Am I doing this right?
Is this normal?
It’s a very basic human tendency to ask these questions about one’s own life, but self-employed people do it more than most.
How much should I be making?…
How many clients should I have?…
How many hours a week should I spend marketing? At the root of so many questions of self-employed women lies the need to compare themselves to others.
Who Are We Comparing Ourselves To?
I want to bust the myth of what is the “normal” or “typical” self-employed woman.
It’s not the woman who runs a wildly successful business selling custom lunchboxes, cooks every meal for her family from scratch, and cares for four children on her own.
It’s you. And me.
The average self-employed woman worries often that she’s failing, not putting enough time into her business, and not spending enough time with her family. She is frantically searching for new work, but she’s not necessarily satisfied with the works she is doing every second of the day.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s look at the stories of three perfectly typical, everyday self-employed women.
Names have been changed or abbreviated at the request of participants.
Gina, Social Media Consultant
After years working a stressful, but fulfilling, job in professional theater running administration, Gina saved up and left her job to pursue her dream: running a website about her adopted home, New York City.
She got it going before she quit and then struck out on her own, only to find that very quickly, a new tour company starting in the city wanted to buy her content and have her consult for them running their blog and doing social media. Delighted not only that someone appreciated her work but wanted to pay her for it, she happily agreed.
Today, she has a large contract with that company, but it’s not always as comfortable as she originally hoped. She’s often asked or expected to take on extra work that’s not in her contract without a bump in pay, and when she does renegotiate, it takes a long time to iron things out.
She is not doing additional writing or social media consulting, like she originally planned, and feels like the owners are not developing the tour company as much as they planned and her contract might be downsized or cut. She keeps planning to try to get some additional writing contracts, but her main one takes up her available time.
Lauren, Career Coach
Though her husband’s job provides for her and the children, Lauren wanted to do something of her own that helps others, so she channeled her own experiences in the corporate world, read up, and created a coaching business.
As the mother of two children, one with autism, she never intended for her coaching to be anything more than part time, both because she doesn’t rely on the money and because her children are her highest priority.
She has several regular clients, but her business isn’t growing as she expected, because she often forgoes taking on new opportunities or clients if she sees a conflict with the needs of her family.
As she struggles to balance her time, she frequently cancels on her own $1000/month coach and moves or misses calls with her clients. Her coach frequently tells her that if her own personal development is weak, that will show in her work with clients. But since she knows that family is her priority, she is willing to make that sacrifice if necessary.
Christie, E-Book Writer
I mentioned Christie in an earlier post. She’s been supporting herself through freelance writing for 12 years, primarily by writing e-books about dating for clients she finds on Elance.
While many writers find the website to be a race to the bottom, in terms of pricing, she’s perfected a great strategy where she bids high and tells clients to get back to her when their bargain basement client fails to complete the assignment properly. When they inevitably do, needing the work done in a hurry, she doubles the price for the rush.
She is able to write thousands of words a day because she works fast, something that not everyone can do or wants to do, but she knows where her strength lies.
While she has a great work-life balance, with plenty of time for her family and a healthy and balanced budget, she does wish she could write more about her passion, travel. She has had success sending ideas to very high profile websites, but doesn’t do it often since she can always find plenty of work on Elance. But she’s starting to hit a wall writing about the same thing over and over.
What Unites Them All?
Like a lot of people with traditional jobs, who take them expecting their work to be one thing only to end up doing something they didn’t expect—for better or for worse—these self-employed women are primarily not doing what they set out to do. But that’s not necessary a bad thing.
We all struggle. Especially with feeling like we are not doing enough, not successful enough, or just generally not where we though we would be.
When we set out to create our own ventures, we set a goal on the horizon, but as we move toward it, our goal gets bigger and better and the horizon seems to stay the same distance away, rather than get closer.
In those moments, it’s important to turn around. To look backward. And see what we’ve built. Who we’ve helped.
As self-employed women, we have struck out on our own to do something that is specifically not the “norm,” and while it is a constant struggle, it is also a constant accomplishment.
We all share both sides.
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