Freelance Cake

What does it actually take to create monthly recurring revenue with high-ticket freelance clients? In this episode, Austin talks with Amanda Northcutt about the shift from project-based freelancing to premium retainers...

Hannah Soto didn’t set out to build a production company. She saw problems in her industry. People below a certain title were treated poorly. Productions were inefficient. Systems were messy. So she did what many...

Satta Sarmah Hightower opens up about the evolution from being a skilled freelancer who took good opportunities as they came… to becoming a more intentional business owner who chooses work based on where she wants to...

At a certain point in your freelance career, the question stops being “How do I get more clients?” and starts being “How do I build a business I actually want to keep running?” In this episode, Austin sits down with...

Josh Cantrell didn’t set out with some polished master plan. He got fired. What could have become a long, discouraging detour ended up becoming the first step in building a self-employed career with more ownership, more...

Should freelancing feel easier by now… or is the hard part kind of the point? In this episode, Austin talks with Rachel Bicha (content strategist + founding Freelance Cake Community member) about building a freelance...

Entrepreneurs love promises. Results come from patterns. Austin and Marc unpack why “actions speak louder than words” is more than homespun wisdom—it’s a working rule for choosing partners, clients, and collaborators...

Ever rolled your eyes at “You are the company you keep” ? Same. But research (and real life) says proximity changes performance. In this solo episode, Austin digs into the research behind peer influence — from Greek...

Hitting ~$330K should've felt like a win. Instead, it revealed the real bottleneck: complexity. In this episode, Austin talks about how pruning services, projects, and obligations— less , but better —created the space...

What if you feel stuck not because you lack skill but because you’ve snapped on a pair of golden handcuffs? What if you want to go a new direction but can’t afford to lose the retainers you finally stacked up? This new...

In this episode, Austin L. Church talks to journalist, freelance writer, and coach Wudan Yan about the art of negotiation. The driving force behind The Writers' Co-op, Wudan tells the story of her transition from...

In this continuation of “The 4 Stages of Freelancing,” Austin L. Church explores the last two stages: Lifestyler and Diversifier. After they’ve navigated through the Moonlighter and Hustler phases, freelancers reach a...

You’ve surely heard of the corporate ladder, but what are the career progressions for freelancers? Those of us who sell creativity in some form usually freelance part-time at the start, and those who stick with it...

In this episode, Austin explores the root problem freelancers face and the constant battle to ignore distractions in the midst of an overwhelming number of to-dos: marketing, client projects, website updates… No wonder...

What if you could charge four times what you do now by making small changes to your freelance packaging? The freelancers who win consistently aren't always the most skilled or the hardest working. They’re the ones who...