What if we told you that all freelancers are leaders?

The idea might seem counterintuitive at first: After all, freelancers provide services or products to our clients. We’re not leading or managing a team in that very conventional sense.

But leadership isn’t just about managing a team. It’s how you position yourself, how you talk about yourself, and how you show up every day in your work.

Career transitions often lead to some element of fear. For freelancers, this could be a fear of rejection or of losing stable income. Or it might show up as a little voice in your head that says: “But what if I fail?” Fear is meant to protect us, yet it can also hold us back from trying new things and thinking expansively about our businesses.

In this episode, Nicole Tsong joins Wudan to talk about confronting this fear while making big career swings.

Welcome to Season 8! We’re calling this year the “Year of Expansive Thinking.” This season will focus on how to think big about our businesses, ourselves, and what we think is possible.

In the first episode, host and executive producer Wudan Yan answers questions from guest co-host Pam Moore about her businesses.

If you’ve been listening to The Writers’ Co-op since the first few seasons, you’ve heard us say: The magic is in the mix of work you get. Slower work – work that is recurring, or on a longer contract or time period – can make us feel both steady and fulfilled. But sometimes, we just need money now. That’s where fast freelancing comes in.

As freelancers, we’ve probably all worked with clients who couldn’t pin down exactly what they wanted. Maybe they never had a clear vision for the project, or maybe they constantly changed their mind—and your scope of work. The experience can be incredibly frustrating. Yet, even these clueless clients need (and deserve) help from freelancers.

A very overdone and true statement about freelancing is: “You’re running a business!” Businesses of all sizes have things like income targets, goals, creative direction—and even business plans! While some of those terms can sound a bit like “corporate speak,” these ways of doing things and problem solving in the corporate world.

Most of us who work for ourselves probably don’t love marketing but know that it’s a necessary task to attract more clients. Some take a more traditional approach—constantly sharing work and services on social media or socializing at conferences. But that might not work for everyone.

Most of the time, freelancers who work with clients do not own the rights to the creative work that's produced. Even retaining a modicum of your rights is frequently a prolonged legal battle that results in very little. But some freelancers who want ownership over their work are turning to another source of income: newsletters.

Determining rates can be really tricky for freelancers. We need our clients to agree to a price for a project, but we can’t sell ourselves short and leave money on the table. Naturally, freelancers might wonder: How much can I charge before I price myself out of work?

If you consume media, are a media worker, or just happen to pay attention to what’s happening to the media landscape, you might have heard that the industry is having… a bad time, to say the least.

Hundreds of reporters and media employees have been laid off this year, leading some to turn to freelancing. In this episode, Wudan talks with freelance journalist Karen Given about maintaining relationships, understanding the freelance market, building your own brand and so much more.