by Erika G. Musser Last week, my first Business Insider article went live. I was excited because, after 5 years of client work, this was the first time getting paid for a story that was 100% mine. I felt excited for about an hour. But then… I got a Facebook message from my Aunt that said, “Wow! I just saw your article on YAHOO! How cool!” And my stomach dropped. Yahoo?? I didn’t write an article for Yahoo. I wrote a personal essay that was tucked safely behind a paywall on Business Insider’s...
4 months ago • 2 min read
By Erika G. Musser I don't know about you, Reader, but every time I’ve tried to follow the typical ‘niche down’ playbook, I’ve ended up feeling trapped, resentful, and honestly… bored in my business. Which leads to either: (a) doing a service I’m not excited about, or (b) continuously changing my services so no one knows what the heck I actually do So last year, I decided to take off the pressure to ‘find my niche’ and take more of an eat-pray-love approach to freelancing, if you will. 😏 And...
4 months ago • 6 min read
If you’ve been in content marketing for a minute, you’ve probably heard of Erica Schneider. She’s got over 40,000 followers on LinkedIn, a popular newsletter, digital courses (that I’ve taken), a 1:1 content creation program, and a group coaching program. It’s safe to say that Erica knows her stuff (and makes great money doing it). So when I hopped on Zoom with her a few weeks ago, I had an agenda: I wanted to hear about her earliest days of freelancing — the messy, underpaid, pre-success...
4 months ago • 6 min read
I was sitting in the driver's seat of my Subaru Forester with a yellow legal pad on my lap, palms sweating, about to dial the number for my first sales call as a freelancer. My 700 sq. ft. house was overrun with moving boxes, a hyperactive puppy, and my husband, who was inside, finishing up the final prep for our big move. So, my car had become the only quiet space where I could take a phone call without background noise. I had zero context going in — just a name and phone number from a...
5 months ago • 5 min read
Kendall Cherry had what a lot of people would consider a dream gig: a six-figure role in the C-Suite of a Fortune 100 tech company, where she worked as their executive ghostwriter. The problem with this "dream job", however, was that it was more like a nicely packaged road to burnout. The endless hours and soul-crushing politics left her feeling totally empty. So she did what any reasonable millennial would do and started secretly building her escape route by posting on Instagram where her...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, Okay, I have to be honest here... I had a different email drafted for today. It was basically a soap box about how the "six-figure freelancer" status gets thrown around on LinkedIn as if it's the ultimate mark of freelance success. And how we shouldn't let arbitrary numbers be the goalpost we aspire to. But something felt off about that draft. So I took a break from writing, went on a walk, hit up Starbucks (of course), and realized why it wasn't sitting right: I wasn't being...
6 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, Last week, I was chatting with a freelancer friend who is wildly successful. Like $20k months working only 20 hours a week kind of successful. Of course, we all get to set our own definitions of success, but in my eyes, $250k/year working part-time = pretty comfortable living. Lucky for you and me, I'm super nosy. So I was asking her all kinds of (invasive) questions. 😉 I'm working on a full deep-dive on this freelancer, who shall soon be named, and I'll share it with you in a few...
9 months ago • 2 min read
Heyyy Reader! *dramatic music starts* The year is 2017. I'm a fresh college grad ready to take on the corporate world. I create a LinkedIn account. It only takes a few moments of scrolling to see that LinkedIn is a bro brag fest. I say, "no thanks," and log off.Fast-forward three years. It's 2020. I'm a burned-out 9-5 employee ready to take on the freelancer world. 'They' say you need to use LinkedIn to build your business, so I log in to give it another go. The bros are still running the...
10 months ago • 7 min read