Do people really give a sh*t about software?
Though we’re proud of our enterprise-quality software and know it’s in a league of its own, freelancers need more than the right features and tools. They need the right education and opportunities too.
Day by day, we’re building that holistic solution.
Take Excel. People needed a way to organize numbers. To crunch them, mold them, and use them to understand and visualize data. Spreadsheet software with fancy formulas really meant better insights and decisions.
Excel increased what 1 person could do by orders of magnitude.
In 1985 that was a really big deal, and now, in 2023, we want to radically change how creatives, consultants, and solopreneurs work.
Specifically, we want to shrink the amount of time and effort required to run a satisfying, sustainable freelance business.
Why? Because we believe that freelancing is the future of work.
Naysayers snort and say good luck with a market made up of artists and dreamers. We know better.
Lots of freelancers choose this path because they’re wicked smart. When they look at the value proposition of conventional employment, it doesn’t add up:
“No matter how much value I create, I have to wait how long to get a raise?”
“And no matter how hard I work or how committed I am, I still get only X number personal days and X number vacation weeks per year?”
Pardon my French, but f*ck that.
At Moxie we joke about our team and customers being “the unemployables.”
We didn’t like having someone tell us where we had to be, and when. What work we had to do, and when. What we were supposed to care about, and when. How much we’d get paid, and when.
Eventually, there came a decision point—a crux—when each of us made that fateful choice to embrace uncertainty and thereby gain more control over our work, time, and life. Value, too—we wanted to decide what our talent is worth.
Once you get that taste of setting your schedule, you can’t untaste it, you know?
A bite of that autonomy is so goooood, Georgia peach sweet, and whether you start with a side hustle or go full-time from the get-go, you choose yourself.
You let it be known that you’re now available for hire. One freelance client becomes two. Two becomes five. Mistakes happen, but money keeps trickling in.
Lo and behold, this freelance thing actually starts to… work.
Then comes that realization that one of our all-time favorite designers, Cherise Lavah, described:
“I can’t handle all these things in my brain.”
Scrappy freelancers solve this problem one of two ways:
Scenario 1 – Frankentech Stack
You roll up your sleeves and roll out your stack. You glom together ClickUp, Harvest, Dochub, and Acuity. You use Zapier duct tape for this and write custom code for that. This monstrosity is ugly, but it works, at least most of the time.
Scenario 2 – Swiss Army Knife
You hear about an all-in-one app for photographers or digital agencies, and think, “I bet that could work for me,” only to discover that Apps That Shall Not Be Named seem purpose-built to drive freelancers nuts.
Why does the least intuitive process imaginable force you through 9 steps to set up a new client? Whyyyy?!
A WordPress dev named Greg told us, “The best marketing you’ve got is your competition.”
Tools are supposed to help you do things more efficiently, not add friction and frustration. In 2020 we decided to do something about it.
Freelancers deserve better. Freelancers deserve a set of tools that are stupid-good, ones that get out of the way and just work. Or to be more precise, tools that conform to the way you want to work.
After all, there’s more to life than work and career goals.
Don’t you want to build a business that works for your life, not the other way around? As cheesy as it may sound, don’t you want to follow your dreams on your schedule?
Yes and yes, and we, the unemployables, need badass but non-obtrusive tools to make that happen.
To create them, our team has had to listen to our customers incessantly (obsessively?) and make one good decision after another on their behalf.
What drives us is emails like this one from coach and consultant Kari Silverberg: ‘'So cliche but what a breath of fresh air! It matches my brain! The way I SEE my business is right there on my screen! Whomever’s brainchild is Moxie, I’m grateful to them, and the rest of the team, for everything it does and everything it will do in the future!”
The future of work is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.
Want to get in on it?
Want to grow alongside us?
Here are our two promises to you:
Ridiculous™ Care.
Just kidding, we haven’t trademarked “ridiculous,” but please bring your questions. Ask about your rates. Hit us up when you need people to celebrate with you. A real person who gives a d*mn will respond.
No Corporate F*ckery.
If you think that we’re drifting from our purpose and aren’t making it easier for you to live the bossless life and turn your passion into income, then pull out your big red whistle. Call us out. Let us know.
That’s it. That’s the pitch.
If you want solid structure for scaling your freelance business and really just living your life, we’ve got a seat for you in this rad camper van called Moxie.
xoxo,
Geoff & the rest of the gang
