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Just a quick reading tip: If you enjoyed the groundbreaking book Genius Foods written by Max Lugavere (with Paul Grewal, MD) about foods and lifestyle choices supporting long-term brain health, there’s an equally good sequel.
The Genius Life broadens the picture by focusing on overall health and longevity, while sticking to solid, well-researched scientific foundations. Once again, the book is pretty dense, so expect a deep-dive with no fluff — a perfect read for any busy freelancer.
Sarah Duran, who is one of the leading voices on freelance business in the U.S., praised The Freelance Way in the recent issue of Hustler’s Manifesto newsletter:
The Freelance Way by Robert Vlach is the most comprehensive freelance guide I have ever read. A lot of books on freelancing are just repurposed “best practices” that you could get from Google, but Robert’s book shares deep expertise and experience that you can only have from being an independent worker for many years. Instead of giving silver bullets and “secret” formulas, Robert shares his incredible knowledge as a freelancer and top-tier business consultant, which gives freelancers the information they need to forge their own path.
One highlight is the chapter on pricing. Pricing is so hard to talk about because everyone wants you to tell them how to do it when the reality is that pricing your work is the journey of a lifetime and is so specific to the industry and the type of work you do. Robert goes into great detail on so many pricing models and the theory behind them, giving freelancers a comprehensive resource for defining their worth.
The Freelance Way: Best Business Practices, Tools & Strategies for Independent Professionals has been published in 2022 by HarperCollins and is available worldwide from Amazon, along with several translations.
Masaryk University is launching Season 4 of From Student ID to Business ID — arguably the longest-running full-semester freelancing course at a renowned European university.
100 students will delve into 10 business topics, inspired by Robert Vlach’s best-selling book The Freelance Way, and presented informally by a group of top-notch independent professionals on Zoom. And once again, the course is completely full.
Here’s an idea: Would you be interested in an English version available globally to all?
If you are serious about freelancing as a business, you should measure your progress somehow, depending on your long-term priorities. Marcie Geffner wrote a straight-to-the-point article about how she does it as a freelance writer. She focuses on the following 4 success metrics while admitting that (obviously) money isn’t everything:
Check out the snapshots on Facebook from our 1st super-awesome international freelance meetup that we hosted this week in Bratislava, Slovakia, in collaboration with Coworking Cvernovka and the creative center Nová Cvernovka.
In the beautiful Indian summer weather, over 50 of us gathered—mostly local, Central-European freelancers, but we also had a few folks from Austria and Belgium! The 2-day meetup was all about casual networking, discussions, and undisturbed work in the sunlit coworking space.
A highlight of the gathering was a live 2.5-hour debate on freelance business with Robert Vlach, and also a tour of Nová Cvernovka, which, apart from coworking, includes 130 creative studios and workshops, a garden, nursery, sauna, café, bakery, bar, shopping, and gourmet zones, hosting dozens of events monthly.
A big shoutout to our friends at Cvernovka for their hospitality and collaboration, and to all of you who made it to this first international meetup!
Looking forward to seeing you soon at other Freelancers On the Road gatherings across Europe — we'll keep you posted on upcoming events in our newsletter.
This week, we’re kicking off our new format of international freelance meetups:
The first event in the Freelancers On the Road series is happening this Wednesday and Thursday (September 27–28) in Bratislava, in collaboration with Coworking Cvernovka and Nova Cvernovka.
Joining is easy! Attendance is free; all you have to do is join the Facebook event and then show up in good spirits.
Breaking news in AI: DALL·E 3 image generator by OpenAI will be part of the paid version of ChatGPT Plus, in October.
This represents another step away from purely text-based AI chatbots towards a multimodal AI that could eventually communicate through images and voice.
A significant improvement is expected to be its enhanced ability to work with text in images, a challenge that has been troubling competitor tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion (Adobe Firefly approaches the issue differently).
The introductory presentation video of Dalle 3 alone takes your breath away—in the hands of skilled (not only) freelance creators it will undoubtedly be an immensely powerful tool for creative work:
Interest in longevity and promoting healthspan is surging among freelancers. One of the new frontiers in this area of interest is the focus on so-called metabolic health, and especially on reversing insulin resistance as one of the pre-diabetes conditions.
Veri is a measuring device connected to an app that enables users to measure their body's reaction to various foods and other factors. This helps users improve their diet and, potentially, extend their lifespan. Even better, most of the benefits can be felt in everyday life and work.
In October, Freelance Business Month 2023, produced by Elina Jutelyte and her team, is coming to your screens with huge improvements in terms of lineup, program, and benefits for paying participants compared to free tickets. Go for it!
If you’ve missed the two recent episodes on improving eyesight by Stanford’s professor of neurobiology Andrew Huberman (or they were too long for you to watch), he also published a useful protocol summary on Exercises & Nutrition to Support Eye Health. It may be especially helpful if you are over 40 or working mostly indoors.