Treasa Edmond (00:00)
Hey there and welcome back to Boss Responses. When the economy is down and clients aren't hiring, what do you do? Perhaps more importantly, how do you deal with the uncertainty and emotional toll you experience during downturns in business? Today's question deals with all of that and our listener also asks, is freelancing actually sustainable? Let's see what Ed has to say and I'll share my perspectives as well.

If you're a freelancer, business owner, or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades. And in that time, I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome, and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business.

Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions. And Fridays, we dive deep to explore how our co-host embraced their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses.

We are back for day two with Ed. Yesterday's session was great. I can't wait to hear what your answer is for today. The question is, I'm just going to jump right into it, is lately I've been feeling stuck. Work has slowed down and I can't tell if it's just a rough patch or if the economy is playing a bigger role. I find myself doom scrolling job boards, that's never good, and questioning whether this whole freelance thing is sustainable long-term. How do I handle the emotional side of freelancing?

when work isn't flowing like it used to.

Ed Deason (01:50)
It's an interesting one. And it's a tough one. this is, mean, you if you spend two minutes on LinkedIn, you'll see 20 different posts about faecal famine, you know, you'll see people talking about the economy. It's, it feels like a pretty hot topic at the moment for fairly obvious reasons that we're not going to dive into too much. So I had a very similar conversation with a client quite recently. And there's, I guess, almost two answers to this in terms of

what you're asking about the economy itself. So the first one is, when there is an economic, and this comes from the kind of the MBA, the business corporate background that I've got, right? Yes, when there is an economic downturn, it is harder to get work. Yeah, that's very much on a kind of a macro level. Yeah, when businesses are feeling the pressure, they cut back on spending, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so on a macro level, there is less investment in things like freelancers.

in things like external services, businesses try and do as much in-house as they possibly can. Yeah, because it's cheaper because they're trying to save budget. Yeah, that's a very macro level. at a micro level, which is, let's face it, the place that we're operating, right? We're running small businesses. We might have five to 10 clients at a time, right? That is a very micro level. Yeah. At a micro level, it doesn't really matter so much because you only need five clients.

to have a sustainable business. The fact that the overall market's gone from, I don't know, a million potential customers to 900,000 potential customers doesn't really matter when you only need five customers. And that might feel like maybe a bit of blasé way of talking about it, because it feels harder to get those clients. But fundamentally, that's what you need to kind of bear in mind is you only need a small number of clients to make your business sustainable. So really, I guess on the emotional side of things, it's remembering that actually it's only a few clients.

That's what you're looking for. know, you're not the fact that the whole economy is shrinking is not super relevant here. It's okay. How can I position myself in a way that makes me the most attractive offering? What is it that I'm going to do as an individual to go and get those five clients? The fact that the economy is slow shouldn't really matter to you that much because you just go, okay, what are the things that I need to do? What are the actions that I need to take on a regular basis that are going to get me those five clients?

you can find five clients, anyone can find five clients if they're prepared to put the hard work in.

Treasa Edmond (04:20)
And it takes hard work sometimes.

Ed Deason (04:22)
Definitely. that's the thing. And I think that's the relevant point here is it is harder when the economy is in a downturn, but it's not unsustainable, in my view. Freelancing is still a very viable approach if you're prepared to put the work in.

Treasa Edmond (04:37)
have two minds on this question because I think that absolutely freelancing is sustainable long term, but it's not sustainable long term for every person. Some people just aren't suited for it. They don't like it for one reason or another. They're uncomfortable with it. They really don't like going out and finding clients. They don't like doing that hard work. They'd rather have someone just give them stuff. There is nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If however, you really love freelancing and

you love the freedom it brings and you like running your business, then yes, it's sustainable. I ⁓ actually promised Ed I wasn't going to talk about AI on this, but I'm not going to talk about AI and the fact that it's part of the problem. I'm going to say that I actually took this question or a question very like it to AI a while back. And I'm like, okay, here's the situation, because I wanted to see what it would say. Here's the situation.

Economy issues, finding clients is more difficult, but not impossible. It's also difficult to get a job. What are the pros and cons of keeping with my freelance business or getting a J.O.B.? Because I think that's a dirty word. And it surprised me and said, freelancing is more sustainable. With freelancing, you have more control over what happens. And with freelancing, you have the potential to make significantly more money than you ever will in a J.O.B. So I was

pleasantly surprised by that. Now the emotional bits.

I'm a believer in prioritizing self care. So if you know you are going to be suffering emotionally from what's going on, or if you are already suffering, you need to prioritize handling that so that you can focus your best self on your business. So that might mean talking to someone. You might need a counselor or maybe just a friend to brainstorm solutions, a business coach.

could help you walk through how you can structure things so you are more sustainable, so that you don't have these ebbs and flows as much, so that you are booking out, like I said in the call yesterday, six months. You might want to take a vacation. Go set on a mountain or on a beach for five days and not worry about things. Give yourself a bit of a reset and do the thing. I know a lot of people right now

are struggling emotionally and it is impacting their business. And that's okay. It's going to happen. What's not okay is if you don't do anything about it. So you need to realize it's a problem and take active steps. And you hear me say this about just about every problem, right? Maybe I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's the truth. If you have an issue, it can be emotionally dealing with the economy or the political or AI or any of those things.

Ed Deason (07:11)
Mm.

Treasa Edmond (07:31)
If you have an issue and you just let it stay an issue, that's on you. If you have an issue and you take steps to resolve that issue, that makes you a mature adult and a good business owner. Just kind of across the board. So you have to be proactive in every aspect of your business and your life. your emotional health is one of those.

Ed Deason (07:53)
Yeah, and I think that's totally fair. And I think, you know, if you are someone who

really struggles when you can't see a way forward, when it really struggles when the uncertainty is, you're in a kind of an environment where there's a high level of uncertainty, freelancing might not be the right kick for you. And again, that, kind of like you said, that is okay. Yeah, it's okay to go, actually, this isn't a fit for who I am. And that's a good decision to make rather than try and kind of plug away at it, always feeling uncomfortable, always feeling uncertain.

always feeling like I don't know what to do next.

Treasa Edmond (08:35)
Yeah. And you know, I've said this on the podcast before too. There are a thousand ways to run a freelance business and you have to run yours in the way that feels right to you. And this is one of those issues. I do want to address the elephant in the room here, which is the doom scrolling job boards. Just don't ever do that. Yeah. I mean, if you are finding the majority of your work on job boards anyway, then your business might not be sustainable. know, I know there are

Ed Deason (08:53)
You

Treasa Edmond (09:04)
gurus out there who say, make $100,000 a month on Upwork. They are full of it unless they are outsourcing a lot of that, which is totally against the terms of Upwork. It's just not possible. What you can do though is maybe look at your business processes. You know, what is more sustainable than job boards? How can I build that referral network? Like we talked about yesterday, if you didn't listen to that yet, go listen to it. How can I find the right clients? Who is my ideal client? You really need to do some business work

and figure out what you want your business to be before you can make your business that thing. It doesn't just magically happen. Actually, I've talked to like three people in all of my freelancing years that it did magically happen to, but they had other people doing it for them. you know, someone made it happen. Someone made it happen. So in most of our cases, it has to be us. But yeah, this is a tricky situation and I feel for you. I do. I do think it's sustainable.

do you think you need to deal with the emotional side of it? I mean, we can't just, my thing is I give myself 24 hours. If I'm in an emotional crisis, if all I can do is think I'm just gonna sit here and cry, I give myself 24 hours, which actually for me, it's usually overnight. Sleeping usually gets rid of the angst. So I set a time limit. Otherwise I could dwell for forever. I mean, we've all figured out already that I have emotions.

⁓ and some of them are pretty strong, but I do set limits on it. So now like obviously loss and grief, that's not something that you can just deal with overnight, but still yet. I'm like, okay, I can dwell on this for a week. And then after that, I need to start doing something proactive. So I, I found, set timelines for myself.

Ed Deason (10:53)
Okay, so there's a concept or there's an idea of something called worry time, right, which is kind of what you've talked about. Yeah, so if you're, if you're sitting there and you're feeling anxious about the state of the economy or your job or things like that, right, and you can feel yourself kind of getting stuck in that place where you're, like you say, doom scrolling or worrying and you can't stop thinking about it. Set a time of the day, say, I don't know, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm and say, that's my worry time. Yeah, I'm going to park this thing that I'm thinking about now.

and I'm to go back to 7pm and I'm going to worry about it then. And the idea is it kind of, well, and this is, this is kind of where it works, right? So first of all, it kind of snaps you out of it and you go, okay, well, I have permission to worry about this in a few hours time. So I'm going to worry about it in a few hours time. I've noticed it and I'm going to do that. And then get to 7pm and you're like, hmm, don't really want to be worrying about this right now. I've actually got like some chicken to cook or I've got some TV to watch. And actually just, it's just that, it just gives you that kind of mental fire break to stop for a moment and go.

worry about this later. Yeah. And then if you get 7pm and you are still, and it does still feel important to you, then you've got some time to sit and think about it. But you've also kind of given yourself a bit of space as well in that two, three hours that you're not totally caught up in the emotion anymore. And you can think about it a bit more logically.

Treasa Edmond (12:09)
that if I put something off, I immediately forget about it. So that would actually work for me. It's just, I'm not going to worry about this till tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and I don't remember that existed anymore.

Ed Deason (12:19)
It's

no longer kind of in you. It's because what happens is we get caught up in the emotional element it, don't we get caught up in the moment and one worry takes you to another worry takes you to another worry. And if you can sort of start to just build in that, I'll think about this later, I recognize that I'm in this place and I'm going to think about it later. Then that gives you the permission to stop and hopefully gives you a bit of, like I said, a bit of a fire break. You can think about it later or typically you're like, ⁓ I'm over it.

Treasa Edmond (12:43)
Yeah, there are some grounding techniques that counselors and psychologists recommend for people who have anxiety too. Those are highly effective. So if you get in that doom spiral where the world is ending, I can't deal with this right now. Take, take the moment to do the one of those exercises, whichever one works best for you and do the thing. But it's all about equipping yourself and then being proactive. think just letting it happen.

and letting it run on and on and on is not productive as either a person or as a business person. You need to give yourself room to feel the feels. And sometimes just giving yourself permission to say, I'm completely overwhelmed right now, I can't deal with that. Sometimes that's enough to make you feel better, but we have to do that. Give yourself some grace. But yeah, that's such a, it's a complex topic and I'm not equipped, I'm not trained to help people.

deal with powerful emotions. will always send you to someone who can do that. But I do think that we need to, if it gets to the point where you are so depressed or so anxious and upset that you can't run your business, then that's the time to Seek outside help and help that can really make a difference for you. Complex topic. Anything else to add on that Ed?

Ed Deason (14:02)
No, I don't think so. think we've run we've gone from the very kind of the very business focused macroeconomic situation to very personal emotion focused. No, no, we'll get

Treasa Edmond (14:12)
And tomorrow's kind of a mix of the two. So tomorrow we're going to talk about is freelancing for everyone. Thank you, Ed, for being here with us again today and see you tomorrow.