“Make your business fun”: what this actually means for freelancers

Freelancing has been an opportunity to finally understand the ways which I am 100% responsible for my joy and misery.

I’ve been having trouble with this one piece of advice that makes total sense, but Bob (my inner critic) is keeping me from fully embracing it:

IF IT’S NOT FUN, DON’T DO IT!

This week I finally understood why.

Bob doesn’t think fun = stable income.

He has a hard time believing that fun and work can even co-exist.

And when I tell Bob that I am freelancing because I want to do the things I find fun and ONLY THAT, the old man gives me his signature WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? look.

I understood that “making it fun” means:

• There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a business. YOU are the blueprint. Make decisions that are aligned with who you are.
• There is no secret and no magic formula either. YOU are the secret. Your unapologetic self-expression is how you build connections and attract people.
• Simplicity and consistency is fun. Thinking that you need to have a website, sales funnel, presence on all social media channels, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, and a podcast before you even make a sale…NOT FUN.

But, the deeper I get into this question, I am also discovering that “making it fun” is more than experimenting until you find the strategy that works for you.

Making it fun forces you to question your entire foundation:

• Your definition of success, productivity, meaningful work
• Your relationship to time and money
• Your comfort with the unknown
• How you truly feel about your needs and desires
• How honest you are about what you want
• How much do you believe that you can get what you want…just because you want it
• How much do you believe that you can bring all of you to your work and build a stable business
• How well can you answer the question: How do you want to spend your days?

This is why I won’t ever get sick of talking about developing a healthy relationship with the Rebel Princess — she is the key to answering all these questions.

When we ignore her, she goes into “pointless revolt” mode. She will make us procrastinate or lose our minds with perfectionistic behaviors.

When she is free to explore these questions and answer them without shame, she is the intuition, imagination and inner knowledge that we need to believe in ourselves and take massive action.

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