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How to bring back the spark back into your relationship with freelancing
When you started out as a freelancer you were probably filled with a bit of passion, a touch of excitement or a smidge of anticipation. Now? Perhaps sometimes things feel a little bit flat. At worst, you might be questioning whether you should’ve started this relationship in the first place.
I'm here to assure you that this relationship you have with your business is something worth saving and it is totally saveable: you just need to make a few tweaks.
Why Your Enthusiasm Might Be Waning
It might feel like you’ve lost interest in the core products or services you offer. But if you think about it, it's likely you still love the client contact, the delivery and going deep into your area of expertise. It's just that increasingly the other demands that freelancing is making of you are distracting you and maybe even getting you down.
Here’s just a few reasons why the spark might have faded and some simple ways to reignite it:
1. Your Business Isn’t Delivering Financially
Let’s be honest here—if generating income isn’t a priority, this is having a hobby, not running a business. If this is a business, one of your main goals is to earn enough to meet your needs (and your reasonable ‘wants’ too). If the cash flow has stagnated, that stress will take a toll.
As hard as it might feel to step away from the tasklist, if your business isn’t delivering financially then pause, take a breath and block out just a half of one day to address these questions:
What do I need to earn to cover obligations, and what do I want to earn to meet my aspirations?
Do I know when bills are due and when payments come in, or do nasty surprises keep popping up?
Am I on top of my statutory obligations like taxes and insurance/ do I delegate to someone I trust?
Which of my products/services aren’t profitable and can I ditch them? If not, why not?
Are my systems, software, and subscriptions worth their cost, or can I downgrade or better utilise them?
What about personnel—am I getting a good return on my investment? (warning: sometimes cutting back is a false economy)
Am I being paid on time and what I’m worth?
Is my pricing strategy working?
Do I need to revisit my marketing and sales budget and strategy?
Take back financial control. Reduce a whole heap o' stress. Feel better already.
2. Freelancing is Consuming Too Much Time
You’re full of ideas, that’s your strength! But finding the time to turn those ideas into reality -well blimey, that's another story all together.
Regardless of what that latest sponsored post on instagram's telling you, great time management doesn’t start with software. It starts with:
Understanding your hopes, dreams, ideas, and frustrations.
Understanding what your business needs in order to thrive.
Prioritising what really matters.
Setting up systems (whether software based or pen and paper) to ensure those priorities are realised in a timely way.
Once you've clarity on what you want and what your business needs, you’ll be on your way to rekindling the flame without burning out.
3. Too Much Time in the Engine Room, Not Enough on Deck
You’re not afraid of hard work, but being buried in the nitty-gritty—admin, software issues, marketing data, payments, onboarding, and offboarding—can still sap your energy. And who’s even steering this ship while you’re down in the engine room keeping all those cogs turning?
It’s important to have oversight, but you don’t need to be neck-deep in every detail. Admin and operations should help your ideas soar, not weigh them down.
If you’re stuck in the bowels of your business, it’s no wonder your passion is fading. Work out ways to come up for air and steer that ship (mi hearty).
4. Too Many Hard Conversations
Unless you've a Ryanair kinda approach to life, it’s pretty unlikely that you started this business willing to spend your time in confrontations about payments, complaints, contracts or cancellations with difficult clients.
If you’re constantly having tough conversations, it's understandable if you are feeling weaker for it.
If the tricky encounters are coming at you hard and fast, ask yourself:
Is your online presence and brand attracting the right kind of people to your business?
Are you able to approach credit control, complaints, or contract renegotiations from a process-driven, not emotional, standpoint?
Are you confident in keeping conversations professional, focusing on the issue at hand, not the person presenting the issue?
If these conversations are distracting you from the core service you provide, can you delegate this responsibility?
5. Clunky Software Draining Your Love for your Business
Look at it this way, if you ran a factory rather than a service based business, you wouldn’t feel great if each morning you couldn’t find the keys to the factory door and if once you'd fumbled your way through your key fob, you went to turn on the lights to only to find all the bulbs had blown.
Same vibe applies to the infrastructure that faciliates online working.
List all the software and files you use daily. Can you find the docs and sheets and logins for everything you need easily? Does the sight of any of these things fill you with dread? Can you streamline things with simple tools like a password manager? Can you bookmark links in your browser or pin them in slack to make them easier to find? Can you delegate the management of these systems or even get rid of some entirely?
Manage your infrastructure so it doesn't drag you down: it should support you and propel your forward.
6. Marketing Promises vs. Reality
Marketing support can be invaluable, but make sure you've got visibility on the ROI. Marketing specialists are often passionate about their specific expertise (paid ads, SEO, social media), but:
your strategy needs balance
it needs to come in on budget
It needs to demonstrate it’s worth your time and money and adapt quickly when it doesn’t.
Set a reasonable marketing budget based on your income goals. Consider testing different stragegies until you find the one your business loves.
Make sure you receive regular, clear, easy to digest reports that show where marketing is performing well and where it needs to change. Consider delegating oversight of monitoring the reports to free up your time and headspace to focus on what it is you do best.
7. A General Lack of Joy
Sometimes, you can’t quite pinpoint what’s gone wrong. It might be a mix of the above, or it could be external problems affecting your focus.
Perhaps your personal development has stalled, or you feel isolated. Or perhaps you know something's not right but you are so caught up in the day to day you can't get the perspective you need to work out what it is about your relationship with your business that is dragging you down.
Want to fall back in love with freelancing?
Let's bring back the chemistry
If you’re feeling stuck, need a fresh perspective or want to chat through any of the above ideas in more detail, book a free chemistry call: you’ll be head over heels again with your business before you know it.