“I’m just too busy”

You know, today was my first day as a full-time freelancer three years ago. To be honest, I thought I’d have more free time than when I was gone 12 hours a day every week. I really cashed that one wrong.

Is it hard work? Not really, compared to some of the jobs I’ve held. Cleaning backcountry shower houses in New Mexico was a lot harder than this.

Working on jets when it feels like it’s -5° outside is a whole lot harder than this. Loading semi-trailers for 12 hours? Way hard.

This is not hard work, at least not physically. But it’s also not something where I’m putting in 90 minutes a day as some influencers would have you think. So, it’s not hard like working in construction or in a warehouse.

It’s hard in that every single thing that happens to your career as a solopreneur is on you, and that’s a lot of weight to shoulder. So, if you take getting paid seriously, you’re going to be putting a lot of content out into the universe. And content is work by another name. The content you create to promote yourself and your services is generally unpaid. You aren’t getting a stipend to promote yourself, so it is taking time and energy that could be going toward paid work.

But you will keep creating self-promoting content out there because it is the only way to promote your work. The same is true for putting in bids on Upwork, or creating a Fiverr profile, or any of the other things that take time and energy with no immediate ROI.

That was the bad news. Now for the white pill.

Nobody else is going to keep kicking themselves in the nuts, day in and day out. If you can stomach reaction after rejection, no traction at all for weeks or months, you will eventually be unbeatable. The blueprint for success is that simple. I am no genius. When someone says, “Somebody less talented and less smart than you are making more money than you,” that somebody is me.

My superpower is tolerating getting metaphorically kicked in the scrotum. Part of it is age; at 41, I finally started feeling patient. I know this is the way, so I just do it. If you can master patience and will truly trust the simple method of producing content longer than your competitors, you’re going to succeed.