Overheard someone at the grocery store say slow months mean you're doing something wrong

I was picking up milk last Tuesday and heard this guy loudly telling his friend that if you have slow months as a freelancer, you just aren't marketing right. That really got under my skin. In my experience, my slowest stretch was last January through February when three regular gigs all ended at once and nothing new lined up. I had been networking fine, sending proposals, all that stuff. Sometimes the timing just sucks no matter what you do. Has anyone else had people act like slow months are your fault when they're really just the nature of the work?

3 comments

3 Comments

kimr9112d ago

Heard a similar thing at my coffee shop last week actually. Some guy was telling his buddy that if your freelancing is slow you just need to 'hustle harder' and I almost choked on my latte lmao. Like okay sure because sending 50 cold emails instead of 30 is gonna magically fix a dead season. I had a stretch last fall where I literally did everything right and still had three weeks of nothing because everyone was waiting on holiday budgets or whatever. People who say that stuff have clearly never had multiple clients ghost them in the same week, it's just bad luck sometimes.

jackson.max12d ago

Used to kinda buy into that hustle mindset myself, thinking I just wasn't working hard enough. But hearing you describe exactly what happened to me last year makes it obvious it's mostly just random bad timing.

kellyallen12d ago

Yeah the "hustle harder" thing always annoyed me but I used to secretly think maybe there was some truth to it. Like I believed if I just pushed more I could control the outcome. But then I had a stretch where I did everything right for months and still got nothing. That part you said about "bad luck sometimes" really hit me because that's exactly what it is. You can't outwork a dry spell when the market itself is slow or clients are just being flaky. Changed my whole view on that hustle nonsense.