✋ Hostile takeover

Author

Jim Hamilton
February 14, 2025

In partnership with

Happy Friday! This is the Freelance Gig, where we share news, tools, tips, and tricks to help grow your freelance business. 

Mentioned in today’s email: Elon Musk, OpenAI, Meta, Google Tag Manager, and TikTok. Plus one simple question to ask new clients during onboarding, and what to do if your creativity calls in sick.

Read time: 3 minutes and 23 seconds

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Working With Clients

One Simple Question to Ask New Clients During Onboarding

Want to make sure you start every new client relationship off on the right foot?

Here’s a simple way to avoid any major landmines before the ball gets rolling…

Ask them this one question:

“Have you ever hired someone else to help you with [YOUR AREA OF EXPERTISE]? If so, what did you like or dislike about it?”

If a client has hired freelancers in the past…

Finding out what they did or didn’t like about the experience is basically a cheat code to managing (and exceeding) expectations from the get-go.

All you have to do is mirror anything they did like and AVOID anything they didn’t.

And if they haven’t, it’s a great reminder to overcommunicate when it comes to your process and timeline.

Either way, their question is guaranteed to reveal valuable intel.

Making the Rounds

POLL: Are you planning any digital nomad trips in 2025?

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Working For Yourself

What to Do When Your Creativity Calls in Sick

Ever struggle to get your creative juices flowing in the morning?

Welcome to the club 🙋

And let’s be honest…

Sometimes caffeine just doesn’t cut it.

So if you’re a copywriter, media buyer, graphic designer…

Or someone who does creative work of any kind…

Here’s a morning routine add-on you should experiment with:

Write out three pages of “stream of consciousness” by hand before you start work.

This technique is called “Morning Pages”...

And was originally created by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way.

Many of our favorite writers swear by it, including Andre Chaperon, Tim Ferriss, and many others.

Imagine your creativity is like a pipeline. ..

In order for the great ideas to flow out, you need to clear out the “sludge” first.

That’s what Morning Pages are for.

So, what are you supposed to write about?

Anything. Everything. What’s on your mind. How you’re feeling. What you plan to do today.  How much you hate your alarm clock.

(You can also find prompts like these ones from Masterclass all over the internet)

But the point isn’t to bang out polished prose…

It’s simply to clear out the sludge and make room for your creative ideas to come out and play.

To trap the clutter of your thoughts down on paper before you move on to the important stuff.

Make sense?

If you do decide to test it out, we recommend committing to at least 30 days.

Then let us know how it goes :)

AI Prompts For Freelancers

Prompt of the Week: The Trendjacker

This AI prompt is designed to help you harness trending topics and pop culture phenomena to connect with your audience or pitch your services.

Here is the prompt:

I'm a freelance [TYPE OF FREELANCER]. Analyze a pop culture phenomenon or trending topic in my target client’s world, then present a creative angle on how I can use it to connect with my audience, pitch my services, or develop relevant content.

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Tool of the Week

Get AI-Powered Transcripts in Minutes With Rev

If you create written or video content for clients…

Chances are, you have to sift through hours of their video or audio content first just to pin down their voice and tone.

But not anymore.

With Rev.com, you can transcribe all that content in minutes using AI, then feed those transcripts into your favorite chatbots like Claude or ChatGPT.

And once you’ve got written text capturing your client’s tone, word choice, and messaging…

You can train an AI model to sound just like them.

That means:

  • More authentic content that perfectly matches your client’s voice

  • Faster turnaround on drafts (since AI already knows what your client “sounds” like)

  • Less guesswork (and fewer rewrites) for you

So if you want to use raw audio or video to crank out on-brand content, copy and video scripts, consider giving Rev a shot.

It’s a simple way to streamline your workflow… and create content that hits all the right notes.

Check it out below:

Bonus Points

💼 Careers: How flunking a personality test can cost you your dream job (link)

🗣️ Content: How to create passive value (link)

🎧 Work Beats: MIDNIGHT [ Chillwave - Synthwave - Retrowave Mix ] - Odysseus (link)