OK, so you don’t have the perfect business yet. Maybe you’re just starting out. Maybe you don’t charge enough. Maybe you sometimes do work that you’d rather not do for clients who, frankly, sometimes irritate you.
Hey, welcome to the club!
You and me both, we’re still working toward the ideal business – but that doesn’t mean that you need to feel like a total loser. There are loads of cool things about working from home making websites, and it helps to stay in touch with why being a WordPress consultant is awesome.
Here're some ways that you can look on the bright side and enjoy your day a bit more.
1 – You Have A Lot Of Flexibility
When you chat to your friends sometimes, do you feel a little jealous about things like holiday pay and long service leave? Well, sure, these are the benefits of working for the man, but actually you and I have one of the greatest benefits of all – the Holy Grail to many a full-time worker – control over your hours of work.
I don’t know about you but I love the flexibility of being a free agent. If I am struggling, I stop and meditate or exercise or go and have a long lunch with my better half. I don’t have to pretend to be productive when I’m clearly not in a good space for working effectively.
Similarly I can stay put and barrel through things when my head is in the space, even if it means working until midnight, safe in the knowledge that if I am tired, I can always sleep in a little because there’s no boss to get upset when I don’t show at 8:45 am.
So look after yourself. If you’re just staring at the screen in the doldrums because “you should be working”, take some time for self-care – because you can!
2 – You Get Paid To Learn
This is one of my favourite things about my work as a WordPress & marketing consultant. I am very honest with my clients that it is not feasible for me to know everything about everything. The scope of change and the complexity of technology these days are WHY people need you. Not because you know everything, but because you have the ability to learn how to solve problems using technology, and as you know, this often means learning new skills on the job.
Don’t be afraid to charge them for this time. If they don’t want to pay you to learn this stuff, then they are free to go and learn how to do it themselves.
3 – You Can Then Apply Your Skills To Your Own Creative Pursuits
If your ultimate creative outlet is building your WordPress business, then I salute you for finding your niche and being focussed. However, like a lot of us, you may also be a musician, artist, writer or budding entrepreneur with other ideas beyond making websites for people.
If so, then working in the web marketing space is such a great asset because, like I pointed out above, you get paid to learn cool things and then you can turn around and use these skills for your projects!
I think this is such an amazing benefit to the work we do. After beavering away for 8 years now working as a web marketing consultant, I am right now throwing myself into a new round of creative work fully cognitive that the marketing abilities and technical skills I have learned on the job give me so much power to get my work out there. The power that others have to hire people like you to access!
4 – You Get To Choose Who You Work With
I pity the fools who work in the same office, week in, week out, with the same few people that someone else has decided they need to put up with. Good God! What a nightmare!
Not you and I, my friend. If we hire people to work for us, we choose who. And same goes for our clients. After some less-than-ideal early experiences, I have maintained a “no arsehats” policy towards clients for years now and this serves me well.
Thankfully, you get to pick and choose who you spend your working time with!
5 – You Get To Set The Agenda
This is important. Early on in my freelance career, I used to be a bit of a pushover. If a client wanted me to come work in their office, even though I didn’t want to, I would. If a client said they wanted to do things a certain (stupid) way, I would say “yessir”. But this leads to poor results for my clients and misery for me. So, along the way, greatly inspired by my time in Agency Mavericks, I learned to set the agenda.
So now I don’t go to work for people in their office, even if they would prefer that (unless I want to). And I don’t just allow clients to make poor web marketing decisions; instead I stand up and say what I think, because I actually have more knowledge – not about their business – but about web marketing.
Setting the agenda, in whatever area, makes working so much more enjoyable. For example, if I am working on something – be it my creative work or client work – and a client rings me, I don’t answer it until I am finished what I was doing.
Compare that to an office job where your boss and others just barge in whenever and dominate your agenda, every day. No thanks.
6 – You Have The Scope To Do Something Huge
If you work for the man, you only have the opportunity to advance your career within the framework of full or part time employment. Not many people can scale that up to the kind of heights that I know you aspire to.
But working for yourself, there is nothing stopping you from building an amazing business (in WordPress or elsewhere) that takes you to amazing heights of success.
If you used your flexibility to put just one hour a day into something amazing, anything could happen. Try doing that on the job and see where it lands you!
7 – You Get To Help People Feel Better About Themselves and Their Life
I know this sounds a bit touchy-feely but it is so important to your sense of well-being about who you are and the value of what you do for others.
People out there running businesses or working in larger organisations are drowning under the weight of their technology problems. It’s like there’s this “www-wall” that stands between them and their ability to fully express themselves through their work. They just want to get on with things, to get their message out to the world, so that they can feel good about themselves, so that they can move up their ladder of self-actualisation. They get so frustrated when they sit down to make something good happen only to spend 3 hours banging their head against their keyboard.
So when you solve these problems for them, you are helping people to go out there and improve their lives by getting the validation that they need from others, be it their own customers or their work peers.
So go out there and make the world a happier place!P.S. 8 – Bonus! You Get To Be Weird
The day I stopped trying to be corporate or straight (i.e. pretending to be something I am not), was the day my business took off. Seriously, look at the links below: I am not normal!
That’s another great thing about this work – you can be your authentic self and attract clients who like that person.
So let your freak flag fly and watch the clients come rolling in!
