Hey everyone, I know I've been quieter than usual the past few weeks. Life got intense fast. Quick recap of my holidays: My mom almost died. Blood clots in her lungs. We flew the whole family from the Philippines to Tucson on borrowed money and Medium payments. Spent a week crammed in my parents' small house. All six of us sleeping on the floor while my mom recovered. Made a last-minute decision to drive to Denver to introduce Flora and the kids to my other two sons. The truck's starter died halfway there. Had to bang on it with a wrench in the middle of the night to get it going. Drove 16 hours straight because I didn't want to risk stopping. It snowed in Denver. Flora had never seen snow before. Neither had Joey. Watching my tropical family experience snow for the first time made every stressful moment worth it. Drove back through Wolf Creek Pass. Flora kept saying "America is so beautiful." The kids want to move here now. Moved into our rental (a cute little cowboy bunkhouse) on December 29th. Got sick immediately after. Lower respiratory infection. Been on antibiotics since Saturday. I wrote the whole story here if you want the details: [Here is the link] Now what? Holidays are over. Time to get back to work. Here's what I'm focused on for January and beyond: 1. Client work comes first I've got contracts that pay the bills. Those get priority. Everything else fits around them. 2. Keep building on Medium. December was good. I want January to be better. That means writing consistently even when I don't feel like it. 3. Grow this community We're at 450+ members now. I want to make this place more valuable for everyone here. More discussions. More real talk. More helping each other figure this out. 4. LinkedIn and Threads I've been inconsistent. That changes now. Posting daily. Building visibility. Driving people back here.

Hi group! I want to start by saying that I will always keep the main group free. I didn't start this to make money off people looking for work with subscriptions. I just want this to be a place where we can all come and talk about freelancing, the job market, and job hunting. But, I have a group of 500 eager professionals, and I can't help but think that at least a few of you would like a more focused and inclusive group. I also see that many of you are interested in Medium, and I can't help but think I could have another stream of income if I monetized my Medium knowledge. Don't get me wrong, there will be a course coming for free for ALL OF YOU about Medium, but what I am thinking, is a more focused brain-trust, where we have weekly training and advice calls, more in-depth information about Medium, and a more focused environment. I would charge a monthly subscription, something anyone can afford, but the main group would always be here to ask basic questions, and talk about everything not related to Medium. Its tough to make a living and if I could even make another few hundred bucks a month, it would be worth it to me to teach all I know about Medium. So what do you think? If you are interested, please let me know> Also, if you ARE interested, help me decide what would be a good monthly subscription? Remember, this is going to be a very activity-heavy group, with a lot of information and focused on Medium. $4.99, $9.99, $12.99, $19.99?????? What would be worth it to potentially make a few extra thousand a month on Medium. I did, November and December I make between $2500 and $4500. It CAN happen. See the screenshot! What do you guys think? Something you would like?

If you're here, you're probably over 40 and fighting the same fight I am. Sending out resumes that disappear into the void. Getting ghosted by recruiters. Watching younger people get hired for jobs you're overqualified for. Wondering if you're unemployable or if the entire system just broke while you weren't looking. You're not imagining it. The job market is brutal right now. Especially for us. I'm 57. I've been freelancing for over 20 years. I have a degree. I use AI tools every day. I'm faster and better at my work than I've ever been. And I still can't get hired. Not because I'm not good enough. Because companies don't want to invest in people like us anymore. We're too expensive. Too experienced. Too likely to know our worth and not accept garbage wages. This group exists because we're all dealing with the same thing. And most of us are doing it alone. Scrolling LinkedIn at 2am wondering what we're doing wrong. Applying to jobs we're overqualified for and still not getting callbacks. Trying to figure out how to rebuild a career in a market that decided we're disposable. You're not alone. That's why we're here. Drop a comment and introduce yourself. Where are you? What kind of work are you looking for? What's your biggest struggle right now? Let's actually talk about this. Let's help each other. Let's stop pretending this is normal and start figuring out how to survive it together. Welcome. I'm glad you're here.

I see a lot of you in here grinding through job applications. Tailoring resumes. Writing cover letters. Following up on interviews that go nowhere. And I get it. I've been there. Hell, I'm still there sometimes. But here's what I've been thinking about lately. What if we're asking the wrong question? We keep asking "How do I get hired?" when maybe we should be asking "How do I stop needing to get hired?" Nobody wants to hire people over 40. We all know this. The algorithms filter us out. The hiring managers see our experience as "overqualified." The salary expectations don't match their budgets. We can keep banging our heads against that wall. Or we can build our own door. I'm not talking about some massive startup with investors and employees. I'm talking about something that's yours. Freelancing. Consulting. Coaching. A service business. A digital product. Something you control. Because here's what I've learned after months of building my own thing while freelancing on the side: The traditional path is broken. But there are other paths. The data actually supports this. People are starting businesses in record numbers right now. Over 5 million new business applications in 2024. That's 50% more than in 2019. And here's the kicker: 64% of entrepreneurs in the US are over 40. We're not too old for this. We're actually in the sweet spot.Most entrepreneurs don't even launch their businesses until they're 42. But I'm not going to lie to you. It's scary as hell. I've failed at business before. Multiple times. And starting again at 57, broke, with decades of failure behind me? That takes everything I've got. But I've never been this far along. I've never had this much momentum. I've never felt this certain that I'm onto something. Here's what's different this time. I'm not choosing between a job and a business. I'm doing both. I'm taking freelance work to keep money coming in. And I'm building my own platforms, my own products, my own audience at the same time.