Too many directions

[geek42]

How do you focus to just one avenue? I feel like I'm going in 10 directions.

I became an independent consultant in January after being an executive the past 3 years, it went great, I had a number of contracts everyone was excited for me and was pointing things my direction. Everything ended and dried up around July and while I'm talking to companies about C2C sub work and have one contract that's supposed to hit that I pulled in myself. I keep being told I'm over qualified for the C2C work but when I talk to people who do executive work they say that 3 years isn't enough time and I'm under qualified.

I created a couple websites using machine learning to help write essays, scholarship applications, college applications etc. I keep trying to advertise them but they are growing very slowly. I'm not certain if they will ever amount to anything. I need to get out and put up posters around local campus because online message boards aren't getting much traction.

I'm being told to use my deep knowledge of a particularly popular social area to start a blog and attract readers.

Anyway, these are just the top three areas I feel like I'm being pulled in and it has felt overwhelming the past couple months. I'm not a natural marketing/sales and it feels like I may fail not for lack of knowledge or ability to offer something on the marketplace but because I can't seem to connect with the correct people.

[Smokystache]

Couple of questions may help the peanut gallery provide better advice:

- Are you comfortable telling us what field you're in?
- Does your field have seasonal swings?
- What feedback did you get from the initial contracts earlier this year? How did you feel they went? How did people react to your prices?
- What does "overqualified for C2C work" mean in your situation? Does it mean people won't want to pay your fees? Something else?

A few initial thoughts:
- you're only under-qualified if someone won't hire you; it usually has nothing to do with X years of experience. If your value proposition and price fit a specific need and the client believes you can help them accomplish their desperately needed goal, then that's all that matters.
- it usually (as in, almost always) takes a long time to start a blog and attract enough attention to make it turn into paying clients. Instead, I think it is much quicker and more effective to offer a low-priced, but helpful offer and then see what else you can sell to the same client.
- in general, you want to take what has brought you paying clients in the past and expand on that. Create new offers, revise your services/options, look for effective ways to reach your prospective clients, make it easy for them to hire you, and deliver some wins for your clients as quickly as possible, then find a way to sell them more services or use that relationship to find new clients.