is the lowest rate that I would accept.
Um, this is the working hours I'm happy to cover. Um, this is how many times a day. I'm happy to check my emails. And when you've got these things written down in front of you, I think it's doubly beneficial. I think it makes you feel more confident when you are on the phone to people or like having discovery calls and things like that.
And it also means that you're not gonna doubt yourself when it comes to repeating these things, almost in the case that if you've got it written down in front of you, when someone asks you if, if you know, if you don't mind doing this out of hours, or you don't mind checking something at a time that you haven't agreed to, if you can look at the sheet in front of you and be like, Nope, I don't do this.
It almost takes it out of your hand. And then it almost makes it feel like it's not a personal thing, it's just a business decision. And that I think. Making sure that the actions you're taking are aligned with your business and remembering that it's therefore not a personal thing. I think that's a huge thing when it comes to working with clients who respect you and working with high paying [00:29:00] clients because you're realizing that both the, the decision you make and this, and the answer that comes back to you are not personal things, which I think really helps to.
To streamline the conversations you have and to feel better about the answers you receive.
Awesome. I love the the do not do list, you know, that's what I've, uh, called it with my clients. Yeah. There, there's so much power in thinking about the opposite side of things. 'cause really, like so many people are like, I'm down to do X, Y, Z and that's the easy decisions.
The other decisions are like, what would the. What's outta bounds for my values, for my time, for that intention I have for my business, which I love Tying back to.
Yeah, and I, I love, what I find very useful as well is that because I'm a freelance writer and everyone that I coach is also a freelance writer, I think it's very useful because then I can often tell people things from my experience and I think mm-hmm.
Often [00:30:00] when you are in the early stages, it's hard to recognize the red flag clients unless you've actually experienced them yourself. That's when I think it's very useful to work with a coach because if you can work with someone who's been there, done that, got the horrible red flags to remember these clients by, it's much easier to advise people.
And if a client comes to me and says, okay, well this person's asked me to do X, Y, Z, and when I said no, they said A, B, C, or whatever. Mm-hmm. I think it's much easier if I can then go back then and say, okay. In my experience, this usually means that this client is, you know, the next step might be this, or if they say that to you, then maybe you should go back and say something like this.
And I mean, I never tell my coaching clients what to do. Mm-hmm. But I advise them based on my own experience, and I will say to them like, okay, so maybe they'll give you one of these three responses. Have a think about what your response would be to each of these options. We can talk through what that looks like to you in terms of your response, and we can take it from there.
Holding people's hands step by step as they go through this, making sure that everyone feels supported and empowered, [00:31:00] and I'm remembering that it is their business, so they might as well grow it in a way that feels best to them.
Yeah. 'cause the, the opposite is you grow it in a way that makes you feel miserable, and then you don't love the work that you do, which is, nobody wants that.
I don't want that for anybody listening, so please don't do that. But it's easy to get stuck there if it's not. If you're not aware of it.
Yes, definitely. And I think with boundaries, it's one of these things where the first time they get pushed, it's frustrating, but it's very easy to then fall down this spiral of watching 'em get pushed a little bit more each time until eventually you've ended up working with someone who does not respect you and does not pay you your value and is just doing all of these terrible things that you may not have noticed because.
You know, this process has been going on for a while, so I think having some kind of sheet of like the, the do not dos or like the red flags to look out for is just useful, even just for cross-referencing. Like, how is this person acting? How does this compare to the list? Is this something I should be keeping an eye on and taking it from there?
Mm. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Uh, it's reminded me, I [00:32:00] did this for the podcast for people, how I find guests and topics I do and, and whatnot. So it's applicable for not just clients, but other aspects of your business of that would impact your quality of life. So that's,
yeah,
maybe how I would tie that together.
Yeah, and it's so interesting 'cause I think sometimes we think of impacting quality of life, even just from, I don't know the amount we're getting paid, but I think there's so many other factors involved when it comes to the clients. And I think the clients that respect you and the clients that pay you well may not necessarily always be the same client.
And I think just even taking a step back every so often and doing like. A small order of the people that you're working with and just thinking, does this person tick the boxes? Like one of the things I was saying to my coaching clients at the end of last year was going through the list of people you worked with this year and telling them up as to whether they're net positive or net negative in the sense that, let's say that they pay very well, but they're terrible to work with and they always be you late.
That to me would be a [00:33:00] net negative, whereas maybe someone who pays you a tiny bit less but always pays you on time, is lovely to work with, refers you to other people that would still be a net positive. And then just going through these people, just tagging them, like let's say green and red for if they're a good client overall or a bad client overall.
And then just using that information. A, to refine your marketing and refine your approach, but also B, just keeping that in mind for the next clients that you may go on to work with for if they are, you know, a positive to your business or if they're gonna bring you down.
Right. Yeah, that's great. Like we, I don't want Tims, there's a Tim guy that was tar.
I'm not, I'm kidding. So what have you found beautiful or surprising in serving your audience of female f freelance creators? Ooh.
Ooh, that's a great question. What have I found beautiful or surprising? One thing I've really, really loved that I have found both surprising and quite beautiful is the the kind of rebound [00:34:00] impact that this work can have in the sense that a few years back, I worked with one coaching client who then grew her business into an agency and then ended up having almost too much work we'll say, and then worked with another client further down the line.
These two clients. Ended up meeting through me and then one of them ended up hiring the other. Mm. And to my knowledge, they still work together. This is like two years on. I've had coaching clients who've met up around the world, um, for my, a cohort of my group coaching course a couple of years ago. A lot of them still have a WhatsApp group and they check in with each other all the time and they meet up around the world.
Like when I started doing this. The initial reason that I started was because I found it very frustrating how many people in the freelance creative world were getting taken advantage of because they didn't necessarily have that roadmap. And so when I started coaching, I was like, this is the core problem that I want to, you know, not necessarily alleviate, but do my bit to change.
And I just didn't realize. How much wider of an impact it could have in terms of people building their communities and people [00:35:00] being able to do these really life changing things like take their businesses remote and travel the world and, you know, then go on to meet their partners and stuff like that.
So yeah, it's been really lovely.
Yeah. Well that's so cool. You never know the the type of ripples we have out in the world.
Yeah, and I guess, and another one on that would be the confidence that it's given me.
Mm.
Because I think when I was writing. I felt like I kind of knew the path that my business would take, and that would essentially be just to keep on writing and maybe build up the writing side of things.
And then when I decided to branch out into the coaching and into more creative based stuff, it's just really broadened my horizons as to what else I can achieve. Mm. And that's been really fun from a motivation perspective, but also from just like a curiosity and creativity perspective of thinking, what else can I do?
Like. I can do so many different things. Like the world is my oyster when it comes to what direction I take this business in, and the confidence that has come from that.
With that, is there anything else we haven't covered yet on how to help [00:36:00] creators to stop undervaluing themselves and find the clients that they work best with?
Ooh. One other exercise that I recommend to a lot of people is writing a letter from Future You to currently, and this is something that I do myself for every year. I use a website called, I think it's future me.org, and you can basically write an email and that email gets scheduled and it gets sent to you on a date in the future.
So I receive one on my birthday every year that I write to myself. You know, usually the best day before that, and that I find. Maybe in a bit of a roundabout way, but that I find very useful for motivating you to really focus on the clients you want to work with, the things you want to achieve, the rates that you want to set.
Because if you tell yourself that you're gonna receive this letter in a year's time, you can really think about where you want to be in a year's time and then think, okay, if I want to become that person, what actions do I need to take now? And I think when you're second guessing yourself as to if a client is worth your time, if a rate is worth the effort it's gonna take.
If you can think to yourself like, okay, well [00:37:00] future, Georgie has written a letter saying that I should be charging minimum X, Y, Z for this type of work. If I'm charging less than that now, then like, am I gonna become that version of myself in the future? And it maybe, it sounds like quite a minimal thing, but even just thinking of future, you kind of looking back at current you and being like, no, you can do it.
Like charge higher, believe in yourself. I found that quite motivating over the years.
Yeah. That, that's one of the things in my coaching process that we have, you coach yourself in the moment. Hmm. Which is similar because you, you're imagining yourself five years in the future being like, what do you really need to hear right now with this thing that you're dealing with and nine times outta 10?
It's profound and
yeah, I really love it. It's, it's something that I look forward to receiving on my birthday every year, and I think it is something that keeps me pushing forward with everything that I'm working to achieve.
This has been such a lovely call. Uh, in the show notes, we'll put whatever links that you want for people to follow you up, but what's the one place people should go to [00:38:00] follow up or support you or learn more about what you're doing?
Ooh, probably my website, which is www.thefreedomroute.com. And that is root spelled R-O-U-T-E. Yeah. There's also my Instagram and my LinkedIn, but I would spam you with links like in this way because it's difficult to, to write them down that way.
Yeah. We appreciate it. And again, it's in the the show notes, but then finally, what did you love about our conversation today?
I love that you've really made me reflect on being a creator and. How exciting and how freedom focused this is as a career path, because I think often it's so easy to keep on pushing forward and think about what we want to achieve next, and it's really made me reflect on what I've achieved so far and what it means to be a creator.
And yeah, how I've definitely chosen the most fun career path, in my opinion.
Georgie, thank you so much for your time, your [00:39:00] energy, your knowledge, and for everything you shared today. I know it's gonna really help out the, the folks listening.
Ah, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's gonna our privilege.
Thanks. And with that, we'll see you in the next episode of Creators That Crush. Take Care folks.
