Freelancing
Why September Is The Best Month To Get Writing
So I had a friend, and on their wall, they had a poster with the caption "A year from now you will wish you'd started today.' It would make me roll my eyes; I'm not sure why and that is not the point of the story. Maybe five years ago, I started using a website that a lot of Write Club members are on called 750 Words, where you write 750 Words every day. No one else can see them, and you write what you want, no one cares. I'm up to nearly 2 million words now, by doing a little bit every day.
My Coworking Moonshot (and the stars look very different today)
(Image Credit Raymond Carrillo Flickr) So What Is A Moonshot Bernie? A few weeks ago, my mate Cat Johnson (the other best coworking content advisor in the world) asked me what my Coworking Moonshot was. The trouble with Cat asking me a question is I need to think about the answer, saying 'to help people' would not have cut it. I know this as we used to podcast together on the Write Club Podcast on Coalescent Network (formerly Ouishare Radio) with Trevor. Listen to this episode to check in
How Finding Your Voice Is My Why
I was standing by the bar in Soho theatre after our 2010 Social Media Week #techForGood event. 'You need to find your WHY Bernie', Julie says. Julie tells me about a new TED talk with over 200k views by Simon Sinek. Simon says we should start with 'our WHY'. I ponder and reply, "Maybe my WHY is ‘find your voice and help others find theirs, like in Covey's 8th Habit." “Is an outcome or a WHY?” asks Julie. I stare into my drink, is it a WHY or an outcome? If my voice came up and punched me
How To Really Know What To Do As A Freelancer
These places are how I get my work done. Somewhere back in 2016, I made a firm choice to commit to only a few places, and this is how I really worked out what to do as a freelancer. I'd spend so much time looking at different blogs, videos and looking for the silver bullet. I went through a two-year space, trying to be the worlds best web copywriter, it was torture. My heart was set on it, and I could see how it would work, but it drained me. Every job was like finishing an essay for the cl
My Seven Week Writing Experiment
My Little Writing Experiment So I’m always writing every day. But still have some odd aversion to hitting publish, and there is always an internal debate about what to post first. Then I massage my work and wonder if it is for this person or that person. Then I'll go and read a book about that type of blog, and then I read a blog about that type of book. After that, I’ll check the SEO for the main keyword my article was written about. Finally, I watch yet another Backlinko video to verifyCTL ALT DEL - My 12 Week Year Reset
Where to begin? 2018 was the best year I have had for ages, but it was a year of reset, learning and working it out which was a new kind of pain for me. This blog is my way of kicking off my commitment to writing and sharing what I am working on and what I am learning in 2019. I was completely dithering around getting started so decided to eat my own dog food and ‘just do it’. Maybe you don’t know that I am part of a podcast about writing and have organised a weekly writing group in London f
How To Kill Writer's Block And Thrive
When you have to write a post, you'll want to do everything but write that blog post. It is much easier to think about stuff than writing it. The main reason only a few people do well at blogging comes down to just a few people execute and post stuff. Everyone else licks blogging wounds, looks for SEO tricks and talks about blogging, without doing much blogging. And that included me. I found it very hard to write and post stuff, but every time I ship a blog post a good thing happens. Someti
How To Get Big Changes In Just 12 Weeks
Big Changes So I have been around a lot of change over the last few weeks, in those few weeks I have been looking for a way to deal with it all. Or instead, accept it and work out what to do with it, change happens all the time, and I've got better and working out how to harness the energy and indecision that comes with it. It still affects me, but I can recognise the different types of emotions and energy coming towards me and either discard them or embrace them. This time I stalled out for
Why You Need Other People As A Freelancer
My Head Never Stops, So I Have To To function each week I need to seek a balance of solitude and connection, so I need time to both calm my head and time to connect with peers. Too much time alone and I live in my head, too much time with peers and I end up building a tower of ideas that go nowhere. A Typical Day For My Head Yesterday I read an Aeon magazine article about Nazi troopers being drunk while massacring people in towns on their quest for ethnic cleansing. When I woke up this mor