When you’re starting to offer advisory engagements to clients and prospects, it’s very common to get nervous.

Say you’re talking with a prospect and you can tell that they need help beyond writing. In fact, you can see that it doesn’t yet make sense to go right into a writing project — mainly because they need to make some other decisions first.

But you’re nervous ... because you’re not sure how to think about what they’re telling you.

Or you’re not sure how to explain that they need to do something else first before creating that marketing asset.

Here’s what I do to help me get better clarity quickly and calm my nerves. It’s a bit of a decision tree or decision flow chart. A powerful heuristic, if you will.

I ask myself the following questions:

1. Does it sound like they need help coming up with the right solution or intervention? In other words, the right solution is not well defined yet. And you can’t really move forward with anything until they figure that out (hopefully with your help).
2. Do they have the right intervention BUT need help improving how they’ll produce that intervention? For example, they have the right idea for how to solve the problem. But as you listen to them talk about it, you realize the topic, theme, or approach they want to take is flawed.
3. Do they have the right intervention AND the right approach ... but they need help bringing that intervention to life? For example, they want to interview 15 subject matter experts, which is way too many. Or they want to do too much too quickly.

Why are these internal questions valuable? They’re valuable because they can help you categorize the exact type of need the prospect has AND how you’ll steer the conversation and how you’ll offer to help them.

And if you can determine this quickly and efficiently during that prospect conversation, you’ll have more mental and creative bandwidth to listen more attentively to what they’re saying AND end the conversation by stating your case confidently.

So give this heuristic tool a try next time you go into a prospect or client conversation where you notice that they may need help beyond just writing.

Life can often feel like a never-ending hustle — especially when you feel like you’re working harder than ever but getting poorer results.

Deadlines loom. Responsibilities pile up. And the bills keep coming.

It’s so easy to get swept up in the daily grind and feel like you’re constantly in the middle of a storm that just won’t let up.

Before you know it, the love you once had for your work starts to dim. And frustration and burnout take hold ... leaving you with a persistent feeling that you're merely going through the motions.

Sound familiar?

If so, I think you’ll really appreciate this episode. My guest today is my mentor, teacher, and good friend Peleg Top.

I’ve known Peleg for 14 years. He’s had a huge influence on my life and my business. And he’s the person who encouraged me many years ago to become a coach. I’ve learned a ton from him over the years, and much of that inevitably seeps into the work I do with my own clients.

I wanted to bring Peleg on because what I’ve been seeing in our business over the past year troubles me.

I’m seeing a level of frustration, burnout, doubt, fear, and uncertainty among creative professionals that I haven’t seen in a very long time. So many solo creative professionals are feeling rudderless and uninspired.

They’re tired and deeply in burnout territory. They want to change. And they’re trying their best to improve their situation, reinvent themselves, and create something new. But they feel plagued with a lack of clarity, fear, and self-doubt.

Peleg believes that these symptoms are a clear sign that your inner muse is inaccessible. It’s locked up in a prison cell made of routine, stress, and self-doubt. And in order to break through and create the change we want, we must unleash this inner muse so we can tap into our core creative potential.

I couldn’t agree more.

In this conversation, we get right into this. We explain what this inner muse is all about. And how we can start embracing it to open up pathways to new ideas, emotional healing, and a profound sense of fulfillment—both in our professional and personal lives.

An Invitation

One more thing. A few months ago, Peleg and I felt called to do something about the challenges we’re seeing among creative professionals. We wanted to do something more profound and life-changing than a podcast episode.

Don’t get me wrong. You’ll get a lot out of listening to this conversation. But we’ve also decided to co-lead a retreat this September in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it’s something I’m super-excited about.

We’re calling it the Unleash Your Inner Muse retreat.

This is a 5-day event where we'll work together to help you rediscover and nurture your creative spirit, unlock your full creative potential and craft a compelling vision for your personal and professional life.

You'll reconnect with a profound joy and exhilarating freedom that will make you wonder how you ever lost touch with this divine spark within.

And by the end of our journey together, you'll walk away with:

• Practical tools to reignite your creativity

• A renewed sense of motivation and direction

• A process that nourishes your authentic self and reconnects you to a creative energy you haven't felt in years

If what we share in this episode resonates with you, I invite you to listen to the end, where we talk a bit about that event. I’m also including a link with all the details on the show notes page for this episode. Or you can go straight there by visiting www.unleashyourinnermuse.com.

In this transformative episode, I discuss the importance of setting boundaries and being selective with opportunities through practical tools and methodologies. Borrowing from Greg McKeown's book, *Essentialism*, I introduce two powerful concepts: the 90% Rule and the Extreme Criteria Exercise. These tools are designed to help you master the art of saying no, enabling you to focus on what truly matters in both your personal and professional life.

Think back to when you first went out on your own.

Remember those first few projects? Getting paid for your writing felt like magic, didn’t it?

You put in, say, 10 hours of work, and the client paid you $750.

Wow!

What made it magical was that the $750 was all for me. And I loved the idea that a few units of effort in would translate to a few units of compensation on the other end.

Eventually, we all get used to this kind of reward ratio. And we (rightfully) start expecting more. We may even get to a point where one hour of our time is often worth $300, $400, or more. Especially when a project goes real smoothly.

And for some solo professionals, this can start feeling odd. We feel a bit guilty that we’re earning that much on some or all of our client work.

Impostor syndrome kicks in. And that inner critic starts taking over our internal chatter.

In this week’s (short) podcast episode I get into these feelings of guilt and how to address them.

This is important stuff. Because if left ignored, these feelings will create a cascading effect of guilt and negativity that inevitably leads to self-sabotage.

I hope you find it useful.

Freelancing is amazing. Until it isn’t.

You wake up one morning and you realize that you’ve created a very demanding job for yourself.

And chances are, you take LESS time off than you ever did in any previous job you held.

Sometimes it even feels like you’re working for a tyrannical boss who makes you feel terrible any time you ask for a small break.

That boss, by the way, is YOU.

Sound familiar?

Not to Wendy Helfenbaum, my guest in this week’s episode. Wendy is an established freelance writer out of Montreal. And for the past 18+ years, she has taken 4 months off every year.

And when I say “time off,” I mean real, non-working time off. No client work. No working on the business. No marketing. No nothing.

Just time to be with her family. To decompress. To enjoy life. And to savor the freedom freelancing is supposed to afford us.

Just as impressive, Wendy has consistently maintained a 6-figure income for years—even while taking a full third of the year off.

I was super-excited to bring Wendy on the show to tell us how she does this. It was a very lively and insightful conversation. I learned so much, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

This is a great follow-up to the wonderful conversation I had last month with Satta Sarma Hightower, where she discussed how she was able to take a 4-month maternity leave recently. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I urge you to give it a listen, because it complements this week’s episode really well.

I’ve heard this argument hundreds of times:

“I don’t have a specific target market, Ed. I’m a generalist who works with all kinds of businesses. So I’m having a really hard time narrowing things down, and I’m not convinced I should.”

When I ask them about their motivation for continuing to do things this way, I typically get a response along the lines of, “I want variety in my work. I don’t want to be writing for just one industry.”

And that right there is the crux of the problem. Most people who view themselves as generalists use the “work and client variety” justification.

I don’t blame them. I want variety too! But that’s a logical fallacy.

There’s a way to have your cake and eat it, too. But you have to look at this challenge differently.

In this week’s (short) podcast episode, I explain how to do that. And how to arrive at a well-defined target market that works for you AND keeps things open and flexible for unexpected opportunities.

For most freelancers, the concept of taking an extended break—be it for maternity leave, personal health, or a sabbatical—has been shrouded in trepidation.

We love the idea of a long break, especially if we’re experiencing burnout. But we immediately dismiss it as unrealistic because we don’t think we can afford to lose the income. Or we fear losing momentum, falling behind, and not being able to seamlessly re-enter the business on the other end of our break.

This week, we're challenging that narrative head-on, with a deep dive into how you can navigate maternity leave (or any extended break) without missing a beat. Not only is this possible, it's an opportunity to strengthen your business and come back stronger.

My guest is a very successful freelance writer and content marketing strategist, Satta Sarmah Hightower. Satta is a previous coaching client of mine. And while we were working together, we put together a plan for a successful maternity leave.

Of course, not every plan works seamlessly. So I wanted to bring Satta into the show to tell us what she did, how it all went, what she learned from the experience — and what advice she has for other freelancers who are thinking about taking an extended break like this but aren’t sure how to make it work.

Satta didn't just manage her maternity leave; she mastered it. From planning and preparation to execution and the transition back into the business world, her journey is a blueprint for any solo professional contemplating a similar break. I’ve been particularly impressed with how she’s managed the work/life balance upon her return—especially with two little ones.

We also spent quite a bit of time discussing her secrets to success. Satta has built a very impressive, high-six-figure business where she’s almost always fully booked. So I asked her to share the biggest factors that have made that possible.

Even if you’re not contemplating a maternity leave or an extended break, I urge you to give this one a listen. You’ll get a glimpse into how a seasoned solo professional runs a very successful business that enabled her to truly exercise the freedom freelancing is supposed to give us.