Newsletter #70 - Massive Pain!


Newsletter #70 - Massive Pain!

I ran into my bicycle pedal while doing a sprint triathlon last weekend.

I rode a mountainbike (while everyone had a racebike) and was a little too aggressive in the transition area

It gave me the opportunity to test the Dutch emergency healthcare on the weekend. They did a good job!

Contrary to the title, it doesn't hurt at all and hence it's business as usual today

And business as usual it was!

It's Friday 29 August, the roads are busy. Schools start again, the coffee place was packed with people who looked like office people. The holiday vibe feeling is officially over. Back to the desk everyone!

Massive Pain

For me, that still means my desk in the public library in Amstelveen. God bless these Dutch public institutions.

My job? To continue marketing myself as a freelancer and agency of one.

At this moment most of my projects are from Upwork. They are reasonably paid, but provide very intermittent work. Which means at the end of the month there is no sustainable revenue yet.

The goal is to diversify that, preferably locally, via LinkedIn socials and my website. And ideally via Youtube, but that's a pipedream for now.

I'm chipping away at these, step by step, but it takes time. More time than I would like.

Is there a way to accelerate?

Some parts like social media probably yes, but they cost money which I don't want to spend now

And parts are no. Some things are a chicken and egg problem, it's by working with customers that i realise what customers want. And hence I can finetune what I offer.

I am doing a robotics project in Amsterdam now. And I might have some new projects in the pipeline through my Twitter Amsterdam connections. Steady but slowly I'm building a local network.

Other than that, I'm doing projects to keep my current and new customers engaged: a CRM content idea, an Airtable solution in Make.com, and a scraping solution using AI

And I'm learning German because I see many projects on Upwork actually are by Germans who prefer to speak German

But all of that is still fun!

Finally the massive pain

So what's the massive pain I'm talking about?

I've had fear of heights forever

So today is the day to do something about that, and do the Scheveningen Bungee!

Erase that fear of heights forever!

Hi! I'm Joris

This is my weekly braindump. You can read it, but I don't write it for you, I write it for me.

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