Farmers plant their crop. They find it, buy it, spread it, and wait. Not all of it will take root. Most of it will die.

Check out the sample spreadsheet here. You can feel free to copy this spreadsheet into your own account and arrange it for your own purposes. I built equations in that automatically multiply your rates by the number days, and add all your rates into a total. This is designed to be a monthly view of projects, and duplicated every month.

Being a freelancer is tough. For every sip of freedom and flexibility, there are two gulps of inconsistency and anxiety. Meanwhile, we see freelancers online who make a solid living working on projects that they love. How do they do that?

Once you open your doors for business, it’s your responsibility to serve people who want to buy from you. If you claim to be able to solve a problem, you must show up and solve that problem as a professional–regardless of how you feel or what’s going on in your life.

Tim Ferriss’ Ted Talk on what he calls “Fear Setting” was always one of the most encouraging ideas for me as a freelancer. The opposite of goal setting, Ferriss encourages people to imagine the most negative outcomes of their fears.

Saying yes to everything is one of the negative outcomes of imposter syndrome. When clients asked me if I could do things for them, I felt I had to say yes. If I said no, I would be found out! If I didn’t know how to do what they asked, I learned really quickly.

Most people in America never have to pitch. Most people work in organizations where other people do the pitching. So naturally, when you’re developing a pitch for your creative project, you’ll hear imaginary voices from people who never had to pitch.

Maybe the reason you feel underwhelmed or stressed out by freelancing is because you’re expecting your freelance work to be 100% pure. If you’re doing it for other people, it won’t be.

I’ve developed something I call The 3-by-3 Copywriting Framework. I use it often as a great exercise and starting place for my copywriting projects. This framework has worked for my clients in the past, helping them generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in online sales.

One thing I’ve learned about successful people is that they don’t have much patience for people who are simply impressed. People like this are just fans. Successful people will often only work with you if you are really involved in what’s going on.

One of the most essential practices in marketing is asking how something could be misinterpreted. Marketing is meant to sell, but people will be hesitant to buy if they are confused. This practice separates marketers from people who just make stuff.

Wishing things were better is often much worse than accepting that things are bad. When we can accept the bad in life, we can recalibrate ourselves to deal with it.

As creators, we get shy. We get self-conscious. We compare ourselves to capitalistic rating systems of art. Of course we don’t sing or cook or write as well as acclaimed professionals.

One trap I fall into is convincing myself that I’ll do the important work when the urgent work slows down. This is a lie. Take a quick look at the past year. Has the urgent work ever gone away? It doesn’t.

“I don’t want to be the hardest-working man in Hollywood. I don’t want to be on the Forbes list. I don’t want to be part of any of that. Forbes Happiest List–put me there if there’s such a thing.”

If someone takes a whiff of the cookies you’re baking, you probably won’t mind. The smell is not a physical thing, and there’s no shortage of it. Ideas are more like smells than shoes. The more people smell your ideas, the more people talk about your ideas, the more input you get on your ideas, the better your ideas get.

Most brands spend October and November getting ready for Black Friday and the holiday season. If you can get in with them during late summer or early fall, you might be busy during December. Otherwise, brands are usually head down just trying to execute their plan.

Hats off to a man who re-wrote the script. Hats off to a man who pioneered good customer service in the digital age. It’s apparent that anyone who had the pleasure of working with Tony Hsieh was grateful for that experience.

The digital age brings faster results and shorter attention spans. If you waste any time, you will be scrolled right past.

This is the irony of accuracy–when we assume we have it, we’re more likely make mistakes. When we assume we might be wrong, we double check our work and catch mistakes. And we become more accurate.