On November 28th, 2023, I had 2400 followers on Instagram. By December 23rd, I had 10,000. By January 12th—20,000. February 5th—30,000. Next week, I’ll likely hit 40,000.

Guess what? I’m bored of it already.

The Freewrite Alpha is a romantic machine. It looks and sounds like a typewriter. It can go off the grid. It’s the kind of thing you can hammer away on at a coffee shop and turn the heads of a few hipsters.

I don’t brush my teeth every day, but once a year I spend all day brushing them to remove all the plaque at once. Do you see how ridiculous this sounds? Yet we apply this strategy to many areas of our lives.

I often encounter photographers, graphic designers, and writers who refuse to post short-form video content. They miss the old days of Instagram, when images were king, and their content performed without them having to try very hard.

When a client trusts you, you can follow your vision to an interesting creative end.

When a client trusts you, they'll happily pay more to work with you, instead of your competition.

When a client trusts you, they'll buy you the time you need to do a good job, and even understand when there are delays.

“Generation Alpha” has been emerging as a term on the internet in recent months. Lots of people saw a viral video titled “The world isn’t ready for Gen Alpha.” It showed two twelve year olds saying funny words while subtly bullying each other.

Jesse Itzler’s net worth is over $200M. But early in his career, he almost gave away 10% of his future earnings in exchange for a $10,000 loan.

You can either say “Well, I tried,” and accept the plausible deniability. It isn’t in your court anymore after all. Other people dropped the ball, yeah? It’s not on you, right? Or you can take radical responsibility.

“When you set giant, unrealistic goals, the delta between the actions you’re currently taking and the actions you would need to take to reach that giant goal become glaringly obvious.”

It was fascinating to see the impact that even a 15-minute delay to his nap schedule had on his ability to cope. Small changes in his diet and dinner schedule were detrimental to his ability to stave off a meltdown. It got me thinking that we aren’t so different.

Photographers and videographers (and all sorts of creative freelancers) spend tons of time tinkering with their portfolios, hoping that big brands will notice. What they don’t realize is that big brands are searching for something beyond just good work.

Have you touched a duck before? Have the majority of people touched ducks before? Then why do we say “get your ducks in a row” so often?

One of my videos is earning tens of thousands of views on Instagram. And counting. Amidst the scramble to respond to comments and messages, I’ve pulled a few lessons from this experience that I’d like to share.

Wherever the folks in your industry are spending time, you need to spend time there too. I’ll add, it doesn’t matter which end of the industry. Clients and colleagues are equally as important in the freelance game.

Life is painful. It’s hard. And no doubt, writing and workouts make it harder. But that is a portion of the pain that we own. We’re co-creators in the pain. We’re still choosing this.

There’s a study in which different people were tasked with interpreting an email. Those deemed in “high-power” positions were much worse at understanding the perspective of the email sender than those in “low-power” positions.

In a recent conversation with my uncle, we were discussing the optimal amount of time to assume you have left on this earth.

Baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs.

On August 11th, 2018, I tweeted the following: “I feel like I’m about to hit a personal / mental breakthrough. If the dissonance between where you are and where you want to be gets stronger, keep going through it!”

My knees were buckling under the crushing weight of stress. And I decided to take the weekend off of work and hang the cost.