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Bren had been self-employed for three years, but she still didn’t have a website and she rarely told people that she was a freelancer. When we first met, she said she didn’t identify as a freelancer yet. In her mind, she would be able to say she was legitimately self-employed when:
People came to her with work, rather than her pitching and sending proposals.
She had enough work to comfortably pay her quarterly taxes without being stressed.
She opened up an LLC.
In other words, Brenwas waiting to feel legitimate. The first hang-up was huge for her: She imagined that eventually, after she’d done good enough work for long enough, people would start to approach her with work. She wouldn’t have to market herself at all. No more pitching! This would mean she had finally made it.
But this hang-up was keeping Bren from showing up as a professional. When people looked her up online, they struggled to figure out what she did. Who was she? What services did she offer? Often, she was losing out on work because people didn’t think she was a legitimate professional. Her doubts had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bren was also waiting for someone else to bestow value onto her. In other words, she felt like eventually, someone else would decide that she was good enough to do this. Someone else would decide that she had value and was a hirable professional, and they would arrive at her doorstep with work. This was akin to Bren putting control of her destiny into the hands of a completely unknown person.
Bren isn’t alone. In a meritocracy, people are given power and success when they demonstrate ability and talent. This will likely sound familiar if you were raised in America: In school, most of us were graded based on our abilities and talents. The better our grades, the more we were noticed and often, the more power we were given. This sets us up to believe that our work will speak for itself; it convinces us that we do live in a meritocracy.
But — I hate to break it to you — that’s not real life. It’s often a rude awakening when we enter the working world and begin to work our butts off, only to be given… more work, which often leads to more burnout. In the real world, power is almost always based on privilege, connections and access to resources. It’s rarely correlated directly with our skills.
Bren stared at me sadly when I explained this. I told her that as a former straight A kid, I, too, had fallen into the meritocracy trap. In my first job, I worked as hard as I could to demonstrate my skills. I wanted everyone to know that I was smart; it felt like it would guarantee my moving up quickly and earning more money. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I was given twice the amount of work at the same salary. Eventually, I burned out.
At my next job, I tried to demonstrate my skills again by working perfectly and quickly. More than once, when I shared new ideas, I was told that I was too ambitious for the company’s culture. Eventually, I was laid off.
Since then, I’ve worked with dozens of self employed folks who are working hard and waiting to be noticed. They feel resentful when their efforts go largely unseen. And I agree: It’s not fair. But here’s what I also know:
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