India splits her time between contract production and agency work, but she wants to stop prioritizing other people's projects to scale her personal brand. Enter Simone Stolzoff, workplace researcher and author of The Good Enough Job, who advocates for building a multi-pronged freelance career rather than recklessly burning your ships. He introduces India to an evaluation rubric for vetting new business, advising her to decline any corporate opportunity that does not offer either a premium payout or a clear brand-building advantage. He exposes the traps of vocational awe that trick creatives into accepting less than they deserve, warns her about the exhausting grind of narrow algorithmic niches, and hands her a data-driven framework to prototype and prune her various income streams as her professional goals evolve.

Executive Producer Corey Wara

Edited by Geoff Craig

Booking by Ben Astaire

Do you have a burning question or a problem you need help with? Email us at howto@mikepesca.com and we will consider your topic for the show.

For full Pesca content and updates, check out our website at https://www.mikepesca.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To receive ad-free content, become a Pesca Plus subscriber at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ For Mike's daily takes on Substack, subscribe to The Gist List https://mikepesca.substack.com/

Follow us on Social Media:⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pescagist/ X https://x.com/pescami YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@pescagist⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@pescagist

To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠ad-sales@libsyn.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://advertising.libsyn.com/howto