Bold Master Plan - Part 4 🌱

Woah, just like that, it’s the end of January. Congrats, everyone! We’ve made it. 🤝🏼

It’s a great place to be. The January gym memberships expire. You can go out with your friends without anyone flexing about Dry January. And with Christmas long gone, it’s acceptable to start planning your next holiday. 🥳

We’ve had enough of this January energy anyway. People create new year’s resolutions, set goals, and build new habits. It’s intense.

February sounds way more welcoming. With only 28 days, Valentine’s day, and the Super Bowl on the horizon, it’s bound to deliver. We’ve got high hopes!

And for anyone doing Veganuary this year. Just one more sleep until you can eat bacon again. 🥓 You got this!

Being your own boss has a ton of shiny benefits. Like wearing pajamas to work and having unlimited snack breaks. As a freelancer, you can finally say goodbye to the 9 to 5 grind and hello to a life of endless happiness.

You get to choose the projects that light your fire and work on them at your own pace. No more boring meetings, no more endless commutes, and no need to deal with that guy Sam who always microwaves fish for lunch.

Well, it turns out that there’s even more benefits on the self-employed menu. Upwork’s annual Freelance Forward report says:

With all the crazy layoffs going on, there’s a sense of gloom in the air. Curiously, it looks like most self-employed professionals are shrugging off the economic blues.

While 75% of the full-time employed workforce is worried about the economy going down the 🚽, 69% of freelancers are bouncing to the Biebs’ beats and sipping Margaritas because they’re going to make more 💵 this year. How come!?

The secret to their optimism is legit. 68% of freelancers have their income spread out like a Vegas taco buffet, with many clients, gigs, and projects all on the menu.

That means less stress and less reliance on one employer's performance, which gives them the chill pill during these crazy times.

Write back and tell us how you’re feeling about 2023? 💩 or 💃🏻?

Did you hear about Justin Bieber and Bruce Springsteen making huge coin in the music biz? Bieber sold his music catalog for a thumping $200 million recently. While The Boss—Springsteen—made a grand exit worth $500 million.

Talk about hitting the high notes!

Our friends at chartr just analyzed the numbers on Spotify and what they found will rock your socks off.

As a music creator, if you're busy strumming up a storm—creating some killer tunes—then you'll want to take a look at this data visualization.

Alright, hold onto your hats, because you’re about to dive into the juicy part. For the past of couple weeks, it's like we've been playing a game of slow-motion-business-planning and you've been snoozin' through the first third of the adventure. Now you’re ready for a bang. 💥

We've covered the serious stuff of finding out the problems faced by self-employed professionals. It's time to put on our flashy-thinking-caps.

It's solution-finding time.

In pursuit of our disruptive business idea, we have to embrace the power of being a contrarian. Taking a fresh look at the problems and saying 'Hey Rebekah, what if we did things differently?’

It forces us to uncover the bold opportunity lurking within the fog of old ideas. It’s like that feeling you get when you find $5 in the pocket of the jeans that just came out of the wash.

Doing something meaningful and fulfilling in the process? That’s the spirit!

People told us that they need information to help them with their work. However, it takes hours digging through the wrong information to find the right stuff when it’s free. And they’re not confident about paying for expensive courses, because they often suck.

Solution: Make premium content free for our readers! Give away all our Legos and invite our industry friends to do the same.

Self-employed professionals want to get better at what they do. And they want to wow their customers with better relationship management.

Solution: Focus on actionable content with our Playbooks revealing exactly how we do it for ourselves and for clients. Top it off with delicious knowledge salsa from our friends.

They want a way to build sustainable and predictable income. They’re looking for scalable and repeatable processes to skyrocket growth.

Solution: Share specific examples of how we run our business and how we’ve helped others run theirs including people, process, and technology needed to scale. Create open source recipes they can steal like an artist. Highlight case studies from various industry professionals for inspiration.