Joe Casabona

Essays

2026

  1. What is Conscientious AI Use? Are you using AI without thinking? Creating slop? Degrading your work. It's time you learned about Conscientious AI Use.
  2. Automation vs. AI: Which One Should You Actually Use? Why should you use AI when a process automation is better? Let's look at Automation vs. AI and figure when to use both.
  3. What Abigail Adams Showed Me About Shallow Thoughts in the Age of AI The publication In Pursuit is doing a fantastic series on all of the presidents and the women behind them for America's 250th anniversary, and I've finally
  4. Not Sure Where to Start? The 4 Systems Every Solopreneur Needs The 4 solopreneur systems that save me 14+ hours a week. Learn the admin, CRM, content, and idea-capture systems to build first — and where to start.
  5. Start Here Before You Build: Simple Solopreneur Systems That Actually Work I found myself in a rare position yesterday morning: I didn't know what I was going to write about for this newsletter. The best I had was a vague idea about
  6. Why Repurposing Is the Solopreneur’s Smartest Content Move Over the weekend, I saw Toy Story 5, which I highly recommend. You will probably cry.
  7. A Simpler Content System for Busy Solopreneurs Last week the parish carnival was in town. It's one of my kids' favorite summer events so we got the weekly pass, which ended up saving us $120 (seriously, we
  8. The Fewest Links Philosophy: How to Build Automations That Don’t Break There's a children's game in Philly / eastern PA that's called "Whisper Down the Lane." Pretty much the rest of the USA calls it "Telephone." If you're
  9. What’s The Simplest Action You Can Take? I remember the first time I went to see my accountant. I was around 19 or 20, and figured it was time for me to treat my side hustle of building websites as
  10. Explain How You Work: The First Step to Automating Your Business Back when I taught Computer Science at The University of Scranton, I was tasked with teaching what most faculty viewed as an unenviable course: Computer
  11. The Solopreneur’s Guide to Protecting Your Time From Everyone Who Wants It When I was in high school, I wanted people to like me. I thought being really nice was the way to do that, so any time someone asked me for a favor, I was
  12. What SNL Taught Me About Solopreneur Automation Too many solopreneurs are confusion AI with automation. But this simple test, thanks to SNL, will help distinguish the two.
  13. 4 Warning Signs You’ve Got AI Brain Rot (And How to Prevent It) AI brain rot creeps in when you outsource too much thinking. 3 warning signs, and the rules I use to prevent it from ruining me and my solopreneur business
  14. Two Weeks with Claude MAX: A Solopreneur’s Honest Review Can solopreneurs use Claude MAX without going overboard? Is it worth it? Here's how Joe Casabona is using it for his one-person business.
  15. Efficiency Isn’t Enough: What Every Solopreneur Gets Wrong About Productivity So as solopreneurs, how do we figure out if we’re “playing with our wrists,” so to speak?
  16. The Framework I Use to Decide If a New Tool Is Worth It Over the last week or so, I’ve introduced several new tools that I’m either trying or evaluating.
  17. What High CO2 Levels Taught Me About Fixing My Business We're coming out of a long, cold winter, and I've gotta say, I'm pretty excited about it.
  18. Daily 3 Task Journal: A Simple System for Understanding How You Work A task journal tracks more than what you did — it tracks how you work. Here's the simple method that helps solopreneurs work better.
  19. The 3-Question Test for Using AI Effectively The Wall Street Journal published a report last week that AI isn’t actually helping us work less — it’s the opposite.
  20. How Many Hours Do You Really Lose? If you're in (most of) the United States, your clock “sprung ahead” this weekend. Our friends in Europe will have the same experience in a couple of weeks.
  21. The Two Questions That Will Change How You Use Your Devices There’s a trend that’s giving me a ton of hope lately, where Gen-Z are ditching smart phones for dumb phones, or getting music players instead of streaming
  22. You Can’t Just Prompt Your Way to Success I used to work at a deli in New York1, where we were incredibly busy during lunch on weekdays. There were multiple law firms and offices that would place
  23. Why “Working Harder” Is Making You a Worse Solopreneur Elite athletes don’t give 100% every single day. They know better.
  24. Beyond Box-Ticking: How to Build an Olympic-Caliber Business It was a big weekend for sports. The 2026 Olympics kicked off, and we had the Super Bowl.
  25. All That Shimmers is Not Gold: Why We Should Be Cautious About New AI Tools If you're of a certain age, you probably remember Leeroy Jenkins, the World of Warcraft player who became popular after a viral video in 2005. From Wikipedia:
  26. How Solopreneurs Can Take More Time Off Forced downtime at the airport made me this about how little time off solopreneurs take, and how we can be doing better...when we know what we're doing.
  27. You Don’t Need AI Michelangelo is getting ready to paint the Sistine Chapel. He’d rather be sculpting, and is struggling to come up with an approach to this massive undertaking.
  28. 2026 Yearly Theme: Digital Detox There comes a time in everyone’s life when they’ve consumed too much of something, and they find the very notion of consuming more sickening.

2025

  1. Why Talking to Your Phone is a HUGE Productivity Hack I remember when Nextel came out with their Walkie-Talkie feature for their phones — you could push to talk over cellular.
  2. Zero Stress Holiday Prep: The Simple Playbook for Taking Time Off Without Burnout When I worked in higher ed, the entire university shut down between Christmas Eve and the first Monday after New Years.
  3. How to Do a Year-End Systems Review in Your Small Business I absolutely love the holiday season here in the USA. Thanksgiving is great. Christmas is great. Everything in-between is the best.
  4. Don’t let AI Steal Your Life When we outsource everything, all of our thinking to AI, we lose important experiences.
  5. How I Keep my Email at Inbox Zero Those who knew me growing up might be shocked by this, but I hate clutter. If I have a lot of stuff around me, I can’t focus.
  6. How to Automate Your Task List Most solopreneurs lose work to tasks that slip through the cracks. Here's how to automate task capture so nothing gets missed.
  7. Faster Doesn’t Mean Better. It Just Means Faster Imagine you're going skydiving and the coach offers you 2 options:
  8. The AI Trap: Why Over-Reliance Will Cost You Time (and Your Voice) The World Series just ended and it was a heart breaker for the Toronto Blue Jays, who were 2 outs away from winning their first in 32 years.
  9. The First Draft is Where the Magic Happens I remember the first time my oldest daughter put on socks by herself.
  10. When Is Switching Tools Worth It? I switch tools, perhaps too much.
  11. Why I Can’t Trust New Browsers After Arc When I tried Arc by The Browser Company, it was a revelation. I loved the sidebar with the tabs, pinned tabs, Profiles, Spaces, and Air Traffic Control — a
  12. The One Thing You Should Learn from the Taylor Swift Podcast (And It’s Not What You Think) I’m getting bored with the Taylor Swift New Heights conversations.
  13. My D.A.D. Framework for Overwhelmed Solopreneurs Then you’ll get a complete blueprint for how to fix it using the D.A.D. Framework.
  14. What Being a Drummer Taught Me About Running a Business I’ve been playing the drums regularly since I was about 14 (on and off before that). I always thought the drummers were cool. It’s a fun instrument.
  15. How Business Books Get Time Management Wrong for Solopreneurs I just finished reading Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. It came highly recommended by a number of people. But there were a couple of problems
  16. My Voice Notes Summary from Tiny Experiments Last month I wrote about Why I’m Trading Highlights for Voice Notes. Well, I finished Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff and thought it would be fun to
  17. The Dangerous Truth About AI Coaching (It’s Not Actually Coaching) I've seen the notion recently of people using "AI Coaches" — that is, using it to get feedback to mentor and guide you to action.
  18. Why I’m Trading Highlights for Voice Notes "What if I need it?"
  19. I made the mistake of trying to do it myself There are some things you can DIY well enough by watching a YouTube video or reading instructions.
  20. How Bad Defense Ruins Even the Best Teams—and Businesses Long-time readers will know I'm a big baseball fan. I think it's a great sport, and I find a lot of inspiration from it.
  21. How I Let AI Ruin My Podcast Content Strategy On Monday, I wrote about spending your time wisely; I don't think I've been doing that with my podcast.
  22. The Parking Lot Problem: Why You’re Focusing on the Wrong Things in Your Business I was looking at a new karate studio that opened up in my town and I couldn't help but think that there were very few parking spots for people to park...like
  23. Why “Just Ask AI to Code It” Doesn’t Work I've been thinking a lot about vibe coding lately.
  24. Are you Stretching Yourself too Thin? Over the weekend, Clark Schmidt, a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, flirted with a no-hitter.
  25. The Humanity, Stupid. Back in 1991, George HW Bush was hugely popular — like 90% approval rating popular.
  26. How to Get Brutally Honest Feedback from AI (And Why You Need It) Are you familiar with the term “Rubber Ducking?” I recently learned it's primarily used in software development, thanks to the book The Pragmatic Programmer.
  27. I Started Writing my Next Book My last book, HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide came out about 5 years ago, in August 2020.
  28. Why AI Only Works When You Already Know What You’re Doing I’ve written a few times about how my father and brother-in-law have helped me with home improvement projects.
  29. Vision, Workflow, Purpose: Lessons from Watching 13 Movies in 4 Days In fact, the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier fed right into Age of Ultron. The formula also serves as a bridge. You can tell Marvel had the vision (see
  30. Doing the Hard Things Matters Do you want to know why I’m AI Hesitant™?
  31. The Intentional Vacation: How My Systems Delivered True Family Time I’m back from our family Disney Vacation and there’s a lot to be happy about.
  32. How I’m Staying Checked Out for a Week’s Vacation My friends. As I write this, it’s 4:36pm on Friday afternoon. In 36 hours, I’ll be at the airport with my family.
  33. I lost a dream opportunity (and I’m glad about it) A completely unsurprising admission for anyone who knows me.
  34. What Building a Fence Taught Me About Better Systems Our fence was in disrepair.
  35. What Wicked’s Practical Sets Have to do with Content Creation Over the weekend, I watched a documentary about the making of Wicked. I will take all of the BTS content I can get, but one part stood out to me more
  36. AI Swipe Files: Your Secret Weapon for Save Time Ichio Suzuki is perhaps one of the greatest all-around baseball players of all time.
  37. My Thoughts on The Anxious Generation Lately I’ve been thinking about how fondly I look back on my formative years.
  38. Why Curling, and Your Business, Relies on Friction Management I've really enjoyed watching Curling Mixed Doubles at the 2026 Olympics in Milan/Cortina.
  39. Where is your focus? For a while, it was pure chaos on the days I picked up my kids from school and daycare.
  40. What Solopreneurs Can Learn from 50 Years of SNL This weekend marked SNL’s 50th Anniversary, and if you’re a fan, you haven’t been short on behind-the-scenes content.
  41. Homemade Pizza and Building Systems: When to DIY and When to Delegate Americans ate an estimated 12.5 million pizzas during the Super Bowl (according to a quick Google search).
  42. How Coaching Changed My Relationship with Meetings I've been thinking a lot about meetings, and how they used to be an income blocker. But coaching has changed that.
  43. My Startup and Shutdown Routines The answer became abundantly clear when my friend Jim emailed me, asking me for my Startup and Shutdown Routine document, which is single markdown for Obsidian.
  44. 20 Years of Casabona.org It’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, I was sitting in my Sophomore year dorm room at The University of Scranton (Redington Hall, bay bay!) when I bought this domain.
  45. Why You’re Losing Money when You Mow the Lawn This is known in economics as opportunity cost. You answer this basic question: What's the cost of me doing one thing vs. another?
  46. Analytics is better than A.I. But as far as I can tell, there’s only one talk on using analytics to measure the success of your podcast.
  47. You Don’t Need to Work Weekends. People who tell you that you need to work on weekends are liars. They need to work on weekends.
  48. 2025 Yearly Theme: Being Present My 2025 Yearly Theme is The Year of Being Present. Here are the goals, and tools I'm using to be more mindful of what's happening now.

2024

  1. Conscientious AI Use: Disclose It Or Don’t Use It Back when I was doing Podcast Advent and in one article, How I Produce a Podcast Completely From my iPhone, I included this at the bottom:
  2. On Shuffling Poker Chips and Perfection I love shuffling poker chips at my desk.It helps me think. It helps me focus. It calms me.I probably shuffle poker chips 100 times each day.Did you know it takes 6 perfect shuffles to get your chips back in the original order?The best way to check is to take 2 piles of different color chips and shuffle them.Do it perfectly 6 times, and they are neatly organized by color once again.Shuffling 100x a day means that 16 times per day, I get my chips back in the right order.But that’s not the case.It happens maybe 4 times a day unless I’m really focusing.Sometimes a chip sticks and doesn’t shuffle. Sometimes, I don’t make even stacks of chips.Sometimes I completely mess up and the chips fall.Perfection is uncommon. It doesn’t happen every time.It doesn’t even happen most of the time.I get perfect shuffles not because I’m the best chip-shuffler.It’s because I take a lot of shots.If I were only striving for perfect, I would have given up the first time I tried to shuffle chips.When you’re creating your podcast, strive for doing. Not for perfect.Perfection is uncommon. But the more you do something, the more likely it is to happen.
  3. Constantly Changing Tools is Bad (Plus, Some Cyber Week Advice) Around this time last year, I asked, When Do You Burn All of Your Processes Down and Start Over?
  4. How Good is Your Idea Capture System? One of my most crucial systems is for capturing and reviewing notes. Without good idea capture, you're letting good stuff be forgotten.
  5. You Must Value Your Time “Why would you pay someone when you can do it yourself?”
  6. I Love Career Day One of the ways I’d like to think I make an impact is being involved in my kids’ lives, and kids’ lives in general.
  7. What I Learned from BJ Novak at CEX The closing keynote at CEX last week was an interview with BJ Novak, who you may know as Ryan from The Office. I personally liked him a lot as Bob Sherman in Saving Mr. Banks though.
  8. Deleting My Mail App From my Phone I was listening to the latest episode of Cortex, where Grey is helping Myke through the question of how to handle email on his phone. There was a 60 second segment that sent me on a roller coaster ride of emotions. It went something like this:
  9. 2024 Yearly Theme: Control The word ‘Control’ evokes various thoughts and emotions, many of which are negative. Control is often associated with an excessive desire to dominate or dictate every aspect of a situation.

2023

  1. What CaboPress has to do with Cartography Recently I found myself thinking about early Cartographers and how they managed to create accurate maps. They’d use rudimentary tools, landmarks, and their own observations.
  2. A Moratorium on Business Books for 2023 As I wrote this article, I was on vacation at the serene Bethany Beach in Delaware. My mind clear and thinking about big picture stuff as my kids napped, I thought about how I’m consuming content.
  3. ChatGPT is Exposing Our Broken Education System I was at a talk about generative AI over the weekend, and someone asked about what it meant for students and homework assignments.
  4. 2023: The Year of Budgets I know what you’re thinking. Budgets? That’s what you’re going to base your entire year on?

2022

  1. Why an apartment is better than a house for most creators I want you to think about when you first started your career. Maybe you’re there right now. What you need as far as living arrangements go isn’t a big house with a lot of maintenance. You’re just starting your career. Maybe you’re focused on work; you’re not spending a lot of time at your living place because you’re going out with coworkers and friends and partners. You need an apartment. This serves as a place for you to keep your stuff, make some meals, and rest your head.
  2. Startup and Shutdown Routines I’ve been in a bit of a rut. Since my wife went back to work in March, my work schedule has been capricious, and until a few weeks ago, Abby (6 months) was home because there was no availability at the daycare, meaning I was mostly a Stay-at-Home Dad. And even so, the kids have been sick regularly1 thanks to daycare and school germs.
  3. Cost is More Than Just the Money Out of Your Pocket One of the most enduring lessons in my life comes from a high school Accounting class1 where we learned about opportunity cost. It’s the potential loss you’ll experience when choosing one thing over another.
  4. How Yacht Rock Taught Me the Importance of Brand Stories I’m not much of a marketing guy. For a long time, I’ve taken a Field of Dreams approach to marketing, which I’ve written about quite a bit. And while I know that you need to define an audience and solve a problem, I still struggle with packaging specific offerings.
  5. You Don’t Start at the Top of the Charts One of my favorite shows is Parks and Recreation, an NBC show staring what’s now considered an ensemble cast in a mockumentary-style TV show, like The Office. It ran for 7 years and is beloved by many. And if you watch Season 1 without knowing anything else about the show, you’d probably be surprised it lasted beyond those 6 episodes.
  6. No Spend January: An Experiment in Minimalism The idea of a no spend month has always interested me, so my wife and I are doing it in January. Here's how.
  7. 2022: The Year of Retreat 2 house keeping notes: if you need a refresher on yearly themes, go here. If you’d rather listen to this, check out episode 248 of How I Built It.

2021

  1. On Generosity: My Favorite Christmas Story 21 Years ago to the day, I experience the first true act of generosity. It all has to do with a kind stranger, and a drum kit.
  2. Do we REALLY Need to Own Our Platform? Last week's Facebook outage brought an onslaught of platitudes from folks on how you should own your own platform. But...should you?
  3. What Prepared Plumbers Can Teach You About Winning Business Recently, my wife and I noticed our faucet was leaking. Now, I’m not a DIY guy. I’m thankful that computers exist because I can’t do anything with my hands. But I decided to try to fix it myself. Long story short…it didn’t work. I brought the faucet neck to Home Depot and they were less than helpful. So we called two plumbers. One was the clear winner, and here’s why (and what you can learn from them).
  4. When You Should Own the Platform vs. Paying for a Service Quick note! Subscribers to my newsletter, Build Something Weekly, got a sneak preview of this post earlier this week. I don’t always publish what I write there here though, so for my best thoughts you should totally subscribe.
  5. What Baby Clothes Can Teach You About Understanding Your Customers If you’re a parent, you’re probably familiar with something that’s been recently reintroduced into my life. It’s 2 am, and my 7-month-old son wakes up and is in need of a new diaper and bottle. So I get up and head into his room. I’m half asleep, I need to undo his PJs, change the diaper, and redo the PJs. And there is one type of PJs that are head and shoulders above the rest: the reverse zip PJs. So good in fact, that I’m certain they were designed by parents that had the same exact experience I’ve shared.
  6. 5 Insanely Impactful Books That Helped My Business Business advice is a dime a dozen these days. To help cut through the cruft, here are 5 of the most impactful business books you can read.
  7. 2021: The Year of Opportunity It's time for my 2021 yearly theme, and after a year being stuck at home, it's time to make 2021 The Year of Opportunity.

2020

  1. I’ve Been Hiring A Lot My aspirations of being self-employed full time have always been about me running my own little business. I never figured I’d be hiring anyone to help me – employee or contractor. I like to say that when you’re a younger business owner (or person, I suppose), your surplus is time. I never wanted to buy premium software if I could make it work myself. I never wanted to hire anyone if I could figure it out.
  2. On Buying Jeans and App Subscriptions It seems that increasingly, more software companies are moving to a subscription model, where instead of paying once to own the software (or app), you pay monthly, or annually, to keep using it at the latest features. Adobe was perhaps one of the first major companies to do it with Creative Cloud. Now we see it in WordPress plugins, and increasingly, iOS apps. Fantastical did it this year, and this week Deliveries announced they are moving to subscription.
  3. The Ultimate Stream Deck Setup for Solopreneurs My Stream Deck setup is SO important. It helps me use my Mac efficiently. Here's how it's currently configured, and how it can help solopreneurs.
  4. 2020: The Year of Depth This year I’m continuing the trend I started last year of choosing a yearly theme over a bunch of New Year’s Resolutions. Where last year I focused on something very tangible – content – this year I’m choosing a “bigger picture theme. This year’s theme is the year of depth.

2019

  1. What Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Taught Me About the Details Today is the day Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens at Walt Disney World. I was lucky enough to preview it 2 weeks ago and experience most of the attractions and workshops there. On top of being completely enamored by Batuu (I mean, I’m a pretty big Star Wars fan), there was a lot to take away from the experience – stuff that we can apply to our own work.
  2. How to Aggressively Guard Your Time and be More Productive In order to stay productive, I agressively guard my calendar by time boxing meetings. One tool that's been hugely helpful is Calendly.
  3. Eliminating Slack as a Distraction to Work Better Slack has become the virtual knock on your office door. It's an easy, annoying distraction. And I'm going to get rid of it with these rules.
  4. 2019: The Year of New Content I've decided to implement a new theme to help me make good decisions. I want to consume and create new things. Here's to 2019: The Year of New Content.

2018

  1. What Would You do if You got $100K for Your Business? What would you do if someone handed you a bunch of money today? After thinking a bit about this, my answer is hire. And here's who would get the jobs.
  2. Have an Inquisitive Mind Being inquisitive isn't just about picking up fun facts or things to file away for pub quiz (or quizzo, or whatever it's call near you). There are lots of ways being inquisitive has helped me, both personally and professionally.
  3. “No But We Can Order It Online for You.” With the latest news of Toys 'R' Us closing, it further cements the thought that in 2018, retail is dying. My latest trip to the mall confirms it, and here's why.

2017

  1. 7 Months: Watching my Daughter Grow My daughter is 7 months today. If you’ve never had a child, let me tell you: babies get really interesting around the 5–6 month mark. I wish I thought about doing this log right in the beginning, though I feel like the entries would have been similar until now. Let me catch you up real quick.
  2. Transitioning to Full Time Freelance Transition from school or a job to full time freelance is not easy. You need to think about financial stability and more. We cover the goods in this article
  3. Thoughts from the book Essentialism My summer of books is going pretty well so far; I’ve finished 4 and am 1/2 way through 5, which is my first fiction book of the summer. Last week at the beach, I flew through Essentialism, which I was excited to read. The general idea of the book is to make yourself an essentialist by saying Yes to the things you truly want to do, and no the things you feel like you have to for whatever reason. The short of it is I highly recommend the book. Here are some of my takeaways.
  4. Smoking Cigars with my Grandfather This past June was the 8th anniversary of 2 significant events in my life:
  5. An Open Letter to My Daughter Hey Little One (as Grandma Casabona so lovingly calls you),
  6. What Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Broadcast tells us about Media Today Have you heard of Today I Found Out? It’s one of my new favorite YouTube channels, and the folks there put out great content 6–7 times a week. They are great videos about a wide variety of topics from history, to medicine, to science fiction. Today I came across this one, called The War of the Worlds Mass Panic (That Never Happened):

2016

  1. You Don’t Need to Save Lives to Find Meaning in Your Work I have the utmost respect for anyone in the medical field, but you don't need to save lives to find meaning in your work. It's all about your mindset.
  2. You Need to do More than Build it to Make Them Come Starting a successful business is more than just creating a product. You need to figure our why you started it and who you started it for.
  3. When You Freelance, Make Decisions & Stick to Them When you make decisions for your business, stick to them. It's easy to bend the rules if it means making money. But that might not always work out.
  4. Solve Actual Problems There are lots of good ideas out there, but the great ideas solve problems that actually need to be solved. Keep that in mind as you pursue yours.
  5. Yet Another Post About Work Life Balance Working from home and loving what you do is great, but a good work/life balance is important.
  6. The Great Freelancing Advice I Never Took When I was deciding my post-graduate career, I got some great freelancing advice I never too. This is an excerpt from my upcoming eBook, Freelance 101

2015

  1. Have Passion in what You Do Recently I turned 30 and I thought about writing a blog post about the ‘event’. I offer a lot of advice on this site so I figured I’d post an article called, “30 Things I Learned by 30” or something like that. I wasn’t really in love with the idea, but it was the best I had. That is, until someone referred to me as a, “Disney Freak.”
  2. Alex King’s Advice It’s been a few days since the news broke of Alex King’s far-too-soon passing. There has been an incredible outpouring from a community he affected in such a deep way. I decided to wait a few days to write my thoughts for a few reasons, the main one being I’m not really sure what I could say that hasn’t already been said. I spoke with Alex a couple of times, once while I was interviewing with Crowd Favorite. The other was at Pressnomics 2.
  3. College is not the Best Time of your Life We are at the end of April, which means a few things. Soon I’ll be able to smoke cigars on the roof of my building. The sun will be out regularly. People will be graduating from high school and college. When I was in school I heard, “Enjoy college. It’s the best time of your life.” When I was graduating, I heard that we needed to savor every moment of our senior year because, “College is the best time of our lives.” And now ever year since I started teaching college, I’ve heard the same things from students. I’m here to tell you something very important: College is not the best time of your life.

2014

  1. The Right Way to Explain Your Freelancing Career to Your Dad Earlier this week I read an article offering advice on how to explain your freelancing career to your dad. It’s something a lot of young people, including myself, struggle with. However after reading the article, my thoughts were less than flattering. Not only was it bad advice, it was a demonstration of what not to do if you’re serious about a freelance career. If you’re really interested in reading the article, I will link it at the bottom. For now, here’s what I consider the right way to explain your freelancing career to your dad (or mom, or whomever).

2010

  1. The Transition from Student to Full Time Freelancer I started freelancing all the way back in 2002, when my church came to me looking for a website (which at the time I didn’t actually do- talk about divine intervention!). I was a junior in high school, I used Frontpage, and GMail had yet to grace me with it’s presence. I had always wanted to run a business and this seemed like a really good opportunity, so I went with it; I freelanced all through high school and college. It was at the end of my senior year in 2007 that I realized I wanted to keep doing it and went to grad school to learn more about my trade, and better prepare myself for freelancing in the real world. That however, turned out to be harder than I thought. I got my Masters Degree in May of 2009 and wasn’t quite prepared for the roll of full time freelancer. I stuck with it though, and am still freelancing full time. With college and high school graduation season coming to an end, I wanted to offer some advice for the student freelancers out there who want to take the post-grad full time plunge.