Matt Olpinski
Community Founder
Creator of The Freelance Institute • Web Designer & Developer • Freelancing Expert • Owner of Matthew's Design Co.
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This week, Circle (the platform we use to run our community) made a very exciting announcement: they are committing to building a fully integrated platform that doesn't require us to use any third-party tools, apps, or software.
This month, they are planning to launch 3 new and exciting features that I believe we can use to dramatically increase engagement and foster better conversations in our own community:
This month, they are planning to launch 3 new and exciting features that I believe we can use to dramatically increase engagement and foster better conversations in our own community:
Live Streaming
We'll soon be able to "go live" directly within our community. That means we can chat more directly / casually with each other and regain the valuable face-to-face time many of us lose when we become freelancers.
Events
The new events feature will allow us to host more events such as workshops, Q/A sessions, and fun community nights. You'll be able to RSVP, add events to your calendar, and get reminders — all integrated directly within Circle.
Member Directory
The member directory will finally live up to its full potential! Finding like-minded people is key to building a strong and valuable community. The new configurable member directory will allow you to find members more easily, allowing you to filter by spaces, locations, bios, and in time, custom profile fields that are defined by our community admins!
Overall, Circle continues to launch incredibly powerful features in record time — all of which makes us happy to have chosen them as the platform on which we build our global community of freelancers.
Please anticipate more engagement this fall as we start to leverage these powerful features to make the community more valuable for you!
Overall, Circle continues to launch incredibly powerful features in record time — all of which makes us happy to have chosen them as the platform on which we build our global community of freelancers.
Please anticipate more engagement this fall as we start to leverage these powerful features to make the community more valuable for you!
Learn more here: https://community.circle.so/c/product-updates/introducing-live-streams-events-paywalls-more
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For those of you who are members of multiple Circle communities, your profile information is now community-specific.
You can now set different profile pictures, bios, headlines, social media links and locations for each community you’re a part of.
You can now set different profile pictures, bios, headlines, social media links and locations for each community you’re a part of.
From the Circle team:
Your profile is the centrepiece of your personality in an online community. It’s a reflection of who you are and it helps other members get to know you and connect with you.
When you’re part of multiple communities, you might want to share slightly different sides of yourself with fellow members.
Community-specific profiles make this possible.
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Hey everyone! I hope you're all having a great summer — can't believe how fast time is flying by.
First, I want to apologize for my radio silence during the last month or so. As many of you know, I took a 40hr/week contract with Instacart back in June in addition to my 4 other active projects. Once that kicked into gear, I started working nights and weekends to manage the workload:
First, I want to apologize for my radio silence during the last month or so. As many of you know, I took a 40hr/week contract with Instacart back in June in addition to my 4 other active projects. Once that kicked into gear, I started working nights and weekends to manage the workload:
For me, the start of any project (up until the first deliverable I present to the client) is always the most stressful as there are so many unknowns.
- Will they like my work?
- Did I scope this correctly?
- Are they as nice as I was expecting?
- Do we communicate effectively together?
Once things get rolling, it becomes easier to manage work/life balance (at least for me). That's essentially where I'm at now, but...
Needless to say, that left me with no time to have discussions with you all here in recent weeks, but in a way, it's a testament to why I structured the community the way I did: as an independent, autonomous community where the value is in connecting with each other, not just me personally.
Now that I've got all my projects under control, I finally have time to share some life and career updates here!
Instacart 🥕
My contract with Instacart could not be going any better! I've ramped up very quickly and become a valuable member of the team. I've also become proficient with Figma and it's been incredibly valuable and educational being a part of such a large, efficient, and organized team.
The project I've been working on single-handedly will launch nationally with major grocery retailers such as Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Giant, and Stop & Shop in the coming weeks! They've repeatedly offered me a full-time job and it's possible that... I may accept it. 😱 At minimum, they've expressed a strong desire to continue working with me and we plan to continue extending my contract for months — or potentially even years.
The project I've been working on single-handedly will launch nationally with major grocery retailers such as Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Giant, and Stop & Shop in the coming weeks! They've repeatedly offered me a full-time job and it's possible that... I may accept it. 😱 At minimum, they've expressed a strong desire to continue working with me and we plan to continue extending my contract for months — or potentially even years.
One key thing I've realized recently is that I'm not obligated to follow a traditional freelance career path: work full-time, freelance forever, grow a company, etc. It's ok if my career has some curves in it.
I'm open to any new and exciting opportunities that make me happy and don't compromise the hard work I've done to get where I am today.
For example, I've been freelancing for over 6 years and started my own company. It's going really well, but for the right compensation at the right company, I'm also open to the idea of taking a full-time role for a few years (stable income, benefits, etc) and only taking 1-2 projects a year through my own business on the side.
And there's nothing wrong with that. There are many years left in my career and there's no reason I need to spend all of them doing the same thing just on principle.
Takeaway: work hard, do what makes you happy, and never say never!
Matthew's Design Co.
The 4 other client projects I'm working on are going quite well.
- One is in the late stages of beta testing and should fully launch soon. This one is barely taking any of my time.
- Another is in Phase II of design and development after a successful product launch last year. This one requires significant time and energy.
- Another is a small monthly retainer (design consultation) I established with a past client (at their request)! It's 10 hours a month renewable in 3-month increments. Can't say no to reliable, predictable income!
- The last one is a new client that I'm partnering with one of our own members on! It's a massive branding, marketing, and product design project and work is going quite well so far!
I don't plan on taking on any more projects in 2021. Currently booking into 2022!
Blog, Newsletter, and Community
Unfortunately, when business gets busy, other commitments need to take a back seat. That's been the case lately, but I'm hoping to free up more time for my blog, newsletter, and this community this fall.
Rachel's Edit
My wife
Rachel
recently opened her own makeup and esthetics studio, which we've renovated together — and her business has been taking off! You can read more about that on her newly updated website. The update includes a new logo and home page layout!
Personal Life
Rachel and I celebrated her birthday this month with a kayaking trip 🚣 and our 5 year wedding anniversary is coming up in just a few weeks! We've also planned a trip to Maine this fall which we're very much looking forward to. 🍁🍂🎃
We also bought a new custom hi-side barn garage as our current metal shed is literally falling apart. This will be 12x24 with a garage door, double doors, 3 large windows, a workbench, and a loft — plus it's large and sturdy enough to park a car in for the winter!
One of my "just for fun" hobbies is building the most challenging Lego Technic sets available and displaying them in my home office. Most recently, I built the Land Rover Defender and added it to my collection:
Lastly, I added some new Fossil watches to my collection and bought this really cool soft watch case on Amazon that keeps them organized and protected without needing to act as a fancy display case. My other favorite watch brand (shown here) is Skagen:
Phew! This was a long post, but hey — it's been a while 😄
Overall, life has been really busy lately, but also really exciting. I'm having so much fun at work and at home! Hard work absolutely pays off, especially in the long run. I've been working hard my whole life and I'm at a point now where I can really have fun with everything I have — my business, my home, and my family 🙏
What fun things have you been doing lately? I'd love to hear about them!
Also, please continue posting, asking questions, and sharing experiences! Don't feel obligated to draft formal posts. If you have something to share or a question you need answered, go for it! 💪
Thanks again for being a part of this community and I hope you all continue to have a great summer! ☀️
One of my "just for fun" hobbies is building the most challenging Lego Technic sets available and displaying them in my home office. Most recently, I built the Land Rover Defender and added it to my collection:
Lastly, I added some new Fossil watches to my collection and bought this really cool soft watch case on Amazon that keeps them organized and protected without needing to act as a fancy display case. My other favorite watch brand (shown here) is Skagen:
Phew! This was a long post, but hey — it's been a while 😄
Overall, life has been really busy lately, but also really exciting. I'm having so much fun at work and at home! Hard work absolutely pays off, especially in the long run. I've been working hard my whole life and I'm at a point now where I can really have fun with everything I have — my business, my home, and my family 🙏
What fun things have you been doing lately? I'd love to hear about them!
Also, please continue posting, asking questions, and sharing experiences! Don't feel obligated to draft formal posts. If you have something to share or a question you need answered, go for it! 💪
Thanks again for being a part of this community and I hope you all continue to have a great summer! ☀️
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When Circle first launched its platform last year, it did not have any integrated payment feature by design. That meant every community owner had to set up an external payment source (such as Gumroad or Stripe) to charge for community access.
Currently, we use Gumroad as our payment processor, which isn't ideal and results in a fragmented experience for our members, especially during onboarding.
But last week, Circle announced that they are launching the most-requested feature yet: integrated payments!
This new feature will have many exciting benefits and will allow us to offer you:
When Circle first launched its platform last year, it did not have any integrated payment feature by design. That meant every community owner had to set up an external payment source (such as Gumroad or Stripe) to charge for community access.
Currently, we use Gumroad as our payment processor, which isn't ideal and results in a fragmented experience for our members, especially during onboarding.
But last week, Circle announced that they are launching the most-requested feature yet: integrated payments!
This new feature will have many exciting benefits and will allow us to offer you:
- Monthly or annual subscriptions for your membership, directly within Circle
- One-time payments for access to specific spaces in our community
- Offer multiple access tiers and membership tiers with different pricing plans
- Offer free trials, which then turn into recurring payments
- One-click upsells to offer progressive access to other spaces, products and membership levels.
- Email and payment receipts directly from Circle (not Gumroad).
We're particularly excited about offering you free trials as this has been a long-requested feature by new members.
We're going to look at these features carefully once they are released and decide how to migrate to a more integrated payment system right here in Circle. We may replace the free membership tier in favor of free trials for full community access plans.
Thank you for your continued support as we optimize our community to bring you and any new members the best possible experience!
We're going to look at these features carefully once they are released and decide how to migrate to a more integrated payment system right here in Circle. We may replace the free membership tier in favor of free trials for full community access plans.
Thank you for your continued support as we optimize our community to bring you and any new members the best possible experience!
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Circle recently announced that a handful of exciting new features have been added to the native iOS app.
Video and image upload
You can now upload your own images and videos from your camera roll and albums to your posts. Perfect for creating content on the go. Want to attach an image or video to a comment? That works too!
Member Search
It's now very easy to search for members and view their profiles in our community. Here's how:
More control on group chats and direct messages
You can now leave and mute/unmute group chats, and archive 1:1 chats.
From Circle: These features are just the tip of the iceberg. Our iOS team shipped a bunch of performance and usability improvements too! Don't have the Circle iOS app yet? Go ahead and download it here: https://circle.so/ios. It can also be found by searching for Circle Communities on the App Store.
From Circle: These features are just the tip of the iceberg. Our iOS team shipped a bunch of performance and usability improvements too! Don't have the Circle iOS app yet? Go ahead and download it here: https://circle.so/ios. It can also be found by searching for Circle Communities on the App Store.
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If time and money were no object and you could pick any job or career you wanted, what would you choose?
- An astronaut?
- A veterinarian?
- A musician?
- A carpenter?
- A writer?
- An engineer?
- A dancer?
- A racecar driver?
- A singer?
- A game designer?
I'm curious to hear not only what you're all interested in as hobbies, but deep down what you'd love to spend your entire career doing if you had the choice.
Feel free to list more than one thing and don't forget to share a little context about why you'd make that choice!
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Over 3 years ago, we launched our freelance community as Slack workspace. In January of 2021, we migrated our community to the Circle platform. After 5 full months and a long stretch of inactivity in Slack, we've permanently deleted our old Slack workspace, said goodbye to our humble beginnings, and finalized our commitment to the Circle platform.
This is a bittersweet moment for us. While we're sad to retire the old Slack community, it's a sign of how much we've grown and how far we've come in establishing our community on a flexible, scalable platform designed specifically for communities.
Since migrating to Circle, we've seen significant increases in engagement, quality of conversation, new sign-ups, and general awareness. Overall it's been a big step in the right direction and while we know there's plenty of room for improvement, we (Matt and Rachel) are so happy with how the community is taking shape.
If for some reason you need to access any messages that were sent in a public channel in the Slack community, we did a full backup before pulling the plug. Just let a community manager know and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks so much for being here. The community would not be the same without you! 🙏
This is a bittersweet moment for us. While we're sad to retire the old Slack community, it's a sign of how much we've grown and how far we've come in establishing our community on a flexible, scalable platform designed specifically for communities.
Since migrating to Circle, we've seen significant increases in engagement, quality of conversation, new sign-ups, and general awareness. Overall it's been a big step in the right direction and while we know there's plenty of room for improvement, we (Matt and Rachel) are so happy with how the community is taking shape.
If for some reason you need to access any messages that were sent in a public channel in the Slack community, we did a full backup before pulling the plug. Just let a community manager know and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks so much for being here. The community would not be the same without you! 🙏
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Circle recently announced that they're launching a new group chat feature and we signed our community up for early beta access!
We're not completely sure how to best leverage this new and exciting feature just yet, but we always try to get the latest and greatest updates from the Circle product team.
Here are some of the ways Circle has suggested we can use the new group chat feature:
We're not completely sure how to best leverage this new and exciting feature just yet, but we always try to get the latest and greatest updates from the Circle product team.
Here are some of the ways Circle has suggested we can use the new group chat feature:
- Easily let your members spin up small group chats with other members
- Coaches, group leaders, and organizers can create private rooms to chat with their members or clients
- Course creators can create rooms to chat with their students
- Members can create rooms to run daily or weekly accountability groups with each other
- Anyone can create a room for a group to share ideas, collaborate on projects, or just hang out.
If you have any other ideas on how we can make the most of this new feature, leave a comment below!
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Two months ago, we introduced a free tier of access to our community. We're excited to share that it worked quite well and dozens of new members have joined since then without us doing any additional marketing!
We doubled the size of our community from about 60 members to about 120 members. But you may not have realized it because almost none of them completed their profile or introduced themselves... 😞
We doubled the size of our community from about 60 members to about 120 members. But you may not have realized it because almost none of them completed their profile or introduced themselves... 😞
If that's you, please complete your profile and introduce yourself!
So we decided to add a membership application to the free signup workflow. We believe this will benefit our community (and our members) in a few ways:
- We'll create an initial touchpoint between our community managers and new members. This will help them feel welcomed and encourage them to be more engaged.
- We'll gain valuable insight about who our members are and why they decided to join. This will help us understand who our target audience is.
- We'll give free members access to one Pro space of their choice to give them more chances to engage in conversation and help them see the value of a paid membership.
- We'll weed out people who aren't serious about joining or engaging in conversation. We don't just want more signups, we want more freelancers actively engaging in conversations — that's how the community becomes more valuable!
If you're currently a free member, we'd love to give you access to one Pro space of your choice. Just comment below with the Pro (paid member only) space you'd like to join and we'll add you to it!
Thanks to all of our community members for supporting us as we try new things, experiment, and try to make the community the best it can be 🙏
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What's the one thing that attracts you to freelancing the most? Whether you're currently a freelancer or not, there's usually one thing that draws people towards the freelancing lifestyle and helps them overcome their fears and doubts.
- Is it the unlimited earning potential?
- The freedom to manage your time how you see fit?
- Being able to manage your own clients?
- A desire to run your own company?
- Being at home more often?
- The freedom of being location-independent?
If you're a full-time freelancer, I want to hear what you love most! If you're thinking about freelancing or only freelancing part-time, let's hear what you are looking forward to the most and what's motivating you to keep pursuing this career path!
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