#68: Why Working On Your Business Is Non-Negotiable with Ed Deason

If you're constantly putting off marketing, planning, or skill development because client deadlines take priority, this episode is for you. If you only work IN your business and never work ON it, you'll be in the exact same place three years from now. Working on your business is the most important work you do.

In this episode, host Treasa Edmond and business coach Ed Deason tackle the belief that keeps so many freelancers stuck: "I don't have time to work on my business because I'm too busy with client work." Ed breaks down why you actually have two jobs as a freelancer (doing the work + being the CEO), and why developing a CEO mindset changes everything. Treasa explains why being stretched thin is actually a pricing problem, not a time management issue, and shares her scheduling priority system: you time first, business building time second, client work third. You'll learn how to treat your business like your most valuable client and why raising your rates is the fastest way to create the space you need.

WE TALKED ABOUT

• Why working on your business is non-negotiable
• How to treat your business like it's your most important client
• The two jobs every freelancer has: doing the work + being the CEO of the business
• Why developing a CEO mindset changes how you run your business
• The mindset trap: If you always treat your business as an afterthought, it undermines everything
• Why hustle culture is a red flag (and what to do instead)

About Ed Deason

Ed Deason is a business coach specializing in working with founders and entrepreneurs ready to scale, pivot, and build their ideal businesses. With over 15 years' experience and an MBA, Ed's coaching has helped clients gain clarity, confidence, and achieve real results.​

Connect with Ed:

• Deason Coaching
• LinkedIn

About Treasa Edmond

Treasa Edmond is a content strategist, business coach, and podcast host who helps freelancers and consultants transition to confident business leaders. She's been referral-based for five years, rarely needing to prospect for new clients, and teaches practical frameworks for pricing strategy, client boundaries, and business systems through her coaching programs and the Boss Responses podcast. Her goal is to help you build the business you need so you can live the life you want.

Connect with Treasa:

• Boss Responses Newsletter - Get frameworks, templates, and strategic guidance delivered weekly
• Coaching Programs - Work with Treasa 1-on-1 or join a mastermind
• LinkedIn - Connect and follow for daily insights

Related Episodes:
Listen to Treasa and Ed's in: How to Ask for Referrals Without Feeling Awkward, How to Handle Freelancing When the Economy Slows Down,

Transcript

Treasa Edmond (00:00)
Hey there, welcome back to Boss Responses. Today we're talking about something that might be keeping you stuck. The belief that you don't have time to work on your business because you're too busy working in it. If you're constantly putting off marketing, planning, or skill development because client deadlines are always looming, this episode will change how you're thinking about your time. Ed Deason and I break down why working in your business isn't optional.

it's the most important work you do. We'll talk about treating your business like your most valuable client, developing a CEO mindset instead of a freelancer mindset, and why being stretched thin is actually a pricing problem, not a time management problem. Let's get into it. If you're a freelancer, business owner, or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Teresa Edmunds.

I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades. And in that time, I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome, and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions.

and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embraced their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses.

We are back for day four with Ed. And Ed, I have a question for you today from Sarah. Sarah is from Denver, Colorado. She says, I'm so caught up in client work that I never seem to have time to focus on growing my own business. I know I should be marketing, planning your head or investing in new skills, but I always put it off because deadlines are constantly looming. How do I make space for the business side of freelancing when I'm already stretched thin with client work? And I cannot wait to hear what you have to say on this.

Ed Deason (02:04)
Well you know what I'm gonna say.

Treasa Edmond (02:06)
I hope it's the same thing I'm gonna say and we can say the same thing.

Ed Deason (02:09)
I'm sure it is. Okay. So first up, working on your business is non-negotiable. It's not optional. You can't only be in your business. have to work on your... Okay. If you want to be in the same place that you're in right now in three years time, just keep doing what you're doing. Right. But it sounds like that's not working for you. So you need to put some time aside to work on your business. And one of the simplest ways to do this is treat your business like a client. Yeah.

So in the same way that you block out your calendar at the start of the week for client work, lock out your calendar at the start of the week for your business as a client. whatever that looks like for you, work out how much time you need to dedicate to it. Right. Is it an hour? Is it two hours? mean, start small if you're uncomfortable with this and it feels difficult. Start with an hour, block an hour out each week to work on your business. Treat it like client work. You know, if you wouldn't get distracted, if you put your phone away for client work, then put your phone away for your business work. Yeah. If you put on some music and spend it on focused work.

for a client, do it for your business. Treat your business like a client. Make sure that work happens. Yeah. That's me. I'm not going to go into more detail. That's what you need. What's your view?

Treasa Edmond (03:18)
I also think it's a non-negotiable. I also believe it's the second thing you should put on your schedule every week. The first thing is you time. So if you have an important family event, if you have a weekly massage appointment, if you know you want to take Friday afternoons off because you want an extra head start to spend time with your kids for the weekend, that goes on first. Then your business building time and then your client work.

every single time. It's just, you have to prioritize it. If you don't prioritize it, then you're telling yourself subconsciously that your business is not as important as your client's business. And how is that a good thing? Running a business is as much a mental game as it is a practical game. We have to believe in ourselves. We have to believe in our business. We have to have the confidence. We have to know that we're giving it the best chance of success. And if we always treat our business as an after fact,

then we're not doing any of that. And it's going to hamstring us. It's going to change the way we deal with our clients. It's going to change our confidence whenever we're giving our rates. It's going to undermine everything. So I don't think this is just an issue when you own a business or are running a business. I think this is the issue.

Ed Deason (04:35)
couldn't agree more. And this is, and this is the thing I think people forget. And it's the reason that I am a business coach, I think. So I'll talk about that for just a moment. If that's where I can indulge me is when you start your own business, you have two jobs. You have the job, which is the thing that you do, whether that is writing, whether that is SEO, whether that is web design, right. That's the thing that kind of got you into business. That's job number one, but job number two is.

building a successful business. Yeah. Being a CEO, not just being a web designer or being a marketer or being a writer, it is being a CEO of that business. Yep. Yeah. So you have two jobs and I suppose to re... And this is the thing, this is why I kind of got into coaching and why I like business coaching is because my clients are fabulous at the thing they do. They're brilliant writers.

They're great web designers. They're amazing SEOs. Where they find it difficult is the business side of things. Running a business, being business minded, making the decisions that you need to make when you are a business owner. Being a CEO of your business, that's the bit that they struggle with. I've come from 15 plus years in corporate. I've got an MBA.

business stuff, right? And then this is what I say to my clients, I'm not going to make you a better writer. I'm not going to make you a better SEO, but I am going to make you a better CEO. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the bit that they have the challenge with and you got to dedicate time to.

Treasa Edmond (06:07)
it.

And I think that that's an important shift, developing that CEO mindset. I talked to a lot of freelancers who don't even see themselves as running a business. They're not usually the ones who really last long. If you are selling a client a service and taking money and paying taxes on that, you are running a business. So if you're going to do the thing, why not do it well?

Ed Deason (06:31)
100%. No question.

Treasa Edmond (06:36)
part of that is changing how you perceive it. So yes, you can always view it as transactional. I do tasks for clients. That's fine. If that's the way it's easy for you, if it's a side hustle, it's still a business, but you can run it as a side hustle. Just you are very limited in where it's going to go with that. The minute you start treating it like a business and you start treating yourself like the CEO of that business, then things are going to change. And it's really going to...

That's when you start working in your business. You start being more visionary. Where do I want to go with this? What do I want this to make possible in my life? focusing on that is really important. It might also change that whole, I'm already stretched thin with client work. Because if you are that busy with client work, you need to raise your prices and you need to choose different clients.

Ed Deason (07:28)
I was just about to say, what would a CEO do if they were fully booked? You know, if they ran a company and that company was fully booked, what would you do? the prices. Economic 101. The first thing any CEO would do if they came into a new business and they found that it was fully booked, they'd raise the prices. And yet freelancers don't. Yeah.

Treasa Edmond (07:34)
you immediately raise prices. Raise prices and limit availability.

They would raise the prices and they would put their staff on business building tasks instead of making do tasks.

Ed Deason (07:56)
Yeah. Yeah. I spoke to someone the other day and they kind of run a small agency and they were convinced their problem was they couldn't find good people. Yeah. And they were telling me they were 40 % over capacity and their problem was they couldn't find good people. And I looked at that and I went, your problem is your price is too low. Immediately, you know, this is a pricing problem. This is not a people problem. Your rates are not so high right now that there is no market for them. You're at a point where all really the only way to, the easiest way to solve this problem is just charge more money.

Treasa Edmond (08:26)
Yeah. And I've said this before, and I say this all the time. This is one of my favorite things to say. The more money you charge, the better your clients will be. They're easier to work with. They trust you more. They respect you more. They are happy to pay your fee. They don't quibble about things. They are, when you reach a specific level, they are paying you to be the expert. They don't want to worry about all that other stuff.

Ed Deason (08:36)
100 %

Treasa Edmond (08:54)
You just make it possible for them to work with you and pay you a lot of money just across the board. And every single time I say that to someone who's still charging 25 cents a word or a lower rate, they look at me like I am absolutely insane. And then they raise their rates. ⁓ And they're like, I'm so sorry you were right. Even if you raise your rates 10 cents an hour,

Yep. It's going to give you the confidence to start finding better clients and you're going to start finding clients that are easier to work with. So I know someone who does this thing where she's happy working 12 hours a day and I'm not. So that's her, that's me, two different people. ⁓ She's also happy to do mass quantities of lower paid work and I want to do as little as possible at the highest rates. Not because I'm lazy.

But because that allows me to focus on the client, to focus on giving them real results for their business. So when I'm saying stuff like this, it's not because Teresa only wants to work five hours a week. It's because Teresa wants to make such a difference in five hours a week that I can make the same that I could working 50 hours a week. I don't, I honestly don't see where there's a problem with that. You know, there is, this is what I said in a workshop a week ago.

People who hype up hustle, there's something wrong there. If people are telling you that you have to hustle to make money, there is something wrong there.

Ed Deason (10:33)
Yeah, you're selling the wrong service or product.

Treasa Edmond (10:36)
Yeah.

I just, and you have to undo that. I mean, you've probably experienced this Ed, when you get a coaching client in and they've been sold on the idea of hustle and doing more and more and more so that you can make more money, it is really hard to unprogram that.

Ed Deason (10:52)
Yep. Okay. So this is a question for everyone who's listening to this, right? And I bet you, you're not along with this, everyone listening, right? Is your most difficult client also your lowest paying? Yeah. Yeah. And I can just feel the waves of nodding going on right now because it is your lowest paying client is usually your most difficult, right? And it's because they view it as transactional or they're not making much money in their business and that reflects how they interact with other people.

Right. It's, it is kind of, it's practically law at this point that your lowest paying client is your most difficult one. And as soon as you raise your rates, you start filtering out those difficult clients, let those clients go to upwork, let those clients go to those kinds of platforms where it's all about price. Yeah. They're not the kind of clients that you want to be working with.

Treasa Edmond (11:41)
Yeah, I never want to bargain or quibble with my clients about my rates. To me, that's a red flag. I know it's not to everyone. And it's sometimes they'd say like pink flag. Like they really just want to confirm that this is a legitimate rate. My best clients never even ask. My best clients make me feel like I'm not charging enough because they agreed so quickly that I'm like, missed something there, didn't I?

Ed Deason (12:10)
Get

them out of their arse.

Treasa Edmond (12:12)
Which is one of the reasons I always pre-qualify my clients and ask them what their budget for the project is. And then if it's on me, if I choose to lower end of that budget and they're like, yes, because I asked them, they told me and I still didn't take them at their word. But yeah, this is a thing. always prioritize making space for your business. And some of that prioritizing is like Ed said, just.

have to work on developing that CEO mindset. What's actually most important in my business right now? And it's like what we were talking about yesterday. Figure out where you want your business to go and then reverse engineer that. Figure out how to get there. You cannot grow a sustainable business that fully supports your lifestyle if you don't know what that looks like. It's not a matter of let's test this and see if it works and let's test this and see if it works. You need to know where you're going if you wanna get there. ⁓

This is one of my passion topics. I think that you should always prioritize this part of your business. Anything else to add to that, Ed? Okay. I think this is a great end to the short questions of the week because tomorrow our topic kind of covers everything we've talked about this week in One Way or Another. I invited Ed to the podcast because I saw a LinkedIn post he had done on average outperforming great.

Ed Deason (13:29)
I think so.

Treasa Edmond (13:37)
And that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow. Why Average Outperforms Great pretty much every time. So come back tomorrow. It's going to be a longer conversation, full of information, and I know it's going to be a great one. See you tomorrow.