Lessons

Lesson Info

Do You Have What It Takes?

Lesson three it's called do you have what it takes? Do you have what it takes to be self employed is how I think about it and this is actually a quiz and in the workbook I have twelve uh qualities and skills that I consider are important for being a sex successful self employed person and I want to just go briefly over each of them and then have you score rate yourself one to five what youth where you think you are in relation to each of those and then you add up your score to see how well you did all right? And so people should be doing this also in the chat room, so let me just talk briefly about each of these qualities. Now the first one is the most important one, but I actually say that about all of them and that is curiosity you don't think about this very often you don't hear about this very often, but curiosity is essential and a lot of creative people are curious about things as it relates to their work, but not necessarily as it relates to their business. And when it comes to ...

curiosity from the business side, I think of it as curiosity about the new needs of your prospects and clients and then of course what you could do to satisfy those needs right? But you have to be a curious person I think a lot of smiles in here why's that justin why you smiling just to get this list okay, right the second one so rate yourself on curiosity and be honest right? We're not trying to impress no one's going to look at your score I'm not grading these papers um the second one to self discipline which I mentioned a few minutes ago right self discipline is essential if you're going to be a success at this so you have to be disciplined in terms of especially the things that you don't like to do the things that don't come naturally you have to give yourself deadlines you have to stick to those deadlines you really have to be your own parents in that situation number three is professionalism and I think this is also the most important one because freelancers and creative professionals have a bad rap essentially you know there is ah preconceived notion that creatives are flaky and it is up to you to disabused the public about the idea that you are a professional in your business and so that is a very important quality so that means being punctual meeting deadlines doing things that you say you're going to do following up this all builds trust and helps people understand that you are exactly the right person to help them number four is organizational skills so this comes from my days as a professional organizer right but you do have to be organized about who you followed up with and what they said and what they suggested you do next and if you don't keep track of that then you're not going teo be ableto keep in touch with those people so that's a really important marketing tool actually organizational skills uh commitment as I was talking about before you have to be committed to your business and to the fact that you're going to do this keep rating yourself on all of these as we get to number six will take a little break and see what's happening in the chat room but number six is self awareness this is really important you have to know for example I'll give you an example from me at the end of the day when people email me asking me for things I tend to say no just because it's the end of the day not because I don't want to do it and I know that I should not answer questions at the end of the day because I'll usually say no right? And if you know these things about yourself then you can adjust your behavior for your profit if I said no just because I'm tired I'm hungry then I'd be doing myself a disservice so you really owe it to yourself to understand yourself better in the context of your business so honestly how good is your self awareness jotted down okay going on self confidence I want to know j k oh how many people in the tack room I feel that they lack self confidence? This is one of the things I hear a lot right self confidence there's so many myths about it like I don't feel confident so I can't do x but the thing is confidence doesn't come before x it is the result of doing x over and over and over because that's what builds competence and incompetence builds confidence right? So rate yourself on self confidence number eight patients again in this world we live in instant gratification is what everybody expects but good things come to those who wait as they say so you have to be really patient especially when it comes to marketing and going after the projects and the prospects that you really want because sometimes the sale cycle is long and you really want it but you may make assumptions oh, they haven't responded yet so they may not be interested but if you're patient it will pay off so great yourself in terms of patients, flexibility is the most important one because everything is constantly changing everything is constantly changing. I can't say that enough so the more flexible you are with deadlines with responses to things with your own mind what you can do, the better it will be for your business perseverance again the most important one because if you give up too easily and you don't persevere you're definitely not going to succeed communication skills number eleven also very important so that includes speaking up, articulating clearly and also communicating mohr than you perhaps normally would I think actually there was an article in the new york times over the weekend that talked about how teams work together and which what qualities make the most successful teams on one of the quality was mohr communication right and it's really easy in this virtual a world that we live in tow under communicate to assume someone knows what we meant, right? But I always try toe over communicate even if it's um too much I'm not worried about too much because it doesn't hurt and I think also as a freelancer as a creative professional you support your reputation as someone who communicates well that isn't also not something that is expected in general and besides in this culture we're just really degrading our communication skills with the technology so it's up to us to compensate for that and finally dealing with change. This is the most important one right? Because as I said, things are constantly changing and how you deal with it this means reinventing yourself if necessary, right? Because what you started out with or what your initial idea wass may have been fine in two thousand two, but here we are several years later and it may not work anymore right, the technology may have changed and there's no need for those services anymore. What are you going to dio? You have to be able to deal with change constantly, so that is different from flexibility. All right, so let's, definitely the one that hit a nerve there. That was the one that everybody reacted to, and somebody called it the imposter syndrome. They feel that they're that they're lacking self constantly, feeling they're an imposter of faking what they're actually doing. I think a lot of people feel that sometimes yeah, a lot of people are dead worried I'm gonna get found out one day this really? I'm not any good at this at all, right? And I think a lot of people feel that yes, and I guess in a way that's related back to what someone else said in the chat room about worrying what other people think of you, right? Might my advice is stop worrying about what other people think of you and just do the best job you possibly can, and the rest will take care of itself. Absolutely. Okay, so, um, let's see how people scored? Did you have time, tio? Score yourself and rate yourself let's see, justin, how didyou d'oh ome I scored myself I'm very highly other than in self discipline and patients there's the two things that I think that I don't know a lot of patients I want things done fast quick keep moving on in self discipline it's easy for me to go like hit that snooze button again and again when I'm a freelancer and be like I need more sleep teo do a good job today you know like so we fooled ourselves don't weigh uh huh okay my advice to you justin not that you asked for it but it is get rid of the snooze button really I think um I think that's an evil thing actually the snooze button I think we have to set our alarms and just get up when the alarm goes off and the metaphor of the snooze button is also very important okay, great. What about you rain how'd you d'oh um I thought I was doing pretty well when I first looked at all of us almost in the four and five everywhere but I really tried to be very honest and think of situations with clients in the past and everything and I had to scale it back a little bit good andi gave myself to areas where I really feel like I need a work on it and uh when its organizational skills you know I am generally an organized person I think especially when it comes to things like marketing and follow up um I could do a lot better on the other one is patients also I think we can all work on patients definitely ok zane, what about you? Yes so I feel that I can work on definitely self confidence I definitely feel the whole imposter syndrome at times so that's one area that I would like to work on and also self awareness I feel that I could, uh definitely go more deeper that that area and um here's what I would say about working on self awareness that what it takes is quiet time to be quiet and reflect and observe ourselves and then think what else could I do differently about that? Right? Because it doesn't come easily and also have someone too basically tell you what you're doing in the way that I said we need you to speak up right that that is done with love if you will help you grow so you need people who can help you grow all right, how did people do in the tack room? Well, people rating themselves now perhaps the least you could just explain people now giving they've added it all up and got total number is that but that was the goal because they're all coming out with very high numbers yes particular fifties or a lot of people came up with forty to which my mom went elsewhere as it isn't that the answer to life, the universe and everything turned out to be full I don't know forty two is a very common name that came up but people very high some of them in the fifties so again you know it's about being honest with yourself ah and it's really not about the number the number is really just a conceit um and to know I think you know the way the in studio audience has handled it I think is the right way, which is of all of these twelve here are the few I'm gonna work on now these are the ones that are the weakest right? Because really what we're trying to do here is strengthen your foundation so that you can build on it all right? So just figure out and actually maybe we can ask in the chat room what are the one or two areas that are the weakest right? We can applaud them for their high scores isn't that already? I just understand I scored much lower on organization and much higher on perseverance on dh so yeah let's definitely here one of the others that were there was an imbalance for you where did you school? Oh, beautiful at the end of each segment I'll talk about what's in the extra goodies bundle because I couldn't put everything in the workbook, so I have a bundle which is a download which is available at that uh web address bit lee flash command fees. And if you put in your email address, you will get a list of links, which will allow you to download that extra goodies bundle, as well as lots of other things that I offer. And what we have for the first segment is an article I wrote called the freedom of freelancing. And it goes into a lot of detail, especially about thes twelve qualities and skills and what they're all about.