305 - Carrie Dils on being your authentic self, and fearless freelancing

Live In The Feast

Today’s guest is Carrie Dils. Carrie is a freelancer, podcaster, writer, educator, and web developer. She runs a very popular blog where she shares her experiences as a business owner and teaches others how to build their own freelance businesses.

Carrie didn’t start out as a developer. She came to it from a far more traditional business - a local coffee shop.

When Carrie left the corporate world early in her career, she visited a coffee shop that she fell in love with, and decided to recreate the experience in her home town.

After almost a decade working at Starbucks trying to build experience, she realized she wanted nothing to do with owning a coffee shop. Still, she was able to glean a lot of the details of running a business from the experience.

She first realized she was in love with freelancing when a radio station paid her $20/hr to make banner ads. She could work when she wanted, from wherever she wanted, and that was enough to get her hooked.

Despite the loving the freelance life, Carrie often found herself in situations where her clients wanted to hire her. However, it was through taking some of these opportunities that she realized just how much it meant to her to run her own business.

These days, Carrie is building Fearless Freelancer - a program for freelancers who are just starting out. It provides the resources and training to help people create a freelance business they actually enjoy.

In this episode Carrie talks about:

• How being yourself and embracing who you are is the way to provide a great experience for clients.
• Working in a cube farm and feeling the soul sucking drain from days spent working in an environment that wasn’t challenging her.
• Building something for one audience and having another one show up.
• Writing an opinionated book that shows the real world of freelancing.

Main Takeaways

• Be yourself with your business. Don’t try to be someone you’re not.
• Don’t make decisions based on emotional responses, but always check in with how a work situation is making you feel.
• Sometimes the people for whom you create something aren’t the ones who actually show up.
• The real freelance experience is not like what’s advertised - there are no hacks to a successful freelance business.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Fearless Freelancer
• Fearless Freelancer Facebook Group
• On twitter @cdils