If you only read one book about creativity, I tell my clients, make it The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

It contains the distilled wisdom of a bestselling novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, who has both the scars and trophies of a life spent wrestling with creative challenges.

This book has been an inspiration to me for years, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to Steven and record an interview with him for Lateral Action. In the course of an hour, we covered a range of topics relating to creativity, work, entrepreneurship and life in general, including:

• Why is it so hard to pursue our dreams, and get started on the creative challenges that mean so much to us?
• How can we overcome our inner Resistance to doing the things that matter?
• What rewards can we expect from persevering in the face of difficulties?
• What are the creative opportunities — and pitfalls — of social media and digital publishing?

As you’d expect from an accomplished novelist, Steve is a great raconteur; I was spellbound in his company and I think you will be too.

You can listen to the interview with Steven Pressfield over at Lateral Action, as well as download the audio file and a transcript of the entire conversation.

Make sure you check out Steve’s website, StevenPressfield.com, which should be very appealing to Wishful Thinking readers.

Finally, ‘conversations’ plural wasn’t a typo in the title — Steve has very graciously returned the favour by interviewing me about creativity, productivity and entrepreneurship. It’s a slightly surreal experience being interviewed by one of your heroes, but Steve asked me some very stimulating questions that made me think about things from a fresh angle, and I hope you’ll find the interview of interest.

Many thanks to Steve for his generosity and inspiration.

Image by Hugh MacLeod

UPDATE: We’ve now sold out. Thank you and welcome to all our charter members!

We’ll be running a second progamme early in 2010 – if you’d like to hear about it when we open up again, you can sign up on this page to join the e-mail notification list.

We’ve now started taking enrolments for the Lateral Action Creative Entrepreneur Course.

The course is designed for:

• Artists and creative freelancers
• People looking to set up a home-based business
• Bloggers looking to build a business around their blog

(If that doesn’t include you, you may want to skip this post — there are plenty more articles about creativity and related topics coming up on Wishful Thinking, plus the free e-book I’m working on …)

If you’d like to be one of our charter members, with lifetime access to the course (including all future updates) at a 50% discount, you can head over to Lateral Action and sign up.

The course gives you a detailed roadmap for succeeding as a creative entrepreneur – a small, creative business consisting of one person or a very small team. It will show you how to research and develop products that people actually want to buy, market yourself on the internet, and build a business without spending a fortune on advertising or employees.

The sign-up page on Lateral Action outlines the course content and format, and we’ve also published a free report about it, so I won’t go into that here. I’ll just say a few words about why I’m launching an e-learning course, and introduce my fellow teachers.

Why I’m Providing an E-Learning Course

The great thing about blogging is that it has connected me with a wonderful network of people around the world. It’s created the opportunity for me to work with inspiring creative people who I’d never have met otherwise. At the same time, I’ve discovered there are certain limits to the coaching, workshop training and blogging that are my core activities.

In some ways there’s no substitute for a live, face-to-face learning experience, either one-to-one in coaching sessions, or in groups for workshops. The logistics can be a bit challenging though — it was great that my Creative Momentum workshops sold out over the summer, and I’ll definitely be doing some more of them before long. It was also a bit frustrating to hear from many of you who said you’d love to come, but couldn’t fly all the way to London for a two-hour workshop. And even when I run a full day workshop, I often wish it could be longer, as it feels as though there’s so much more to teach.

Coaching is a bit different. It’s about facilitating someone’s learning in a way that is highly focused and tailored to the individual. So it’s not the best use of a coaching session for me to spend a lot of time explaining things and conveying information. But with many issues, such as web marketing and entrepreneurship, there is often a lot that the client needs to know before we can get started.

In the past three or four years, I’ve found I can use the Wishful Thinking website to add a lot of value to my coaching and training. I often give clients e-books and blog articles to read before for coaching sessions, so that they have the essential information when they arrive, and we have a much more productive session as a result. And for my recent workshops on Web Marketing for Creative People and Creative Presentation Skills, I created an online version of the workshops, which attendees access in the Members area of Wishful Thinking. The feedback I’ve received about this has been terrific — people have told me it really helps them to learn at their own pace, and they can keep referring to the materials as they put their plans into action.

I’m now taking this a stage further by launching a full-blown e-learning course, featuring audio lessons (handy for listening on an iPod, iPhone or other MP3 player), transcripts of all the lessons, and practical worksheets. Later on there will be a members forum and Q&A calls, all included in the charter membership package. It means we can cover the topics in much greater depth than a normal training workshop — and you’re free to learn at your own pace, repeating lessons and referring to the training materials whenever you need them.

It also means you get the benefit of an extended training at a significantly lower price than you would pay for live training or coaching. We’re talking around 18 hours of audio lessons (plus the transcripts, worksheets etc) for less than the price of a couple of coaching sessions.

And you may have noticed that a couple of paragraphs back I said “we can cover the topics…”. That’s because I’m not teaching the course on my own. I’m delighted to be working with Brian Clark and Tony Clark — two highly successful creative entrepreneurs — so you’ll be getting the benefit of not one but three teachers on this programme.

It’s a good deal for me too, of course. As well as the satisfaction of creating a programme that I’m proud of, it means I’m practising what I preach about entrepreneurship, creating my own product and adding an extra revenue stream to my business.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

OK, But Why Entrepreneurship?

If you’re like me a few years back, you probably don’t readily associate entrepreneurship with creativity. But I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that they are not only highly compatible, but creative entrepreneurship is the path that offers creative people the greatest amount of financial independence and personal freedom to pursue their dreams.

Over the past 13 or so years of coaching artists and creatives, I’ve noticed that earning a living from your creative passion is one of the most cherished dreams – and often one of the most difficult to realise. That’s the core challenge we’re going to address with the Lateral Action programme.

So what is a creative entrepreneur? It’s someone who takes a slightly unconventional approach to entrepreneurship — we’re not trying to emulate empire builders like Richard Branson and Bill Gates. Good luck to them, if that’s what they want to do, but it’s not my cup of tea.

The Lateral Action definition of a creative entrepreneur is someone who builds a thriving small business around their creative talent — but without hiring any employees or investing large sums of capital. He or she could be an artist with a studio, a freelancer with a laptop, or a micro-entrepreneur operating from a home office.

For a fuller description, read my article The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur. And for an inspiring vision of what it’s like to be a creative entrepreneur, watch the Lateral Action videos Everybody Loves Marla and Marla Mentors Jack.

And if you’d like to hear about my own journey towards creative entrepreneurship, read my recent article The Story of a Reluctant Entrepreneur.

Who Will Teach the Course — and How Do We Know What We’re Talking about?

This next bit is slightly awkward, because Brian and Tony are much better known than I am, so it feels a bit odd introducing them. But I know that some of you are new to the world of Internet marketing and entrepreneurship, so I’ll do my best to do them justice with a brief introduction.

Brian Clark

Brian is best known as the founder of Copyblogger, a hugely successful blog about copywriting and web marketing. I’ve been telling my clients for years that Copyblogger is absolutely indispensable reading for anyone who wants to sell things on the Internet. Brian gives away an enormous amount of free advice on Copyblogger, but unlike most bloggers, he has used his blog as a platform to build a multimillion-dollar online business, releasing e-learning programmes such as Teaching Sells, Partnering Profits and Freelance X-Factor, and the popular website design theme Thesis (which I use on Wishful Thinking).

Brian isn’t just a very successful internet marketer. He’s also a highly talented writer who really understands creativity and creative people. He turned to entrepreneurship when he became disillusioned with his prospects as an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter – and the screenwriting bug hasn’t quite let go, as you can see in the Lateral Action animated videos, all scripted by Brian.

This is what artist and creative entrepreneur John T. Unger has to say about Brian’s gifts as a teacher:

My first career was poetry, and for fifteen years all I did was read, write, perform live and study with luminaries like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. I learned more from Brian in the first year of Copyblogger.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Brian will be taking the lead on the marketing modules on the Lateral Action course, and showing you how to approach web marketing, not as a ‘necessary evil’, but as a highly creative extension of your core work.

Tony Clark

I think of Tony as a kind of Swiss Army Knife for creative entrepreneurs. For one thing, he’s got an incredible range of talents – illustrator, animator, programmer, blogger, teacher, entrepreneur. And for another, he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of creativity, business, software and productivity systems. I first ‘met’ Tony online a few years ago, when he was dispensing advice for home-based entrepreneurs on his blog Success from the Nest. More recently he’s partnered with Brian on Teaching Sells.

Tony likes to keep himself in the background, but his fingerprints are all over Lateral Action. He does all our design and website development. He drew the cartoon characters Lou, Jack and Marla – and brought them to life in the aforementioned animated videos. And he also serves as a one-man IT suppport department for Brian and me, when (as frequently happens) we reach the limits of our technical capacity.

Whenever I encounter a technical problem at Lateral Action — I ask Tony.

When I’m stuck for an example to use in an article — I ask Tony.

When I want a recommendation for software to perform a particular task — I ask Tony.

You get the picture.

Tony will be teaching the module on business systems, a.k.a. how to automate or delegate the ‘boring bits’ of running a business, and stay focused on the interesting creative work which is the reason most of us got into a creative profession in the first place.

Tony would like to point out that he’s not Brian’s brother.

Mark McGuinness

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll have a reasonable idea of who I am! As you know, I provide coaching and training for creative people and innovative companies.

But you may not be so familiar with another side of my work, as I don’t write about it much online. I’m a psychotherapist, registered with the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and in practice since 1996. In that time I’ve worked with all kinds of people facing challenging problems and situations, including anxiety, depression, fears and phobias, addictions, trauma, work-related stress, relationship break-ups, bereavement, homelessness and stress-related illness.

In my coaching work, I’ve also helped a lot of freelancers and small business owners deal with the stresses and strains of self-employment — which can be a very lonely place at times. And having been self-employed myself for almost the whole of my career, I know exactly what a rollercoaster ride it can be!

So it’s fair to say I’ve seen a lot of stressful situations up close, at first and second hand. I’ve also seen what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to handling pressure and staying motivated and effective. On the Lateral Action course, I’m taking the lead on a module called Succeed (Don’t Stress) which is a distillation of everything I’ve learned about emotional intelligence and stress management for self-employed people. We’ve included it in the course because we want to give people a holistic toolkit for dealing with all aspects of running a small business — the personal as well as professional.

Most of the other modules of the course will consist of interviews/discussions between Brian and me. I’ll be asking Brian lots of questions to draw out the most relevant advice from his vast store of knowledge, and complementing this with my own perspective on creative entrepreneurship. And I’ll be asking Brian many of the most common and urgent questions I hear from coachees and workshop delegates, about how to apply the principles of creative entrepreneurship to their own career and business.

I Know This Stuff Works

Those of you who have attended my workshop Web Marketing for Creative People know that my websites are my main source of new business. When people ask me how I manage to get my sites so high up the search engine rankings, and actually convert visitors into clients, I tell them “by following Brian and Tony’s advice”. As well as reading Copyblogger for the last four years, I’ve taken several of their e-learning courses and devoured every lesson (many of them two or three times). And since we launched Lateral Action together, I’ve had the benefit of a hands-on education in how to create and promote a successful web venture.

In a nutshell: I’ve tested Brian and Tony’s advice first-hand, and I know it works.

(I drew the line at changing my surname to Clark though! )

If you’d like the benefit of our combined experience, and to apply it to your own creative business, you’d be well advised to sign up sooner rather than later. UPDATE: Enrolment for the first programme is now closed. We’ll be running a second progamme early in 2010 – if you’d like to hear about it when we open up again, you can sign up on this page to join the e-mail notification list.

For this programme we’re offering a charter membership deal of 50% discount on the 2010 price, to include all future updates and features. On the sign-up page Brian says the price will never be this low again, and I know he’s true to his word about this. Whenever Brian and Tony have launched a new course, I’ve signed up for the charter member deal — and a few months later, I’ve seen people happily paying several times the fee I paid. It’s great to see people are satisfied with a course at the full price, but it’s even nicer to know I got the whole thing a lot cheaper!

We also offer a 30-day guarantee on the programme, so if for any reason you decide not to continue, we’ll happily refund your fee, no questions asked (but feedback welcome).

OK, that’s enough about Lateral Action from me. I’m excited about the programme as it’s on a bigger scale than any of the trainings I’ve delivered before, in terms of both the content and the number of people we’ll be able to help. If you’re interested in joining us on the journey, head over to the sign-up page, where Brian outlines the roadmap.

Next up on Wishful Thinking, we’re back to our usual programme of articles about the business of creativity and the creativity of business. (Including that free e-book I mentioned earlier …)

If you’re remotely interested in making a living from your creativity, I suggest you download a copy of the free report The Lateral Action Guide to Becoming a Creative Entrepreneur.

Written by Brian Clark, one of my partners at Lateral Action, it tells the story of Brian’s unconventional route to success, via Law, screenwriting, real estate (as they call it in the States) and blogging, to his current position as the founder of a multimillion-dollar online business enterprise.

What makes his story even more remarkable is the fact that he does it all with no venture capital funding, no employees, no office and very little overhead.

If you’re wondering how that’s possible, have a read through the report, where Brian explains his unconventional approach to entrepreneurship.

Crucially, he doesn’t just tell you what worked for him — he lays out the 5 Critical Components of Creative Entrepreneurship, that you can use to build your own creative enterprise:

• Create (Don’t Compete)
• Lead (Don’t Manage)
• Communicate (Don’t be Shy)
• Automate (Don’t Duplicate)
• Accelerate (Don’t Stand Still)

Regular readers of Lateral Action will recognise these principles from the latest of our animated cartoon videos, Marla Mentors Jack:

The report is free to download and share. You don’t need to provide an e-mail address. And you’re welcome to pass it on to anyone you know who would like to know more about making a living as a creative person.

PS — If I were you I’d read the report sooner rather than later…

If you’re feeling daunted by the challenges of the recession – or if you could simply do with some inspirational and practical advice, then I suggest you download Defiant: Practical Tips to Thrive in Tough Times.

It’s a new e-book from Rajesh Setty, successful entrepreneur, respected author, columnist for Lateral Action – and a thoroughly nice guy who I’m pleased to call my friend.

A few months ago Raj asked me to contribute a practical tip or two for people under pressure due to the recession. I was happy to do so, and am delighted to find myself a co-contributor alongside stellar talents such as Seth Godin, Liz Strauss and Phil Gerbyshak.

As well as the ‘guest tips’ Raj has packed the e-book full of advice based on his experience of surviving and thriving through several recessions.

The e-book is completely FREE – you don’t even need to give your e-mail address. So once you’ve grabbed your copy and please help to help others by forwarding it to your friends and contacts.

Thanks Raj!

This is a review of the new e-book The Unlimited Freelancer by Mason Hipp and James Chartrand.

If you’re a freelancer feeling overwhelmed by your workload (or even worse, your lack of workload), this e-book offers solid advice to help you reduce your working hours and stress levels, and increase your income and job satisfaction.

I first came across James Chartrand’s writing via his excellent articles on Copyblogger, and was pleased to discover more stylish and practical advice on his Men with Pens site. He’s known as one of the foremost voices on the Internet on the subject of sales copywriting, and has built a successful business on the back of his expertise. I’ve also been getting to know him via Twitter and e-mail and have found him a thoroughly decent chap. So when he asked if I’d be interested in reviewing his new e-book and acting as an affiliate partner, I said I’d love to see it.

Mason Hipp was a new name to me, but a little investigation revealed he’s one of the editors of the popular blog Freelancer Folder, which looks a great resource.

Having now read the book, I’d say it’s an excellent introduction to essential business skills for the 21st-century freelancer. If you’re in the same position as many other freelancers — being ‘really good at what you do’ but struggling to make a living without working seven days a week — it’s well worth the investment of time (an afternoon’s reading) and money ($29).

James and Mason haven’t written the e-book explicitly for creative professionals, but I believe the advice they offer is particularly relevant to freelancers working in creative or artistic fields. Here’s why.

The Problem with Freelancing

You probably didn’t start freelancing because you wanted to run a business. You did it because you love your creative work and want to make a living doing what you love. You hate being ordered about by a boss and want the freedom and control of running your own show.

But for many freelancers, the reality falls short of the dream. As a one-person operation, not only do you have to do all of the ‘real work’ of your business (e.g. designing, coding, copywriting) but you also have to do all the support work as well — marketing, sales, client management, accounts, IT etc. You can find yourself working late into the night seven days a week, and still falling behind. Your social life and holidays become a distant memory. You can’t turn away work for fear of missing out next time, but it’s hard to find the time and space to do things to your usual standards. And you can’t get sick or have an emergency, because there’s no one to replace you.

This scenario is so common it has been described countless times — most memorably by Michael Gerber in his classic book The E-Myth. According to Gerber, most small business owners get into trouble because they fail to make the transition from the role of a Technician (an employee whose job is to get things done) into a fully fledged Entrepreneur (a businessperson who builds systems for generating profit). This means freelancers can end up working too hard for too little money, under the watchful eye of the boss from hell — themselves.

And you don’t need me to tell you the current economic climate isn’t making things any easier.

How Creative Freelancers Can Be Their Own Worst Enemy

A few months ago I wrote an article on Lateral Action explaining why the typical Artist (any kind of creative professional) is several stages worse than the average Technician. While all Technicians enjoy their work and take pride in doing a good job, creatives are notorious for taking the joy of work to extremes, burning themselves out with obsessive perfectionism.

Plus many creatives are deeply suspicious of the world of business — we associate it with corporate characters like Lou, and want to run a mile. In fact, many creatives set up as freelancers in order to escape the corporate world — so the last thing we want to do is sit down with spreadsheets and business plans.

Unfortunately, these two tendencies can combine to turn the freelancer’s dream into a nightmare — working incredibly hard for very little financial return or creative fulfilment, with no idea how to dig yourself out of the hole. And if you’re working completely on your own, it’s hard to know where to go for support.

Ironically, the solution to the problem lies in the one place most creatives are reluctant to look — business skills.

The Solution — Build a Business, Not a Job

In The E-Myth, Michael Gerber did an excellent job of describing the problem. He also described the essence of the solution: instead of working in your business as a Technician/Artist, you need to work on it, as an Entrepreneur, building systems and assets to generate income (almost) automatically. Unfortunately, the business model he proposed — creating a franchise like McDonald’s — probably won’t appeal to the typical creative freelancer.

This is where Mason and James step in, picking up where Gerber left off and updating his advice with an approach to business that is much more relevant to 21st-century creatives. Their basic advice is the same as Gerber – build a business for yourself, not just another job:

all you need is to change your mindset. Freelancing isn’t your job; it’s a business. Your business should be working for you to help you reach your goals. It should have systems and processes that make life easier. It should make money even when you aren’t around.

But how do you do this? Mason and James answer this question with detailed advice based on three fundamental principles: set up systems (instead of doing everything yourself); build a team (instead of going it alone); and create valuable assets (that generate income and free you from being paid by the hour).

1. Set up Systems

In this section the authors invite you to sit down and have a good look at how you’re using your time — and how you could devise systems use it it more efficiently. I took a similar approach with my e-book on Time Management for Creative People — I had to force myself to sit down and take a good look at my working habits, but found the investment in time paid for itself many times over, saving me hundreds of hours per year.

James and Mason do the same for areas of your business such as accounting, project management, managing sales leads and customer relationships — even marketing. As well as devising workflow systems, they recommend using software to automate as much repetitive or tedious work as possible.

For each of the areas they cover, they provide a selection of recommended software and websites that can help you, many for little or no cost. To me, this is one of the most valuable parts of the e-book — I’ve looked into automated solutions for most of these areas, but I still came away with plenty of new tools and services to explore.

2. Build a Team

Here Mason and James tackle one of the biggest problems for freelancers — the ‘lone wolf’ mentality that causes us to strike out on our own, and which can leave us feeling stranded and with no one to turn to when things go wrong. They point out that being freelance does not mean you have to do everything on your own, and suggest a range of practical options for getting all the benefits of working as part of a team (greater capacity, complementary skills, support and encouragement) without having to employ someone or compromise your independence.

Enter the distributed team:

Imagine a team made up of outsourced help, virtual assistants, and other freelancers — distributed around the globe. With the right combination of these groups, you can create a team that works completely on demand, cost nothing when you aren’t using it, and is scalable to accept as much or as little work as you need.

This is an area I can certainly relate to. Having spent several years working completely solo, last year I started work on Lateral Action in partnership with Brian Clark and Tony Clark. With Brian in Dallas, Tony in North Carolina and me in London, we certainly count as a distributed team! And all of us have other projects on the go, which means we retain a certain independence. But working with Brian and Tony has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Not only is it fun and stimulating to be working with like-minded creative partners, but pooling our talents means that we can achieve much more together than we could as individuals. The Lateral Action website is only five months old, but already I’m reaching more readers than I do at Wishful Thinking, and we can do things — like animated cartoon adventures — that I’d never even have dreamt of while working on my own.

Mason and James look at different ways of assembling your distributed team, including outsourcing and partnerships. The also offer advice on collaboration, managing others and when and how to terminate business relationships that aren’t working out.

3. Create Income-Generating Assets

This section of the book focuses on building business assets that can generate income and free you from the tyranny of ‘time = money’. If you’re a freelancer getting paid by the hour, the day or the project, there will always be a ceiling on your income because there are only so many hours in the day and days in the year when you can work. The solution? Build business assets that are separate from you, and which can generate income independently of you — the entrepreneur’s dream of ‘earning money while you sleep’.

Types of assets covered include blogs, websites and information products, design, photography and software.

Again, I can relate to this from my own experience. Three years ago I had nothing but a freshly-awarded Masters degree, 10 years’ experience as a coach, and plenty of enthusiasm for relaunching my business with a sharper focus on the creative sector. In addition to looking for clients, I devoted a lot of time and effort to building my Wishful Thinking website into a valuable resource and new business magnet. It hasn’t been easy — particularly at first, I had to fight the temptation to spend all my time chasing new clients — but now this website, and spin-off projects such as my e-books and Lateral Action, are valuable assets in their own right and my main source of new business. Even as I write these words, hundreds of people out there are reading my other writings, recommending them to others — and potentially bringing me new business.

As with the other two main sections, the e-book contains advice on selecting the right kind of assets for your business, and practical tips and resources for creating your assets.

Is The Unlimited Freelancer for You?

You’ll have noticed by now that James and Mason focus on principles that help you multiply your talents and effectiveness: systems to make you more efficient; teamwork to achieve more than you can alone; and assets that can multiply your income exponentially. Combining these principles can help you achieve the freelancer’s dream: more freedom, more cash and more time is spent doing the things you love — in your personal life as well as at work.

The Unlimited Freelancer contains a wealth of information to help you achieve your dream, but it’s not a magic wand or an encyclopaedia. It will give you principles and solid advice to get started, and plenty of resources to use in your ‘next steps’. But its value will depend on your willingness to roll up your sleeves and take action.

The book is 200 fairly short pages in length — 2 pages fitted comfortably on a sheet of A4 when I printed it. Personally I think it’s about the right length — it offers plenty of information to help you understand the principles and start taking action without feeling overwhelmed.

Some topics — such as personal productivity and sales — are touched on rather than explored in depth. E.g. the section on ‘Sale Closing Method’ is very brief, and the claim that ‘once you find the right fit, it should be an instant sale’ may be true in some contexts, but from my experience of selling complex services to organisations, it sounds a little optimistic.

Given James’s well-known expertise in sales and marketing, I was slightly surprised that the book did not cover these topics in more depth. So if generating instant sales leads and closing the deal is your primary concern, you’ll probably need to supplement this book with specialist advice elsewhere. (Copyblogger and Men with Pens are excellent places to start.) Even if you do this, I would still recommend The Unlimited Freelancer, since without the systems it describes, it will be difficult for you to handle a large volume of work if your marketing succeeds.

The book is targeted squarely at freelancers with strong technical skills but little understanding of business principles. So if you are already confident in using systems and software for project management, accounting, customer relationship marketing; using outsourcing and partnering to supplement your own efforts; and leveraging assets such as websites and information products, then it may be a bit basic for you.

But if you’re a novice or even a relatively experienced freelancer struggling with ‘the business side of things’ The Unlimited Freelancer is an excellent guide. Reading it is like sitting down in a coffee shop with an experienced mentor, who was in your shoes a few years ago and is prepared to give you the benefit of his experience. It shows you the fundamental areas you need to focus on to build a successful business. I wish someone had sat me down 13 years ago and told me this stuff — it would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.

As well as the practical advice it offers, a book like this can help to take the sting out of the freelancing predicament. When you’re on your own and things are going badly, it’s easy to give yourself a hard time. But reading this book, it’s blatantly obvious that many of the problems you encounter are simply a normal part of the learning cycle for freelancers. The chances are there’s nothing wrong with you, your work or your work ethic — but like many freelancers you simply don’t have the business skills and knowledge you need. Mason and James will fill you in on the fundamentals without patronising you. And although they’re not writing explicitly for creatives, the writing is resolutely ‘non-corporate’ in tone.

At $29 with a 100% money back guarantee, it’s not exactly a large financial risk. If The Unlimited Freelancer sounds like it could solve a few problems for you, you can get your copy from Freelance Folder.

N.b. as a member of The Unlimited Freelancer affiliate program, I earn a commission on copies sold via my website. Other than that, I have no affiliation with either Mason or James’s businesses.

And if you want help putting things into practice…

Don’t forget I offer a specialist coaching service for creative freelancers. James and Mason give you plenty of information and tools — I can help you make decisions and put things into practice in a way that fits your unique situation.