Why is understanding yourself important for success as an entrepreneur? How can the dreaded “burnout” be avoided without dropping the business-owner ball? These questions are just the tip of the valuable entrepreneur-insight iceberg that we crashed into with Emily Leach, founder of The Freelance Conference.

If you’re a freelancer, you’ll find today’s Entrepreneur Stories blog to be particularly interesting! Join us as we discover exactly how Emily went from a struggling employee to a successful entrepreneur and public speaker.

What are three things you think every entrepreneur should know?

Emily divulged that, in her opinion, the most crucial thing for an entrepreneur to understand is themselves. They need to know who they are, what their boundaries are, what they’re passionate about, and what they excel at, as well as what they’re innately bad at.

Essentially, entrepreneurs need to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and boundaries. While many people may believe that this is so they can work hard and improve their weaknesses to succeed, Emily has a different take on it. 

She believes it’s more important for entrepreneurs to focus on their strengths and passions while finding ways to delegate tasks they’re not good at. By doing so, they can avoid mastering tasks they don’t enjoy and focus on what they’re actually good at, which ultimately leads to a more successful business and a more satisfying life.

Entrepreneurs also need to be mindful of their boundaries to not overwork themselves. Emily recommended a book, “Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well,” by Tracey Lovejoy for all entrepreneurs to understand the importance of valuing themselves and their boundaries above their productivity and output. 

Burnout is a household term in today’s society – and a real risk for entrepreneurs who push themselves too hard. It can lead to the loss of important relationships and passions that inspired them to start their businesses in the first place. It’s important to take breaks, reflect on actions, and make iterative shifts to avoid burnout. 

Finally, entrepreneurs should aim to integrate their business and personal lives. Instead of viewing them as separate entities, they should design their lifestyle to incorporate their business. This may take time, but it can lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life where they don’t have to sacrifice one aspect for the other.

Tell us about the problem your business solves and who are your customers.

Essentially, Emily’s business model is helping people walk through and understand their own solutions to their own problems. With 30 years of freelancing experience under her belt, she intimately understands the problems faced by freelancers.  

As a woman specifically, it’s very difficult to find someone to teach you how to sell without taking the wheel from you and doing it for you. Emily is very passionate about creating a space for freelancers to learn how to run their freelance business in a way that is true for themselves, that enhances the experience for them and their customer, and that gets them more business without taking more time. 

Emily’s current goal is to teach women how to sell more confidently while ensuring that the control remains with them. In her previous work with freelance business owners, Emily helped people overcome problems such as hating accounting, which often led to neglecting it altogether. She taught them how to automate pieces of their freelance business and improve the experience for themselves and their customers. 

Emily enjoys tackling these types of challenges, which help people walk through and find their own solutions. The Freelance Conference’s customers are freelancers who need help solving business obstacles with a focus on micro-businesses, or individuals, rather than large or medium-sized businesses.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur and would you do it again?

More to the point: What inspired you to work with freelancers specifically? 

In our conversation, Emily Leach explained how she transitioned from being a struggling employee to a successful freelancer. She battled with working in teams and being a traditional employee, which led her to explore working with freelancers. 

Emily explained that she encountered two types of freelancers: those who couldn’t afford to spend money and those who spent too much money without seeing any results. Emily fell into the third category of freelancers: those who had figured out how to spend money effectively.

Emily taught classes to help entry-level freelance business owners understand how to generate a steady income and not be afraid of spending money. She found that many freelancers were hesitant to invest in their business because they did not know how to justify the cost. Emily helped her students see that investing in their business could return that money to them tenfold down the line.

Emily’s own experience with search engine optimization (SEO) is an example of how spending money on the right tools and resources can pay off. She was initially hesitant to invest $2,000 in her SEO Academy, until she realized that the investment would pay off in the long run. She encouraged her students to think about the return on investment (ROI) and how much additional income they would need to generate in order to justify the cost.

Towards the end of her freelance business, Emily was spending hundreds of dollars on various tools that helped her automate and improve her business. She found that these tools were worth the investment because they made her business more effective and efficient, as well as fulfilling. 

Overall, Emily’s experience highlights the importance of spending money wisely in a freelance business and investing in tools and resources that can help generate a positive ROI.

Knowing what you know now, if someone gave you a million dollars when you started your business, what would you have spent it on?

Had a million dollars fallen into Emily’s pockets when she started The Freelance Conference, she would have spent it on a team of freelancers. Throughout the seven years of running her business, she had already relied on freelancers to help her build and manage it.

With that million dollars, Emily would have reached out to someone that had already achieved success according to the image of her goal – clear in her mind’s eye – so that she could gain insight into the road and path to success. 

She would then have hired a team to take care of the tasks that she was not good at and didn’t enjoy, as she ended up doing 90% of them herself, despite disliking them.

What is your proudest accomplishment as an Entrepreneur?

This was a hard question for Emily to answer, as there were two accomplishments that stood out to her: the Freelance Conference and the Austin Freelance Gigs Group.

She considered the Austin Freelance Gigs Group her biggest achievement, despite the fact that she didn’t gain any financial profit from it. Conversely, she found the Freelance Conference to be the funnest and coolest thing she ever launched, despite it being a lot of work. 

She had a hard time hiring a team due to lack of funds and ended up needing to do about 95% of the work herself, which left her with little time to sell tickets and sponsorships. This created a cycle that she could not completely break out of. 

Ultimately, both achievements were her ‘proudest accomplishments’ for entirely different reasons.

We hope reading today’s blog has infused you with all the inspiration and knowledge you need to go out there and knock the entrepreneurial world’s socks off! Remember, valuing yourself above your productivity is key, delegation is not abdication, and investing in automation can be worthwhile – even if it’s daunting.  

As you read the questions highlighted above, did your own answers come to mind? Answers gleaned from your own experience as a successful entrepreneur? We’d be thrilled to discuss them with you! Get in touch with us today to share your own tale of startup business owner to successful entrepreneur.