When you’re paralyzed by marketing anxiety

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Things to try, if you’re paralyzed by marketing anxiety

Lately, I’m hearing from a lot of freelancers who are struggling with some hard realizations:

• It’s difficult to impossible to have a thriving freelance business in 2026 without actively marketing your services
• Lots of people know this (translators and interpreters, after all, being very smart people) but still can’t make themselves do it

First, it’s important to remember that the freelance landscape changes all the time. When I started freelancing in 2002, I applied to over 400 translation companies during my first year in business. Marketing to that many potential clients never seemed odd to me, because I didn’t know anything different. And yet, the generation of freelancers ahead of me, people who started in the 80s and 90s, said, “That’s crazy!! When I started freelancing in 1993, I had a phone number and an AOL address, I did only a tiny bit of marketing, and through word of mouth and referrals, within six months I was so busy that I had to hire another translator to work with me.”

Moral of the story: things change. The other day, I overheard a discussion at my coworking office; two middle-aged guys, one lamenting the changes in the freelance landscape. “I wish I could still make good money making simple websites, now everyone uses WordPress or Squarespace!” To which the other guy responded, “Yeah, and I wish I were still 25 and not bald. But the world doesn’t work that way.”

If you’re really stuck

Two truths about me, as context: I’m not a fundamentally anxious person, and selling doesn’t bother me. I don’t love selling, otherwise I’d work in sales, but I don’t dread it. People respond, people don’t respond, I don’t really see it as a reflection on me as a human. And, I realize that a) we all have “outreach anxiety” from time to time, and b) some of us have debilitating outreach anxiety, as in we just can’t do it.

I’ve got three things for you to try, all very different strategies:

1. 
   If you’re a fundamentally spiritual person, *or* you struggle with the feeling that things in the current world are just stacked against you and you’re constantly swimming upstream, do this. Before you work on marketing, say to yourself, out loud, “The universe is conspiring in my favor. Everything in the universe is pushing me toward success.” This is pretty woo-woo, but it’s actually a take on a quote from Paulo Coelho, and honestly, I think it’s helpful. Why shouldn’t you be destined for great success and even wealth? What if you assumed that that’s what the universe wants for you? Then get after it with your marketing!
2. Less woo-woo. Start your marketing sessions by asking yourself these questions: Who should I be serving? Where can my skills be most useful? Who really needs my help, but they can’t get my help because they don’t yet know that I exist? This is the approach that I find most helpful because it has the advantage of being true. We’ve all had the experience of a client telling us, “You really saved us.” “I’m so glad we found you.” “You’re just what we needed.” So now, go find more people who are waiting to be helped by the skills you have.
3. A tip I gleaned from a freelance writers’ group I’m in. Give yourself a little distance from your direct marketing efforts by scheduling your e-mails and posts rather than sending/posting them as soon as you write them. As mentioned above, I’m neither an anxious person nor super-anxious about marketing, but I was amazed by the number of people who chimed in to say that they do this and find it helpful. Instead of writing a pitch e-mail, sending it, and then sitting there sweating bullets over whether the person is opening it, reading it, are they going to respond, you can avoid all of that by scheduling the e-mail to send the next morning. The person who suggested this tactic said that by that time, she’s probably forgotten about the e-mail anyway, or it seems less terrifyingly immediate. All modern e-mail programs can do this: in Google Workspace/Gmail, click the little arrow on the “Send” button and it will offer you various options, i.e. “8 AM tomorrow morning.” You can do the same thing with LinkedIn posts (click the clock icon on the post interface).

If you’re struggling with marketing paralysis, I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week!

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