Operation 11th Hour Q1 Results
Ladies and gentlemen, Q1 of Operation 11th Hour is complete! What happened?
The Results
Here’s how Operation 11th Hour works. In 2024, I need to establish a viable business. Every quarter I evaluate results and assign a pass or fail grade. A pass grade means I live to fight another quarter. A fail grade means game over, time to do something else.
TLDR: January worked; February and March were saved by freelance work
January was my best month of the quarter. The ChatGPT course had a good launch. I got 65% of what would have been a great month. All in all, a decent start.
Course sales dropped after January but have been a stable and substantial source of revenue since. When selling online, a common fate is sales dropping to literally zero after launch. It’s a small but significant win that I’m avoiding that.
Freelance work saved me for the rest of the quarter. Without it, I could be sunk already. (The comparison is a bit tricky, though, because I also had much less time to work on the business.)
The Toughest Challenge
This quarter was like running a marathon with a sprained ankle.
Family illness was unbelievable. Some of this was my own illness, but the biggest challenge was extra caretaking from missed school days and sleepless nights with Little Kirby.
Before pre-school, for a year and a half, Little Kirby was sick twice. Since starting pre-school, he’s been sick perhaps 8 times. I’ve honestly lost track. Every other week it’s something new. After a recent cold, he went back to school for one day and immediately caught a long-lasting stomach virus.
The stomach bugs are extra awful for us parents because of, let’s just say, messes. Thumbs down. Zero stars.
Nora and I catch most, but not all, of the bugs Kirby brings into the house. I was some version of sick for all but one of the shoots I did for the ChatGPT course. As I write this, I’m at home with Little K as he recovers from the latest stomach bug.
What worked, what didn’t
I tried a variety of experiments this quarter. Some worked, most didn’t.
These worked.
Good course launch
Good growth with the Everything is a Remix mailing list
Good success with targeted email campaigns
The free module of the AI course worked
The major thing that didn’t work was writing. I tried cranking out lots of writing. All of this was outperformed by a single video I posted on YouTube, which didn’t even do that well views-wise. Video content will be a priority in Q2.
Q1 Grade: Pass
For Quarter 1 of Operation 11th Hour I scored a pass.
BUT!
I’m at the low end of where I need to be. I can’t stay here. I need to make more revenue next quarter.
An extra challenge: I need to achieve this while still doing freelance work because that work is still ongoing.
I live to fight another quarter! I couldn’t have done it without your support. Sincerely, thank you to every one of you.
What’s next? An exciting new thing! I’ll start telling you about it next week.
Love,
k
P.S. If you’d like to support this endeavor, go buy something! If you’re interested in consultation or coaching about AI or creative work, head to the contact page and drop me a line.
Why is Liu Cixin original?
Liu Cixin in The Wall Street Journal
Some people just are original. They’ve got it.
Maybe it’s because of their past experiences. Maybe they’re just wired that way. Regardless, they somehow have a more original voice than the rest of us.
Liu Cixin, for instance, has it.
Cixin is a science fiction author best known for The Three-Body Problem trilogy, which is being adapted into a Netflix series.
In the prologue to The Three-Body Problem, Cixin writes about how a blend of random experiences coalesced to define his imagination.
And so, satellite, hunger, stars, kerosene lamps, the Milky Way, the Cultural Revolution’s factional civil wars, a light-year, the flood … these seemingly unconnected things melded together and formed the early part of my life, and also molded the science fiction I write today.
Part of why he’s original is luck. He didn’t choose these experiences, they just happened.
But even if you didn’t win the originality lottery, you can always be more original. And it’s not even that hard.
Draw major inspiration from outside your field
Cixin Liu is really a scientist and engineer who writes fiction. His dominant interest is science, which he translates into fiction.
Sure, plenty of sci-fi authors are the same, but there’s an infinity of possible ways to do this.
When you draw inspiration from other fields, you almost can’t help but be original because you have to translate those concepts in order to merge them into your medium. You have to invent.
If you’re a developer, don’t let software dominate your interests. If you’re a filmmaker, don’t let film dominate. If you write science fiction, don’t let science fiction dominate.
Stay Out of the Herd
The key to originality is simple: stay out of the herd. Or at least, venture out of the herd regularly.
Originality, like creativity itself, is about finding unusual connections and sources. If you get your media through the major algorithms and popular content, you’ll just create versions of that stuff – and second-rate versions at that.
Matter of fact, the more useless a subject seems, the more exciting the discoveries can be. Who would think that kerosene lamps would have much to do with writing hard science fiction? For Cixin, that experience wove into his imagination.
The simplest lesson of all
Here’s the simplest lesson of all we can draw from not just Cixin but all authors: read books.
Most people don’t read books anymore. Books improve your life in a wide variety of ways. They improve focus and attention. Fiction raises your sense of empathy. There is no greater fuel for the imagination than books.
Go read a book. If you haven’t yet, start with The Three-Body Problem and thank me later.
"The Years Pass Like Months." Why Does Time Speed Up?
When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked as a low-level graphic designer and technician (Mac nerd) at a printing plant in a tiny town in Nova Scotia, Canada. I made hundreds of newspaper ads for a couple of years, then graduated to pizza flyers and fishing equipment catalogs.
Places like this pretty much don’t exist now. Guys would smoke cigarettes while standing beside literal tons of highly flammable newsprint. Some folks were clearly alcoholics and that was ignored so long it didn’t get out of hand.
The guy who serviced the vending machines was a fun character. He had friends at the plant and dropped in during his breaks. He was a huge, powerful, big-bearded man with a potbelly that stretched thin the mid-section of his t-shirt.
I would guess now that he was probably 60-ish – or maybe 50-ish with a lotta miles on him.
He was a light-hearted guy who loved small talk and jokes. But one day he was earnest and I’ve remembered what he said ever since.
“Time speeds up when you’re older. It’s all so fast now. The years… they pass like months.”
I’d never heard of such a thing. Time was… time, right? You get older and older faster and faster? It gave me an existential chill. Especially because I instantly knew he was right.
As a kid, every day was a long and winding adventure. A year was an infinity.
By the time I’d heard this guy’s insight, my thirtieth year was approaching and I was noticing how quickly the odometer was spinning. As the decades have passed since it’s just gotten faster.
Time accelerates as we age. Days blend together. Did we go to the play gym yesterday or the day before? A week begins then it’s over. You get used to being in your 40s, then you’re in your 50s.
Each year of your life passes a bit more quickly than the one before.
I’d never considered that I could do anything about this.
I’ve been listening to Moshe Bar’s fantastic book Mindwandering and he thinks you actually can do something about it.
Why do the years pass more quickly as we get older?
Bar thinks one of the reasons time speeds up is because we experience less and less novelty. We’ve seen so much that we engage less and less with the real world and spend more and more time in our mind’s perception of the world. We increasingly look at our mental map, not the territory around us.
I’ll also add: we vaporize thousands of hours on phones, TV, and video games. This is huge.
Bar believes when you spend less time lost in your interior monologue, time slows down.
One way to do this is through mindfulness meditation. (If you’re curious, just search. There are loads of resources out there.)
But it’s even simpler than that. We all know how to quiet our minds. Stop talking to yourself.
When you notice your mind jabbering away about nonsense, let it go. Begin to recognize when your mind is churning and let the thoughts pass. Don’t say anything in your head.
Your mind will always churn, that’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s trying to make meaning and plot your future. You can only reign it in.
We all have to work, parent, study, caretake, et cetera. Sometimes you need to talk in your head while doing these things. But when you don’t have to, don’t.
How do you slow down time?
The answer is simple: think less, experience more.
This can feel boring. Accept the initial discomfort.
Try this out this week. Quiet your mind. Slow it down. It isn’t easy to do, but it is simple to work at and improve.
Oh, and more important than slowing time down: it feels better. It’s a better life.
Love,
K
The Spring Reset
It’s springtime, folks! And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy fall! Cold and decay! Hooray!!!
Regardless of your GPS coordinates, it’s a new season and it’s the perfect time to reset. If you’re off-track, let’s get on track. If you’re on track, let’s level up.
Remember, this can be about anything, not just work or creative projects. If you need to do better with your health or your family or relationship or social life or community or even hobby, a new season is a great opportunity to create change.
The Good
Here’s where I’m at. This is all about business because that’s my focus this year.
I’ve done decently thus far this year – or as I’ve said before, slightly good. Here are my wins, some big, some small.
I started the year with a bang and delivered a two-hour-plus video course about ChatGPT, on time, on Christmas Day. I executed a good launch. The course has been well-received and some well-known people took it.
I ventured into areas outside my wheelhouse, like Google Ads and targeted emails, and scored some small wins.
The Everything is a Remix newsletter was a priority and generated good growth.
I’ve met loads of amazing people.
After course income started to decline, I was able to quickly secure freelance work.
Consistency has long been a weakness of mine, but I’ve put out two articles every week all year.
I’m writing the most and the most easily I have in my life.
The less-good and what I’m going to do about it
Here are the struggles I’ve had and how I’ll address them.
Overall, after a strong start, momentum has dipped. Some of this is because I’m working on other projects, but that’s not the only cause.
Course sales dropped more than I would like. I need to refocus on sales and marketing and establish consistency.
My social media efforts have not delivered much and I’m occasionally making myself cringe with stuff I’m posting. (To be clear, selling stuff requires enduring some cringe.) I’m mostly shelving social for now and just posting updates about new stuff.
I’m gonna launch something new! This will be something I’m very excited about and I hope you will be too. It’ll be my biggest and best product yet.
But the biggest change I’m going to make is this.
Video returns to the center of my life
I’ve written a lot this quarter, more than I ever have before. I’ve really developed that muscle. But there are two problems.
It hasn’t amounted to much.
I don’t think I’m especially great at it.
Writing feels partial to me, like a prototype. With some exceptions, I often feel like something is missing from what I write.
Now, I don’t love every video I’ve made. But I love plenty of them and I like the rest. It’s easy for me to make stuff I like in video form.
I can’t escape video. I’m a lifer.
This might sound like an obvious conclusion, because, y’know, I’m a filmmaker. But this is a major change in my work.
The way I made videos before was insanely labor-intensive. Everything is a Remix, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, all the video-essay style stuff – each of those videos took months and there was no conceivable way to make them faster. They weren’t working well enough to justify that kind of investment. I had to let that kind of work go and try something more efficient, writing. Writing has gotten faster and easier for me and now I think I can adapt that material into easier-to-produce videos.
And I now have a business model. Before I only had videos. Video is possible again if I can make it in a reasonable amount of time and if it can serve the business.
So I’m trying that next! I’ve already launched a new video, which you can see below. (It’s a version of the ChatGPT course content.)
I’m aiming to publish a new video every two weeks, but the quantity-quality balance is not settled.
So that’s my major course correction. All of you will, of course, be the first to see how this goes.
Hemingway Was Right (and ChatGPT Can Help)
NEW VIDEO
Hemingway Was Right (and ChatGPT Can Help)
Watch 25 minutes of my ChatGPT course FOR FREE
TRANSCRIPT
Hi everybody and welcome back to the wonderful world of Everything is a Remix. I'm gonna try some new things. I'm experimenting. I don't know what I'm doing or where this is going.
I know I told some of you I'm retiring from video, I stopped the kinds of videos I was making. It's a new game for me, this is a new chapter. I'm going to be doing things in a way.
I want to tell you about an exciting new project I have and share one of the best parts of it right here.
I have a new course about ChatGPT and AI. You can watch the entire first module, which is 7 videos, over 25 minutes of content, for FREE. There's a link in the description.
AI is the next frontier in creativity. And the best tool there is... is ChatGPT.
What for? For writing and for writing content.
ChatGPT helps you deal with this.
The blank page. The void. The abyss. That relentless blinking cursor.
You can get spooked here. When you're starting from nothing, it's easy to get overwhelmed with choices or overthink or procrastinate.
Remember what I'm about to say. Make a note. Screencap.
Rewriting is easier than writing. I'll say it again: rewriting is easier than writing.
ChatGPT gives you something to work with. It's not good necessarily, it's just... something. It's a start.
Some of you might be thinking: doesn't your first draft need to be kinda like... good?
No no no. No, it really doesn't. Common misconception.
Don't believe me?
How about the author Jane Smiley? She won the Pulitzer Prize. She said.
"Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist."
How about Anne Lamott? She wrote a famous book about writing called Bird by Bird.
"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere."
Or most famously, Earnest Hemingway might have said "The first draft of anything is s--t."
We're not totally quite sure he said exactly that.
The first draft is often bad. Just like the first demo of a song is bad or the alpha version of your software is bad or the first prototype of your product is bad.
Thinking that the first draft has to be good will paralyze you. It'll stop you from starting.
ChatGPT can get you that crappy first draft, it can give you the raw material. Then you have to rewrite it pretty much completely. There won't be much ChatGPT left in it when you're done.
Sound like a lot of work? It's way less work than writing your own first draft and then making that better.
I'll say it again, rewriting is easier than writing.
When there is something there on the page, you can improve it and fix it.
And sure, sometimes ChatGPT will strike out. No matter what you do, its first draft will be a dud, you won't be able to use it. Was that a waste of time?
No, you still come out ahead. Because seeing what you don't want can shed light on what you do want. It's helped you narrow down the possibilities.
In sports, there's the expression "You're either winning or you're learning." Same applies here. Even when you lose with an attempt at a first draft, you learn, and you get closer to a solution.
Saltburn: An Anti-Lesson in Originality
Still image from Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn
Emerald Fennell’s latest film Saltburn is highly polarizing. That’s certainly a quality of good art. Good art is provocative and strikes a nerve. In that regard, Saltburn is good art.
But it’s not actually good art.
There are many reasons for this, like goofy plotting, cardboard characters, and its overall trashy psychological thriller quality.
But this is the biggest reason: Saltburn lacks originality.
Saltburn feels too familiar because it’s overflowing with recognizable references to popular movies and social media fodder.
The biggest similarity is to 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, a well-known, big-budget Hollywood film with an A-list cast.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Broey Deschanel goes into the issue in-depth in this video essay.
This familiarity increases Saltburn’s popular appeal and helps it go down easy, but it’s a double-edged sword. We also crave originality, things that feel new.
The art that resonates the most deeply with us comes with a strong dose of originality. Originality forges a deeper connection with us and creates work that can endure.
If Saltburn were more original, it could have been good art.
So how do you be more original?
How to Be Original
Your originality lies in how you combine existing influences and add your distinctive perspective.
Here’s the key: be eclectic.
Having diverse and unusual interests will help you discover unusual material to incorporate into your work and develop a unique viewpoint.
How do you be eclectic?
Think of your imagination as having two realms:
1) The Professional or Avocation Realm
2) The Hobby Realm
The professional realm is your primary work – you’re a designer, developer, entrepreneur, filmmaker, et cetera. This is your domain and you’ll need to have plenty of interest here. You can find interesting and unusual sources here, but you can’t follow them too closely without becoming derivative.
The hobby realm is where you get eclectic. Pursue fascinating and weird subjects that have nothing at all to do with your domain. It’s this second realm that will provide you with unique connections and inspiration. Have fun, follow your heart, and wander wherever you desire. This isn’t work, it’s play.
The issue with Saltburn is this: Fennell is a filmmaker and her main source of inspiration is films. And not unusual films, but popular films that we’ve all seen.
Her hobby interest is probably social media, which, again, is stuff most people have already seen.
If Fennell’s hobby interest was, say, the literature of the nineties, that could have resulted in Saltburn feeling more original, and thus more fresh and vital.
See how simple that is? Rather than scrolling social media as a hobby, be a book buff.
There’s a lot more to unpack here. Next week, I’ll share much more about how to be original. And it’s simpler than it seems.
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How Remixing Grew Into a Multi-billion $ IP
How does creativity happen?
Step 1
We start with copying. Watch Everything is a Remix Part 1 to learn more.
Step 2
We take what we copied and we transform it. We stretch it, squish it, flip it, distort it, recolor it, add effects, or anything else you can imagine.
By the way, this includes making mistakes. You try to do one thing and get something else. Always take a moment to evaluate your mistakes. Mistakes can be free ideas.
Transformation is time-consuming tinkering. We make small revisions again and again and again, and over time, these turn your source material into something unrecognizable. The Daft Punk sequence from Everything is a Remix Part 1 is a fun example.
George Lucas was the first major entertainer to work in a clearly remix-y style. He took bits from other films and transformed them. This style is strongest in the original Star Wars from 1977.
Lucas initially conceived of Star Wars as a version of the Flash Gordon shorts from the 1930s. Overall, Star Wars still bears many similarities, which is why many science fiction fans think Star Wars is not science fiction. Flash Gordon was more of a fantasy. It was castles, princesses, and evil kings, much like Star Wars.
The style and swordplay of the Jedis are drawn from samurai films, like those of Akira Kurosawa.
Some scenes in Star Wars resemble those from famous Westerns, like The Searchers.
The template for the final Death Star mission was a variety of World War II films, like The Dambusters.
All these are just the beginning. Watch this sequence from the original Everything is a Remix series to see more. And for the deepest of deep dives, check out Michael Heilemann’s site, Kitbashed.
But transformation isn’t just about art and entertainment. It applies to innovation and business as well. That’s where we’re headed in our next installment.
BIAS: One of my most important creative tools
I want to share one of my most essential tools. It’s a four-step method for generating ideas called BIAS. That stands for Bound, Immerse, Arrange, and Stop. I’ll briefly explain each, but check out my digital toolkit, Get Ideas Now, for a more thorough explanation of this process.
How BIAS Works
BOUND
Start by defining the boundaries for your exploration. Creativity thrives within constraints. Pick a niche, like, for instance, early first-person shooters.IMMERSE
Next, immerse yourself deeply in your chosen area. Research and absorb knowledge through reading, talking to experts, and experiencing relevant products and culture.ARRANGE
Arrange your findings into narratives, maps, and connections. Push yourself to go deep—but beware of lapsing into analysis paralysis.STOP
Now, the twist: stop working! Go for a walk, take a drive, or just relax. After you stop working, your subconscious will work its magic. Ideas often arise in these quiet moments, so be prepared to capture them in your phone or a notebook.
Following these steps sets the stage for your subconscious mind to generate ideas. You might not be aware of the process, but it's happening beneath the surface.
In other words, getting ideas is just a matter of:
Picking a specific topic
Uploading a bunch of information to your brain
Reviewing it and arranging it
Stopping and waiting
Any creative person you admire is probably doing some version of this.
When is copying wrong?
Above: The TV series Invasion (2023). Below: The Abyss (1989). Is this sort of copying wrong?
I’ve been watching the Apple TV+ series Invasion. There’s a scene in the show where I’m sure thousands of sci-fi fans all said, “Uh, that’s from The Abyss.”
You can see the two shots above. And yeah, they’re quite a bit alike. Is there anything wrong with this?
Let me talk this through using the example of the seventies hard rock band Led Zeppelin. (Click that link to watch this section of Everything is a Remix Part 1.)
There’s no doubt that Led Zeppelin were a highly imaginative group of musicians, especially Jimmy Page, the band’s guitarist and founder. Nonetheless, early in the band’s recording career, Page and Zeppelin repeatedly crossed an important line: the line between copying and plagiarism.
The clearest example of this is the song “Dazed and Confused.” Without a doubt, this was an uncredited cover of a song by Jakes Holmes. Check out the songs back to back in our playlist: Spotify, Apple Music. (They’re songs 31 and 32 in the list.)
Page plagiarized Holmes’ song.
So: copying is wrong when it’s plagiarism.
Uh huh. But when is copying plagiarism?
Copying is plagiarism when you copy too many parts at once.
For instance, Page could have copied a single part from “Dazed and Confused,” like its dark mood, the descending guitar line, a bit of the melody, even the title “Dazed And Confused,” which wasn’t Holmes’ invention.
But Page copied all these things. The Led Zeppelin version of the song does all of these things… and more.
(Yes, there’s plenty of original music and lyrics in the Led Zeppelin version, but as a whole, Zeppelin’s song is too much like Holmes.)
So what’s the verdict on this image?
In my opinion, it’s certainly not plagiarism. All that was really copied was a single element: reaching out to a gelatinous blob.
However, I will say this: I think these filmmakers could have done better. That moment from The Abyss is well-known and they could transform that idea more. This would make it less recognizable, and more importantly, make this scene more their own and more imaginative.
And that’s where we’ll head next, into the realm of transformation. This is how we take things we love and make them our own.
How AI Remixes the Human Imagination
AI is the new frontier of creative work. And remixing is deeply ingrained in generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E.
All generative AI is trained on the infinite library of creative expression that is the internet. When AI “creates,” it is remixing. It copied loads of human work, then it transforms and combines this data to create new works.
The technology of AI itself is remixing human creative work.
But we also remix when we use AI.
When we write with AI, we can take our words and transform them into someone else’s style.
For instance, I can take the first paragraph of this post and have ChatGPT turn it into a children’s song. Here’s the first verse.
AI's a new frontier, so vast and bright,
A world where ideas take flight.
In the land of ChatGPT and DALL-E's art,
Creative journeys are about to start!
When we create images with AI, we cite styles and artists and remix them.
The image below was created by DALL-E using the prompt “create an image of the easter bunny rendered in a renaissance painting style.” To the right you can see its clearest influence, The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci.
So how do you get started with AI creativity? Download our free toolkit, 11 Incredible Ways to Work With Al, to get started!
Originality Matters. But What Is It?
Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction
Originality is a misleading concept. All new works, no matter how radical they seem, are derived from past works.
Like all young film nerds of the nineties, Pulp Fiction blew my frickin’ mind. The film was basically a long sequence of things I’d never seen before.
That Sam Jackson interrogation in the apartment
That sweet, awkward dance scene
A major character dying early (sure, I’d seen it a couple times – Psycho, To Live and Die in LA – but it was a rarity)
The gimp, the dungeon
The adrenaline shot
And most of all, the nonlinear structure
Pulp Fiction inspired many filmmakers, Guy Ritchie, Edgar Wright, and P.T. Anderson among them. And it influenced countless films, most noticeably with its nonlinear style, which was taken even further in the likes of Run Lola Run and Memento.
Love him or hate him, Tarantino is an original, to the point that he’s become his own genre.
And yet Tarantino is also derivative.
One of the later revelations that led to the idea of Everything is a Remix was my discovery of how Tarantino creates, which I would describe as steal liberally.
His first film, Reservoir Dogs, shared a lot of plot similarities with the Hong Kong action film, City on Fire (a far less notable film, by the way).
Tarantino’s later film, Kill Bill, was a brazen mash-up of dozens of martial arts films. I explored that in the original Remix series.
I later learned how Pulp Fiction was a stew of influences and some of the stand-out elements even had specific sources.
The Band of Outsiders dance scene is the inspiration for the one in Pulp Fiction
That sweet, odd dance scene had the same feel as the dance scene in Band of Outsiders.
One of the tensest scenes in the film, the adrenaline shot, was based on a moment from an early Martin Scorsese doc.
And that striking nonlinear style was a prominent element in loads of film noir, including Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.
And yet, Pulp Fiction is original, Tarantino is original.
When something gets called “original” it simply means it seems original. It hit some sort of threshold where its novel qualities are far more striking than its familiar qualities. It doesn’t mean the work as a whole is without precedent.
Originality in that sense not only exists, it’s a vital quality of great creative work. Originality is one of the most enthralling and exciting features you can achieve. All the great filmmakers – Kubrick, Hitchcock, Bergman, Kurosawa, Spielberg, Lynch – are originals.
How does one achieve originality? I’ll explore that next time.
Operation 11th Hour: Month 2 Update!
I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!
Month 2 is complete! How’d it go?
The short answer is: I survived!
Operation 11th Hour basically entered a holding pattern. In January I could see that course sales would be much slower in February. I didn’t yet have a good plan to boost sales and get in front of new eyeballs.
So I elected to buy some time. I rallied some freelance work, coaching, and consulting to fill the hole… and it worked. (However, because I diverted time to this other work, course revenue probably dropped even further.)
The end result: February generated almost as much revenue as January. I remain in the same position as at the end of Month 1, which I described as “slightly good.” I’m in a decent place for the short term, but staying at the “slightly good” level will not cut it. The trend line’s gotta up.
What’s in store for Month 3? It might look a lot like this month because I’ll still be working on those freelance projects, which will take most of my time.
I definitely need to change things up and get fresh revenue flowing. Month 3 would be successful if I could generate some new momentum from the educational work while working on freelance projects.