What kind of freelance business do you *really* want to build?

The answer to this question starts with knowing your values.

Hey there,

Today I’m digging into a topic that comes up during almost every coaching session I conduct: Values.

Let’s start with a story.

Lynn first emailed me because she was conflicted about her career. She’d recently been laid off from her editing job at a prominent magazine (which is almost a right of passage these days) and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next. Sure, she could apply for other jobs. But she was also really curious about freelancing, which brought her to my inbox. The problem was, she wasn’t sure how to make a decision about whether or not to dive into running her own business. Would she like it? What if it caused more stress than good?

In her initial email, Lynn shared all of her doubts: She’d heard that freelancing meant working around the clock, and she had no experience running her own business. She didn’t have any clients yet and had no clue what to charge. She worried that people wouldn’t take her seriously.

But she also told me about what excited her: freedom of location, freedom of time, the ability to possibly combat the burnout she experienced at her last job, and an opportunity to write again after years of editing. The pay-offs could be worth it.

When we’re faced with big life decisions like this – my podcast co-host Wudan and I call these inflection points – it can help to circle up the wagons and base your decision on values. (And yes, for all of you skeptics out there, I know we’re getting a bit woo-woo – but hear me out!) Whenever I coach someone who’s building their own business, we start with values. Value is defined as the importance you place on something; often, you value the things in your life that feel useful, worthwhile and grounding. When we talk about values for your business, we’re talking about what is most important to you, both in your life and in your career. We’re talking about the things that make you excited and keep you motivated. 

Freelancing and running your own small business presents you with a unique opportunity to create your ideal job. This freedom can help make your career more sustainable over the long-haul. Take it from me, someone who’s skipped from job to job throughout my career; my husband always jokes that I have an 8-month expiration date, when I start to get tired of the job I thought would fulfill me. It turns out, I need the flexibility to pivot and adjust my business based on my values. That’s why I’ve been in this freelance game for longer than I ever stayed at any full-time job.

What kinds of values are we talking about? Here’s a list of potential values that might be important to you: achievement, independence, freedom of time, recognition, collaboration, autonomy, stability, service, prestige, compensation, leadership, leisure, creativity, and beyond. (This month, paid subscribers get access to several values exercises that walk you through picking your key values and then implementing them in your business!)

Because Lynn needed to make a big choice, we started our coaching relationship by interrogating her values. Lynn’s predominant value in this phase of life was freedom: She wanted to be able to make choices that were based on her gut, and she never wanted to be trapped in a work situation she didn’t like. She wanted to work 10 hours one day, and two hours the next. She wanted to work from Hawaii or Iowa. She wanted to spend Fridays with her three children. Right off the bat, we could see that freelancing might allow her to live that value of freedom, day-in and day-out.

But she also cared a lot about stability. Because she grew up in an financially-unstable home, Lynn valued providing a steady income for her family. She wanted predictable paychecks that stayed fairly level, month-after-month. On the surface, this seemed very anti-freelance; after all, many freelancers have fairly unstable incomes month-over-month. And it showed us that if Lynn wanted to freelance, she’d have to set up her business with anchor clients who paid retainers each month, versus bouncing from assignment to assignment. She’d also need to set up a business bank account and pay herself a set paycheck every month rather than experiencing huge ebbs and flows in income, if freelancing was going to work for her.

Lynn’s other values were autonomy (which told us that she’d need to work with clients who didn’t micro-manage her), service (feeling like she was giving back to her community in some way) and curiosity (which meant leaving room in her business for time to learn, whether in the form of conferences, online courses, or reading new books). In the end, she decided to give freelancing a try based on these values; two years later, she’s thriving.

Values give us a touch-point for success. But here’s the thing: There’s a difference between your deeply-held values and the ones you think you should embrace. For example, as a freelancer, you may feel like you should choose productivity as a value. Or you might feel like it’s important to chase compensation over creativity. You might feel guilty for wanting a routine, since this is supposed to be “the ride of your life;” or you might hear about other people’s epic morning routines and feel obligated to set one up for yourself, too. We call these societally-held values external values; they are typically aspirational and you can suss them out because they come with the words “should” or “must” attached. When we plan our businesses based on external values, we often end up unhappy and burned out. 

Internal values are the opposite. They’re values that feel aligned in that “oh, I’m getting away with something,” little-kid happiness way. They typically feel like home; they’re not stressful, although they may feel bold and exciting. When we design businesses based on internal values, we end up building something that’s sustainable for years to come. 

Here’s the other thing: Values change over time. In other words, what we care about changes as the world around us changes. Having children, moving to a new city, experiencing a pandemic, becoming a caretaker to an aging parent, getting sick, or simply growing older can change our priorities. And when these big changes happen, we get to go back to the values drawing board. As you read in the first edition of my newsletter, this happened to me after I gave birth to my son; suddenly, I cared far more about impact than I did about compensation. And the decisions I made in my business – down to the clients I chose to work with, the rates I charged, and how I advertised my services – all changed because my root values had changed. I usually encourage my clients to revisit their values annually, if not every six months. Ask: Do I still care most about these things? What has changed?

After we define our values, we get to do the work of embodiment, which means defining what a value looks like practically. For Lynn, the value of freedom ended up mapping out to out-of-office days on Fridays, scheduling a week of family vacation each quarter, and booking herself for two weeks of remote work in a cool place each year. Without this practical step of implementation, we don’t actually get to experience the positive effects of our values. Lynn’s value of service equated to choosing one service-oriented client to work with each quarter, to make sure she felt like she was positively impacting her community. Caring about curiosity meant setting aside $1,000/ year for continuing education, and actually enrolling in that conference she’d been eying. 

This month, paid subscribers (just $5/ month) will get a chance to identify their values and map out how those values show up every day, all the time. Can you imagine running a business where you actually get all of the things you deeply desire? I can, and I promise you – it’s what makes this whole freelance thing worth it.

Here’s to using our creative muscles to build businesses we love, day-in and day-out, and to pivoting as needed,

Jenni