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The Freelance Success Podcast is here — and we're kicking things off by talking about the thing nobody wants to admit they're feeling: Fear.
If you've spent any time in the freelance world, you know that fear comes with the territory. Fear of not having enough clients. Fear of income drying up. Fear of putting yourself out there and having it fall flat. It shows up at the beginning, when everything feels new and overwhelming — but it doesn't stop there. Even after years of freelancing, fear has a way of resurfacing every time you try something new.
That's where we're starting. In the very first episode of the Freelance Success Podcast, host Liam Carnahan sits down and gets honest about fear. Not to wallow in it, but to talk about what it actually looks like to acknowledge it, work with it, and use it as a springboard rather than a reason to stop.
Liam shares the strategies that have helped him push through six years of freelancing uncertainty — from gathering information to calm anxiety, to building processes that take the edge off unpredictable income, to getting experts in your corner when money feels scary. It's a personal episode, and a fitting place to begin.
New episodes of the Freelance Success Podcast drop every Tuesday. Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss what's coming.
Episode Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the very first episode ever of the Freelance Success Podcast. I'm your host, Liam Carnahan. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to kick off our very first episode, and I did what I normally do when I have to untangle a tricky problem, which was go for a long walk.
It is early November here in New England. Everything is golden and orange out there right now. Really good environment for untangling this tricky problem of how do I start the very first podcast? And the word that kept coming to mind as I was walking was fear — which feels like maybe a negative word for the very first episode ever, but I can't think of a word that is more common right now among the hive mind of freelancers I talk to at Freelance Success, and in my coaching and mentorship.
There's a lot of fear going around right now. And I feel it too. Things are scary out there. Things are scary economically, things are scary politically, and everything feels uncertain. And I know for me, I am a person who naturally has anxiety. Uncertainty is my biggest trigger. When things are uncertain, when I don't know what's going to happen next, that's when I start to feel fear.
And in my freelancing career, I know that fear has held me back in a lot of ways. Slowed me down a lot of times — and also has been a motivating factor and a protective factor that's allowed me to stay in business now for six years.
Now, going forward, each episode will have a different subject matter, and I'll spend five to ten minutes at the beginning of every episode talking about the subject at hand, and then I will bring in a successful freelancer or someone who works with freelancers to talk with me in an interview format. But today is going to be just me, and I just want to focus down on this subject of fear.
Now, I'll say this: there is no freelancing without fear. I have never met a freelancer — and I've met at this point hundreds of freelancers — and I've never met one who hasn't experienced some sort of fear in their career. Certainly the place where we see the most fear for freelancers is at the very beginning, when they are considering going into freelancing and everything feels overwhelming and confusing and uncertain. But it doesn't end there.
If I'm honest with you, there is fear in freelancing even now. Here I am, six years into my career, and I'm still doing things that scare me — including this podcast. I'm sitting here in a room by myself talking into a microphone, and I'm afraid that I'm going to be spending all of this time doing this podcast and it's going to fall flat. Nobody's going to care. And I'm afraid that I'm going to sound bad on this microphone. All of these things could have stopped me from sitting here and doing this. But fortunately, over the years, I have learned that because there's no escape from fear — it's going to show up anytime you're doing something uncertain — it's not just freelancing that works that way. Traditional careers also have their fearful moments, but freelancing does involve more risks, and has more rewards as a result. Which, again, is something we'll definitely be covering in future episodes.
But when it comes to fear holding you back, I was thinking about: what is it that I have done over my career to look fear in the face and push through it? I wanted to talk today just generally about some of the things I do when I'm feeling fearful — things that allow me to use it as a springboard rather than something that's holding me back.
One of the first things I do is acknowledge that I'm doing something scary. And honestly, even though that sounds simple, it's really quite hard. I'm someone who holds myself to a very high standard. I imagine most freelancers are the same way, because you really can't make it as a freelancer unless you have very high standards for your work. But that also means that I don't really like to admit weakness. I don't like to say I'm actually so scared right now.
Coming here on a podcast, on our very first episode, and telling you that I'm afraid for my own career, for my own plans — that's scary in itself. And it's hard to acknowledge that there is fear out there and that I'm feeling it and that everybody is feeling it. Because when you acknowledge it, you think in your head: everyone's going to think I'm crazy. Everyone's going to think I'm weak. Everyone's going to think I'm pathetic. When really, that's not usually what happens. Usually when you come forward and say, "Hey, I'm afraid of this, I don't know what to do," you're usually met with voices of people saying, "Me too. I'm also scared. I'm so glad you said that. I really identify with that." And other times you have people who step forward and say, "I used to be afraid of that too, and now I'm not."
And that brings me to my second point about facing fear. As I mentioned earlier, the unknown is what gives me anxiety, and one of my mantras is that the antidote to anxiety is information. So if I am facing something uncertain, which causes me to have the fear response, the first thing I try to do is gather information.
I think back to when I started freelancing full-time in 2019. I was so scared of quitting my full-time job, but also so miserable at my full-time job, and really craving the freedom to move and to choose my clients and make more money. And I was so afraid to do it. So the first thing I did was start interviewing other freelancers. I was really fortunate at that time that my job at the marketing agency meant I actually worked with dozens of freelancers, and so I just started reaching out to them, asking them what it was like when they started. My favorite question of all time to ask people when I'm seeking information is: if you could go back and do it again, what would you do differently? Because that is where you really learn about other people's mistakes, about how they overcame their fears.
And this is actually at the heart of why I'm creating this Freelance Success Podcast. I'm going to be bringing you, every episode, an interview with a successful freelancer who has already been there and done that — on one part of the freelance journey. So you don't even have to go out and do the interviews like I did. You just have to tune in here, subscribe to this podcast, and you'll be getting new episodes bringing you conversations with successful freelancers and their best tips and advice.
One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was thinking about starting freelancing was from a freelancer named Nick, and he told me that it was like stepping into a dark stairwell where you can't see the first step. And so that first step feels really scary, but once you hit the first step, you realize it's not that far down, and you can start moving down the stairway faster because you're not as afraid after that first step. So I often think about that when it comes to fear — about that first scary step, and that it is always the first step that is the scariest.
Now, that's not to say that fear goes away after your first year of freelancing, and then it's coasting after that. Talk to freelancers, including myself, who are further along, and you'll see that fear rears its ugly head your second year of freelancing, your third, your fourth, your fifth. Even now in my sixth year, I'm still, as I said, doing things that scare me. I still have some uncertainty.
But the things that used to bring me anxiety, I have managed with process. So once I knew that there were certain factors of freelancing that were going to bring uncertainty no matter what, I set about trying to mitigate that uncertainty by creating a process that would allow me to at least have a plan ready to go when I started to face uncertainty.
Let me use an example. The biggest source of uncertainty I had when I was first freelancing — and still sometimes to this day — was about income. It was very hard to know what my income was going to be in the near future. Sure, I had retainers that lasted for a certain number of months, but you can never really be as certain about where your money's going to come from as a freelancer as you might be when you get a regular paycheck at a job.
However, I found that the real problem with my uncertainty wasn't that my income changed month to month, but that I couldn't predict when it was going to change, and I was therefore often caught off guard — suddenly needing more money than I had, or on some better occasions, having more money than I knew what to do with and not having a plan to invest that money wisely in my business.
So I started to look for solutions that would allow me to predict my income, and I ended up making a spreadsheet that I would use to not only track my income, but also my expenses, and automatically generate a chart that allows me to see into the future when my income is going to change. That allows me to plan ahead with additional marketing or lead generation when I know that a few months down the line I'm going to be running low on money. That is a lot better than flying by the seat of my pants. Yes, there's still some uncertainty, but being able to look at my financial future for the next few months and actually visually see what it's going to look like on a chart — that made all the difference in reducing that anxiety, because I knew I wasn't going to be caught unawares anymore.
These processes took me a while to develop, but now I have a whole bunch of them. I have processes for following up with clients. I have processes for managing my marketing, my email list. I even have processes for things like making new connections. Sometimes these processes are spreadsheets. Sometimes they're templates. Sometimes they exist only in my head. But most of the ones that exist on paper — the ones I really can't live without — are part of the Freelance Success Library, so members can grab access to those resources and start using them today.
And anyone who's listening to this can get a free one-month trial and check out some of those resources now. All you need to do is go to JoinFreelanceSuccess.com, and you can test drive any of them for a month and then decide if you want to stick around for the processes and resources that we are continually adding every week.
Okay, so just to recap: some of the ways that I manage fear — which is, as we've said, inevitable as a freelancer — is to first sit with and acknowledge the fact that I'm doing something scary. And this is not just about starting freelancing, but about all stages of freelancing that bring uncertainty and anxiety. The first step is always to acknowledge: hey, this is scary and difficult, and I feel the way I do because that is the right way to feel about something that's scary and unfamiliar.
After that, we talked about reaching out to your community and touching base with people who have been there and done that before — people who can tell you, "Oh yeah, I did that. I made this mistake," or "This was the best thing I did," or "It didn't work until I did this." Those are the kinds of things that are going to reduce that fear and allow you to keep moving forward even when you aren't really sure exactly what you're doing.
And the third thing I talked about is having processes and resources that you can fall back on when things feel uncertain. This takes time. It takes time to find the resources and plans that you need. But once you have a few that you really trust and that you know work well, you won't feel as stressed when something goes unexpected or turns sideways in your business. You'll be able to look at your library of processes and say, "Okay, I have a plan for this."
And the last thing I want to talk about is money — because for me, fear and money go hand in hand. I was raised in a family where we really didn't talk about money. We kind of looked down on the idea of making too much money. And so I have a lot of anxiety around money, around managing money. It's exacerbated by the fact that for much of my young adult life, I was really broke and wasn't making very much money, and looking at my financial situation felt scary and uncomfortable. So I learned habits of avoiding looking at money.
But let's face it: for freelancers, money is usually the number one anxiety and fear factor. Usually around not having enough of it, not knowing when we're going to get it.
What I can say on this is that obviously you have to make money in order to feel secure. So hopefully the processes that we've talked about here, and some of the other episodes we have about lead generation and marketing coming up, will help you get the money in the door. But one thing I can say that seriously helps me develop less anxiety around money was hiring a few experts to make sure that I was doing everything appropriately.
I have two experts in my corner. One is a CPA who understands freelancing, and they help me at the end of the financial year to make sure that I'm filing correctly and getting as much back as possible so that I don't end up with a huge tax bill, which can really damage your freelance business. And the other is a financial advisor — I'm hoping to have him on the podcast at some point — and we meet every quarter. We talk about what happened in the last quarter, what's coming up in the next quarter, whether I need to take some money out of my savings or whether I can adjust how much money I'm putting away. Am I making sure that my money is moving into retirement accounts? I pay him a monthly fee for this kind of service, but it has definitely earned me more money back, because he's helped me put my money into places where it doesn't just sit in a bank account, but also grows and brings me returns. He helps me move that money around so that I can maximize my tax situation and make sure I have some money set aside for when I want to retire — hopefully in the next fifteen or twenty years.
Okay. That's all I really wanted to say about fear. If you're feeling fear in your freelance career, first know that that's normal. And second, know that there are ways to fight back against that fear and use it to your advantage. As I've mentioned, that happens through process, through seeking information, through getting experts, and perhaps most importantly, getting into a good, solid freelance community where you can talk to freelancers who've already been there and done that — freelancers who have solutions that will ease your fear, and freelancers who can simply say, "Yeah, me too." It really helps to have that kind of connection, and that is what we offer at Freelance Success.
So I hope you'll come and join our community and check out the resources, expert talks, and daily conversations that are happening there. Anyone who's listening to this right now can get a month free — just go to JoinFreelanceSuccess.com. You'll see an option to sign up for our newsletter, which will get you some of the very best freelance resources and advice right in your inbox, along with a link to sign up for the community for one month for free. And we hope you'll stay longer than that.
Once again, go check out JoinFreelanceSuccess.com, and I'll be back in your feed very soon with episode two of the Freelance Success Podcast.
