Here’s the business-owner mindset check every freelancer needs
Thank goodness for people like Elizabeth Day.
The author and podcaster relayed in a LinkedIn post a personal story about being blindsided by an employer she’d trusted for years. Sure, the betrayal stung, but the lesson stuck. It proved a sentinel moment in Day’s career-turned-business mindset.
“I’d said yes to almost everything my bosses asked of me,” wrote Day in the post. “When I eventually asked to go on contract so I could have more freedom to pursue my own writing, the request was refused. I was surprised. And then I was furious. But it taught me something: most big employers are never going to feel sentimental about you.”
Once she accepted that, she started asking herself a different question — what do I want? — and it changed the direction of her career. From journalist to all-encompassing author, podcaster, creator and the penultimate: FOUNDER.
“What do I want?” It’s a good question. One we should all ask ourselves at least every 6 months. However, if you’re self-employed (like many of Day’s followers and those who commented on her post), the question can be enhanced with a commercial hook.
The Freelance Informer put a fuller version of Day’s question to the test, adapted for anyone working for themselves:
What do I want — and how can I build a business around it?
Are you evaluating clients like a business owner?
Being your own boss doesn’t automatically mean you think of yourself as a business. Plenty of freelancers left the security of employment years ago but never actually left the employee mindset behind. Sad, but true, that could stem from historic freelancer-client culture. That’s because many freelancers running solo self-employed businesses have shared that their clients have treated them as useful cogs, but equally disposable and powerless.
The result can be a solo self-employed business that still runs on someone else’s terms. An employee mindset and a business-owner mindset aren’t just attitudes — they’re two different ways of processing the same situation. Here’s how to tell the difference:
The employee mindset asks:
- What does the client want from me?
- Am I doing enough hours / work to justify my pay?
- How do I avoid disappointing them?
- Is this project going well for them?
The business-owner mindset asks:
- What does this client actually need? Am I the right person to give it to them?
- Is this relationship profitable and sustainable for me?
- What happens to my business if this client disappears tomorrow?
- Am I building something, or just trading time for money on a loop?
Neither set of questions is wrong. However, if you’re self-employed and tending to ask the employee-minded questions, you’re running your business like it’s still someone else’s job.
Are you thinking like your clients do?
Here’s a useful check-in session. Successful clients, AKA businesses, are constantly asking themselves things, such as:
- What’s my margin on this?
- Is this worth my time compared to the alternative?
- What’s my pipeline look like in three months?
- Where’s the risk if this one relationship goes wrong?
- What can I systemise, raise prices on, or walk away from?
Now ask yourself, do I honestly ask those questions about my business? Or do I tend to only ask clients about theirs, on their behalf, as part of the service I provide?
Many freelancers can write a sharp strategy document for a client’s business without ever applying the same rigour to their own. That’s the employee mindset hiding in plain sight.
Ask yourself: are you using business-owner thinking as a skill you sell, rather than a lens you work in?
Signs you’re still in employee mode
You might still be operating with an employee mindset if:
- You price based on what feels fair to charge, rather than what the market — or your costs and time — actually require.
- You take on work you don’t want because saying no feels like a risk, not a decision
- One client makes up the majority of your income, and you haven’t done anything about it
- You measure a good week by how busy you were, not by what you earned or built
- You wait to be asked before raising your rates, changing your offer, or ending a bad-fit client relationship
- You think of “the business” as separate from you; something you’ll get around to building once the client work calms down
- Loyalty (to a client, a platform, a way of working) is something you extend automatically, without asking whether it’s reciprocated
None of these makes you a bad freelancer. They make you a freelancer who hasn’t yet made the switch from doing the work to owning the business that does the work.
How to turn Day’s question into a business question
“What do I want?” is a good start. It forces you to separate your own interests from the organisation’s (or client’s). But on its own, it can just produce a wish list. The second half of the question is what turns reflection into strategy:
How can I build a business around what I want?
That reframe changes the kind of answers you look for. “I want more creative freedom” becomes a question about which clients or offers give you that freedom. Which might you need to drop?
“I want more stability” becomes a question about diversifying income, raising prices or building recurring revenue instead of one-off projects. “I want to work less but earn the same” becomes a pricing and positioning problem, not a time-management one.
What-if scenarios worth sitting with (take notes):
- If I lost my biggest client tomorrow, what would I actually do? Why haven’t I done any of it yet?
- What part of my work would I do for free because I love it, and can I build more of my business around that?
- Where am I currently pricing or behaving like an employee rather than a supplier?
- What decision have I been putting off because it feels disloyal to a client, rather than because it’s bad for my business?
- If I looked at my own business the way I look at a client’s, what would I tell it to do differently?
It’s time to put your business first
Day’s insight about employers wasn’t really about employers being unkind. It was about recognising that an organisation is structurally built to protect itself first — and that once you understand that, you stop waiting for permission to protect your own interests.
The freelance equivalent isn’t “clients are disloyal, so be cynical about them.” It’s more along the lines of you are the only person guaranteed to be thinking about the long-term health of your business. Your clients are — rightly — thinking about theirs.
We hope this article has helped you evaluate the difference between having a career you happen to run yourself and running a business. One waits. The other decides what it wants and works out how to build it.
Check out Elizabeth Day’s podcast and production company; they’re inspiring.