Listen: Money Mindset For Freelancers

Listen to the Guidebook Now:

Money Mindset for Freelancers Transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome back to the Guidebook, everybody. Today on the show we're talking about your money mindset. Money mindset is foundational to your freelance writing business. It has been cultivated over your entire lifetime, whether you've realized it or not.

(00:16)
Growing up in a capitalist society, everything has contributed to your money mindset. From marketing and advertising to how your parents handled money to the community that you grew up in, you have been ingrained with cultural and familial ideas of money your entire life.

(00:33)
A good money mindset can mean making a thriving business and an amazing living from freelance writing. But leaving your mindset unkempt can lead to a struggling business. So today I wanna help you heal your money mindset so you can create a healthy foundation for your freelance writing business.

(00:52)
This podcast episode is based on a workbook that I've created for freelance writers. If you want to download the workbook, head to the show notes or go to store.meltzerseltzer.com where you can find this workbook for free.

(01:06)
I recommend revisiting this workbook every six to 12 months. It's extremely helpful to consistently review these ideas that we're gonna talk about today because you are going to change over the course of your lifetime so much in your first year of freelancing alone.

(01:24)
I guarantee you are going to see massive changes in your mindset and your abilities to handle money. Now, this isn't by any means financial advice. We are just talking about your mindset today. In future episodes, we will definitely discuss how to manage your money as a freelance writer and a lot more about these money topics. But I want you to start out.

(01:50)
But today I just wanna introduce some concepts and some questions that have helped me personally grow as a freelance writer and that I have helped over 40 other freelance writers use to change their money mindset and earn more in their businesses without changing their services, without changing their offerings, or working more hours.

(02:10)
All right, let's dive in. This is the guidebook. We're sharing tips for freelancers, raw conversations with risk takers, how to become a digital nomad, and the emotions behind it all. I'm your host, Rachel,

(02:27)
On the show. I share everything I've learned in the past five years of freelancing and living nomadically, showing you how you can work to live instead of living to work. I'm interviewing some of my favorite digital nomads and entrepreneurs to help you unlock your bravest self. If you wanna become a freelancer or a digital nomad, this is the podcast for you.

(02:57)
So one of my favorite questions to ask freelance writers is, growing up, what was your relationship like with money? What did your parents teach you about money? What did you do with money? Growing up?

(03:10)
My parents didn't have a lot of money. We were always really struggling to make ends meet through When I was in college, we've had multiple foreclosures. They've declared bankruptcy before. They've owned multiple small businesses that failed. And the money mindset that I was taught was that money is scarce. It is not easy to earn. It requires hard work. You must work long hours to achieve financial success. They were afraid of credit cards. They didn't have credit cards. They signed on to a mortgage that was predatory multiple times, and they were afraid of money. I was afraid of money. They would fight about money loudly in my presence as a child, and I really, like internalized all of that, of course, because as a kid you are a sponge and you're just learning from this.

(04:06)
So when I grew up as an adult and I first started freelancing, I truly believed I needed to work long hours for my business to be successful. I would work multiple 12-hour days a week, sometimes six or seven days a week to the point of burnout. And actually, burnout is so bad for your business. Working 12-hour days is not helpful, and the type of work that I'm doing is just sitting in front of a computer. It's burning my eyes out and I'm focusing the entire time I'm working. There is nothing about freelance writing that you can do absent-mindedly. There is no reason to be working that many hours either. I did not believe I was worth a lot of money. I really thought money was scarce and hard to come by and difficult to earn. It wasn't until I lived with someone who had a very successful business of their own.

(04:56)
She owned our house. I rented her guest room. She's a hairdresser, and the things that she told me and showed me just by living around me about money changed my life and I felt empowered to raise my rates just being around her. I learned how to use a credit card from her, how to get a credit card, why you want your credit score to be higher, how to raise your credit score. I couldn't even qualify to rent my own apartment when I moved into her house because my credit score was so low because I knew nothing about credit. See how this question opens up so much about your past and what you know and what you can learn and grow about? What are you scared of with money? What is the root of these fears and this scarcity? Where did you learn what you think about money? How can we untangle that so that you can move and make more?

(05:57)
Another question I love to ask is, what are conversations about money like for you typically? Are they positive? Are they negative? Is it different when you're talking to a family versus talking to friends, versus talking to your partner or yourself? Are you telling yourself these stories about money? Like, I can't earn money quickly. I can't earn money when I need it. I'm not worthy of earning a higher salary. Is it? Yeah, money's tight. I'm really stressed right now with your family, or is it, uh, no, I'm doing great guys. Don't worry about it with your friends, not digging deeper.

(06:32)
Do you know how many friends after doing this workbook multiple times, I now talk to my friends about money. I ask them what they're earning, what they're charging as if they're a freelancer or if they own their own business. I ask them, how do you budget your money? How do you automate your finances? What kind of retirement plans do you have? Are you investing? How do you afford what you're doing? How much did you spend on that trip to Portugal? This <laugh> opens up so many possibilities. I had no idea I could afford to go to Portugal. In my mind, I thought traveling abroad is so expensive. I can't possibly do that, but you can. In my mind, I thought, I'll never own a home. I can't afford that and I won't qualify for it, but I can. I thought, I'm not good at budgeting. I've tried multiple times, so I must be a failure, or I won't do that anymore until someone showed me how to automate your budgeting into multiple reserve accounts in your bank account based on percentages rather than defined final numbers.

(07:42)
There are so many ways to treat your money. There are so many ways to allocate it, to earn it, to have it come and go from your account and your friends and your family and your partner. And you even can learn and grow and share in this, but money can be taboo.

(08:01)
So ask yourself, what are your conversations around money like and how could I maybe change this to make it so that I can learn and grow with money? Maybe if you don't feel comfortable speaking to people that you know about money, you could find some kind of support group or a course online that comes with a um, chat group to learn more and talk to other people who want to manage their money differently.

(08:28)
In relation to all these conversations about money, with your friends, with your family, with yourself, you can think also about are you open or private about speaking about your finances? If you're private, about your finances, why are you embarrassed? Are you in debt? Are you not handling your money well? What do you need to change in your life in order to make it easy for you to speak publicly about your finances? Do you need to change some of your behaviors so that you're not embarrassed about how you're managing your money?

(09:03)
Do you need to change some of your mindset surrounding your debt, surrounding whatever experiences you are having with money and how you're managing it? Okay, another thing to consider is, has money ever been used in a negative way in your life? This could be settling a divorce, paying bills. You struggle with being used for money absent parental roles because their priority was work to earn money, which probably was used to support you but still feels challenging in your childhood. This can really play a role in how you treat your work and the way that you balance your life.

(09:41)
Maybe you were taught to prioritize work over everything else so that you can make enough money to live, but really you want to be living, not working all the time. So you wanna change that, and maybe that's why you started freelancing, but you maybe don't know how to do that, how to start doing that. And this is a great opportunity to start examining those stories in your head about the negative value of money. Now, once you've asked yourself how it plays a negative role in your life or how it has in the past, you can ask yourself, does money solve any issues in your life right now? Is it currently solving issues for it? Or could it solve issues for you? Maybe you struggle to find childcare and afford childcare, but if you made more money, you wouldn't be worrying about it. Maybe you struggle to afford healthcare and if you made more money, you wouldn't have to worry about it, right?

(10:36)
Maybe money isn't going to make you happy. You'll still be you. You'll still have all of these thoughts that you have right now. You'll still have to learn how to overcome them and how to master your mindset. And you'll still have to live as yourself. But maybe if you had more money, some of these things wouldn't be worrying you. You'd be able to solve these problems. You'd be able to think about, yes, I can contribute to my retirement plan on a regular basis. Yes, I can pay my taxes without worrying. Yes, I can pay my medical bills without worrying. I am capable of going on that road trip. I wanted to go on or just taking a couple of days off. Okay, now we're getting to the part where we're really talking about your business and how your mindset affects your business. Okay? We've done our personal finance mindset and now we are into the business finance mindset.

(11:30)
So I want you to consider, how do you feel when you're asking for money in exchange for your services? Does it come easy or do you feel comfortable asking for a lower price? Why? Maybe you think of it as selling yourself when actually you are selling a relationship with your clients. That's how I changed my mindset when I felt weird about selling myself. Instead of saying, when you work with me, you'll get x. I think when we work together, we will achieve a goal that you have in mind. Make it about them, not about you. Make it clear that them spending this money is them solving a problem that they have. Rather than giving you money for whatever self-worth reason, you clearly do not know <laugh>, if you haven't had a lot of money in your lifetime. It can also help to question what your biggest judgments towards having money are.

(12:25)
Maybe in your mind, wealthy people are bad or evil. Maybe in your mind you see wealth as something that only people who are bad have. Maybe people have treated money in a way around you and in like the news in society. I mean, we've all seen stuff about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and politicians and these things, right? But what are your judgements towards having money? And can you find role models who are doing amazing things with their large amounts of money? And then think about what you would like to replace those judgments with. What beliefs can you replace those judgments with wealth can help me help somebody else. Wealth can help me help myself. Wealth can change certain circumstances. Maybe you want to help people in your own community create a community garden or save a community garden. Or maybe you wanna help out with a nonprofit for birds.

(13:21)
I don't know, <laugh>. But what beliefs could you replace those judgements with? Maybe you help a sick family member. Maybe you can help your parents retire. Maybe you could buy a house. Now, I want to combine yourself with your business. So how would you feel if you could step into a more powerful, financially stable, wealthy version of yourself? How would you feel stepping into a more profitable version of your business? Do you feel like you'll lose yourself if you gain more money in your business or in your life? I think some people worry that, and maybe this is subconscious for a lot of people, that if you earn more money, you will lose yourself because part of your identity as being a hard worker, part of your identity has been struggling. Whether you know it or not, part of your identity has been being scrappy.

(14:19)
But if you are able to step into a more powerful, more profitable version of yourself, what could that look like? Could you take more time off? Could you travel the way you want to? Could you contribute to movements and funds and friends and family the way that you want to? Okay, so those are some of the questions that are in the workbook. There's even more in the workbook, and I highly recommend you go and explore that yourself. But now I want to talk about a concept that my coach Marie, from self-growth nerds has taught me a lot about. Um, yes, I am a coach and I have a coach. <laugh>, uh, even coaches need to be coached. Marie has a great saying that helps me move from my anxious brain to my logic brain. She says, are you doing the math or are you getting caught up in the drama?

(15:10)
If I pulled out a piece of paper right now and did the math, you would likely see exactly the steps that you need to take to make the money that you need to earn, that you're worried about. But often we get caught up in the drama and the anxiety that our brains create can turn a mok into a mountain. For example, I had an issue recently where I had to move unexpectedly. This is gonna cost me about $5,000. And I of course freaked out. But when we sat down together and did the math, I realized that if I could get two more clients per month for a month and a half at my current rate, I had five months left on my lease at the time, it was completely doable. The next week I got those clients, which I had time in my schedule to take on, and I managed to move and pay for all of this with ease.

(16:02)
Yes, I'm still anxious about moving. Everybody gets anxious about moving, everybody gets anxious about spending $5,000. And it did put me a little bit behind on my credit card debt repayment plan. It did put me a little bit behind on some of the savings goals I had. But you know what? It made me realize that if I did this for those other goals, I could achieve those more quickly as well. So sit down and do the math. Don't sit with the drama. If you need to make $5,000 a month, it is likely that you don't need more than three clients. You just need to get the right clients at the right rates and do the math. You know how to calculate, calculate your rates by this point. And actually, maybe you don't cuz you're on my podcast. If you don't know how to calculate your rates, we'll talk about this in a future podcast episode for sure.

(16:55)
But if you calculate your rates based on what you need to earn before you factor in anything else, you should be able to slip into your logic. Brain feelings are not logic. Despite the fact that you know this trick, you will probably freak out at least four times a year <laugh>, because we have feelings. But the more you practice, the shorter these freakouts will become. You won't be anxious for a month or three weeks or three months or whatever. You'll be anxious for a day or two and it will pass, and you'll sit down and you'll figure out how to solve your problems. Practice makes patterns. It does not make perfection. So remember that It's okay if you still freak out a little bit. You are always learning for the rest of your life. But does the thought, oh my gosh, I don't know how to make $5,000 to move and I need to move feel great to you.

(17:45)
Or does the thought or how can I make the money that I need for this change feel better? Instead of getting stuck in your feelings, there's nowhere to go with the question how c Like, oh my gosh, I don't know how I'm gonna make that happen. That statement is a statement, it's a full stop. But the question, how can I is incentive for you to make movement and make change. All right. I hope that this podcast episode helped you. Again, you can head to store dot meltzer seltzer.com to download this workbook. I highly recommend downloading the workbook. There are more questions in there and some exercises including key takeaways and, um, a whole page for you to plan your next steps in your financial mindset journey. I want you to thrive as a freelancer and I hope that this helps you do so. Thanks for listening to the show. I'll see you next week. This podcast was created and produced by Rachel Meltzer. Also while you're here. Did you know that I offer courses and coaching for new freelance writers? Check it out at meltzerseltzer.com/coaching.

(22:28)
Um, I made, oh, and one last thing. I actually made a money mindset playlist inside Spotify. I'll link it below in the show notes. Um, you can go and listen to that if you'd like. And if you're watching this online, it's in the link in my bio. This, um, this playlist is filled with Money Mindset podcast episodes that helped me change and grow my mindset. I highly recommend throwing on a pair of headphones and going for a walk while you listen to these or listening to them while you're driving. This will help you really be able to be present with them and sink into it. Uh, maybe you put it on in the background while you do chores, whatever, but you don't have to like sit down and pay attention to it. Just, just listen to it and absorb it. And feel free to listen multiple times if you need to.