Happy New Year! On today’s show I talk about where my head is at for 2021, which is essentially that I am not setting huge goals for myself this year. I’m trying to continue to give myself grace—not be so hard on myself—and to focus on my personal wellness, while maintaining a steady income.   I did an audit of my business in 2020, crunching the numbers and analyzing the data, and I share that data and the lessons I learned—and how that info may be able to help you—in today’s episode.   When the pandemic hit in March, I lost my primary anchor client (which is still “on hold”) and a few smaller assignments that were in the works. I had to immediately figure out how I was going to pay my bills and find new clients to recoup about 50% of my income. I quickly sent a mass email to my larger network—current clients, past clients, other freelancers and other colleagues—and let them know I was available for work and how I could help them.   I received a great response, which was so heartwarming. Some of that even led to new clients. From that one email, I earned $40,000 from new clients last year, and another $10,000 from current editors with new assignments.   You don’t have to be hit with a pandemic to send out an email like that. I’ve sent them out individually on a much smaller basis, telling clients and colleagues that I have availability coming up and listing the ways I can help.   With other work in 2020, I was able to make six figures again, but it was way less than I earned in 2019, even though I also received a $20,000 PPP loan.   This financial stress, along with the anxiety surrounding COVID-19, caused me to experience anxiety like I never had before. Initially, in March, I interviewed therapist Mira Dineen on the podcast to talk about dealing with that anxiety, which was a great episode (all links below). Soon after, I brought on my acupuncturist and friend Rachel Brumberger to talk about embracing self-care without the guilt, whether we’re in a pandemic or not.   But later that summer, with my newly discovered and self-diagnosed anxiety, I sought out therapy for the first time. My new therapist gave me some great tools to use when I was feeling anxious and also before I was feeling anxious. You can hear about those tools in episode #70.   Because of the outreach I did in March, by August I was back to my pre-pandemic income levels, without the big anchor client I had lost. But it wasn’t always steady work. September and November were lighter months, and I was constantly working to get new writing assignments, which I don’t do in a typical year. But one-off writing assignments and a few new anchor clients helped me pay the bills and get to six figures in 2020.   In this episode, I also break down the percentages of the type of work I do, the type of clients I work for and where that work came from (networking, referrals, social media, past job connections or LOIs).   A huge chunk of my work comes from past job connections and ongoing referrals, which was not a surprise to me. And most of my work comes from membership associations. The majority of my work is managing editing, followed by writing, then copy editing and proofreading. With the loss of my anchor client, for which I was a managing editor, I thought that percentage would decrease a lot. But in 2020, the income from managing editing was still 57% of my income, partly because I had that main anchor client from January to mid-March and because I gained a new anchor client by August.   Managing editing is my favorite type of work, and I’m trying to figure out how to increase it in 2021. I can’t manage a ton of magazines because it takes a lot of time, but if I’m able to gain more of these types of clients, I may be able to outsource pieces like some of the writing.   The second type of work I do is writing. Writing pays well, but I don’t want to write every day, all day. But new writing assignments helped me survive 2020 because it’s easier to get one-off assignment