#140: Melanie’s Six-Figure Low-Stress Freelancing, from the Hustle & Grace Podcast with Hilary Sutton
Sep 15, 2022
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Melanie, a freelancer who has achieved six-figure income with low-stress work, shares her career journey in freelancing, tips for taking the leap, and insights on podcasting, community building and hitting financial goals.
Building relationships and networking is essential for freelancers, emphasizing the importance of relationship building rather than traditional marketing.
Being a successful freelancer requires having a business mindset, setting rates, negotiating, marketing, networking, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Deep dives
The Power of Relationship Building in Freelancing
Building relationships and networking is vital in freelancing. Rather than viewing it as marketing, it should be seen as relationship building. Passion for your work is essential, as it enables you to effectively communicate about it. Deliberate Freelancer podcast focuses on helping freelancers build successful businesses deliberately.
Melanie's Career Journey and Transition to Freelancing
Melanie Padgett-Powers, the host of Deliberate Freelancer, shares her career journey from being a newspaper reporter to working in associations. Dissatisfied with the direction of her last association job, she made the leap to freelance without a concrete plan. Nevertheless, her network and previous experience allowed her to start freelancing successfully, securing work right away.
The Path to Becoming a Six-Figure Freelancer
Melanie talks about being a six-figure freelancer and encourages others to evaluate what financial goals they need and want. She emphasizes the importance of having a business mindset, setting rates, negotiating, marketing, and networking. Melanie also shares that she works less than 40 hours a week, tracking her time to ensure efficiency. The deliberate freelancer podcast focuses on guiding freelancers to build successful businesses while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
This week’s episode is unique in that it’s a cross-post episode. What that means is that I, Melanie, was invited on Hilary Sutton’s Hustle & Grace podcast recently. Not only does that episode debut on Hilary’s podcast this week, but I agreed to share it here on Deliberate Freelancer.
Hilary is a writer, speaker and consultant. And she has become a real-life friend who lives here in the DC area near me. I encourage you to check out her podcast for great interviews from entrepreneurs and other freelancers and consultants.
So, the tables are turned and Hilary interviews me this week. In this episode I talk about:
My career journey and why I left employment and became a freelancer.
Tips on taking that leap into freelancing.
Why I launched Deliberate Freelancer.
Why I launched a second podcast, Association Station, this year—and how I used lessons from Deliberate Freelancer to make the creation process more efficient.
How podcasting has improved my business and built my community, in surprising ways.
My thoughts on whether we should strive to be six-figure freelancers.
How to hit your financial goals.
Hilary might sound familiar to you because she has been a guest on Deliberate Freelancer. Scroll down to access that episode about the importance of personal branding.