Build the business you really want with people who really get it
The Freelance Cake community helps advanced freelancers stay focused and finish what matters most. It connects you with like-minded people and provides the structure and tools you need to execute.
Once you have run your own business for a while, you know how easy it is to get overwhelmed, discouraged, and distracted, even if you’ve had some success.
You know about going from crippling self-doubt one moment to blazing optimism the next. Yay.
When you’re smart and multifaceted and have (too many) options, one of the best things you can do is surround yourself with a core group of smart, freedom-focused peers who understand the ups and downs.
People who are wired the same way and yet can remind you to keep your chin up and stick to the fundamentals.
Three specific things make the Freelance Cake community distinct:
1. High-caliber people, ideas, and advice… behind a paywall
As nice as free communities and Reddit threads are, there's no barrier to entry. The quality of the conversations varies, and you have to sift through memes, rants, and client-from-hell dog piles to find the gems.
Who’s got time for that?!
We get what we pay for in life, from food to transportation to advice, and that’s why Freelance Cake is pay to play.
This barrier to entry ensures that you get solid advice quickly when you have issues, as well as encouragement and good ideas from a cross-disciplinary gathering of folks at your level.
2. Smaller group with narrow focus
Unlike more generic freelance communities, Freelance Cake is a smaller group of seasoned, focused pros* whose goals are different from those of beginners.
We talk a lot about the Big Three: marketing, sales, and systems.
Why? Because we need the first two to grow our businesses, and we need the third to enjoy our lives outside of work.
Advanced freelancers solve different puzzles, including these:
- Sell more strategy work
- Make more money in less time
- Build a Morning Marketing Habit
- Work with VAs and subcontractors
- Create robust systems and processes
- Win high-paying projects and retainers
It’s a beautiful thing to have freelance friends with the same values and goals who are solving the same problems (e.g., making good money but working too much, burnout, weak systems and processes, not enough support).
Seeing our friends make progress makes us want to do the same, and Freelance Cake provides a no-nonsense, action-oriented support group with built-in accountability and motivation.
(*This group will only be relevant to you only if you’ve been freelancing for a while and your business is operating at a more advanced level.)
3. Emphasis on honesty and psychological safety
Have you ever had a big win that you didn’t feel comfortable sharing?
Maybe because you know other freelancers are struggling. Maybe because you didn’t want a target on your back: “Hey, troll, over here! Come make me feel guilty for not suffering more.”
Many of the goal-oriented high achievers Austin has coached have told him that they didn’t have a safe place where they could talk openly about both problems and successes.
The Freelance Cake community is that safe place.
When you’re struggling after a scary $3K month, write a post and sign up for a Hot Seat. When you’re celebrating your first $30K month, write a post about what’s working for you and why.
You don’t have to hold back out of sensitivity to others.
Working remotely and solo can be isolating and lonely. Our 9-to-5 friends don’t understand the challenges we face building our businesses.
We want freelance friends who do.
We also want faster results.
Most of us have a Dropbox folder of courses that we’ve paid for but hardly looked at. The knowledge is there, and we’re willing to put in the work.
So why don’t we go through the material?
Honestly, because courses get expensive, time wise. Once we reach a certain level, access to information isn’t the problem.
What we want is speed plus quality:
- We want the step-by-step process or template, followed by the constructive critique.
- We want pointers on how to navigate hyper-specific client situations.
- We want wise mentors and smart peers to short-circuit our overthinking, second-guessing, and perfectionism and ship the thing already.
When possible, we want to share our own expertise, too! It feels good to save a friend from a dead end.
Let’s optimize for freedom and joy, not just dollars, together and generate a surplus of project leads so that rehoming that one client (looking at you, Negative Nancy) is an easy decision.
Here are the main things we do together as a community:
- Weekly coworking sessions. We show up, chitchat for 10 minutes, and then work on our businesses for 50 minutes on mute.
- Office Hours & Hot Seats. During Office Hours Austin keeps his metaphorical door open for anyone who wants to talk through a challenge or opportunity in real time. During Hot Seats a member brings a specific problem or opportunity to discuss, and the group asks questions to bring clarity and uncover next steps.
- Monthly sprints, themes, or challenges. For example, implementing a single playbook and giving updates along the way). Think focused biz dev work in community, because the last thing any of us need is another membership or subscription we don’t use.
The Freelance Cake community also includes the following:
- Resource Library. While you’re a paying member, you get access to a high-quality collection of tools that’s constantly growing. Need to hire a VA? We’ve got that playbook. Need to send a price increase email? We’ve got that email template.
- 9 Business Redesign playbooks. Austin recommends that all new members start with these and begin building a $300K Flywheel. Once you understand that framework, you'll find it easier to understand which part of your business model isn't working.
- Deeper level of insight, support, and camaraderie since the community is small on purpose (capped at 200).
- Clear Community Guidelines and expectations around confidentiality so that you can ask tougher and more vulnerable questions.
Now, for the brass tacks details you’ve been waiting for:
- The community “lives” inside of Circle.
- Coworking sessions and other live group sessions happen on Zoom, and when appropriate, we make replays available afterward.
- Membership is by application only. We review every single application within 48 hours.
- Membership is for 6 months at a time and costs $474 (i.e., $79 a month), and that price includes access to the library of step-by-step growth recipes and other SOPs, playbooks, and templates.
- If you like, you can pay $711 for 6 months and get a one-on-one session with me.
Freelance Cake brings together advanced freelancers with similar values, goals, and problems and provides the right ideas, structure, and tools to help you reduce trial and error, grow faster, and have more fun more along the way. Freelancing isn’t easy, but we can make it easier.
Want to build the business you really want in good company?
Any questions? Email hello@freelancecake.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the focus of the community on advanced freelancers?
The first reason is that there are plenty of communities for beginners and fewer for the established, growth-oriented pros.
Also, it's difficult to have a wide spectrum of experience in a single community because conversations and advice revert to the lowest end of the spectrum.
This community isn’t for folks asking “Can I do this freelance thing? Do I have what it takes” It’s for folks asking, “How do I keep growing without burning out? How do I make my business truly sustainable?”
Here’s how you know you’ll be a good fit:
- You’re passionate about what you do.
- You’re committed to putting in the work.
- You’ve been freelancing for 2 years or more.
- You’re a seasoned pro with a strong point of view.
- You’re goal oriented and have a bias toward action.
- You’re a professional who works on the business, not just in it.
How much time should I expect to spend in this community?
One hour a week? Two? I recommend that you should up for the coworking sessions at the very least.
You’ll get out what you put in, and you’ll show up more often when interesting conversations are happening or when you need more help.
What can I expect in terms of content?
This community focuses more on connection and relationships than content and programming.
I honestly don’t want to flood members with TONS of content because is that really what any of us need? More content? People showing up to listen to Austin deliver a sermon about [insert freelance issue here]?
The more content and events a community has, the less valuable each thing becomes by association, and the easier it becomes for members to deprioritize any one event or piece of content because there's always another one.
That’s why this community prioritizes relationships and focused business development. Let’s identify and do the things that will transform our businesses, finances, and lives. And let’s do that in good company.
What are good reasons to join?
You’re making decent money but you want to optimize more for joy, impact, and free time.
You need momentum and a place to validate ideas and processes.
You want to grow/scale an already successful business by getting more support (e.g., VA or subcontractors), scaling up into a micro agency, or diversifying revenue streams.
You’ve realized you need to look outside of your current community where everyone shares the same specialization and get some fresh ideas and perspectives.
You want to surround yourself with other people who've done the work of building a "successful" business and you want to learn from them and share your expertise.
What are bad reasons to join?
You have products you want to sell to freelancers, consultants, and agency owners, and this community seems like a room you could pitch to. Please don’t.
You hope to get some clients here. Will you start new relationships? Yes. Might some of those relationships organically lead to collaborations or referrals? Yes. Is this community a smaller Upwork? No.
You want other people to answer all your questions and do your thinking for you. We’re here to answer questions for which Google doesn’t have a quick answer. Think “What CRM are you all using right now?” not “What is a CRM?”
You enjoy being controversial, combative, or contrarian, and it’s all in good fun. Please take your fun elsewhere.
When do office hours and other live group sessions happen?
Coworking sessions, Hot Seats, and Office Hours usually happen between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm ET (GMT-5). That being said, if enough members want or need a different time, we’ll mix it up.
Who the heck is Austin L. Church?
Austin is Freelance Cake’s founder. He has been freelancing over 15 years and has made six figures more years than not. That said, the revenue is less important than some of the other things he has experience with:
- Scaling up into a lead agency
- Developing and selling a portfolio of 30 iOS and Android apps
- Doing the tech startup thing (2013-2017)
- Co-founding a branding and marketing studio
- Serving as a fractional CMO (2018 - present)
- Publishing several books, including Free Money, a pricing and money mindset guide for freelancers
In 2018 Austin started coaching other freelancers and consultants and helping them get better results with less effort.
The SOPs, templates, and other tools you get inside the Freelance Cake community took him 1000s of hours to create and refine.
Helping advanced freelancers build their $300K Flywheel is something he’s very passionate about. In fact, his wife Megan would love to hear him talk about something else.
Austin and Megan live with their three children in Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains.