Built over 6 weeks together in small groups, freelancers nominate a project or aspect of their business they need a deadline to move on.
Each week, they come together to built side by side before introducing their awesome idea in front of a virtual audience.
Another bunch of brave deadliners are going to debut their projects. And you can be there to cheer them on.
WHAT YOU WILL SEE AT THE PARTY
- Julie’s new approach to writing blogs & social content to avoid overwhelm
- Tracey presenting her Services for Community Groups page and showcasing her lead generation planning tool
- Rebekah demonstrating how she split a 10,000 word pile of customer management information into a workable series of blogs and course
- Grace will reveal how the decision to move to a geothermal hotspot, simplifying her life has kick started a creative brain reset (and a little of what that entails)
Watch the action replay of the 2022 Deadline Party now
Deadine Party 2022
Rebekah: [00:00:00] Good morning, Australia and New Zealand. Of course, we are here with the 2022 deadline party. I had to think about that. I’m still stuck in the nineties. You can probably tell from my dress sense. We are here to celebrate the brave achievements of three individuals. Plus myself, as we have gone against the clock for six weeks, tiny little bit more to develop projects that are meaningful to us now in typical style.
Rebekah: We’re having a few little issues with getting people up on board. Grace is dialling in from New Zealand. Seems like the Kiwis have gotten into the internet connection again and eaten the wires. There is a contingency in place if we can’t get Grace on stage. I will be playing the role of Grace. I will not put on a New Zealand accent because that can be potentially dangerous.
Rebekah: However, We have got some great projects here for [00:01:00] you today. I’d like to start by saying we acknowledge the traditional owners of the country. All the places that we are gathering today, I am from the Mighty Windang area, which means that the Mighty Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal nation are the traditional custodians of land.
Rebekah: They gathered here for thousands of years to fish and resolve their issues as a community. A community connected with each other. Trace, what community are you coming to us from today? Do you remember?
Tracey: Good question, because I don’t know now. She’s just moved.
If anyone can answer that question for me, otherwise I’m going to really quickly google and find out.
Rebekah: And we’ve got Julie coming to us from Tasmania, which is?
Julie: Lutruwita, and I am in the land of the Moominina and Palawa peoples.
Rebekah: Absolutely gorgeous we have Grace coming in from New Zealand where the Māori are from.
Rebekah: culture is strong. Hopefully we can get Grace up on stage. All right, so today you’re going to hear [00:02:00] from Julie, Tracy Grace, or Grace Light, and myself as we talk to you about our projects. We’re going to have five minutes each. Without further ado, let’s kick off with Julie.
Julie: Okay. I’m Julie. I am a social media specialist. I’ve been working in this line of work for about 15 years now, which is fantastic. a really long time. I’m chronically ill. I have myalgic encephalomyelitis slash chronic fatigue syndrome, and a bunch of other comorbid chronic illnesses and chronic pain that I deal with which is why I actually freelance and that’s been my primary income since around mid 2018.
Julie: Okay. So I joined the deadline party with the goal of producing content for my blog. And some [00:03:00] complimentary content for social media as well. And my initial plan was to write at least six blog posts in six weeks, which was very ambitious. Where I started I was overwhelmed. I’d always over committed in the past and, made plans that were really too big to actually fulfill for myself.
Julie: I always had that mindset that, it was all or nothing and that I should be able to do better.
Julie: So the issues that I came across so during our six weeks and previously for the last few years. My health and mental health. I, have a need for flexibility in the [00:04:00] way that I work. I haven’t had a consistent approach to my own marketing in the past. I do it well for other people, but And I think it’s the same with, a lot of us do the same thing.
Julie: We tend to, not do our own marketing or things as well as we do what we do for clients. I had over committed to producing content sorry and blog posts and, my, the blogs that I was writing just tended to get very long with very deep information. And so I always felt like it was going to take a bare minimum of a full working day, like six to eight hours to be able to write a blog post.
Julie: So I always whenever I started, it just became too big. And so I have just haven’t been posting regularly. [00:05:00] So the problem that I want to solve with my own marketing and that I wanted to look at tackling with the deadline party was regular incoming paid work for my own financial stability and peace of mind.
Julie: So initially my plan was I wanted two posts published by the deadline party, which is today, another four complete posts as drafts, a bunch of social media content planned and produced, and have a solid plan to continue posting along with a quarterly plan in place to keep consistently posting. I was kidding myself.
Julie: basically. I, I can’t, I’ve calmed down a bit since then. I, really wasn’t well the, the first few weeks. [00:06:00] And I didn’t get to do any of the stuff that I had planned to. But I did stay on top of the homework and I found the exercises really quite helpful. And I I settled down a bit and, yeah, I was forced to rethink what was actually achievable for me.
Julie: So the new plan that I went with was, So what I would do would be, try to post one, at least one blog every two weeks. And make sure that, yeah, when I couldn’t do that was okay. To write mostly shorter blog posts, which I guess was, [00:07:00] one of my main struggles in the past. I, hadn’t really found a way to do that.
Julie: So when, so I decided that when a blog I was writing was getting too long, just stop and break it up into some smaller posts. So yeah, and also to attempt to overthink it less, which is you know, difficult for me because I overthink everything. I do have really deep and broad knowledge, but I don’t need to put all of that into my website and my blog posts.
Julie: So what I actually produced in the end and a couple of these things are based on the, the exercises throughout. The the sessions that we did with Beck. So I ended up with an elevator pitch for myself, which [00:08:00] I think is just, it’s always something that I’ve struggled a bit to clearly articulate.
Julie: So I yeah I, felt like this was a really good step forward and, I, ended up updating my website and, I’ve used this in a couple of places already, which feels pretty good. Yeah. So I have just, yeah, my little reminder that I can do this. Margarita is a former client of mine, who, I always worked really well with.
Julie: And she, re-engaged me time and time again. And so I just put this little testimonial into a deck of mine. Just a little reminder [00:09:00] to self of, what I can provide. And this is also something that I can show to prospective clients. So I, I came up with some personas as well. And this is something that I’ve never, again, I’ve never clearly defined personas for myself in my own marketing.
Julie: I got those done and I made them all pretty so that I can refer to them regularly. So I have two of those that I’ve been using and referring to and keeping in mind. I I have a, I’ve documented a desired outcome of what I want the people I’m reaching, to actually do when they come across me.
Julie: So I feel like that’s really helpful as well in terms of doing my own marketing and content. And in terms of the. [00:10:00] I guess the specifics of what I’ve produced, as to what I set out to do. I have three blogs ready to publish and I have seven more drafts or works in progress that need a little bit more work.
Julie: To actually finish off, I have an Asana board ready to collect and develop my ideas. And I actually have over 26 ideas ready to develop into blog posts, which gives me one year’s of content. But I also have more than hundreds of other ideas that I can source from other places. And I think Coming up with those ideas to start with and wondering where to start has been a bit of a block for me as well.
Julie: So that feels really good to have that in place. The social media content plan is now just to create posts out of my own blog posts. So it’s a sort of low time and energy [00:11:00] input for me and I feel like I can continue to share those consistently. So these are my posts that I have ready to go.
Julie: I’m really happy with those. And this is like my assigner board that I use. So by using assigner, I actually have it on my desktop and my phone and my iPad. So whenever an idea pops into my head, I can throw it into my little, brain dump column. And then whenever I have a thought that applies to one of those things I can, add it into the notes in there.
Julie: So I never lose any ideas as they pop into my head because I’m better at developing ideas on the fly. And as I’m working through things for clients things become much more concrete. I have developed ideas. So these are just sort of anything that’s occurred to me that I throw in there.
Julie: And then I’ve got the ones that are In a bit better shape to start adding to the [00:12:00] blog and I’ve got things that I’ve got ready to publish and things that I have actually posted as well, so I feel Having a plan is one thing, but then having a way to manage that is going to be really helpful for me as well.
Julie: And now, yeah, I think I’m feeling a lot better, than when I started out. I know my audience and how I can reach them. Now that I have actually written a few blog posts and I’ve got the three drafts and I did manage to publish one a couple of weeks ago as well I feel like I have a much better handle on how to write some shorter posts and to be able to use that approach I thought of just breaking them up into smaller posts when, they’re becoming too one wheeled y.
Julie: I feel like my plan [00:13:00] is achievable and I have the flexibility that I need to do things my way. And I have time for fun stuff instead of just trying to, sit at my desk and be less productive more of the time. Yeah, I think all of us in the group learned the importance of that through the sessions as well.
Julie: And that’s me done.
Rebekah: so much, Julie. Can you hear me?
Julie: I
Rebekah: can. Awesome. And thank you so much for presenting today when today was not necessarily the best health day. As well, like you’ve done an amazing job. I think anyone that’s ever had a chronic condition or a disability can really feel that I’m getting through this. So thank you so much.[00:14:00]
Rebekah: Now folks, there is an ask a question feature at the bottom of your screen. You can also answer the poll that we’ve got going. Rebecca’s given some confidence stuff. She said, I love the planning you’ve done. It looks like you’re so organized and that it helps you feel more confident. It looks amazing.
Julie: Yeah, I think having a way of getting all the kind of the mess and overwhelm that’s in my head out and down makes me. Yeah, helps me, feel more organized and helps me manage my anxiety, so it’s not just all swirling around up there.
Rebekah: That’s it. That’s it. All right, Julie. Thank you so much. We’ll just let you go and have a cup of tea now and kick back and watch the other presos, I think.
Rebekah: So thanks for joining us on screen today. And I’m going to invite young Tracy up to the stage. Where are you, Trace? [00:15:00]
Tracey: Should be coming back on. There we go.
Rebekah: Alright. I’m just gonna hand over the reins to you. We’ve confirmed that you’re on Darug land which is
Tracey: great. Yep. Yep. So I’ve just learnt, I’ve learnt that in the last 5 minutes thanks to the local council’s website.
Rebekah: And now all you need is your furniture to arrive from Queensland and you’ll be on your way as a new Sydneysider. It actually
Tracey: got there and I now, I have 2 boxes left to unpack and they’re still there. Because I haven’t got a cabinet yet to put them in.
Rebekah: Look I will disappear off screen again and let you take it away.
Tracey: Okay, so yes, so for, why that in the middle of a deadline present deadline party, I moved interstate, moved from Queensland to Sydney. Yeah, I know everyone does it the other way around. I’m a little bit interesting. And I had a week where my furniture was stuck thanks to the flooding [00:16:00] in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales.
Tracey: Don’t recommend sleeping on an air mattress for a week. Not a great way to go. Just trying to now share my screen and it, oh, Everything froze for a second there.
Tracey: Okay. So a little bit about me. I’m a management consultant and let’s face it. Everyone’s got their stereotypical view of management consultants. We can be the expensive, annoying loud mouth who spout a bunch of jargon and fix nothing. And some people would actually just, I can feel the fear sometimes when I walk into a room.
Tracey: I in 20, at the end of 2019 finished my MBA a Master’s of Business Administration and I also finished up a role where I’d been CEO of a disability support service and taken them through a couple of major transformations. One to regain an [00:17:00] accreditation that meant we could continue to provide service and then a whole of organization transformation to prepare for the NDIS.
Tracey: Queensland was the last state in the country to, oh sorry, actually Western Australia was last, Queensland was second last. So we were slightly lucky in having a bit of time. But it was a couple of really a few intense years and I needed a break. I planned to take just six months out. I was working on a novel that’s still not finished.
Tracey: And then I would look for my next opportunity. March 2020 with COVID coming in, that obviously changed a lot of things. And I did not expect to be told that I was, clinically vulnerable when it came to COVID and happened to be in my doctor’s surgery the day they said, announced that everyone was going to telehealth to be told, Oh, by the way, you’re [00:18:00] clinically vulnerable with this.
Tracey: Oh, so I, and I have an 84 year old father who lives with me. So we’ve had a couple of years of being very close to home and careful. Last year I decided that I would like to continue my research at high degree level. And so I’m now working towards a PhD looking at organizational culture, particularly in not for profit organizations.
Tracey: And my, just my little weird fact despite growing up in Queensland and a block away from the beach, I didn’t actually learn to swim until I was 33. So I came to the deadline party because I needed to get, back on track with what I plan to do with my consultancy. I really enjoy working with organizations and groups of people that want to create a better world and want to create [00:19:00] change in the world.
Tracey: What I’ve noticed a lot over the years is some of the really passionate people that want to create that change. They don’t necessarily have the skills to work within the structures that we have to work within in terms of government funding, philanthropic bodies. legislative requirements, regulatory requirements.
Tracey: I have a background prior to coming into human services of working in more corporate organizations and around governance and as paralegal. So I actually can straddle both worlds really comfortably. And I wanted to create something in the deadline party that would share that. Although I think Initially, I did have another idea.
Tracey: And I can’t remember it. I’m sure that can, confirm that one for me. So just a little bit about how big community organizations in Australia actually are. Over in [00:20:00] 2019, 2 million volunteer hours put in. by members of the community. Think of all this, of all the footy teams, community footy teams that wouldn’t run without the parents.
Tracey: The, community, the op shops one of my favorite places to hang out. All the small, theater and performing arts groups that have had terrible times over the last few years. These groups wouldn’t survive predominantly without those volunteers. And that’s the, people that I wanted to create this resource for and share some of my knowledge.
Tracey: So there is a lot of challenges for any community group or anyone wanting to make change in the community. And the first one, as I well know from my own time, is there’s too much to do and too little money. There’s a lot of complexity. It’s, there’s legal complexity, governance [00:21:00] complexity. When do you get your, have to get your forms in?
Tracey: What forms do you have to put in? Negotiating with government, making sure that you can sell your plan so it aligns to a government plan. Time constraints, particularly when we’re looking at people who are volunteering. The issues of duplication. Many years ago, I was part of a group that wanted, we lived an hour outside of Brisbane, and we wanted to create a community mediation service.
Tracey: And initially the state government said, yeah, that’s a great idea. And they funded the training for us all to become mediators and we did the mediation course and then we went back and said we’ve done the course. We’re ready. We’re ready to start. We want to offer it for free to, to help our community.
Tracey: And they went no, actually, we’ve changed our minds. You’d actually be duplicating a government service where people can just come in.
Tracey: [00:22:00] which was not possible for a lot of members of our community. There was significant costs in travel. There was also the issue that people didn’t want to engage with someone in Brisbane, they wanted to engage locally. And in some groups there can be some real boundary and control issues when you get those older cliques, not even older cliques the old hand type things.
Tracey: So the other thing I’m very passionate about is sustainable development. So we develop our organizations, our businesses, our communities in ways that we meet the needs of us without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. So this is the plan that I put together and like Julie, I have to say the exercises that Bec asked us to do throughout the six weeks were really fundamental in helping me consolidate [00:23:00] my thinking, consolidate what I want the future of my consultancy to look like, and the people that I want to, work with.
Tracey: And And how I want to work with those groups. This is the change framework that I use all the time when I go into an organization and I’m working in a change area. If you’re familiar with, the. Continuous improvement plan. It is similar. One of the major things that I feel is important that continuous improvement doesn’t necessarily highlight in the same way that I’ve highlighted in this model is that need for constant communication.
Tracey: We all know that communication is at the heart of any successful change project. You need to be able to identify and work with people in ways that connect with them and give them a sense of belonging. [00:24:00] So the, I have created this into a workbook tool that takes people through how to use this tool.
Tracey: And how to be able to start developing opportunities for change in either their organization or their community, or you can actually even, use it as a behavior change framework, for yourself. So in the identify phase we start looking at data analysis, it’s really a data analysis and scoping frame for us.
Tracey: There’s a couple of, areas that I look at, which is around the triple bottom line, so people, planet, profit. Transcribed and looking at how they interact with your organization or your issue, and as well as starting to work through who the stakeholders are in the issue and how to, identify them, how to group them, how to start to look at their engagement level.
Tracey: In the planning [00:25:00] section, it’s really starting to get into the nuts and bolts of how you’re going to talk to people and involve people in the project and also what areas of organizational culture. So organizational culture, is very broad and it encompasses policies, procedures shared behaviors, ways organizations celebrate, job descriptions, ways things are done, whether you’re a hybrid organization or where you work, how you work.
Tracey: And so all of these things can, need to be assessed to understand how they support or push back the change that you’re hoping to make. So the implementation phase is really about starting to look at the change practices and what identifying in the individual strategies that you’re going to use.[00:26:00]
Tracey: And then there’s a phase of looking at evaluation. So the toolkit is it’s, it concludes the analysis tools around that you can see on the screen at the moment, a triple bottom line worksheet, a stakeholder mapping worksheet, There’s examples of the tools actually in action as well. So you can get ideas of how to use it.
Tracey: The tools can be printed out and taken to, workshops if you’re wanting to work with a management committee or a group of people that you think might be interested in making the same change as you. And there’s an Excel workbook that takes you through the whole process. from setting a goal through to what are the objectives?
Tracey: What, who are the stakeholders? What are the cultural components? What are the change practices? How are we going to evaluate whether we’ve been successful? So you can get a copy by going to the website or following, [00:27:00] there’ll be some stuff coming out on social media about it as well. And the last piece of the puzzle that I had to get done that I’d said that I wanted to do for the deadline party was to actually update my strategic, my community services for community groups page on my website.
Tracey: And I will confess that I finished it this morning. But I did finish it and it’s now available with the download for the sustainable development change management toolkit. For me, the sharing of knowledge is my preferred way to market my consultancy. I believe that I’ve had a lot of Support to obtain the skills that I now have the degrees, the qualifications and the experience, and it’s my responsibility as a member of our community to share [00:28:00] that knowledge and to not only share that knowledge in a paid format.
Tracey: Obviously this is. tool is partly a lead generation tool. I am hoping that it will lead to paid work, but it is also a format of my corporate social responsibility and my giving back to the community. So I just really like to thank Beck, I’m going to stop sharing my screen now. I’d really like to thank Beck for organizing the deadline party and thank Julie and Grace for their support throughout it.
Tracey: It has been fantastic to be a part of this, party and I’d really encourage anyone, to come in and do the next one. That’s me done, Beck.
Rebekah: Thank you for being so patient with me, folks. Okay, so I joined the deadline party, even though it is a deadline party [00:29:00] to do some customer management work. Now about me, if you don’t already know I’m a writer, marketer, advocate, amateur artist, terrible drummer, utter customer service and client management nerd.
Rebekah: I am a PowerPoint tragic, I’m really sorry. I’m an owner of a shambolic collection of half finished ideas. I think it Number’s about 75 at the moment. I’m a devotee of George Orwell and Hunter S. Thompson, so I like to find new and interesting ways to say the same shit that everyone else does. I’m a person with an anxiety disorder, and that makes life colourful.
Rebekah: Card carrying introvert, dog worshipper, tasty lunch for the imposter syndrome monster, lover of oversized sunglasses and skullcap headphones, as you can see from my photos, really bad designer, as you can see from my power I’m not. PowerPoints. Sorry, Jess. And pathologically uneven deadline. This is my problem.
Rebekah: I often overthink things to the point where I’m missing the opportunity. Whee! I’m drowning in all things half finished projects. I have [00:30:00] literally got journals and boxes and things and categories and I spend a lot of time planning and not a lot on all things. I often feel isolated and alone with my creativity because I never make the traction forward.
Rebekah: I’m always in that planning stage and I get stuck in my own head. I tend to get distracted by other ideas really. Oh! Look, there’s a kitty. Easily. I am verbose. Back up the track, Becca’s got a few words to say verbose. And we all know this about me. My inner critic’s voice is incredibly cruel and very harsh.
Rebekah: I think it’s a bunch of mean girls at school that have had way too many martinis. I never know quite where to start. I certainly don’t know where to end. Everything in the middle scares the shit out of me. Yeah, I’ve had conversations with my therapist about this. I chose to do the deadline party because I wanted to launch a customer management project, but was struggling to get it online on the Patreon.
Rebekah: I often design things for other people that I’d secretly love to participate [00:31:00] in. The Deadline Party is not my concept. It is a concept that was launched at Ignite 2017 or 2015 in Sydney where a young woman presented the fact that she’d learnt a Rachmaninoff piece, for a party she was having with her friends because she was never going to get it done.
Rebekah: And immediately I fell in love with this whole idea of having accountability in that way and having that party thing and I took it online. So this group of deadliners all needed to put in an application form to say why they wanted to join in. Tracy and Gracie, as I call them now, poor things, both applied twice.
Rebekah: Julie applied as well. And Lexi also applied, but unfortunately had to drop out at the last minute. But from what I read in the applications, I knew that I’d found my people. So I thought, Fuck it. They need a fourth. Let’s make this interesting. I’ll join on. So my project broken down in the old project manager format of background objective execution [00:32:00] outcome.
Rebekah: Basically freelancers often have trouble managing client behaviors and this leads to issues when working together. Projects running late payments, all this sort of stuff. You see it in the jungle all the time, right? These freelancers. I wanted to fix that by changing it on a behavioral level. The objective was to figure out tangible ways for freelancers can build client management muscle to improve project outcomes.
Rebekah: The execution was to identify the common problems freelancers face. Develop the assets and scripts to help with the on fire client situations. Enhance the freelancer confidence through teaching client management skills and the outcomes. That’s why you’re here, baby. You’re going to see them soon.
Rebekah: These were the challenges. You don’t get better at dealing with your clients by reading about it. There are some really fantastic blogs and really fantastic books and all the rest of it, but I firmly believe that until you get to a role play session or you [00:33:00] start acting out some of this stuff you’re still going to get eaten for breakfast because the theory needs the practice.
Rebekah: Managing other people’s emotions is a full body experience. You need to see their face, their flapping arms, they’re enraged, sounds as they waft out of their face, whatever you need, right? Microskills are incredibly useful, but they also need to be practiced. And by microskills, reflecting the meaning and listening to the person and countering objections and all that jazz, right?
Rebekah: There are a few issues though we’ve all got hellish zoom fatigue. We’ve only just been let out of the digital box after two years of flying monkey disease. The thought of role playing does turn many people to goo. It also. Attracts some weird sexual connotations from some people. Please don’t bring that near me again.
Rebekah: And there’s nothing to steal like an artist from. There is no person out there that’s going, Hey, let’s do improv to get freelancers doing shit. So there was no one else that I could learn from. So I had to make it up as I was going on. You have to learn by [00:34:00] doing to build your boundary muscle. And there is it’s very hard to get people to commit to freelance education, especially when you’re doing a pay what you can afford model.
Rebekah: Like I do. Sure, if you sunk 500 into this, you would definitely turn up, but because you might be sinking 5 into this, it’s a little bit harder to get motivated when things start falling over. I utterly refuse, however, to go to the other model because I really want to make sure that everybody in need, in crisis, always has access to be able to learn.
Rebekah: So how I started was literally put up two straight threads in the freelance jungle. Eugenerous folks responded with over 80 comments in each thread. I then stripped those down, put them in common themes, The themes on the other side, the time pressure payment stuff and all the rest of it. And I started writing and then I got to 10, 000 words and went, Oh fuck, what am I going to be doing with this?
Rebekah: I don’t really want to write another book. So what I decided to do was to go back [00:35:00] to the original instinct that I had with the improv class and this beautiful art was done by the amazing Jess Harkins. Hire her, she’s shit hot. And I went back to it and I went this is really where my heart lies.
Rebekah: This is really what I want to do. How can I do this? And then I sat there with all of those words and I split out templates. I looked at the blogs that had the commonality of the emotions underneath them. I looked at further little zoom classes that could result. I could, I looked at the cycle of things that we were going through in terms of boundaries and all of that sort of stuff.
Rebekah: And then I also had to design for different learning styles and varying degrees of flakiness. So I know that if I say to people, you’ve got to turn up every week for four weeks, people start dropping off really quickly. But if I say you can drop in and it doesn’t really matter if you don’t turn up next week, then they start turning up for the whole four weeks.
Rebekah: It’s a little bit manipulative, but it works. And all of this combined would help freelancers get better customer service management. So what I did next, first of all, I took the 20 that I originally [00:36:00] had off the class and it gave me the freedom to be able to do improv to improve on my terms. Cause originally it was going to be on that 20 level, but then I thought I’m iterating a product.
Rebekah: I’m getting really nervous about doing this live. Bugger it, I’ll just drop the price and it’ll make us all feel a lot more comfortable. I enrolled myself in the deadline party in earnest, let the group know that I was there. I outed myself about my problems. I created time barriers to keep me accountable.
Rebekah: I literally didn’t have the content written for the courses. I just had it in all my notes and all the rest of it until a week before the date of when I’d said it, even though I’d been advertising it for six weeks. I find that works for me. It doesn’t always work for everyone else, but I need that bit of tension and that grit.
Rebekah: I also went back through the thousands of blog shells and posts that I have as a former lifeline crisis supporter, current counseling student, former drama teacher, and someone who’s worked [00:37:00] extensively in client management and customer service. I also have all of the notes from those guys, which I build into things as I went along.
Rebekah: I casually reread Teaching Improv and Getting to Yes And Again, which are two great books on this sort of learning. And I opened up different word docs as I wrote. I wrote the blog shells. I threw things onto a scratch pad and just got on with the job. What resulted? Already there is a three client pushback email for your freelance tool belt that is there for the Patreons available.
Rebekah: I’m still working on the documents, but I’ve got the templates coming up. I’ve. done one of the class sessions. I’ve got another one of the class sessions this afternoon. There are another further two coming through. I’ve got the designs for a metric shit ton of templates. Sorry, you’ll get used to my wolfy mouth.
Rebekah: And I have a far more easygoing approach to this work because it doesn’t feel like 10, 000 words is chasing me down the road begging for attention. What did I relearn? My first instinct is usually [00:38:00] my best. I wanted to do improv. It’s attracted students. I should have stuck with it instead of overthinking it.
Rebekah: It doesn’t have to be fully cooked to function. I am literally learning by doing with the folks, and when we got to the point last week when I’d had too much content, we were able to truncate it, cut it off there, and restart it again today. This is a topic I know really well, so I just need to dig in and just share it, because it isn’t a topic that a lot of people know well.
Rebekah: Surprisingly for freelancers, many of us do not have customer service and client management skills. So this is the main focus for me to get this out as quickly as possible and in as many forms as possible. I just need to spend time on it instead of drilling my own head. And to use my own processes.
Rebekah: So for example, I am going to the virtual You Gotta Work It session that’s happening tomorrow again featuring Jess Harkin’s art, that is about sitting there going, what are you working on? Oh, you’re working on that? I’m working on this? [00:39:00] Okay, let’s just sit here and work quietly and then check in with it at the end of the hour.
Rebekah: I did that with a couple of people last month and it was freaking fantastic. When I get nervous, I start overdoing it. So I just got to be mindful of that. Dealing with the nerves is better than drowning in the work and the work’s intent. It’s fucking nice to have people to talk to. I highly recommend it.
Rebekah: And deadlines help, but accountability is better. Having some friends that you can check in with on email, kick each other’s asses up the block, be kind when you need it. is supreme. So there you go. Boundaries, this afternoon. Grace under pressure. Not kiwi grace, but grace itself. And then also how to stay out of your own way.
Rebekah: Alright folks, I’m going to pop Grace’s wonderful presentation up on screen then for you.
Grace: You’re listening to Grace Bridges, and these are my stories. You may know me as an author, an editor, or even a translator, or just a [00:40:00] traveller. Simple words can cover so much, right? So let me tell you about my latest project. Me. It was time for some big, scary decisions, and some serious self care.
Grace: As a freelancer working from home in multiple industries, I always had a huge to do list. It was pretty much driving me crazy, and it never seemed to get any smaller no matter what I did. Then I had nearly a year dealing with injuries and lost my independence for a while. Finally I began to feel better, but I was still stuck in a rut.
Grace: It was time to make a change, reset my mind, and fulfill a long standing dream.
Grace: So I did the [00:41:00] thing! I moved to a new town, and set up home base in the middle of a geothermal zone full of boiling streams, bubbling mud, hot water beaches, and steaming ponds. In my 40s, it felt like a big step. I hope to show you the inside view and unique aspects of living here with all my particular As I learn to be a local rather than a tourist.
Grace: I’ve minimized my stuff to what I need in this one room. Although some is still stored in case I go back to living in a bigger house. But who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll find I don’t need it. And yes, I did bring my two cats.
Grace: I write fantasy based around these hot springs because why wouldn’t they be magic? I edit novels for authors all over the world. Sometimes I translate and design things. I walk around the thermally active town, spend a lot of time in the water, and I cook ridiculously tasty meals in steam that comes out of the ground.[00:42:00]
Grace: Why here? My dad was born here, and he loved it. We came here often when I was little, and I’ve continued the habit, alone or with friends and family. I’d like to think Dad would be pleased that I’m here. And why now? After my health issues, I needed this.
Grace: Auckland is great on a good day, but it turns out, not being able to drive or walk up and down hills had me basically stuck in one place. Then the final push was my room needing repairs to an extent that I couldn’t live in it while it got fixed.
Grace: To top it all off, two close friends and their families also left Auckland. One was going [00:43:00] anyway. But the others said I’d inspired their move by constantly talking about mine, and then they ended up leaving before me.
Grace: So it was time to do what I’d talked about for years. Now that I’m here, just like anywhere else, there are only so many hours in the day. My online access is limited, so I’ve all but disappeared from social media. No more endless scrolling. Being here helps me identify work hours and make the best use of them, and have a really good time when I’m not working.
Grace: I still have that to do list, but I don’t have to tackle everything at once. One task at a time, in the smallest possible bytes, in an amazing location, without heaps of clutter in sight or in mind. That’s my path to a brain reset. And this video is part of it, the first in a series exploring what it’s like to live [00:44:00] as a creative person in this time and place.
Grace: I’m really glad you joined me. This is going to be fun.
Rebekah: Wow. Can I just say, that was just amazing. I’m pretty sure tourism New Zealand is going to be on the phone to grace because now I want to go and live in a hot spring environment with mystical, magical lands and wonder. [00:45:00] Grace is saying in the comment section that her original goal of the Deadline Party was to publish approximately 15 books in multiple formats, plus an omnibus and hardback editions.
Rebekah: And that goal had to change. Lol. Yeah, we did actually spend, there was a little bit of a moment with I think Julie Grace and myself, and maybe even Tracy as well, where we all went, we wanted to do all the things and we realized that we were just setting ourselves up for failure. So it was a beautiful thing of just going, you know what, doing something and then something that is meaningful is just as empowering.
Rebekah: I’d like to thank all of the participants that have come here today. It’s really hard to actually. set a deadline and do a project for other people to see in a, short period of time. It is really difficult to commit to turning up [00:46:00] every week and listening to feedback from other people and to share your stories and all the rest of it.
Rebekah: We had a few sessions where we all sat there and cried with each other. We had a few sessions where we all had a really good time. And eventually we found a rhythm in amongst everything that was happening and it’s a rhythm that I hope that we can continue on. to help each other along as well. So that is the 2020, 2022 deadline party wrapped and rolled for you.
Rebekah: I think it was pretty amazing and pretty special. Don’t you audience? Yay! Always good to see people achieving things. I think I will be running this again at the end of the year if you folks are interested. So if everybody wants to do another one, we can do it at the end of the year, maybe springtime, somewhere around there.
Rebekah: Let’s see how we go with that kind of thing. So just let me know. It’s available to Patreons to participate. You can extend the project that you did at the [00:47:00] moment. You can extend the project that you did last time that we had one. Or you can think of something entirely different. And I love the fact that we had this breadth of, some of it was for marketing, some of it was to build stuff.
Rebekah: Some of it was to work on models and get things together, and some of it was about lifestyle change. I think it’s, it says a lot about us as a diverse group to be able to do those sorts of things. That’s it for the moment. Catch up with Grace Bridges, Tracy Lloyd and Julie Delaforce in the freelance jungle.