『Freelance Cake』のカバーアート

Freelance Cake

Freelance Cake

著者： Austin L. Church
無料で聴く

This podcast helps ambitious freelancers get better results with less effort. We reveal the specific beliefs, principles, and practices that give you better leverage. Every episode contains no-hype, non-expiring ideas that you can use right away to make the freelance game more profitable and enjoyable.© 2022 Freelance Cake マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
エピソード
  • 7 Lessons for Building a 7-Figure Freelance Business with Satta Sarmah Hightower

    7 Lessons for Building a 7-Figure Freelance Business with Satta Sarmah Hightower
    2026/09/11
    Getting laid off twice might not sound like the beginning of a story about job security. For Satta Sarmah Hightower, it was.Satta started freelancing in 2014 after back-to-back layoffs. She figured freelancing would tide her over until she found another full-time job. Twelve years later, she has built a multi-seven-figure solo business.And strangely enough, she now considers freelancing the most secure job she’s ever had.Why?A layoff can erase 100% of your income overnight. A well-built freelance business gives you diversification — across clients, relationships, services, and opportunities. But resilience like that doesn’t happen accidentally.In this conversation, Satta walks me through seven lessons she learned while building her business:Treat your business like a business.Choose your niche wisely.Always be marketing.Don’t just date your clients. Marry them.Repurpose profits into future revenue.Create a business continuity plan.Go with the season you’re in.What I appreciate about Satta is that none of these lessons depend on working yourself into the ground.Quite the opposite.We talk about setting boundaries even when losing a client scares you. We talk about choosing a niche based not only on what interests you, but also on demand and profitability. We talk about why your best source of future revenue may be the clients who already know and trust you. Satta also explains her “W-2 prevention plan”: a pre-decided set of actions she can take if a big client disappears or revenue suddenly drops.Because panic is a lousy business strategy.Finally, we talk about something that tends to disappear from conversations about seven-figure businesses: seasons.Sometimes you can push.Sometimes your family, health, caregiving responsibilities, or plain old life need more from you. Building for the long game means knowing the difference.Note: This conversation was originally recorded for the Advanced Freelancers Summit in May 2026.Key PointsTreat your business like a business: Stop acting like a hired hand waiting for clients to dictate your schedule. Build systems, processes, financial discipline, boundaries, and diversified marketing into the business.Choose your niche based on more than passion: Satta followed demand toward B2B tech content and used her journalism background as a differentiator. She even studies current job descriptions to see which skills clients are hiring for now.Always be marketing: Don’t wait until a client disappears and your nervous system catches fire. Marketing works better as an ongoing habit than an emergency response.Turn clients into long-term relationships: Look for gaps you can fill, educate clients about the other problems you solve, and stay in touch. Your clients are busy. They aren’t necessarily going to remember to call you.Reinvest in yourself: Satta regrets being too conservative with her resources early in her career. Today, she deliberately puts profits toward future growth opportunities, including her book, The Forever Freelancer.Create a W-2 prevention plan: Decide in advance what you’ll do if revenue drops 50% or an anchor client disappears. Satta’s plan includes sending LOIs, checking in with current and dormant clients, and activating her network.Go with the season you’re in: There are seasons for pushing and seasons for pulling back. A sustainable business should accommodate both.Notable Quotes“I’ve had experience over the last 12 years that proves to me that being proactive is the path to sustainable business. If I wasn’t and if I just sat around and moped when things weren’t well, and I’ve had times even in recent years where things haven’t gone the way I thought they would go, but I was able to turn them around because I just did what I knew worked.”“Don’t just date your clients, marry them. And by that, I mean you want to build long term relationships with clients, whether that’s through retainers or they become anchor clients. You don’t want just one assignments because I think I really saw income growth when I started to have those long term relationships and engagements with clients.”“People are busy. They’re not thinking about you. You’ve heard of demand generation marketing where you are everywhere your potential customers are, even when they’re not ready to buy… So it’s sort of like the same principle. You’re like omnipotent in a way. And then all of a sudden when there’s a project, because you’ve been in their feed or you’ve sent them that touch base email, they’re like, oh, you’re the first person they think.”“Go with the season you’re in. So rest, recharge and play the long game. This is especially important for parents and caregivers. I think there will be there are seasons in life and there are seasons in freelancing. There will be times where you can work a lot and really pound it out and really grow your business really fast. And there’ll be times where you can’t, where...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間
  • Stop Doing Everything Yourself: How to Hire Help and Become the CEO of Your Freelance Business with John Jonas

    Stop Doing Everything Yourself: How to Hire Help and Become the CEO of Your Freelance Business with John Jonas
    2026/08/27
    John Jonas hired his first full-time worker in the Philippines in 2005. Within a couple of weeks, he says it felt like there were suddenly “two of me.”That experience eventually led John to create OnlineJobs.ph, and today he has roughly 60 people working for him in the Philippines. Some of the people he hired nearly 20 years ago are still on his team.But this conversation isn’t really about finding someone to manage your calendar. It’s about leverage.John prefers the term Online Filipino Specialist (OFS) because the people he hires aren’t limited to traditional VA work. His team includes developers, content specialists, marketers, and other people responsible for business-critical functions.And that distinction matters for freelancers. At some point, doing everything yourself stops being evidence that you’re capable and starts being the reason your business can’t grow.John’s philosophy is refreshingly simple: Getting it done is more important than getting it done your way.Yes, someone else may make mistakes. Yes, training them will require time. Yes, you may currently be terrible at delegation.John’s response to that last objection is basically: Okay. Then learn.Because staying buried in email, client work, admin, marketing, and every other detail of the business leaves very little room for the work only you can do: thinking, selling, strategizing, and leading. John says he has spent years working around 15 hours per week precisely because his team gives him room for that higher-value work.We also get into AI.John is hardly anti-AI. His entire team uses it. But his argument is that AI and human talent don’t have to be competitors. Use AI for what AI does well. Use talented people for everything else. Most importantly, don’t spend the next three years waiting for some magical agent to run your business while you remain the bottleneck today.Finally, John walks through his hiring process, including why he prefers email before video interviews, what he looks for in a test task, and the surprisingly important question he asks when an employee isn’t performing:What did I do wrong?The employers John sees succeed take responsibility for their instructions, communication, and leadership before assuming the person they hired is lazy or incompetent. They also remember that the person on the other side of the screen is exactly that—a person, not an expendable commodity.If success has somehow made your freelance business heavier instead of lighter, this conversation may help you see what’s missing.Maybe you don’t need to work harder. Maybe you need help.Note: This conversation was originally recorded for the Advanced Freelancers Summit in May 2026.Key PointsDoing everything yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck. The skills that helped you build a successful freelance business can trap you in its day-to-day details if you never learn to delegate.Think beyond the traditional VA. John calls the people he hires Online Filipino Specialists because they can own specialized and business-critical work—not just calendars and data entry.Getting it done beats getting it done your way. Perfectionism and control can masquerade as quality standards while quietly keeping everything on your plate.Training is an investment, not an instant time saver. John readily admits that a new hire may consume more time than they save during the first month. The payoff comes when great people stick around long enough for that investment to compound.Delegate where your time is actually going. Instead of automatically outsourcing the task you dislike most, John recommends looking at what consumes the most time and figuring out how another person can support or own it.Hiring can force you to think like a CEO. Committing to another person creates pressure to find meaningful work for them—and gives you room to spend more time on sales, strategy, systems, and growth.AI and people aren't mutually exclusive. John’s team uses AI extensively. His point is to use the technology to make good people better rather than assuming AI has already eliminated the need for people.Test for collaboration, not just technical ability. John uses test tasks partly to see whether candidates ask smart questions, clarify ambiguity, and work well with him—not merely whether they can produce the deliverable.When something goes wrong, check your instructions first. One of John’s biggest distinctions between successful and unsuccessful employers is whether they immediately blame the worker or first examine their own communication and leadership.Notable Quotes“What I found over the years is getting it done is way, way, way, way, way more important than getting it done your way. Like getting it done your way is good but getting it done is so, so much more important.” — John Jonas"What is the thing that you are spending time on? Outsource that. Hire someone to do that. Because your most precious resource is time. And if you can ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 12 分
  • From $270K Freelancer to CEO: Ross Simmonds on Reinvention and Distribution

    From $270K Freelancer to CEO: Ross Simmonds on Reinvention and Distribution
    2026/08/21
    What happens when you’ve already built a successful freelance business?You could keep doing what works. Or you could ask a more interesting question: What else might be possible?Ross Simmonds grew up in a small community in Nova Scotia without an elite marketing network or proximity to the usual centers of opportunity. He went on to build a multiple six-figure freelance business, found the B2B content marketing agency Foundation, build a 50+ person team, write Create Once, Distribute Forever, and become CEO of Distribution.ai.Ross doesn’t describe that path as a series of perfectly planned career moves.He describes it as compounding.He kept creating. Experimenting. Learning. Meeting people. Doing good work. Putting ideas onto the internet and seeing what came back.One of his operating beliefs is simple: Give value to the internet, and the internet will give value back.That philosophy becomes especially interesting when we talk about content.Ross believes most content collects dust for a deeply human reason. We tell ourselves we’re too busy to promote our work. He thinks we’re mostly afraid.Afraid of repeating ourselves. Afraid of looking like a try-hard. Afraid of annoying people. Afraid somebody will disagree with us in public.So we press publish, get the nice little dopamine hit from finishing something, and immediately start creating the next thing.Ross offers a different frame: Publish is halftime.The second half is distribution.Take the podcast, article, case study, video, or idea you worked hard to create and keep finding useful ways to put it in front of the right people. Because being excellent and being known for your excellence are two different things.We also talk about video as an underused opportunity, how to participate in communities like Reddit without barging in like a marketer with muddy shoes, why public speaking created enormous leverage for Ross, and what AI does—and does not—change about expertise.Ross’s AI take is refreshingly non-apocalyptic: AI makes good people faster at good work. It makes exceptional people faster at exceptional work. But it cannot manufacture the taste and judgment you never developed.Your craft still matters.So does doing what you said you would do. So does becoming a slightly better human tomorrow than you were today.That’s a much bigger conversation than writing better LinkedIn hooks, and I think that’s exactly why it belongs here.Note: This conversation was originally recorded for the Advanced Freelancers Summit in May 2026.Key PointsYour current ceiling may not be permanent. Ross grew his career from a small town by refusing to assume geography or a lack of connections determined what was possible.Think in compounding, not career ladders. Freelancing, agency ownership, investing, software, writing, and speaking became interconnected layers rather than isolated career moves.“Publish” is halftime. Creating the asset is only the first half of the job. Distribution is what gives the work a chance to produce a return.Fear is a distribution problem. Freelancers often say they lack time to promote themselves when the deeper issue is fear of judgment, repetition, or being seen trying.Distribution is a competitive advantage. Great work alone doesn’t guarantee reach. The freelancer who consistently gets strong ideas in front of the right people can outperform someone with equal—or even greater—technical skill.Show people how good you are. Long-form content, case studies, videos, podcasts, and thoughtful analysis can demonstrate how you think before a prospect ever talks to you.Video and niche communities deserve attention. Ross sees video as a powerful relationship-building format and encourages freelancers to engage genuinely in communities like Reddit rather than treating them as another billboard.AI accelerates expertise. It doesn’t replace it. Good judgment, taste, fundamentals, and subject-matter knowledge become more valuable when powerful tools make execution easier.Public speaking creates authority at scale. Ross went from being nicknamed “Shy Ross” to using speaking as a way to build rapport, credibility, relationships, and business opportunities.Getting better is bigger than business. Ross closes with a reminder that growth isn’t only about becoming a better marketer. It’s about improving how you serve clients, teams, family, and the people around you.Notable Quotes“If I give value to the internet, the internet will give me value back.”“Instead of viewing the job as done at that moment, I’m going to view it as halftime.”“Show the world how good you are… Give away all the sauce and then get it in front of the right people.”“If you give a good marketer AI, you’ll get good marketing faster. If you give a great marketer AI, you’ll get great marketing faster. If you give an exceptional one percenter AI, you’ll get exceptional one percent level marketing faster. AI makes everything faster.”...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 2 分
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません