My peers are all the coaches I need 👩🏼🤝👩🏽
It's hard to ignore career advice when it's coming from someone just like you.
Right before the Christmas break, I got talking to a couple of fellow freelancers at an informal get-together.
It was an outdoor affair due to Covid restrictions and I went home after a few hours, every inch of my body chilled to the bone. 🥶
But I also went home feeling electric and a little dizzy. And it wasn’t because of the overpriced cinnamon schnapps I had drunk. It was more that light-headedness of feeling like a star.
Let me explain.
I spent a big part of the evening talking to a freelancer who had worked with a client I’ve had my eye on for a while now. This freelancer encouraged me to reach out to the client and to send them my proposal repeated times throughout the evening. She explained how she had gone about contacting them and offered a lot of helpful tips on contacting clients for the first time more generally.
She also told me to take that client off the ridiculous pedestal I had put them on and reassured me that it wasn’t a completely ludicrous idea for me to reach out to them. 😱
To be honest: it wasn’t as if she was telling me something I didn’t already know. But it was the fact that all this advice and “go get ‘em” encouragement was coming from her in particular – a person I consider to be my peer. Someone I admire and respect but also someone who I think is as skilled and talented as I am.
I find it easy to ignore most career and business advice. You could say I’ve made an art out of it. So much of the career and business advice offered up in newsletters, podcasts or books seems difficult to apply to a creative profession, irreconcilable with my values as a freelancer, or at odds with my goal to build a long and sustainable career.
A lot of it also comes from people who seem altogether different from me. People who seem, if not more talented, definitely more confident, whether deservedly or not. So I tune it out.
But when someone who I consider to be a peer of mine tells me to get over myself and to just do it – whatever it is – well, that’s harder to ignore. So today, I finally sent that pitch. 🎉 And if the client says no to my proposal, I will pitch it elsewhere until I get a yes – just like that freelancer told me to.
Around the same time that I went to that freelancer meet-up, I also caught up with another person working in the same industry as me. She is someone I respect and admire but, again, she’s also someone on the same level as I. Neither of us fits into the stereotype of the aggressive journalist, all swagger and bluster. And we’re both on the shy side.
It’s why I get such a ego boost from meeting up with her. She’s working for a company that I have never dared to apply to and she’s been doing well, as far as I can tell.
Her success almost feels like mine. 🤸🏾 Which, of course, it isn’t. But seeing someone like me, someone I consider to be a peer, excel in such a demanding role makes me feel more confident about my own abilities.
I’ve learned so much from her since we started hanging out a few years ago. I’ve always been a freelancer and she’s always worked in a salaried capacity, but we’ve been working for similar organisations and on similar topics.
I’ve learned from her by osmosis. She’s been pushed out of her comfort zone in both her current and previous role and seeing her step up has lit a fire under my ass.
She makes difficult things feel within my reach. If she tells me she’s been doing a particular thing at work, I know that I not only should start doing that thing, but also that I can do that thing.
I believe her career progress has had such an impact on me because we’re peers, the result of which is that our meet-ups feel like a safe space to talk about our work fears and accomplishments, and to learn from each other. Because we’re friends first and foremost, I relate to her so much more than if she had been a mentor or boss.
What are your thoughts on all this? Are you more likely to listen to career advice when it’s offered by your peers? Do you have a friend who inspires you to do better as well?
Linda
PS: For an upcoming edition of the newsletter, we’re looking to interview freelancers who do volunteering work. If this is you, please get in touch with us at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com
What I’m reading, watching, listening to this week:
I reread a couple chapters of Jessica Bennett’s “Feminist Fight Club” over the holiday period. I know I said I ignore most “professional” business advice, but this is one of the few books that I have found very useful. It unfailingly helps me shut up my inner critic.
If you’re interested in reading more about the topic of being positively influenced by your peers, you could do worse than exploring Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman’s Shine Theory.
Just a few minutes after finishing this newsletter, I opened a newsletter that linked to an article about horizontal mentoring. It sounded incredibly familiar to what I describe above. Well worth a read.