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♾️ Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs

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Happy Tuesday! Midterm elections take place in the U.S. today, and the results will ripple out across the freelance economy, regardless of which party controls the House and Senate when all is said and done. As always, you can count on us to keep you up to speed.

Mentioned in today’s edition: Meta, Twitter, and Substack. Plus what makes a bullseye portfolio piece, Metabolic Sitting Secrets™, and spell check on steroids.

Read time: 3 minutes and 21 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • Meta is the latest Big Tech firm to plan major layoffs. Not to be left out of the cool kids club, Meta is reportedly planning to let go thousands of employees as soon as this week, and join the wave of Big Tech firms slashing headcount due to an industry-wide post-pandemic downturn.
  • New Gallup poll finds 62% are indifferent to their work lives. Hate your job? You’re not alone: a recent edition of Axios’s Finish Line reveals 18% of people are miserable at work, while a whopping 62% are indifferent about their life at work. Just 20% of people surveyed said they were thriving at work. This is might be a good time to remind you of Benefit #4756 of running a freelance biz: if your clients make you miserable, you can always fire them 🙂
  • The battle for Twitter’s successor begins. One week into Elon’s tenure as Twitter CEO and the vultures are already circling: Substack is looking to capitalize on the opportunity by targeting Twitter’s user base with Substack Chat. The new feature lets Substack writers communicate directly with subscribers inside the mobile app, similar to Slack or Telegram.

Working With Clients

What Makes a Bullseye Portfolio Piece

Want to increase your chances of getting the gig?

Make sure you’ve got relevant sample pieces in your freelance portfolio.

There are two ways to think about relevance:

1) Task-specific

2) Market-specific 

Task-specific relevance means that if you’re applying for a job to write emails, you should highlight email work you’ve done in the past (instead of sales pages or video scripts).

Market-specific relevance means that if you’re applying for a job to run ads for a health company, you should highlight previous work you’ve done in the health space (instead of another niche like finance or relationships).

The bottom line is:

The last thing you want is to make clients try to imagine what your work will look like for a specific medium or market.

So give them relevant samples.

And don’t be afraid to curate individual portfolios for individual clients.

Taking just a few minutes to select the most relevant sample pieces will be time well spent.

Working For Yourself

Metabolic Sitting Secrets™

Sitting may not be the new smoking…

But the data suggests it sure ain’t good for us.

That’s why a new study covered in this episode of the Huberman Lab podcast is making waves:

Researchers discovered a stupid simple exercise you can do while sitting that can lower your blood sugar and increase your metabolism — significantly.

No equipment and (almost) no movement necessary.

We sh*t you not.

Listen to the episode and see for yourself.

In it, Dr. Huberman also covers a basic fitness “template” anyone can use to build strength, endurance, power, and flexibility.

So if you’re looking to limit the downsides of working at a desk…

Click below to check it out:

[LISTEN]: Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health

Tools We Love

Spell Check On Steroids

Even if you’re not a pro copywriter, being able to write well is a superpower.

It helps” grease the skids” in all areas of life.

The only problem is…

Writing for business and writing for the classroom are two different things.

Five dollar words might get you an A, but it’s the two dollar words that get your message across.

That’s where Hemingway comes in.

Copy and paste your text into the free app and you’ll get instant feedback on readability:

  • Adverbs
  • Passive voice
  • Run-on sentences
  • And those dreaded $5 words

Aim to write at a Grade 5 reading level or lower.

Give Hemingway a try for free today and see how you score.

P.S: Copy and paste the above section into the app to see how we did 😉

Gig Alerts

Looking for clients? These freelance jobs were posted on Upwork in the last 24 hours:

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Quote of the Day


“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

— Confucius

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