Heidi spent much of her earlier career training horses.

And, as she told us during our Tuesday Night Call this week, some of those horses were animals she probably had no business climbing onto in the first place.

They could buck. They could bite. Some seemed determined to kick you on the way out.

But when you're starting a business, you need clients. You need experience. You need to establish a reputation.

So Heidi rode some bad horses.

Fortunately, she survived the experience and went on to become a very successful trainer.

Today, Heidi works with me at Barefoot Consultants, helping experienced professionals build independent income through Upwork.

And during our discussion about how to choose good clients, she made a marvelous observation:

When you're working through Upwork, you don't have to ride the bad horses.

I thought that was worth exploring.

Think about your working life.

How many times have you been assigned a boss you didn't particularly like?

Or worked with a client who was disorganized, demanding, chronically late, or simply unpleasant?

Perhaps you've spent years in a company where you were perfectly capable of doing excellent work, but the people making decisions seemed determined to make that as difficult as possible.

You probably didn't have much choice.

You could complain, transfer, tolerate the situation, or look for another job. But you rarely got to choose the people you worked with.

Now imagine something different.

You have a consulting business built around expertise you've accumulated over 20, 30, or 40 years.

You find interesting projects. You decide which ones deserve your attention. And before you invest your time, you investigate the people offering them.

You don't have to accept everybody.

In fact, being selective is part of becoming successful.

During Tuesday's session, I put two actual Upwork client profiles side by side.

Both looked pretty good at first glance.

One had a perfect five-star rating.

The other had 4.9 stars.

Which would you choose?

Well, the five-star client had received just two reviews and spent approximately $1,800 on Upwork.

The 4.9-star client had accumulated around 280 reviews and spent $1.1 million.

Quite a difference.

The second client had a substantial history of hiring people, managing projects, and presumably learning how to work successfully with independent professionals.

The first client might have been terrific. But we simply didn't have much evidence yet.

And that's an important distinction.

When you evaluate opportunities on Upwork, you're not simply trying to persuade somebody to hire you.

You're deciding whether that person deserves your expertise, attention, and time.

It's a very different way of thinking about work.

Upwork uses something called Connects to submit proposals.

I like to describe them as postage stamps.

In the old days, when you wanted to send a business proposal to a prospective client, you put stamps on the envelope. Sometimes you even sent it by Federal Express.

Today, you spend a small amount of money on Connects.

Depending on the opportunity, that might be a couple of dollars.

I've seen people become terribly concerned about spending $2 or $3 on a proposal.

But here's what concerns me more.

Someone spends an hour studying an opportunity, writing a proposal, and trying to convince a client to hire them.

And they never had much chance of winning the project in the first place.

Maybe the client has a history of hiring very few applicants.

Maybe the budget is ridiculous.

Maybe the description is so vague that nobody really knows what the client wants.

Or perhaps the opportunity simply has very little connection to the applicant's strongest expertise.

That hour matters a great deal more to me than the $2 worth of Connects.

Especially when you could have invested it finding a much better opportunity.

(insert calm horse photo with women)

One of the things I enjoy most about working with professionals in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s is the extraordinary depth of experience they bring to the table.

These are people who have solved real problems.

They've managed organizations, trained employees, designed systems, cared for patients, negotiated contracts, taught students, and helped businesses survive difficult situations.

Frequently, they've done several of those things.

But there's a difference between being capable of doing a job and being the person a client immediately recognizes as the right choice.

Suppose you've spent 25 years managing hospital operations.

A client needs help improving a medical organization's processes.

You have relevant experience, sound judgment, and probably several examples of problems you've solved.

That's a wonderful match.

Now suppose you see a $5,000 opportunity to write poetry.

I have nothing against poetry.

But unless you've got some convincing evidence of your poetic talents, that $5,000 is probably going to somebody else.

The most attractive opportunity isn't necessarily the one with the largest dollar amount.

It's the one where your experience gives you a meaningful advantage over the other applicants.

And that advantage should be obvious from your profile and portfolio.

Here's something you can try the next time you're looking at opportunities on Upwork.

Find three projects that seem reasonably well matched to your expertise.

Before getting excited about the job descriptions, look at the clients.

How long have they been using Upwork? Have they hired people regularly? What do previous consultants say about working with them? Does their hiring history suggest they're serious about getting work done?

Then consider the projects themselves.

Have you solved this kind of problem before? Can you demonstrate it? Does the opportunity make sense for where you are in building your business?

You might discover that the most attractive project of the three isn't the one you expected.

That's fine.

That's the point.

And remember that what makes sense for someone building their first two successful Upwork projects may be quite different from what makes sense for an established consultant with several ongoing clients.

Both can make excellent decisions. They're simply working toward different immediate objectives.

I think there's something bigger here than learning to use Upwork efficiently.

For many years, your career probably involved adapting yourself to an organization's needs.

You worked where they needed you. You followed their schedules. You dealt with people you didn't choose.

But there's a different possibility for the next chapter of your life.

You can build income around subjects you find interesting, problems you enjoy solving, and people you genuinely like working with.

You might want to work three days a week.

You might want to spend part of the year somewhere beautiful, with time for travel, family, or adventures you've been putting off.

Or you might simply want to continue doing meaningful work without all the machinery that comes with traditional employment.

Whatever your ambitions, choosing the right clients is part of making that possible.

And the more carefully you position your expertise, the easier it becomes for those clients to recognize the value you bring.

You don't have to win every opportunity.

You don't even have to pursue every opportunity.

You just need to find the right ones.

And you certainly don't have to ride the bad horses.

Happy trails,

Winton & Heidi

P.S. One of the biggest obstacles to finding good clients is having a profile that doesn't adequately communicate what you're capable of doing. That's exactly why we created our Done-for-You Upwork Profile service.

We help turn your experience into a professionally positioned profile, including a portfolio example that demonstrates your expertise. It also includes a year of access to our Freedom Vault training library.

The investment is $995.

If you've been meaning to get your Upwork presence established properly, this is a practical way to get moving without spending months figuring out every detail yourself.

Explore Our Done-for-You Profile Service

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