I often times get emails from blog readers and coaching clients where they express their underlying fear that they believe there may be too much competition for freelancing.
I’m personally not a big believer in competition and I’m positive that this mindset has helped me with my own success. Instead of worrying about what other people are doing, I instead just focus on my own lane.
If you’re also concerned about there being too much competition for freelancing, here are a few of the reasons why you probably shouldn’t be.
There’s more than enough money to go around.
Our mindset when it comes to money has a lot to do with how much money and opportunity we are able to attract into our lives. I don’t mean this in a woo-woo spiritual way, I mean it in the most practical way possible. If you don’t believe there’s money for you, then that’s how you’re going to act. The end result is you’ll be broke.
One of the ways in which people sabotage their money mindset is by worrying about competition for freelancing. Competition implies that you believe there’s a finite amount of money in the world and that you either must take people down to get it or that none of that money is for you. This leads to acting out in fear which could look like greed or simply giving up, neither of which will actually help you make money in the long haul (or at the very least you won’t feel good about the money you’re making).
The reality is there is more than enough money and clients to go around. Not one person (or even a few people) could possibly handle all the work that needs to be done.
Different strokes for different folks.
Another reason you shouldn’t worry about competition as a freelancer is because no one can do what you do in the exact way that you do it. People hire other people they like, know and trust. That means some people may like you more than they like others simply because they like your personality or the way you do the work.
I like to equate this to ice cream. Some people like chocolate while others like vanilla, but at the end of the day it’s still ice cream. Same goes for freelancers. You could have two writers with the same credentials but one could get hired just on the basis that the manager liked their personality or their perspective. Neither of those can be duplicated by someone else which makes the entire notion of competition somewhat obsolete.
By the way, the same thing would happen when I worked in recruiting. You could have two stellar candidates with the exact same background and the manager would just pick the one they got along with better.
It’s All About Mindset
At the end of the day, it’s all about mindset. The great thing about mindset is you have a choice. Do you want to see the world as full of opportunities or would you rather see it with too much competition? I can tell you from experience that the former leads to a lot more money.
