10 Days to Paid Challenge: Introduction

Hey there, future freelancer! 👋NOTE: This was meant to go out last night but life was doing what life does. So, when I say 10 Days to Paid hits your inbox Tuesday, hear that as TOMORROW! 🎉

If we're just meeting, I'm Erica Nall—a chronically ill healthcare escapee who became a top 1% Upwork copywriting freelancer, retired my husband, and now travels full-time in our RV with an alarming stockpile of Diet Coke.

People are always wide-eyed when I tell them I quit my six-figure healthcare position, built a freelance business that makes more than my corporate salary ever did, and now work from wherever the heck I want. Their immediate question is always:

"But HOW did you actually do it?" 👀

The System Failure That Changed Everything

Let me get real with you about why I'm even here teaching this.

I gave my literal health—almost died—for my employer back in 2020. I wrapped my self-worth and identity around being a killer employee because that's what we've been taught all our lives: that our value is in our jobs, our careers, how we climb the ladder.

And when I needed help despite all I had given? My employer chose themselves.

Then 2023 happened:

* My husband lost his job after 25 YEARS of loyalty to a tech company he helped build from the ground up in the 90s into a half-billion-dollar per year enterprise

* My high school teacher dad was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer just before retirement

* My son was making $15/hour with ZERO chance of affording his own apartment

* My mom was forced into early retirement to care for my aging grandparents and then was left having to choose between her parents and her dying husband

* My grandparents had to sell their family home just to qualify for the nursing care they needed

The systems were failing everyone I loved, all at once.

Something in me just... broke.

I rented our house to my son and his friends (so they could actually have affordable housing), bought an RV with my husband, and headed west to be with my parents. And I returned to freelancing with a completely different level of determination.

We Weren't Meant to Live Like This

We weren't put on this earth to give our lives and health away to other people for the sake of them making money off our hard work. We were meant to be tribes, a community, people who helped one another.

We are here to experience. To learn. To love.

And I've seen enough proof in my lifetime to know that the way our systems work right now—at least here in the US—is NOT how we were meant to be living.

You shouldn't be:

* Living in debt just to maintain a middle-class lifestyle

* Starting GoFundMes to pay for medical bills

* Working full-time for decades only to face retirement insecurity

* Watching your parents and grandparents struggle after lifetimes of hard work

Our systems are failing everywhere you look. People are suffering. People are struggling. People are hateful to one another right now because LIFE IS HARD and they want someone to blame.

But the hard truth? It's the lack and instability of financial resources that is at the ROOT of this breakdown.

Freedom Was Always Your Birthright

Having finally broken through to the other side, I can tell you:

* Being fully self-employed

* Making more than I ever did as an employee

* Being able to tell my husband "just don't go back to work"

* Traveling the US full-time in our RV

* Setting my own schedule

* Choosing my clients

* Setting my rates

* Waking up without an alarm

* Swimming in the middle of the day or taking a hike when I'm not feeling work

* Staying in bed on bad flare-up days...

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