She Made $60k In 2 Months… After She FINALLY Faced This Fear

I've got a hot take for you.I think the fear of looking thirsty, AKA looking desperate is costing most freelancers tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is keeping some of you just straight up broke.

Brian: In this episode, I'm gonna break down one of the most quietly destructive things that I see in freelancers, and that is simply just the fear of looking desperate, not actually being desperate, just the fear. Appearing to be potentially maybe somewhat looking desperate. It's holding you back so much, it's keeping you invisible.

It's keeping your pipeline empty. and it keeps you in this pattern of just copying other people who don't have a clue what they're doing. And at the end of this episode, you'll understand why this fear exists, how it's sabotaging your business, and maybe what to do instead.

You can start creating real demand for your services and actually start getting clients and start to claim back some of that thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars that you're losing right now

if you're new here. Hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is the six Figure Creative Podcast. This is a podcast for creative freelancers who wanna earn more money from their creative skills without selling their souls.

I've been in this industry for over 16 years, almost 17 years now.Actually, by the time this episode airs, it probably will be about 17 years. I've had to work through a lot of the stuff that I bring on this podcast. I've learned a lot of things over these 17 years. Not only that, I have a team of 11 different people who bring a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different expertises, a lot of different things that I can bring to this podcast.

On top of that, we have hundreds of freelance clients that I look at their businesses and I see what they're doing, what they're not doing, what's holding them back, what's pushing them forward, what's working, what's not working. And I bring it to this podcast.

Whereas most freelancers just sit in a little hole, in a little cave, and they just look to their immediate left and their immediate right to the other freelancers around them, and that's how they run their business. I take a different perspective with this podcast. I take a lot of perspectives from a lot of different industries and a lot of different freelancers, and I bring it here to tell you what works and what doesn't work.

Simple as that. If that sounds at all interesting, you're in the right place and we've got almost 400 other episodes for you to go through and binge through to start getting your business in order where it should be, not where it is right now, but where it needs to be if you wanna be successful long term.

Let's go back to this fear of failure. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the issue that I see when it comes to freelancers who are avoiding doing the right things in the business because of the fear of looking desperate. Most freelancers who have this fear are actually desperate,

and you're just afraid of showing that desperation to anyone, and that's understandable. No one wants to necessarily work with a desperate freelancer. It's not a good look. It's not good for positioning sake. It's not good for you to command higher rates. It's not a good look no matter what.

There's a gap between what your business looks like from the outside looking in, and then how it actually is on the inside, and you're terrified of someone actually seeing that gap. So you clinging to this illusion of just actually being in demand instead of doing the actual work that creates demand.

And when you think about how many of us were brought up, I was brought up in America, in the public school system. Some of you have that exact same background, but some of you're in some other, countries maybe, or maybe you went up through a private school or maybe you're homeschooled. I don't know if you have the same exact experience that I had when I was brought up in public school, but many people are raised and trained early in life to not stand out, to not try anything different because effort is somehow embarrassing or cringe.

Being different is somehow making you the outcast. You're taught at an early age that you could want something, but you can't look like you want it.

You can want to date this certain person, but you can't look like you wanna date them. You can want to be around these certain people, but you can't look like you want to be around those people.

And so we're taught at an early age up through even adulthood, that if you stay invisible, you'll never face rejection.

So you end up avoiding. Any behavior that might get you judged. So while you end up going through life avoiding judgment, for the most part, you also go through life avoiding the good things in life that can come from facing rejection.

in school, at least in public school, or at least where I was raised in Alabama, the quiet careful person is the one who wins. It's the person who doesn't stand out. The person who doesn't make waves, the person who doesn't. Do more than they're asked to do. While the loud risk taker, that person does not do well in school.

I was that person. I did not do well in school. I was not the quiet, careful person. Those people did great in school, and in the real world, there are some paths available where you can still just coast through life as that quiet, careful person if you stick with a day job.

But in the business world, this does not work.

in the quiet, careful person. This is how they run their business, and this is why they end up in so much trouble later on in life, Especially if they've tried to branch out of the day job world into the entrepreneurial world after a long stint as a career oriented person where you can just put your head down and get work done, and no one will bother you because you're taught to avoid standing out or trying anything different.

You end up looking like every other freelancer just like you.

You end up looking around and you say, what are they doing? What are they not doing? I'll just do what they're doing. I'll just avoid anything that they're not doing

because that's how you've built your entire life so far, is just looking to the left and the right, what everyone else is doing and just doing that. but in the freelance world, you end up building your strategy by copying people who don't have any sort of strategy whatsoever. So you end up as what I call an inbred freelancer.

An inbred freelancer is just someone that let the blind lead the blind. It's a cesspool of homogenous freelancers who are all learning from each other and doing things that everyone else is doing with no real outside influence.

is as if you threw like 20 people on an island and said breed. You looked to your 20 freelancers that you know, and you were just like, I'm gonna do all the things that you do and you'll do all the things that I do, and we're just gonna be one big happy family here.

I mentioned earlier, I've been in this industry for like 17 years now, and I've been a part of several other industries that are not in the creative freelance world, and I can say this. As a factual statement. I don't mean this with any malice towards freelancers, but freelancers are the last people that I wanna look to when it comes to how to run my business.

if you were raised and taught to avoid standing out or trying anything different, that will not serve you in the business world

If anything else, it's the exact opposite. Those who try to stand out, those who try to do something different in the business world when it comes to exchanging your services for money, whether you think of yourself as that or not in this world. Standing out and being different is what will make you successful, and fear is what holds you back from ever doing that.

Let's go to the other lesson that we were taught early on because you're taught that you can want something but you can't look like you want something.

You rarely follow up with your clients. You don't wanna bother them. And when you do follow up with them, it's just like weak slop. Like, Hey, let me know if you need anything, or How's life?

You never make any sort of direct offer to someone who needs your services. You never ask for referrals. You rarely reach out to past clients to see if they need more of your services. And again, it's costing you tens of thousands of dollars per year just for this alone.

So while we're taught, again at a young age, you can want something, but you can't look like you want something in the business world, it's the exact opposite. By following up with your clients, you look like you care. People want to know that you care. People want to know that you can help them with something and offering something.

People want to refer people to you, and by avoiding this behavior, you're only sabotaging yourself. You're not hurting me. You're not hurting your neighbor, you're not hurting your friends or your family. You're only hurting yourself.

And I can stand on my little podcast soapbox and I can preach all day long, but at the end of the day, you're the one who has to learn this lesson. It's not me. I've learned this lesson the hard way over many years of trial and error.

Let's go to one of those other lessons. We're taught at an early age. You're taught that if you stay invisible, you'll never face rejection. That's true. That works in high school, maybe middle school. You don't ask the girl out to the dance, you won't get rejected. Right. But in the business world, it means you never post about your work on social media.

No one ever knows of the accomplishments that you've had. No one ever sees the new work that you've done and the cool stuff that you've done. You never go all in with content marketing. So no one ever sees your expertise,gets value from what you know and what you've learned over the years, and you'll.

Definitely, Definitely never try paid ads because you label these as thirsty moves. You try to protect your image instead of your income.

The reality is this is not desperation. This is not thirsty. It is simply marketing. The stuff that you fear doing, the stuff that you're avoiding doing because of the fear of looking desperate is exactly the same stuff that successful business owners do without any hesitation whatsoever. For some reason, the freelance industry is one of the few, if maybe the only that I know of.

Industries where marketing is a self-imposed limitation. It's taboo,

and unless your clientele is other freelancers. Who cares what they think. a matter of fact, Our clients are freelancers, so you should be the ones who are most allergic to any sort of marketing, because that makes me look desperate, right? A six figure creative.

We're desperate. He's got a podcast with almost 400 episodes. He must be so thirsty. He runs tens of thousands of dollars per month of paid marketing for months and months, years and years at a time. He must be so thirsty. He must be so desperate.

But month after month, year after year, we grow. We double. We double again. We double again,

targeting the people who should be allergic to this. Who should hate this because it's desperate, right? So if it works on you and other freelancers. Even if your clientele were freelancers, it should work for you. But most of you, if you're a freelancer, most of your clients are not freelancers. Most of your clients are general consumers or other businesses.

General consumers are used to being marketed to businesses are used to being marketed to. They understand marketing from a fundamental level.

Desperation. On the other hand, desperation is when you end up doing erratic shit, dabbling in 30 different areas because you waited too long. You waited until the famine to try to fix this. You ignored the signs in the feast mode. knowing that you're gonna have a family mode this, if you don't do something about this, marketing is just simply doing repeatable actions, whether you feel good or not. And when I say feel good, I mean whether you feel like you look desperate or not.

Because the only thing that looks desperate is you, again, doing just erratic stuff, throwing spaghetti at the wall with no strategy whatsoever, or just trying and dabbling little things here and there because you waited too long to try to solve this.

For many of you, this is costing you your entire business. You just won't face the truth. You don't have leads, you don't have clients, and your pipeline is empty because your actions are empty. You're losing clients faster than you're gaining new ones. Your feast periods are getting shorter, your famine periods are getting longer, and you're letting fear decide what to do, and you're letting pride decide what you avoid.

This is a recipe. For having a business that will not last.

And even for those of you who are already doing well, people who are already making six figures, multiple six figures, don't think you're immune to this. We work with many freelancers who are making multiple six figures, half a million or more a year. Even some people, seven figures or more per year, multiple seven figures.

Those people. Generally speaking, there's a few exceptions, but generally speaking, those people are succeeding in spite of their habits, not because of them, and it's likely the same for you. listening to this podcast for a while now. You've heard me talk about all of these things.

Many of them you're still avoiding because your fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of looking desperate, just general fear, and yet you're still successful, but it's not because you avoid these things. It's in spite of avoiding these things.

You are likely missing out on probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of you, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, not just over your lifetime, per year. One of our brand design clients, she brought in about $60,000 worth of new work in the past couple months alone, just from paid ads. This is something she avoided, something she had fears around. And that's just in the last couple months, and that's just from the leads that she's closed so far. During that time, she generated hundreds of leads.

Many are still in her pipeline, some she's still pushing through the finish line. That will come into the future, and that's also not counting any future revenue that the client, she's already closed generates, not counting any future referrals. Again, that's 60 grand the last couple months and probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of future income just from these last couple months of work that she's done.

That is not desperation. That to me is a power move. When you have a waiting list of clients who have prepaid you to get on your calendar, that is the opposite of desperation.

This is something she had never done before and it completely transformed her business.

If you wanna let fear run your business. This is probably not the podcast for you. maybe, if you're open to at least getting over the fear, you can keep listening to this podcast because it's gonna take multiple attempts. You're gonna have to hear this stuff over and over again. It's gonna have to become comfortable and familiar to you.

You're gonna have to start to see other people who have had success. You're gonna have to listen to other episodes of people trying different things out. Listen to some of our panel episodes with other coaches. Listen to interviews with our past clients, or some of our past guests. listen to me ramble on for hundreds of episodes before it finally sinks into your soul, into your essence as a freelancer, that you cannot let fear rule your business. You cannot avoid things like paid ads because you fear looking desperate,

especially when you have no other means of generating new leads. There is a laundry list of ways to get clients.

Most freelancers, there's some low hanging fruit that they're missing out on. People in their network, their past clients, their past leads. Things need to get some quick wins early on, but those are usually one and done. You get a surge of clients, you feel good about it, but then we have to look to the future.

What are we gonna do for the rest of the year?

This is likely the time most of you're going to start considering making massive changes to your business. It's December 30th when this episode comes out, or it should be, it's the new year, new you.

But it's really hard to become a new you when you let fear in the driver's seat.

Now again, you can keep listening to this podcast and I encourage you to, but to me, the easiest way to get over your fears is to have somebody basically driving you and holding you accountable to the things that you say you want to do.

And for many of you, you won't do it unless you put your money where your mouth is. my personal biggest increases in business income has come from when I've hired coaches to help me do something that I was afraid of doing. And then them pushing me every week, every month to do things I,may not have otherwise done without their help. And the sunk cost of me investing money with those coaches has helped push me over the edge of getting past that fear. If you listen to this podcast, you know we have a coaching program called Clients by Design, where we will map out your client acquisition strategy, we'll help you implement it.

This is a great time of year to do it.

so if you were interested, I would encourage you to get in earlier than later. It's December 30th. Right now, January's our busiest time of the year for obvious reasons.

The earlier you apply, the earlier we can look at your application, the earlier we can start working together, if it's a good fit. The longer you dally, the longer it's gonna be for you to get started and you'll hit this point. This is the sad part about this. You'll hit this point where you will want to join.

You will join, but you'll be on the waiting list and then by the time we get to where we can actually work with you, you. Sudden burst of inspiration for the new year has waned because you waited too long. So I'd encourage you go to six figure creative.com/apply. Fill out the short application there

and we can open the dialogue with you to see if this makes sense for you or not.

But my goal for you is to stop looking to your left and to your right, what other freelancers are doing, and start running an actual business that's not based on fear, but just based on what actually works. Again, apply by going to six figure creative.com/apply. That's all I got for you today. We'll be back next week for another episode of the six Figure Creative Podcast as we get up to 400 episodes now.

Woo. this three? Nine five? I think that's wild. Alright, peace. Thanks for listening.