Oh, how often I receive this question. How is mystery normally done? How are people normally self-published? How does one normally pitch an agent? How do you normally start a freelance business?
These questions fly in the face of being unique and striking out on your own to create a brand, especially in the creative arts.

Sure, it’s scary to venture out on a task, a mission, or a career, and not know the rules. As a freelancer, as anyone creative, however, you hear about what should be done or how others did it, but the truth is there are no hard and fast rules. Most people are saying what worked for them, not what will work for you.

Those who strike out, learning as they go, making it up as they go, with their primary mission being the result, not the right journey to get there, normally make the best impact. As a novice, that concept feels frightening and quite inconvenient.

You might think you’d rather spend time on the work you love versus the how-to of the business, with all of that appearing highly inconvenient. Like nobody has ever said that before.

The journey needs to be inconvenient. You know why?

1) You become more adept at this business when you learn it from scratch rather than copying someone else. In learning it yourself, you better understand the shortcuts, the best practices, and smartest ways, because you learned by trial and error.

2) Most people want to copy others rather than learn the journey on their own. As a result, the sheep are following all the how-to messages out there instead of hustling, head down, to research and make it on their own.

3) Those who break ground (versus those who follow the leader) make the best advances and are noted most.

By cutting your own path, by learning your own way, you offer the world originality. You are better noted . . . and better remembered.

The work that matters most is almost always inconvenient.