On today’s show, I want to talk about some core principles you’ll need to run a successful freelance business — these are ideas I have come to believe strongly in over the past seven years: Core principle #1: You are a freelance business owner. Changing your mindset and truly believing you are a business owner and the boss of you helps both the way you look at yourself and the way others perceive you. Embracing that mindset creates a fundamental shift in how you think about being a freelancer. Tell yourself in everything that you do that you need to base your ideas, plans and actions on how a business owner or entrepreneur would think. That can mean creating a business plan, creating a marketing plan, setting financial and other goals, tracking your money, figuring out how to charge better, having the confidence to ask for more money and increase your rates, and setting boundaries, office hours and a work structure. Core principle #2: Take charge of your finances. You could be great at what you do. You may even be charging great rates and bringing in the cash. But if you aren’t handling and tracking your money well, you could be losing money and gaining stress. Do you have a yearly financial goal? Do you have monthly or weekly financial goals? Basically, do you have any idea how much money you are earning and how much you are spending? When you set your rates or a project fee, are you accounting for taxes or other expenses as part of the rate you set? Are you tracking monthly income versus expenses? Do you have a separate business account, not co-mingling your money with a personal account? I finally got a separate business account and a business-only credit card last year. I started using a 12-month cash flow projection spreadsheet in Excel. This was particularly helpful during the pandemic so I could see if I was earning enough to pay my bills. But that sheet also encouraged me because the numbers kept increasing over the summer as I kept striving to add more clients to those columns. By August, I could see that I had reached my pre-pandemic income level. And perhaps the most important part of taking charge of your finances: Are you setting aside the right portion of your income for taxes? In the United States, that’s about 28–30%. You have to tell yourself and truly believe that that percentage is not your money. It was never your money. Don’t ever think of it as a safety net or part of your savings. Once you believe that, set up a system to make that easier to follow. I have a separate online savings account that is only for taxes. I named it Pay My Taxes as a reminder not to touch it. At the end of each month, when I am paying my bills and invoicing my clients, I figure out my monthly income, minus expenses, and take 30% of that and transfer it to my tax account. Core principle #3: Be stubborn. Be confident. I know this is easier said than done for some people. This often comes down to personality, but I think we can continue to grow and learn and change and improve parts of ourselves that we struggle with. For example, I know that I do not like conflict, and I see the most basic disagreements and conversations as “conflict.” I know this is a challenge I struggle with, but being aware of it can be helpful so that I can work around it. So, I have created systems to boost my confidence. One way I do that is by emailing first instead of picking up the phone — at least for that initial conversation — when there is a disagreement, communication or misunderstanding. I have also come to understand that I suffer from impostor syndrome at times. I didn’t think I struggled with this until I had guest Kristen Hicks on episode #67 and she described the various aspects of impostor syndrome. I struggle sometimes with raising my rates or sticking to a project rate or scope creep. That falls under impostor syndrome too because deep down I’m really thinking, “Who am I to ask for this or to demand this?” To me, being stubborn means stickin