Welcome to Black Freelancer – What’s next?

Hello Everyone and Happy New Year 👋🏾 

I am excited to share more about the vision, direction, and traction of Black Freelancer for 2022 and beyond. 

By now, many of you may have learned a little about BlackFreelancer.com via an Instagram post, our website, the #BlackPaper, or even joined and began engaging on our Discord server. 

Side note: Every morning I wake up and am inspired by the organic connections that are being made and conversations happening in our new Discord community. I’m also amazed by the growth and interest in the BlackFreelancer.com platform which started as a passion project to build a professional profile that would help me stand out to prospective employers.  I quickly realized that it could also address systemic problems that make it difficult for Black Freelancers to find work on existing platforms like Upwork or Indeed. In less than 30 days of creating our Discord server we’ve grown the network to include over 1000 community members and 3000 BETA signups on BlackFreelancer.com who in one way or another have experienced the same pain point.

So what is Black Freelancer and why should you care? Black Freelancer is a community powered project built on the Solana blockchain that connects Fortune 1000 corporations with vetted black freelancers. With a demand that outweighs the supply for knowledge workers and creatives, a real desire to prioritize DE&I initiatives within corporate spaces, and a massive pool of highly qualified black talent across the globe, we have created a marketplace that helps forward thinking corporations leverage an untapped talent network. 

Ok, so what does that mean to me? As a freelancer this means a better way to find opportunities to further your career and impact your community. You’re able to connect with and work on interesting projects while getting paid and expanding your portfolio! More tactically speaking we will be granting folks BETA access to create their profile and share it with employers in the coming months.

Call to Action. I have four call to actions: 

1. Freelancers: We will be rolling out additional ways to engage with our community.  Community engagement is the primary way to increase your status and improve your chances of being granted early access to create and share your profile with potential employers. If you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with the content outlined in the #role-info channel on our Discord server.

2. Employers: We are kicking off conversations in the coming days to identify and onboard early partnerships with Corporate Human Resourse departments in an effort to best understand your needs and provide you access to top talent within our network. Interested in learning more?  Grab time on my calendar to be a part of our first cohort and onboard the #futureofwork today.

3. Block Chain Enthusiasts: Begin by familiarizing yourself with the #BlackPaper if you haven’t already. For those that have an interest in learning more about the $BLACK token blockchain component, have experience contributing to Web3 projects and want to learn how you may contribute, feel free to raise your hand in the #blockchain channel in our Discord Server or shoot me a DM. 

4. Support Black Freelancer: For those that love what you’ve read so far and are interested in learning how you can support our mission, click here to speak with someone about being an Inaugural Sponsor of Black Freelancer.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to our small but mighty volunteer staff. Each and every one of you continues to motivate me to help make the future of work one in which we actually have ownership over our time and services. I’m excited to see what the next few months and years bring!

**Stay tuned as we have quite a bit in store for all of you during Black History month. 

Many thanks,

– Sterling Smith // Founder @ Black Freelancer