Freelance Cake

Dustin Riechmann went from traffic engineer to marketing consultant to meat stick entrepreneur to founder of 7-Figure Leap. Yes, meat sticks. After COVID wiped out many of his local consulting clients and stopped the in-person trade show strategy that had been growing his e-commerce brand, Dustin got on a podcast. That one move helped him grow the meat stick company to seven figures, get into Walm...

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, advisory work, and long-term client engagements. Amanda explains why doing great work is not enough, why generalists struggle to command premium fees, and why high-ticket MRR start...

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 capable, quietly ambitious freelancers do: She fixed what was broken. That decision eventually became Aridia, a production company that worked with major clients like Apple, Coca-Cola, an...

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 go. At first, she did what many freelancers do: she followed the money. After layoffs and instability, survival mode made that feel sensible. But over time, she realized that good inc...

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 Matthew Fenton, a positioning and strategy consultant with nearly three decades of freelance experience. Matthew has worked with brands you’ve heard of, launched White Mystery Airheads...

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 leverage, and more intention. In this conversation, Josh talks through the evolution of that journey. Early on, he did what many freelancers do. He said yes to whatever paid. Along...

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 business that’s sustainable because it’s intentional. Rachel shares how her offline community gives her the psychological safety to do things that scare most freelancers—like DMing in...

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 without becoming cynical. Expect candid stories (including an investor publicly dressing down his assistant), red flags to watch for, and a dead-simple rubric: Lead with trust. Watch...

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 philosophers to modern management studies — and shows how freelancers can use positive spillover to their advantage. Learn how intentional community gives solo freelancers leverage: mo...

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 for saner, more sustainable growth. You’ll get the tomato-plant metaphor (shoutout to Grandmother Martha), insights from Katelyn Bourgoin (“What should you stop doing?”), and even an...

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 Freelance Cake episode with Josh Monen is the first one to drop in over 18 months, and I can’t wait for you to check it out. In it, Josh Monen opens up about his transition from se...

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 journalism to freelance narrative writing and sheds light on the two different cultures with their sets of norms. Wudan goes on to share how her upbringing and academic background provide...

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 level of maturity where challenges become more complex. Meanwhile, opportunities for growth and personal fulfillment expand. Austin highlights the motivations, challenges, mistakes,...

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 eventually think, “Hey, why shouldn’t I be one of those people who make money while they sleep?” In this episode of Freelance Cake, Austin L. Church discusses the moonlighter and hustler...

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 many freelancers are burned out! The truth is, we don’t really want to get more done. No, we want to focus on the right things at the right time, and push the unimportant stuff to t...

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 focus on finding the right advantages, or “levers.” Packaging is one of those levers.  If you've been in the freelance game for a while, you already have insight into your clients’ p...

Hourly is by far the most popular freelance pricing model, and freelancers often get asked, "What do you charge?” Or, “What’s your hourly rate?” But when you think about it, time is never what clients want to buy. Read that again. Time isn’t really what clients want to buy. A patient getting heart surgery doesn’t want the surgeon’s time. She wants the surgeon to save her life. Surgeons, pilots, ar...

One month, you're swamped with freelance work. The next, your project pipeline is dry.  You try all the tactics you can think of. You cast your marketing net far and wide. You come up empty-handed.  Meanwhile, those bills keep coming. It's no surprise that a lot of freelancers develop money anxieties !  Irregular income and anxiety makes it difficult for freelancers to do their best work and harne...

Can you be successful at art and business? Can you sell your work without compromising your artistic integrity? We’re all familiar with the identity of the starving artist. The assumption that artists and freelance creatives must forego financial stability to preserve their creative integrity usually goes unchallenged. It’s taken as a fact of life, like gravity. Art and commerce don’t mix. They’re...

To niche or not to niche, that is the question. Many freelancers have the "jack of all trades" mentality. To survive in the freelance business, we take on a variety of projects in a variety of industries. That's what Austin did for 6 years. As a generalist, he made freelancing harder on himself.  After adopting more of an abundance mindset, Austin specialized in content marketing for tech founders...

In this episode, Austin shares the 20 Stories Exercise that helped him build a predictable flow of freelance income. He also goes over the 6 questions you need to uncover which of your current marketing strategies bring you your best, easiest money. Then, once you know where your best income is coming from, you can put his marketing ideas into action! What is the biggest challenge most freelancers...

"What do you charge?" A potential client named Andrew asked Austin that question when he first started freelancing.  Austin had just been laid off from his job at a marketing agency, and he chose $40 per hour as his rate because his agency had billed out his time at $85 an hour. If he charged half, then maybe clients would feel like they were getting a good deal. He wasn’t confident in that rate t...

Freelancing is hard work. There are so many moving parts in your freelance business: project management, marketing strategies, setting your freelance rates, you name it.  With all those priorities flying around, all that noise and motion, it’s easy to get off track. It’s easy to keep saying yes to crazy clients and boring projects. It’s easy to forget why you got into this in the first place. One...

Are you getting paid to uncover pains and problems your clients don't know they have? If not, you're probably in the same situation as Austin was: juggling multiple ventures, meeting with clients, and helping them get clarity around their problems (but not getting paid for that). Discovering that his family was back in debt made Austin realize that certain aspects of his business just weren’t work...

Freelancing isn’t easy, but many of us make it harder than it has to be. Working harder often doesn’t… work. Spending more time on the wrong things won’t produce better results.  The way to break out of the freelance hustle is to ask what six-figure freelancers do differently. For starters, they remember that the Pareto Principle, better known as the 80/20 rule, is at play in every business. 20% o...