I have gotten into the habit of reaching out to people who I admire. What I love about your exercise is that you are suggesting for us to have conversations with people who might be dead.. I have been thinking about your approach for a couple of days but I must say that I am far too practical for me to be ok with being hypothetical. 

Thanks to the internet it's fairly easy to find people we can learn from. When I wrote my first book I approached freelancers who I admired for their careers. That really made a huge difference in my first year of freelancing.

Now with the second book, I've been trying to figure out how to turn my freelance career into a creative business while remaining the freedom freelancers have. Here are the people I've been talking to and who I've learned from:

• Elaine McMillion Sheldon, an incredible film maker who I've been chatting to about implementing educational elements to your work to create a gradual income
• Joanna Penn, who I've been talking to about building a career as a self-published writer
• Sara Comb, who's explained to me how she uses social media. She was very much inspired by your work and has now built a whole new income stream as a pattern designer thanks to your 100 day project
• Elise Blaha, who's explained to me how she invests in new projects
• Susan Schmitz, who managed to build a social business helping rescue groups find homes for their pets quicker while pursuing a career as a photographer
• Helen Johannessen, who has explained to me the importance of being part of the right community
• Sarah J Bray, who's talked me through building, re-building and iterating businesses
• Jaymay, who's explained to me how musicians can make money with royalties
• Lisa Glanz who's creating DIY sets for others to implement in their creative work
• Patty Golsteijn, who's built a career because she has a strong point of view
• Sophie C Ryba who's supporting small business owners with their online marketing
• Shayna McHugh who teaches English to people in short periods of time
• Maaike Boot, who has explained to me how she grows her income by being resourceful with her creative work
• Julieta Ulanovskywho's explained to me the importance of side projects
• .. and Sarah Eichhorn who's recently returned from an around the world trip even though she had been working with her clients back in Germany the entire time while living on the road.

I have approached all these women quite randomly and just asked them whether they would like to share their story with me. And they did! Transcribing and editing these interviews is really helpful for me to reflect on what they said. It's a long, exciting and simultaneusly a very painful process that makes me think about every single word they said at least millions of times.

I am actually really excited to publish what I have learned from them. I'm planning to go live on Kickstarter on the 4th of January. Nevertheless if I could choose anyone to mentor me it would be Tina Roth Eisenberg and Seth Godin. I approached Tina too unfortunately haven't heard back just yet.