Receiving feedback isn’t easy. But the viability of a creator’s career depends on it. The better the work they create for their clients, and the better time their clients have working with them, have a direct effect on how often they get hired.

When you make a pitch deck, start with a Google Doc. If it makes sense there, then go ahead and add reference images, design elements, and creative copy. But whatever you do, don’t start your pitch process by opening Keynote and Unsplash.

Have you ever held a gold medal or a Grammy or a Super Bowl ring? Have you ever seen a bank balance nudging up into the seven figures?

Recently, Matt D’Avella published a journalistic video called The 40 hr workweek is killing your productivity. The video breaks down the history of the 40-hour work week, the drawbacks of that strategy, and examples of businesses that are doing it differently. I want to respond to this video by adding a few points.

We make marketing more complicated than it needs to be. Just go out there and make a good impression on people who could hire you.

Marketing comes from the word “market.” And if that’s all you knew about marketing, you would be in a better place than thousands of brands and businesses are today.

It’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t win a pitch. You spend all this time developing an offering, packaging it in a pitch deck, preparing for the call. And then you don’t win. What a bummer!

No creator gets their start doing branded posts. Why? Because they don’t have any attention to sell to brands yet. By creating work solely for fans, creators slowly grow their audience and gain attention they can leverage.

The trouble comes when we give into short-term dopaminergic urges again and again. Like an addict chasing a high, long-term projects can never compare to short-term rewards, from a dopamine perspective.

If this were a Monday morning, I would have my caffeine just before I write, I’d eat a square meal just before I plan my day, and I’d put on motivational music to carry me through the afternoon.

The internet is flush with food bloggers who claim they have “the secret sauce,” or the perfect way to get the most flavor out of a skillet. I’m not so sure. I just think cast irons produce more flavor because you never really wash them. That’s it.

The consistent freelancers I know show up almost every day anyway, even if there is no work. They do another round of outreach. They tighten up their sales funnels. They chip away at passion projects.

Technically, working out for longer blocks of time is more efficient. Sticking to a program that targets specific muscle groups maximizes time and energy. But it’s not always the most psychologically successful.

Ditch The Common Metaphor. Common metaphors are a dime a dozen. What does a dime a dozen really mean to you, though? Probably not much, because you’ve never spent a dime on a dozen of anything.

This is the most magical thing to me. In almost every other creative discipline, you need to have supplies, materials, gear, or a team to pull them off. In writing, all you need is a blank page and an idea.

There are thousands of topical self-development books that you could read to try to get a leg up in a specific area. Then there are free PDFs from bloggers and influencers that boil down ideas from dozens of these books, and create an actionable plan.

Freelancing can be discouraging. Losing a pitch, or being dropped by a client, or not hearing back from someone you admired can take a toll on your confidence.

It’s one thing to make an ad with a few lego characters. But creating an entire village of classic Lego characters, all working together for some goofy goal? That’s special.

The Big Three is a list of three things you want to accomplish in a day. They’re small enough to be completed over the course of a day, but big enough to make it a productive day when they are completed.

Do you consider yourself a creative person? Do you have creative projects that you’d like to complete within the next 30-90 days? Do you have trouble committing to your creative projects for longer than 7 days?