Capital letters totally intentional! Being Your Own Boss is wonderful, but comes with a decent-sized helping of random challenges, some big, some small, and some utterly unpredictable.

This episode we’re a bit more focused on business, and how these challenges are suddenly more relevant because of home working due to the COVID pandemic, and some tips & tricks to tackle them.

It’s a bit of a scratch-the-surface episode, as there’s so much to unpack, and because one of our main motivations in starting Creative Reboot was to talk more openly about this stuff, so that no one feels alone with whatever it is they’re struggling with.

What we talk about

Isolation, loneliness, the need for human contact – this is one of the most quoted challenges our self employed friends & contacts encounter, but it’s not often tackled.

This year has brought working from home to a whole new audience, a bunch of people who had no desire to do it, a bunch who were secretly desperate to do it, and a subsection who had never given it much thought.

It turns out the pandemic has affirmed both of our life choices, but our approaches to hermiting differ!

Looking at support networks and making friends, business networks and buddies, and industry peers – can you hear the collective sigh of relief when you can talk honestly?

Impatience, icky bits and the lack of guide to friendship and making connections.

Adding a bit of authenticity and behind the scenes so you aren’t comparing your everyday life with everyone else’s shiny, edited versions of life online.

If you can’t find what you need, and it’s not there, create it – you can use things like Facebook groups, Whatsapp, online meetings like Zoom, apps like Meetup – there are loads of ways to find people who are trying to achieve the same things as you.

Moving onto other challenges, money rears its head… which is a massive one.

Worrying about money, cashflow, talking about money, pricing… there is SO MUCH to deal with when you’re a creative charging for your work in any form.

How to have those money conversations, growing your money mindset, expanding your awareness of what earning more money can do – being ok with earning more than you used to in a job.

Mindset shifts on money flowing in and out, and balance. The way we approach money as creatives and as business owners.

FEAR – of not getting booked because you’re too expensive, and how that morphs into quite enjoying that feeling!

Focusing on your flows in and out, and value. Pricing based on your worth vs pricing based on your cost of doing business, vs plucking figures out of thin air.

Treat mentality & guilt, essential frivolity and spending just for fun.

Boundaries! Personal vs business, why we sometimes struggle with ours, actually taking weekends off and how Sarah got there.

Having time off, and reaching the point where time off is completely necessary to avoid burnout.

Finding – or making – time for your personal work, the passion projects in your soul. Time blocking and treating it like client work, and treat yourself like one of your clients.

Linky links

Denise DT
Jen Sincero – all her books are great, the one we talk about is You Are A Badass At Making Money
Data Clinic – who, you’ll be delighted to know, successfully recovered ALL my data from the failed drive and were absolutely bloody brilliant!
The Ethical Move – the pledge we talk about

And of course

We’d love to hear from you! Share us if you’re enjoying the podcast, like & subscribe & rate us on your fave platforms, and let us know if you have any topics you want us to tackle, or if you’d like to join our list of guests 🙂

Till next time,

Carla & Sarah