Rochi Zalani is a freelance writer who helps SaaS companies grow their business through long-form content. She has worked with well-known brands like Zapier, Buffer, and more.

Here’s her take on why and how you should be investing in your freelance business.

Why should freelancers prioritize investing in their business?

For me, it came down to efficiency. I was using 12+ software tools to manage my business — which resulted in a lot of admin management and context-switching.

As a freelancer, time is money, and you want to use it wisely. It’s more than worth it to invest in courses that help you improve your skills, software (like Harlow!) that decreases your mental load, and even a virtual assistant to take some tasks off your to-do list. The return on investment is huge.

How has the way you’ve invested in your business shifted as it’s grown?

In the beginning, I stuck to free tools. That often meant going the extra mile to research good software/courses with a free version and trying many different platforms to find the one that fit my needs best. It was a lot of work, but at the time, my top priority was keeping my expenses to a minimum.

As my business has grown, my needs have evolved. I’ve devoted a budget to business expenses like software and courses that help me scale and optimize my processes or improve my skills. And I use it as I see fit. Some expenses are recurring (like my Harlow subscription), while others are one-off (like courses).

When do you recommend small business owners begin investing in their businesses?

Ideally, as soon as you get your business off the ground. Migrating to a new tool later on can be a huge hassle. And, as they say, you have to spend (at least a little) money to make money.

You don’t have to start with multiple paid tools, but you do have to start somewhere. This could mean:
– Taking reputable courses that round out your resume
– Devoting one day every month to learning a new software or platform
– Trying the business tools other freelancers in your community use and love

You could be stuck in grunt-working methods for years, trying to cobble together a bunch of free tools. Or, you could invest in the right ones early on and watch them scale with you.

Talk to us about the tools you invest in for your business and why you chose them.

Software-wise, I used to invest in a time-tracker tool, an invoicing software, and a project management platform. Harlow has replaced all of these for me now. It has been one of the best investments I’ve made because it simplifies my admin work by leaps and bounds. I can keep track of invoices, deadlines, and time all under one tab. It’s become a tradition for me to open Harlow every morning and see what I have in store for the day.

Apart from Harlow, I still rely on Trello a little bit for client work. And I use Notion to keep track of email templates, interesting examples in my industry, and other valuable info. For scheduling my social media posts, I use Buffer. I also use Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to ensure correct grammar and easy-to-read sentences.

(Out of all the tools above, I only use the paid versions of Harlow and Grammarly.)

In 2023, I also bought Marijana Kay’s project planner and data vault. The former is immensely helpful for capacity planning and tracking my income. The latter is useful for finding the latest studies on various topics in my industry.

I’ve also invested in many free and paid writing-related courses over the years — like Steph Smith’s Doing Content Right (paid) and Tommy Walker’s The Cutting Room (free). I vet any course I do thoroughly — primarily relying on reviews and ensuring it’s taught by industry experts who have walked the walk. These courses help me stay sharp, relevant, and skilled in the economy. No one has ever “learned it all.”

For solopreneurs who want to begin investing in their businesses but don’t have much extra income, where do you recommend they start?

Find the free tools and free trials and experiment with them. They might get only 50–75% of the job done, but they will still help you become more efficient.

You might have to test many before finding one that fits your needs. I tried around five different social media scheduling tools before deciding Buffer is the best of them all. Notion has a bit of a learning curve — meaning it took some time before I could get the most out of it.

I began investing by snooping around in other freelancers’ workflows, and I’d suggest you do the same. Ask your community which tools they love, and you’ll have a solid list to work from.

If you haven’t picked up any courses in a while, I recommend dedicating two hours of your weekend (or Fridays) to learning. Again, you don’t have to find paid courses. There are free YouTube lessons and valuable articles for nearly every topic. You just might have to do the extra legwork of needling together many different sources of information.

And keep in mind: Time is money too. You might decide that the time you’re devoting to researching and jerry-rigging free tools would be better spent on client work. This is why investing in paid tools can be better than free tools if they help you optimize your workflow. They save you time, which is a valuable commodity in our industry — and that’s more than worth it in the long run.

Lizzie Davey has been a freelance content writer and strategist for 10 years. During this time, she’s worked with 50+ brands in the ecommerce and tech world, including Shopify, CoSchedule, and Hotjar. Alongside her writing business, she creates workshops, resources, and courses for freelancers and content writers at Freelance Magic and Copy Revival.

Guide us through your process for pitching a new client.

My pitching process has changed a LOT over the years. It used to be a bit more of a hit and hope activity, whereas now I’m much more strategic about it.

This is the pattern I follow each time I pitch:

• Find a brand I want to work with
• Check that they work with freelancers (by checking their blog, social media presence, and whether they’ve had any recent funding)
• Identify the right contact via LinkedIn to find their first name
• Engage with the contact if they have no idea who I am
• Send a short, personalized message either via LinkedIn or email
• Follow up one week later if I don’t get a reply

Where have you had the most success pitching new clients?

LinkedIn has been a fantastic resource for finding clients to pitch. People are often thinking about work when they’re active there, so there’s not so much of a context switch, plus there are plenty of ways you can find brands to pitch. This might include using the LinkedIn search function to look for open freelance roles, searching for brands in my niche, or using hashtags to find call-outs for freelancers.

How do you build your list of potential new clients to pitch to?

I use a mix of good old Google, LinkedIn, and Crunchbase to find brands that are in my niche, are open to working with freelancers, and that have a good amount of funding behind them (so they can afford me!).

Each time I come across a client I’m interested in working with, I jot down their details. This includes the point of contact, any key notes, any previous connection I’ve had with the brand, the date I send the first pitch, and any follow up that is necessary.

Do you have any email templates for pitching that you could share?

I shared some pitching templates for different scenarios in a past newsletter edition here – including pitching new potential prospects!

What advice would you give new(ish) freelancers who are intimidated by pitching?

Pitching has been a part of business for centuries. Content leads and hiring managers expect to receive pitches.

I try to come at it from a curious angle, kind of like I’m experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. That makes the rejection easier to handle because it’s not personal, it’s just another data point. And finally, brands won’t know you exist, and are open to work, if you don’t put yourself in front of them!

Genevieve Michaels writes to make complex topics engaging and accessible. She started her career in the contemporary art world, then pivoted to life as a freelance writer. She’s written for brands like Atlassian, Shopify, Hootsuite, and Hubspot, and her creative writing has been published in Elle Canada, Vice Canada, and Canadian Art Magazine.

Find her on Substack at gentle chaos, where she shares her creative writing and thoughts about freelancing, reading, travel and living a self-determined life.

Talk to us about what gentle productivity means to you.

We’ve all heard that procrastination is a problem with emotional management. Gentle productivity is about staying in tune with your emotions, and using them as a guide.

To me, negative feelings like frustration or disengagement are not an inconvenience. They are precious signals towards where you shine, what inspires you, and where you should focus your energy.

So many traditional productivity methods, like time blocking, involve rigid, predetermined rules and obligations. That’s never worked for me.

Instead, I aspire to work with my natural impulses, curiosities, and inclinations — or at least listen to them, without judgment. Those feelings are just data, and I can use them to improve how I work.

I’ve learned from experience that I’m more productive when I’m inspired, excited, and curious.
When you’re highly engaged in an activity, you are working faster, being more creative, and doing better work.

It’s not lazy to want to chase that feeling — it’s using your mental resources effectively. And more importantly, it improves your experience of work, which means elevating your life as a whole.

Read more thoughts about gentle productivity on my Substack here.

How do you incorporate this approach to productivity into your daily routine?

Creating space for your own interests, curiosities, and emotions doesn’t happen by accident. It takes three crucial components to work this way: reducing distractions, removing time pressure, and breaking down your work into different kinds of tasks.

Here’s a little more detail on each of these three strategies:

• Protect your time (and brain) from the internet: Because smartphones and social media are designed to be addictive, they put us out of touch with our natural curiosities and inclinations. By limiting your access to these distractions (or whatever else tends to throw you off track), you give yourself space to discover what does make happier, more inspired, and more productive. I wrote an step-by-step guide to these strategies on my Substack — read it here.
• Give yourself plenty of time: If something is due tomorrow, it doesn’t matter how you’re feeling — you’ll have to do it whether you’re in the mood or not. That means padding your deadlines, and starting on projects way before you need to. That is its own special kind of discipline, but it gets easier with time.
• Understand the building blocks of different types of work: What specific tasks does it take to get a project or assignment done? These will depend on your profession — since I’m a writer, mine include research, outlining, drafting, and editing. This allows you to choose the work that feels right for you in each moment, instead of scheduling your time based on clients or projects.

Together, these elements add up to a life where you know what you’ve committed to, and what it will take to get there. But nothing is imminent, so how you use each day and hour is entirely up to you.

Each new day becomes a fresh, inspiring blank page. Your to-do list is a menu of exciting possibilities, not a list of obligations. Instead of “I need to start X project,” you could say “I feel like some research today, what’s coming up?”

Not every day will look like this — we all have to do things we aren’t in the mood for now and then. But I find that pushing down negative feelings just makes them worse. By holding space for inconvenient feelings like boredom, this approach helps me with all parts of work, not just the ones I’m excited about.

What are some indicators that more traditional approaches to productivity might not work for someone?

You wouldn’t expect to change your body to fit into a pair of jeans. So why should your brain conform to a certain way of working?

Our working habits, methods, and routines are supposed to enable you to do your best work. But since we spend so much of our time working, they should also make your life more enjoyable.

If your current work routines feel painful or discouraging, that’s a sign they’re not not the best fit for you. Similarly, if you see yourself as lazy or lacking discipline, that could be a clue that you’re not inspired.

These feelings can, of course, signal larger issues like attention deficit disorder or executive dysfunction. But why not start by working towards a professional life that feels good? You won’t be able to eliminate all the work you don’t love right away, but listening to those feelings can make them easier to live with in the meantime.

On Substack, I wrote about my journey to realizing traditional productivity didn’t work for me — read it here.

How do you navigate negative self-talk when it surfaces?

Negative self talk is just feelings — shame, judgment, fear, anxiety.

Seeing those feelings objectively, as data I can learn from, helps me not get caught up in them. It helps me not to give those thoughts more power than they actually have.

Coming back to what I said above, obviously, reality isn’t going to match up with this vision all the time. But somewhat counterintuitively, this approach helps me tackle even the tasks that don’t feel flowy, that I do have internal resistance towards.

Those feelings are easier to handle, because I’m not judging myself for having them. They are what makes me human. They’re valuable data that I can use to improve my life and work.

What advice do you have for new freelancers who are struggling to find productivity practices that work for them?

I would suggest thinking about what motivates you, and designing a working style that puts those things first. “Motivation” isn’t going to be a problem when you’re living your dream life, or at least getting closer to it. So how can you make that a reality?

Even when I’m not that excited about the specific topic I’m writing about, it’s part of a career and life that brings me joy. You’ll be so much more engaged with work if it’s part of creating a life that feels fulfilling and exciting, generally.

For me, freedom and seeing the world has always been the thing. I travel often, and people have asked if I find it distracting or hard to concentrate when I’m in a new place. The answer is no, of course not — it’s not hard to focus on living your dreams.

Maybe caring for your family, or spending time in nature makes you happy. If you can clearly see how your work routines bring you closer to those things, they will be so much easier to stick to.