There are so many gurus out there, telling us how THEY did something, promising you it will work for you. But the truth? It won’t.
What works for THEM will not work for YOU – you are not them. It’s as simple as that.
But, we do need some kind of framework, right? We have to start somewhere, some template, some values or mission and vision that inspires us. And instead of focusing on finding frameworks that TELL you what to do, what I’d love for you to consider going forward, is to look for frameworks that ALLOW you to do what YOU want to do – that help give you structure that you can flow within. And a structure that – quite frankly – you can apply to ANYTHING you do … the work you do, the life you live, the people you commit yourself to.
That’s what we’re talking about today.
You know the old adages that shame us for not taking action? Sayings like:
- “The only way to get what you want is to ask for it.”
- “The only shot you miss is the one you don’t take.”
- “Carpe diem.”
I’ve never really liked these sayings, and I think it’s because the underlying belief here is that WE are the reason that we’re not doing something right. And, yes, maybe that’s true in part. But it’s not all on us, either. Society tells us we have to be perfect, look perfect, sound perfect, act perfectly in order to be successful, to “get it right” or to get that client – but that’s a lie.
The truth is, everyone’s just trying to make it, trying new things, trying to make a change in their life and business and career.
What if instead of thinking about what we’re NOT doing, we consider the fact that society has created standards and norms that make us feel that if we don’t do it right the first time, that somehow, that means we shouldn’t do it at all.
The other day, I posted about failure in my Instagram Stories. It’s okay to fail. But it’s not okay to fail the same way twice. The thing is that “failing” the same way twice means you didn’t learn the lesson you were supposed to learn from the first experiment. Yes, I said it – the experiment. Life is just an experiment. Every decision, every boundary, every reset expectation? All experiments!
Every time you try something new, you’re saying: “This is my hypothesis, let’s run the experiment!” and sometimes, at the end of the experiment, you say, “oh crap it didn’t work as expected…” And when that happens, we evaluate the data, then choose: rerun the experiment or quit. Most people quit because it didn’t work as expected the first time. Or, they stay in bad situations because they think that’s their punishment for the experiment not going as planned.
But, let’s be honest: it can take a few tries to finagle the environment to match your needs and desires. Sometimes, yes – we need to quit. But 99.9873% of the time? We should run the experiment again.
Every single time you try something, you learn how NOT to do it – you learn what you LIKE, and you learn what you do NOT like. Every single time you take action, you get more clarity about what’s next in your experiment. And, that, my friend, is confidence. And with confidence, comes courage. Because without that tiny action, you would not have gotten the clarity you needed to get more confident and to get even more courageous.
The truth is, once you have that clarity around your FAILURES, i.e. what worked and what did not, you can then tweak your behavior towards something you think will work next time. This is how you can attract the right people, and the right projects, and the right pay.
But knowing all of the things that didn’t go right that one time you tried, and never running the experiment again? That can add up. And then, it can just feel like a big pile of nothing-ever-good-happens-to-me, which then feels heavier and heavier to hold, so much so that we don’t want to try because we don’t want to do it wrong “again” … but I’m here to tell you that pile of crap goes away – but only if you start to make decisions around what works best for YOU and what FEELS right to YOU.
It means stop doing what other people tell you to do – their “magic formula” – and instead, create your OWN magic formula. Your own framework. And you can do it with someone like me, who provides you with the space to answer the questions about what YOU want to do. Because there’s no amount of money that will make you want to do something you don’t want to do. And if a client isn’t paying timely, or they’re micromanaging you, or just, you know, overall being an annoying client, there’s nothing that they can do – or you can do – to make yourself be happy about the work you’re doing.
At the end of the day, the key to getting the right people on your client roster, and the right projects that light you up, and the right pay that makes you want to dance into a waterfall … that key is simple.
It’s about BEING YOURSELF. That’s what I want for you – to be yourself, 100% – showing up weird and wild and wacky. Letting your tats show and wearing your rainbow earrings and saying what you need and want from clients BEFORE they become your clients.
This is what I do every single day, right? Helping people just like you … helping them to be honest about the truth of what it means to work with them. Even if that truth is a set of strict rules about scope creep and steep hourly rates for anything outside of your scope. That’s a boundary. Or even if that truth is around communication and being clear that you want your clients to answer you within a certain number of business days. That’s an expectation. Even if it means putting both of those things in writing – that’s a decision. It’s not scary; it’s reality. Because until they’re your client, they owe you nothing. But once they become your client, they owe you the same level of respect and trust and communication they expect of you.
At the end of the day, your work is not just about helping a client. Your work is also about protecting YOU – protecting YOUR peace, YOUR heart, YOUR reputation. And this applies even if you’re working for an agency or organization, but this especially applies if you’re a freelancer or taking clients on your own.
There’s a real difference between being an employee and being self-employed. But being self-employed still rings too … how can I say this … EMPLOYED. 🤣
If you dream of being your own business owner (or maybe you are one now and you’re feeling like an employee for a bunch of clients), then you have to do what’s necessary to get the clarity you need, to develop the confidence to speak, and the courage to follow through on the consequences of your actions and the client’s. But if there are no consequences outlined, then YOU are the one who will suffer. You and you alone. But chances are, you already knew that, yeah?
Most creatives are doing what they think everyone around them is doing, or doing what they think the “industry standard” is (spoiler alert: the industry standard doesn’t actually exist).
When you have the clarity, the confidence, the COURAGE even, then you don’t need to say yes to crappy clients because you’re just trying to make rent. Instead, you attract the right kinds of people, the right kinds of projects, and the right pay to you.
When you outline the expectations you have of clients – you know, things like communication and intellectual property rights and payment terms – then you don’t need to keep reminding clients of the rules or keep putting up guardrails. Instead, you actually set strong boundaries that ensure your personal life is stress-free, too. You make decisions that feel good.
When you make sure you have the systems and processes and contract in place that fully speaks to you – your process, your expectations, your boundaries – then you don’t need to keep bending over backwards, hoping your client pays you extra for the out-of-scope work (spoiler again: they won’t unless your contract says so and you’re clear about what’s in scope and out of scope).
When you do all of these things, then you actually create an ecosystem for yourself that protects your peace, protects your heart, and protects your reputation. You create your own experience around what it means to do the work you love, for people and causes you actually care about. And you will attract clients and work and pay that is aligned with that.
The problem I’ve always seen with creatives, though, is that rather than taking a bit of time to figure all this stuff out on the front end, they just jump right in, start taking clients, and say they’ll “figure it out later” – but later never comes. And I know that, because I’m a lawyer for creatives. I have seen the shitshows that have come up because someone didn’t take the time to make sure their contract said what they wanted it to, or even that they had a contract to begin with. Procrastination is real. But all procrastination is, is the avoidance of an emotion – so if you’re avoiding doing a task, what emotion are you avoiding on the other side of it?
A lot of creatives feel like it’s too stuffy to have an actual, real, professional client contract. They’re afraid that if they put a bunch of rules in front of a potential client, that the potential client will bail. So, they don’t even TRY. That’s because they’re afraid of rejection, afraid that they’re not good enough, afraid that someone will see right through their facade and somehow, they’ll be seen as a fraud.
So, what do I want you to do with this information? I want you to stop winging it, stop pretending that being “easy to work with” and “flexible” are badges of honor. Instead, I want you to create your OWN framework, your OWN systems, your OWN processes, your OWN contract – all based on what matters most to YOU. No one can tell you what matters most to you – only you can do that. Assuming you’re asked the right questions.
So, instead of saying yes to every potential client that walks through the door, be more discerning about whether YOU want THEM to be your client.
That means you need to get clear about what matters to you in your work, for your client roster, in your compensation. Even what kind of clients and projects you want to take on in the first place.
It means you need to be clear about what you expect from your working relationships with clients, and that you’re outlining what it looks like to work with you – and that you do all of that BEFORE they become your client, so that they know what they’re getting into.
That means you need to be proactive about protecting your peace, your heart, your reputation.
To have great clients and life-giving projects and excellent pay, you need to get clearer, so you can feel more confident, so you can go and be courageous.
A great place to start is my free interactive guide, the 12 Tweaks to a Clearer Client Contract. To go through and to answer a few questions about the topics, seeing how you can start to tweak your contract to make it more … well … YOU. Not a robot. Not a template you got off the internet or a friend. But to bring YOU to the table, so that what happens in the day-to-day with you in the project matches what they see before they say yes.
At the end of the day, we all want better clients, better projects, and better pay. And it’s not something that just happens overnight.
It takes a bit of time – not too much, really, a few months – to sit down and focus. It’s easier to do when you have some Gentle Accountability with someone like me, a coach consultant lawyer … but the truth is, you won’t get where you want to go unless you sit down. Focus. Stop winging it.
When I started out, to an extent, I was winging it … but looking back, now I see that every single interaction I had was just an experiment. I had some royal client failures – and when I did, I learned my lesson: I never took another client like that person ever again. And I integrated those lessons into my systems, my processes, my intake, my contract – because otherwise, I was going to just keep attracting crappy clients.
And when I started to be super clear about what I did and did NOT want, I felt confident in telling a potential client no. I felt courageous after I’d say no and the world didn’t end!
The shift was pretty quick to start to get the right kinds of people and projects and pay in my life. But I had to make the changes. I had to focus. I had to tweak and tweak and tweak – incremental changes that have helped me learn all the lessons that I share with you here on the podcast.
At the end of the day, my focus was on setting the right boundaries, clarifying my expectations of my clients, and making decisions that I knew in my heart and soul were the right ones for me.
- When’s the last time you did that for yourself?
- How are you protecting your peace, your heart, your reputation? Are you?
That free interactive guide that I mentioned will help you start inserting that ounce of prevention that leads to a pound of cure into your contract, into your client relationships.
And look, over the years, I have helped plenty of creatives with fixing their contracts, their processes, their systems, their intake, their messaging, their missions and visions and values, too. The truth is, we all struggle with this to some degree. But someone else can ALWAYS see you better than you can see yourself. So, as we wrap up, just know that you’re not alone.
- Society wants you to believe that if you don’t present yourself perfectly to a potential client, that you’ll lose the sale.
- Society wants you to believe that if you have expectations about how you want to be treated, that somehow you’re putting people out by asking for it.
- Society wants you to believe that the client is always right, even when they’re not your client.
And none of these are true.
My mission, my focus, has always been on making sure you have the tools and skills and words you need to be clear and confident in your working relationships.
I care about whether you have the right client for YOU. There are plenty of fish in the sea. If you want the friendliest pufferfish in the sea – the Amazon Puffer – then you can have that.
The only person telling you that you can’t have that amazing client is YOU.
And look, of course you can keep doing what you’re doing, but if you never stand up for yourself, always bending over backward for clients who don’t deserve you, then that’s all you’re going to get. But don’t believe for one single second that those are the kinds of clients you deserve. You DESERVE the friendliest puffer fish in the sea, if that’s what you want. But to get the friendliest puffer, you have to step into yourself, sink back into your own knowing. You have to have SPACE to drop back in and tell your truth, even if it means not taking on a crappy client. It’s hard at first, to say thanks but no thanks … but it opens up all the space for the whole body hell yes for the Amazon puffer that’ll be coming at you later.
And, if you need support, I’ll be running an 8-week Contracts Course soon – I’ll throw the waitlist link into the show notes – but also, go do my free 12 Simple Tweaks Form to help you get a clearer client contract. I’m here if you need me.
Next Steps
- Free Interactive Guide: “12 Simple Tweaks to a Clearer Client Contract”
- Take the Quiz! Identify and start fixing your people-pleasing patterns today!
- Get on the Waitlist for the 8-Week Contracts Course!
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Hi! I’m Sheila, your guide to a Joyful and Thriving™ creative life! I have lots of titles: attorney, social worker, coach, consultant, keynote speaker, educator. And while I’m proud of those titles, I am a human first and a title second – just like you. I want to help you reset expectations, set boundaries, and make aligned decisions, so you can streamline and focus your energy on the people, projects, and pay that actually matter to you.
Instagram: @sheilamwilkinson | LinkedIn
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