Know Your Values and Stick to Them

One aspect I've come to learn with freelancing is to take some time to understand your values. Whether it's your own values as a freelancer, or company values for an entrepreneur, knowing this is crucial for various reasons.

The reason I bring this up today is that I was approached with two opportunities this morning: one I accepted, and one I rejected.

The one I rejected is consistent writing work for the foreseeable future. It's on a topic I'm familiar with and don't mind writing about.

The reason I turned it down is that I feel the potential client only cares about getting the work done quickly and with quality. That being said, they are making no effort at all in helping me—the freelancer they want to hire— understand anything about their business.

I don't even know their name, as it's a friend who is giving me these clients directly. Even my friend doesn't know much about their business either.

. . .

On the other hand, the client I did accept is someone outside of my area of familiarity. They're willing to pay me more for the work while the overall word-count demand is roughly the same.

The money here isn't important, but rather the fact that the company stated who they are, what their business is about, and I can look through their website as much as I want.

I immediately got a feel for the company and realized my values are connected to the company's values as well.

While the work is guaranteed for four months—as far as I know—I value the message the company sends more than the money itself. The money is secondary.

. . .

From the scenario, it's clear what sort of values I have, but these are crucial to me and my business. They're important for these particular reasons.

Knowing these values develops a lot of grit. Knowing your values and valuing them is the difference between doing work you don't agree with or working for someone you dislike versus developing a mindset to keep pushing and finding a truly amazing client to bring you out.

This grit is immensely valuable as you'll see with these other points.

You keep your integrity. Becoming someone you're not has a lot of built-up shame in it. From people around you judging you to even yourself berating yourself.

It's important for us to maintain our own individuality. Even if your face is behind a company brand. I've always said that businesses are an extension of yourself and the type of business you have and how you run it says a lot about you as a person.

By sticking to your values and recognizing them, you're creating a space where you can thrive along with other people. That's more important than losing yourself for a quick buck.

You develop yourself further. A good example of this is through my own business. It's obvious that I work with businesses and people who care about their clients. This provides further growth to myself as even though I'm outside of the business structurally, I'm still part of it in some fashion.

I feel invested in the company's growth and I want to be part of that growth. What this means to me is that I'll accept additional tasks and work above and beyond what is required of me. Instead of writing an article and sending it off, I ask myself whether I can backlink the post to other content the company published. I'll ask them about their email marketing or general SEO strategy. I'll look for other ways that I can contribute to the growth of the company.

Yes, it's more work, but when you position yourself as someone who is invaluable to a business, not only do you grow your skills, but you have a valuable client that you can keep for several months or years than what they initially expected from a freelancer.

You get the satisfaction of turning clients down. Being picky pays off because you get to fire clients or refuse work from certain clients. While we are already overwhelmed about the choices in our lives, these particular choices bring a certain level of satisfaction.

I'm slowly moving into a position where I have enough clients that I don't really need more work. On top of that, I have clients that I do want to be working with.

And this aspect is most important and is something we often overlook. The reason for that is we always focus on the financial benefits or the work itself. We never fully think about how we feel about the work or whether we can tolerate the work for several months or even weeks.

The emotional aspect I find is important to our overall well being as a freelancer or entrepreneur and some people have figured that out. From some of my conversations with people, they'd rather work with people who are great to work with despite producing amazing work.

So why should freelancers be the only one to accept bad clients?

I'd rather work with an excellent client who'll work with me rather than someone who isn't.

Freelancers and entrepreneurs need to understand where they are in terms of values and virtues. Determining these things is a matter of looking at yourself and thinking about an ideal client.

Who do you want to be working with? Paint an ideal picture and define some core qualities of that person. At least three or four.

When you have a grasp of who you want to work with, you can use it as a sort of checklist. You'd be surprised how many people fit that bill, but it's also a great tool for your own development. Professionally and personally.