NeildaVerse Notes #30

CrossFit, Last week as a Research Fellow, and starting my freelancing journey

Hi friends,

Happy 2023! I hope you’re having a fantastic year so far.

The past few weeks have been filled with setting up systems so I can stick with my YearCompass intentions longer. One of them is incorporating writing into my morning routine by connecting my Google calendar to my Evernote. That way, I have my essay prompts ready, and all I need to do is open up a Note and start writing. For an added forcing function, I also started using Danger Notes to avoid getting distracted before getting into the flow. If I stop writing for 5 seconds before my 5 minutes is up, all of my work will be deleted.

No pressure!

So far, I’ve been able to do this on most days.

---

🖋️ Quote of the week

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

🏆 Wins

I got back into CrossFit

One of my 2023 goals is to go back into CrossFit for at least three months. It’s a small goal, but who knows? I may go for longer than that!

The last class I took was when I was living in San Francisco over three years ago. So let’s say that I’m back to being an absolute beginner. For the first day, my main goal was to show up. I had no idea how my body would react after months of being sedentary. My only hope was not to embarrass myself in front of everyone if I didn’t know what a particular move was. But when you’re close to fainting, that’s the least of your worries.

It definitely got better in the next few sessions. I looked at the WOD (Workout of the Day) before class so I could watch training videos of the exercises I didn’t know.

Like— what makes Spanish squats “Spanish”? If you know, please share because not even my Spanish CrossFit coach knew.

Tomorrow will be Day #5 for me, and I’m looking forward to it. 💪🏾

I finished my Research Fellowship with Contrary Research

On Monday, I wrapped up my final startup memo about a marketing AI and no-code platform for marketers. I won’t be able to share it with you until it’s published on Contrary Research, but this piece was exciting. Especially since it’s about how marketers use data, AI, and GPT-3 to optimize websites for conversions (and have playbooks for you to apply immediately).

My journey during this fellowship was filled with a lot of growth, challenges, and insight. I dove into the research rabbit hole for each startup and spent hours writing to ensure readers get everything they need to be well-informed about them. My writing changed, my thinking changed, and my mindset changed. Overall, I’m proud of the pieces we published.

While the last memo I wrote won’t be ready for a few weeks, here’s the latest we published on Webflow.

👩🏾‍💻 What I learned

Since the end of my fellowship, I began reflecting on how I’d like to provide value to the world and who I want to help as a freelancer. In a similar deep-dive fashion as my startup memos, I began researching the world of freelancing and how to set the systems in place to be successful.

I’m not ready to share what I’ll be offering and to whom I’ll be offering it. Still, the most fascinating thing I learned this week was creating an enticing Upwork profile. On my list of things to do are the following:

• Create a catchy headline describing what I do and who I am

• Write a descriptive blurb about who I help and how I help them

• Record a video so potential clients can see my personality and build trust

• Share portfolio pieces to give them a preview of my work

• Write proposal templates to make it easy to reach out to my target clients

As a bonus — I’m also learning how to create custom Notion templates to organize this entire process. Who knows, maybe I’ll also add making custom Notion templates as an offering. 😉

🖼️ AI-Generated Image(s) of the week

Text description: “The Vitruvian Man as a super woman on a Times Square billboard”
AI system used: DALL·E 2 by OpenAI

🤔 My question for you

Close your eyes and picture yourself in the middle of Times Square in New York. As you look at the billboards, you see yourself on one of the big screens.

Why are you up there?

---

👋🏽 That's all for now

I’d love to hear from you, whether it’s feedback on what you enjoyed about this newsletter, what needs work, and what you want to hear more about. Just hit reply.

Till next time!

Cheers,
Neilda