Remind yourself: You’ll only make that mistake once!

Simple but important tip: When you’re paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake in your business, remind yourself that if you really mess something up, you’ll only make that mistake once! 

Especially if you’re new to freelancing, or to an aspect of freelancing such as direct client marketing, the fear of making mistakes can be debilitating. You literally cannot take action because you’re so afraid of doing something wrong. What if you:

• Call someone by the wrong name in an e-mail? 
• Send a message before it’s finalized? 
• Post something on LinkedIn with a typo? 
• Say something that turns out to be totally wrong or weird? 

Simply put, you channel my grandmother. She was a lifelong seamstress, and was determined that all of her granddaughters were going to learn to use a sewing machine at a young age.

When a friend expressed concern: “Aren’t you afraid they’re going to sew over their fingers?” (sounds crazy, but it’s surprisingly easy to do on a home sewing machine) my grandmother’s response was, “They’ll only do it once!”

As a kid (and still today, honestly) I loved the answer to this question. Not “That would never happen! They’re too gifted to ever do that!” but “If it happens, it will happen a total of one time!”

In our freelance business, this mindset teaches us:

• No matter how careful we are, we’re going to make mistakes and even say or do things we immediately regret 
• When (not if, when) that happens, the real mistake is not evaluating what went wrong, and letting the mistake happen again

Examples include:

• After the first time I accidentally sent a sensitive e-mail that wasn’t quite finished, I learned to add the recipient’s e-mail address only after the e-mail said exactly what I wanted it to say. Adding the recipient is the very last step before clicking Send. 
• After posting something on LinkedIn with a heinous typo, I trained myself to slow down and read my LinkedIn posts out loud before uploading them. 
• I’ve definitely left the previous client’s name in a marketing e-mail. That’s so cringe-worthy that you’re only going to do it once! After that, you learn to double, triple-check the key information every time. 

Especially if you’re exploring a whole new way of doing business, having the courage to try is really, really hard. When I’m trying something new (I’ve been doing this with Training for Translators and in my direct language work), I tell myself, often multiple times: If this is a total flop, I’ll take that as information and I just won’t do it again. No one is going to die because I tried something new and it didn’t go the way I hoped.

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re trying new things these days (and I hope you are!). 

Don’t forget to sign up for the SEO class if you’re interested.

Also: I’m excited to be speaking at next week’s techforword Direct Client Summit. My presentation, on a simple e-mail sequence for direct client marketing, is on Thursday, and there are tons of great presentations (social media, trade shows, LinkedIn, relationship-building, referrals, nudge marketing). The basic ticket is free, and if you buy the Power Pack (longer access to the recordings plus other bonuses) within 20 minutes of when you register, it’s 49 euros. That’s not an affiliate deal, just recommending a good opportunity!