Ask Rezzz
You ask, I answer your web development and design business questions. 🚀 Struggling with a client? Want to build recurring revenue but unsure where to start? Feeling overwhelmed? Have a client that's always late? Want to get clients who respect you? This is the show for you 2 times a week.
Tue, March 19, 2019
A263 - How to onboard a new client?
Today is going to be all about a process that I put into my business years ago that I reap the benefits from over and over again. That's onboarding for new clients. If you want to get my own Onboarding Email Sequence which is 8 emails with the delays I put in between. Along with instructions on how to use them too, head to rezzz.com/a263 and pick them up. What is onboarding Onboarding is a term that's thrown around quite often and it has a few different meanings. In the context of this show I'm referring to when a client becomes a client, how are you bringing them into your world. What sort of process to you have that helps that client understand what this engagement is going to look like. When you open up any box, there's a quick start guide right? Even for things that are commonplace like a TV, headphones, or even a mug that I got from my wife as a gift. That's what an onboarding sequence is for you and your business. I've heard it as a "Welcome Package." Whatever you want to call it, I want to share with you the 4 essential parts of it that you must include. Then share with you 2 other bonus tips that will help your marketing and sales. Go ahead and grab mine, the link is in the show notes or by heading to rezzz.com/a263 . How to use your service That's the first part, you want to explain all the ways that a customer can utilize your services. This means how they will communicate with you. Set the boundaries right here. If you want them to use a ticketing system, email, text messaging. This is how you tell them to do so. Also share with them what they can expect when they do communicate with you. Will you give them a response in 24 hours? Will there be an automated response? What can they expect during off-hours? Define that process right from the start so that there's no confusion along the way. What to expect This maybe should've been the first since it's most important. If the client knows what to expect from you, then there's no way of misinterpreting anything. This can also be setting the tone. If you want the client to be open to your suggestions, then share that in a nice way. Be humble, but firm too. If you need the client to accomplish something by a certain date, share that with them. Don't assume anything. Even by spelling something out that they may know levels that field When to expect Share with them when they can expect certain things from you. If you send out weekly emails, then tell them when they can expect them. If you have a timeline of tasks, give them ample time to get the things you need but share with them a date when you need it. Open the line of communication Having something tha
Wed, March 13, 2019
A262 - A podcast for freelancers
As we embark on the second year of Ask Rezzz, the format will change up slightly. The reason for this is so that you can take action. I'm all about that action taking as you know. Having a show each and every single day without a doubt can be overwhelming. You may already have a backlog of shows that you want to listen to. Maybe there's a bunch that you don't have any interest in hearing as well. With that, the new format will be this. Every Friday, you'll be a fly on the wall for a one-on-one coaching session with someone. I will have a conversation with someone who's applied to be on the show . They have a specific problem or situation that they want to get some help on. The objective is for you to hear what they are going through and maybe it'll help you too if you are in a similar situation. As the saying goes "a rising tide raises all boats." The big benefit of this is you, the audience. You as a Feaster can help and support them through offering encouragement, advice, and accountability. You may even want to work with them if you have such a need. If you want to be on the show, it's easy, just apply here . Every Tuesday there will be an actionable show. It will either be what you are familiar with already from the previous 261 episodes where I answer a question. Or I'm going to be introducing a resource or strategy that you can walk away from the show and put right in your business. For example, how to use Advanced Search on Twitter to find local clients to work with. Another example could be that I bring on a lawyer to the show to talk about contracts. Doesn't mean that you may not see the podcast show up in your podcatcher on other days, but this is what I'm committing to you today and what you can expect from the show. I want to make Ask Rezzz as actionable and valuable to you as possible. If you have any ideas for the show, let me know through Twitter or email. The Ask Rezzz show is dedicated to being the most accessible and most valuable podcast for freelancers out there. You can come on and get one-on-one coaching from me along with the support of the audience. Also get resources, strategies, and expert answers to your questions.
Mon, March 11, 2019
A261 - One year in, what's the next 5 look like?
Chris Bintliff from Not Really Rocket Science , is someone who I met through Twitter, but someone I consider a friend. Chris appeared on Live In The Feast and we geeked out about marketing and creating delight for clients. Not only that, but if you want to know anything about home automation, he's the guy to talk with. During a conversation one day, Chris mentioned that if there was ever an opportunity in which I myself could be interviewed, rather than me doing the interviewing, he wanted it. There's no better day than on this very special, milestone episode of Ask Rezzz. I'll be honest, I really had no idea what Chris was going to ask me. He could've asked me anything at all. The only constraint was to stay within a certain time, the rest was up to him. Chris rose above and beyond to the task and asked me 3 amazing questions that I know you'll enjoy. Are you a Freelancer? Do you identify with the Unemployable? What advice can you offer to someone to embrace where they are in their freelance career so that they can take that next step? Where do you see yourself in 2, 3, or 5 years? ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Fri, March 08, 2019
A260 - How to unexpectedly delight clients?
I was introduced to Chris Martin through a friend of mine Joe Workman. How do I know Chris? I've heard a few of his shows before in the past and when Joe mentioned that I should reach out to Chris to be on his podcast, Getting Work to Work , for me it was a no brainer. Chris was a great interviewer, genuinely curious, asking things that to be honest, I hadn't been asked about before. One topic that we talked about most was personalization and delight. I talk about personalization a lot, it is what I do for clients, right? In this episode, though, I talked about personalization in regards to leads and client interaction, not doing the wor ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- “Solve Problems by using communication and data.” In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including: How I manage to stay ahead of communication with leads and clients How I create the unexpected delight The one thing that I realized I was doing wrong in my marketing Last year I was talking with a coaching client of mine and shared some of the simple things that I do specifically to delight clients. He sent me this email "I finished a large project with a client and sent a small gift to them based on something you said in the conversation we had a couple week ago. The response I got was insane! I received a message from them thanking me for the gift card. They then followed it up with 'no one ever does that for me, so I really really appreciated it.'" That small gift was a $10 Starbucks card. What is one small way you can delight your leads and clients? Definitely go checkout Getting Work to Work Episode 227 . If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. I’d like to thank Chris for being a part of it and including me along amazing folks like Liston Witherill , Tim Kelley , and Ilise Benun
Thu, March 07, 2019
A259 - What 3 things do you grab in the zombie apocalypse?
Janelle Allen of zencourses.co is an Instructional Designer who specialized in custom online course that improve student results invited me to her podcast. I thought that I'd share an answer to a question that she asked me on the show. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- She asks all her guests this question. "The zombie apocalypse has hit. You have 6 minutes to grab 3 essential items and your family is fine. What do you grab? As someone who's watched many zombie movies from a very young age all the way to today with The Walking Dead, this was a welcomed and fun question. Since I've actually thought about this over the years I had my answer at the ready. My winter coat, a broom, and my skis. A broom because you can carve the handle into a point and use it to defend yourself with some level of distance. That's the obvious item in this list. Like Janelle, you may be scratching your head a bit at the winter coat and skis. It's simple, first of all, there's never been a movie, tv show, or anything zombie related where it's taking place in the snow. So I'm going north when the zombie apocalypse hits. If you are thinking, "Jason, but you are basing your logic off of movies." Of course, I am, this whole scenario is predicated on a hypothetical movie scenario. But I'm open to the conversation, so let's look at it this way. Zombies aren't exactly fleet of foot. They often get caught up on branches, stuck in mud, and even caught up on fences. It stands to reason that in waist deep snow, they wouldn't fare too well either. Additionally, snowy regions tend to be less populated which reduces the number of potential zombies. If I can find a mountainous area, then there could be a natural way in which to protect myself and family as well. I pose this question to you. If your family is good, and you have 6 minutes to grab 3 items in the zombie apocalypse, what would you grab? Shoot me a tweet and let me know. If you are wondering how all this relates to your business, it doesn't. I just though that I would have some fun today in answering an oddball question so that you can maybe get a glimpse into other parts of my head. If you absolutely need it to relate to business, the one thing I can say is to put yourself in a position where the odds swing in your favor.
Wed, March 06, 2019
A258 - Is Instagram a better vehicle for visibility? Sales?
Inside of the Sustainable Freelancer someone asked a question that I've never answered directly in the previous 257 episodes of the show. This is a great question for a lot of people thinking about how to use social media for their business. Simply put, I don't like saying this, but it applies. The answer is, it depends. I'm going to put aside the paid ads on the platform because that's a different game altogether and really just stick to answering the question in the context of organic engagement. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Organic Engagement You have to remember that it's a social network, the key word here is "social". So that lends itself to the awareness stage, or visibility as this person puts it. That doesn't mean you can't use it for sales, but from my experience, sales needs to be at a deeper level on the platform, say in DMs, Lives, IGTV and that sort of thing. I say "it depends" also because I think the product/service you are selling has to make sense to where the person is on Instagram. If you are trying to sell full web builds, or branding, I think that's going to be tough to sell on any social platform, even Instagram. Not saying that it can't be done, because I've done it. Which I'll explain in just a minute. What I am saying is that the buyer who's scrolling through their feed or viewing stories of people they follow aren't in the buying mode. They could be standing in line waiting to buy milk, or in the back of an Uber. They are in consumption mode and most likely in some sort of passive state of mind. Now if you are selling a product, such as t-shirts, jewelry, that certainly works because of the visual elements there. If you have a lower tier service or product, say that or a similar price as a t-shirt, then that too may work for you too. Since you are most likely selling services, this could be something like a mini-course or an ebook. "Selling on social media" Back to how I sold a higher priced item on social media. As you know, my social platform of choice is Twitter. I've built up a following over there, from what Twitter tells me, for the past 12 years. Twitter in my opinion is even harder to sell on than Instagram. Especially higher priced items. Simply because it's a text-based platform. Sure there are images you can attached, but it's text-first and the percentages of selling something for a few hundred dollars or higher with a one or two sentences is pretty low. My following is not huge but it's an engaged, which means that I've built up trust. Of those that follow me, many of which I've had conversations with. I personally greet anyone new
Tue, March 05, 2019
A257 - What kind of content should I promote to potential clients?
In A256 - Where do you find freelance clients? we talked about the watering holes, those places where your clients come together to talk business. Today's episode goes a little deeper into that topic to talk about the context and intent of your client at these watering holes. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- The human behavior part of this equation is what I'm fascinated most with. I'm not the first, nor the last person who will talk about context when it comes to marketing. In fact, it's the very first personalization that was done in advertising and marketing. It's why restaurants put their side dishes next to entrees on their menus. You are going to order a potato and veggies with that steak and they know that. So they aren't going to put sides on the last page, they'll put it directly after that filet mignon that you plan on ordering. Ad platforms these days put context on steroids. We have more information at our disposal about someone than ever before. We can target a specific employee at a global company in a certain town that has a hobby of white water kayaking. But what do you do with that information? Often you will jump all over that by pushing an ad out to come to sign up for your service or book a consult or something of that nature. While that's all fine to do, they may be looking at the photos of their niece's dance recital. That's not the most opportune time to pitch your abilities to build them a new website. To make this even more concrete, in the case yesterday where we spoke about the medical industry, you wouldn't walk up to 10 doctors sitting around a table ordering a steak and pitch them even though that's where they all are at the moment, right? If the content is king, then context is queen. As in the last episode, getting into the head of your client and then understanding the context and the intent of them in a specific setting can increase the likelihood of success of your strategy. In the context of my former employer, they bought booths at events that specifically spoke to marketing, technology, and business growth in the industry. At events that were smaller or not specific to the mindset where the doctors and organizations would be thinking about their website or marketing, my former employer would be there anyway, but in a different way. The sales team would be there to build relationships, set meetings up with clients and leads and of course network, but there wasn't a big push for sales. Ariel, The Urbanist , on a podcast, shared some insights in his strategy on this. His objective was to land gigs with big travel brands and online publications.
Mon, March 04, 2019
A256 - Where do you find freelance clients?
Where you find your clients out in the world is a big question. I held an open door session inside the Sustainable Freelancer FB Group last Friday where I put the webcam on and anyone could pop in to talk about anything they want. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Resulting from that was a conversation around location of potential clients. Not necessarily any strategy about getting them, but more of where to look for places, online, offline, etc, where they may be. Amy Hoy calls these watering holes in the context of her Sales Safari exercise in they course 30x500. A watering hole is where all the animals in an ecosystem come together because they need water to survive. The idea fits perfectly because you want to find places where you clients come together to talk about business with other people in a similar market. These are events, meetups, conferences, online forums, trade shows, and the list goes on. You are a developer or designer and live online, so it's safe to assume that you know your way around the web. Because of that, you may want to find your clients on the web. You try Facebook Groups, Twitter, Instagram, and even online forum sites. While you may find them here, maybe it's not THE watering holes best suited for your clients. When I was working for an agency that focused on the medical industry, the sales team would regularly attend trade shows and conferences and buy booth space at these events. Sure they ran Google Ads and such, but a great portion of sales and revenue for the business came from these events. There were months of the year where the sales team would attend 10-15 events in one month, all over the country. The thing is that doctors and the medical industry doesn't spend the entire day on the computer and the web. They still don't. What they do is attend conferences and events to learn about new technology and studies, to meet up with colleagues and build relationships, and play golf (let's be honest). The sales team knew this, the business knew this, which is why they were so invested in putting effort into going to these watering holes and finding their clients. Understanding the behavior of your client will help you figure out where to find them. Pay close attention to your existing clients. Just because you found them in one spot, doesn't mean that's where they all are. Follow them, talk with them. Ask them about their weekend and what they did. If they tell you that they can't make a meeting because they are going to a conference, ask them what conference. Where you find your clients isn't about you. It's abou
Fri, March 01, 2019
A255 - Finding Clients Lesson #11: Group Coaching for Leads
I'm continuing here today with the eleventh and final lesson in the "Finding clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Group coaching for leads. WHAT?!? 🤔 ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- You've heard about group coaching before in the context for your business. I met Lauren Pawell, founder of BixaMedia, a marketing strategy firm, a couple of years ago. In fact, she was the very first guest on Live In The Feast Season 1 Episode 3 . She inspired this idea of bringing your leads together in one space so that you can then vet the good fit en masse. Let me explain how this works. You get a lead as you normally would, but instead of getting on a one-on-one call with them, you get them to an educational webinar. Get them to sign up and as a group, you run through some educational material for them, provide ridiculous value in a way that allows all the leads to walk away with something beneficial to them. They also know and understand the type of work that you do, who you help, and if you may be a good fit for them. Then towards the end of that webinar, you present them with an application for them to be able to work with you. Lauren shared some of her KPIs that she aims for with registration, attendance, and applications. The part of this I like the most is that you are spending one hour of time with say 5-10, maybe 20 people and weed out those that aren't a good fit. Rather than one hour with each individual to weed them out. As a result, you are only spending time on those that raise their hand to want to work with you. But those that don't still walk away with value from you, something that's helpful to them in that moment to move them forward. Lauren said that of those who fill out the application, she'll close 80% of them. That's such an amazing use of time. In fact, she sent me an email just last week that as of January 2nd, she's booked solid for 2019. The only work that they are taking on is Strategy Sessions. Since I heard about this idea, I've looked for ways in which I can leverage this in my own business. Because as I said, it's such effective use of time and provides the same amount of value as you would if you continued the sales process as you do today. A good place to start with this is with past clients. You already know who they are and that you'll want to work with them again. Remember in lesson 7 we talked about those up level skills? Take the skills that you've learned since working with them and p
Thu, February 28, 2019
A254 - Finding Clients Lesson #10: Who do you hang with?
I'm continuing here today with the tenth lesson in the "Finding clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Who do you hang with? And I'm not talking about your family and friends either. That you are on your own (although support matters so choose wisely). What I mean is the group of business colleagues and friends you can trust. That you can bounce ideas off around with. That you can be frank and give them the real you. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- There are different communities and groups you can join obviously. I'm going to share something very important with you in a minute here on why all this matters. Masterminds High level masterminds can be both paid and free. Maybe, like myself, you have been a part of one or both kinds already. What I've found from them is that you really have to connect with them like no other group. At first, find a common aspect that you can appreciate in the others. Find a common element within the group that makes the group stronger than the individuals combined. This could be something like a goal each of you have. It could be that each of you work online or have a store. It could be location too. That element will spark the idea to join but also be able to carry you through. Because once that initial euphoria and emotion and excitement dies down after a few meetings, you'll need that something to carry you through. Paid Memberships & Closed Groups These are very similar. From my experience though the closed groups are usually those that are ran by someone in business who you've become close with and then start up. Whereas paid memberships and communities, like Feast for example, are built on the specificity of the transformation of those who join. These are often built on the back of courses, but the community is often where bonds are formed and relationships are built because you want to accomplish similar things in your business. In those relationships too is gold. I have friends that have grown out of those communities that I paid to be in. I've received lots of work from inside those communities directly or indirectly through referrals. When you joined a mastermind or closed community, you know that the people in there are willing to invest into their growth. Whether that's time and/or money. They are also amazing avenues for warm leads too because they are running a business, understand what you do, and then can refer you work when the opportunity arises. Here's the biggest, most important r
Wed, February 27, 2019
A253 - Finding Clients Lesson #9: Look at your pricing
I'm continuing here today with the eighth lesson in the "Finding clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will introduce the phrase "You get what you're paid for." Yes, I said "you're paid" not "you pay". ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you ------------------- I walked to the office every single day back in 1999-2001 from Penn Station up to 37nd Street. Most days, usually if there wasn't terrible weather, there were the same vendors on the street selling their wares. Scarfs, souvenirs, jewelry, music, and handbags. Of course all for the "best price." People would be lined up to haggle, especially during the holidays or on nice days. A "Rolex" for $10, a "Louis Vuitton" bag for $25 - people would be there buying these things. Sure they knew they weren't getting the real thing, so why did they buy it still? Well one day, I saw a pair of "Oakley" sunglasses for $8 and I always liked the style of them, I just didn't want to pay the $250 for them at the time. So I picked them up. I didn't care so much for them in the end, but I only paid $8 for them. Had I lost them, sat on them, or they broke after a month of use, it was only $8. Like myself, the other people felt much in the same way when buying from these vendors. It was the cheap knockoff that looked like the real deal. Ultimately there wasn't any respect for the product, because it was the "best price". We, as the customers buying these knock-offs were paying for something that we had already come to accept certain flaws and imperfections and were willing to pay the "best price" for. Is your price worthy of respect? You want your clients to value what you do. You want them to respect your suggestions and experience. When was the last time you looked at your pricing? Are you charging by the hour or by the project? Is what you are charging positioned with other vendors in the market or positioned based on the ROI to the customer? Charging $1000 for a full website design and build is not a price that's worthy of respect. Charging $50 per hour for full-stack development is a price that's not worth of respect. These are the "best price". If your platform for getting work is something like Upwork or one of these freelance job boards, have a listen to how other business owners talk about their use for these boards. They are looking for "best price", first. There's nothing wrong with selling something at the "best price". But then don't expect that your clients will look at what you do for them in any other way. They will want it a certain way and want to get
Tue, February 26, 2019
A252 - Finding Clients Lesson #8: Brag about your clients
I'm continuing here today with the eighth lesson in the "Finding clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will help leads relate to your existing clients. It will also give your clients a boost. Can I share with you 2 ways to do this so easily and so effectively that doesn't require you to build out a new page on your site or take hours to put together? ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Testimonials, social proof, and portfolios are all bits of proof for our track record. They are the curated elements of your business that showcase what it is that you do and prove that you've done it. However, there's a piece missing to the puzzle that's most often overlooked. The reason the track record needs to be there is not for you, but for the leads. Someone who may be looking at your services wants to see that you've done it, but also that you've solved their specific problem, maybe with a business that's just like theirs. Replace a social share No doubt you are shooting out links or resources into the social media firehose. I encourage you over the course of a week, replace one of those shares with a quick win you gave to your client. If you wrapped up a project recently with a client, put out a tweet sharing that. But not saying you completed a project with Company X. Simply share what the benefit was to your client by completing the project together and then tagging your client's Twitter account. This can be as simple as something like "Stoked to be able to help Client A save 10 hours a week by building them automation that no longer requires hand copying and pasting." Or could be a share on Facebook or Instagram where you can dive a bit more into the design decisions of a project and share a nice visual. Write about your clients to your leads I hear it time and time again that you don't have an email list. You have had someone write you an email to do work for them, right? Well, that's your email list. Next month, in your monthly newsletter, highlight a client of yours and the benefits that the client got out of the project and working with you. Doesn't have to be some elaborate write-up. Touch upon 3 items and the benefits of each one. The reason this is effective is leads don't know all the corners of everything that you can do. They also don't know the full benefits of what they can get by working on their project with you. Often I'll hear something like "Oh really, I didn't realize that was a part of that" or "Oh! That's pretty sweet. Didn't even think of that" Keep it
Mon, February 25, 2019
A251 - Finding Clients Lesson #7: Your Up Level Skills
I'm continuing here today with the seventh lesson in the "Finding Clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will help you work with clients you had in the past with things that you now know because it's the future. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- In lesson #4, you learned about the Sneak Peek . You are on this constant cycle of learning. You improve your craft each and every day because it's that practice that refines the skills you have and allows you to learn new things. You solve problems every single day whether you realize it or not. If you are a developer, you learn that a new library will help you build out something that once you would've had to build yourself from scratch. If you are a designer, you learn that there is a new technique or trend that's making sites perform better on mobile because it makes the UX better. We gloss over these in our every day because they happen quite often. Our clients though, they don't stay on top of the things we do. They get what they paid for, they love it and then move forward. 3 months ago you no doubt had a project where there was a challenge that you had to overcome in some way that due to time, budget, or both, you and the client agreed on a particular path for solving that problem. Today, that problem is solved by a new piece of software you found, a step-by-step how-to on YouTube, or that you merely learned a better way because the client you are working with today gave the breathing room for you to explore the better path to the solution. Go back to that client from 3 months ago, open the door of the conversation by refreshing their memory on the conversation you both had. Then share with them how you solved it today and why it would benefit them. If what you did today is the same recipe, the same solution for your past client. You've put in the time and effort and already have had the solution paid for. Offer that solution for a price that makes it a complete no-brainer to your past client. They'll say "yes" and here's why. You already know that they wanted it because you did something already with them that was a solution. They see the benefit and value in it. But there were sacrifices to be made there because of costs or time or both that prohibited the full solution to be implemented. Second, they trust you. If you did a good job with them, they'll be receptive to you and understand that you are coming to them with something that will help them. Lastly, say this 100%, A+ solution was an investment of $1,000 for your client on this
Fri, February 22, 2019
A250 - Finding Clients Lesson #6: Get Yourself On A Podcast
I'm continuing here today with the sixth lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series. This is the no nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson is something that will have you stand out above all others to your market by going onto a podcast that has the ears of your potential clients. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Podcasting is HUGE and growing every day. You are listening to (reading the show notes from) one right now in fact, right? With Spotify kicking the door of Apple's podcast castle a couple of weeks ago, it's a medium that's firmly planting itself into the mainstream. Ask your clients what podcasts they listen to. If your clients don't listen to podcasts, then pull up Apple Podcasts and search for the industry that you work in. Non-Profits, E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Drone Photography, Sports, etc there is a podcast out there. Go listen to a few episodes of a podcast that has more than 35 episodes and their most recent episode is in the past few weeks. This is so that you know that they do have an audience they are broadcasting to. You can also look at the number of ratings and reviews too. If they have some, then you know that the audience is engaged too. Look at the episodes, see the kinds of topics they talk about, but also pay attention to some of the gaps that are missing that you can help fill. This is the important part to remember. If you are just adding to the firehose, the host won't pay attention However if you do reach out, you want to make your ask super relevant and focused. Bonus points if you go ahead and share some episodes and tag the host. You'll pop on their radar and when you go ahead and contact the host, they'll at least recognize you a little bit. Every host knows that when they receive an email or DM asking to be on the show that it's self-serving, so don't try and beat around the bush too much. Keep it short, super relevant and focused on adding value to their audience and you'll be positioned to land that guest spot. If you know another guest that's already been on the show, ask that person for the introduction. And finally, when you do make contact, keep it about their audience and not of yourself. The only time you should mention anything about you is where you fill in a gap. "Hi Pete - I loved Ep 27 when you were speaking about how important it is for marketability of the business to leverage local Google search. Then in Ep 34, you shared a few tools that you use to do some comparative analysis. My name is Jason and I provide a service to my clients for marketing comparative analysis. If you think that it would resonate with your audience, I'd love to share all that I know and the process that I walk
Thu, February 21, 2019
A249 - Finding Clients Lesson #5: Buy a cup of coffee
I'm continuing here today with the fifth lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will help you stay front of mind 2 different ways. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- We are all busy and there's only so much time in any given day. Business though is all about the people. Whether you are a running a solo owned and operated business like myself or running an agency, you have to be out there not just seen to sell, but also to provide value. If you are always out there every day pushing ads, pushing leads, asking 9 out of 10 times, then you'll be put on the top of the pile. Just like all that junk mail you get both in your inbox on your phone and the thing that's hanging off the front of your house. What I want you to do in the next 24 hours is this. Goto Starbucks and send an e-gift card to all of your clients. Just to say "Thank you!" It's nothing overly difficult to do, right? The gesture goes a long way though. Expect nothing from them either. What you are doing is creating a memorable moment in their minds. Do this once or twice a year and switch up the gift. Since you did an e-giftcard this time, go ahead and send some customized gift next time. The second way is to answer a question. I've built half of my business in 6 months with this lesson alone. The social web is full with questions, pick out a topic or problem that your clients have and then monitor the web for those types of questions and keywords. Then when one hits, jump into that thread and share a link, resource, or helpful answer. I do this with my Drip and ConvertKit services. And early on in my business, I did this with WooCommerce as well. It doesn't have to be a specific platform or tool either, although that makes it someone what easier. Look at the questions your clients are asking you, and then pull out those keywords. "get more phone calls from my site", "install X", "what's the best way to Y", etc are all easy to jump into those conversations. As you continue to do that, you'll be in a much better and more referable spot to get work.
Wed, February 20, 2019
A248 - Finding Clients Lesson #4: The Sneak Peek
I'm continuing here today with the fourth lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will help you position yourself and share insight into what problems you are solving. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- You are smart and I know that you are constantly learning and evolving your skills and business whether it's on a project you are working on, or in passing as you read articles online when sitting on the couch. When you come across something new that you've learned, don't hold it back like it's the One Ring. Share that knowledge either in a tweet, Facebook share, or a blog post or video for YouTube even. When you share your knowledge online, there will be someone who will search for it who doesn't know. My friend Val Geisler shares teardowns of Saas business' onboarding emails on her blog. She stated in her 2018 review "I honed my voice and writing skills and got to build a nice little portfolio of spec work while I worked on moving more firmly into this specialization." And she was able to break the 6-figure mark too. I can also attribute a few clients to one specific article on my site where I break down a number of well-known brands and how they should improve their checkout process . But in there I share how it could be improved as well. This gives potential clients a sneak peek into what you can do and how you do it. But it also gives the web the ability to have a piece of content to serve questions like "how do I improve my checkout process?" or "how do I improve my email onboarding sequence?" By sharing what you know instead of holding it back will position you and your expertise in the world. Instead of spending a tremendous amount of time figuring out an algorithm on how you can get your profile to outrank other freelancers on a platform, spend that time pushing out a piece of content that gives a sneak peek into your brain.
Tue, February 19, 2019
A247 - Finding Clients Lesson #3: The Client Sandwich
I'm continuing here today with the third lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson will help you build a pipeline of high quality leads into the business of people and businesses that you want to work with. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- You know I'm not a fan of discounting your services. However, this is more like buying highly qualified leads. I can't take credit for this lesson all on my own, and to be honest, I haven't yet implemented it (yet). So I'd like to thank Ryan Bowles who runs the Create or Die Tribe FB Group for this. I think it's a smart way to leverage your services and the relationship that you have built up with the client. But also be able to have built in a testimonial and referral system in one. I'm changing it slightly from Ryan's original . When you onboard a client, maybe a touch after you've been working together for a little bit, ask them this. "Would you like $X off on the final invoice, simply by referring 5 business colleagues or friends that would be a good fit, if I've done a great job?" When they say yes, reply with "Awesome, we'll talk about it when we get there." Then after you've gone ahead and done a great job, remind them about your offer. Ask them to create a quick 30-second video about how it was working with you, or better yet, ask them to answer this on the video. "What challenges did you have prior to us working together and how did I solve those challenges for you?" Then have them send that video and the 5 referrals to you. Send those folks the video testimonial and ask if you can help them in any way. Not only do you have a great, relatable testimonial, but you'll also have a built-in system to continuously generate new, targeted leads based on clients that you want to be working with. That's the important part of this lesson and where I modified this idea from Ryan slightly. Ask them if they would like this offer after you have got to know them a little bit better. This will further your chances to get better leads that you actually want to work with. You'll also be in a better position to make sure that the client is sending you leads that are legit as well.
Mon, February 18, 2019
A246 - Finding Clients Lesson #2: Zero Line Item
I'm continuing here today with the second lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series. This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis. Today's lesson is solely targeted toward getting repeat clients by you adding in a built-in opportunity in your existing projects. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- With any project you have, no doubt you'll either be asked to do something the client wants that isn't in the scope or want to throw something in just because it is quick. We all do it. We are humans after all. But we are also running a business. So when you do these one-off add-ons you should keep track of them and make your client aware of them too. When you do one, whether you are doing hourly work or on retainer, add the task to the invoice. Along with that, add how much it would cost normally and then zero it out. Meaning make it no charge. Even if it's something that takes 15 or 30-minutes to do, mark that down, describe the task in the line item and then put the $50, $100, or $200 down. When you do this, you are putting value into the project that may or may not be perceived by your client. Ever have a client ask you "is there anything you can do better on price?" Especially when scoping out a project? This is where all that added value comes into play. If you give $500 worth of zero line items in Project A, there's no way that a client will ask for a discount on project B. Here is where you get the repeat work though. By adding in all the zero line items into the work, you are keeping track of all the possibilities to add-on repeat work. For example, say you are designing blog images for your client and they ask you to create a few Facebook images for those blog posts along the way. Say you have the bandwidth and did 2 of them. You now have an opportunity to re-visit those blog posts and do a comparison on the images you did vs what they did otherwise. If the shares that had your images performed better, guess what? There's your opportunity to pitch additional work. Here's another example. Say you are a developer and your client asked to add in an additional feature to their app that allows their users to log in via Facebook or Twitter. You obviously know that those APIs change pretty regularly, right? Well when they do, go back to your client when it does happen and sell them on the update. The Zero-Line Item is your best friend when it comes to positioning yourself, but also leaving a built-in opportunity for yourself to them go ahead and get additional work later.
Fri, February 15, 2019
A245 - Finding Clients Lesson #1: Targeted Referrals
If you are like most service business owners I know, then referrals is where you get most of your work from. Yet you can't figure out how to make those more predictable. Today I'm going to share with you a process that I've developed and used based on business practices that have been in the wild for decades, if not longer. Whether you are just starting out or been in business for a little while, you have a network. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- A network of trusted colleagues, friends, family, and individuals who you look to for advice. You also have a network online if you are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Why is it that you hear time and time again, to attend chamber of commerce meetings or local business events? It's because it's networking. Though in those meetings it's often hard to really get what you do and who your serve out there in an effective way. Most people are there to hand their own business cards out. But those networking events have worked for a long time helping local businesses connect and find new business. By taking that concept and turning it into something you can do for the 21st century, I present you with targeted referrals. I want you to reach out to your network. Reach out to folks who do similar work as you, who are your trusted colleagues and friends. Also, reach out to those people who you look up to as well. Create a list of people. Don't confuse this. This is a relationship building exercise. Once you have the list, grab 5-10 people from that list. What I encourage you to do is to reach out to them asking them about their weekend. Ask how their latest project went. Congratulate them on a job well done that you noticed them doing online. This can either be done via phone, text message, even your social media platform of choice. Create engagement with no expectation of anything else. When they respond, continue that conversation and see where it takes you both. There will a natural point of the conversation where they will ask you what you are up to. This is where you want to share exactly what you are doing. Share with them a couple of sentences about a successful project or client problem you solved this week that you are excited about. Don't bore them, keep it short. Then follow up with your positioning statement of who you help and the problem that you solve for them. So this could sound like "This week I was able to help a client of mine land 10 new customers under their new pricing, which was double the number and twice the price than what they had last week. I love helping online business build better relationships with their customers through email marketing." Again, expect noth
Thu, February 14, 2019
A244 - 11 Lessons on How to Find Clients
You are selling a service or product and want to have a system that continuously attracts clients and customers in a predictable way, right? Can I share with you 11 of my top lessons to do so? These aren't tips and strategies that are overplayed. These are pretty unique and work amazingly well. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- As you know we are coming up on the magical episode 261 here on Ask Rezzz. And as such, over the next 11 shows I want to share with you 11 of my top "getting clients" lessons. Thanks to my good friend Mark Asquith for inspiring this series of shows. Mark, is currently running a series of podcasts on his show The 7-Minute Mentor called 11 Podcasting Lessons To Help You To Become An Audio Influencer in Your Niche. So how do you get more clients? I thought I'd create a series that does just that. Over the next 11 episodes, I'm going to share with you my top lessons that are tactful, repeatable, and help you establish yourself as an expert so that you not only clients, but get your clients on a consistent basis to build that pipeline. There are more freelancers and competition out there in the world than ever before and tactics that you see out there that worked last year, 3 and certainly 5 years ago, just won't work anymore. Platforms like Upwork and Toptal and others are a race to the bottom. They force you to try and manipulate algorithms and compete with other people on the wrong thing. That's price. And while these platforms have many companies and opportunities coming to them every single day, those companies are looking for one thing, the cheapest price possible. What I believe, and with great reason since I did it myself, is that you can build a sustainable business providing services for clients without selling to hundreds and thousands of people. You certainly do not need to be dropping your prices, racing to the bottom and spend tons of time trying to figure out an algorithm to stand out. You can build a business that's built around your life and your dreams with a small number of carefully selected clients. Then you can build a system that continually feeds into your pipeline so that you can build a predictable income. When I say recurring income, most people, and maybe you as well, think that means providing a monthly service. It's not. It means that you are selling a service or product that continuously attracts clients and customers in a predictable way. So that's what I'm going to share with you over the next 11 episodes. Lessons to build your business with a core type of client and attract those types of clients that you want to have more of. They are all based on strateg
Wed, February 13, 2019
A243 - How to sell strategy?
First let me say that if you are still working your full-time job or have less than 2 years under your belt as a business owner, this may not be the ideal opportunity for you to try and sell strategy. Simply because you don't have that experience yet. No doubt you have the skills, but to differentiate yourself as a consultant rather than a developer or designer comes with a proven track record of success. I'm not saying that you can't sell strategy, in fact, I would suggest selling discovery phases which are strategy sessions of a different sort. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- What I'm saying is that if you want to be a consultant selling strategy to a client, you have to be positioned as an expert in a particular space, understand the hurdles on the track and how to get over them, and most importantly, you have to be sure of certain outcomes of the project. With that caveat out of the way, let's dive into how to sell strategy 1. Understand the problem An absolute must to selling strategy is a full understanding of the problem. This means that you have to be able to notice a lead that has this particular problem and then have the solution to that problem. The most important piece of this is to then connect all the dots in between. You do this by walking through the problem, then the process with milestones attached and then what the dream is on the other side. 2. Your process The process you use here is important. It needs to illustrate progress to the end goal. The dream of what the client has at the end of the project. Imagine building a house and as the days and months go by and you don't see the blueprints, plans, permits, foundation being poured, walls going up and so on, you'd no doubt be disappointed. By explaining during the sales process what the process of getting to the solution will be, you help the client visualize their journey through the strategy and then getting to that implementation. Illustrating your process will establish that you've been down this road before. Allowing your client to feel that they made the right decision. 3. What's next? Whether or not you are doing the implementation, that's what will come from your strategy sessions. To be honest, doing the implementation yourself will further establish you as an expert. You'll simply be able to speak to obstacles that may come up, and you'll be able to fully understand what the next steps in the dream are. This is the best opportunity to hand off the deliverable as a proposal/contract to your client. Obviously, you've gone through and walked them on every step of the process of the service that is to be implemented, what better person for the job than you, ri
Tue, February 12, 2019
A242 - How to add a productized service to my business?
Are you providing a solution that allows a potential client to work with you at a lower risk? Custom work is often times a big ask. It's a big investment for someone to not just pay, but also to spend time on. Here's why I like having a smaller, more productized option. Reduces the risk for the lead Reduces the risk for you Allows both you and the client to get quick results This especially works nicely if you are just starting out. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Are you thinking... "I would like to have one, but I just don't know what." What this solution could be, starts by listening and observing opportunities. During a sales conversation simply ask the lead "What would be a quick win for you?" As you start to hear answers, watch for a pattern. What sort of quick wins are you hearing? Write them down. In Ask Rezzz A233 I share with you 3 other questions that you can explore in order to start building out a productized service In this episode: Who will buy my productized service? How to do market research for a productized service Land that first client Are you going to give this a try There are many more steps in this process, but I wanted to spark some inspiration and direction for you to take if this is something you are considering.
Mon, February 11, 2019
A241 - Why I didn't set goals for 2019
I want to thank Sara Dunn for asking this question. In her video, she on her YouTube Channel she talks about how she's setting goals for the year over 12-week periods based on the 12-Week Year. This year, I created themes for myself and the business. The reasoning behind this is simple. If I have a project, decision, or question where I'm suddenly faced with the option to go one way or another, the theme will highlight the right choice. I've created each theme based on who I want to be and the purpose and value of the business. I've created 3 themes for the year and they are "intentional community", "commitment to my marriage," and "ship new products". ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Let me address the middle one since that is the easiest. There is nothing wrong with our marriage at all, in fact we have our second child on the way at the time of this recording in Feb. When I say commitment to my marriage I mean doing the little things and enjoying time with my wife as a couple. Any parent knows that with a little one, or even 2 little ones, time together just the two of us becomes harder and harder to come by. I don't want to lose that identity and what made us, "us". Doing some of the little things together. Like grabbing an hour here and there whether that's going out on a date night, staying in and watching a movie, or grabbing a quick cup of tea together in the morning. Intentional community is about creating a close-knit community of like-minded business owners who are real, genuine, and want to create a business that's designed around their lives. There are so many products and programs out there that are a bit dime-a-dozen. Where they promote to you over and over and over again and then when you buy, you are left wondering where everyone went. I've been subject to them and I know you have too. I don't want that for anyone that comes across me or my business. If you download something free like the client onboarding sequence or get 1-on-1 business coaching you will get an experience that is a bit unique and I will genuinely care about your results. The final one, ship new products, is pretty self-explanatory. Though it aligns with "intentional community" theme. By learning a bit about everyone that comes into my world and listening to their wants, needs, and desires, I want to be able to easily create products to help you succeed. Now when I'm faced with any sort of difficult decision, I can't go wrong if the choice aligns with any of the themes. I'm trying this for the first time this year, because like Sara mentioned in her video. Often when setting goals for the year, by June some of
Fri, February 08, 2019
A240 - Why ConvertKit?
The features of what the application has are exactly what I need for myself and clients. Yes, I have some [e-commerce clients](https://rezzz.com/services) who may fit better with Drip as their platform, but I have other clients who are non-profits, service-based businesses, coach, and other individuals who are selling only a handful of products that ConvertKit is a perfect fit for. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- I can easily geek out about many things that I like about ConvertKit and some of the ideas that I have, which I dive in head first in this episode Most certainly I'll be diving into more discoveries and how I'm solving interesting problems as I continue to flex the ConvertKit muscle and boundaries. If you have any specific questions about my move, ConvertKit, or your business and how ConvertKit may or may not work for you, I'd be happy to chat. I'll share with you some of what I like and what I'd love to see: UI Features API + Support Feel valued as a customer Cleaning up the house Handling various integrations How I think about and categorize integrations ConvertKit excels at Sequences and managing those emails within Segments THE #1 thing...folks get the emails
Thu, February 07, 2019
A239 - Why did I move my business from Drip to ConvertKit
Over the years, I've been known to specialize in a few different platforms, Ruby on Rails, PHP, WordPress, WooCommerce (and a few other plugins), and Drip. Anytime I switch from one to the next, I get asked a lot of questions. "Why did you switch?" "What happened with X that made the decision for you?" "Did you switch because of Y?" For myself and my clients, I try and look at platforms as a tool. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- This is part 1 where I share with you: Why I started with Drip My reaction when Drip sold to Leadpages My thoughts at a personal level My thoughts at a professional level What the tipping point was In the next episode, I'll share with you why ConvertKit was the easy choice, what I like about it, what I'd love to see, and some things to be aware of.
Wed, February 06, 2019
A238 - What to say when a client is late on a payment?
I was talking with my new neighbor over the summer about cutting the grass since he saw me out there cutting the grass with my brand new battery powered mower. He shared this with me. "If you are looking for a landscaper, I'd be happy to give you my guys' number. He's a bit expensive, but I haven't paid him in 14 months and he's still showing up every week." Now whether that's the fault of my neighbor or the landscaper, in the end, the landscaper is sending the wrong message here. Before it gets to 14 months, let's see if we can nip this in the bud as quickly as possible, shall we? ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------ Benefit of the doubt This is obvious for some, yet not so much for others. When a client is late once it's often not malicious or with bad intentions. It's often more like they saw the notification and it slipped their minds. Or if you are taking recurring payments through a credit card and the card fails, it's often due to the card being expired. The point I'm trying to convey is that you want to remove your emotion from the equation when it happens for the first time. Come at it with the perspective that it is likely a mistake and can easily be remedied with a simple email asking them for the payment. What to do when a late payment is more than a mistake If the same client happens to do it again or more than usual, then a more in-depth conversation needs to happen. Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One, when he was on [Live In The Feast](https://rezzz.com/podcast/paul-jarvis-on-keeping-things-simple-freelancing-and-being-a-business-owner/) shared a time when he had a client stiff him of close to $30,000. The mistake was that he continued to do the work, thinking that he would get paid eventually. He shared a great point on the show when he said, "what I was saying to my client was that it's ok to not pay me because the work gets done anyway." "What I was saying to my client was that it's ok to not pay me because the work gets done anyway." You want to have your clients respect the payment structure of your business and the contract of the project. If they miss a payment, work stops. End of story. Simply tell your client either in a phone conversation or email that since payment has not been received, the work will be suspended. Also in that conversation, you want to share the consequences of this. Could mean a missed launch date, marketing plans, or something else. If time continues to pass without resolution, say for a couple of weeks, the conversation should transition from a payment conversation to an end of project conversation. Explain what that would look like and how if/when the project became a priority again how they could ramp the project back u
Tue, February 05, 2019
A237 - How do you convince someone to sign a contract?
Bottom line is that you don't. You can't convince anyone of anything if they don't have an open mind about it. To be honest, it's actually better for you to refer the project off than to spend the energy working at someone who has already decided not to work with you. With that being said, sales are all about helping someone make a decision. If you are looking for someone to do something that they don't really want to do (and that's to spend money), you need to find a legit reason that is big enough for them to do so. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Get someone to do something they don't want to This means you have to understand what the motivation is of that person. In my experience businesses are motivated really on the basis of 2 big reasons. Both are related. They want to get more money. Or they want to save time (which translates into getting more money eventually through profits). The tricky part of this comes in when you want to discern if someone is basing their decision off of emotion or logic. The reason it's tricky is that their buying decision will be because it's both emotional and logical. I'm always talking about how you should learn to trust your "gut" and tha if something doesn't feel right, than steer clear right? Well that's even more true with someone buying from you. They need to feel that the purchase is the right decision before anything else, even if it's the logical choice to make. For example, ever have an argument with your brother or sister or good friend where you know you are right. Facts of a night out or story growing up. You both start arguing back and forth it's so heated that all logic goes out the window. It doesn't even matter if you are saying that the sky is blue because they feel that it's red. You can't convince them otherwise, because their emotions are dictating their thinking at this point. So you have to start by getting their emotional side of the brain to buy-in before all else. Get their emotions on your side You can do this through empathizing with them. You can do this by sharing a similar experience another client of yours had where you helped them. Another way to do this is by asking a question. In the book by Phil M. Jones, Exactly What to Say he offers to use "How would you feel if...?" as a prefix to a future scenario. "How would you feel if you got 100 more customers?" "How would you feel if your website was 2 seconds faster?" "How would you feel if your competitor outranked you and you lost a good portion of your organic traffic?" That last one is one that I actually asked an existing client of mine a few months ago because that was a trend that was happening with the
Mon, February 04, 2019
A236-What to say when a client insists on adding something new?
All too often a client will ask you for something that you are skeptical about. They are convinced that it will work for whatever you are trying to accomplish, but you have some doubts. Your doubts come from 2 places. The first is your experience and the second is from your ego. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Your ego may be in the way Let me tackle the ego part first. By ego, I mean that little voice inside you that is telling you that you, not the client, knows best. Paying attention to your ego is a practice in becoming more self-aware. Self-awareness is critical to being professional and being a respected freelancer. Now you may be saying that you have doubts because you don't know enough about the request to get it done. Or that you are resistant because it's taking your focus away from what you need to be doing that's already agreed upon. Either way, you want to recognize, you want to be self-aware, that your bias is playing a small part in the reason you are skeptical. It's not wrong to have this happen, but you want to realize that this exists so that you can best address the request with the client. Your experience is often correct The first part of that skepticism comes from your experience. You are hired because of your skills, but more so because you have an expertise. The client's request may be something that is warranted for the project. It could also be scope creep as well. It's your job to suss this out properly and professionally. "With respect to the goals and timeline that we have set out for the project, where and how does this fit in?" "What changed that makes this a new priority?" "So that I can be sure to account for this request, can we root this out a bit more? Moving forward without doing so will put the timeline and potentially the budget at risk." All of these responses, or any in the same vein, will show the client that you have their best interests and the success of the project in mind. When you give this little bit of pushback, you'll not only show that you are a professional, but you are standing out from the countless number of other hands-for-hire out there. The surprising thing here is that by doing so, the next time instead of the client stating that something needs to happen, it'll come in the form of a question because you've represented yourself as a consultant on top of the skillset you have.
Fri, February 01, 2019
A235 - How to sell your productized service?
In episode 233 you learned about how to make a productized service. It makes sense that the next question is how do you sell it. To be perfectly honest, knowing how to sell the productized service really should come before you make it, and here's why. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- When you have a productized service, it's super focused and solves a big enough pain that someone has. That someone has already raised their hand and shared why it's important enough to solve their problem. When you are working on custom projects and then finding out that you happen to be doing a similar thing on almost every project that gets your clients an immediate win they want. Well, the service essentially has been sold because it's in demand. I think it'll help to illustrate by example. I have a productized service that migrates people from Drip to ConvertKit . How I came to create that was a need from my own clients who wanted to reduce their monthly costs as their list grew but weren't using all the advanced features that Drip offers. So like how I explained in A233 - How do I make a productized server? people already were hiring me for that service and other services like on-site personalization based on email subscriber data because I'm listed in both expert directories. I had built out this process and it was something to leverage for new clients and gave them a quick win. A big bonus that the quick win helps their bottom line costs. Yes, it's not something that is going to have someone come back to me to do, but it created a simple way to start to work with me for my larger services at a lower risk. They see how it is working with me and it's at a much lower risk to get a result than to start with my monthly service. Why would someone buy it? Understanding the reasons why someone would want the service is ultimately how you sell it. What is the pain or frustration that the buyer is looking to solve? What is the quickest and most simple path to getting that pain or frustration turned around? Keying in on those elements is how you sell it. You don't even need to go about advertising it like crazy either. Send out a tweet, a post, or at most set up a landing page. In that share you put in the frustration point and a call-to-action. In my case recently, Drip increased its prices pretty dramatically and so I tweeted out "Frustrated with Drip's price increase and looking to lower costs by going to ConvertKit? DM me and let's chat" I did that maybe a few times i
Thu, January 31, 2019
A234 - How to make business habits stick?
How are those goals, those habits for your business working out for 2019? Are you still focused on them or has the reality of 2019 and life, in general, pushed them aside and you are no longer as focused as you were 4 weeks ago, now that it's Feb 1? ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Before I share with you some ways to make your business habits stick, I want to share with you something that happened to me the other day that rarely happens when I read a book and that's an immediate impact. One of my big things for 2019 is to become a reader. As someone who much rather watch the movie than read the book, this isn't easy. As someone who's read the Cliff Notes and Monarch Notes all through high school and college, this isn't easy. As a father though, I want to read more so that my kids see me reading and not sitting in front of a screen all the time. As a husband, my wife loves to read and it would be cool to read the same book and have a discussion about it. As a business owner, reading and learning from others and being able to form my own ideas from things that I read will help me grow and help the business grow. The first book I read this year was Atomic Habits by James Clear. Outstanding book for so many reasons which I'll explain 2 here in a minute. The reason I read this book first was because I actually wanted to read it to help understand the why and how of better habits not just for myself, but so that I could help create better habits for my children too. What I didn't expect to happen was exactly what happened on Sunday, January 27th. I went downstairs around 6:30 am put on the kettle to boil water for my coffee, check my Twitter feed from the night before, then made my cup of coffee and pulled out my wife's Kindle and started reading. I was up at 6:30am on a Sunday because I was sick and my sinuses were hurting so bad that I couldn't lay down anymore and quite honestly, it hurt to even move my eyes. I even said to myself coming down the stairs that I'm going to skip reading this morning. So what gives? Why did I read? Create a habit for the type of person or business you want to be What James talks about in the book is to relate your habits to the type of person you want to be. Notice earlier that I said that I want to become a reader. Not that I want to read more. Well, I created a system of habits in the morning that stack upon each other that form identity-based habits. Once I pour my cup of coffee in the morning, it's become automatic in a sense that I sit and read my book until that first cup is done. I've created this environment in the morning that sets up and leads me to the act of reading. I read in the morning, because for me, any other time and reading tend
Wed, January 30, 2019
A233 - How do you make a productize service?
I don't know about you, but I'm constantly bombarded with ideas on making this, and creating that. Thinking that the product will help diversify my revenue and make my business more stable. I'm not wrong. And I don't say that because I'm arrogant. I say that be it is a fact. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Not everyone wants to create a product, I don't. I'm not looking to build a software product. I'm not looking to create some physical thing to sell. What I enjoy is creating a solution, building services, publishing content that help others solve a problem. To me, what I want is a productized service. Creating a productized service is creating a menu for potential clients to order off of. It doesn't even have to be something that's complex and automated. But it needs to be profitable for you. ## What does everyone hire you for? Simply start with what people hire you for in the first place. If you are a designer, what is the one thing that you do for each and every single client. Same goes for developers. Do you perform audits? Do you do brand identities? Do you setup coding environments? What do repeat customers hire you for? This is what I call "chronic pain points". Are your clients seasonal and always come back to you for something at the same time each year? Do you have to design social media assets for new content? Are you building iterations of software for new features? After you work through these things, look at the lists. Pick out ones that have a similar theme. You want these things to be small enough to achieve quick wins for your clients. They also need be delivered quickly and profitably. Since they are small and you may be doing a number of them, make sure that you can enjoy doing them as well. How have you helped brand new clients get over nervousness and apprehension? This is key, because ultimately the goal of a productize service is to make it simple and easy to work with you. By reducing the number of choices a lead has and creating an easy option, you make the decision for them. Building a website or designing a brand that has an investment of $20,000 and 3 months of time is scary for some businesses who have never been down that road before. However, delivering brand style guide that may take you a few weeks and $5,000 to do is easier to digest. Then once they see that deliverable and how the relationship was successful with this engagement, the client is now more comfortable with you to move forward with the much larger project. Yes, productizing a service is not easy. But if you think of it like creating a menu for your business so that leads can order from, it'll create that diversity you are looking for. A little bonus tip...you don't even need to tell anyone that you do
Tue, January 29, 2019
A232 - Are you reviewing your projects?
Last week you learned [how to review your sales process]([https://rezzz.com/ask/how-to-review-your-sales-process/](https://rezzz.com/ask/how-to-review-your-sales-process/)), just as important as that is, so to you should be reviewing each and every project that comes through your business. Ever feel like you finished a project and felt like the weight of the world lifted up off your shoulders. Suddenly you have this sense of relief that is so strong you wonder how you got sucked into that mess in the first place? ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- It's so easy to get sucked into the excitement of a brand new project. Being able to see an opportunity and hear about how you can solve someone else's problem simply from your skillset is the high we all get at the beginning. Just like getting drunk though, this high clouds judgment. It also clouds your awareness of subtle signals that are indicators that maybe this project isn't a right fit for your business. It actually hinders our instincts to "know better" especially from past experiences. You want to hone those instincts and make them so strong that the high only happens after your instincts, your gut, tells you it's ok. Questions to ask after a project is over Once a project is over, you should sit down for 15-30 minutes and digest everything. Ask yourself 5 questions. How do I feel now that the project is completed? Did this work help me reach my goals? What problems did I face that I didn't anticipate? How did my estimates (on budget, time, expectations) compare to the actuals? Did something happen in the midst of the project that I should've seen coming but didn't? Once you answered these questions, reflect on the answers and pull up your initial project brief/application that you had the client fill out and see if there are any correlations to be made. This is the "Hindsight Exercise". You now are standing in the future of what that application came to be. You know how well or bad the project went. Within the application, you want to look for indications in what that client filled out so that you can then go ahead and look for in your next lead. Again whether it's good or bad. This is where you are honing your instincts, your gut. You are allowing time for you to pick up on indicators of both good and bad earlier on in your sales so that you can have more success with your projects.
Mon, January 28, 2019
A231 - How do you make it simple for a lead to sign?
As a business owner, as a salesperson, which if you are freelancing I hate to break the news here, but you are in sales, you need to close the open loops in the decision making for your leads and clients. We don’t have control over the decision-making process anyone has, but we can lead them to that decision. We can create a path to that decision that makes it easy for them to make a choice. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- You do a great job of getting people interested in you, yet in the final moment of helping them decide, you fall down. You fall down because you leave the decision making solely on their shoulders. This final moment is the tough part. It’s the part where I struggled with too. But it’s the part that needs to be mastered in order for you to have a sustainable business. ## Remove choices and create easy options In sales, it’s your job to put the lead on the path to solving their problem. This is the mindset you need to be in so that [you overcome objections in sales](https://rezzz.com/ask/overcome-objections-in-sales/). When you remove choices and create easy options for a lead, they are more likely to buy from you. Your goal should be to create a statement that presents a choice to them. I was on a FB Live talking about follow-up and I said “There are 2 types of businesses online, ones who become freebie folks and ones who actually sell and make money.” And now I wasn’t selling anything, but in the midst of the conversation, it framed everyone there watching, including the host, where they sat. It made perfect sense for them to go ahead and see what they needed to do or take action on based from this live stream at that time. By removing all the choices on how to do a follow-up sequence, how many emails, what tools to use, when to send them, and so on, I positioned the simple action of just doing a follow-up sequence against making money or not. As service-based businesses, you and I have so many things that we know we can do for a lead to help them out. The leads know they need the help, they just aren’t sure of the right choice or the right decision to make. By painting a picture of who they are today and where they want to be with a simple action for them to take, you remove all the choices and give them the easy option to choose.
Fri, January 25, 2019
A230 - How not to be annoying in sales?
I was asked a question on a Twitter chat I was a part of that said “A few of us are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of seeming like a nuisance. Have you received a negative response to multiple follow-ups?” Following up with someone after they’ve expressed interest in you is not being a nuisance or annoying or bothersome. Unless you are emailing them every day with “Just checking in.” If you have an email that sounds like “Hey Pete, I was thinking about your project a little bit more and came across this article that talks specifically about that one thing. Here’s the link if you have a few minutes to check it out. If not, the big takeaways were…Hope you find it useful. Best, Jason” ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- For whatever reason, most people, as service-based businesses, get all messed up in the head the closer someone gets to becoming a client. Anytime they see an email address, they ask “can we add them to our email list?” Yet, as it gets closer and closer to the sale, they start to shy away from it. It’s very much a mindset that you put yourself into. One that in the beginning of starting my business, once I realized that it was just business and that if they thought me sending them an email that’s helpful is annoying, then we ultimately weren’t a good fit to work together. Imagine you walk into a store, let’s say a car dealership. As you walk in you immediately go towards the car that you are interested in. You open the door, sit in the driver’s seat to see how it feels. You hop into the back to see how much legroom there is. And you come to the point where you want to get some more information. So you seek out a salesperson. She comes over and you ask some questions about options, colors, if they have it in stock and she answers all of your questions and then takes you on a test drive. As you walk back into the dealership you realize that you are completely alone. Even the salesperson, who was right behind you coming through the door is gone. Now what? You’re ready to sit down and go over financing. You are literally standing there ready to buy and wondering what’s next. Now I ask you “what’s annoying now?” That’s what it can seem like for your leads. They opt-in to your lead magnet or fill out your contact form, maybe have a few back and forth emails with you, and even get on the phone with you and get to the proposal stage. After you hang up on the call, it’s radio silence from you. The lead is wondering what happened? Seemed like things were working out, but they may be wondering what’s next. Even with the proposal in hand, they may have some questions still. In fact, there’s a good chance they do. Here’s the thing, people, humans, are embarrassed to ask questions. They don’t want to l
Thu, January 24, 2019
A229 - How do you segment your email list?
Let’s assume for the sake of brevity that you are segmenting your list at least to the point of people who have bought and haven’t bought from you. If you are like me, you are tag happy, they want to track everything someone on their list does and so they tag everything. This is great, but if you don’t do anything with the information, it’s just clutter in your CRM or email marketing platform. There really are 2 things to focus in on when you are segmenting your email list. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Intent The first is intent. Why do people buy from you? What problems are they trying to solve? Intent is essentially the buyer’s goal. It’s what they want to achieve when they buy from you. Someone’s intent is all the benefits that are important to them that they will get from you, your solution or product. It’s their motivation behind the purchase decision. For example, you want to buy a big screen TV because the big game is on and you are having a party. The intent here is you want everyone to see the game, and maybe impress your friends a little too. That’s the motivation behind the purchase of a big screen TV. Another example, and maybe a bit more relevant is a non-profit wants to redesign their website so that they get more signups for their fundraiser. The intent here is that the non-profit needs signups to get more donations so that they can fuel their mission. The motivation behind the purchase of a redesign is that it will result in more signups. How you obtain this intent is either through asking them and recording that as a tag. Or the more efficient way of getting that intent is by asking someone who just bought from you what they hope to achieve from their purchase. Then you can take that information and turn that around into headlines on your website, maybe even case studies or articles too. Interest The second segment to focus on is interest. This is harder to do, but when carefully planned out is powerful. Because interests is where you are able to really hone in on the language so that you can craft a proper buying journey for them. Interest is a big area to cover because it has a wide range of possibilities. It’s actually where most get stuck in the weeds about, which in a minute I’ll share how you can avoid that. For the sake of choosing the easy road first, demographics is a part of interests. In the case above with the TV, the one making the decision obviously likes sports, has expendable income, and even has a time crunch to make a purchase. In the case of the non-profit, well, that’s the first demographic. The age of their existing site and the number of signups they have for their fundra
Wed, January 23, 2019
A228 - Are you reviewing your sales process?
Are you sitting there thinking that you suck at sales? Maybe you say to yourself “I’m not confident in my selling skills.” Are you feeling like you are doing all the things in sales that the best salespeople are telling you to do? LinkedIn outreach, using tools for followup, even your [business coach](https://rezzz.com/coach/) aren’t 100%. You have the mechanics of everything in place, but still feel like you aren’t able to hit the stride or get enough clients to fill that pipeline. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- I have just one question for you. ## Are you reviewing your sales process? Do you listen to the recorded sales calls? Are you listening more than talking? Who’s asking more questions, you or the lead? Are you reading between the lines of what the lead is telling you? Do you have a spot on your calendar every single month to review your sales process? It’s so important to be able to listen back on a sales call to hear how you sound to the lead. Get over the fact of hearing your own voice and put yourself in the shoes of the lead. Ask yourself, as the lead, if you would buy from this person. Listening to, reading transcriptions of the calls if you need to, is so important to be doing, especially early on or if you are trying something new. Here’s why this is important. ## You think you sound good When you are in conversation with someone, your brain in processing feedback and forming your next words as the words are coming out of your mouth. When you listen back, you’ll hear all the “ums” and “ahs” and “you knows”. You’ll hear things that you don’t hear during the midst of the conversation. You also hear spots in where you may stumble or misheard the question and wonder to yourself “what was I thinking?!?” Once you hear these things, you can’t un-hear them and so you’ll be a little more conscious of them in the next one. Which in turn improves your sales communication. ## It’s not always all about you If you don’t get a lead to close, ask why. There’s a good chance they will never tell you. Or tell you something that really isn’t all that helpful. But understanding the reason behind why someone chose not to move forward allows for you to adjust your process and sales conversation. For example, if you keep hearing pushback on pricing, ask for the budget early on. If it’s timeline based, ask for the lead when they would like this done by earlier. Another could be that they don’t like something about the process of working with you. Which then you may want to think about putting a nice write up about that on your website. All these objections aren’t saying that you are wrong in any way. It’s simply saying that their expectat
Tue, January 22, 2019
A227 - How to sell on Twitter?
Since Feb 26 in 2008, I’ve built my business without selling on Twitter. I have no qualms about saying that Twitter is my home away from home. Without Twitter, I’m not sure where I’d be right now to be honest. I can attribute the growth of my business, my network of friends and colleagues, my clients, and you listening to this episode right now to the effort and engagement of my Twitter account. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- But Twitter is never the first place that I go to thinking about sales. Engage This is the very first tip here. Engage on Twitter! Twitter is the biggest cocktail party on the planet. People making small talk, making introductions, complaining, connecting with people with would’ve never done so 15 years ago. There’s really no place online like it. I’ve been down the rabbit hold of blasting my followers with links, resources, and a plethora of other tweets fully automated and guess what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sure I would get a like or a new follower here and there. Aside from that, the actual natural engagement there is where the magic happens. I shut off all my automation back in October of 2017 and everything, and I mean everything got better. People started seeing my tweets more, the natural occurrence of thoughts and helpful shares became liked and retweeted more and more. If someone likes or retweets or just mentions you on Twitter, you better thank them. Don’t worry about getting the likes, worry about how you can reply to those that likes. Sales Bot You’ve heard me talk before about my Sales Bot. It’s what I’ve built my business on when first starting out and still use to this very day. Here’s the deal and why this is important. There are [about 8300 tweets every single second](http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second/#tweets-band). That’s fast! A tweet has an average lifespan of [18 minutes](https://moz.com/blog/when-is-my-tweets-prime-of-life), which means that you have to be on top of things when they happen. People complain all the time on Twitter with mentions of brands and/or people. If you work with a certain platform, company, brand, or even person, and know that you can help solve problems that their customers have, it’s best to set up an alert for yourself than to spend your whole day on Twitter. You’ve got work to do. If you want my walk-through on setting up your own Sales Bot, jump onto my mailing list. Patience Be in it for the long game. Take it from me, I’ve tried experiments on all sorts of platforms including Periscope, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Beme, Blab, and so many others. Nothing wor
Mon, January 21, 2019
A226 - How do I respond when a client says that I’m out of their budget?
This is where there’s a mismatch between the value that you have for the work and the value that the client sees in the work. As the professional, you need to close this gap through education and focus. The education is on the potential of the return on investment. That return on investment is focused on the success of the project. Focus on the success of the project The first thing you need to do is ask your client “what does success look like 6 or 12 months time?” Here’s why this is important. It takes the focus away from you and what you are charging the client for the work and onto what they are looking to get from the project. Because that’s why they are talking to you in the first place, right? They didn’t come to you because they want to spend money with someone. They want their own problem solved. So if they answer with something like “we want to have 1000 new signups to our email list” or “we would like to have 100 new customers” or “we want to show up on the first page of Google for a specific keyword”, all these things translate to the bottom line, the value they are putting on the project. That bottom line is now out in the open for you to either follow up with another question that asks them what that value of a customer is, or if you can go ahead and do some quick math based on your knowledge of the business and how much they make from their customers, you can position the project price to that value. A client needs to be educated by you before they buy from you The education piece comes into play during the follow-up. When you talk budget, you should be talking about very early on in the process. If you are doing so and still getting this objection, that means the client hasn’t had the proper education on the value of their problem. This is where most freelancers and consultants fail. They fail at delivering a followup sequence that is valuable and defaults to waiting a few days and then sending an email that says “just wanted to check in and see if you have any questions.” The reason this is the default is the fear that you don’t want to bug or bother them. The only way you will bother them is with that lame followup email. Because that followup has no value to them at all! If you were to fire off some links or resources that pertain to their problem and the solution you are proposing to them, then how could that be bothering to them. You are simply sending them what they want. In fact, 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups after the first meeting. How many are you doing? When you follow-up, you need to provide value. There’s no reason to ask them for questions, if they have them, they will ask, don’t worry about that. During your own education and surfing online, when you find something that betters your business in any way. Or come across an interesting article on the industry. Save
Fri, January 18, 2019
A225 - How do you push past the imposter syndrome?
Maybe it’s the time of year where goals and aspirations are high, then reality sets in the fears, the hesitations, the mind games start to mess with those aspirations because over the past couple of weeks through email, through Twitter , and in some communities I’m in people seem to be asking this same question. How do you do the work and push past the fear of getting it out there. Things like podcasting and “going live” and just the general action of putting something into the world is scary. I won’t ignore that. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- As someone who has introverted tendencies, if I were to look back when I was in school, I certainly wouldn’t have stood in the middle of campus and started answering questions from people. Or stand at the back of the bus and give lessons on how to do the homework from the night before. That, in fact, sounds absurd. So it got me thinking about why now? What changed? Because I’m still very much that introverted guy. In fact, for my wedding, I had to prepare days in advance for being the center of attention for family and friends. (Let’s be honest, my beautiful bride was the center, but I would get some collateral attention). Yet, I have stood up and spoken at meetups and WordCamp NYC, where all eyeballs were on me. You are listening to episode 225 of my third podcast. My wife thinks I’m nuts for preferring to spend 60-minutes answering questions from people rather than presenting a scripted slideshow. So what changed? There are 2 things that I can nail down that make a difference in young Jason and me today. Mindset The first is the mindset. And before you turn this off, I’m not going to go into the woo-woo, rah-rah stuff. When I say mindset here, I mean that this is something I genuinely enjoy doing. I like helping people, I mean who doesn’t. But what I can help people with is specific things that I have done myself and have experience with. I also enjoy being around people such as yourself. And the final point of mindset is that I have a long game, a life’s mission of sorts for time freedom and flexibility not only for myself but for anyone else who wants that. So when I feel nervous, or apprehension about pushing publish, I think about those things and the rest becomes mechanical. I get out of my own way. Smaller steps get you farther The second item is doing things in small iterations. Break things down into smaller chunks so that the action isn’t overwhelming. You no doubt have heard this before, so let me share a concrete example for you. When I did my first podcast, it was with other developers and it was called WP Dev Table. <
Thu, January 17, 2019
A224 - What is the #1 business trend for 2019?
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why I’ve been asked this. I’m honored, but I’m not in any sort of position to give a great answer. Simply because I’m one who studies business trends and not in that analytical type of position. With that being said though, I’d like to share an aspect of the business that I’ve seen grow and produce amazing results, not just in my business, but other businesses as well. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- On Live In The Feast Season 4 and as I’m recording Season 5, the co-hosts who have come on the show and shared their experiences and insight have all talked about sales and marketing at a personal level. When I say personal level, I mean that they are doing things that are unscalable like high-touch sales, like personalized videos, like one-on-one sessions. They are doing things like creating welcome packages like what Andrew Askins, co-founder of Krit, spoke about in Episode 10 . I’ve found in my own business indications from prospects that they want a more customized, a more personalized experience. When I think about my own buying habits, more often than not I lean in the direction towards getting a great experience more than anything else. For example Podcast Royale, who edits and does all the production work for Live In The Feast. Can I get what they do for a lower cost, maybe? But the experience I have when working with them. The feeling of knowing that all I need to do is record and put the files in Dropbox and the episode will cross the finish line and be published. The back and forth conversations, feedback and advice is an experience that I’m happy to pay for. If you are wondering why you aren’t closing more deals or maybe not getting repeat projects from a client, are you doing anything to better their experience? I’m not saying that you need to send them away on an all expense paid vacation, but is there anything that you are doing to stand out and create a memorable moment in their minds. This could be sending them a small gift for signing a contract with you. Maybe a wooden coaster with their logo on it. (Thank you, Agency Highway podcast ). Maybe it’s a hard copy of your onboarding sequence that you normally send via email. Something that’s unique enough that allows you to stand out from all those just going through the motions. I’m not going to say that it won’t cost you a small investment. Maybe even a bit of time to do. But that gesture is something that will delight them and make you memorable.
Wed, January 16, 2019
A223 - How to ditch hourly rates?
Jonathan Stark invited me onto his podcast where I unpacked being a platform specialist and how I built a productized service. I actually shared some of the fears I had along the way. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- How do I know Jonathan Stark? Jonathan Stark, author of Hourly Billing is Nuts and host of Ditching Hourly podcast invited me onto his show. We are a part of a Slack group together and as we were talking about Jonathan's platform migration from Drip to ConvertKit, he invited me onto the show to talk about how I productized my services as a platform specialist. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about how I went from a burnt out generalist developer to an in-demand specialist. How to become a platform specialist In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. There is a lot that goes into specializing your business, you can choose a vertical specialty, a horizontal specialty, or a platform specialty. In this conversation with Jonathan, we dive into many of the pivot points, thoughts, fears, and strategy behind how I built my business. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including: - How I put myself on the radar of specific platforms? - How building relationships and being helpful in the community can create trust - How I still choose those who I work with even if I’ve already helped them in the past Specifically, I talk about how I became a trusted partner of both Drip and ConvertKit. The main takeaways from this show are: - How to identify pieces of your existing services and creating products to sell - By being helpful first, your business will grow - There are pros and cons to being a platform specialist, which both are that you are tied to that platform. Definitely go [check it out](https://www.ditchinghourly.com/b87a8b24). If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. I’d like to thank Jonathan for being a part of it and including me along with amazing folks like Liston Witherill , Jane Portman , and Blair Enns
Tue, January 15, 2019
A222 - How to charge more as a freelancer?
In the last episode you learned some things to delight and create the perception of value in your business. Today you will learn exactly what to deliver that validates that perception. I get asked how to get more clients and I often say that it’s not about “more clients”, it’s about “right clients.” I stress that it’s about getting the right quality clients. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- What you need to think about is how high-quality is that client that you are working with right now and how much are you charging them. If you are looking to increase the budget, it comes from not just leveling up your skills, not just your experience, but also that you are doing more for them in your solution. Which means that if you are including more, that, in turn, requires more time spent on the solution and obviously a bigger budget. What is it in those budgets that allow you to charge more? This could be strategy and consultation. Could be a weekly phone call. This could even be an add-on service like marketing on social media. Maybe you are thinking that you don’t know how to do marketing. Or that you aren’t experienced enough yet to give a valuable strategy. That’s ok. Figuring out what you can add into the mix to increase those budgets isn’t about you. It has to be about your client and what they want. As a developer, I take pride in proper coding practices such as environments, coding standards, and efficient deployment scripts. My clients, not so much. What my clients' value is communication. This comes in 2 forms. The first is how we handle everyday communication. I tried Basecamp, Asana, and others for project management with clients. All too often though they would forget their password, forget the URL to go to. It made working with me in their eyes, difficult. So instead of forcing them into something that would frustrate them, I stuck to something that I know they know. Email. They send me an email and then I do what I need to on the backend to file it accordingly. The second form is a weekly call. I asked my clients “how can I be more awesome?” What I was told was that communication is great through the email, but having a regular phone call would be awesome. So I added in a weekly phone call to my services. Now I rather spend the time doing work than talking about it, but that’s me, not the client. In order to make that phone call reality and provide more to the solution in that way, that would require time carved out of the week, and require prep and post time. You may be thinking how can you charge more for something like a call when those seemingly are needed anyway.
Mon, January 14, 2019
A221 - How to attract clients with big budget?
It’s not about how many clients you have, it’s the quality of the client. You want to attract clients who have bigger budgets so that you can raise your rates and get out from that hamster wheel. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Where is the money First is to know where the money is coming from. I love music, I love listening, playing and exploring new bands. I also like the design, the aesthetic of metal and hard rock music. Though new bands often don’t have the budget to spend on their marketing or website development. That’s often left for beer. So I wouldn’t want to go after them as an ideal client. However since I enjoy the creative arts, folks who sell services, sell products (both digitally and physical), makers of all shapes and sizes who already build their businesses online. Well, those are folks could be potential clients. Go get them Once you’ve established where the money is, it’s time to go out and get the work. They won’t automatically find you and come knocking on the door. You will need to prospect. This means having to find people to have conversations with, sending emails to, and have Skype calls with. Once you’ve established yourself with some sort of track record, which I talk about in episode 140 - How can I start freelancing as a web developer? , the prospecting becomes easier to do. You’ll start to see that more clients come to you. But that does take time and that’s why prospecting is so important. Put up the velvet rope Sure clients with bigger budgets want their solution delivered to them with great success, but they also want to feel like they are spending wisely. This means, putting up a velvet rope, or as I call it a Project Brief . Even if you initiated the conversation, have them fill out an application. This velvet-rope not only shows that you have been down the road before, but it also gives the perception that you don’t just let anyone be a client of yours. There is a bit of psychology here where if there’s a gated community, us humans want to be in it. Then as that client progresses through working with you, delight them in unexpected ways. Send a welcome packet. Send them personalized notes and cards. Send them unexpected gifts that relate to their business. These tiny gestures go a long way in the good feeling of spending a lot of money. Walk the walk The final tip here is a bonus one, but it’s important. You want to walk the walk. Meaning, have your energy and your language reflect th
Fri, January 11, 2019
A220 - What do you do for a follow-up sequence for leads?
I think by now you that I’m big on communication and followup is the biggest piece of communication especially early on. In episode 135, I shared 11 ways to stand out as a freelancer. And while that’s a great list and got awesome feedback, the one thing that is most often attached to that is the word “the most.” I get asked “How to stand out as a freelancer the most?” so often that it’s astonishing. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Yet, what I asked on Twitter how many of you have a formal follow up for leads with the choices of “yes”, “no”, and “just send ‘just wanted to check-in’”, shockingly only 19% said that they have a formal follow up sequence. Let me say that a different way, more than 80% of freelancers do not have a formal follow up sequence with leads. Yet, you ask how do you stand out in a crowded freelancer market. Education and add value When I first started doing follow up sequences, it was more manual than anything. Mainly because I was a generalist developer serving customers of all shapes and sizes. But for me it made sense that if a lead contacted me, even if we hadn’t talked yet, to send them valuable pieces of content that were relevant to their project, business objectives, and maybe a fun joke to show that I’m a human too. I would have a library of related links to articles or videos or podcasts that spoke to a number of stats, key metrics, case studies, and even how-tos. I read the articles and got value from them to better my business, so why not share what I’m consuming with those who may work with me. I would set a reminder in my calendar to send off an email that was quick, simple, and had a link with a few key points that I wanted that lead to walk away with. I put those key points in there just in case they never clicked the link. I’ve since automated this process a bit more and if you want to know how I do that check out Stop The Cycle . How often do you email? How many emails should I send to a lead? is the next logical question I’m sure you have right now. You’ll have to play with this yourself to find the sweet spot, but I did some research on the topic to get a good idea of a ballpark to start with. Decision makers consume 5 pieces of content before they are even ready to speak to a sales rep Half of all leads that enter a sales pipeline are not ready to buy in near term. 80% of sales require 5 follow ups after the first meeting 44% of sales reps give up after one That last stat I threw in there just to reinforce my answer to standing out.
Thu, January 10, 2019
A219 - How to improve your sales process as a freelancer?
Today I’m going to give you 3 very small, yet powerful tactics to improve your sales process as a freelancer. Quick, small, yet powerful tweaks you can make to your sales process that you can put into practice today. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Find out how to close those who are sitting on the fence This is something that is normally best done over a call or face-to-face. It’s much harder over email. But when done a few times, you’ll know exactly what you are missing in your sales. If someone says to you “I need to think about this” or any of the variations of that. Respectfully respond with empathy on the decision and then follow up with asking them what it will take. You do this by simply asking them, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being we’ll never start this project together, and 10 being let’s do this right now, where do are you right now? If they answer 6 or 7, which is probably where most will sit, follow up by asking “what do I have to do to make that a 10 for you?” Add in a tactic to get more leads to your business with your current clients I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried this tactic myself, but I’ve heard others do it pretty successfully. When you get a brand new client, before you present your proposal to them, ask if they want to get $X off of the project. When they say “yes”, then explain to them at the end of the project, if they can refer to you names of 5 other people who could use your services, they’ll get that discount. I’m not a fan of discounting, but I can see this being a pretty successful campaign because if you landed 10% of the referrals, that would totally cover your costs on the discount. Add in a strategy that involves you reaching out to new people For example, every single day, reach out a business or to someone who could be your target client on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or your platform of choice. By using a quick DM to say very quickly that you admire something that they are doing, something that you do and how you can add value to what they are already doing, it’ll go a long way. If you do that every single day for a quarter and only close 5% of those leads, you’ll have 4 new clients. If you continue to do that over the course of a year, that’ll be 18 brand new clients this year. I think you’ll agree that these 3 things aren’t hard at all to put in place today, right? If you do all 3, then you’ll be improving aspects to bring more business opportunities in with leads, hot leads, and clients. Can’t beat that! Which one are you going to try first? In fact, let’s do this. Tweet me @rezzz on Twitter with a 1, 2, 3, or multiple of them and hashtag #askrezzz. So if you are doing the 1-10 rating, pu
Wed, January 09, 2019
A218 - What do you ask during a sales call?
During any part of the sales process, whether it’s a call, form, or email, there are critical and absolutes, when it comes to questions to ask. This is true if you are a developer, a designer, a marketer, or even a photographer. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- Before I jump into the must-haves when you think about these questions to ask, think about the end, what you are delivering and work backward from there. It’s so easy to get caught up in the emotions and excitement of a new project and want to jump in. If you want the project to be as successful as possible, just like the client does, make sure you are on the same page from the start. The key thing to remember is to not assume anything. Cover all your bases so that you both earn trust with each other and have a firm foothold on the project. So if you are a developer and you need to work on an existing codebase, don’t assume that they have a code repository and different environments for testing things. For any type of business that you are, don’t assume that you are the only one working on the project. Make sure that you know who else is so that it can be collaborative. Which now leads me to the X questions to ask. What are you looking to achieve? This can also be “why is this important right now for the business?” Aside from any technology, there’s a reason that the business has chosen this project right now and it is important to understanding why. The reason could be sales based, could be philosophy based, could be they are looking to get investors, and so on. The underlying reason will set the path for the success. What does success look like in 6, 10, 12 months from now? This is important even on the smallest of projects that may only last a couple of weeks. Understanding the vision the client has for the work that’s about to be done is the measuring stick of happiness for them with you. If they expect 1000 new users to sign up in 6 months, it’s better to know that than doing the work and you thinking that they would be happy with 500. What does failure look like? This is important especially when it comes to working with a client that’s had a bad experience previously. Failure for you will be different than the client. That I’m sure of. So best to understand what that is so that you can steer clear of that at all costs. Oddly enough, failure for the client has to do with communication more often than not. Which makes it easy for you since you can always take 5 minutes at the end of the day to let them know what’s going with their project. Why have you come to me? This is also “what is it that I do that interests you for us t
Tue, January 08, 2019
A217 - Is this going to get me clients fast?
The internet tends to fool us. It creates this illusion that everything is a click of the mouse and we’ll be bringing in 6 figures or that if we do these 7 things in 2019, we’ll be sitting on the beach in a month sipping umbrella drinks working 3 hours a day. This isn’t truth. There’s nothing about this that is valid. If a magic wand exists, then I haven’t found one. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- I get asked plenty every single week for a “quick win” or “what’s the best way to get clients” or “how long will it take before I get results.” I always say that these questions are the wrong questions to be asking. If you are asking these questions then stop talking to me, and everyone else, and only talk to those that will pay you. Get out there, ask your network of friends and family, even previous employers and see if there is something that you can help with. If you want to build a business, you can’t do it without revenue bottom line. You may fall into one of these If you have zero clients right now and looking for them, spend the next day, 8-10 hours, making calls and reaching out to potential paying customers. If you have one client right now and looking for more, then spend 6 hours today looking for clients by reaching out to potential customers. If you have clients and need money to pay bills that are piling up, spend 4 hours today reaching out and looking for clients. This is the hustle part of the business. The first 2 are scenarios where you are most likely starting out or in a downturn in your business. The 3rd is often a matter of your expenses outpacing your revenue. In that case, you need to raise rates and get that higher paying and higher value clients. Now don’t get me wrong, I get that this is all easier said than done. And seeking out on Google and putting into the search “how to get clients” is much easier, but that won’t get you anywhere fast. In fact, you may find yourself back inside a cube. That was only the first step… I applaud you though for looking to better your business through education and coaching, but these are foundational lessons in business. They won’t land you a client today. I turn folks away from Feast when I get a sense that they should be cutting expenses and focusing on the hustle part. Some still subscribe and buy-in, but they soon realize it’s not what they need right now, which is what I told them in the first place. Searching Google and investing in your business as I said is the easier thing to do. It’s also the part that you have control over. Therefore, it may seem like you are doing what’s needed to get clients, when in reality the act of getting a client you honestly don’t have any control over. You h
Mon, January 07, 2019
A216 - How is business going?
With the holidays, I don’t know about you, but I still get asked about the business in a way that the person asking is skeptical that I am stable. To me, it’s a bit funny that they ask this because I’ve been in business since 2010 and often times this person I’m talking to has had multiple jobs with multiple companies over the same period of time. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. ------------------- The best analogy of my point of view came by way of Troy Dean when he joined me as a co-host on Live In The Feast . He said that he’s a terrible passenger. If he’s on the bus, he wants to his hands on the wheel. I love this because I feel the very same way. I want to be in control of my life. I wasn’t someone who enjoyed school very much and being shuffled from class to class by a ringing bell. I felt like I was one of Pavlov’s dogs where they ring the bell and I come running for the treat. With that though comes great responsibility. When it was just me, I had bills and rent to pay but that was about it. Now with a family, I have other mouths to feed and other lives to support and nurture. It requires some sacrifice for sure. Sometimes it’s an early morning wake up call, or a late night launch. But that’s the nature of the business. So when someone asks me “how’s business” and then proceeds to look at me like a poor soul who’s struggling to make it, I often think to myself. I feel for this person who’s been put in a box, whether by their own parents, society, schooling, whatever happened that they are trying to put me in a box. I think about how grateful I am to have the ability to generate my own income and how empowering that is for myself, my family, and our future. I usually smile and I certainly don’t diminish what I do. What I mean by that is when I first started my business, I used to internalize this view that they were in better position than I. I would then vocalize something to diminish my accomplishments by saying something like “it’s tough, but it is what it is” or “business is good but could be better of course.” Now when I think about how their situation is when they ask me about mine, I smile and think about how they’ve switched jobs 3 times in the last 9 years, commute to the city on the train or drive 45 minutes one-way to get to work, and I think about how they are lucky to get a 3% raise every year . I’m in control of all those things that I hate about those boxes. After I share how awesome things are, I often will ask the same question back to them which is the fun part. Whereas many of my conversation
Fri, December 21, 2018
A215 - How do I find the time to create content for my business and what do I write about?
So excited for today’s episode, because today will be the Ask Kim show. Kim Doyal is all about content. I’ve known her from the WordPress space for years but she’s since pivoted her business to focus more on helping business with their content and the Content Creators Community . She’s coined the phrase “Everything is Content” and since I know that you struggle with finding the time to and figuring out what to write about, I thought no better person to answer this than Kim. Just like you plan your projects, plan for your business, you want to also plan for your content and Kim has the strategies to help you. She’s going to share with you 2 strategies for making the time and then 2 easy strategies to get your content rolling. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Thu, December 20, 2018
A214 - What to say when a potential client says you are too expensive?
If you haven’t yet listened to Episode 207 - How to overcome objections in sales? , I encourage you to do so. When encountering a “price buyer” there’s often nothing you can do to have them come up and see the value from a cost perspective. I don’t want to beat a dead horse on what to say when this happens because I dive into what you should be doing and how to direct them down the path of a referral in that episode. In Episode 156-What do I say when a potential client says I'm too expensive? -- yes, I get asked this question quite often -- you learn 3 strategies and how to tell if it's a negotiation tactic or not. What I’d like to share with you though is that if you are getting this often in your sales conversations, put your prices on your website, Facebook page, or wherever you get your leads from. If you get this objection more than a third of the time, then you aren’t clearly attracting the right kind of clients. You are also not setting the expectations early enough in the process. Your leads will go down, there’s no question about that. You lead quality though will skyrocket. You’ll get folks coming to you with an expectation of the kinds of budgets they need to work with you. You’ll also gain back time in your schedule too. I don’t know about you, but when I take a sales call, it’s not just the 30 minutes for the call. It’s the prep time, looking into their business, looking around online to see if there are any red flags from them, maybe seeing if I can find past vendors they’ve worked with, looking at their customers, and so on. Plus all that time that pulls me away from other client work or my own business. All this could easily be a couple of hours on top of the time for the call. Lower quality of leads will result in no-shows for the call, wasted time for yourself and them, and your profits flying right out the window because you are not getting paid for doing sales. The payment for sales should be baked into your project costs. So just like any part of your business, your profits will increase if you are able to reduce the time spent on a task and increase the conversions through those points. Setting the budget expectation as early as possible is a key component and major objection clients have. A lead really has 3 things they focus on when deciding to sign on with you. Price Timeline If you can actually do the work Addressing all these 3 before you even hop on a call with a lead will be beneficial to you improving your close rate on new clients. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, December 19, 2018
A213 - What do you say when a lead comes to you from a bad experience with another freelancer?
I’m going to get up on my soapbox here for a minute, so if you don’t want to hear it, scroll down a little bit. Over the past decade, I’ve run into many leads and clients that have had terrible experiences from flakey freelancers who have either disappeared, communicated poorly, didn’t deliver a project, or just didn’t set the expectations the client had. If you are a freelancer in business, please, please, do right by your clients. Be honest and don’t get in over your head. If you find yourself in a sticky spot, there’s nothing that communicating to the client can’t fix. If you are a freelancer and asking questions like “how come clients don’t respect my value?” or “how do I charge more than bottom dollar hourly rates?” The big reason is that of these flakey freelancers who don’t do right by their clients and then those clients are jaded and don’t want to be burned again. If nothing else is taken from this, please communicate clearly and often with your clients so that it raises the bar for all of us in the services based industry. Rant over! This is actually an easier answer than you may think. Be empathetic Tell them that you are very sorry and can appreciate their apprehension based on their past experience. I’m sure you’ve had bad experiences in the past with either a product or service, right? Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and support them. Don’t be confrontational. Don’t throw anyone under the bus. You only know one side of that story and you have no knowledge of the situation. However, you can call upon your own experiences of bad service in the past and how that made you feel. You have your guard up and don’t want to be burned again, and that is exactly how they feel too. Reflect the conversation back to how they found you Once you are able to put your arm around them, next reference back to how they found you. If it’s a referral, that’s great, because referencing the person’s name you pull that trust factor back into the conversation. If it’s by some other means, say an article or podcast you were in, mention that big takeaway. No doubt it’s the reason why they wanted to get you to work with them in the first place. Give them confidence Tying in that takeaway, ensure them that they won’t find themselves in a similar place again because of how you run your business. Share with them some behind the scenes workflows and processes if you need to. But what you want to do is instill confidence quickly that you’ve got things under control. By talking through these 3 points, you’ll find that most of that initial baggage the lead has, will be put aside. What you want to keep in mind though as you work together is that baggage is not gone. They will be on the watch for the signals of getting burned again, so you need to be as well so that the trus
Tue, December 18, 2018
A212 - How do you handle a client that has ghosted?
You may have been in those projects when all is well and the correspondence is good going back and forth and then crickets. Radio silence from the client. You’ve sent a few emails that have gone unanswered. Maybe even a few calls have gone unreturned. What do you do next? There are a few things, but first, keep in mind that no matter how good the relationship is remember that you really don’t know the full story of your client. So before your brain starts jumping to conclusions, be empathetic first and foremost. ## Are you ok? First, you want to make contact, probably via email with a simple “Are you ok?” type of email. Something simple, like: > I haven’t heard from you in a while. I called X times and sent emails on A, B, and C but haven’t heard back. I just wanted to make sure everything is ok? Please let me know so I know everything is good or if there’s anything that I can help with. ## A nudge to move forward After having sent that and then a couple of days go by and you still haven’t heard back. > I know things come up unexpectedly. I just wanted to see what your thoughts were about X so that we can move forward with Y. If priorities have shifted, that’s ok too. We are at a standstill and the project is in jeopardy of missing the scheduled date of completion. ## Final call If there still is no response, there’s a good chance it’s been a month or more since you last heard from them at this point. It’s time to close the project and move forward. > I haven’t heard from you since X. I’ve sent Y emails and called Z times. As per our agreement, I’ll be putting your project on hold. When you are ready, I can re-schedule your project. Re-scheduling the project involves 1, 2, and 3. Please pay your remaining balance by . Sending an invoice will certainly awaken a sleeping client one way or another. You may not get the payment, but you’ll certainly get some sort of response good, bad, or otherwise. Item of note here is that if you don’t have a “ghosting clause” in your agreement, here’s the time to put one in. You don’t want projects to linger on for months, maybe years even. This is a simple paragraph in your contract that states what happens if they are unresponsive. Put strict parameters around what "unresponsive" means and the consequences of this. State what has to happen for the project to be re-scheduled to be worked on and any penalty fees that may or may not apply. Clients aren’t bad. They don’t go into projects with the intention of ghosting, but when it does happen, you’ll be happy that you have that clause in place. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Mon, December 17, 2018
A211 - How do you handle a good fit for you that doesn’t really fit for your marketing message?
Last week I recorded an episode of Live in the Feast with Andrew Askins. He’s a co-founder of Krit, a company that helps non-technical founders build their idea into a product. Andrew asked this great question and I thought I’d share it here since one the episode won’t be released for another few weeks. And two, after last week’s series on being better at sales, this fits in perfectly. For a little bit of context to how Andrew asked me this, we were talking about crafting our messaging around the company by who we serve, why they should care, and how they benefit from it. As we were chatting we both agreed that the messaging is marketing. It’s who we target because it’s who we know we can serve n the most successful way. But shockingly, that isn’t always who we work with. When you specialize your business, you may be afraid of “the money being left on the table” when in actuality, you repel the bad clients and attract those people that can resonate with who you are. So as a lead comes to the business, and maybe they aren’t the WooCommerce business, or they aren’t using Drip for them email marketing platform. Maybe they are using Teachable and ConvertKit, but all the other signals I have for taking on a project align. We gel from a personality perspective. I can totally support their business and what they stand for. They respect my expertise and value my input. Well, I’m going to try and close them. I may put some constraints around the project, but I’m going to close them. There isn’t any reason not to. It’s these types of clients that have allowed me to grow my business over the past decade. I work with non-profits, e-commerce, service-based, coaches, memberships, and digital product based businesses. If I took a hard line approach with everyone coming in and didn’t expand my horizons as a business, I wouldn’t be in business today. How I determine they are a fit This is the time though I really have learned to listen to my gut on things. I also lean heavily on being able to read that person and making sure that we can work together well. If anything my gut tells me or something is off, then I don’t push them towards the proposal stage. I try and help them the best way possible and more often than not, will refer them to someone who can help them. I go into every sales call with the intention of having that other person leave with value and in a better place than before we started it. Letting go of the notion that every sales call needs to be closed is freeing and confidence building. No one on the planet has a 100% close rate. I’d much rather accept that, then be helpful and honest with the other person so that we both leave the conversation feeling good. You may approach sales differently, maybe you want to close every deal. Maybe you feel you have to just to keep
Fri, December 14, 2018
A210 - If you don’t have experience, how to you prove the quality without the education/experience?
This is the classic chicken or the egg scenario. Doing these 3 things will raise the bar immediately and have you stand out from the other 3 vendors your lead is talking with. For the context of this episode, this is for those that are just starting out, maybe still full-time and looking to go freelance. This could also be for those trying a new service or piece to their business. Maybe even niching down or specializing your business to where you haven’t had any experience in before. So many of you in this area find yourself in a chicken or the egg scenario, where you talk about how you have no case studies or portfolio pieces. You don’t have experience because you haven’t done this type of work before. You find yourself paralyzed because of it. You don’t move forward with anything because you get stuck. I want to share with you 3 tips that don’t require anything other than a conversation with a client or lead when you don’t have the experience. Find out why they are talking to you Unless they are a friend of yours or existing client, there’s some reason for why you are talking with them. Maybe it was a bad previous engagement. Maybe someone referred you. Maybe they found you online and liked what you do, but they are unsure if you can help them because of the business they have. Whatever it is, find out. Because that will give you a quick insight into what is attractive about you to them. Simply ask “How did you find out about me?” before starting in on the conversation. Or if during the course of the conversation they seem unsure if you can help, ask “There are a lot of choices out there, and I respect that, may I ask you why you are talking with me about your project?” Set up the clarity for the lead, make sure they are clear of the problem Making sure that the lead is fully engaged and clear on what problem they want solving. Echo back what they are asking you for. State everything that you hear back to them to make sure that there is clarity on what’s being asked for and the goals they want to achieve. If there’s some level of contention about the project based on a previously bad engagement, be empathetic but state how you work and the benefits to the client of the way you work. After briefly giving them insight, ask them if that process makes sense to them. Ask them if it aligns with their thinking and the goals that why are looking to achieve. Get them focused back onto your conversation with them, not thinking about the bad experience they had. Empathize with them and offer a lower risk opportunity to work together If there’s still some level of skepticism due to lack of experience, offer them a lower risk opportunity to work together on. I’m not suggesting discounting your services! I’m suggesting offering them a phased project, where the initial engage
Thu, December 13, 2018
A209 - How to respond to “I don’t need strategy, can you just do…”
In episode A207 - How to overcome objections in sales , you briefly learned about leaning into what they want and then directing them down the right path. Leaning in, or being empathetic during a sales process is really about giving the lead what they want. Whether they want the lowest cost, the best value, to comparison shop, etc, it’s in your best interest to give them what they want. When you think about sales, instead of thinking about closing every deal, think about how to have them leave your conversation in a better place. You aren’t going to convince anyone they need you. They have to realize that themselves. If they feel they need something that you don’t have or do, the best thing to do is to put them on the path to getting that. One of my favorite quotes is from Pippin Williamson founder of Sandhills Development. “If it’s a hard sell, let them go.” If it’s hard to have a conversation with someone and suggest a course of action, how do you think a project will be working together? Ever have a lead say “I don’t need the strategy, can you just write the code” or “Can you just design the logo without the full brand?” The answer is simple. “I will design you a logo, but how will you know it’ll be effective for the brand.” “I can certainly write the code, but how will that code fit with the rest of the application and do what you need it to do.” “Is that what you want?” Lean in to what they want. Explain that the strategy and process is all a part of the code or design. Without it, it’s just a visual element. Without your process, you have no way of knowing with confidence that the solution you are providing will be successful. This lead is often a price buyer, maybe a touch of the “know-it-all” buyer as well. Explain that the price is the same with or without the strategy. Encourage them that there are other low cost options out there for them to use. It’s like building a house without a blueprint. It may stand, be a 3 bedroom house. But you were expecting it to withstand a hurricane and be 5 bedroom house. What they are looking for is your value, but for cheap and that just isn’t possible. Let them go and come back. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, December 12, 2018
A208 - How do I respond to an RFP?
RFPs, or Request for Proposals, is something as a freelancer or consultant you should stay away from. An RFP is a document that talks about a project and asks you to write a proposal on how to solve it. In the previous two episodes you learned to protect your sales process, and ultimately your business, by only pushing value buyers and those that give you a firm “yes” at the end of the sales call to the proposal stage. RFPs are the complete opposite of this. In short, responding to an RFP, have you reading through a document explaining the project from the perspective of the company and then drafting up a proposal with your time estimates, milestones, due dates, company history, and questions you have to bid on the project. Then that company shows all the responses and selects what they feel is the best option. If you are responding to RFPs, this is the epitome of the proposal writing business. If a buyer presents to you an RFP, full stop. Protect your time! Protect your profits! Simply say “Before we get into this - It’s not your policy to do speculative work.” Because that’s what an RFP is, speculative. You are speculating on the project based on what is in that document. You have no customer input, surveys, data or your own research to help you build a proper solution to the problem. How to speak with a lead that insists on responding to an RFP? Ask them if they are a gambler? “How important is this project to you?” “What is it worth to you to solve the problem?” These are appropriate questions to ask the lead that insists on the RFP process. The lead has to be a gambler, otherwise, they wouldn’t be hanging themselves out there asking companies to build and present solutions without any conversations and research into the problem, for free. These 2 questions, refocuses the conversation you are having for the lead to get clarity around the project and what they are asking you to do. You can further pursue it by elegantly and tactfully asking if the other companies pitching: Have these companies interviewed customers Have these companies interviewed sales to see what the challenges are “Chances are that you are going to say no. And since you are asking people for free work, they are just going to come up with answers on their own. They might hit it, but they might not. That’s why I asked if you are a gambler or not.” Explain why you do what you do Take some time and explain why your process is important to them and solving their specific problem. This is where that clarity can hit them like a ton of bricks. Because here you can emphasize that you can give them a cookie cutter solution, but what happens when that doesn’t work. They will have to then go back to whoever approved the bid and backtrack. Explain to them that without your process, what t
Tue, December 11, 2018
A207 - How to overcome objections in sales?
The most important piece of your sales process is to overcome objections and direct the lead down the appropriate path they want to be on. If you haven’t already done so, go back and listen to How to get better at sales? , where you will learn the first 2 steps to getting better at sales. Learn from every sales call Identify the type of buyer you are talking with By the end of this episode, you will learn the most important piece of sales. That is how to overcome any objection to the 5 buyer types we identified in the last episode. Once you key in on identifying which type you are speaking to, you want to embrace them. Lean in to what they want and give them exactly what they ask for. STEP 3 - Put the buyer on the right path With any of them, you don't want to waste your time in writing a proposal unless you get a firm "yes" from the at the end of the call. You aren't in business to write proposals. If they balk at the time and cost investment and still ask for a proposal, tell them that "this is the proposal, nothing will be different in the document." You aren't in the proposal writing business. There's no reason to waste time on writing up an in-depth proposal on something that's never going to happen. Explain to them that the proposal is a formality to get the ball rolling on the project together. If what they hear on this call doesn't make sense to them to move forward, nothing will change in the document. When you identify the type of buyer, there's a different path you want to direct them to. Price buyer --> referral Value buyer --> a firm "yes" to move forward "Know-it-all" buyer --> empathy first, with a path of clarity for why they are talking with you "Wishy-washy" buyer --> add value and let them go and come back "Go between" buyer --> explain the process, but then full stop until ALL decision makers on the call STEP 4 - Overcome Objections To help you identify which buyer a lead depends on the objections they have. As you have your next sales call, or if you've recorded the calls in the past, listen very closely. Break out a piece of paper and write down any of the objections you hear from the lead. Statements like: "that seems like I a lot of money for this" "this should be simple" “This sounds great, but I have to talk with so-and-so first" "I'm not sure" "I had this other person and it didn't work out" "I'm talking with a few other vendors" "I have someone else who can do this work but wanted to see what else is out there" I can go on, but I think you get the point. Not every objection is in the form of confrontation or conflict, like “you are too much money.” Statements like “I’m not sure” or “this s
Mon, December 10, 2018
A206 - How do I get better at sales?
"I'm an introvert and I don't like sales" -- "How do I close more deals?" -- "How do I get better at sales?" By the end of this episode you’ll know the 3 steps to do just that. "I get a lot of folks on the phone, but think I should be closing more." This is something that I hear quite often and it’s the wrong statement to be making. You want your sales process to eliminate leads from becoming clients. You want each stage of your sales to be a locked gate. Keeping out the leads that shouldn’t be your clients and only letting through those leads that you really should be working with. Getting better at sales is difficult, but not impossible. It requires practice. It requires close attention to details. It also requires you to accept that this is the most business-y part of your business. Which means, you have to build up a bit of a thick skin here. Don’t take rejection personally, instead learn from it and adjust. There are 2 things that helped me get better at sales. Knowing the type of buyer I'm talking with Being able to answer objections STEP 1 - Learn from every sales call Being present during a sales call is a must. You have to be in the moment, listen to everything being said and concentrate on closing the deal, not learning about the interaction. Though, that’s the only way to learn and get better at sales. Is to be able to listen to and see patterns in your process to improve. The ideal thing to do is to record the call so that you can listen back to it later with your learning ears on. If you can't, or the lead objects to it for some reason, then be in the moment, but as you take notes, be mindful of objections being said and write them down among your sales notes. The most important thing to sales is being able to answer objections, so take note of them. STEP 2 - What type of buyer are you talking with? Understand the type of buyer you are talking with. In the services business, there are 5 types of buyers: Are they a price buyer and want to just get the lowest price they can? Are the a value buyer and want quality and price isn't a concern? Are they the "know-it-all" buyer that feel they know how to do your job? Are they the "wishy-washy" buyer t hat really doesn't know what they want? Are they the "go-between" buyer that say they are a decision maker, but not really? One lead can be a mix of these but identifying which one they are as early as possible will help you in figuring out how to handle them and where to lead them. Tomorrow we’ll go into how to overcome objections in sales. Each of the different types will have different objections. The fun part is that objections don’t always come in the form of conflict or tryin
Fri, December 07, 2018
A205 - What do you think about Gutenberg? Schmutenberg!
Finally it’s landed. The #Gutepocalypse! I say that in jest because this has been the biggest anticipated release since Star Wars Phantom Menace. WordPress 5.0 is what I’m referencing here, and before you tune out because you aren’t in the WordPress space, I encourage you to stay tuned because this is not about that as much as it’s about technology and your clients. When Apple released the iPhone back in 2007, most people with a Motorola Razor said “that is huge and what would I even do with that?” When Amazon released the Echo in 2015 and I bought it, my wife said, “what’s the point of this thing? There’s no way I’m ever going to talk to this.” Now she’s using it all day and much more than I ever have. In case you aren’t in the WordPress space, 5.0 is the release of Gutenberg. It’s the brand new default editor for WordPress, which has the whole place in an uproar. It’s been this way for a couple of years to be honest. Some people hate it, some people love it - both have very valid reasons. When asked, I usually respond with indifference. I truly am indifferent of an opinion to any change in technology, especially when it comes to my business, mainly because it’s nothing I have control over. Whether or not I like the change that’s coming, it’s coming. So no use distracting myself with the drama surrounding it. It’s a matter of figuring out if the change in that technology still aligns with the need of my clients. See I’ve always lived by the rule, business should drive the technology and not the other way around. Does change affect business, sure, I’m not denying that at all. But I’m saying that when using technology for our clients, we ultimately have little to no say in the direction of that technology. Companies have their own agenda and purpose. We have to serve our clients the best way we know how. We have to solve our clients’ problems. Our clients come to us for our experience and expertise on how to solve their problems. That’s what we should worry about most. Not whether there’s a UI change. Not whether there’s a leadership change. I’ve been a web developer since 1998. During that time, I’ve developed in Frontpage, Homesite, Java, PHP, TCL, VB, COM, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, and countless platforms like Magento, BigCommerce, WordPress and others. These are all tools to solve a particular problem at the time. I encourage you to look at technology as a tool in your tool belt. If that tool no longer serves it’s purpose in solving the problem the best way and there is a better one, time to move on. If you resist any change for the sake of staying put, you aren’t serving anyone, your client or yourself in a good way.
Thu, December 06, 2018
A204 - How to find your freelance niche
Avani Miryala is a UX designer who specialized in the Cryptocurrency space. She’s the host of Beyond the Status Quo podcast. In this episode we discuss the reasons why finding your freelance niche can increase your revenue, strengthen your relationships with clients and create a smoother funnel for recurring business. We connected on Instagram and when she told me the name of her podcast and invited me to come on, I had no choice. It was a no brainer. If anything, I had to be a part of anything named Beyond the Status Quo. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the how to find your niche. In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including: Strategies for finding your freelance niche and methods for developing your specialty How to introduce your niche to your network and the price tag that comes along with it Best practices for circumventing negative emotions attached to client and revenue ‘FOMO’ Specifically I talk about tips for gracefully declining work that does not fall under your scope of work. I think that this is an important part of the process. Once you figure out what niche to go for, it’s a matter of not falling back into bad habits. Once you draw that line in the sand for your business, anyone that’s defined as not a great client should be referred elsewhere. Definitely go check it out . If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, December 05, 2018
A203 - All my work has been word of mouth, how do I find work on my own?
This is a great question because I’m all about doubling down on what’s working. Making word of mouth more predictable though is key here. You want to create opportunities that make word of mouth easy for those spreading the word. Even though this was a question that came from my newsletter, I wanted to share it here, because I’m sure that word of mouth is your #1 lead generator. I’m going to share with you 2 specific strategies to help you make your word of mouth more predictable. Follow up sequence When you are getting word of mouth, you are building your trust by proxy. That’s the warmest of leads because they are getting a personal recommendation from someone they already trust. The next step for you is to get them sold by presenting your solution. In order to access that trust by proxy, then once someone becomes a past client, put them into a queue for a follow-up sequence. This can be super simple and not complicated at all. 30 days after offboarding 60 days after offboarding 90 days after offboarding 120 days after offboarding Each time you send them an email you are sharing with them something else they could be doing with what you gave them. Share with them how much you enjoyed the project and ultimately asking for that referral. “If you know anyone who may be interested in solving this problem like yourself, feel free to forward this email to them or introduce us and I can take it from there.” They should also be in your evergreen newsletter sequence as well, so that’s plenty of touchpoints. Create a memorable experience Do something special to create a memorable moment that’s remarkable. Remarkable is key here. You want to this is as simple as possible but something someone talks about. Laura Elizabeth , a designer who was on Live In The Feast back in Season 1, shared that she would send her clients a gift card for Starbucks right from the start. She did this with a note saying, “grab a coffee on me so that you can go ahead and put together the content for the website.” Chris Bintliff , owner of Not Really Rocket Science, shared that once he has a sales call with a lead, he’s gathered up enough data on a lead to send them a link to a custom built landing page of resources. Both of these are brilliant ideas. Think about what you can do that is remarkable and creates a great experience for your customers. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Tue, December 04, 2018
A202 - How to take the next step from contracting resource to solo business owner?
Someone from my list had asked this question when I asked “what are you struggling with right now?” What’s great about this question is that it’s smart. Smart because a “contracting resource” is someone who’s hired out by presumably another business to fill the gaps in their own business. For example, development shops hiring a developer to help with their overflow work. Whereas a “solo business owner” is someone who has a specific customer that they go after and serve a specific solution towards. They may be a developer who can write PHP, but they stay to a specific kind of customer because of the service they provide. For example, they only work with SaaS companies providing onboarding development within their application. I had this exact question back in 2011. I had most of my client work coming by way of other agencies. I purposefully did this due to me working in agencies for close to a decade. So I understood their pain, but also knew that I didn’t have to do the sales end, which at that time I was not very comfortable doing. In 2011 I realized that I was running a business where I had no control over the work, timelines, budgets, rates, and had left a full-time job of 1 boss, for a job that had 8. The first thing I did was stop taking any new sub-contracting work. Sure I did work for existing clients, but any new agencies that came my way, I said no to. I started seeking out through my network for projects that I knew I could do, which were specifically focused on ecommerce. No longer did I want to work on employee directories, back-end applications, custom database applications on the front-end. Had no interest in doing those types of things. So I focused solely on ecommerce, put up a simple landing page talking about it, and then had an online form to fill out. This was the first time I started my own sales pipeline. The second thing, and key to the success I had, was to network. Business is all about the people, this was the time I really started to double-down on Twitter and jump into the conversations that I could help people answer some questions. I had [Bridget Willard](https://rezzz.com/podcast/bridget-willard-on-wordpress-why-twitter-is-the-best-and-relationship-marketing/) on Live In The Feast. She’s a Twitter guru and helps her clients build their businesses using relationship marketing on Twitter. She unpacked a ton of tactics, which one of them is about creating lists and watching out for specific questions that you can answer. I didn’t realize it then, but that’s exactly what I was doing. I would spend about 30 minutes a day on Twitter just jumping in and helping out. It’s not fancy, but it’s the reality of business today. If it were 1950, I would’ve have been flipping through lead call lists and dialing. Except this day in age, people on social are there, complaining, telling you specifically what they are struggling with.</p
Mon, December 03, 2018
A201 - What do I do? I’m afraid to filter the tire kickers coming into my business because they are the only leads I have.
This was asked from someone who’s on my email list, which by the way I love interacting with folks there. So many amazing conversations are sparked from it. This person admits that SEO works well, and is in their words “very targeted” but they are often leads with low budgets. Here's the thing, the tire-kickers aren't good leads and that don't pan out to become clients are a complete drain on the business. It’s critical to have the leads understand the full picture before you push them into your pipeline. That means budget needs to be addressed further up the chain. Optimization of the top of funnel Assuming that SEO is working for inbound, and you are collecting names and emails as a request for your services, put a few more fields on that form. Budget being one of them. Obviously SEO is working to bring folks in. So for your business inbound strategy works. Next is to optimize your content accordingly to bring in the better, non-tire kicker leads. [Josh Doody on Live In The Feast](https://rezzz.com/podcast/josh-doody-on-why-when-and-how-to-niche-your-business/) does an amazing job in regards to optimization of his content. He talks a lot on listening and adjusting his content based on the feedback he gets. Now you need to plug the leak that's causing other leads to fall through the cracks. If it’s just budget related, aside from adding in the field to the contact form, a sentence or 2 within the content around budget may do the trick. Another option is to write an article on why you are not the best option for them. It may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but best to share that information in black and white, rather than during a call or follow-up email. Have them disqualify themselves If it's any consolation, this isn't the first time I've heard this. Getting any leads is a false positive for your business. In fact, it's a drain on the business. It’s awesome to be able to notice why leads aren’t a fit, budget and timeline is often the easiest. Other aspects come later and through experience. As soon as you realize how a lead isn’t a fit, and then it happens again, then it’s time to plug up that leak and move that criteria up the chain. Get it in front of the lead sooner so that they can disqualify themselves. They don’t want to waste time either. So if you don’t take projects for anything less than $5,000, put that in front of those that only have $1500 so that they can then adjust their expectations if they really want to work with you, or move on to someone else. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Fri, November 30, 2018
A200 - What is the best freelancing website?
I get asked this question so much and I always answer with the same thing, “yours.” But I was thinking about giving this question some thought, especially with regards to Day 1 of being a freelancer. I want to go ahead and preface this with that I’m not going to be giving you a long list of sites to create profiles on away you go. Sites like Upwork and 99designs and alike are all races to the bottom. Some other sites like Codeable and Toptal are hand-curated and at least have some sort of bar for you to hit before getting in. I’m a firm believer in that no matter what you do, these sites will always put a ceiling on your income and clients. People posting gigs want bottom dollar and the site itself takes a piece of that, leaving you as a commodity and not in any sort of control of your own business. With that being said, Fiverr to me seems like a good place to start, especially if you are just starting out. Here are 3 reasons why I say this. Your service is a product When people look at Fiverr it is with a very specific task in mind. They’ll look to hire someone who can make social media images, a piece of code, edit a video, create a video intro, and so on. All these are literally products within a bigger service that you may be providing. When you start out, you may think I can code a website or I can do brand design. These are large, often times, custom projects that are difficult to scope and price when starting out. Creating a profile on Fiverr forces you to think small right away. You may even be able to know that creating a social media pack of images takes you 1 hour to do and you can charge $100 for and be profitable. Because you’ve done this already in the past. It takes a lot of the guesswork that most freelancers have when starting out. It also puts you into the mindset of looking at your services as products with profits in mindset, straight away. Something that most freelancers struggle with later on as their business matures. Scope of work is clear-cut and well defined Recurring revenue comes with a repeatable service within your business that has a defined scope, clear goal, and most of all profitable. Smaller projects are easier to scope, market, optimize, and deliver. Let’s take that example above. Let’s say that you land 10 clients looking for social media images and charge $100 a piece for. That’s $1000 in 10 hours. These clients are easier to market to and sell because they already know they need it. If you sell one client on building a website for, that could be $5000 and take 4-6 weeks. Sure it would be more revenue, but it would take you much longer to deliver the product, harder to sell, and market to. At the end, you may have one client that’s happy and willing to give you a referral and testimonial. Whereas w
Thu, November 29, 2018
A199 - How many email follow-ups should I send to a lead?
I want to share with you 4 statistics and I think you’ll get the answer to today’s question from them. Then I’ll share what I do and why I do it. Why is follow-up vital 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups after the first meeting or conversation. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up and the average give up after 2. 50% of leads that enter a sales pipeline are not ready to buy in the near term. On average, decision makers consume 5 pieces of content before being ready to speak to a sales rep. Do you see a trend yet? At a bare minimum you need 5. For me, I keep following up until I get a “No.” Standing out I’ve heard stories from sales people who have landed their White Whale with 50+ follow-ups. It’s about persistence and making yourself stand out that often times wins the project. Why re-marketing ads work so well? No doubt you’ve been followed around the internet like myself a few times and then gone ahead and bought that product or service. In episode 188 - What do you do to position yourself as an expert to leads I shared the results of a Twitter poll that I ran which revealed that over half answered that they did not have a formal follow-up process and 29% had a process that was the “just checking in to see if you got my last email?” follow-up. In Stop the Cycle , a course that Curtis McHale and I run, you can learn the exact sequence of follow-up, the content within those emails, and how to progress your follow-up sequence so that signing on the dotted line makes perfect sense to your lead as the next step. A simple follow-up can answer your most asked questions Here’s the interesting part of all this. You want to stand out from the crowd, you want to position yourself as an expert to command higher rates, you want to close more deals, and you wonder how many times to “bug” a lead to sign that proposal. You can kill 4 birds with one stone just by having a simple 5-part follow-up sequence. Just by having a follow-up sequence you are standing out in a much smaller percentage of service providers. Having a follow-up sequence that provides the lead with resources and content give you the ability to close that education gap that decision makers need to do prior to signing on the dotted line. This also positions you as the expert in the space to that lead. And if 80% of sales close after 5 touch points and decision makers need 5 pieces of content before making that decision, well, send off 5 follow-up emails. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, November 28, 2018
A198 - What’s a polite way to tell existing clients you are raising your rates? And what is a reasonable percentage to go up?
The end of the year always has us looking at revenue numbers doesn’t it. It’s also a great time of year to reevaluate our prices. January 1 is a great time to also create deadlines and launching pads for yourself and clients as well. Inside of the Sustainable Freelancer FB group, Meg asked this questions. I can only presume that she’s done what so many of us business owners do this time of year. Because it was such an awesome question, I thought that I’d share it with you in today’s episode, in case you have thought about this too. I'll answer the latter first. Double it! Especially if you are sub-100 per hour. Chances are that you are under charging and under calling your work. Years ago when I was told to double it I thought "no way" but I trusted them since they were where I wanted to be and did so. Best decision I made. If you get push back from all clients you can back away without too much issue saying "since you are a great customer, I can do 1.5X and then next year the 2X rate will go into effect." To answer the first part of the question, give your existing clients a period of time to either come on board or move on. If they decide to move on, that's fine because your rate is higher and need less to make the same. Any potential new clients coming on board get your new rate today. No need to wait or anything, they get the new rate today. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Tue, November 27, 2018
A197 - Why don’t you grow your business?
Everyone’s businesses are different and unique. Just like them as a person. Some freelancers I’ve spoken with grow agencies, others stay solo. Some have aspirations of hiring a large team or scaling a product. It’s very different and that’s why when someone asks me “why don’t you grow your business?” I often respond with “why?” See I like being comfortable in my own lane. Having a few select clients on the roster that supports my family and allows us to live the life we want is perfect. It also allows me to do things like this podcast, coaching, and build products. I left the world of managing teams of developers when I quit the 9-to-5. As my business matured though, I dabbled in the hiring process and bringing on people. I quickly realized that it wasn’t something I wanted to do. Took a few failed attempts at growing a team on my part to realize that staying solo and being responsible for consistent income for my own family to live off of was what I wanted. There is a pretty big focus in various communities that you need growth to be successful. Someone who I have respected for quite a long time since I went freelance is Paul Jarvis. Recently this year, I was lucky to have him come on Live In The Feast and then chat with him off-the-record too. I’ve admired him from afar for the reason that he’s been able to run a very successful and lucrative business being a one-man show. He’s coming out with a book called Company of One in January. He did not ask me to talk to you about this book. But you can goto ofone.co and pre-order it. When you do you’ll get the first chapter of the book. I have to say as a non-reader, I’m excited for this book to come out. He and a few others that I follow, really speak to the idea of “staying in your lane” and maybe going a few degrees left and right, but growing and scaling a business isn’t the goal of everyone. If you are feeling pressure from others, or from comparing yourself to others on growing your business, stop and ask “why?” You don’t have to be the next agency in SF or NY. Be the business that you want. Help the clients you want to work with. Obviously be profitable in the process, but stay in your lane if that’s what you want and don’t let pressure or comparisons force you to a place that you don’t want to be. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Mon, November 26, 2018
A196 - What do you do again?
With the holidays fast approaching, one of which here in the U.S. just passed, there are bound to be parties to go to. Ones where you will meet folks who haven’t a clue as to what you do. Don’t you love those folks who find out that you are a designer or developer and automatically want you to solve their home Wifi issues or their printer problems? Well let’s solve that by coming to the table with something that helps them understand what specifically you do. In episode 146 - Should I call myself a “freelancer”? I shared my thoughts on this topic (or debate really) and that it’s really about how you conduct yourself that matters. This though is how you present yourself to the industry and market, not while holding a drink with holiday music in the background. This is often called the elevator pitch. I have a template for this that is: “I help get . So they can .” Here’s the thing, when you ask someone what it is that they do and they respond with “I’m a divorce attorney” you don’t ask them to look over your contract do you? If they say “I’m a contractor” do you ask them to come hang some frames on the wall. Of course not, you know that they don’t do that. When you share these 2 sentences, there’s no question who you help and what you do. To be honest, they may not even understand you. Only recently when I say “I help established online businesses increase revenue through repeat buyers and decreasing the time to the first purchase. So that they can focus on what they are great at and not get stuck in the weeds of technology” have I been getting any sort of followup. When I said “I’m a web developer” I would get half of the people asking some followup about their own site or own computer problems. Or some crazy idea of a new website they had. There are 3 key aspects to this 2 sentence reply: 1. By stating who you work for, they immediately know whether it’s them or not. 2. They identify (or don’t) with the last bit which is the pain point that you are solving. 3. When you state the results of what you do, that sticks in their minds as you being referable. Point 3 is the interesting point here. As a web developer, the next time this person hears someone, anyone, who needs work on their site, they will mention you and hand over a bad lead. Now as someone who increases repeat buyers for the online business, or increases appointments to the practice, or creates a batter client onboarding for SaaS products, when that person hears any of these, then they will refer to you and give you a more qualified lead. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Fri, November 23, 2018
A195 - I’ve reached my goal, what’s next?
How do I know Steve Folland? Steve Folland is a creative video and audio freelancer and host of Being Freelance podcast. This was an awesome experience chatting with Steve because I’ve been a listener of his podcast for quite a long time. So I felt a bit like “long time listener, first time caller” at first. Which for me is a bit strange because I don’t normally feel that way. I was having a chat with him through the comments of one of Steve’s vlogs on YouTube and asked him if he had any room for a guest and he graciously invited me on. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the following: “I’ve reached my goal, what’s next?” In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the [full episode](https://www.beingfreelance.com/season-6/freelance-web-developer-jason-resnick) for all the details. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including: The number one reason for me to freelance in the first place How I learned HTML back in the 90s that I don’t recommend any one ever doing 3 stories of my life, 2 of which are true and one is a lie Specifically I talk about my biggest hurdle when starting my own business. It was a scary time for sure, but with some self-awareness and support, I came through it. The main takeaways from this show are: Setting up processes with the goal of sustainability in mind How I can help Definitely go check it out . If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Thu, November 22, 2018
A194 - 🙏🤘 Thank you for being awesome. I appreciate you!
It’s Thanksgiving here in the US today. Happy Thanksgiving to you if you are celebrating today. My family and I are spending some time together and eating way too much. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for listening to the show. There are a ton of podcasts out there that you could be listening to today, but you chose mine and for that I’m grateful and very appreciative. I’m humbled by you continually supporting the show by asking your questions, listening, and sharing. So I thank you so much for that. I do have some plans for the show in the future to make it even better for you, but more on that at as it gets closer. So before I sign off today, take a minute, even if you aren’t in the US where it’s Thanksgiving, to think about someone you are grateful for and let them know.
Wed, November 21, 2018
A193 - How do I know if I should buy a course?
There’s so much to learn and as business owners, we love to absorb as much as humanly possible. But that’s where the pitfall happens. We consume and consume and consume. If we applied half of the actionable information that we consume, we would have zero time in the next 10 years for anything else. (And yes, that figure is statistically backed by science ;) ). Seriously though, like myself, I would assume that you have had periods where you are reading, watching, listening to amazing and valuable information, taking notes and making countless todos for days on end. Especially around the end of the year when all the sales and marketing kicks into overdrive we get teased with all these shiny objects that seem to be the answer to all our questions. Financial Aspect to think about If you haven’t already listened to A184 - How to budget as a freelancer? where you will learn that if you are buying something for $100 and you bring in 20% profit, you need to bring in $500 of revenue, not get another $100. Marketing tactics messing with us Let’s evaluate another thing here for a second. Most products and apps serve a purpose, not all purposes. Most of the marketing around these products, if you look, market to a specific audience with a specific problem. It’s us that say “Oh I need that!” or “This has to be better than what I’m using right now.” This goes for courses and education as well. I want to share with you, 5 questions to ask yourself when evaluating an educational product. 1. Has the person/company selling the information done it in the past? Are they still doing it? Not everyone does what they say to do. They preach things that they’ve never tried. The business world moves fast. Sales, marketing, and client management are the fastest movers. The specific strategies and tactics that worked last year, 5 years, and 10 years ago, especially in client services, most likely will not work today. Sure the methodology may apply still in some capacity, but collecting leads via a popup on your homepage saying “Join for updates” worked 8 years ago, but not today. If the person no longer does what they are teaching, then for me, they aren’t up-to-date. I want to have the best possible information and strategies that are going to keep me out in front. 2. Am I getting the team or the individual and are they engaged? I’ve purchased programs before thinking that I was getting the individual, but then didn’t even once see the individual. You know, the one that actually knows the thing being taught and sold me on buying. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything wrong with working with the team. It’s just that if that’s not conveyed up front, I feel a bit duped. My thought too is that if the teacher is th
Tue, November 20, 2018
A192 - Should I offer my services as a web designer/developer or specialize first?
This question came by way of a Twitter DM. Yup, my DMs are open and love engaging with folks there. TLDR; If you need to keep the lights on, then offer the services you know that you can deliver. Then after you are settled in, take a look at what you've done and for who. From that see if you can then start to specialize you business somehow. Do what you know first Keep things simple. When starting out, you need to give yourself the best chance of success. The only way to do that is by providing services you know you can fulfill. When starting out, there is so much that you don’t know about. Billing, client management, delivery, onboarding, support, marketing, sales, that you will need to learn about and get better at. Don’t complicate it any more. Specializing is really just marketing Once you have a few projects under your belt, then reflect back on what you’ve done and who you’ve done it for. Are there any similarities? Anything common in the clients? Anything common in the solution you are providing? Then on the other side, are there clients and projects that you didn’t like and not want to do again. In episode 174 How to demand higher rates and on my other podcast, Live In The Feast, Episode 8 in Season 2, I share with you my step by step guide to specialization. In episode 182 How do you go about breaking into a niche you’ll learn about how specializing is really just a marketing strategy, especially at first. You don’t have to go all-in on a niche. In fact, why would you? You need to land a few of those projects first just so that you can understand the language and problems in such a way so that you can position yourself as the goto person in that market. If you can’t even articulate the problem as your client would, the marketing won’t go very far. You’ll be restricting your business from the start. Specialization is all about putting an effective process around a solution for clients. Once the process has been ironed out, a system around those processes can be built to increase your profits and elevate you and your business. Building custom content and marketing campaigns around your specialty will give you signals on if the niche is viable. It could be that it’s viable enough as another revenue stream into the business and nothing more. Meaning that there is a ceiling on how far you can take it. Then in other terms it could show you that it’s something that you need to dive all-in on or even stay away from. This can’t be known when you first start freelancing. ------------------- 👉 For full s
Mon, November 19, 2018
A191 - What are lead generation techniques to get me out of the feast and famine revenue cycle?
In the last 5 episodes I shared with you a course called Stop the Cycle where Curtis McHale and myself to be delivered to you on November 30th at 3:30 PM EST. A few people who have registered, jumped in and shared some feedback they had, well because we asked them what is it that they hope to get out of the course. What sparked you in deciding to join us. We want to make sure whoever joins us, gets the most value from it. This came by way of some feedback from one of those people. So with anything in business, it comes down to who you are, who you work with, and most importantly what’s working right now. The great thing about the Stop the Cycle course is that you will get 2 people’s point of view on running a business that is quite similar. What’s worked for me hasn’t for Curtis and vice versa. We are going to give you our best strategies and techniques that has landed us great work over the past decade, and still does to this very day. What I want you to do right now is to think about what’s working for you today. Also I want you to think about what is it about that lead generation strategy that you want to get away from? And why? Podcasting See for me, podcasting has been a great lead generation strategy for me. Ever since I started my business I found podcasting to be beneficial to me in a variety of different ways including widening my network and positioning myself in the market. Writing Curtis is a writer of several books and does a ton of writing very well. He gets paid to write for other companies and it also brings in clients to him as well. He does a lot of content marketing, writing specifically, well to be honest, hasn’t worked as well for me. Seeking out specific conversations Another tactic that I will dive deep on is jumping into highly specific conversations on Twitter and Facebook. By targeting certain keywords, I built a system to look for those keywords and then ping me in Slack when a tweet contained that keyword. This way it allowed me to be mindful of my time so that I can not be distracted for 20, 30, or 60 minutes down the social media rabbit hole. If my sales bot pings me in Slack, I can look at it in realtime or later even, and if it’s relevant, jump into that conversation and then get back to work. Time Management Curtis will dive into the time management since he’s much better at this than I. He has literally written the book on Analog Productivity. Curtis has built his business to work around his schedule and he’ll show you how to do this so that you actually have the time to market yourself. If you are wondering what else you are going to get out of this course is that you’ll get lead generation strategies. A huge benefit of this course is that you will get both of us and hear our takes
Fri, November 16, 2018
A190 - How do you get high-quality clients?
This is part 5 in a 5-part series called Stop The Cycle where I ask you a question and you’ll get an actionable item to take away with you at the end of the show to help your sales and marketing so that you are on the way to stop having the feast and famine killing your business. Positioning is simply marketing What if you only talked with high-quality leads that viewed you as an expert? You want people to respect you, right? You want to be valued as the expert in the conversation, right? What are you as the expert doing to facilitate that? Experts ask the right questions, they try to ask the right questions early on in the process. So that they identify who they can help as well as those they can’t. Respect is earned, it’s not given. If you aren’t asking the proper questions and the lead or client doesn’t recognize them as questions that lead them to their transformation with you, they won’t respect you. Are you talking budget? Are you talking timeline? Are you setting expectations? Are you asking questions about their business not just technology? Are you talking the same language as your leads and clients? Are you helpful and serving? Being empathetic and showing humility goes a long way in getting answers to all these questions. The awesome thing about asking questions like these, is that you are showing your expertise, but also vetting leads. You want to work with clients of a certain budget. You don’t want to work with clients who have unrealistic timelines. You don’t want to work with clients that look at you as labor or someone they can just pluck from Upwork at the lowest bid. If they are open about their business goals because you asked them about some specifics, that’s a good sign they see you as an expert who knows what you can do for them. Stop the Cycle If knowing what the right questions to ask is something you have been trying to figure out, you aren’t alone. Which is why Curtis McHale and myself have built a workshop called Stop The Cycle. During the workshop, Curtis and I pull back what we’ve done in our sales processes that have let us build 6 figure businesses without 60 hour work weeks. If you haven’t already done so, head to [Stop the Cycle](https://rezzz.com/stop-the-cycle/) to learn about the details of the workshop and all the resources for you and how you will stop the feast and famine from killing your freelance business. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Thu, November 15, 2018
A189 - How do you balance your time for sales and marketing?
This is part 4 in a 5-part series called Stop The Cycle where I ask you a question and you’ll get an actionable item to take away with you at the end of the show to help your sales and marketing so that you are on the way to stop having the feast and famine killing your business. Make the time, don’t wait to find it What if you had the time to keep marketing while doing great work for your clients? When I started my business, I sat on my couch every single Tuesday night doing lead generation tactics and then again every Thursday night filling up my queue to share relevant and valuable resources. This is what I had to do in order to get this one-man show off the ground. Why Tuesday? Why Thursday? Because that’s what I choose to do. If you aren’t going to market yourself, no one will. How I got referrals was because I was sharing colleagues content and resources. By doing that, I put myself on their radar which then started building the relationships I have today. Don’t overwhelm yourself with what it means to do marketing. Simply carve out one hour in the next week dedicated to getting your name out there. Don’t write or record something that you don’t publish. Take action and do something that literally puts your name into the feed of someone else. Over the years I’ve tried so many different time management strategies. Some worked, some didn’t. However, when it comes to being structured with your time and focus, Curtis McHale has been my Yoda. “You can’t find time. You won’t find it in the couch cushions. You make the time for the things that are important.” This is a phrase Curtis has said time and time again that I constantly remind myself with. Stop the Cycle Curtis will walk you through his process for time management in our workshop called Stop The Cycle . During the workshop, Curtis and I pull back what we’ve done in our sales processes that have let us build 6 figure businesses without 60 hour work weeks. If you haven’t already done so, head to Stop the Cycle to learn about the details of the workshop and all the resources for you and how you will stop the feast and famine from killing your freelance business. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, November 14, 2018
A188 - What do you do to position yourself as an expert to leads?
This is part 3 in a 5-part series called Stop The Cycle where I ask you a question and you’ll get an actionable item to take away with you at the end of the show to help your sales and marketing so that you are on the way to stop having the feast and famine killing your business. Level up the experience you provide to your leads What if you could give your leads an experience that positions you as an expert? I ran a highly scientific and analytical poll on Twitter and the results can back with an overwhelming 79% of people do not have a follow-up process in their sales. This is a shame, because it’s so simple, and powerful when done right. I’m going to paint a picture for you and tell me if this is you? When you get a new lead, you have a call, and then send a proposal. A few days go by and they you send another email saying “Just wanted to check in and see if you had any questions about the proposal?” Is this you? If so, you did exactly what everyone else does. Proven simply by the stats. You want to be respected as an expert, right? By writing this email, you’ve completely put yourself right in the bucket of all the flakey, desperate, and laborer freelancers. Instead, I want you to replace your lame email with one that shares a link to a useful article and send it to your lead. I have no doubt that you are reading industry articles, watching videos, listening to podcasts and then using that information as a part of your conversations to talk with leads during your sales process to sign with you. Send them those links! It positions you as a someone who is an expert, keeps up-to-date on your expertise, and someone who isn’t desperate for work. It shows your prospect that you are providing value even when you aren’t getting paid. It sparks interest in you to want to work with you even more. No one wants to work with someone who’s desperate. They can smell it a mile away. If you want to stand out from among the crowd, from among the 80% of other freelancers out there, provide value in your follow up. It will define you as an expert leads will want to work with. Stop the Cycle Over the years I’ve built a proven follow up sequence for various stages of the sales process, that continuously adds value and growing education for the leads. Join Curtis McHale and myself in a workshop called Stop The Cycle and I’ll walk you through it completely. During the workshop, Curtis and I pull back what we’ve done in our sales processes that have let us build 6 figure businesses without 60 hour work weeks. If you haven’t already done so, head to Stop the Cycle to learn about the details of the workshop and all the resources for you and how you will stop the feast and famine from killing your freelance business.</p
Tue, November 13, 2018
A187 - What is your sales process?
This is part 2 in a 5-part series called Stop The Cycle where I ask you a question and you’ll get an actionable item to take away with you at the end of the show to help your sales and marketing so that you are on the way to stop having the feast and famine killing your business. Always be selling What if you could have your sales process running 24/7 scouring the web for opportunities? Yesterday we talked about a simple share as being a part of your marketing and awareness to the world. That was about being out there when someone is looking for you. The second part of that equation though is that you need to have a process in place for you to jump on opportunities when they happen. This is a much more proactive approach. Still, to this very day, I have my very own sales bot that scours Twitter for certain keywords and then pings me in my Slack when a tweet with that word comes up. I don’t need to be on Twitter all day long, but when something interesting happens, an opportunity arises, I can jump into the conversation first. When I first started my freelance business, I landed clients like Canon, PGA, and Adobe using this. Then in 2016, I built a new service in my business in 5 months solely by using this method. That service is now 50% of my revenue. By using Zapier, you can create your own sales bot to do just this. Stop the Cycle If this social media is a distraction for you and you find yourself using sales as an excuse to be on it you aren’t alone. If you’ve always wanted to leverage automation, but don’t know where to start with it. Curtis McHale and myself have built a workshop called Stop The Cycle . During the workshop, Curtis and I pull back what we’ve done in our sales processes that have let us build 6 figure businesses without 60 hour work weeks. If you haven’t already done so, head to Stop the Cycle to learn about the details of the workshop and all the resources for you and how you will stop the feast and famine from killing your freelance business. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Mon, November 12, 2018
A186 - What is your marketing plan?
Going to do something a little different over the next 5 episodes where I ask you a question. This is part 1 in a 5-part series called Stop The Cycle where you’ll get an actionable item to take away with you at the end of the show to help your sales and marketing so that you are on the way to stop having the feast and famine killing your business. Don't let the client work always trump your own When you are deep in project work, it’s so easy to let your marketing slide. We’ve done it, those client problems you’re solving mean money right now. You need to have something in place at all times to have your marketing going. It’s not today or tomorrow that will hurt when you are heads down on a project and not marketing your business. It’s next month or 3 months from now. See when you don’t market yourself today or tomorrow or the day after that, you fall behind quickly. The fall you take is much further than if on the fourth day you do market yourself. Consistency above all else matters. It’s not just because of an algorithm, it’s the human nature. Don’t you see successful people doing the small things every single day. People like Chris Ducker, Ryan Carson, and others. Not saying you need to create a daily post or podcast or highly produced video, I get it. But no doubt you are scrolling through your feed and find inspiration, value and useful posts that you can then go ahead and re-share to your audience. That’s marketing, that’s creating awareness of you and that’s how you stay top of mind. You have no idea where that next potential client will learn about you for the very first time. At least not yet anyway. Consistently putting your name, your business out into the world will give your potential leads and clients an opportunity to find you. Stop the Cycle If this is something you are finding difficult, you aren’t alone. Which is why Curtis McHale and myself have built a workshop called Stop The Cycle . During the workshop, Curtis and I pull back what we’ve done in our sales processes that have let us build 6 figure businesses without 60 hour work weeks. If you haven’t already done so, head to Stop the Cycle to learn about the details of the workshop and all the resources for you and how you will stop the feast and famine from killing your freelance business. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Fri, November 09, 2018
A185 - What is niching down like?
You hear a lot about niching down on this show. Many different actionable takeaways for you to be able to work through defining your specialty. But one thing I found myself to be beneficial is to hear how others do it. Especially others that I feel may not be too much further down the road than me. Which is why for me it’s important to always be in the freelance services side of things so that I can provide you with the best content possible that works for today’s market. If you are interested in hearing stories about someone else’s journey, head on over to [Live In The Feast](https://rezzz.com/podcast). Season 4 is such an amazing season for some many reasons. If you aren’t a listener to Live In The Feast podcast, it’s a seasonal show. Each season has a theme, Season 1 is Getting Clients, Season 2 is Marketing, Season 3 is Origin Stories, and Season 4 is Niching Down. Then in each episode, there will be a deep dive into a specific strategy, question, tip, or storyline for about 30-40 minutes. At the end of the show, you’ll be able to walk away from it with an actionable takeaway to implement into your business right then. I’m all about taking the action. Consumption of information only works when action is taken on that information. I’m so excited to bring some amazing and brilliant people who run very successful businesses. And their success is defined by themselves and how they run their business. Each episode will go into a bit of their story and then myself and the co-host will discuss a specific topic based around specializing your business. Questions like “how do you test the waters while still doing existing client work?” “How to fill-in the gaps in a niche that’s already occupied?” “How to build a proper value proposition to explain what you do?” “How to position yourself as the go-to person in your niche” “How to get and use the language of your client?” Each co-host has niched down and has a very specific business model that serves a particular client extremely well. The episode they come on will be focused on what they’ve been more successful in. Head on over to Live In The Feast to listen to amazing folks like Josh Doody, Sara Dunn, Matt Medeiros, Chris Blintiff, John Locke, Elliot Murphy, Troy Dean, Lianna Patch and more. While your there if you enjoy what you hear, then why not subscribe so that you get notified each and every week when a new episode comes out. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Thu, November 08, 2018
A184 - How to budget as a freelancer?
Get your clients to pay To budget means that you need to know (or at least be relatively sure) when your clients pay you. You obviously can’t reach into their pocket and pull out the money they owe you, so there’s some trust there you need to have, but there are systems that you can use and put into place that will help you nudge and remind clients. Don’t be afraid of doing this. No business can run without money so if you are doing work, make sure you get paid. Track your expenses You have to stay on top of your expenses. Taxes being your biggest. Remember it’s not your money, but here in the U.S. you will need to take a percentage of what you bring and put that away. Pretend it doesn’t even exist because it’s not yours anyway. Aside from that, you have to be mindful of the phrase “it’s for the business and I’ll just get more revenue in to cover this.” It’s a deadly phrase and here’s why. If you have a 20% profit margin on your services and you buy something for $100, that means you need to bring in $500 in revenue, not $100. Make sense? You really want your expenses to fight for their worth in your business. Keep your business and personal separate This is something that’s extremely important and helpful at the same time. This will make your accountant happy. If you don’t have one, and you do you own tax filings, well this will make your life so much easier. As a part of this, you’ll want to build up that business account too. Make sure that you have a buffer in there. You need to maintain a certain level of cash in the business. How much cash should you have really depends on what your plans are. This is an inception moment, because you need to really understand your budget to figure out what this number is. Pay yourself You need to pay yourself. There are so many different philosophies around this, but try and pay yourself as soon as you get revenue into the business. This will be your lifeline of sustainability. If you need $5k in personal monthly expenses, food, shopping, and living your life, then don’t think that all you need is $5k in revenue. Remember you have expenses to pay, the business to invest into, profits, and spending cash for the business. This is overly simplified but you get the idea here. Save for your future This sounds like what an old man would say, but it’s important. Especially when you are young. You don’t want to work forever. So you want to capitalize on the flexibility you have to build a nice nest egg for yourself. Put a percentage away of your salary into some sort of long-term savings account, like and IRA. Automate your plan Whether you have an accountant or not, leverage automation to move the money around. Most payment systems and banks these days allow you to set up rules to
Wed, November 07, 2018
A183 - How do you go about breaking into a niche (Part 2)?
First, you want to create a page on your website to send folks you are talking to who are looking to you for your specialized service. On this page it’s important to put 4 sections: Who the service is for? What problem you are solving for them? How you solve that problem? Social proof of the problem and solution Keep it simple and make a call-to-action to reach out with their request. This can even be to your email address if you want. The idea is to test the market, not build something complex that you don’t even know will work. Making funnels and ad campaigns and email automations will come much later on. The time here is best spent talking with potential customers and gauging your new market. Second, review your existing footprint online, and if your niche market is essentially a re-vamp of your pricing and such, you may want to consider removing your pricing from your website if it’s there. Just so that there isn’t confusion for your new lead should they find your old pricing. Keep in mind that you are running your own business, there are no rules to say that you need to have or not have your pricing on your website. If pulling the old pricing down for a month or 2 allows you to freely talk about your new pricing without worry, do it. Lastly, get those conversations going. In order to see if this niche is viable, it’s not about building out funnels and marketing campaigns. Not yet anyway. It’s about 2 things: Is the problem of the niche painful enough for you to build a business around? Can you fully understand and grasp the language of that market? You can only get the answer to these questions through market research. Think about your early days in building the business you have now. Did you set up marketing funnels and campaigns? No. You spoke with someone, drew up a contract in Word, got a payment via a PayPal link and did the work. Those roots are where you need to go to when breaking into a niche. If the answer is “Yes” to the above questions then you can start building the business bit by bit from there. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Tue, November 06, 2018
A182 - How do you go about breaking into a niche (Part 1)?
This is something I hear asked quite often. Sara Dunn asked me how I did it after the first time she appeared on Live In The Feast in fact. Sara has embarked on her journey to publicly share her journey on specializing her agency’s business. As you can see, everyone is trying to figure out the answer. It’s important to put some context around this question. Your journey is your own. I can’t answer this question with a foolproof plan for you. This is something that you need to be able to go on yourself. ## Your fears of niching down I understand that it is scary because you may be feeling like it’s an all or nothing deal. What happens if you go all in and it doesn’t work. Then you are left sitting there wondering what happened and how can I recover from this. There’s another fear here that is the real reason you may not want to jump in. You’ve built up a reputation in the market, have great clients and are getting referrals for new work. Losing all that hard work and effort you’ve already put in the business would be devastating. Am I right? You want to niche down because you fully understand the benefits to the business and becoming an expert. You get that once you learn who it is and what you are selling, everything else tends to become easier, you can command higher rates, and get back some of your time to explore other things. Maybe the biggest reason I see most folks like yourself looking to niche down is because of sales and marketing. Once you specialize, sales and marketing becomes so much easier and that’s what you want to get better at. Your niching down strategy What I tell my coaching clients and those inside the Feast community is this. You are working with existing clients and may even have leads with proposals in hand. There’s no way you are going to drop them, so let that go right away. You have to finish up what you said you would. If you are working on specializing your business, you aren’t going to flip the business around overnight. Bottom line is that this is a transition. This transition needs to be as simple as possible. No reason to overbuild, overcomplicate, and put a ton of time into something if it doesn’t work out, right? Niching Down is Marketing No doubt you’ve either seen, heard or read from people who say to use FB ads, point to a video or post, build a lead magnet, create emails to market to those people and then give them something to buy. This is known as a marketing funnel. Yes, you’ve heard me say these sorts of things too. But when breaking in, this is the worst thing you can do. You suck at marketing. Ok, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Maybe it’s more that you want to be better at it. To be better at marketing, you need to
Mon, November 05, 2018
A181 - What is the structure of my monthly review?
In episode 180 - What is the structure of a weekly review , you learned my framework for performing a weekly review. Look back Look ahead Execute When I found that this framework worked for me, I started applying it to all reviews I did, including weekly, monthly and yearly. I’d like to replace the monthly with a quarterly review. Also sprinkle in a daily review as well, but those I’m still working out. 1. Look back on the month. Very much like the weekly review, I look back on the revenue, only this time, it’s the first thing I do. I’ve got a few different revenue streams into the business and I have certain goals for each. Looking back on which stream brought in what revenue is important for the business to understand if I’m meeting the goals I have. I’ve started only recently taking a review on the expenses during the month. Only just so that I’m not overly surprised at the end of the year and it allows me to curb and keep those $10 per month services under wraps. Then I take a look back on the projects. It’s a quick look just to make sure that everything is moving forward. Really only because I tend to do these reviews the same day I’m doing my weekly review. I have a monthly spreadsheet that I record the KPIs of the business to make sure the business is healthy and trending in the right direction. 2. Look ahead. Similar to the weekly review, I look at the calendar month as a whole. I look for personal vacations or events, holidays, and anything that may throw priorities or projects off track that I need to be aware of. This is when I review the longer term projects and the “some day” projects too. If the past month ended with finishing up one, or one is close to wrapping up, I’ll line up the next one. I also review them at a high level to see if they are still important and/or needed. This is how I curb my distractions. If I have an idea, I put it in as a long-term project, and then let it bubble up later to make sure that it’s still relevant and important. 3. Execute This is the hardest part because I really just go back to work. Since I do my monthly review at the top of my weekly review, not at the first of every month. I allow the natural course of monthly review flow into my weekly review. So once I’ve done my monthly review, made sure that all the ducks are in a row there, I dive right into my weekly review. I put a recurring task in my task management tool, Todoist for the first Sunday of every month to do the monthly review prior to the weekly review, and that’s it. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Fri, November 02, 2018
A180 - What is the structure of a weekly review?
I was chatting with Greg Hickman over Instagram and he asked about my review and planning structures. He shared a story on his daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly reviews and was open about which ones he’s still working on getting better at and that sparked the conversation. I thought that since I’ve spoken about how important and what I do in my weekly reviews, I’d share with you today the exact structure, the framework if you will, of all my reviews. Look back Look ahead Execute It’s a simple framework to remember and stems a bit from the GTD methodology. But see what works for you. Look back on the week. Review the sales pipeline. Clients and cash is lifeblood of your business. You have to be ridiculously involved in it even when you are heads down in a project. Supplemental to this is looking back on the revenue. This is essential to see how much came in to the business. You know when you are doing well and when you aren’t. Even if it’s a week where $0 come in, if you do this look back every week, you’ll see patterns and trends in your business. If those normal patterns of income change, that’s when maybe you could adjust what you do based on your activity based selling . I run through my email with the Inbox Zero methodology. This is something I try to do the times I check my email during the day, but there are times when by the weekend I haven’t fully cleaned it out. Look back on the calls and meetings I had as well to refresh my memory on what was done, talked about, and see if any priorities came up that need to be accounted for. This also means gathering up all the stickies, notes, and things sitting in my Inbox in Todoist. Seeing if I need to file anything if I haven’t already. Look ahead on the week I pull up my calendar, which I use Google Calendar to see what’s planned for the week. Every single appointment, personal and professional goes in there. Then take all those and write them down into my weekly desk planner. This allows me to visually see what the overall day and week look like. It forces me to not over schedule and be mindful of the energy I have on any given day. Then I go into my project management tool and schedule any tasks on the dedicated days if needed. Most of the time they are planned already, but if adjustments need to be made, this is when that happens. Finally I look at the long-term projects and if they are already started, I make sure that at some level, the needle on them is moving forward. If it’s a busy week, then I fit in some smaller tasks in between everything else to keep the momentum going. Execute on the week I take a final review of what the week looks like to make sure I didn’t overload an
Thu, November 01, 2018
A179 - How to adapt and change to the WordPress climate?
How do I know Matt Medeiros? Matt is an account representative at Pagely, a managed WordPress hosting company. In his prior life, he co-founded a successful digital agency. He is the host of a number of podcasts, one of which he invited me on. I’ve known Matt for a number of years in and around the WordPress space. I’ve met Matt on a couple of occasions as well and when he asked me to be a part of a panel of other niche business owners for his podcast, Matt Report , I easily accepted. Matt and I have an east coast bond together where I guess for lack of a better term, we are all about figuring things out, just putting it out there and not messing around about it. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the following: How to adapt and change to the WordPress climate? In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including How WordPress isn’t my business, but a tool I use to solve a problem Ask the hard questions of your business What my work goal of the year is Specifically I talk about the benefits of specializing. Where I share how I will experiment, but always do so with the goal in mind of benefitting my clients and my own business. With regards to specializing, you can leverage your expertise by simply answering questions. There is no shortage of emotion and complaining online, especially when it comes to business and companies. If you can jump into those conversations and be a voice of solution, you immediately position yourself as an authority. I learned a ton from Sara Dunn and Nathan Allotey as they shared their thoughts and opinions on the ever-changing landscape. The biggest reason I was excited to be a part of this panel was because Matt doesn’t shy away from asking the hard questions. WordPress is a large community and in recent years it certainly has taken its lumps. Many businesses that WordPress was a core of have either gone under or been acquired or completely pivoted direction. The 4 of us share a common bond in that we solve problems for our clients. And if WordPress, Frontpage, Adobe Photoshop or whatever the technology of the “day” is doesn’t help us in doing that, well time to adapt and change. Definitely go check it out . If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. I’d like to thank Matt for being a part of it and including me along amazing folks like Sara Dunn and Nathan Allotey.
Wed, October 31, 2018
A178 - What are the biggest mistakes a freelancer can make?
Performing a search on Google of the biggest mistakes in freelancing and you’ll find over 10 million results. Yikes! Sad thing is that prior to this episode, I took a look at the lists in the first page to see if my list had any overlap. There are a ton of mistakes any freelancer can make. But what I think you want to hear are the mistakes that another freelancer has made. So that’s what I want to share with you today. The 15 mistakes that I made throughout my career of nearly a decade. And how to avoid them! 1. Not positioning yourself within the market 2. Taking on a partner that doesn’t align with your goals 3. Jumping into every client request immediately 4. Reacting right away to a potential lead 5. Client work always winning 6. Discounting 7. Not always doing some sales and marketing 8. Not following up with everyone 9. Not respecting your time 10. Not building your own personal brand 11. Not trusting your gut 12. Time management 13. Thinking like an employee 14. Settling 15. Not keeping your goal in mind We all mistakes. But those mistakes don’t have to be failures. A failure is something that happens that you don’t learn from. Making these mistakes isn’t the end of the world, but if you can understand the mistake, how it’s happening and then address it, you’ll grow your freelancing business. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Tue, October 30, 2018
A177 - How is parenting as a freelancer
Without a doubt having a child changed everything. We don’t nearly go out as much alone as we used to. We travel, but to places like Sesame Place rather than the Caribbean. We don’t sleep anymore. Even the business has changed. I love you, Joanna Before I jump into it I want thank my wife for everything that she does each and every day. She is absolutely the rock of this household and family. Without her, I know you wouldn’t be reading this right now. The goal I had at an early age on why I wanted to have my own business was so that I could have the time freedom to spend it with my family and friends when I want to. I wanted to be around for first steps and first words. I want to go out on a random Tuesday afternoon just because it is nice out and not have to ask someone for permission to do so. The day it all changed When my wife and I had our son TJ, our first, it was a very different scenario than what it is now. My wife worked full-time and after her maternity leave was up, she went back to work. Which meant that I was home with TJ. This was both very rewarding and stressful. See before TJ, I had my schedule fully booked up with work and some days would wake up at 5 AM and work until 9 PM. Having a strict work schedule suddenly meant that every single day there was a lot left undone at the end of the day. No nap, no regular time to take calls, crying in the background, crankiness all add up to not getting much work done. Maybe even lost a client or 2 in the process. In case you aren’t a parent, babies under 8 months in age don’t care what’s on your schedule, the day is run by them. I started to really think about how my business would be. I would need more flexibility than I currently had. I may have needed a different type of business altogether. Then the opportunity came when my wife would leave her job. Tough decisions I won’t bore you with all the details of the conversation, but when the opportunity presented itself, it was something that she really desired so that she could be around TJ and not sitting in traffic. We had probably our most candid conversations ever over the next few days. She was half our income. She was the carrier of our family health insurance as well. She was the one contributing to our retirement. There was a lot that went into the decision. This also was the time at which we realized that TJ didn’t like serious conversations. Every time my wife and I would talk about the leap, he would do anything and everything to grab our attention. We decided that she would stay home and become the primary care taker during the day of TJ and I would continue the business and grow it in various other ways to eventually make up for the loss in salary. My routine Now, I wake up anywhere between 5 and 6 AM to get the day started. I end the day usually the
Mon, October 29, 2018
A176 - What is the benefit of a business coach?
In episode 84 - Did hiring a mentor really help you with starting your business you learned how stubborn I was in getting a business coach. If you haven’t already done so, take a listen to that episode because I think it will reinforce what you’ll hear here. If you are running a business of any kind, there’s a good chance that you are not an expert in every single part of that business. Maybe you are exceptional at sales but not so great at the implementation. Maybe you are technical, but suck at marketing. The great thing is that you could learn all these things. Just about anything you lack as far as a skill you can read countless articles, listen to tons of podcasts, and even watch thousands of videos on that topic. All for free too! The downside is that you’ll be spending all your free time doing so. There’s a good likelihood too that you’ll be completely overwhelmed with varying point of views and opinions on what is “right.” This overwhelm will leave you scattered and stretched thin. I know this because I’ve been there. Hiring a coach has a number of benefits. Accountability Efficiency One-on-One Attention Habit forming Trust Trust When you hire a coach, you undoubtedly trust this person, otherwise why hire them, right? You trust them because they are a bit further down the road than you and you can see the results they have had with past clients that you are looking for. Accountability Because of that trust you have, there is this inherent accountability of not letting the coach down. The accountability also comes in the form of scheduled meeting times. As well as some exercises and actions to take before a meeting. The reason accountability works is because you don’t want to disappoint that other person. One-on-One Attention The trust you have in the expert will save you having to figure out what’s “right” because based on what your goals are the information the coach provides you with will be relevant to your specific situation. An example of this is when you were a kid, did you take piano, dance, maybe even karate lessons. Maybe you were into sports instead. Whatever lessons you took, didn’t the teacher or coach meet you where you were? If you were a beginner learning the piano, they showed you how to sit properly and what the keys were. Not how to play Mozart. If you were a baseball player and couldn’t hit but fielded well, didn’t you get extra time in the batting cage to work on your swing? Efficiency Same goes for a business coach. It’s the most efficient way to ramp up the skills that you are lacking and smooth out the edges of your existing skillset. Hiring a coach is an inves
Fri, October 26, 2018
A175 - How to ask?
During a coaching session I was asked how to properly ask someone for a phone conversation. The context of this question was that this person wanted to reach out to specific people in larger organizations in order to simply have a phone conversation with them, not necessarily to sell to them, but for research. This is cold outreach and let’s be honest with ourselves here and just call it like it is, it’s spam. It’s unsolicited communication, even if it can add value to the recipient by making it you focused . In the post-GDPR and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation era we live in we, as businesses we have to adjust and be respectful of a recipient’s privacy that a lot of businesses hadn’t in the past. With that in mind, nothing really has changed other than shortcuts that businesses used to essentially carpet bomb an email list with a broadcast are now closed off. By now, you’ve heard that when performing outreach of any kind, you should be doing it in a way that makes the recipient feel like it is a direct email to them specifically, even if it’s not. Avichal Garg, Managing Partner at Electrical Capital and an Expert at Y Combinator, posted a thread on Twitter on this very topic. As someone who essentially gets asked many many many times a day for things, it’s refreshing to see his input on how to do it. I wanted to share a couple of points from his 10 that I find interesting. Offering Context Letting the recipient know who you are and if there are any contacts you share in common. If you met some where, jog that person’s memory. Doing this quickly before anything works best. If they recognize the connection, they’ll more likely continue reading. Be Precise Get to the point quickly, but be as specific about what you are asking for. Don’t make it vague. In Avichal’s tweet he gives a perfect example, one that I know you can relate to. “Can we get on a call?” is bad. No one will want to jump on a call with someone who they’ve never heard from before. But “I am performing research in your industry. Here are 2 questions about your website and how it helps your business.” is good. Avichal offers up these 2 examples as “great.” “Do you know person X and could you forward the following blurb to them?” and “I am applying to YC. Does our application make it clear what we build?” Be Gracious Remember that whole respectful thing I mentioned early, well be gracious too. If they don’t respond, don’t bombard them every day for a week. That’s only going to make them annoyed and ignore you more, maybe block you or report you as spam. Follow up a week later, then maybe a month after that. If you haven’t heard anything, stop emailing.</
Thu, October 25, 2018
A174 - How to demand higher rates by specialization?
## How do I know James? James owns a company called [Content Snare](https://contentsnare.com/) that helps freelancers and agencies get content from clients. This was a really fun episode because James and I are in the same circles around the web, we just haven’t had an opportunity to meet yet in person being on opposite sides of the planet and all. We both have a fondness for automation that, well can border on the line of obsession. So when James DM’d me and invited to me come onto his podcast, [Agency Highway](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/), it was a no-brainer. I knew that we’d be unpacking so much together. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the following: ## Demand higher rates by following this specialization framework In case you don’t want to read the rest of this post, you can check out the [full episode](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/016-demand-higher-rates-by-following-this-framework/) for all the details. And for the second podcast we did together on [Lead Generation](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/017-an-epic-lead-generation-strategy/) In the episode, which was jammed pack with laughs, I shared a variety of things including: - What was the best thing that happened to me this year - How taking time out to reflect on your business can help in so many ways - How niching helps you raise your rates, and not niching leads to burnout Specifically I talk about the 4 quadrants of niching down. Which is the process I teach my [coaching clients](https://rezzz.com/coach) and those inside of [Feast](https://rezzz.com/feast) on. The main takeaways from this show are: - Fears are just excuses - You will leave money on the table when specializing, but the opportunity to deliver better solutions to fewer clients, positions you as an expert that commands higher prices. - Get a list of red flags to filter clients through when going through your sales process so you don’t end up working with bad clients. - Put everyone through your vetting process, especially referrals from previous clients. Good chance if they are from your “generalist” days, they won’t be ideal for you now. Definitely go [check it out](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/016-demand-higher-rates-by-following-this-framework/). If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. I’d like to thank James for being a part of it and included along amazing folks like [Troy Dean](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/011-building-recurring-revenue-with-troy-dean/), [Jennifer Bourn](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/009-client-management-system-jennifer-bourn/), and [James Schramko](https://agencyhighway.com/podcast/003-work-less-make-more-james-schramko/) ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, October 24, 2018
A173 - Why is hourly billing good?
This may be a surprising episode title for you considering everything you hear me talk about in regards to hourly billing, sucks! Yet there are times when hourly billing is good and I wanted to share the other side of the coin from yesterday’s show titled, Why hourly billing is bad? with you today. Quick / One-off task If you are a designer or developer and have bandwidth or time in your schedule where someone presents you with an opportunity to do some quick task. Something you know you can bang out in a few hours, or maybe have even done it in the past for a previous client. Or if you are a developer and another developer needs you to write some code. Or a designer and another designer asks you to design some simple elements. Hourly billing may be an option for you. To be honest, this is even a stretch, because I would argue that you would know what the outcome is and be able to put a price on it. However if it truly is something that only takes an hour or 2 and both you and the client know that, it’s going to be hard to say “$1000 for that Facebook share image.” You are terrible at estimates / Inexperienced I get it, I’m a realist and if you are just starting out, your estimates are going to suck. You won’t know what you don’t know until you get into it. Which means, you may have to take on hourly work at the very beginning by way of sub-contract work or just because you can’t define how long it will take for the scope of work. What I would suggest though is that when you do take on the hourly work, track any and all time on the project. Be as detailed as you can so that you learn and get better at estimating and scoping out work. Expanding services As you grow your business, you’ll want to expand your services. Sometimes this means expanding into areas of unfamiliar territory. Depending on what sort of services and market you are expanding into, your research may tell you that there’s a certain expected price. Especially as you are trying to break into that market, you’ll want to pay close attention to your own cost, as much as the client’s. Therefore you may have to charge an hourly rate to the client just so that you get a better understanding of the value of your service to the client and cost to you. Please note here that expansion of services doesn’t mean that this is the majority of your business. Chances are that if you are a solo shop, you’ll expand with one or two clients in this new market at any given time. It should be in a very controlled environment. This is a part of business development and should be closely monitored to see if it’s a viable option for you and your business. To wrap up You’ve heard me before say that I’m a realist. If someone told the young Jason to start value pricing,
Tue, October 23, 2018
A172 - Why is hourly billing bad?
I want to start off by stating, if you having yet read Hourly Billing is Nuts by Jonathan Stark go ahead and get it and read it! Hourly billing puts the 2 parties in the service agreement at odds. The financial incentives are misaligned from the start. From your perspective you want to take as long as possible so you get paid as much as you can and your client wants you to finish as quickly as possible to keep the costs down. This puts the goal, the motivation of the project, regardless of what that project is, on the number of hours to completion. Not on the business objective of that project. There’s a laundry list of reasons why hourly billing is bad. So I don’t want this to become a two hour long podcast of me spouting out a list. What I’d like to focus on are 3 reasons. Clients prefer fixed price (certainty) vs hourly billing (uncertainty) You are doing client service work and you can’t have your motivations different from your clients. “Serve first”, “Help”, “Put your customers first” are all things that you hear and see as inspirational and motivation phrases because of the archaic hourly billing model. Clients want the lowest risk possible when hiring someone. They want to know exactly what they are getting and for how much. This means, understanding when the outcomes and deliverables will happen within that cost. Clients will always invest in something that they can see the positive ROI. The reason clients want the hourly rate as low as possible is because they (along with the freelancer) don’t exactly know how long it will be until the outcome is realized. Businesses want certainty and in an uncertain world, the only way to limit risk is to have the investment as low as possible. It’s your job to provide an outcome, a deliverable that’s the solution to your clients’ problems. If you know what that outcome is and have a proven track record for that outcome, you should be able to put a price on it. When you focus on the goals, the outcome, rather than the time spent, you and your client are in alignment and as such there’s a value (from your client’s perspective) and price (from your perspective) that is placed on that outcome. Get into the vicious feast or famine cycle It’s the quickest way to become a commodity. If you feel like you are on a hamster wheel, then I’d be willing to bet you are billing hourly. You started freelancing because you wanted to travel or spend time with your family. Yet, those things seem so far removed now because if you take your eyeballs off the screen, your income stops. You can’t even schedule or book ahead either because you aren’t completely sure of when your current project will end. The feast or famine cycle is a real thing and the reason why so many freelancers fall into it is because they start with hourly billing. It’s easy math to do and it’s something that they a
Mon, October 22, 2018
A171 - How do you choose the technology for your clients?
The short answer to this question is that I don’t, their business does. A mantra that I’ve always lived by for my business is “Let the business drive the technology, not the other way around.” The simple truth is that technology changes much faster than a business can. So if the technology were to go away tomorrow, would the business still be viable and run or would it be out of business? Last week YouTube went down and the internet lost it’s mind! There are a great deal of people who build their business on YouTube. And if you don’t listen to those smarter YouTubers like Roberto Blake, Sunny Lenarduzzi, and Amy Landino who always talk about building a business on YouTube, but then say that it’s an absolute must to get customers onto your mailing list. It’s for that exact reason. To answer today’s question though, you want to listen to your client extremely closely and objectively. Be overly objective My wheelhouse is WooCommerce, Subscriptions for WooCommerce, Drip, and ConvertKit. That is the technology that I work with and on for clients. If I hear from my clients that they need a different ecommerce platform such as Shopify. Or an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp, then I don’t hesitate to share that with them. There is any number of reasons why technology may fit or not fit for someone. Price, features, existing knowledge, existing business software, and timeline. As a professional, you will want to give your clients the expertise that you have in order to provide them with the best possible solution, even if it isn’t your own. If you don’t, you and your client will find out later in a much more painful way. If you don’t like having hard conversations then best to over-communicate early on. Listen closely Not every client project is a fit for you. What happens when you take on projects that are not is that your profits and time go right out the window. What I mean by this is that if you provide a solution that your client is looking for and you shoehorn the technology that you know into it, there will be a high likelihood that further down the road your client will ask for something that the technology may not do, or do well. When describing the requirements for the project, your client is coming from their perspective and knowledge of what they need. That knowledge comes from their experience with the problem so far. There is no way that you’ll know every detail of the problem within a 30 or 60-minute conversation. Rest assured though, you’ll find out the hard way when it arises. It’s hard for me to cite exactly what to watch and listen for here. Every case is different. However keep in mind the phrase “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” If you’ve got some gut feeling or the dots connect to form a specific technology that fits perfect, then that’s the answer.
Fri, October 19, 2018
A170 - How long does it take?
First, I want to thank Justin Jackson for the mention on Build Your SaaS podcast. Second, an episode of Build Your SaaS is part inspiration for this episode in fact. Couple that with a couple of conversations I had in a forum last week is where this question comes from. Since they are two sides of the same coin, I thought that I’d share some thoughts around it. How long does it take to become successful So inside the forum thread was a person who was curious how long it takes to become successful in freelancing. Which obviously varies from person to person and business to business. Some may never get there in fact. I responded to the question with another question “What does success mean to you?” And whatever that meant is what will dictate how long it could take. Then in another thread we were taking about specific sales strategies and why it works and doesn’t work for similar businesses. It went on for quite a number of back and forth posts. What came of the conversation was a needed level of patience and trial and error. In marketing and sales, you do things that you can get results quickly on and other things that take time. For example, Ads are quick, whereas Content Marketing is long term. This particular strategy fell more on the side of longer term but this person wanted a quick win. So in this person’s eyes, the sales strategy didn’t work because not enough time was given. What does success mean to you? Before I dive into the answer to today’s question, I want to share with you what Justin and Jon unpack in their podcast episode. Justin has been championing a bootstrappers mindset campaign recently. Where the idea is that business is hard and everyone’s journey is different. What they talk about in this episode is how MailChimp took 6 years to hit 10,000 users. That’s the point at which the owners became full-time to MailChimp instead of running their consultancy firm. The flip side to this was that DHH said in a comment thread that Justin had been a part of “If it takes 5 years to get to the point where the business can pay two salaries, it’s possible that the business isn’t destined for that long-term.” Which is interesting and fair to say. But everyone’s journey is different. Everyone’s situation is different. There’s no formulaic answer to this question. I’ve been working on my business full-time since 2010, so that’s 8 years. I’m in it for the long-haul. In business, if you are freelancing, chances are that your goals are some sort of lifestyle goals. You aren’t looking to exit, you aren’t looking to get acquired. You should have the mindset for the long term. What do these numbers actually represent? People throw around outrageous numbers that are 6, 7, 8 figures like it’s as easy to get as stepping outside you front door to get the m
Thu, October 18, 2018
A169 - How to stop the feast or famine cycle?
How do I know David Shriner-Cahn? David Shriner-Cahn is the founder of Tend Strategic Partners and co-founder of the BestNetwork, which guides expertise-driven business owners to build recurring revenue. David and I know each other from the NY entrepreneurial space. We met a few years ago in an online community called Youpreneur. Then we continued to keep in touch, meet up and continue spreading the word for building sustainable businesses. David invited me on his podcast since we are both NYers and share in our love for podcasts. No I’m kidding (sorta), but he did invite me on because I’ve been doing client services work for so long and thought that I could bring value to his audience. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the following: How to stop the feast or famine cycle In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. In the episode, I shared a variety of things including: Origin of the word “freelancer” Why freelancers don’t need more clients The mindset and discipline are key to building recurring revenue Specifically I talk about building recurring revenue and how you can dive into the heart of any project or business owner and figure out what is most important to them. Then once you understand what that is, how to work backwards and start to filter for that throughout all aspects of your sales process, starting with your project brief. The main takeaways from this show are: How by using a project brief or application you can weed out the bad leads immediately. By getting to the underlying cause of the need for the project, you can start to build your business around those you serve and the value you provide. How to become the expert in your field. Definitely go check it out . If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well. I’d like to thank David for being a part of it and included along amazing folks like Jessica Yarbrough, Gabriel Neuman, and Ben Walker ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, October 17, 2018
A168 - Do you use a CRM for your business?
What is a CRM? A customer relationship management tool keeps all your contacts and the relationships with that contact in place. This is used for managing customers, leads, colleagues, network contacts and so forth. For a long time I didn’t use one, because I basically used my email inbox to manage my contacts. But that quickly became cumbersome and not ideal especially the more mature my business became. I then shifted from my inbox to my email marketing provider, Drip , to manage my contacts through tagging and segmentation. But then I had to switch from that as well. Focus on the contact The reason I had to switch was really based on the need to keep in touch with a single contact. Drip and even my inbox was easy enough for leads and clients, but not for my colleagues and those that I wanted to be sure to keep in touch with over the year. Due to the fact that my relationship with leads and clients are mostly a linear relationship, but colleagues and other contacts can become complex and evolve, I needed a system that is flexible enough to evolve with those relationships. I use Pipedrive as my CRM. Growing relationships It allows for the growth of the relationships of leads and customers. You’ve heard me so many times talk about the sales process and buyer’s journey on this podcast. Having a proper CRM allows for you to nurture the individual through each of the stages of the process . By keeping tracking of emails, calls, and even in some cases social media posts, a CRM tool will retain all the information of that relationship you have without you having to keep those things in mind. Opportunities A CRM allows you to be to identify opportunities for your business and your clients as well. What I mean by this is you can see a certain pattern of questions, objections, or reasons why a lead doesn’t sign on the dotted line. Performing a report on these can spark ideas and even opportunities for you that you wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Pipedrive’s core is activity based selling. Which means that deals and contacts alike are all based around activities. When you create an email with a client, Pipedrive will then prompt you for the next activity and when. At that point, you don’t have to worry remembering what that is until it’s that time again. It removes the clutter in your head. Helps you with your numbers Numbers don’t lie. Your cashflow is key to your business and if you don’t know how many people you need to talk to today in order to hit your revenue goals for the quarter or year, you’ll no doubt be reactionary and looking at lagging indicators of your business which is no w
Tue, October 16, 2018
A167 - How to have a productive week?
In A152 - How do you do a review of your week? I talk about how important my weekly reviews are. It’s actually quite scary how my wife can tell Sunday afternoons how distracted or off my game I am if I haven’t done my review that morning. Can I be completely candid with you right now? This is a funny question to me because about 2 weeks ago…talking with a friend…when I start looking…I’m just distracting myself. I’m going to share with you X strategies to have a productive week, without question, but you need to really figure out what works best for you. The tools, strategies, methods that make me productive may not be right for you and that’s ok. Just like maybe you are a night person and I’m a morning person. It’s just how we are wired. So let’s dive in. Plan ahead You need to plan your week before it starts. Whether that means you take Friday afternoon before you shut down for the weekend or are like me and plan on Sunday, you have to hit the ground running Monday morning knowing what you are working on. Not planning ahead already sets you up for a slow start to the week. Use a calendar and put the important stuff on it first There’s only so much time in a day. So the very first thing you is to use a calendar. Post-its are great for ideas and thoughts, not for time based planning. Use your calendar as a constraint and for accountability. Put all the important things like date night, workouts, Dr appointments, vacations, time with the family down on the week first. If it’s not already on there. Next put your marketing and sales activities on your calendar. This is the [blood of your business](A165) and needs to be something you prioritize doing in each and every week. Use booking application You are having sales calls, client calls, and networking calls with friends and colleagues. They all take a different type of energy level to do and different amount of time as well. By using a tool like [Calendly](https://calendly.com) or Acuity(https://acquity.com) it allows you to create events based around your calendar and the availability you set within the application. Then you get a link to send off where the other person can pick a time slot that works best for them based around what you have available. Theme your days Whether it’s a full day dedicated to a piece of your business or a part of your day, I’ll leave that to you. But make sure that if Monday is meant for Client A and Tuesday is meant for sales and marketing and Wednesday is Client B and Thursday is content and so on, keep to that. Switching around is scientifically proven to be a detriment to productivity. If you can batch a single bunch of hours to a specific activity, your brain will easily move through those tasks. When I started out, I allowed
Mon, October 15, 2018
A166 - How to grow with word-of-mouth marketing?
The funny thing about marketing is that when something works for your business, you want to know what’s the next thing you should try. In the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, which is a book written for startups who want to grow and build a customer base. It dives into 19 or so different channels to do this. At the heart of the book though is traction. It’s not a book that tells you to try all the 19 different marketing channels. It’s a book that tells you to completely exhaust the one channel that’s working for you. To the point at which you start to almost see a decline. Yes, this book is mainly designed and written for startup Saas companies, but much of the methods and strategies can be used for consultants as well. Why WOM is bad I know right now that 50+% of your new business and sales comes by way of word-of-mouth. And you are no doubt falling victim to the thoughts and pressures that your marketing is based off of someone else’s words. Perfectly understandable and definitely something to consider. Instead of thinking about diving head first into ads, or social, or some other form of marketing, have you thought about why 50+% of your business is word-of-mouth? Maybe it’s due to: Price Quality Knowledge Availability To be honest with you, it’s probably a combination of several things. Can I share with you what the reason for why word-of-mouth is such a big portion of my business? It’s because I make the technical aspects of what I do easy to digest and understand. I know this because I asked. I asked clients what they liked and I asked those that were referred to me what was it that they heard about me. Why WOM is great People are 4x more likely to buywhen referred by friends. Word-of-mouth generates 2x more sales than paid ads. Think about your own buying habits. Do you look at reviews? Do you ask your friends and family for recommendations? Or do you eagerly wait for those 2:20 breaks in between your favorite tv shows? If word-of-mouth is 50% of your business today, and your best customers are coming out of those referrals, then I ask, how much effort are you putting into word-of-mouth marketing? My guess is the bare minimum. Here are 7 things you should be putting into your marketing right now to help promote yourself by allowing your existing and past clients to refer you. 1. Ask for referrals during and after your project. Every milestone you have with clients, you should be asking your clients if there’s someone that they know that has a similar problem that you just solved because it was awesome working together to resolve it. 2. Ask for reviews. 3. Create a referral program. These are easy to do nowadays with services like Rewardful and AffiliateWP. 4. Create an incentive 5. Create a podcast and invite your
Fri, October 12, 2018
A165 - How to get more clients?
This is something that I’m sure you’ve asked before, right? I’m going to share with you 4 strategies and biggest tip on this but I want to ask you to be open to hearing me out for the next few minutes here It all starts with your mindset. The reason you ask this is because you are stuck in hamster wheel that is the feast or famine cycle. Clients are the blood of your business, yes, but you are the brain of the business and need to control it so that the success of it is driven by the actions you do. You may be working on projects that are one-off and not recurring based and that’s ok. But often times when you ask this, you haven’t put in the effort, the time to properly set yourself up for consistent work. Prioritize the money This includes dedicated sales and marketing time on your calendar every single week. When I first start, I blocked out time every single Tuesday between 7 PM and 8 PM to do lead generation. Now I dedicate mornings to sales activities. Things like writing emails, performing outreach, and even having sales calls. The consistent work you do for sales means that you will always have a pipeline of leads and clients coming into your business. Guard your time Another reason you ask this is that you aren’t protecting yourself and your business. Chances are good that are reacting to your clients instead of making your time a priority. What I mean by this are things like: You answer your client emails off-hours or as soon as they come in. You allow your clients to text you or call you anytime instead of scheduling a call. You stop everything you are doing to address your client requests most of the time. I get that you have a client services business, and these things happen from time to time, but they can’t be the norm. A client thinks about their business and you should think about yours. You hopefully have multiple clients and you have your own business to run as well. If you react, rather than plan ahead for client requests, you’ll be continually chasing down requests. Dedicate a day of the week or multiple days if needed, where your focus is on a specific client. Share that with them if you have to. You’ll be surprised how receptive they will be when you tell them that you’ll look at this on Wednesday when you are working on their project. Talking with your clients increases your value This leads me to the next thought and that it create boundaries and expectations. This may surprise you, but clients often will see the communication as a value. Simply by sharing with them your plan for the week when it comes to their work or sharing with them an inside look at the very beginning of working together how it will be goes a long way in creating a sense of a higher value for your services. It shows a level of professionalism that they don’t get from
Thu, October 11, 2018
A164 - How to create memorable moments?
Lee Jackson is the founder of Agency Trailblazer. He helps agency owners fall back in love with their agency with his amazing community, workshops, and masterminds. Lee and I are 2 sides of the same coin. Lee works with agency owners where I work mostly with solo business owners. Lee and I had been bumping into each other around the web in various different groups and thought that we’d come together and dive into a few rabbit holes on a podcast together. See we both seem to have this uncanny ability to de-rail serious conversations. When you listen to this show, you’ll hear us talk about NY accents, Jarvis from Iron Man and how that will work itself into web development in the future, how Lee got played from a fellow colleague, Phil Collins, and us being rappers. Yes, the show gets quite off the rails, especially at the end. Yet, in the midst of all the tomfoolery, we unpack quite a bit of value for agencies and freelancers alike.o Lee invited me onto his show and I invited him onto Live In The Feast and we had a number of jokes and laughs among all the amazing chat. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the following: How to create memorable moments In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details. In the episode, I had a chance to talk about a variety of things including: What my first paid project and how I got it How to run your business and not letting it run you Have a vision for the business that you want to create Setting boundaries with your clients allow the balance you want in your life Specifically, I talk about how to create milestones with clients and then when they are reached, make them memorable with your clients. When I say celebrate, I don’t mean just send off an email. I mean create a memorable moment in the mind of your client. The main takeaways from this show are: How to make yourself memorable How to work with clients that you want to work with The power of referrals My “2 Red Flag” Rule - Learn to trust your gut ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, October 10, 2018
A163 - What is the first step in productizing your service?
Documentation! It’s not sexy. It’s not fun, but if you are looking to transition your services into a productized service, you need to document everything you do. Productizing your service is all about profits and processes. How you trim your processes over time and become more efficient at delivering your service to your clients, you increase your profits. The only way to understand your processes to optimize them is through documentation. You’ll need to document everything from your sales process, onboarding process, how you deliver, and everything in between. There are tools out there to help, but all you really need is Google Drive. This will allow you to share documentation with your team or even if you are by yourself, you can see your documentation anywhere on any device. Please note that when you start documenting, it’s going to add time to whatever task you are doing because you’ll be taking screenshots, copying and pasting things, and bouncing back and forth between windows and tabs. But there’s no better time than to start doing it today. On the very next thing you do for a client, open up a brand new document and create yourself a few sections. Why Why is this document is important. You’ll want to in a few short sentences explain the importance of this process to your business and your client’s business. Screencast Drop in a link to the screencast here. I’ll expand upon this here in a minute. Process List out in a step-by-step guide the process. Include screenshots, URLs, etc. Be as specific and detailed as you can be. A good trick I learned was to write this document as if my grandmother was going to read this. Would she be able to go through this document and get the “thing” done. Important Item of Note This final piece is just one sentence at the end to hit home the importance of this process. Yes, it may seem repetitive but with long documents we can sometimes want to skip steps and just get to the bottom. This bolded and underlined statement will reinforce the “why” statement and be a reminder for you. The quickest way to document The quickest way to document is to record yourself. You can create a recording using any number of tools now. Screenflow, Loom, Camtasia all make it super simple. If you press record and then take the few minutes and talk through all the steps, you can then turn that into a document by having it transcribed. Talking is much easier and faster than typing, having it transcribed for you to then go back through and edit is much quicker. Using a tool like Rev.com it is $1/minute. So for $5 for a 5 minute recording you could have a 3 page documented process all written up for you. Throw the original recording up on Dropbox to look back on and put that share link in the Screencast
Tue, October 09, 2018
A162 - How do I grow my audience and awareness?
You don’t need to spend a ton of money on Facebook or Google Ads to generate awareness and grow your business. Look at Dropbox as a simple example. What they did was create a free tool that made it easy for people to download, put on their computer, and share files with others. Simple, effective, and most of all useful. How can you do this with your services? Easy, create something useful for your target client that you can give away for free. Let’s say you are an ecommerce developer? Create a calendar of dates over the year that are important sale days for ecommerce shops to keep in mind. If you are a designer, how many mockups of websites have been tossed aside over the years? Tons I’m sure. Bundle up a few of them and release that as website templates. If you are a photographer, package up a bunch of photos and release them as stock photography. Offer these up as freebies on your website that folks can get in exchange for their email address. You want to make your free thing specific enough to your ideal client so that it attracts them to you and what you offer. Grow your audience Create a shareable loop so that when someone downloads the thing, it’s super simple for them to get a bonus or next thing if they go ahead and share. This could be as easy or as complex as you want. The most complex would be to install a referral program where you can have the person share links and can award people who share the most with some prize. There are plenty of these tools out there like KingSumo, Kickoff Labs, Vyper, and UpViral. Or make it super simple and drop in share links where people can quickly click the link to share it with their audience. Make your prize as specific to your ideal client as well. If you are giving away an iPad as your prize then that will just attract a bunch of folks who could careless about you and your business and just wants a free iPad. Make it a 15-minute free consultation, social media templates, whatever that makes sense as the next step. Remember you want your free thing to attract someone who could potentially become a client, so you’ll want to give away something of value to them and their business. Then as they get that free thing, offer something of more value in exchange for them to spread your great freebie. That creates a viral loop. Not going to say that it’s going to attract thousands of leads, may not even get you hundreds of leads. But once this is up and on your website, it’s a leveraged piece of lead generation that you now have that is a gateway for leads to your business. If they come into your business from that freebie, you now know a piece of the puzzle about what is important to them and have a conversation starter. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more res
Mon, October 08, 2018
A161 - How to answer objections and get clients to say “yes”?
In business, there is this scenario that gets created during sales that put 2 parties on opposite sides of the table. But the reality of it is that both parties want the same thing. They both want to be successful with the project. When the objections start popping up, I like to bring this up to them. I simply share something that I’ve said for years and it’s this. “I want to get you where you want to be as efficient as we can together. We are both working towards that same goal and both are successful when that goal is crushed.” I had a one-hour coaching session with someone (who I got permission to share this on the show) where she wanted to learn more about how to answer objections of clients and get them to commit but in face-to-face conversations and email. ## Need to come into the conversation without bias The simple reason is that they’re more than likely been here before. Maybe not to the extent or the exact service you are pitching, but the internet is now 20+ years old and no doubt they’ve had their business website up and running before. When you come into a sales conversation, you should meet the lead where they are, not where you are. Don’t assume anything. Don’t assume that they had a great relationship with a past vendor. Don’t assume that they know what it’s like to get a proposal and what to do with it. Don’t assume they know what the words mean that are coming out of your mouth. Don’t assume that they even have the most basic of information like who they host with on hand. Which is why it’s so important to get out in front of these questions by way of your project brief or project application. If there is information that you need to better present your solution and you can get that in an online form someplace and allow the lead some time to gather this information, do it. Be empathic. Don’t make them feel bad by putting them on the spot with a question that they can answer easily given a few minutes of time. Embrace Objections Objections are your opportunity in any conversation to connect with the other person, to ultimately solve their problem. This is where, in the limited time you have here, to build that trust up even further. So when you start to hear objections or them becoming a bit apprehensive, come from a place of empathy and understand what their concerns are. Why are they apprehensive and not ready to say “yes” and start the project right now. What is the ask? Chris Do, from The Futur worded this best when he said: “Ask them back for clarity.” What I’ve found to work is to start asking honest, genuine, questions around exactly what it is that the client wants to be done. You want them to actually use the words they have in their head to explain what it is that they want
Fri, October 05, 2018
A160 - What is the difference between warm and cold outreach?
I’ve talked a ton on this podcast about outreach strategies because whether you like sales or not, if you are building a business, you’ll need to do some form of sales outreach. Hate to break the news to you. A lot of people I talk with, and maybe you have this same question too, ask what is the difference between warm and cold outreach. Simply put the difference is how aware is the person you are reaching out to about you and the solution that you provide. Start with warm outreach If you are starting out, warm outreach is a good place to start because you can build up the momentum and cadence of your sales process. See in warm outreach, there’s less education that you need to do for that person about the problem they have, results they can expect from the solution to that problem, and you being able to provide that solution. In warm outreach, they know you and have trust in you at some level. So you can pay close attention to the language they use, objections they have and improve your sales conversations and process rather than worrying about hooking the lead in. All the tiny asks, getting on the phone, having them fill out an application, even sharing information about budget and timelines, are more likely to be answered because they trust you already. Leaving the biggest ask, signing the proposal, as the only hurdle you really have to overcome. I like to look at warm outreach as 2 types of contacts, one is my friends and colleagues and the other is that lead that has been reading, hearing, and seeing me talk about my services through my content I put out there. Warm Outreach Strategy The first group, the colleagues and friends, are the best kind of warm outreach, because they already know what you do. No need for explaining what you do and as long as they encounter a lead that isn’t right for them or have a client who needs that thing you provide, you want to make yourself available to them for a referral. Create yourself a list of 25 close colleagues and friends. Each quarter, send 3-5 of them an email letting them know you are available for work. Taking only a small chunk of them allows you not to bombard your friends all the time looking for work, but pings them about once a year. This way when an opportunity comes their way that isn’t a fit for them, you stick out as a potential referral. The second group, those that are familiar with you because of their own research is another kind of warm outreach contact. They need to build up more trust in you. So you’ll need a bit more education of yourself and the solution than that of your friends. But there’s some level of trust already built there, which is what you want. Like the first group though, you can focus on learning their language and improvi
Thu, October 04, 2018
A159 - What is activity based selling?
In A158 How much money do I need to make? , you learned what to take into account when trying to figure out how much money you need to make. What you’ll learn today is activity based selling. Which boils down to looking at what you can do today, not what happened yesterday, to reach your goals. What it really comes down to is breaking it into chunks. You started off knowing what things you enjoy and totaled all them up into a yearly number. You figured out what your total revenue number is too based on your aspirations and the reality of your expenses. Lagging vs Leading Indicators Here’s the shocking point, you have zero control over this number. It’s solely based on someone else handing over money to you. The amount paid to you is a lagging indicator, it’s the output or result. It’s easy to measure but hard to improve or influence because you don’t have the control. The concept of activity based selling is a focus on leading indicators. These are the inputs or effort you put forward. They are hard to measure, but easy to influence because they are what you do control. Example of lagging vs leading indicators Let me explain this concept with a simple example. For many of us a personal goal is weight loss. A lagging indicator that is easy to measure is the weight lost. You literally go on the scale every week and see the decrease in weight. But how you reach that goal are leading indicators. For weight loss there’s really 2 leading indicators, calories in and burned. Easily influenced by you and within your control. Now let’s take this concept and apply it to yesterday’s episode. Real life business example of activity based selling Say you want to make $120,000 per year. That means you need to make $10,000 per month. If you have an average project price of $5,000, you’ll need 2 new clients per month. All these are lagging indicators. You really don’t have any control over how many clients you get per month. Sure you can hustle and land none, or sit back and get someone to fall into your lap. Obviously, not the way to run a successful business. Pipeline Stages What you do control though is the number of leads, number of sales calls you make, number of proposals you send out, etc. In between each of those stages will be a conversion rate too. Not everyone who is a lead will turn into a sales call. Not every sales call turns into a proposal. And I hate to break the news, but not every proposal turns into a paying client. You won’t know this at the start, but you can put an good estimate on them to give yourself some context. As you start using this system, you can then tweak your percentages accordingly to get more accurate numbers. With these leading indicators in mind, you can take the 2 clients yo
Wed, October 03, 2018
A158 - How much money do I need to make?
The mistake most freelancers make after having worked full-time is taking their annual salary and breaking that out into an hourly rate. This is a mistake for so many reasons, one of which is that what you pay in taxes here in the U.S. as a W2 employed person is very different than that of a 1099 self-employed person. You will need to cover things like healthcare, social security, and a whole plethora of other things that often times your full-time employer have covered for you. So before you make that leap, or if you have already and wonder why you feel strapped for cash, this episode should shed some light for you. Personal expenses This is the biggest nut to crack and the harshest reality for a lot of people. Your personal expenses can vary from what your groceries cost, how much the mortgage or rent is to how much do you often spend on a pair of jeans. Be honest with yourself when exploring this because this is the space where you don’t want to skimp on. In fact, if you over budget here, you’ll be better off. Things to think about here are food, shelter, family expenses, taxes, travel, hobbies, emergency funds, car payment, toys, and so on. You can extrapolate these numbers just from looking at your credit card and/or bank statements. In fact, I encourage you to do so because you don’t want to be short. Be honest with yourself here. Then take your monthly number and multiply it by 12 to get your yearly personal expenses. Business expenses Next you’ll need to figure out the cost of running your business. This could be things like your laptop, hosting for your website, supplies, contractors that you hire, organizational filing expense, professional fees for your accountant and lawyer, other business equipment. If you are just starting out, you may not know these, so ask around to get ballpark figure on these if you have to. Don’t let people, namely your friends and family, who aren’t accountants tell you that “it’s a write off, who cares what it costs.” A write-off doesn’t mean that you get everything back, it’s often percentage based and you want to keep your expenses low especially when starting out so that your profits, what goes into your pocket, is as much as possible. Get your estimated business expenses per month here and multiple it by 12. What is your yearly target After those 2 areas are figured out, think about what you would like to make for the business. If this number is short of your expenses added together, time to up your revenue goal. Here’s the tricky part, just because the business brings in $100,000 doesn’t mean that’s what you make. What you make is a percentage of that total revenue minus expenses. When thinking about the total revenue, it’s best to think about your taxes first. You’ll want to set aside 30% to cover your taxes. If you want the total
Tue, October 02, 2018
A157 - How do you stop comparing yourself to someone else?
As a creative entrepreneur, you decided to start your own business because of certain reasons. Whether that’s time freedom to spend time with your family or travel or no limit on your income potential, that goal is your own. With all the social media and “celebrity” out there it’s easy to become distracted and get off track. What their goals is not what yours are. Plain and simple. Even if that person’s goal is similar to yours, you aren’t the same person. You may not even have the same type of personality. The way that person does something may not be the best way for you to do something. Look for inspiration Comparing yourself to someone else will do more harm to you than good. What you want to do is look at what’s working for someone else and potentially take that as inspiration for yourself. There are many successful folks building businesses based on their personality and being outgoing. If that’s not your style, but you respect the way that they are doing sales or handling customers, use that for inspiration. Take what they are doing and make it your own. I’ve fallen a few times into the pitfalls of comparing myself to someone else. Each and every time it’s demoralizing because I don’t get the results they did. Put a ton of work into the “thing” and didn’t see the results. It’s the type of thing that burns your out and can put you out of business. Catch yourself Let me share with you what I do when I start to find myself comparing myself to someone else. I’ve got a photo of myself on my desk of my son and I. That is my anchor. When I start to get distracted by something new - whether that’s jumping onto the latest social media platform, learning a new tool, or trying a new sales tactic, my eye will catch that photo and bounce me back into my world. What that does is allow me to frame that distraction into inspiration rather than diving into a comparison of apples to apples. I’ve been in business a long time and of course, I don’t have all the answers. But I know what can work for me, what does work for me, and what feels right to me. That photo keeps that in mind. Comparing myself to others both in the online and physical space does me no good. I’m not them and they aren’t me. There are things that I’m great at that they aren’t and vice versa. Same goes for you. Your goals are yours and yours alone, how you get there will be on your terms. You aren’t standing in someone else’s shows and no one is standing in your shoes. Learn from others as inspiration, make it your own, and you’ll see that you’ll have more success. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Mon, October 01, 2018
A156 - What do I say when a potential client says I’m too expensive?
Sticker shock is real sometimes, but other times this is a negotiation tactic. It’s up to you to figure out. Explain why you are different than others and provide proof This is where you should be explaining and re-framing the context of your service in comparison with what they’ve experienced in the past and/or your unique advantage. You want to be empathic to their budget restrictions obviously. Simply re-iterate the results you’ve had with past clients and keeping it succinct and to the point that you are helping them accomplish goals and not only building a website, feature, or blog post. All these things they have heard from you before at length so no need to re-hash it all again. Then leave it at that and let them fill in the awkward silence. This will start to tell you if it’s a negotiation tactic or reality. If they don’t have the funds, be understanding and tell them that when they are ready in the future, you are there for them. Scale back the work to meet their budget Scale back scope, don’t discount! If their budget is way off, then scale back the scope of work. If you’ve gone through the entire sales process and your solution is much more than what they have budget for, then you think and reflect on why that happened in the first place. Maybe you didn’t ask their budget early on? Maybe there was a misunderstanding on what the scope of the solution was. Whatever the case may be, then on the next project you want to fix that. If nothing else, it won’t waste anyone’s time. When scaling back, be specific about the results that they will get. You want to share with them that because you are removing bits of the project, that certain goals will not be achieved. Move on If you are fully booked, or that this haggle was the latest of a [list of red flags]([https://rezzz.com/ask/client-red-flags/]) simply move on. Be respectful and empathetic to the budget and excuse yourself from being a viable option for them. You can do this by saying “I completely understand and respect your budget and working with me may not be the best option for you. If in the future, this project gets more funding, then don’t hesitate to reach out.” How to tell if this is a negotiation tactic or not? To tell if this is a tactic or not comes with experience. Without being there and hearing the responses it is hard for me to say definitively or not. This is something that I help my coaching clients on a regular basis with. However, here’s an example of a tactic as opposed to their actual budget. Say you give your proposal that it’s $1000 and they respond that they only have budget for $500. Which obviously you wouldn’t do for half and the fact that it’s so far off, the “Move On” option would be your best bet here. If af
Fri, September 28, 2018
A155 - How do you collect online payments?
Taking payment is complex, but should be the easiest, most frictionless experience for your clients. If you get nothing else from this episode, please take that with you. Outside the U.S. There are all sorts of laws and regulations that complicate all sorts of payments. What I’m sharing applies to the U.S. If you are not in the U.S. these companies and services that I talk about may still apply, but I can’t guarantee it. Please do your due diligence to make sure that this works best for you and where you are. There are a few layers in taking payments that I hope to provide some clarity on. There is accounting software and there are payment gateways. The lines between the 2 have become much more blurred in recent years. What is a payment gateway? The difference between the 2 are important. Payment gateways process payments only. They will not reconcile your expenses, can’t generate invoices directly and easily, and will not give you profit and loss statements. Gateways are companies like Authorize.net, Stripe, and alike that you need to link into your bank account so that when someone pays you online, 2-5 days later, you get that money in your account. Stripe is by far and away the leader in this field when it comes to taking online payments. It integrates with most of the software out there and has a robust API that if you have developer chops, can build your own software on top of it. You may be saying, “But Jason, I’m generating invoices from PayPal and Stripe.” And yes, you can. But when I say invoices, I mean being able to set up recurring invoices, allow your client to log in and see their account history, and even manage their own account with relative ease and no intervention from you. The cost is usually a fee applied to every transaction in the form of a percentage of the total amount. If you have a lot of transactions or a high amount of money going through, you can sometimes negotiate this rate. What is accounting software? So what’s accounting software then? These are companies like Freshbooks, Quickbooks Online, Bonsai, and Xero. These services allow you to link up your bank account, generate invoices, set up recurring billing, and give you or your accountant nice reports. These often carry a monthly price with them and would link directly into your gateway. Your accounting software sits as a layer in between your client and your gateway to make everyone’s life easier. Is it needed? Well that’s something that I’ve wrestled with in the past, especially as I’m seeing more and more advancements from companies like Stripe and Azlo as they build out developer tools. This is the area I find most interesting because the stalwarts in the space, like Xero and Quickbooks technically don’t have a unique added value other than your accountant uses them. Stripe and Azlo and others have started to c
Thu, September 27, 2018
A154 - What is your favorite quote?
It’s hard to come up with just one favorite quote, because for me quotes are inspirational when there’s a reference or context to them. I’m going to share with you my 6 favorite quotes and put some context around them. Everyday Life “Two things that you have control over every single day: attitude and effort.” -Andrew McCutchen This is something that I heard him say in an interview once. Smart man and absolutely right. It’s important to remember that you can only control yourself, what you do and how you act. There’s no point in trying to control someone else, a particular situation, etc. It can’t be done. Show up, give it your all, and do your absolute best each and every day. Competitive “Never underestimate your opponent, never take what your enemy gives you.” - Sean Connery This is from one of my favorite movies of all time. Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. In this movie, Sean Connery plays the role of a mentor to an upstart police officer, Wesley Snipes. If you haven’t seen it, definitely queue it up in Netflix. It’s a great flick. I’m a pretty competitive person and when I heard this quote for the first time, it hit a home run with me. Being competitive you can become cocky or arrogant and that tends to become a pitfall. Whether you are in business, sports, gaming, even board games, you should never underestimate your opponent because on any given day you can be off and they can win. However, in the same light, don’t assume that what your opponent is saying, doing, or offering you is necessarily to your benefit. Take it as information, but don’t dive too deep into it. Make sure that you stick to what you are setting out to do. Business Quote "Charge what you're worth and don't apologize!" - Chris Ducker “Business does not just come sit in your lap….you have to go out and get it or else you’ll fail.” -Gordon Ramsey These are amazing quotes from two amazing Brits. Bottom line is to know your value, don’t waiver on it and go seek out those that can see the value that you bring to their business. Don’t wait for the business to find you. However you are comfortable in seeking out work, do it and then do it some more. Favorite Sales Quotes "If it takes a hard sell, let them go.” - Brian Clark "The lower the price, the higher the expectations; the less appreciation of the value.” - Pippin Williamson These 2 quotes are something that freelancers should write down and tack on the wall in front of them. In episode 151 where I talk about cold outreach strategy, Brian Clark shares a similar sentiment here in that you aren’t going to convince anyone to buy from you if they don’t see that value. Pippin’s wise words here should resonate with you if you’ve lowered your price or been haggled with at some point in time. No doubt
Wed, September 26, 2018
A153 - How would you get into the corporate business as an independent professional?
I was speaking at an online conference called Weaver’s Space Online Conference and asked this question during the Q & A portion of my talk. I love Q & A more than any scripted presentation for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason is because I know that someone walked in with something specific they wanted from the talk and walked away with an answer. I’ve had my share of big brands and corporations in my career and it’s definitely a different beast to tackle. It’s hard to break in the door if you don’t already have an in. Unlike small businesses, corporations usually have an agenda and roadmap of projects they need done. They fill the gaps by seeking out vendors, then vetting those vendors and hiring. Once those vendors are approved, they most likely will continue to go back to that well time and time again, so I get the appeal of that as a target client for a lot of people. However that outreach is a hard nut to crack. You essentially have to be in the right place at the right time. Increase your chances by finding those right people On LinkedIn you’ll likely have the most success in finding the appropriate person who handles hiring. What you want to do is follow that person, make that person aware of your presence by potentially commenting on their shares, sharing their content to your audience, and maybe even just providing some resources to that person. It’s a long haul effort, but you want to keep in mind being a “friend” here. Congratulate them on milestones. Maybe their work anniversary or some launch they were a part of. Maybe even a new product or campaign that brand put out. Be a good person to the brand and contribute to their success. Follow the brand Look for opportunities out there where that brand may be posting other things that could be relevant to the needs they have that you can fill. Look even for those tangential opportunities as well. By this I mean if your solution is design, and you see a release of something that’s broken from a design perspective because it renders funky on the iPad, reach out and suggest connecting them to someone who you know may be able to fix it if they don’t have someone in house to do it. Even though it’s very likely they do. But the idea here is that you are continuously adding tons of value to them. Create targeted content via ads If you have a budget, then you may want to even target them with ads specific to them. It’s scary how precise you can get an ad in front of someone now a days. And by doing that, you can passively continue to provide value, only this time, it’s a free resource to your website that they see that would be of interest to them. Like I said, it’s much different beast and a much longer lead time too. I have friends in that space that it’s months even a ye
Tue, September 25, 2018
A152 - How do you do a review of your week?
I’m a huge fan of weekly reviews and they are a pivotal part of my business each and every single week. I was having a conversation with a Feast community member and this person had a bad week where things unexpectedly happened and through some plans off track. They said “that they see the value in a weekly review but in practice they would see that plans got thrown off track and would then just work through the weekend to put things back on track.” This is something I’ve done in the past myself. But what I’ve learned from several different people is that during a weekly review, a key point to do is evaluate the week and if something went bad, you need to ask yourself. “Why did this go bad? “What was the results of this happening?” “How can I prevent or at least minimize the effects of this when it happens again?” Learning is key to your weekly review During my weekly reviews it’s not just about Inbox Zero and planning the week, but it’s also planning out the future and learning from the experiences of the week. Case in point, last week I felt a bit scattered and didn’t think that I accomplished all I set out to do. Well I didn’t, however during my weekly review I found that the reason I felt scattered was that I had too many pans in the fire, between client projects and rezzz projects. I had to pair back and reduce the number of things that I was focused on. I sat down, wrote out all the tasks that are directly impacting the business right now and that’s my focus. Everything else is back-burnered for now to a point that I’m still moving the needle on those projects because they are important. But until the immediate tasks impacting the business are addressed and completed, they aren’t going to take a front-and-center priority. Don’t get down about your own self-imposed deadlines We as entrepreneurs and often put hard deadlines on all the things we do because that’s what we feel is important. When we miss these deadlines we tend to beat ourselves up about it. Especially when we start exploring new opportunities and things that don’t have an immediate impact. Those are things that can wait often times by a week or 2 and there’s no loss. When we have these self-imposed deadlines and we miss them it can derail us off all the other things that need their deadlines met. Give yourself a break once in a while and ease off the deadlines of new things so that you can finish what you need to and then move and grow the business in new ways. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Mon, September 24, 2018
A151 - What is your cold outreach strategy?
I’ve spoken about cold outreach emails in in episode 127 “How would you write a outreach email” but prior to that, you need a strategy to get to that email right? You can’t convince anyone of everything First thing to remember is cold outreach is a numbers game. If you cast a wide net with no bait, the more likely it’ll be that you need to throw away most of the fish. What I mean by that is, if you have a large list of emails or contacts of a particular industry, most of that list isn’t the right kind of client for you and you are just wasting time. The segment that may listen to you will be small, but even most of them you won’t be able to convince them that what you do is valuable to them. The segment that is the smallest are those that fit for your business, because they see the value in what you do. They are the contacts that you want to target for cold outreach and not waste time on everyone else. Instead of picking an industry/trade/niche and then casting that net and praying for responses and then weeding through another round of bad leads to get to the good ones. Think about how you can throw away the biggest chunk of leads first. You won’t be able to change the behavior of anyone if they aren’t ready to listen and accept value in what you do. Meet them where they are In episode 56 - Do you get any leads from your content? you will hear about the buyer’s journey and the different stages of a potential client. If you take this idea and apply it to your cold outreach strategy, if only for a small amount of time, you’ll greatly increase the chance of success. Cold outreach metrics say that a 1% response rate is good. That response doesn’t even need to be a positive response either. Let me explain a bit about my business as an example of this in practice. I do email automation and behavioral marketing for clients. This entails lots of ecommerce and membership clients who need this for their business to grow and retain customers organically over time. Business owners often try these things for themselves and get frustrated with all the nuances that goes into it. The development on site to link up data points to specific events within the sales process, etc. They simply don’t want to know how to do it and get frustrated with it. But they see the value in it and know what it can do for them and so the seek out help. Those are my ideal cold outreach candidates. Businesses using platforms and products that I can work with, but they seem to struggle with the setup. Conversely, any ecommerce business or any membership website could benefit from my services. Any website that sells anything could in fact. But if they are more focused
Fri, September 21, 2018
A150 - What is the best lead generation strategy?
Before jumping into today's show, I want to thank you specifically for allowing me into your earbuds every day for the last 150 days. I don’t take it for granted at all! 🙏 I want to share with you an important story and lesson that will illustrate the best lead generation strategy. I had an eye-opening, reality check of sorts recently. See as you know I do client service work, but also help folks like you through coaching and other products such as Feast to help specialize their business and build recurring revenue. As this part of my business becomes much bigger, which is much different than my services, I’ve learned a lot from other folks who run similar programs and businesses. See what I tend to do is pay attention to how they do sales, marketing, run programs, etc and if it’s something I like and feels appropriate to me, I’ll try and reverse engineer it or ask them and have a conversation to learn it. Sales and marketing in this type of space is very much something that seems a bit unnatural to me. Only because it’s a pay-to-play and a push type of game. Meaning, you use ads to drive signups to a webinar and then pitch. Which definitely works and does very well for lots of very smart people. Obviously, I’ve oversimplified this a bit as there’s a ton more that goes into it. I spent a ton of time and resources and developed systems and campaigns that felt more like myself that allowed me to serve you better and help in ways that you would get value from. Sure it worked to some extent, but I did feel that wasn’t as successful as it could be. Not just for me, but for you too. As I started to reflect on what I was doing and how I could better serve you, while still being able to build a business, I came to the realization that all the time spent on building and learning what was working for other people and their massive audiences, I shouldn’t have paid any attention to. What was working for me was what I’ve built out for my client services part of the business. Having conversations with leads and prospects to a point where they got value specific to their situations and projects and if it made sense, the next step would be to work together. With that in mind, I went back to having conversations. More folks like yourself started getting value specific to themselves and what their situation is. Going back to those conversations allowed people to evaluate if it made sense for them to take that next step and work together. As a result, this process has worked out much better for everyone, my coaching clients, Feast and Sales Kit members, and my business. I share this with you so you maybe see the value in not getting distracted by the “new”, “shiny”, strategy. Whether that’s Facebook Ads, blogging, speaking, podcasting, or something else that you see working for someone else. If you have something working right now in your business, own that space, as it’s said i
Thu, September 20, 2018
A149 - What do you want for your birthday?
Today’s going to be very different because it’s my birthday today. And if you aren’t listening to this on Sept 20, that’s ok too. It’s going to be a quick one for you and I hope that it’s going to be helpful for you as well. When it gets close to your birthday, don’t you get asked this question? Especially from family members or close friends, right? I always find this a little awkward because I don’t ask for things. Yes, I’m a gadget geek, love the Mets, and all types of toys from the 80s that I grew up with, but they are all things that aren’t necessary in my life. To be honest, I’d much rather have folks if they must spend some money, either give to a charity they can get behind, or spend it on my son TJ. So you are probably wondering where’s this going, Jason? Well, since it’s my birthday today and I am always in your corner to help you any way that I can, I want to share a gift with you. The gift of vision. This is going to sound pretty basic and crude, but I tell you, it works. Grab yourself a post-it note and write down a reward for yourself for all the hard work you do. This could be a nice dinner out, a gadget you want to get, a vacation even. Whatever it is, make it something that means something to you is a treat. Take that post-it and stick it to your monitor. Put it front and center so that throughout your workday, or during client calls, or when the day seems to be throwing everything in your way, you have that within your vision. It’ll keep you motivated to push through and treat yourself at the end of the week, month, or whatever fits best for you. I’ve been doing this for years and when I reward myself, I pull it off and then put up a new one. It really does help keep me focused on what I need to do and stay on track. When you do it, I’d love to see what you do. Take a photo of it and tag me on Twitter (@rezzz) or on Instagram (@rezzz20). That could be your birthday gift to me. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you. -------------------
Wed, September 19, 2018
A148 - Why should you not be a freelancer?
Not everyone is meant to be a freelancer. It’s not easy. There was a time in my career that I questioned if it was something I was meant to do. Multiple times in fact. It’s something that many wrestle with especially in the bad times, myself included. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either. People with a full-time job and a classic 9-to-5 wrestle with what they are doing every day as well. It’s a natural feeling people have. Being a creative person and going against the grain is something that comes naturally. Having a regular 9-to-5 job seems just that, “regular” and you may think the grass is greener. Becoming a freelancer is a career choice that has to be made based on you and a soul-searching exercise that is true to you. Here is an article I wrote on the 13 reasons [Why Freelancing Isn’t For You](https://rezzz.com/freelancing-not-for-everyone/). - Don’t have a good support system - You need benefits - You don’t have patience - Can’t say “no” - Aren’t objective - Don’t like to continuously learn - Don’t like change - You don’t like being alone - You don’t want to deal with people - Have pipe dreams - You don’t love what you do - You can’t handle rejection well - Not organized or easily distracted Only want to work on fun things Freelancing gives you the freedom to pick and choose what projects to work on and what client to work with. That’s for sure one of the biggest benefits freelancing has and one of the biggest reasons many creative entrepreneurs choose to go freelance. Just because you choose the project though, doesn’t mean that there are not many tasks that aren’t boring. Every single project has mundane tasks. There are parts of your business that have mundane tasks. You will have to do them, there’s no doubt about that. They will suck and be boring. But you have to do them and potentially do them for a long time. It’s not sexy but it’s necessary. Ryan Carson, the founder of Treehouse, has been waking up at 4:30 am for well over a year to simply outwork his competition by doing the mundane. Can he offload these tasks, probably, but he says that by doing some of these mundane tasks that aren’t the sexy parts of the business, he learns more and understands what it takes. Which then allows him to grow himself and his business. Aren’t in it for the long haul Freelancing is not a get rich quick scheme. I’ve been in this game a long time and I’ve seen plenty of people come and go with these false perceptions that freelancing is all about living on the beach, rolling around on cash, and even sailing around in yachts. If you are doing any of those things off the back of freelancing, you are faking. Don’t believe the hype. To be successful as a freelancer, you need to build a business that’s sustainable. A sustainable bus
Tue, September 18, 2018
A147 - What is the best structure for setting a goal?
Creating goals can be overwhelming for some. But it doesn't have to be if you make it fun, exciting and don't forget that it's all about growth. Today I’m going to share with you the structure of creating a goal that will put you ahead of the game of most people. If you haven’t yet listened to A142 How do I set a goal? go do so. It’s a quick 6 minutes where you will learn what a SMART goal is and the important 3 pieces about SMART goals to pay close attention to. This structure can certainly be used for any goal of any type, but for the sake of this example, let’s assume that this will be a goal for your business. Example of a SMART Goal This first thing you’ll want to do is give your goal a name. Give the goal a name that’s positive and specific. Don’t just name your goal “Make $100k” Instead name it “$100k in a year to help others and my own business grow” Brings that element of feeling into the goal that creates a sense of attachment. The second part is the type of goal. What kind of goal is it, let’s assume it’s a business goal, but could easily be fitness, spiritual, etc. Why is this goal important, especially now! You’ve heard me talk about the 5 Whys Technique in A63 How do you price your work as a freelance web developer (Part 2) when unpacking your clients’ root cause, in this case, I want you to use the phrase “so that.” When you are writing down the "why", follow that up with “so that” to allow yourself to dive deeper. In our example here about making $100k, it could look like. “This is important because it’ll grow my business so that I have a proven set of results to put in my portfolio. So that I can stop taking on sub-contract work. So that I can pick which clients and projects to work with.” Go 3 levels deep on this to really unpack the goal. This will help you build clarity in the goal. Set a deadline for the goal. Unfortunately, when it comes to things that are hard or things that we are supposed to do, humans won’t do it. Putting a timeframe around your goal is needed to put us into gear. How to accomplish your goal Since you have the deadline defined, it’s time to work backward. When working backward, it’s a matter of defining some key leading indicators or milestones to hit, so you can create that momentum of wanting to continue on. In this process, you’ll start figuring out what it is that you need to do in order to accomplish this goal on a daily or weekly basis. I had a great conversation with Ryan Carson, founder of Treehouse, where he said that in order to accomplish the great things, you need to be ok with doing the mundane things every day. Reflect and Celebrate the win! In <a href="https://rezzz.com/a
Mon, September 17, 2018
A146 - Should I call myself a "freelancer"? (Definitive Answer)
Today I’m going to put an end to this conversation once and for all. I’ll be the first to admit I spent to much time on this question myself, and so I don’t want you to. For a very long time, I’ve wrestled with the idea of what should I call myself. Should I ever use the term “freelancer.” Should I call myself a “consultant” or “web developer.” In Episode 61 What is freelance? , I dove into the negative perception of the word what you can do to change that perception. A lot of my friends online have said in some shape or form to never call yourself a freelancer. For a very long time I would jump on this to train as well. Does calling yourself a ‘freelancer’ matter? But to be honest, I don’t think it really matters all that much, and I’ll explain why that is here in a minute. But before I do, I just want to say that I’ve had some amazing conversations about this with so many smart people that I absolutely respect. Because of these conversations and what resulted from them, is the basis of this episode. The funny and ironic part of this is that when I’ve had conversations about this we always end up in the exact same place with the same exact point of view. Showing up, acting professional and doing great work is what’s needed in order to be successful. And ultimately how you’ll earn more in the process. Also, that we all wind up calling ourselves ‘freelancers’ at some point to someone. What you call yourself is a matter of context I’m a realistic person and I’m not going to say that it completely does not matter what you call yourself in business. Because it does, to some degree. But I think that there is this over-emphasizing and over-analysis done in publications like Forbes and Fast Company that put a sense of fear into people who are starting out and distracting them from what truly matters. That is how you conduct yourself, how you deliver on what you say you can deliver on, and ultimately start figuring out what your business is and how to build sustainability into it. I’ll be the first to admit it that I spent way too much time worrying about what I should call myself. Especially early in my career. So much so that I looked up the origin of the word. Being a generalist is why you are having this conversation I was very much a generalist and looking to try and make myself stand out from among the crowd. Which is the wrong way to specialize your business and stand out from the crowd. That time spent could’ve been better served had I spent it learning about sales, building out processes in my business to make myself more effective, or simply having some conversations with my clients learning why they hired me and what is it about me that I do for them better than others. The
Fri, September 14, 2018
A145 - How do I go from self-doubt to being confident?
I posted a question in our FB Group, Sustainable Freelancer . Which is free by the way, get in there if you haven’t done so already. The question was "What do you see as your biggest hurdle in growing your business?" and someone PM’d me instead of replying to the post itself saying “My biggest hurdle is me, I’m an introvert and I always seem to have a problem with my confidence. Self-doubt always creeps in and I’m not sure how to get away from that.” Out of respect, I’ll just refer to this person as “he”. But I did get approval to share the conversation on the show because this is something that I talk about and write and share my own battles with it pretty frequently. My initial response to him was that he does outstanding work and from my point of view, you have nothing to lack confidence in. But we all can get into our own heads a bit from time to time regardless of how well everything else sees us? “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’” – Maya Angelou It’s easy to say get over yourself and stop complaining, isn’t it? But getting that voice out of your head is much harder. Where does the self-doubt come from? My friend Mark Asquith, amazing guy, podcast host of the 7 Minute Mentor , and an inspiration for me and this podcast, broke this topic down recently where he highlighted where does “self-doubt come from first?” It can come from: - a lack of skill - belief - others saying things to you - your experience - fear and worry - paying attention to others - your family - a lack of knowledge I like Mark’s approach to the topic because he shared “Ultimately, what is it that matters? What is going to go wrong if I fail?” And yes, this is a better way of saying “get on with it”. But it did spark a thought and tactic that I’ve used for years outside of business and maybe in the past couple of years, closed that loop with the business as well. Plan out the results Anticipate what may happen. Both good and bad. What are the roadblocks may occur that you can address now, or at least think about know and plan how you are going to respond to them. See, when I played baseball as a kid, my coaches would tell me “Before the pitch is thrown, know what you are going to do with the ball before it gets to you.” We’ve all seen little kid play ball, they run around when they get it like they just found out the meaning of life and haven’t a clue as to what to do next. People are just screaming at them to throw the ball, right? I became a much better fielder because I would take a look around, I would see the situation at play, f
Thu, September 13, 2018
A144 - How do I work “ON” my business and not “IN” my business?
If you don’t work take your business as serious as your clients’ well you won’t be in business for long. Have to be disciplined on protecting that time. As I mentioned in yesterday’s episode, when you are freelancing or consulting, you have to be extremely mindful of your time. It can quickly get out of hand where you spend a tremendous amount of time on things that you shouldn’t be. Now working “ON” your business really isn’t something that is a choice if you are running a business. But I get the idea here. The question basically is asking about doing all the sales, marketing, support and administrative work that isn’t your client’s business. It ultimately comes down to having discipline. Willpower if you must. Carve out and schedule the time What I did very early on in my career was block out time on my calendar and get up an hour earlier every day. Just knowing that I wasn’t taking time away from clients but still moving the business forward allowed me to not feel guilty and build my business. Now there are whole days on my calendar devoted to the business. Which means that I don’t take any client calls or do any client work during those days. Google has the 80/20 rule that they put in place for their employees to explore their own passion projects. I like this split because even doing 20% work on your business will make a tremendous impact in a very short amount of time. Get support and accountability to make great strides Having that schedule and committing to moving the needle of your business is critical to the growth and sustainability of your business. Inside of Feast we hold a 90-Day Challenge called “Moving the needle” because it’s that important. Folks in challenge meet up every week and check-in on the progress of what they need to do. Sales processes, libraries of operating procedures, building a team, and even content marketing have all been made as tremendous strides from these challenges. If you are more of a person looking for 1:1 support. Having someone holding you accountable has made the biggest impact on improving my business. If you are disciplined enough to do it yourself, then just do it. If not and you need that support from someone to hold you accountable, then find that person or free community to do so. Tools Use a tool like Calendly and give links out to people. This tool is great because it allows for you create blocks of time that you are available, sync it with your calendar and then people can go ahead and pick from the time available that works best for them and you to be able to schedule calls, etc with you. Working “on” your business starts with the management of your time. Setting
Wed, September 12, 2018
A143 - Do you meet leads and clients face-to-face?
I was speaking at a conference of developers and freelancers and presented with this question of meeting face-to-face or everything is virtual. Being in New York, obviously there are many opportunities to be able to meet people, leads, and potential partners. When starting out, I did meet lots of leads at coffee shops, their offices, and other places. I’d either get in my car, or hop the train and head on to the location early for the meeting. NY has traffic and lots of it and the subways have been known to be late from time to time as well, so I always went extra early because I’d rather show up early than be late. Once there, I’d grab a cup of coffee or drink or whatever for myself and my guest. I especially did this with leads at the first meeting, but would carry that through when they became clients as well. They would arrive, we’d talk and get to know each other and I would then go ahead and ask whatever questions I needed. Or we would talk about the project tasks and statuses of things. Whatever the purpose of the meeting was. I’d then hop back into the mode of transportation back home and be on my way with the rest of the day. Travel time loses profitability For a one hour meeting, this often times would result in 4 hours of time spent. Between the prep time, travel time, and waiting time, profits literally would fly right out the window. As I started to notice that an hour spent talking resulted in a half day of actual time, I analyzed that against those meetings that were virtual. I took into account if they were leads vs clients. And ultimately tracked the time spent and the likelihood of closing the deal. What I found was that leads that wanted to meet in a coffee shop often would be tire kickers that didn’t result in becoming a client. They were looking to bounce their idea off of me. Leads that invited me to their office, well they resulted in becoming a client about 65% of the time. Virtual meetings Those that I would hold as virtual calls, whether that’s through video or phone, were somewhere in between. But the virtual conversations I would have took 25% of the time than meeting face-to-face. I started to key in on the points where I could ask the right questions up front to filter out tire kickers better. I started to only meet those that had a place in mind to meet me rather than me deciding on a place. And finally, I would hold kick-off calls when we decided to work together face-to-face. See the value of the face-to-face can’t be measured to be honest, but it adds to a much higher trust factor that you’ll never get virtually. Over the course of my career, I honestly haven’t had many local clients, so I when possible, I try and meet face-to-face somehow. Over time I’ve guarded my time with purpose. I’m only a single person without a sales team. So getting out there
Tue, September 11, 2018
A142 - How do I set a goal?
Today we are going to set some goals the right way. It’s not December (most likely) and that’s ok, setting goals shouldn’t be just an annual thing. As a freelancer, you are in control of your day, year, life even. This can be daunting and overwhelming at times. This time of year for me is always when I start thinking about my goals. It’s easy to remember because my birthday is this month. For the vast majority though, goal setting doesn’t happen until end of November or in December. I would encourage you to start thinking about your goals a bit earlier than that though. Goals need to be SMART. What is a SMART goal That’s Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-based. Most times I don’t remember all 5 because for me what I find helpful is that it needs to be specific, measurable, and time-based. So saying that you want to “increase revenue” is not a SMART goal. It’s not bound by time. Something important here is that the clearer something is in your head, the easier it is to break down into smaller chunks and take steps into achieving it. For example, if I were to ask you what would what would be success for your business a year from now. And you responded, I’d like to be working with clients who respect me and understand the value I bring to their business. But also like to be making enough money so that I can turn down the other garbage work. Now I’m purposefully using this as a response to the question because 40% of you, the people that come to my website, tell me this. Since this is likely to be your response, time to listen up. We are going to dig deeper here. Make it specific The question I would ask is “What does “enough money” to you mean so that you can be selective about the projects you work on. If you were to say, for the sake of easy numbers, $100k per year. That makes it easy now. That means you need to make $8,333 per month. This is specific and easy to track. The next step is, where does this come from? Does this come from 1 project at $8,333 or 8 project at $1041? Make it actionable, which translates to being realistic The next question I would pose is, which one of those seems the best fit for you? Here’s where the reality check comes into play because you should know from your current experience the types of projects you are currently landing and then extrapolate on that. If you are now taking on projects at around $1000 but taking on 2 or 3 right now, 8 seems a bit unrealistic, right? You may want to think about upping the price of a project and taking on less to get to that same number. And finally, ask yourself, what kind of projects to I have to pitch or go after that fit the type of budget that I am looking for.
Mon, September 10, 2018
A141 - Should I use my name or create a business name when starting?
I get asked this question a lot and to be frank and to the point, I’m going to say to use your name. Now if you want the case on why I’m going to outline 3 reasons as to why I have this response. There are obviously cases for both sides, but I want to share with you some thoughts as to why you should think about using your name. 1. People do business with people This is especially true in the freelance or consulting space. When you are starting out, there are a ton of distractions that force decisions on you that to be honest, don’t matter. What matters is getting out there and getting those first few clients. How you get them is by making conversations and talking about problems that you can solve. Chris Ducker, the founder of Youpreneur , always says that people do business with other people. Forming that P-2-P relationship is the foundation of business. I couldn’t agree more. Here’s the thing, if you continue the discussion with a random business name rather than your name, you start to dilute the impact your name has. There aren’t a couple of logos that sit across the table from each other and work together. When you build trust in yourself and not a business name, that trust is much more solid. It becomes something you can build a foundation off of. 2. You will change direction What you start out doing today won’t be what you are doing 3, 10, and especially 20 years from now. When you pick a business name, you’ll probably go with something that is related to the “thing” that you do. Just as an example you are doing development today but then 5 years from now, create a product to sell. Sure you can use your business name for anything, but people are more likely to follow Jane Smith to the next thing, more so than “XYZ Development Inc.” This is the very heart of a personal brand. People recognize a person and will follow that person around to their next thing. When a logo changes or shifts direction, people are much more reluctant to shift because it doesn’t fit what the logo once was. 3. Get that business name Starting out is easy, but building a business and being sustainable is hard. You may not make it. Let’s face facts, right? Since you are listening to the show, you are trying to build sustainability and I have little doubt that you’ll get where you want to be. As you build your business and it continues to grow, then you can go out and make everything formal. See here in the U.S. there are certain benefits to formalizing a business. If you are starting out and not putting all your effort into building sustainability no business name will matter. Nothing is set in stone other than yourself. Putting your name out there as trustworthy, responsible, organized, and professional is what the focus should be. Build
Fri, September 07, 2018
A140 - How can I start freelancing as a web developer?
Today's episode are the 3 steps you need to do immediately, to start freelancing as a web developer and get your first client today. How to start anything is to commit to it. So let’s just get that out of the way now and assume you’ve committed to this. I don’t think it’s a surprise to you if you’ve heard more than a couple of episodes that finding your niche would be the number one thing to start freelancing as a developer. 1. Find your niche There’s a very tactful reason for this and that is because the sooner you can focus your efforts on solving a particular problem, the easier it will be to find your ideal client, industry, location, technology, to market yourself to. This will differentiate you from all the commoditized web development services out there in the market today. You will start to become a trusted advisor because you understand the business, not just the lines of code. 2. Show up The second step is to just do the work. Let’s assume you already have done some development whether it’s in school, at a job, or for yourself, think about what you’ve done and enjoyed doing and the problem your code solved and do more of that. It doesn’t need to be elegant or fancy, just seek out someone or some business that you can help. Either by email, through Facebook, or through a friend. However, it may be, don’t worry about being all perfect with it, just reach out. Show them that you understand the problem they have How important it is to them (usually by explaining that their problem is wasting their time or costing them money) Then that you can solve it for them by sharing your past work This doesn’t need to be overly complex either. What I did when I first started out even though I had built complex Java applications for startups and corporations in the late 90s and early 00s, I found websites online that their contact form was broken. Reached out to the businesses either through email or some other means and told them. Told them that I could fix it for them for a couple of hundred dollars and it was costing them business. Because back then, most websites out there, the contact form for small businesses was a means to get customers. Today it could be reaching out to businesses that have a crappy website on mobile or that their SSL certificate is invalid. In both those cases, Google has said that these are ranking factors in their algorithm which results in less traffic to their website. 3. Get yourself testimonials This is key because you want to show a track record of solving the problem. There are 2 ways to go about this. First is just be mindful of compliments via email, phone, Skype, etc. One-liners like “This saves us an hour a day.” is a testimonial. Second is asking for one. Through email just simply ask for one, but help them to provide you one b
Thu, September 06, 2018
A139 - How do you make time for your side projects?
We’ve all got them right? Even when we are working on client stuff, there are things that we are passionate about, mess around with, even do as a hobby with no real upside to them other than it just makes us happy. And so I was I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a full-time job and loves it. He asked me, “how do you make time for your side projects?” I simply replied, “By doing exactly what you said, make time.” Now we can’t make time and I want to tip my cap to my friend [Curtis](https://curtismchale.ca) for always hitting me on my head with that notion. But he’s right. How to prioritize your time What we do though is prioritize time and make room in our every day for the important things. Time is the only thing we never get back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. What you do with your time is what you are saying is important to you. Sure there are times where there are sacrifices to be made and that’s obviously just a way of life. But you can adjust and still cover what you want and need. Case in point, yesterday at 4 PM I walked out of my office just to grab a drink of water and heard TJ by the front door saying “Daddy, Daddy” as he normally does when he hears me emerge from my office. I had planned on finishing the day by drafting up a few emails. Which would’ve taken me about 30 more minutes. My wife said that they were going to go for a walk around the block and asked if I wanted to come. My answer was simple and quick. “Sure.” See right there in those few seconds, the priority of the next 30-45 minutes of my day was evaluated and set. Because I do what I do to have the time freedom and flexibility in my schedule to spend time with my family, it was an easy thing to say “yes” to. Now, what happened to those emails? Well, I woke up a little bit earlier today and wrote them. So today’s episode is a short one, but I want to leave you with this. Think about all the things you’ve got going on. All the ideas, projects, and goals you have. Next time you are faced with a choice to make based on the time that you have at the given moment, think about what option aligns with your goals. Then push the other option aside and if it’s still important enough, create space in your day tomorrow to check it off the list. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Wed, September 05, 2018
A138 - How to overcome objections people have about you?
I get asked a lot of questions about what my sales script looks like and how I handle objections during the conversation. As you learned in Episode 102 - What do you use for your sales script? , I don’t have a sales script. Since I dive deep into my sales process in that episode, I won’t bore you with all the details here. I mention that episode though because my process preps the prospect of having a productive sales conversation that speaks directly about their project. So much of the sales script is custom. For me, I’m more comfortable talking with a prospect about the specifics of the project rather than following a specific script. My sales script is given out as an application prior to the call. That’s not to say that I don’t come to the conversation without any prep. Which is what the answer for today is. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to answer this question specifically since I didn’t receive any specific objection, but what I’m going to share with you are the 3 objections that are most common in any sales conversation and how I would handle them. “I’m not sure this is going to work.” This is something that you may get when first starting out. Mainly because you haven’t put enough in front of the sales call to educate the prospect on the results of your services. The answer to this question is to followup with some proof of results. This is usually explaining or sharing with them, the results that you have had with your business. This could be a particular technology, or process, or even new tactics and strategy. I often run experiments or learn new strategies and techniques using my business as a sort of test kitchen first, before I ever offer it as a solution to a client. This way I can confidently offer it up when the opportunity arises. “I guess this works for you…” This is where you will want to share the results of your past clients. Preferably clients that are similar in nature than that of the prospect. This is so that they can feel that you understand their business. This kind of social proof builds a track record of success for you to be able to counter this sort of objection from a prospect. “It’s not going to work for me…” This is where you outline the process or path from this point in time to what their life will look like after having worked with you. Make it simple and clear to them of what that transformation will look like. That doesn’t mean it isn’t complex or time-consuming. It just means that by following the process you have, they’ll be able to achieve the results that they are looking for. If you take a little bit of time, say 10 minutes, before your next call with a prospect and answer these objections before the call, when they appear in some way, shape, or form on the call, you’ll be able to answer sw
Tue, September 04, 2018
A137 - What is a Niche?
I talk a lot about what a niche is and I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding around that as well that I would like to help clear up here. There are a lot of folks who think that a niche has to be an industry. So for example, as a web designer he only works with lawyers. Or as a web developer, she only works with doctors. And because you don’t want to work within those niches that you can not have a niche. Which is simply not the case. So let’s define it. What is a niche? I define a niche as a targeted audience that you can clearly define who it is that immediately the person reading your site or hearing you talk will immediately say whether that’s them or not. Of course, if you talking about a specific industry or location or technology, it makes your job easier. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a niche in professional female business owners who are based just located outside the Boston metropolitan area. (and yes, that’s a niche someone has defined for their business). The key is to define it so clearly that there is no question of what it is. The biggest problem when defining a niche In my experience with freelancers looking to niche down, they often say things like “my niche is small business owners who use WordPress and want to growth their businesses and not spend their days running a website” or something to that effect. And while that’s great, but I would challenge that is not a niche since WordPress is about 30% of the web and every small business wants to grow. It’s just not specific enough. It’s fine to have the industry or technology as a part of the criteria in defining a niche, but it’s not enough to narrow the focus. How to define your niche It has to be about them, not you. What I mean by that is when you are working through what your niche is, you have to think about the individual and what they are looking to achieve. What is it that they do each and every day and ultimately what are they trying to accomplish with their business and life to be quite honest. The reason for this is simple. This is how they are going to define themselves. So if you say something like “We help technically savvy businesses increase sales.” Well, who isn’t going to identify themselves as savvy? As we both know, not everyone is technically savvy and your definition of savvy is different than theirs. You want to get at the heart of defining your niche by how your niche defines themselves. If you think you are specific, then I challenge you to spend even more time getting specific, because you are not done. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Mon, September 03, 2018
A136 - Do I drop this client?
Do you drop that freelance client? It sucks for everyone, but maybe the relationship can be saved and even flourish. This is always a tough question, because it’s sensitive, there’s a big reputation factor on the line with both yourself and client, and it should be something that’s a last resort. You and your clients are running businesses, you are adults, having difficult conversations such as this will happen. First and foremost, you have to deliver what you say you would, as best you could. I think that goes without saying. But we’ve all faced situations in our service business where this question can pop into our heads: Where a client doesn’t pay on time The client is non-responsive The client didn’t communicate fully There were unrealistic expectations Scope continues to change You want to move away from that type of service Too many bumps in the road and the trust on both sides has eroded away Areas of responsibility When this question pops into your head, it’s important to really take a look at the road to this point. Who was responsible for what and how did each party know that? What were the terms? Why did it get to this point? Having an objective look at the situation may highlight things that can be solved and prevented in the future. Own your mistakes, even if your client doesn’t own theirs. This is where the high road will always win out. Set aside time to talk As much as the conversation is going to suck, you have to reach out and set aside some time to have a conversation with the client. Ending the relationship should be the last resort, because depending on all the aspects of it, it could get messy very fast. Instead, see if there can be some level of compromise met. You may have to give a little to get a little here. This is especially in the case of getting paid and timelines. If there has been set terms, or no terms at all, signed in a contract that you are looking to alter, compromise is key. However, if there is total fault on yourself or your client, then there needs some accountability there. If it’s late payment, the way to handle that is to stop doing work until the payment has been caught current. Some explanation here may be needed and proof, so don’t go into the conversation without that. Don’t point fingers It’s imperative to not place blame and point fingers. Explain that there’s an issue in the engagement, and offer up some possible solutions with some hard guidelines. When you start placing blame, it lowers the professionalism of the relationship further and no one likes to feel like a kid on the playground being blamed for losing the ball. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your ow
Fri, August 31, 2018
A135 - What makes you stand out from other freelancers?
The freelance space is getting more and more crowded by the day. It used to be that all you needed to do was to show up, deliver, and then support to stand out. But nowadays it’s a bit different. I wrote a blog post titled How to Stand Out As a Freelancer in a Saturated Market a little over a year and a half ago with 10 tips. I want to share with you something that I’ve found that can make you stand out that isn’t in that article. But before I do, I want to highlight those tips and if you want to get more in-depth with them, have a look at that article. Setup a regularly scheduled time to email or talk with a client Be selective about your clients Focus on Customer Service as much as one getting a customer Be positive Remember why you started your business Look at other freelancers and agencies and see what they aren’t doing Be organized Invest vs Expense Share your expertise & experiences Be the “Go-To” person All those still apply, don’t get me wrong, but since writing that article, I’ve found a few more things that can have you stand out from other freelancers. As the industry of freelancing grows and more and more people flood the market, the more it becomes a commodity. Which basically means that you are competing on price. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to not compete on price. You have to create an experience with your leads and clients. And you have to fully understand the business of who you serve. How do you serve your freelance clients better? This comes in the form of specializing your business and really understanding who it is that you are talking with, their problems, and how to build the solution they desire. By asking tons of questions of your clients, by listening and using the words that they use to describe themselves and their businesses, you start to be able to state their problems before they do. Albert Einstein said “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” As a freelancer, you are presented with and often jump at opportunities, like creating a new website or designing a logo. If you dive deep on defining the problems those businesses are attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important, that’s how you stand out as a freelancer. Without that deep dive you’ll miss out on opportunities and potentially waste valuable time and resources pushing out projects that aren’t aligned with your clients’ strategies. You will elevate yourself above the commoditization of freelancing and become an integral partner with your clients and their business when you provide solutions that align with their overall strategy. ------------------- <a href="ht
Thu, August 30, 2018
A134 - What can I use for social proof when starting as a freelancer?
This question came from Mario inside of Feast . And he is starting his career as a freelancer. In building a website, a landing page to send leads and prospects to, or during a sales conversation, testimonials and social proof are great tools to use. But when starting out you haven’t built those up yet. So what can you do? Since you haven’t built up a track record of successful projects with actual results, you can play to the human side of business. People to people People want to work with people they trust, people that are reliable, and people that are likable. No one wants to have a bad experience. Experience is heavily based on the human element more than anything else. What is your “superpower”? The first tactic to do is send an email to your colleagues, friends, and family asking a simple question. “What do you believe to be my ‘superpowers’ or traits and characteristics that you believe to be unique to me?” This may seem a bit weird to them to get out of the blue, so frame it in a way that explains why you are asking this question. In _Will It Fly_ by Pat Flynn, he suggests sending this question from your email address but written from a 3rd-party. In the context of the book, Pat is writing the email so it appears to be a conversation between Pat and your friend, talking about you. I did this exercise years ago when I read the book and received traits like “Driven, Compassion, Organized, Dedication, and able to see the larger goal and potential hiccups of a project from a conversation.” Professional Reviews The next place you can get social proof from is your professional experiences so far. This especially works if you are working in a cube farm or full-time position. When your boss gives you your yearly review, she’ll often tell you what you need to work on and what you are excelling at. Pay close attention to those and make note of what positive affirmations there. You may not be able to use their name or company, or maybe you can. That would depend on the relationship you have with that person. But maybe at a minimum, you could use their first name and last initial. Even if you can’t though, with some creative design within the layout, you can simply throw in a quote or 2 into the mix in the right spots that don’t need to carry along a photo or name. Build the testimonial in your process The final tactic would be to build in your testimonial asks into you process from the start. This way straight from the first project, you’ll get social proof. It may not be the best, but something is better than none and you can always change it moving forward. As a part of your milestone and final delivery process, you can slide in an email that asks your client for a testimonial, or a quick share on Facebo
Wed, August 29, 2018
A133 - What product do you use for your business that you can’t live without?
The product I use for my business that I cannot live without is the one that manages the only thing that I regret not managing from the start. That is my email list. There’s a love-hate relationship with this type of question. Simply because tools or products come and go over time. Either they become obsolete, or other ones come out that is better, whatever the case may be, tools will evolve. With that out of the way, I will say this. Understanding “why” you are in business and finding a product that supports that will result in you finding a product you cannot live without. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My email list is the one regret I have in growing my business that I didn’t pay attention to from the start. And to be quite honest, it probably has cost me a ton of revenue in the long term. The reason it’s so important is that I am in business to help other businesses grow. In order to do that, communication is key. If that business is for the services side of my business, I need to stay in touch with them at all stages of the process. Before, during and after we work together. If that business is for folks like yourself who are building a business, I need to do very much the same so that I can share with you what’s working and what’s not working in today’s market. For a long time, I lived out of my inbox and that was enough. But after a few years, I realized that I needed to better serve my leads, clients, and colleagues. To accomplish that, I needed to find myself an email service provider. At the time, that was MailChimp, but I then moved to Drip and ConvertKit. For full disclosure, I am an affiliate for Drip and ConvertKit . Which means that if you choose to go ahead and use Drip or ConvertKit because of what I mention in this podcast, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please though understand that I have experience with all these companies and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the commissions I make. Why did I move away from my inbox? At first, it was because I wanted the pretty newsletters, I’m just kidding, that was just a bonus. I moved simply because I wanted a place where I knew all the contacts I had in my business were in one place where I could reach them effectively. So I went with MailChimp to start because, well it was free. That seemed logical, right? However, I’m a developer, and when a developer finds a tool or product that allows him or her some level of power to leverage by way of programming with…well let’s say that developer becomes like a bee to honey. That’s how I was with Drip. They had an API that few other ESPs at the time had which allowed me to do some interesting
Tue, August 28, 2018
A132 - Should I bundle projects for clients or keep projects separate per client?
“To bundle or not to bundle, that is the question.” You are going to learn 3 things today to think about when deciding to bundle your services for a freelance client. This question came from someone in Feast , but I do hear this question and ask myself this quite often. There isn’t a firm right answer one way or another. I just think that there are too many factors that can go into this, but I thought that I would share my thoughts around this question and help you decide what’s best for you and your clients. 1. What is your relationship like? Is this a first time client or someone who’s been with you for 5 years? Above all, I think this is important when even thinking about discounting your services. Now I’m not a fan of discounts, but when you bundle, that’s what you are doing. So if this is someone you have had a long-term relationship with and feel that you understand them to stay within the walls of your working relationship well enough, it’s understandable. I mean we are people right, and we want to help others. On the flip side, I have a hard standing rule that I won’t discount, whether that’s bundling or not, for new clients. Just because I don’t know how the working relationship will be together. 2. Is there leverage between the bundled items? Is there an overlap between the projects you are bundling? Can there be parts of one piece that you can re-use for the other? If the parts of the bundle are exclusive of each other and you need to spend as much time on one as with the other, then bundling may not be a good thing here for you. 3. Why is bundling even a thought? You have to be really mindful of profits when it comes to bundling. If you are bundling to try and sweeten the pot for the client, make sure you aren’t killing profits in the process. Make sure there are some leverage assets that you can share in the bundle, otherwise you may be shooting yourself in the foot. If you are bundling to get more revenue into your business, this to me is more acceptable than sweetening the pot. But still being mindful of the profits is key. Did the client ask for a bundle? This is probably the thing I most hang on when it comes to answering this question. This is what I check myself with. Let’s face it, we can get in our own head sometimes and think that we need to do something when it isn’t even asked. This is the classic case of self-sabotage, right. If the client or prospect isn’t asking for it, you could be sacrificing a great deal of lifetime revenue from that particular client. If you do this often, think about how much revenue is lost. Don’t sell yourself short. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom
Mon, August 27, 2018
A131 - Should I put pricing on my website?
Are you a freelancer and struggled with putting prices on your website? In this episode, you are going to learn why it's important to address pricing and ways to do it without putting your actual prices up there. Case for putting pricing on your website The thought with putting pricing on your website is so that you start to weed out the tire kickers. This is simply to protect your time and profits. See you have a minimum per project and the last thing you want to happen is for you to go through the entire sales conversation to get to the point of discussing budget and come to the conclusion that you are miles apart. By putting your pricing up on your website, you eliminate that wasted time spent. Case for not putting pricing on your website The case for not putting a price on your website is often that you don’t want to pigeon hole yourself. It’s really this fear of missing out that happens here where you think that if you put prices up there and a project comes along that is right for you and they see your prices. They won’t even bother. Whether it’s your prices are lower than their budget and they feel that you may not have enough experience to do their project. Or that you are way out of their league with their budget and can’t help. What I do and why I put prices on my website. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that putting your prices can be a scary thing to do. You feel like you are locking yourself in, or that you can’t change the prices during the midst of the conversations if they’ve already seen your prices on the web. Well, that’s wrong. There are plenty of times where during a sales conversation I have adjusted the price up or down to suit the need of the project. You run your own business, remember? I put my prices on my website because it frames the conversation from the start. If someone has a budget and whether I can fit or not into that budget, then I want them to know that. I’m all about not wasting time. I try to answer any and all questions up front and as early on in the process as I can. If you don’t want to put your prices on your site, I would encourage you to at least put something that opens the conversation and addresses about your pricing. Stop having conversations with folks that want your service for free. You can do so in a variety of ways: Explain the factors that go into your prices and how your process can affect it. Put a price range. It builds trust. Without prices, there’s a perception that they can’t afford it Leverage testimonials in a way to frame your prices. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Fri, August 24, 2018
A130 - How to present different services that could potentially diminish your abilities in the minds of clients?
This was such an awesome question that someone inside of the Feast community asked during our monthly round up call this month, I had to share it. I’ve been asked this many times before. In fact, I’ve wrestled with it myself over the years. Let me quickly paint a picture for you. The Scarlet Letter of Services or Service Stigma You offer 2 different types of services to 2 different types of clients. One of those types of clients essentially looks down at the other service for some reason. Whether they believe that the skillset isn’t advance enough, or that those working in that field must not be great at providing other services. Basically attaching a stigma to it. It’s like “the other side of the tracks” metaphor, if you will. On the call, it was suggested to create different landing pages for both and hope that the one client you are trying to keep away from the one service doesn’t find it. This is one option, but I wouldn’t count on them not finding out what all your services are in the end anyway. Thus requiring you more work and more stress in trying to figure out a way to market yourself, but also hide yourself at the same time. For me, and this could be the NYer in me shining through a bit, it was my decision to just put all my services on equal footing. Your services are how you serve your clients If you goto my services page, you will see distinct types of customers and how I can best serve them, even if the services I provide are pretty much the same. How I can best serve them… To me that’s what’s important. If you are a blogger using ConvertKit and looking for someone to build out some email campaigns for you, let’s talk. If you are an e-commerce store using Drip and looking to build out some complex integrations with cart abandonment and on-site personalization, let’s talk. If you are an influencer running a membership site or coach selling your programs on WordPress looking to grow your membership’s retention rate, let’s talk. Each of those types of clients are very distinct, but if they know who they are and what they need, they will follow the correct path and won’t care what other services I provide. Have you ever hired someone to do your driveway? I’m actually in the process right now actually. Well those that do driveways also often times do chimney work too. Did I know that? No, but after finding out, makes sense right? Do I care how they do their work on the chimney jobs? Maybe slightly just from a professional standpoint, but 95% of what I care about is how well they do on the driveway projects. What sort of substrate do they plan on using? Will this crack in 5 years or last me for the next 20? What kind of pavers work best for my area? That’s what I care about as the consumer. And I think that’s really what most clients would care about too. How well you can sol
Thu, August 23, 2018
A129 - What is your biggest failure as a freelancer?
This is actually an easy question to answer and I hope that by answering it, you may understand a bit why I talk about the things I do with respect to testing the market, talking to customers, etc. My biggest failure as a freelance came when I released a product into the wild called WP Field Guides. My idea was what I built It was to educate people on the best practices of WordPress and targeted to businesses wanting to manage and grow their website. I got the idea from the leads that would come into my business, but then either because of budget or timing, they didn’t become clients. I took those reasons of budget and timing as a reason to build this product that I could offer as a sort of down-sell to leads that didn’t sign up with me. I went off writing up these guides, posts, created a website, social media profiles, linked up the e-commerce store and laid out all the pieces to fulfill the orders. Why it failed Well guess what? I sold 4. What happened you ask? Well here’s what happened. I took the WP Field Guides as the solution to the timing and budgetary reasons. I thought that a lower cost solution to their projects where they could essentially manage things on their own but have the manual to do so would be the answer they were looking for. I was wrong. I assumed when I should’ve gone out and spoke with the potential buyers to see if this was the solution they were looking for. After this time spent, all the late nights and resources I put into this, I folded it all up and gave the money back to the 4 people that made purchases. Validate the idea before building it I went back to the drawing board, only this time I had conversations with people and found that they didn’t want a DIY solution, what they wanted was a done-for-you solution and they didn’t mind paying for it. What I realized was that the offering I had at the current time wasn’t a fit because it wasn’t built for the type of clients that were turning me down. In fact, I learned that the ones turning me down were actually willing to pay a bit more if there was more depth to the services. Which I didn’t provide at the time because: I didn’t think of it because I didn’t have the conversations I couldn’t take them on with the way my existing client base So as some projects ended, I started to offer a higher end service to those that I spoke with, refined the model and validated the idea for the business with paying customers. Ever since WP Field Guides, I will always test the idea first with real people and potential customers. Never again will I be Kevin Costner and think "If I build it, they will come." ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -----------
Wed, August 22, 2018
A128 - As a developer, should I throw my projects on Github or build a site from scratch to grab attention?
Let me provide some context to this question as I think it’s important for my answer here. This particular question comes from someone who is a web developer just starting out looking to get the attention of other companies looking to hire him. This person has no experience outside of school and pet projects. They don’t yet have a website either to speak of. The quick answer to this question is build a site. Yes it’ll take longer, but you need to keep in mind who you want to attract and where they are. Let me explain a little bit more of what I mean. Are you where your potential clients are? When you put something on Github, the other folks on Github are most likely to be developers. If your clients are developers, then by all means this is your best bet to help showcase your work effectively. However in this case, the likelihood that a decision maker or business owner is browsing around Github for well written code in order to go out a hire that developer is very slim at best. Having a website where you can link up your Github profile, but then have that sit on a page where you talk more about what the project is about, what you did to solve the problem, and potentially talk about the results of that project, resonates more with those business owners or decision makers. Remember those folks are looking for someone to solve a problem and fill a role. They will pass along your name and site over to the technical person for reviewing the Github profile. To make the biggest impact, be everywhere that the first and second person you are going to talk with are Obviously if you want to make the biggest impact, then you’ll want to do both. But to grab attention, the first step is to think about the person you are trying to grab and cater to their wants and needs. Then put that information where they are most likely to see it. If putting up a website is too much effort for the time you have, then you’ll want to leverage social media platforms that have the people you are trying to grab attention from. If it’s business owners or decision makers within the business, then definitely want to check out LinkedIn, maybe Twitter in some cases too. There you can showcase projects, your skills, and even get others to recommend you there as well. Always keep in mind that you want to be where your clients are. Where your potential clients are, usually isn’t the most natural place for you. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Tue, August 21, 2018
A127 - How would you write a cold outreach email?
Do you ever wake up in the morning and say “I can’t wait get today rolling so that I can have people completely ignore me?” No, of course not. But that’s what’s going to happen when you do cold outreach. In general, a good cold outreach campaign yields a 1% response rate. That doesn’t even mean that 1% are “yeses” either, just means that you’ll get a response. It’s heart wrenching, it’s soul crushing. It’s the same emotional nightmare of your teenage years during prom season again as an adult. Set your expectations low The first step in this process, before any emails go out is to put your thick skin on, recognize that you may not get one single response, and set your expectations extremely low. By doing this first, you’ll set yourself up for not feeling defeated or invisible. It sucks to get no responses, I’m not going to lie, but unfortunately when you have zero relationship with the person receiving your email, the chances are very slim that you’ll be important enough to them to get a response. How would you feel if you got this email I try to imagine myself getting this email and how I would feel and react. I get tons of emails where I can tell immediately that the sender didn’t even bother to look at my site or social profiles or anything about who I am and who I serve. It doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to hit someone’s homepage and about page to see what they are about. Which leads me into the next step Make it personal By spending a minute or two learning a bit about who that person is or what that company does goes along way in making the email more “you” focused. If you haven’t heard the term “you” focused before, it’s the positioning of the content to be focused on the recipient rather than yourself. By taking some queues from the about page and potentially something that the person posted about on social media over the weekend, you can: Ask them a specific question to start the email off Congratulate them on some award or achievement Set a tone to the email based around a casual or professional language Keep it short to only 1 or 2 sentences. Make it valuable You shouldn’t be just blasting anyone that could be a client. You want to target only those ideal people you know you can help with your services. Don’t just email someone because they partly fit your business. In the email you are sending, give them something of value that they can walk away from reading the email and be better off for reading it. This can be: A resource to download, like a checklist Personalized video of a quick win for them to do A link to a resource that will help them along to accomplishing their goals Remember this email is “you” focused and by sharing with them some pie
Mon, August 20, 2018
A126 - What is your mantra or personal manifesto?
Do you have a mantra, a manifesto? Is it something we need? I don’t know, but I’m going to share with you mine. As a business owner or freelancer we hear that people have these personal manifestos and mantras that they live by. I never though of these 2 "words of wisdom" that I live by as such, but maybe they are. You be the judge. I had the pleasure of being on Philip VanDusen’s Brand Muse interview series over on his YouTube channel and he asks all his guests this question. And while I don’t have a set in stone manifesto, there are mantras that do guide me and help keep me on track when things get rough, get too big, etc. One of which I shared on the show…that’s “Be Consistent” Be Consistent It’s something that I’ve heard from many folks that I’ve respected growing up and in my professional career as well. This is one of the few things that I’ve said to my 1 and a half year old son too since the day he was born. The reason this is a personal mantra of mine is because I’m a planner and I don’t like to let folks down in any sort of way. Being consistent means that you aren’t late, you don’t miss deadlines, you are dependable. This goes for personal as well as professional. Think about your list of close friends, there is inevitably at least one that shows up to the party late, that the rest of you say “We need to remind so-and-so to make sure they remember.” Is that the person you’ll call if you need a ride some place, probably not. That’s who you become if you are not consistent. Being dependable and reliable in business is an absolutely must for you to be successful. Otherwise don’t even bother. Don’t be the smartest person in the room Another mantra I have is to not be the smartest person in the room. This is something that you’ll hear from a lot of people but that’s because it’s true. Having a someone who you can gain knowledge from and learn from their experiences has a positive effect on you and what you want from your life. There’s a reason why you’ll hear about apprenticeships in various fields like tattooing and other artistic areas. It’s why you hear about how mastermind groups are game changers and people rave about them. Learning from others is the best way to grow your knowledge and skills so that you can get to where you want to be. Learning from their life experiences, their business experiences, their mistakes and successes will help you pave your own journey. When you feel that you are the smartest person in the room, then time to find another room. You will outgrow them, it happens, and that’s ok. But by outgrowing those rooms, keep in mind that there is always another room to go into. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build o
Fri, August 17, 2018
A125 - How often should I write a blog post?
This is the natural follow up to the last episode . Now that you know what to write, how often should you. Once you get the juices flowing it’s often easy to then say, I’m going to put out a daily blog post, or a weekly post. More often than not though, you’ll die out. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that. I’ll tell you what I tell my coaching clients as well as my service clients, write as often as you can be consistent with it. You don’t have to write daily or weekly even. If you write once a month to start out, decide on a day of the month, and publish then. Writing isn’t an easy process, it takes time, research, thought, editing, and even some pretty-ing up. You want to make sure that you have the dedicated time and resources to do this among all the other things that you do. Here’s why being consistent above all else is important. People You write above all else for your readers. If you push publish on a particular day of the week, day of the month, your readers learn to expect it. It’s why TV shows have time slots. It’s why your favorite podcast releases at a regularly scheduled time. You, as much as the reader, will learn to expect the content to be there. Search The secondary reason you are consistently writing is to be found. How does that happen? Through search. When you push publish at the same day and time, Google and other search engines get those signals from your website. Like your reader, they begin to expect it to happen. See the search algorithm wants to put in the most up-to-date and relevant results for a search. By producing a piece of content on a consistent day and time, the search algorithm will see that it’s fresh and put it in front of those looking for your article. As long as people click and read your valuable content, you’ll be rewarded with improved search results for all your content. Your Next Steps Write 4 articles, record how long each one takes from start to finish. Think about how you’ll fit writing among all the other tasks you have to do. Then pick a day and time that you know you can stick to and put all the publishing dates on your calendar. If it’s weekly, then you’ll need to write about 4 articles every month, or 52 articles in a year. If it’s monthly, then you’ll need 12 articles a year. It’s that simple, just be consistent with your valuable content and you’ll be well on your way. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Thu, August 16, 2018
A124 - How do you decide what to start blogging with if you’ve never blogged before?
With video, social media, and other platforms popping up daily, it’s inevitable that you’ll be enticed to follow and jump all in on the new platform. It’s important to remember that putting your content on rented land means that you need to play by their rules and those rules can change in an instant. Case in point, I started this podcast on Anchor. Then around episode 30 or 35, I noticed that Anchor was injecting ads into the broadcast. Which I fully understand why, but it just didn’t feel right for the show from my perspective. And so I pulled the podcast onto my own website. You’ll want to produce content elsewhere to get those eyeballs, but you’ll always want to produce content on your own site, in your own blog. This can be overwhelming, but to give you a bit of a starting point, I want to share with you 5 types of articles to start with. All these types of articles are tailored specifically to what someone is searching for. All of these types of articles can work for any industry, business, or niche. They are known as “The Big 5” and Marcus Sheridan in his book They Ask You Answer is the inspiration behind what this podcast is all about. The first and maybe obvious one is Problems What are the problems, struggles, concerns or issues that people have. Think about your buying habits and what you research. You’ll search for the negative reviews, the things that could go wrong, and even the bad things could result in you making this purchase. Instead of shying away from these, embrace them. It builds trust and honesty with the reader and your potential customers. Cost/Price People obviously want to know what the cost is, how much are they going to have to spend on your services. Most freelancers don’t put their price on their website. I do, but must don’t because they feel that they may be restricting themselves or painting themselves into a corner and limiting what the projects they take on. Now this doesn’t mean to put an article up that has your prices in it, but it can mean that you can speak to what goes into the price. Which factors affect the price. Explaining the reasons behind the pricing models and who they suit best. Even why a certain service costs more than another. Versus/Comparison We all do it, we search for comparisons. We read up on which TV is better. Mac vs PC. iPhone vs Samsung. If you are running a marketing business your customers may be searching for things like SEO vs Pay-per-click or Email marketing vs Content Marketing trying to figure out which is better for their business. By writing articles that compare your own services together with comparing products and service that aren’t will earn trust and position you with an unbiased perspective on the market. <st
Wed, August 15, 2018
A123 - How to decrease the sales cycle or time to close?
Sales is something that you learn. It’s a constant learning to be honest with you. Sales today isn’t what it was in the 80s, 50s or 30s. How you improve your sales is more about you and the relationship with your client than it is about sales tactics and tips. The question today has a bit of a “I want a silver bullet” feel to it. I hate to disappoint you but there isn’t. However I will share with you, 3 things that you can do to affect your sales cycle and get those leads to close and sign that proposal. Step 1: Educate clients more and better! First thing to work on is the top of the funnel, the awareness stage, basically the client education part of your business. The more informed a lead or prospect is: About their problem About the possible solutions to their problem About the options that provide the solutions The more they are likely to understand what it is they are buying from you when you present it. 70% of the buying decision is made way before someone reaches out to you. If someone reaches out to you, they’ve already weeded out a good number of other options. You only have to align your business with the remaining 30%. That 30% should only be questions that are custom to that specific client or situation. Step 2: Tell the lead the next steps. Secondly, tell your prospect what to do with your proposal. How many proposals do you hand out? Plenty. It’s a part of what we do as a business. We understand what a proposal is, what it represents, how it falls into the grand scheme of things, and what to do with it. Most clients don’t. Especially small businesses and non-profits who are looking for help with their website that they never touch. At the end of your proposals, are you telling the lead what to do next and what to expect next? Tell them that they need to sign the proposal by a certain date, get you the initial deposit and once that’s complete that you’ll schedule with them a kickoff meeting. If you don’t, then they may know that the need to sign it, but then what. Maybe they like you, want to go with you, but since you didn’t tell them what to do, they slightly confused about what’s next, maybe waiting around for you to followup, and while that happens someone else comes along and tells them what to do and they go with them. All the while you are wondering why the prospect hasn’t returned your email about the proposal. Step 3: Pay attention. This is simple. Just pay attention to what sticking points a prospect has. Learn what they struggle with as you communicate via email, through Skype and on the phone. As you pay attention and learn what prospects have issues with and ask you time and time again, put that learned materials back into Step 1. Educate them earlier on in the process to anticipate the
Tue, August 14, 2018
A122 - How do you turn the things I do into benefits?
If you are struggling with the content on your website, today we are going to fix that and get you on the right path. Just like yesterday’s show which is [What makes a great case study?](https://rezzz.com/ask/great-case-study), this show is all about the reader too. Before jumping into today’s show, I want you to load up Twitter. Type in @rezzz and then put in your website URL and hit enter. I’ll tell you in a just minute why, but what else do you have to lose? It’s a free shout-out to your website right? It was back in 2014 when the light clicked for me. I was going through a re-branding effort. See up until then I had created my own logos, either a friend or myself would design my website, and I wrote all my own content based on what I had in my own head. Sure I was doing just fine with my business then, but I felt as if I could do better. Not just in business, but as a personal brand. See I was very technical, but what I was hearing from clients was that I was able to translate the geek speak, the techno mumbo jumbo into plain english. I hung my hat on that for years because it was something that I learned how to do very early on in my career. In fact the trick was to to put myself into a position where I had to explain the tech to my Grandma. And so when I started down the road of re-branding, which let’s be honest, it was a branding effort, my branding expert, [Megan Gray](https://houseofgrays.com) said during her consultation session with me “This makes total sense, so why isn’t that done on your website?” I paused, and didn’t have an answer for her. ## Write about the benefits, not the features See I had nothing but features all over my website. Things like “custom plugin development, security scans, monitoring, ecommerce strategy.” While all these things had value, they didn’t speak to the potential client, they spoke about what I do. Megan and I went through all the content on my website services page and rewrote all the things. Turing things from “custom plugin development” into “Have an idea for your website? Let’s talk about that” Turning things like “ecommerce strategy” into “Get 2 times more buyers through your checkout process with simple tweaks.” Did Megan have some secret sauce or recipe to do this? Not really, but what she was able to do with me during our session was to reframe my thinking to be “you” focused, rather than “I” focused. ## Always keep your client in mind when talking about your services Think about it when you shop, do you care how the TV was made or how the car maker used the latest and greatest technology? No, you care if the TV has the best view angles because your couch will be sitting on an angle to the tv. You care that that car gets great gas mileage because you are driving a lot and don’t want to spend every other day filling the tank. Address your clients’ con
Mon, August 13, 2018
A121 - What makes a great case study
It’s one thing to have a portfolio, it’s another thing to have an effective one that contains case studies to help covert those shoppers into buyers. I was speaking with some Feast members, and then again over the weekend when I was emailing my cousin’s friend who was looking for a job. They asked me about what goes into a great case study. In all the conversations we dove pretty deep into what makes a great case study with examples, workshopped some, and even outlined some initial ones. The one thing that all these conversations had throughout was to keep in mind that it is all about the reader. Write so your ideal customer can relate to the case study If you have an ideal client in mind, then your case studies should only be about those types of clients. The reason for this is that you want the reader to identify with you and trust that you can solve their problem. The goal of a good case study is: Show that you understand the industry Show that you know the problems of that industry You can solve those problems with specific results Writing the case studies specifically to your ideal client will highlight all these. Write a beginning, middle, and end A great case study will tell a story. A great story has 3 parts, the beginning, middle, and end. You want to share why the client came to you in the first place. Who they are and what their goals is the start of that story. The middle part of the story is all about highlighting their problems and building the solution to reach the goals. The end are the specific set of results of the project. Including real numbers is almost critical. It’s not always easy to get, but these numbers help in the first impressions of your case study when someone is glancing through. Include before and after pictures, charts, graphs, points within a timeline of certain milestones. All these help in crafting your case study. Make the case study easy to follow and followup Remember that it’s easy to write in long paragraphs but these will be read online and most people just scan things online. Break up the case study with your photos and pull quotes from the client. You can appeal to the masses if you have video or audio in a podcast form as well. But you’ll want to make sure that the client is comfortable in these mediums before making the attempt. After you show the end results, make it super simple for the reader to contact you. Give a specific call to action that’s related to what they just read. Don’t assume that they’ll go searching for how to contact you. Make the decision for them. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------
Fri, August 10, 2018
A120 - Do you have a tip to get over thinking I don’t know enough?
Imposter syndrome is a real thing. As a freelancer, as an introvert, and just working with smart people every single day, it can be an overwhelming feeling to get past that you don't know enough. Today's show will share you my story and what I look to when I have this feeling. In the freelance world, we can't let ourselves stop us. This question came by way of Instagram and with respect to the person who DM’d me, they will remain anonymous. However, I will say that this person was one year into their freelance business. So they admittedly hadn’t been doing it very long, but felt that most times they feel that they don’t know enough about business and development as they should. Imposter Syndrome is real I want to share with you a story. It was Friday if my first week at a consultant firm and we had an all hands meeting at a global telecommunications company that we were being billed out to. I was just hired as a senior developer in a team of 14 people. Our team and a few of them, making it about 20 people in the room sat around a large conference room table. We went around the room and talked about the things that we did during the week, what was up for the next week. Since it was my very first week, I barely had my laptop setup properly. Not to mention, all through the week people would talk to me like I knew exactly what everything was; all the terminology, server environments and people. During the entire week, I felt that 1. I was supposed to ramp up quickly to hit the ground running and 2. I was supposed to know a lot more than I did. Oh, and did I mention, up until this job I was a Java developer and this position required me to know .NET. For those of you non-developers out there, that’s like having to drive a manual or stick shift car when all you’ve ever driven is automatic. As each person rattled off their stuff and it got closer and closer to my turn, I got more anxious and just wanted to almost crawl slowly under the table in hopes that they would skip over me. As the VP of Online Services got to me he said “Welcome to the team Jason. We are excited to join us. I’ve heard from Christina and Joe that you know your stuff. Totally get that you are a Java guy and have never touched .NET before, but that’s ok, we want your experience and knowledge. The syntax will come. Get yourself settled in and let’s chat next week.” And he moved on to the next person. How to deal with imposter syndrome All that anxiety. All that worry. All that self-deprecation and thinking all week was for nothing. Of course I had to learn .NET, but I wasn’t there for the .NET skills. I was bringing my experience and knowledge to the table. I was brought to this project because I was an expert that the project needed. I would’ve never called myself an expert then, but I was. I had experience that no one else had. I had ability t
Thu, August 09, 2018
A119 - Do you have any tip to increase productivity and motivation?
As a freelancer, business owner, consultant, sometimes the productivity and motivation isn't there when we need it. Today I’m going to share with you 4 tips to increase productivity and motivation. I was asked this on Instagram and got such an awesome response from it, I thought that I’d share this here with you as well. By the way, if we aren’t connected on Instagram, let’s do that - I’m rezzz20 and when you follow me, drop me a DM and say “hi” We all battle it from time to time. Sometimes we just don’t feel up to it today. That the motivation just isn’t there and we’ve gotta try and push through. Sometimes the motivation is there, but wonder if we are working on the right thing at the right time. The worse case scenario is that the lack of motivation leads to the lack of productivity. Well thanks to Gabs for the question over there on the gram, I want to share with you 4 tips to increase your productivity and motivation. Know the 3 things you need to do each day, the day before Love what you do Celebrate the small wins Reward your hard work Let’s talk productivity first Know the 3 things you need to do each day, the day before. Before you cut out for the day, make a quick list. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just write down the 3 things that you need to accomplish tomorrow. Having this front and center will drive you and keep you on course no matter what tries to derail you tomorrow. Often you’ll look at this list quickly as soon as you sit down in the morning and bang out 1 or 2 of these things before you do anything else because your mind is fresh and focused on what’s important. The second tip for you bridges the gap between productivity and motivation and that is love what you do. Plain and simple, if you don’t love what you do, or at the bare minimum like it, you won’t be productive or motivated to do the work. Stay motivated In episode 104 , I shared with you this idea of gamification and how our brains are hard wired to be motivated when there’s a game to be played or a streak to be kept alive as a motivational tactic. Instead, today I want to tell you to celebrate the small wins. This is celebrating small wins with your clients, colleagues, partner, or anyone else that you are working with. If you get a RT from an influencer and get a bunch of traffic from it, celebrate that in some small way. To go along with this is to reward your hard work. This is more of an internal thing either with yourself or your team. Something like treating yourself to a nice steak dinner with your spouse, or if you are into Lego, getting yourself that new Voltron set. Maybe that’s something I’ll do when this podcast hits 25,000 dow
Wed, August 08, 2018
A118 - How to handle a bad referral?
Nothing can waste your time more than jumping at an opportunity you get for a freelance project through a someone you know. I’ve been there and going to share with you what to do. Let me paint the picture for you. You get this quick, short email that says: Hey Fred - I was talking with Joe and he is in need of X. I told him about what you do and thought that it’d be best for you to jump on a call with him today or tomorrow. That’s what he said would work for him best. Talk soon, Ref It’s awesome that Ref was touting your wares right? I mean, Ref knows you, likes you, and trusts you enough to put his reputation on the line and suggest someone to work with you. Sounds awesome, right? Well…It’s not all awesome. Why a referral can be bad Here’s the thing, you have a ton of things going on today and tomorrow with limited time for a call. You have a sales process that everyone goes through too. You have an intake form or project brief that you have all leads fill out prior to jumping on a call. But your friend set the expectations with Joe that you’ll be calling to talk to Joe. Ref has you potentially walking into a buzzsaw. Did Ref properly vet Joe? Probably not. But you want to do right by Ref and Joe. And not set the tone that you are someone who is a flake. You almost feel bad if you don’t call Joe outright. Well I want to stop you right there. Don’t call Joe. Handling the lead If Joe wasn’t attached to the email, then ask your friend for Joe’s email address. Then what I want you to do is to send Joe a simple email stating what your process is and a link to your project brief form. Explain to him that the form is there to get in his words what the project is about and why the project is important to him. Also share that this form helps to make the call as productive as possible. This will reset the expectation that Joe has and if it’s something that is pressing, there is no doubt that Joe may just get his call today or tomorrow. Only this time it’ll be on your schedule. Handling the referral source To handle the referral source is usually the step that’s often overlooked. The reason it’s overlooked is because you don’t want to burn a bridge, hurt a friendship, or just simply ignore the step altogether and hope for the best the next time. Shoot the referral source an email, a quick one in fact. Thank them for the referral Share with them a glimpse into how best to refer someone to you Highlight who your ideal client is, how you help and ultimately the benefits of working with you. Then the next time that source sends you a referral, It’ll be a better referral. ------------------- 👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playli
Tue, August 07, 2018
A117 - How to raise your rates at any time?
I've had this feeling so many times I lost count. If you haven't had any objections to your pricing, then as I shared in episode 60 , I’m going to tell you the very same thing my mentor told me to do on the very next prospect, and that’s to double it. If you have had some pushback on your pricing, it means that they don't understand the value of their investment. There is a disconnect between your "thing" and your price that you have yet to make it a clear no-brainer for them to sign up with you. How you close that gap is based on * Showing a track record, better known as testimonials or case studies, of proven success * Having problem you are solving for them to be painful * A short timeline to the proven results When I started out freelancing, I always thought that signing $20,000+ contracts was the path to success. I soon realized that those big projects took way too long to prove results. Sometimes 4-5 months! Resulting in my profits 💸 flying right out the window and not necessarily unhappy clients, but testimonials became tough because they hadn't had the promised success yet. So I developed a process to Get results quicker To dig deep on the problem to make sure I was solving a big pain point To get testimonials and case studies from my clients. The start of this was to look at the solution I was providing and carve a slice of that out that I could deliver quickly and effectively, then sell that. The price that I would sell this for would be anchored to the pain point of my clients. By understanding their pain point and knowing what’s most important to them as a successful result our engagement, I can position my service in a way that makes the return on their investment 2x, 3x, even 10 times. You can do this too Write down the last 5 projects that were successful for you What quick wins, the results that happened in a short period of time, did you get for your clients? (Think increase in revenue or savings in time) Could it be replicated and sold as a standalone service? What is the very next step to find your next client? As you do this, you'll find that "all the things" become so much easier and the chasing of projects stops just due to the nature of it. Set aside 1 hour this week and do Step 1. Then reply back and let me know how you did. If you've already figure it out, I want to know too.
Mon, August 06, 2018
A116 - Are job boards reliable?
------------------- For full show notes, your own customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all . ------------------- However, I’ve never once used one. Mainly because I never wanted to build my business on rented land. And in episode 95 where I answer the question “How viable is it to find a job as a front-end web developer as a freelancer in the current market” I shared that I didn’t like the idea that there was someone else’s hand in the sales process. Places like Upwork and Fiverr have been very successful for people. I’ve spoken to and are friends with many of them. But they will say that it’s getting harder and harder to succeed in those places. See here’s the thing about job boards, they have algorithms just like Facebook, just like Google, and just like any other website out there that makes money. They will push the best, most “relevant winners” in front of users. As I mentioned, I have many friends that use and are on these platforms. I’ve also heard from many people DMing me and in Feast telling me that the boards aren’t working like they once have for them. That the projects and leads are drying up. Does that mean that they aren’t reliable? No, because they are for some. But it does tell a story that using job boards to get prospects and leads into your business should be another stream into your business. Not the only stream. This is the classic “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” scenario. When you diversify your marketing channels, and this is what a job board should be, you’ll be able to notice trends and be able to help flatline the peaks and valleys. When a stream starts to lag or dries up completely, you have other established avenues to pick up that slack. This is true of job boards, social media, or content marketing. All of these avenues have peaks and valleys and could dry up your leads. To definitively say whether job boards are reliable or not is not the right question to be asking here. The question you should ask yourself is “which sales avenue am I going to focus on today?”
Fri, August 03, 2018
A115 - How do you step away and actually take a vacation?
This is going to be a pretty simple answer today. It’s not easy to do, but taking vacations and being able to step away from the freelance business for a day or a week can be scary. From about 2004 to 2011 I didn’t take any days off. There was no vacation, no hotel plans, no cruises, no car rentals, nothing that resembled any sort of pleasurable trip because I wanted to get away. When was the last vacation you had? Maybe even years at some point where you didn’t get a break? So why is that? Big excuses is why! Too much work No time, I'll look into next year How will the business be when I get back? Will there be a business left? So how do you step away? Communication and planning! 1. Communicate with your clients as early as possible. The earlier on, the better. Timelines, sales, and delivery may all need to be figured out. And the more time you have to plan all that out the better. 2. Give yourself a buffer before going away. If you are taking a week off, don’t work yourself to the bone the week prior to going away. When you do that, you won’t give your brain a chance to wind down. It’ll be 2 or 3 days into your vacation before your brain stops doing all the behind-the-scenes thinking around all the work that was just completed. If you are going away on the 14th for a week. Then plan all you need to do for the vacation and tell yourself that you are going away on the 7th. Giving you a full week buffer prior to vacation. Then from the 7th to the 14th, you do the every day tasks you need to just as if it were a normal week. 3. Plan for the unexpected. In other words, should something happen with a client that is an emergency, put in place a process by which that client can get the help they need. If you have a helpdesk system, have a process by which your client can put in a specific subject line to an email that then gets forwarded to someone who can handle the request. Make sure they are aware of what sort of issues you could be filtering their way and make it super simple for them get access to all the things they would need to resolve said issue. Now go ahead, take that vacation. Force yourself, like my wife did to me, because you do deserve it.
Thu, August 02, 2018
A114 - What are some useful tools that you use?
Today I’m going to share with you 3 tools that I’ve found extremely helpful, useful, and are making my life and business better. These aren't your run of the mill tools that you hear everywhere (at least not yet - or at least I hadn't ;) ) Bonjoro , Undraw , and Hey Meta . Review of Bonjoro The first is bonjoro.com . I’ll be honest, I’m not sure where I heard of this tool, but in using it, I’ve grown to love the company as well. Full disclosure, I am an affiliate so if you want to check out Bonjoro and would like to buy me a beer, please click the link. But to be perfectly honest, this app was a part of this list prior to me being an affiliate anyway. Bonjoro is an app that you can tie into your own systems and send a personalized video to. So for example, when you get a new customer or even someone filing out your contact form, this app will ping you to record a video on your phone. I’ve used this for a number of things and if you have attended one of my Live Q & As or newly signed up to my newsletter, you’ll have received one from me. I’ve had conversations with folks and learned more about who they are and how I can help just by initiating the conversation with these videos. The metrics are awesome! Seeing when someone opens your video, or clicks on the call-to-action is great, but getting replies is the best. If you can compare email metrics to Bonjoro’s, Bonjoro’s knock email out of the park. Open rates around 70%, click through rates around 30%, you can’t come close to that with email. It helps you in your onboarding and introducing folks to your business in a very personal way. Plus, the folks there are awesome and super helpful with anything you need. And they take photos of themselves in bear suits, so what’s more fun than that? Review of Undraw The second tool I want to share with you is undraw.co . If you are looking for illustrations to help brighten your content or social media, then check out undraw.co. This isn’t just your average stock/illustrations website. They are continuously adding new illustrations every week around the types of images you need. Images like “clients”, “mindset”, “workout”, “analysis”, “mail sent” and close to 300 more. The best part of this site is you can change the color scheme of them to match your brand. That’s game changer right there! With one click of the mouse, all the illustrations are now using your color scheme! Review of Hey Meta The final tool I want to mention is heymeta.com Ever want to know how your website or new blog post will look inside a text or Slack or the various social
Wed, August 01, 2018
A113 - How to stay being a generalist but test the waters to specialize your business?
You can find all the steps and questions to ask yourself over in the show notes . So don't sweat trying to copy all this down. Just have a listen first. Yesterday I gave you a dose of reality. Harsh? Maybe. Blunt? Somewhat. But if you are still a skeptic in this whole niching down thing. I want to give you a bit of a game plan so that you can test the waters and see if specializing your business has an positive impact on your business. In business, you need to experiment sometimes. I’m a HUGE fan of making some assumptions and building an experiment. WHAT MAKES A GOOD EXPERIMENT A good experiment has an assumption, a set time around the experiment, and a measurable goal. Parameters for testing the waters of niching down: Assumption: niching down has a positive impact on your business Time: 45 days Measurable goal: Get 2 new clients I want to disclaim that there are no guarantees. Your mileage may vary, but what I want you to get from this exercise is a feeling for what being a specialized business can mean for you. Is messaging easier? Is finding the right kind of client easier? Is the pay better? Your First Week Over the next 45 days, take 90 mins per day and dedicate it to working towards being a specialist. Pick a type of customer to focus on. Pick the type of work that you’ve done in the past that you enjoy doing. Pick a specific solution that is scaled back from your current offering. Something that may be a piece of your current services in fact that you can deliver quickly and effectively. Look at your services and select a piece of it that you can deliver to a specific type of client quickly. This could be building landing pages for non-profit events. Could be writing about pages for coaches and mentors. Could be designing Facebook Group banners for groups that are larger than 1000 members. Remaining Month Then over the next month and a half, go looking around for clients, set up sales calls, reach out to your own network of colleagues and have the conversations around your new offering. Reach out to lost leads and see if your new offering fits a need they have. Build a simple landing page on carrd.co or even your own website to at least direct people to. Goto Megamaker and follow Justin’s template of building out that landing page. Pay attention to the language you are hearing in these conversations. How are they talking about problems they have? How are they talking about the solution to those pro
Tue, July 31, 2018
A112 - How to get over the fear of niching down?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- Let me ask you a question, why are you niching down? What ever that reason is, that’s your focus. It’s that “why” that brought you to this conversation in the first place. “What got you here, won’t get you there.” You’ve heard this before from Marshall Goldsmith, right? It’s the idea that sometimes you need to be a bit uncomfortable and out of your comfort zone to achieve the results you want. This fear of niching down aligns with a similar fear of gambling. It’s easy to stay being a generalist because that feels safe because you’ve been able to build a business around it. But you are at a point where you are starting to think about your value, whether that’s your rate or time or both. While niching down can feel like you are betting it all on one-hand, in reality it’s betting on a hand where you know what everyone else is holding. If you are solving a problem, have a track record of success at solving that problem, and have social proof of that reliability from past clients, that’s your winning hand. A lead with that problem, who identifies with those past clients, and sees that you understand their problem fully will always choose you above someone else who may have had a generalized and limited experience with that problem. Let me illustrate this with a simple example. When you have a cold, you goto a general practitioner right? What you are looking for is that quick fix, the medicine that will get you feeling better and back on your feet. But it’s also why Walk-In clinics exist. So that if your GP isn’t available, you can feel better by going to a walk-in clinic and they’ll be happy to pick up your payment. On the other hand, let’s say you need to brain surgery. Are you going to use a walk-in clinic? I didn’t think so. You are going to do research, find someone with a track record of success and then choose the best. Now that brain surgeon went through medical school just like your GP, but took it a step further, went down the road of niching down. Are they leaving money on the table? Yup, for sure they are. Because of niching down, they’ve become an expert at solving a problem. They can then charge a premium for their services. They can spend an hour with a patient, have a consultation, know exactly how to speak to the patient that will result in tens of thousands of dollars with them, then someone who has a co-pay of $50. That’s a lot of co-pays they are giving up. When niching down, you leaving money on the table. However you are able to focus on a number of things. The customer, how they speak about their problem, remain on the pulse of new strategies and techniques and delivering on high-ticket solutions for clients rather than
Mon, July 30, 2018
A111 - When niching down, should I target the type of work or the type of customer?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- I’m often asked this question around niching that seems to question either or. Yes, you can pick the type of work you do and specialize your business. Yes, you can pick the type of customer you work with and specialize your business. But, the type of work you do and the type of customer you work with are both part of niching down to specialize your business. When I’m working with clients on finding their specialty, I have them reflect on the type of work AND the type of clients they’ve had in the past. A key part of the exercise and self-reflection is figuring out what they liked and what they didn’t like both about the people and projects. The reason is simple. Ultimately it’s the customer that you are helping with your solution in the end. You can’t be fully successful with just one piece of the puzzle. If the type of work you like to do is something that the market doesn’t need, then you have no business. If the type of customer you like to work with is someone who doesn’t need what your selling, then you have no business. Build it and they will come is not reality. Just because you sell something, doesn’t mean that someone will buy it. I feel that when someone is thinking about niching down a thinks about the customer, they think more about the customer as a business. Do they have money? How hard is it to reach them? How hard is it to sell to them? These are valid thought exercises to walk through, but I’d argue that there’s a key element missing here. Think about any job you’ve ever had. What is the one constant in each job that you had? You were forced to work with whoever else was there and deal with any customer regardless of whether or not you liked them. Now think about your closest friends or who your partner is? You chose them because you truly enjoy being around them and your personalities mesh well together. There’s a reason why those relationships last for years. As a freelance business, if you want profitability and sustainability, you won’t be excited to all the things you need to for the business if you do not like the people who you are helping. You won’t be able to build the long lasting relationships and referral network with people that you don’t feel connected to. It’s just not going to happen. Business is about people. This is even more the case in your freelance business. You want to genuinely like and enjoy working with your customers. You want to be able to love their problem enough to be able to solve it over and over again for them day after day. You don’t want to build yourself a business that’s soul sucking and something you don’t want to get
Fri, July 27, 2018
A110 - How important is branding?
Your personal brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room - Chris Ducker ------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist, and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- Why is the Nike Swoosh so effective? And if you don’t think it is, my one year old son points to it anytime my wife and I wear Nike apparel and says “swooo”. Why is the red for Manchester United or the navy blue from the Yankees so widely recognized? These things are all apart of branding. When you see them outside of their normal context, it puts it right into context. In 2015, I decided to hire Megan Gray for the branding of my company. I gave up the reigns and gave her complete creative control over all things rezzz. I didn’t know it then what sort of an impact it’s had on my business, but looking back over the past 3 years, it’s done a 5 things for my freelancing. Took a lot of the decisions away from me when it comes to imagery, text, font, etc. Elevated my professionalism Sets a tone that branding and other things are important for my business There’s a thought process to what I do and that translates down to clients Stand out in a crowded market Branding is very important in freelancing. Standing out in a crowd of other freelancers is hard, but when you have a brand and a way to be front-of-mind with leads, clients, and past clients that puts your brand out there. A past client or lead won’t say “Let’s go to Upwork”, they’ll be saying “Wait a second, I know someone, let me dig up their name.” Because your branding stuck out in their mind.
Thu, July 26, 2018
A109 - How do I keep a lead focused on the conversation and not get off topic?
But as a professional, it’s your job to protect your time, which protects your profits. And I want to share with you 2 things that I use to keep the conversation going. ------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- When you have a phone conversation or video chat, always set a time limit and an agenda for the call. These will be the 2 lifesavers for you to keep the conversation on point, focused and effective. This is especially true with sales calls. When you are on a sales call, often times the lead will want to unpack and explore their project with you. They want to start defining the requirements of their project with you on the line. This is a surefire way for you to lose time and money. It will turn a half hour call into and hour and a half. Before you hop on the call, define the parameters of that call. For example, that it’s a 30-minute call to talk about any specific questions about the project and if at the end of the call the next steps are not clearly defined, another call will need to be scheduled. For me this is where I transition into paid discovery. I explain that this initial call is a free 30-min conversation, but if at the end I can’t define the scope of work, then we will need a paid discovery session. I go into what that would look like, which in a nutshell is a paid 2-hour session in which we deep dive on the business and outline the scope of work. Because I let the lead know this prior to getting on the call, I’ve framed the conversation in a way that if they want to take the conversation over and talk off topic, then it could potentially cost them money to move forward. Now during the call that doesn’t mean that I’ll be some warden to keep things on track and only focus on the topic of conversation, but I will be mindful of the time. I’ll say things like “we’ve got 10 mins left for what we scheduled for this call” and “I want to respectful of your time today.” “Is there anything else that we need to cover?” Things like that will prompt the conversation back on track if it’s been astray. It’ll also trigger my email that I know they read before. Why, because inside that email is the link that they used to scheduled this call we are on. So there’s never any excuse for going over time unless we both allow it. There’s not a surprise that the next step in working together could be a paid engagement. Everything is said up front and center, which keeps me, them, and the topic of discussion on track. To sum this up nicely. Set the agenda and email it along with the link to schedule the call Set a time limit for the call Set expectations about what could happen as potential next steps
Wed, July 25, 2018
A108 - When starting out freelance, should I just be a generalist to get my feet wet, or should I go for that niche?
Before I share with you my answer, are you new to the podcast. Maybe you are simply overwhelmed and not sure which episodes you want to listen to first. I bet you there are a few episodes you’ve missed that pertain directly to you and can help you with your business right now! I’ve got the answer for you. You can get a customized playlist of Ask Rezzz episodes based around you, your business, and your experience. This playlist is made by minifigs and gremlins directed by me of course , that are handpicked especially for you. I’m always going to suggest you niche down. Let’s get that out there straight off the bat. It’s just a matter of how fast you specialize to that niche and how strongly focused you stick to it. Regardless of your situation, you should always be working towards that niche. In the end, that’s where you’ll want to be to avoid that feast or famine cycle. With that out of the way, I’m a realist. I know you’ve got bills to pay. They will never stop coming in and how well positioned you are on being able to pay those bills will guide my answer to this question. The only time where you’ll here me suggest taking on generalist projects is when you don’t have an income coming in or a nice nest egg of savings that can support you while you structure your specialized business. Let’s face it, when you niche down, it will take longer to get a few projects under your belt than it will as a generalist. That’s just the way the world works. You’ll find way more $15 bottle of red table wine than $250 50-year old bottles of Merlot. I have no idea if that’s the thing, but you get my point. There are more low revenue generating projects out there for many different businesses than there are premium revenue generating projects. So if this is your situation, then go get yourself a generalist project or 2. But all the while you should be spending at least half the time targeting the niche you want your business to serve. Now, if you have a severance from a position you once held, or a savings, or you are even working full-time, go straight for the niche. You have a cushion to sit on for a little bit. You can be a bit selective. You don’t have a HUGE urgent need to bring money in to pay bills because of that cushion. Build yourself some constraints, especially when starting out and you don’t have a full-time job. Tell yourself that you are going to give yourself 2-months of dedicating 100% of the effort towards the niche because you’ve got 6-month cushion. If you can’t get a project or 2 within that timeframe, then dial back the focus to 50% and get yourself some income. And finally if you are working full-time now, there’s no excuse to take on a generalist project. You’ve got income coming in. No doubt you want to leave your job for something bette
Tue, July 24, 2018
A107 - How do you handle push back?
Before I share with you my answer, are you new to the podcast. Maybe you are simply overwhelmed and not sure which episodes you want to listen to first. I bet you there are a few episodes you’ve missed that pertain directly to you and can help you with your business right now! I’ve got the answer for you. You can get a customized playlist of Ask Rezzz episodes based around you, your business, and your experience. Head on over to askrezzz.com today to get your custom playlist made by minifigs and gremlins that are handpicked especially for you. Now let’s get back to today’s show shall we? When you first start out selling a recurring service, you’ll start to make it out be an afterthought in the conversation. You’ll focus on what the lead came to you with in the first. What you want to do is re-frame the conversation so that the solution is the recurring service, not the one-off project. How you do this really depends on you and your business, but there are a few things to keep in mind: If you listened to the show way back in episode 12 you have heard the first 3 points before. They are crucial to framing the conversation so I going to go over them quickly for you. Point out to them the path on why they are here talking with you in the first place. Whether that’s by referral or some other pathway. Then talk about the process and everything that they did with you so far to highlight the value that they’ve received. To put their mind in a frame of positivity. Align you recurring service against the one-off project. Share with them the benefits of the recurring that makes it a complete no-brainer. Chances are that you came from doing one-off projects in the first place, right? You understand the hiccups and headaches that occur in the one-off projects. Explain why those don’t exist in your recurring service. Lay out the path to move forward. They want to get the ball rolling. Plain and simple. The last thing they want to do is go back and forth for a week or two with NDAs, Scope of Work documents. Show them why starting today eases that and gets the ball rolling on the work tomorrow, not 2 weeks from now. I’m not saying don’t define the detailed scope of work document. What I am saying is since you’ve define your recurring service offering, which is your general scope of work, but to lay out a roadmap for this particular project, kicking off tomorrow under your offering will get their project underway and moving towards their goals quicker. If you’ve gone through all that and still getting push back. Then you’ll want to share with them how the one-off project will work with you. Share with them the negatives of making the project one-off. That it could take longer to see results, could cost more, could cost less until something is needed down the road which
Mon, July 23, 2018
A106 - What should you be able to create as a web developer before starting in your freelance career?
------------------- For full show notes, your very own Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- Having a track record of solid, reliable, work will go a long way to helping you close sales. Having just your own website won’t do. You’ll need to do a bit of hustling, maybe even barter with some folks and trade your skills for an opportunity. Reach out to some local agencies to see if they have any overflow work. Agencies aren’t the most ideal to work with if you want to drive the ship of projects, but they are an amazing starting point to build up a reputation and place in the market. The idea is to get work that you can do and build up a nice track record of good work. SOME THINGS YOU’LL WANT TO KEEP IN MIND When you start this journey, you’ll want to make sure: You can showcase the work on your own website. You can talk about the work you are doing. To try and stick to the same type of technology, or same industry, or even same location. The smaller the project, the faster you can deliver. The faster you can deliver, the faster you can tackle the next project and build a track record quicker. You’ll want to get #1 and #2 in writing on your contract. #3 is something I wish I had done early on. The reason why this is important is so that when you start your own sales, you are solving a problem that you have solved before over and over again. So as an example… If you are taking designs from an agency and building out landing pages for lead magnets and the delivery of that lead magnet. That’s the solution you can pitch over and over again to any business. If you are building out Laravel apps with Vue for startup Saas companies. You know have a track record for both a technology and sector of business. These 2 examples are much more marketable and easier to target potential clients than if you are just a generalist developer who builds PHP, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, but also plays around with various front-end technologies. The generalist web developer will always be compared to the next developer on price. Creating a specialty for yourself makes your solution appealing to businesses that need it and they will compare your price to that of their expected return. This is all well and good, but you do need the skills to do web development in the first place.
Fri, July 20, 2018
A105 - What are your client red flags?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- Today’s show is going to be a little different. I’m always asked what I look for when it comes to red flags in talking with leads and clients. Like you, I always try to learn from what other folks do in their business so that I hope not to fall into those same pitfalls. And so when I get asked this question I try to put myself in their shoes. Maybe there is something they are experiencing at that moment where they are looking to get insight into something they are missing. So what I’m going to do is list off 26 red flags for you. These are a mix of my own and other business owners that I’ve spoken to both inside and outside of the Feast community. Some may be obvious, some may not. But I’ll leave that to you. 1. Had issues with the other developer / designer 2. Their values, what they represent don’t align with your own 3. “I’ll know it when I see it” 4. “Maybe we can work out something if this project turns out good” 5. Everything is quick & easy 6. Step on each other while talking 7. Don’t understand their own limits 8. Seem desperate 9. Seem to be a hard sell 10. Disorganized 11. Vague goals / Can’t nail down why they don’t like the results, but instead just “feel it” 12. Unrealistic expectations 13. “Let’s just start the project, I’ll get accounting to send out the payment” 14. Want to always go against your processes 15. Haven’t thought through on the project / “don’t know the budget, but maybe you can help” 16. Late payment 17. Don’t follow directions / boundaries 18. Changing things last minute 19. Think that you’ll run their business for them / non-responsive 20. Micromanage 21. Pick their own set of tools and expect you to conform 22. Don’t respect the collaboration part and then wonder why “its not working” 23. Constantly miss scheduled calls then want to make them up by saying “let’s hop on a call right now” 24. Want to re-structure your process or payment terms 25. Email follow-up 26. Cut corners / modify core functionality Now that you have the list, which ones had you not thought about before. Any stand out? When it comes down to red flags, you really need to take care of 2 things: 1. Trust your gut - if something feels off, that’s a red flag 2. Just because it’s someone else’s red flag, doesn’t mean it’s yours too. And vice versa, just because you make it a red flag and I didn’t list it, doesn’t mean it’s not a red flag. As a business owner you need to protect your time and profits. As a person you need to protect you sanity levels. Take this list and adapt it to your business and add in your own.
Thu, July 19, 2018
A104 - How do you stay motivated on long-term projects?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- I’ve found that freelancing clients are often the ones that need the motivation on the longer projects. They are the ones paying, so really they’ll want that return on their investment as quickly as possible. I’m always saying “be consistent” in both my personal as well as professional life. In fact, “be consistent” is just one thing that I’ve been whispering in my son, TJ’s ear since the day he was born. Being consistent means showing up each and every day you say you will for the client. I find that any and all projects have both short term and long term gains. Even if they are simple and small milestones along the way to those longer term goals. Long term projects will always have stepping stones to the end game. Things like a feature being built, a set of designs completed, beta testers coming in, even something like content has been written and signed off on is a short term goal. These are all things you can set up within a project plan with your client. We are humans, humans do feed off of gamification. You see it in apps like Todoist and others where a simple streak of doing something every day keeps you opening that app. If you need your own motivation play games with yourself. It can be as simple as I’m putting 10 hours on this project this week. Or putting yourself into a process where you email your client at the end of every single day with the progress that’s been made on the project. This is more a game of accountability than anything else. Because it’s the accountability with your client that you don’t want to disappoint. Staying motivated on long-term projects isn’t hard, it’s delivering on the expected results that is. If the client is fully educated on how long the it will take to get results, then they may just need to be reminded of that from time to time. And you need to be consistent to show up, get the job done, and fulfill the work as expected or better.
Wed, July 18, 2018
A103 - How do you price your services on your site?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- When you put prices on your website, I encourage you to think why? When I did it, it was to filter out tire kickers. I found that I was getting more shoppers than buyers. I was ok with the drop in leads to the business if it meant that more qualified leads were getting through and becoming clients. Pricing on my website sets the conversation around the lead’s potential budget and if they don’t match, then there’s no point in moving forward. I am fully aware that you may be skeptical about putting pricing on your website because you don’t want to pigeon hole yourself into that price alone if a larger project comes along. I get that! But what you don’t realize is that putting prices on your website isn’t the ceiling, it’s the floor of what you will do work for. To circle back to the question, packages are fine if you are delivering on items that you know your leads understand to a “T”. Because most of the time, those packages are laid out on those pricing grids that list the features and the lead will select which one they want to go with. However if the messaging isn’t right or your leads don’t understand the value in the features, you may turn them away even if they are ideal clients for you. If you put one price on your website, then you’ll want to say on there exactly what they are getting for that price, but then if you want to do add-ons, make sure that you mention those as well. Otherwise if you say you are doing website design for $1000 and then get into the sales conversation and you then say web development on top of the design is another $3000. You’ll immediately seem like you are a bait and switch artist and turn your lead away. Pricing is fun to play around with and see what works. Play with it and see - give it 6 months one way and then 6 months another way. See the responses you get (or don’t get) and then that will tell you which way to go with your pricing on your website. Bottom line though, how you present it is truly a matter of understanding your leads and clients. You should give them options, but too many options and that causes confusions.
Tue, July 17, 2018
A102 - What do you use for your sales script?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- In episode 91, you heard me talk about finding a quality prospect and how I use a Project Brief in the qualification part of my sales process. I look at sales this way. There are way more people and projects in this world that I’m not a good fit for. If I can have them figure that out as early on in the process as possible without wasting too much of their time, the better. It’s all about time for me and those that I talk with. I don’t want to waste time on things that aren’t valuable and so I feel that most other business owners don’t want to either. And that’s who I talk with, the decision makers. 95 times out of a 100 it’s the business owner. The first step is… I put out a ton of content and most of the leads I get to the business came by way of some level of education on what it is that I do. That’s from a previous client or a vendor or some other place like a podcast. So most likely, they don’t come to me completely blind as to what I can do for them. My purpose for a call is to get them a proposal that is a formality of closing the deal. The second step… After the content, the next step is that project brief. Which I dive real deep into in episode 91 on, so I won’t belabor that here. But the gist of the project brief here is to have the lead essentially voice in their own words what their project is, the goals, and in a matter of few key questions, show to me how important the project is. This helps in filtering out tire kickers and leads that haven’t thought through the project. One of the responsibilities as a business owner is to protect the time and profitability of the business. If I’m taking anybody’s call and sitting on the phone with them to unpack their project for them, that’s eating away at profits. I only want to talk with those that have already done this. The final step is… The sales call. If a lead has submitted a project brief and I can help them with their project, the next step is the call. The reason I don’t have a specific script is because this 30-minute call is an extension from the Project Brief. I ask very specific questions about their business and about the project that isn’t the same for everyone. But it’s all the information that I need to properly provide them with a solution. I know what I need in my business from clients in order for a project to be successful and so if I haven’t yet heard those things, or seen the metrics, I ask them. I don’t hold back anything. I don’t want the lead to hold back either. We are on the same page when working together. I tell them this if need be. I give them a brief insight in
Mon, July 16, 2018
A101 - What has been the biggest challenge in your business so far?
------------------- For full show notes, a Choose Your Own Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- My back story is that in early 2000s I struck out on my own doing freelance full-time. Due to getting laid-off from the consultant firm I was working at. At that time, I thought my path was pretty clear. I had a skill that was very much in demand, at least from what I could see, and instead of getting a job, I would just ramp up my side hustle and become freelance full-time. Just shy of 2 years after that, I found myself sitting back in a cube at someone else’s desk. It wasn’t my technical skills that was at fault here, in fact, even though the startup bubble had popped, there were plenty of jobs out. What I hadn’t taken into account was all the other things I needed to run a business. I lacked sales and marketing skills I lacked knowledge around contracts I lacked processes and systems to help run a business I lacked the knowledge to even know what those should be I was a developer without a platform to develop on. That being clients. Sure it was a tough pill to swallow that I failed. Yes it was a punch to the gut that I had to go find a full-time position. But it taught me a valuable lesson in taking something that most would see as a failure and learn from it. I went back to the cube and said, I’m going to let me development skills stay the course but I’m going to ramp up and learn all I can about marketing, sales process, and learn all that I can about the stuff I don’t know about. And so I did! 4 years later I quit and I’ve been my own boss since. If you’ve been on this journey you understand the ego bruising. But it’s not a journey that you have to be alone on. It’s why I’m so passionate about helping other freelancers, developers, designers, marketers through my coaching and Feast . Your skills are honed, it’s the other things around your awesome skills that need work. I’ve built a coaching program and built Feast with the pieces of the puzzle that I had to put together. I’ve been lucky enough to have some of the most inspirational and talented folks go through my coaching program and Feast. Just last week, only after one-month of working together, I had a client (a husband and wife team) land their first client on their monthly services. They had a monthly service, but it was much like all the other maintenance packages you’ll see on the web. We worked on figuring out how to market to their ideal client, how to present the service offering, and what the backend of the sales process should be. They had the game p
Fri, July 13, 2018
A100 - What’s the best thing about being a freelancer?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist , and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- I put it out there on the interwebs this milestone episode. And thank you to every one who responded and I will answer them all, as you know. But today’s question comes from Cameron in the Sustainable Freelancer Facebook Group. The simple reason I picked it was because it’s a good window into who I am and maybe you have similar values and realistic ideas of freelancing like myself. Before I jump into the answer, I just want to say thank you 🙏. #humbled #grateful #gratitude When I started this show, it was a bit of an experiment, and I only gave it 30 days to see if it had any legs. Because of you I’ve seen this podcast grow and grow over the past 100 shows and that’s why I’m still here today. So thank you very much for your time each day and support in sharing as well. With that being said, are you ready to hear my answer? I had to think about this one for a few days because I could’ve said the standard cheesy responses like: - I get to be my own boss - I get to work from home - I get to work in my pajamas - I don’t have to sit in traffic for hours on end - I can goto the beach every day And while all those things are true, I want to share with you my Top 3 things. Let’s make this a true countdown and start with number 3. 3. It allows me the freedom and flexibility to explore and learn. When sitting in a cube, I was essentially forced into doing whatever my boss would tell me to do. I couldn’t explore other creative outlets, try new strategies or technology, or even be myself at times. Being a freelancer affords me the opportunity to do things like this podcast. To interact with other folks through social media, go hang out at conferences, and even work with and learn from great people outside of my geographical area. 2. Work when my energy to tackle the task is optimal. I’m a big fan of working when it’s best for you. There are mundane tasks that you are essentially clicking around a screen that can be done when your energy levels are low, say at the end of the day or week. But there are tasks that require deep work and concentration and require a ton of mental energy. This is how I structure my day, around my energy levels. I’m not a morning person, but I know my focus and brain power is at it’s best when I wake up. Makes sense right? So I do all my deep work in the morning. Do the administrative and lower energy tasks at the end of the day. I apply this to my week as well. Mondays I don’t even take any calls just so I know that I can start the week off getting a ton of work done. Fridays is often my day of calls. I always schedule out my calls and make myself available to c
Thu, July 12, 2018
A99 - How do you set the boundary of work you do and work you don't do?
------------------- For full show notes, a customized Ask Rezzz playlist, and bonus material, head on over here for it all. ------------------- Setting boundaries around the type of work you do is at the core of what niching down is. It very much is a mindset that you need to get yourself into. The best way to force yourself into the mindset is tracking your time with everything. Even when you think you are just doing that “one-thing” for a client that takes 10 mins, I’d be willing to bet that task took 15 or 20. Which directly eats into the overall profits of the business because that’s not what the client hired you to do. Specializing your business means to not just focusing on a particular client, but it also means to focus on the type of work you do. I ran a Twitter poll a few months ago and asked “Who would you rather be? Larry Bird or Danny Ainge?” It was a landslide victory for Larry Bird at 92% . I ran this on Instagram as well and Larry won with 100% . Respect to Danny Ainge, who honed his craft in 2 sports and reach both the NBA and MLB. He played pretty well in both places, but was never the best. But Larry Bird on the other hand, concentrated all his effort on basketball and became the Hall of Fame legend. It’s hard for most to set these boundaries. To be profitable and be able to optimize the business processes and be better at pricing, you have to reduce the number of variables in the work. You do that by setting these boundaries, which really is reducing the scope of work that you do. Here’s a hint, anytime I heard that a client wants me to go off and use a different technology that they went ahead and signed up for or that they want me to do design or social media work, I picture in my head a stack of money on fire. As a business owner, I’m sure that you’ve heard the expression “Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean that you should.” Owners hear especially when they start delegating tasks to other folks. But it applies very much to this as well. Sure I can develop in Rails, Java, and work in Infusionsoft and MailChimp. I have in the past, but I decided to stop taking on those projects. Why? I’ve found that for the clients I serve, and the solutions they need, WordPress, Drip and ConvertKit has worked better. Overtime I’ve learned the ins and outs of these platforms and been able to solve problems for clients in ways that even the companies didn’t even know could be done. Had I not focused on these platforms, chances are good that I wouldn’t have gotten this deep with them. Let me give you an example, when I was a generalist developer I would spend 3-6 months working on Rails projects, then bounce from those to a custom PHP project for the next 6 months. Then back t
Wed, July 11, 2018
A98 - How did you scale your freelance business?
-------------------- For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all. -------------------- If you are looking to grow your freelancing into building an agency, then you want to take steps that put you on the path to that. If you are looking to grow your freelancing so that you can spend more time at home with family, then you want to take steps to do that. If you are looking to grow your freelancing in a way that puts you in a position to get bought out, then you want to take steps to do that. These are just 3 goals business owners have, but the question about scaling your freelance business in each case is very different. There’s a keyword to the definition of “scale” that is often over looked. “Profitable” I can’t speak to building an agency or looking to get bought out, but I can speak to wanting to spend more time with my family. Profitability is the key to the success of any business, not just a point scaling your business. But when it does come to scaling, there will be an initial investment and cost analysis that has to take place in order grow. Let me explain what I mean by this. For me when I look to scale a part of my business, I tend to turn to automation first . Why? Because rather than hiring a human that I need to manage, land more projects to support that salary, and essentially put more time into the business. I can leverage my skills as a developer or leverage tools that exist in the market today to help me automate. This is usually a low-cost or no-cost long-term investment with all the time being spent upfront. Which on the back-end frees up the time I want to spend with my family. So initially I’ll have to put some time into: - documenting the processes - finding a tool or coding up a solution - then integrating the automation into the business - testing - and finally iterating on that automation as needed But once that automation is in place, it hums along and frees up time for me to do other things. Putting that initial time may cost me a bit of profits at first, but after it’s in place for some time and I can see and know it’s working and accomplishing what I need it to accomplish, that’s when the initial investment turns around into more profits. This is where the danger lies in the word “scale”. People want to scale first and fast before really knowing if the business can scale. People hire too fast and then find the business crippled by having to pay salaries. Two examples of this is Brennan Dunn’s and Matt Inglot’s stories. When thinking about scaling your freelance business, remember why you are doing f
Tue, July 10, 2018
A97 - How do I improve my communication skills and confidence in public?
As someone who has always said that I’d rather be the guy in the coffin than the person saying the eulogy, improving my communication and confidence in public has been a journey and still very much is to this day. But if I can get up there in front of a room of 70+ people in NYC and talk, I know you can too. 1. Find a mentor This may sound a bit out of left field, but find someone who’s a little bit further down the career path than you are right now. Having a mentor that knows exactly the path your are will help you with confidence and being able to relay the proper message to your audience. They can share their experiences with you, the pitfalls they fell into so you can avoid them as well as things that they’ve done that have worked well. Since they are knowledgable in your field too, a mentor can also give you mock scenarios for you to practice and get more comfortable with the types of conversations and speaking that you’ll have to do in public. 2. Talk to 5 people During any given day, when you see someone, anyone, passing by, smile and just talk with them by asking a question. Simple question like “I really like your shoes, where’d you get them?” Or “Love the hat, where’d you get it?” Simple, quick, and then move on. 3. Genuinely want to help and be curious Confidence comes from knowing the subject matter. As a human, it’s our natural tendency for being curious and wanting to help others. Communication is a 2-way street, so instead of thinking what you are going to say next when the other person is talking, listen to them. Ask them “how did you feel about that?” Ask them “why do you think that is?” Be curious. Being helpful is easy especially since you are the expert in the thing you know most about in the room. A trick I learned early on is pretend I’m speaking about my topic to my Grandma. How could I make it such that she would understand the topic. I don’t dumb it down, but I start with the basics and assume nothing. 4. Get out from behind the desk This goes without saying, you have to interact human-to-human. Get out, grab lunch with people. Go to a meet up and interact with some folks. Remember those 5 people you have to ask them about their hat, in order to see 5 people you need to leave your desk behind. 5. Speak at meet ups first Communication and confidence in public come by way of practice. First head out to meet ups that are relevant to you. Then after attending a few of them, if they have speakers, ask the organizer if you can speak about your topic. Meetups range in sizes obviously, but speaking to a small audience would allow you to gain confidence quickly. It will cause you anxiety, I know, but once you are in your groove up there talking to 15, 25, maybe 50 people, you’ll star
Mon, July 09, 2018
A96 - What is the very first step to work as a freelancer?
When thinking about this question, every time I’ve gone through the process of niching down my business or thinking about adding a new service to my business or exploring a new opportunity, I tend to do the same thing each and every time that I know will help. And so because I want to share with you only stuff that’s of value, I did a bit of searching around first. I’m still shocked by the amount of bad advice that’s floating around on the internet. When I put this question in Google, articles that come up were still spouting the terrible advice about Doing free work just to build up your portfolio Learn a new skill to “diversify your skill-base and make you more valuable” Attend local business networking events The reason this is terrible advice is because this is old school thinking. This is the stuff that I did because I read it was the way! Know where that landed me? Back sitting at a desk in a cube once and then almost again for a second time. Remember it’s your first steps into freelancing so you have to keep it simple to start. Stick to the stuff you know because there are many things that you don’t know at this very early stage of your career. This is your job now! It’s a job that you want to grow. It’s a job that you want to be able to live life the way you want. It’s a job that you need to take serious and make money from. With that in mind, I’ve found that there are 3 things you should do when starting out freelancing or adding new services to your existing freelance business. Make money Leverage skills you have Figure out your worth Just like a baby taking their first steps, clear the path of any and all obstacles. Keep it simple! In this episode I give you permission to suck, we all suck when we start something new. But with these things in mind, you'll know quickly if your new thing is viable and something you can be good at. For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all .
Fri, July 06, 2018
A95 - How viable is it to a find a job as a front-end web developer as a freelancer in the current market?
The real short answer here is that it’s extremely viable! The first question to ask is what is a front-end web developer and the skills needed for one. Without getting into the weeds too much here, the main role of a front-end web developer is to get the visual elements to actually work on the website. Essentially to turn the design into functional elements. You’ll need a skillset of HTML, CSS, Javascript, some design skills, knowledge around the browsers, and other frameworks to just start out. I’m not going to say it’s going to be an easy road because there are plenty of front-end developers out there, but there are plenty of jobs to be done as well. Sure you can go onto job boards like Upwork and such, but I have never had to do that in my career. Plus I don’t know about you, but I’m not to fond of someone taking a big bite from my bottom line just because they made a connection for me. Don’t get me wrong, finder’s fees are warranted. I’m just not comfortable in having someone else control the flow of money into my business and handling all the communication I have with clients. Before going directly to job boards, I would look around at a few different communities first. 1. Hacker News Every single month they have a thread there that has businesses looking for freelancers to do projects and you can post that you are available for projects. Hacker News is a community that’s full of folks building businesses and what do businesses need? Websites, folks to handle parts of building those websites. 2. Look in communities where you can find startups There’s a plethora of business communities out there that have founders looking to launch their next thing. Making some connections in and around those communities is a way to land a few projects. With all the various Javascript frameworks like React, Angular, jQuery, Node, etc if you have one or more of those skills, it should be easy to find a community, if you aren’t in one already based on that where other people may be looking to partner up on projects. 3. Goto a local meet up Meetup.com is an awesome place to find local business owners who meet with other likeminded people. Making some local connections in those events can be a gold mine. Especially if you live in a large city, you can easily attend a meetup that has 35-70 people and find someone or 3 who’s looking for help on a project. Yes, there’s a lot of competition out there in the space, but with a tiny bit of hustle and being a little creative in where you can find work, you’ll soon realize that being a front-end web developer is definitely viable. For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Thu, July 05, 2018
A94 - How did you find/determine your niche?
I talk a lot about finding your niche. I help freelancers personally through Feast and Coaching on finding their niche. But the other day, I had a cup-of-coffee call with a person off my email list. If you haven’t heard about those before, I randomly pick 4 people every month off my email list and send out a link to schedule a 15-minute chat. This person asked me how I went about niching down. And I’m not sure I actually ever spoke about my feelings leading up to it in depth before publicly, so here ya go. ------------ For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Wed, July 04, 2018
A93 - How does a freelance web designer build a client profile when preparing their marketing plans?
Bands tend to spend money on beer, food, and travel - they really don’t spend it in their design elements. So you may want to re-visit that niche a bit. Small family owned businesses is interesting though because you are putting “family” into that niche. Which means that the business may have been passed down for generations, or that only family members work in the businesses. This may be a tough nut to crack if that’s the case. But if you are targeting small family owned businesses, you know exactly what’s important to them. Their family! The support of that family remaining viable through the business. Knowing and understanding those two aspects in that area, you can put together a marketing plan that speaks directly to the understand of family values and legacy. You can show past clients that have benefitted from your services showing them how your designs have increased their business. And if you are in business for yourself because you want to be available to be there for your family, that’s a personal touch that you can add to the mix in your marketing. To answer your pricing portion, that’s a bit more complex because I’m uncertain about exactly what you are providing as a service. As you explore your plan, you’ll want to anchor your prices for your services to the end results your clients, and the benefits they receive. ------------------ For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Tue, July 03, 2018
A92 - How can I share a tool for freelancers?
With that in mind, you obviously want to get it into the hands of your target market, if you haven’t done so already, with a free trial or some other kind of offer. WHO IS IT SPECIFICALLY FOR? Yes, you say freelancers, but are they aspiring freelancers, have they just started freelancing, or are they experienced freelancers. Each of these 3 types of freelancers have a different need for their business. They also have a much different view on spending money. IN THE IDEA STAGE? EARLY / PRE-LAUNCH STAGE? POST LAUNCH STAGE? In this episode I dive into some examples you can use try based on where they are in this space. --------------- For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Mon, July 02, 2018
A91 - How do you determine a quality prospect?
Before someone reaches out to you to potentially work with them, they’ve made 70% of the decision. That’s what all that education and being visible is about. After they reach out, that’s where more specifics about budget, timeline, goals, what sort of business they are, what they sell, who they are as people, and a number of other factors that can determine whether or not I’m a fit for their project. I point every single prospect to a Project Brief. The Project Brief does a few things for me. Shows me that they’ve thought a bit about the project. Prospect doesn’t mind using electronic means for communication. Get the basics out of the way. Makes sure that I’m talking with the decision maker. It gets their project down in writing in their own words. This allows for the sales call to be as productive as possible. By specializing, learning who I serve, the common questions leads would ask, the aspects of what my business can provide for successful projects, and understanding the problems I help people solve, the educational content and Project Brief has been the point of entry for my services to not just help me determine the quality of a prospect, but also help the prospect the quality of me for them. ---------------- For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Fri, June 29, 2018
A90 - Imagine I was going to bring you $100k in revenue
So here’s the scenario. I will bring you $100,000 in new revenue, what we would offer to the customers? Assuming that I had the customers and you have the service and/or product to sell, what is it that we are selling them? I want you to think about it for a minute, then share on Twitter or post on Facebook your response with the hashtag #AskRezzz But before you do, I don’t want to see tweets like: “Web development” or “WordPress theme building” or “SEO” Think about this $100,000 in revenue and what it represents to the customers and to your business. Think about who these customers are. Think about what problems you are solving for them. Be specific! For me, my response would be “I help freelancers, especially web developers and designers, through coaching and community looking to specialize or niche their businesses and build recurring revenue so that they can live the kind of life they want.” The response should say: Who it is for Identifies with their goals What it is that you do What the outcome they can expect -------- For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Thu, June 28, 2018
A89 - How do I pitch some big companies in my niche?
This question comes with sense of imposter syndrome. This is where you get in your own way. You are inside your head and that is what is limiting you. How you pitch them is all about confidence. If you pitch with this self-doubt, it’ll show. That self-doubt needs to carry through the follow-up as well. If the pitch dies on the vine and you don’t hear back, then move on. Put them into a past lead followup sequence that keeps you front of mind. In this episode, you will learn: The first impression is now the last What to include in your follow-up sequence after the pitch How to remain front of mind for when the next opportunity araises Why having them pass on you the first time isn't a bad thing after all For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all .
Wed, June 27, 2018
A88 - What is the easiest way to get a remote testimonial?
When you ask for a testimonial you should do so not with the intention of having it up on your website, it should be with a focus around improving your business and the experience you customers have with you. Even though a testimonial is about your business, it’s really about your client and how you helped them. There will be emotional responses as well as facts too. Specifically, if you’ve reached very specific and measurable goals. By “emotional” I mean that you will hear what the client felt about their experiences with you. Not necessarily that there will be tears or utter jubilation. If so, get that celebration on video! The easiest way to get testimonials is to just keep an eye out for them throughout the course of the project. Watch out for those wins and thoughts of gratitude from your clients. Especially if you’ve reached a certain milestone. Similarly, watch out for the voice of opportunities that tell you what you can be doing better. These usually come by way of emails and you can pull them out as quick quotes that you can use in your marketing. Those are the quickest ways. But I also share with you my 2-step process for getting video client testimonials and the 7 must ask questions for you to ask your clients to get a great testimonials. For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Tue, June 26, 2018
A87 - What is my writing process?
Gwen asked this during the Feast Monthly Round Up Call. And I thought that considering I don’t consider myself a great writer, that you would get something out of this answer. The Feast Monthly Round Up Call is an open forum call inside the Feast membership website that we have each and every month. Find out more about Feast and how it can help your freelance business define your niche, build processes and systems and get recurring revenue so that you can live your life away from the screen. She’s been reading my content for some time and thought that it must take quite a while for me to research, write, and then publish an article. Since she knew that I don’t fancy myself a writer, that I must have some secret sauce to share. Well, like I told Gwen, it does take some time, thought, and effort to publish something. Although, there are 7 things about my process that I follow: It has to provide some value to someone, otherwise it’s filler Know who I’m talking to Start with the end in mind Make it personal at some level Try and make it entertaining Just write Wrap it up That’s it. It’s simple, works for me, and I do it quite often, if I don’t really consider myself a writer. For full show notes, downloads, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
Mon, June 25, 2018
A86 - How do you find other freelancers you can work and partner up with?
In episode 83 , I shared my answer to a question someone ask about wanting to do web and software development along with digital marketing all at the same time. First, find your focus, your core offering, and then branch out into the others where it fits to augment and make your core offering much better. The same is idea applies here. If it is a good fit, then here’s how you find a partner. 1. Make connections at events 2. Social Media 3. Build relationships 4. Ask 5. Google Be careful with who you partner with, remember your name is going on the service and recommendation. If you aren’t fully confident in the job that they can do, then it’s better not to even offer it. The partnership should be an added bonus to your services that increases the value that you are bringing to your clients and increases the value of your offerings for your business.
Fri, June 22, 2018
A85 - Why did you start freelancing?
Today I share with you a very personal story of mine and why I do what I do. It was something that I discovered at a very young age, but my family environment played a HUGE part in shaping me as a the person I am today. There’s a reason behind the work we do, especially the work we choose to do as freelancers For you that could be travel, or spending time with family like me, or work on projects that you have a close passion to. What ever that is, if you don’t keep that why in focus, you’ll de-rail yourself and during the times of bad, you’ll feel the desire to turn back. It’s your why that will allow you to push through hard times, allow you to celebrate the great times, and be the goals you have for the rest of your life. I encourage you to take some time and reflect on your why, put it front in center of all the decisions you have to make and make sure as a freelancer those decisions you make align directly with your why. Otherwise, why are you freelancing? Take a look at the Ask Rezzz Extra from this episode over on my channel on IGTV .
Thu, June 21, 2018
A84 - Did hiring a mentor really helped you with starting up your business or your career?
There are different types of mentors though. Virtual Mentors, Personal Coaches, Business Coaches, In-Person Mentors, Mastermind Groups. Some you do have to pay for, some you can follow and learn from just with all the content they provide. To answer the question though, if you really want to make an impact starting your company or your project, paying for a mentor would be the most helpful to you. In this episode I'm going to share with you the 4 benefits of hiring a coach or mentor. Then dive into 3 things to keep in mind when looking around for one. You’ll want to find someone who has experience in what you want help in. You want to find someone who you mesh with at a personal level. Find someone who can coach you in the way you learn from best. There are so many awesome people who are mentors and coaches out there. But you need to figure out what you want help on specifically and then with the steps above, find the one for you. If you are a developer or designer who is freelancing, not looking to build a large agency, but looking to niche down and specialize your business to build recurring revenue, let’s have a chat . No strings attached, just want to learn more about you and why you do what you do.
Wed, June 20, 2018
A83 - Can I do web, software development and digital marketing as a freelancer at the same time?
Each of these 3 fields are different, yet they all have crossover. You want to create a done-for-you-service for your clients to elevate above the other freelancers just offering one of these 3. The short answer to this question is “yes, you can do all of them at the same time, but at what cost?” Will you be awesome or just mediocre at all Will you get the best results for your clients doing all 3 Will you get the best results for your business doing all 3 Will you burn yourself out doing all 3 My question to you would be which of the 3 are you best at? Start with that one and then slowly move into the others where it fits and can augment your services that you are great at today. In today's show, I take you through my journey and decision making process to bridge those crossover points to augment and make a more complete service and solution for my clients to get the most from me.
Tue, June 19, 2018
A82 - How do you market your business to local clients other than attending networking meetings?
First, walk around town, walk around your city. Find the types of businesses that you want to work with. Take note of their websites. Create a quick 1-2 minute video, using a tool like Loom, showing them exactly what you can do for them. Bonus points if in that video you tell them exactly the steps they need to take themselves. Then send it off to them with a link to the video and a quick note sharing with them what you did. Bonus strategy included with this by way of Justin Jackson in this episode. Second, is a page from a friend of mine, Matt Medeiros . He hosts a podcast highlighting the businesses and business owners of his local market. He has a podcast called We Are Here for the entrepreneurs and business builders of the South Coast of MA. If your local area does not have a podcast, of even if it does, having a podcast and inviting businesses onto it to talk about them, their business, gives immediate wins back to the community and local businesses. These 2 effectively strategies can show that simply by providing value, you are making an impact in your local community. What you provide value to those businesses, you stand head and shoulders above the crowd and put a face to the name behind an email address. Remember it’s your local client base. It’s your neighborhood. Time to remember what allowed the Mom and Pop shows to last those 45, 60, even 100 years in your town. Be a good neighbor!
Mon, June 18, 2018
A81 - How do you followup with a lead after a proposal?
“Hi there, just wanted to reach out and see if you have any questions about the proposal. Don’t hesitate to reply back. Looking forward to working with you.” This is the worst possible thing you can do. It unravels all the hard work you have put in to position yourself as the expert freelancer for their project and business. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you the 3-part email sequence followup I've used for 10+ years and how it keeps your position as the perfect freelancer for the job.
Fri, June 15, 2018
A80 - How did you do it?
Over the years I’ve learned that what works for someone may not work for me. You’ve heard me say “take it and make it your own” before. The reason I say that is because you have to own whatever it is that I’m sharing with you. I dive into injecting your own personality into the tactics and strategies you hear on this show (or any place for that matter). I also ask you a pretty personal question (about me) that I would really love to hear from you on. 🤔
Thu, June 14, 2018
A79 - What is the best way to attract larger clients?
Attracting the large clients is the same as attracting small clients. Know the problem you are solving for them. This is even more the case for attracting larger clients. A much more effective way to land larger clients is to seek them out rather than try and wait for them to come to you. Larger clients are much more difficult to nab, well because they have layers and layers of people in the organization and getting in front of the right person can be much harder. Most of the times with smaller clients, you are working with the founder or owner of the business. Depending on what you do, you’ll need to find the appropriate person to get in front of. You can go to that organization on LinkedIn and find who that person is and see if you have any sort of connection to that person. Ariel Viera leveraged the power of Facebook to get in front of the "right" people with his content just as a bit of marketing, like TV commercials. He didn't ask for a sale, didn't promote, just pushed his content. In this episode I share with you 4 points from my experience in working with larger brands that you'll want to keep in mind.
Wed, June 13, 2018
A78 - Does live chat bring you in business?
My answer is yes. Sure, you'll get the strange, one-off questions from time to time, but you will be able to engage with someone as if they are walking right into your office. Shy of getting on a phone call or meeting someone in person, live chat gives a lead that availability to ask questions that your website doesn't have answers to. Having that quick chat can mean the difference to landing a gig or not. In this episode, I share with you why I use it and the benefits it's given my business, not just from getting clients.
Tue, June 12, 2018
A77 - Do you charge for meetings?
During that call you are providing your time, experience and expertise to answer questions and/or scope out work. That is time that’s requested by your client of you to be a part of a meeting that they feel is necessary. It could be about your project directly, it could be about a future project, or totally unrelated to anything that you are working on with them in the first place, but they want to pick your brain. As a freelancer you should look at meetings just like you look at any other billable time. In fact, you should look at meetings as even more valuable because you are getting the opportunity to learn more about pains of your client, learn more about their business, and take notes on those things to become even more of an asset to them.
Mon, June 11, 2018
A76 - Why is an email list important for a freelancer?
In order to be successful and build a sustainable freelance business where you can stay out of the famine part of the feast and famine cycle, you need to be able to push through those slow periods and not lose your shirt. An email list is your best asset here. To minimize the work right now, go into your inbox and/or wherever you keep your communication with leads and build a spreadsheet with 3 columns. First Name, Last Name, Email Address Now after that, do the same with your past clients by just going into your billing system and pulling out all that information. You should essentially have one list with 2 segments Leads and Past Clients. Send an email to each person on that list asking them a simple email. “I’m writing today just to ask you one simple question. Would you like to be included on my email list to receive information about X so that you can Y? Also to stay up-to-date with my services and be first to know about any new availability and offers I may have? If you want in, just reply with ‘yes’ and I’ll add this as your best email address to my list.” Remember those slow periods, well this is how you push through those successfully. When identifying those slow periods, craft a scaled back version of your services and a month or 2 prior to that slow period. Write out a few emails to your list with your scaled back offer. I’m not saying to discount your services, I’m suggesting you to carve out a slice of your services that you can do, build, implement, and deliver quickly and effectively. Then offer that at a profitable price.
Fri, June 08, 2018
A75 - What is my second most successful lead generation tactic?
But in this episode, I'm going to share how you can do the same. In order to do that though, it will time, but something that can be done once and continue to be a profitable means of getting clients.
Thu, June 07, 2018
A74 - What podcasting gear do I use?
In this episode I'll share with you the gear, software and host and give you my 2¢ on each of them and why I chose them. For my mic - Rode Podcaster For recording - Audacity and Zencastr For hosting - Transistor.fm The mic, Zencastr, and Transistor do come with a price. Albeit not too much, but I just wanted to mention that you will need with the gear I talk about, some level of initial investment. As you'll hear in the show, I've got a ton of value and return on that investment that I'm not about to turn back now.
Wed, June 06, 2018
A73 - What does it take to be a freelancer?
Don't get me wrong here, you don't have to have them, but I think if you are looking to be as successful as you can be as a freelancer, these 6 traits are what you should be aware of. Patience Determination Discipline Curiosity Know your strengths/weaknesses and be able to adjust Take imperfection action I dive a little deeper into each of these with examples and experiences in this episode.
Tue, June 05, 2018
When creating a new freelance service what’s the best way to send cold emails?
By “you” focus, I mean that you want to make your emails about the other person, not about you, your business. Kai Davis wrote an amazing piece around this on and I’ll link that in the show notes. He shows you exactly how to write a You Focused email. Here is the simple 4-step process I dive into for cold emailing for freelancers Compliment them Spend time researching for a quick win to provide them Provide them a resource to find out more about that quick win Share with them the benefit of your service By going into cold emailing with the intention of educating and serving the recipient first, you’ll be way more successful in the end.
Mon, June 04, 2018
When it comes to getting premium freelance clients, what's your single biggest challenge?
These 4 things for me are critical to the success of the project. In order to land higher priced projects, clients need to understand and be willing to pay those prices. Remember price is subjective, you want it as high as possible. Whereas the client wants it as low as possible. To make the pricing conversation steer clear of other suitors, you and the client have to be a fit for each other. Premium freelance clients will have thought about their project and what it means for their business for more than 30 minutes after having a conversation with a friend at a BBQ. Premium freelance clients will also understand the value someone brings to them because they’ve thought about an ROI to the project that’s acceptable to them. They realize that by putting $X they hope to get $Y back. In this episode I'll explain how you can do this effectively so you’ll diminish or remove altogether, the gap between your high price and their low price.
Fri, June 01, 2018
How do you have time for all that you do?
This question came by way of Scott inside of Feast - the membership community for freelancers looking to specialize their business and build recurring revenue inside their freelance business. I asked him why he was asking me this question. He simply said that since I do perform services work, run the program, produce all sorts of free content, and then still have time to be with the family, how’s that possible? So I had to think about it and to be quite honest, it’s just a matter of making things a priority. I share with you my process and how I get things done I want to get done.
Thu, May 31, 2018
How do I go from one-off projects to retainers for all future projects? And is it a good idea?
There are 3 points I want to make here to help you on the path to shifting your business into recurring revenue. You must nail down your offer and solution Know exactly who you are talking to and talk in their own language You have to stick to your guns In Episode 6 - What’s the best way to pivot if you are serving a new niche? I shared with you a bunch of tactics that would apply to this question to, so definitely go have a listen to that as well.
Wed, May 30, 2018
What do I need to do to ramp up my freelance business after having been in the game for a few years?
Your skills are advancing and you want to be able to grow the revenue accordingly. What will happen though is that your growth of revenue will start to plateau and hit a ceiling. If you haven’t already, you need to niche down or specialize your business. Start to figure out what problems you are solving for your clients over and over again. Start figuring out which clients of yours that you work with the best. Start figuring out an industry or even technology that you are working with to deliver the solution. By doing this, you can start to build and increase your profitability. You’ll start to deliver the solution quicker and more effectively. You’ll start to be able to anchor your price to the value of the return the client gets, not to the time you are actually billable. Your client sees a price that is a no brainer for them to spend when the ROI on that investment is proven time and time again.
Tue, May 29, 2018
How to start out as a freelance translator?
My suggestion was for her to take a look at their website, check out their forums for both opportunities where their customers were struggling with the plugin, but mainly for websites where her services as a translator would help. Another thing I suggested to her was to reach out to the makers of the plugin and see if you can get onto the radar of their support team as a translator. Look around online using a tool like builtwith.com and search for sites using WPML, and build up an outreach list of sites that have poor translations. She emailed back to me last week and told me that she’s landed 8 gigs and 3 of them are recurring. She’s now looking to move up a bit and become an exclusive freelance translator for 5 clients on a monthly basis. You go get ‘em Mia. If you are looking to start out or break through a particular industry, look within that space and see what the top vendors are and make friends. Even if the opportunity to make friends isn’t there, no doubt you can find other businesses using those top vendors that could be struggling with something that you can help with. Being a freelancer is about solving problems. Go ahead and seek out the problems that you can solve, show how you solve them and you’ll be successful at business and ultimately a freelancer.
Mon, May 28, 2018
How can I start freelancing without experience?
Though on the business side is where you differentiate yourself. Your organization skills, follow-up, how you document aspects of the project, how you deliver on whatever it is that you are doing, and the customer experience. All these things matter in creating a buzz around how you do what you do and create a word of mouth to other folks around what you do. The best suggestion I can offer here is to get yourself into a great community of other freelancers. Go to events and network with other business folks. Online communities are a plenty for sure. But there are a handful that are outstanding for freelancers to learn to hone their craft. WP Elevation is amazing if you work with WordPress. CMA, or the Content Marketing Academy is great if you are a writer. If you are looking to remain a solo freelancer, Feast , which is our online community, will help you niche down and build recurring revenue. Don’t be afraid to fail. Failing only happens when you don’t learn from your stumbles. But that’s what I’m hear to try and help you with, right? To help you get past the bumps in the road or as many of those bumps that I hit along the way.
Fri, May 25, 2018
What are the tools and services that you use and would recommend to freelancers?
The caveat here is that what works for me, may not work for you. Every business is different. How you work is different than how I work. But I’ll try and explain why I enjoy using each of these tools. My mindset is that the tool should get out of the way of my every day. If I have to remember to use it, or it’s something where I have to turn my business around to use, it’s not for me. The 5 tools that I use every day in my business that keeps me sane, keeps my clients happy, and serves my business. Sure I have a bunch of others, but these are the ones that get out of the way of me doing business and have solved so many hurdles and manual processes for me.
Thu, May 24, 2018
How do you price your work as a freelance web developer (Part 3)?
At the end of episode 63 , I no doubt left you thinking 2 questions which I’ll hope to shed some light on for you. Why did you talk yourself out of $12,500. I looked at an opportunity to make more than that. It comes down to simple math really. If I spend 10 hours working on solving a problem for a client and make $2500 on that, my effective hourly rate is $250 per hour. It lowers my risk to work with this client, and the opportunity of them being happy much faster is much greater. On the other hand, if I spend 6 weeks and roughly about 30 hours a week doing a complete redesign of their website, my effective hourly rate is $83. The risk is high on both sides from both a cost and time perspective. The risk is also higher because we don’t fully understand if the redesign will result in the goal the client has. What if I don’t do ecommerce, how can I quantify the value for the client? In content marketing, design, writing, social media and many other types of projects, it’s often hard to quantify the ROI a client will have. Reflect back on the 3 buckets of saving time, making money, or making money faster. Find which bucket your client falls into. In these cases it’s often that time matters to the client. They’d much rather use their time to work on the business or on sales calls or building business relationships. In this episode you'll learn about a tactic that I have used and others have used to really connect with the person you are meeting with, without saying a word.
Wed, May 23, 2018
How do you price your work as a freelance web developer (Part 2)?
Let me explain the difference here. When a client comes to me asking for a new design for their ecommerce store, that’s a want. It’s now my job as the professional to get to the bottom of why they feel they want a redesign. I do this by using the 5 Whys technique. You’ve no doubt heard me or someone else talk about this conversational method where you continue to ask questions of someone until you actually get down to the root cause of their problem. You will feel a bit awkward at first performing this. But as you continue to do this anytime a request comes across your desk, you’ll get better and better at it. The next step is creating a no-brainer price around the solution to their project. Remember that price is a subjective. It’s an arbitrary number that someone puts on a product or service. From your POV, the price should be higher than that of the client. From their POV, they would want it as low as possible. By unpacking what the real need of the project is in step 1, we can close this gap by putting some real numbers to it and show the potential ROI of the project. In this episode I walk you through a real case of mine with actual numbers. You'll be able to take what you hear in this show and apply it to your very next lead.
Tue, May 22, 2018
How do you price your work as a freelance web developer?
In episode 50, 57, 60 I touch a bit about pricing your services and what to look for from both a starting point and where you want to get to point. In episode 12, I dive a little deeper into the topic where I was asked “how do I talk to a lead about a one-off project and turn them into a recurring services client?” But I want to share today the exact process I go through in order to put a value on my service so that the price I present is a no-brainer for a lead to jump on board and become a client. Value pricing is much harder to do, and I think that’s why a lot of you if you are starting out default to hourly. There’s definitely nothing wrong with that either, but at some point you’ll want to stop trading your time for money. It’s a difficult thing to do because of 3 things: you need to understand your clients have the confidence to ask tough questions pin the value of your services against a dollar amount All of these things are not easy to come by. Especially #2 — difficult conversations, and that’s what talking about budgets and rates can be for you. It was for me for a long time. I didn’t like the perceived confrontation. I wasn’t comfortable asking the questions I needed to ask in order to really understand their business. Until I realized that...
Mon, May 21, 2018
What is freelance?
After looking into what "free lance" comes from, what it's true meaning is, I embraced the term and I hope this episode will help you as well. To be a successful freelancer and have a successful freelancing business, you need: To have focus and driven to do the best work possible Highly communicative Charge what you are worth Know who you serve Know the very big problem that you solve for them Have the discipline to stay on task Focus on your own business as if it were a client of yours These 7 things are absolute musts, non-negiotiable. With these 7 characteristics you will stand head and shoulders above the crowd. Because of them, you can embrace the term “freelance” and know that you aren’t just a hire hand or a mercenary. You do what you do to help grow your client’s businesses. You are passionate about the “thing” you are putting into the world because you know that it can help make difference, not just in your client’s eyes, but their customers’ eyes and ultimately your own. By becoming that partner with your clients, you can design a life, the life you want, through freelance. That is freelance!
Fri, May 18, 2018
What sort of freelance work is available for an individual web developer?
Most of the advice is learn as many different languages as you can. Build up your portfolio. Get out and do local networking. Get on job boards. I’ll did all these things and what it landed me was smack dab in the middle of generalist-ville and back to sitting in a cube full-time. It’s no wonder why so many freelancers are always stuck in the feast or famine cycle with this sort of advice still out there. Here are the 5 things I dive into in this episode: Talk with your existing network and probe for projects to work on Start figuring out a niche Get yourself organized Charge what your worth Ask for referrals
Thu, May 17, 2018
Aren’t I leaving money on the table?
When you niche down, you become an expert, unique, and everyone knows exactly what is it that you do. They actually listen to you and respect the experience and expertise you have. You may get less leads into your business, but when you niche down and the leads know exactly what they are getting from you. Because of this, they are more qualified because they already have a problem that they understand you can solve for them. As a generalist, they will look at you as a jack of all trades. People who are generalists often have to compete with other generalists on price. When you are the expert, you can set your own price. Because you can set your own price and can prove with past results you’ve gotten with other clients, the leads will know the results without having to ask you. They respect those results, trust you because of the results you have received for previous clients and will pay for those same results.
Wed, May 16, 2018
How to freelance when you are depressed?
My answer to this question isn’t a simple one. But I share with you my experiences as an example in this episode. This is something that needs to be put out there more in this man’s opinion. 4 suggestions that have helped me are: 1. Find people that you can talk with every day - inside + outside of your family and friends. You need to talk with folks on both sides of your life, the professional and personal. 2. Take mental breaks throughout the day. Go for a walk. Play with your kids. Even just sit outside on your front porch. Whatever it is that you can do to give your brain a rest. 3. Go on vacation! Can’t stress (no pun intended) this enough. When you get an extended break, your brain does this reshuffle of priorities without you even knowing it. So that when you come back, you are re-energized and re-focused to do some awesome work. 4. Take mental health days. Or even half days. You are building a business of your own, why not take advantage of that once in a while and allow yourself to not work. The other morning I knew I had to get up at 5:30a as I always do. But I literally said to myself, I’m tired, TJ is sleeping well this morning, and so I’m going to sleep in. My wife rolled over at 6:50 and said, you know it’s almost 7 right? I simply replied, yup and slept in until 7:30a. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a bunch of stuff to do. But I just wasn’t feeling it that morning and so I gave my brain a break rather than force it and potentially make the entire day a lost day, or worse. There are some awesome communities, like WP Elevation who talk openly about mental health. I think we all, as humans, need to be more aware of where the health of our minds are. We are always so conscious of our weight or the foods we eat, but if our heads aren’t health, the rest of the body won’t be either.
Tue, May 15, 2018
Do you negotiate on price?
If a lead or client say something to the effect of “Well I need Option A, but is there any way to get that price lower or closer to Option B?” Holding true to what the offers are I simply and politely say “no”. A few things may happen from this: They will see that I’ve thought through their project and know the solution that will get them results for their budget They’ll see that because I’m not wavering on price, that may I’m a little bit different than the vast majority of freelancers and consultants out there. They may just walk away. Which for me is ok. Not negotiating on price doesn’t mean that I’m not flexible. It just means that when I put a number of a scope of work, that’s a true value number. The final thing I’d like to talk about on this topic is that if you present a proposal, you want to position your price to the value the client would get from the project. You do this by figuring out during the sales process what the project ultimately means to them. Is it a time saver? Is it something to bring in more customers? Is it something to keep current customers longer? If you can position your price against that of the value of the solution to their problem and make it a clear no brainer, they won’t even ask about a lower price.
Mon, May 14, 2018
Do you get any leads from your content? And what traffic acquisition methods have worked best?
Being a freelancer you need to be putting content out there so that you can start building upon that reputation. As my friend and virtual mentor, Chris Ducker says, "You need to build influence, and by building influence you are seen as trustworthy and get the job done." I have article on my site that potential clients have found through search. They had the question answered in some form or another and then those prospects reached out to me for additional work, or just to do the thing that my article is saying. The other piece of content that has helped is content that I’ve written or talked about on the podcasts about things that I do for my processes. Clients have told me that by hearing how I organize things, how structure projects and my days, and how I just run my business has shown professionalism that most don’t. Those are their words, not mine. I consider the content helpful for positioning and sales, I don’t think that I had any piece of content that’s directly converted someone to become a client of mine. Mainly because I don’t have buy now buttons on articles. Bottom line here is that content helps you sell. It helps you position yourself. It helps you stand out. You should be thinking about your content in a way that is helpful first, then acquisition second. Use your content as an awareness tool, and use your sales process as the converting tool. Service based consultants won’t convert someone to buy their premium priced packages from one article. But one article can make a reader recognize you and your business and see your business as a resource to buy from later on.
Fri, May 11, 2018
Should you do free work to build a portfolio?
You to get a gauge on what my value in the market was. There’s no way to do that if you aren’t getting paid. Having someone tell me “let’s do this project and then if it goes well, I’ll have more work for you” never showed me that the person valued the work I was doing. There may be certain circumstances where you need to take on spec work. Say for example you are a designer and looking to branch off into an industry that you have never worked in before. If you don’t have a other clients to show work, it may be hard to land a client. Or if you are totally learning a new skill and want to offer services using that skill. Doing spec work will help you learn and get you that real world experience too. Make sure to get sign off from that client for you to be able to use them in your portfolio? As an alternative to spec work, try scaling back work. Let’s assume you are starting anew and that’s why you are looking to work for free. Instead of doing the whole project, why not scale back and do a small, more manageable, less riskier piece of the project. That’s really what’s at play in all this. Risk. The client wants to keep the price as low as possible, sure. But they want the price as low as possible to minimize their risk of potentially the work not getting done. You get the real-world experience and learned skill. Plus, the scaled back timeframe allows you to get more initial pieces into your portfolio even faster. If you are starting out, don’t just assume that you have to do work for free. Don’t be enticed by the “I’ll give you more work after this project is done” promise. Think about what you can do that’s smaller, but still get you the learned skill you desire and build up a bit of a portfolio quicker so you can get to being respected for the value you are bringing to your clients’ businesses.
Thu, May 10, 2018
What did your parents/partner say when you told them you wanted to freelance?
Today I dive a bit into my personal life that I haven't done before. So have a listen and see if you can relate. The main thing though is you want to make sure that you surround yourself with supportive people. Not necessarily supportive of your choice, but support you. What I mean by that is, to this day, my Mom still doesn’t really understand what I do, but she is proud of the life and happy if I’m happy. My friends may question some of my decisions I choose around doing or not doing something work related, but they know that I always manage to figure out a way. If you surround yourself with doubters or people who will judge you constantly, then they will inevitably start to rub off on you and you’ll start to doubt yourself. These people are detractors. If your family are detractors, then take what they say as concern for your well-being and security and their own fears of the unknown. It doesn’t mean that they don’t support you, it’s just that they may not see down the same path as you. It’s family, remember that. Instead I encourage you to surround yourself with folks who may challenge you, play a bit of a devil’s advocate if you will. Find your own path, don’t be shy about telling someone about you freelancing. Let them think what they think and leave it at that. There’s really no better time than now to plant your flag in the freelance space.
Wed, May 09, 2018
Do I have to be concerned with GDPR?
As a part of the GDPR, all customers or users will have the right to request the data held on them, the right to have that data deleted if its original purpose has ceased, and the right to have that data transferred to a different provider. Which means to provide an individual with the right to request, delete, or move their personal data, the individual must be aware that you as a company have the data to begin with. Without their awareness of you using their data, they have no actionable right. So the use of user or customer data through third party providers is likely to become quite complicated. This would fall under the right-to-be-forgotten laws. As you can see from the previous 5 sentences alone, there are lots of room for interpretation and questions to be answered. So best to consult your lawyer. I can’t tell you how to make your business comply with GDPR because there are still so many gray areas (in my opinion) for the EU, that outside of the EU it’s even a darker gray. What I can tell you is that if you are “doing right” by your email subscribers you are well on your way to being compliant. What’s “doing right” mean? It means that: you are doing double opt-in you are allowing folks to unsubscribe from every email if you are sharing email addresses via JV webinars, online summits, partnerships, etc with other businesses, you are sending transitional emails to those subscribers letting them know what you are doing with their email address and giving them an option to opt-out you share who else has their data and make sure that you understand (even sign, in some cases) what they are doing with the data. This includes 3rd parties such as Google, Facebook, etc. you aren’t selling your email list In short, you are doing good business with good intentions. You may also want to update your privacy policy on your website after the conversation with your lawyer. Further resources: 12 Steps to take now GDPR Requirements in Plain English Action Items Update your Privacy Policy Add a checkbox to any lead magnet form and have the subscriber acknowledge what you intend on doing with their information after the lead magnet delivery Find out what else you can do from your own email marketing service In Drip and
Tue, May 08, 2018
Isn’t it hard to have self-discipline when you work at home?
In episode 36 - How to work from home effectively , I dove into 4 tips and discipline was the very first tip. Then in episode 45 - How does the house run with 2 stay at home, freelancing parents , I shared 3 tactics that help the house to run smoothly while maintaining a high level of quality to our work. Aside from those 7 tips, I want to answer you with something that I didn’t mention in those episodes. That’s self-awareness. Let me explain what I mean in this episode.
Mon, May 07, 2018
Is my niche too narrow?
Think about your own buying habits. Think of how others buy. Folks are tied to Apple products like it’s the only option out there, right? And to think they started by building computers that really couldn’t compete in the market. Then launched the iPod and took off. A tiny music player that folks could download music to and didn’t need to carry around CDs anymore. Now we’ve got iPhones and MacBooks all over the place right? I was an early adopter of MP3 players and most of them sucked. Until the iPod. It was a very tiny niche (almost to say that it wasn’t even a niche). And it essentially revitalized a company. If the niche is narrow and there are folks really looking to scratch that itch, they will pay for it and you’ll have raving fans for life.
Fri, May 04, 2018
How to start freelancing?
I wrote a more in-depth blog post called the Definitive Guide to Start Freelancing Successfully that dives much deeper into each of the steps I outline here. Most freelancers don’t do the work that it takes to run a successful business, that’s why the term flakey freelancer exists. It’s why you hear freelancers talk about the feast or famine cycle all the time. Following these 6 steps will set the foundation for you, in order to really level up your game to specialization and recurring revenue. You’ll see patterns and gaps in the market that you can fill. You’ll become that goto person that people talk about when it comes to the service you offer. And bottom line, you’ll stay out of the famine and live in the feast.
Thu, May 03, 2018
Should I focus on SEO or Paid Ads to gain new clients?
If you are starting out in your freelance business, you probably don’t have a daily budget to run ads. Focusing on answering your clients questions, and being able to convert those visitors into leads on your site would be the better use of your resources. SEO isn’t an overnight thing though. It takes time, it takes optimizations, for Google to start pulling you up in the ranks. On the other hand, if you want to run an event, unless you have a large following, paid ads would make sense to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I talk about folks doing creative things with Facebook Ads which you may want to take a page from if you are looking to attract a certain type of person or company. But if you’re looking to keep that pipeline of leads full, looking to establish yourself long term, then your best bet is to concentrate on SEO, answer your client’s questions in the public forum of your blog to attract those leads who are asking Google those same questions.
Wed, May 02, 2018
What are skills you can learn fast and have high freelancer value?
The number one thing would be to learn the language of your clients . If you can understand what they mean when they are saying certain things to you, then can echo back to them, you instantly create that connection with them and build trust. Number 2 is don’t wait for them to ask for an update . Be out in front of them. You know you are doing the work, they know you are doing the work. But they don’t know where you are in the process. So shoot them off a simple email, maybe once or twice a week to let them know what’s going on. Number 3, make memorable moments. Celebrate the wins. Both you and your client work hard. Way too much we wallow in the bad things that happen and often don’t celebrate the wins that happen over the course of a project.
Tue, May 01, 2018
How can I focus on my business when I’ve got a ton client work?
Your business is important. Not just for you, but for your clients. If you don’t make your business important and set that time aside, you won’t be around very long for your clients, right? Here are 3 tips: 1. Wake up one hour early/or work one hour later if that’s more your speed and only work on your business tasks. This will not take away from your client work at all. In fact, you’ll be adding one more hour to your work day, but solely meant for working on the business, not in the business. 2. Plan your week in advance and set aside time in every single day to work on the business. If that means juggling around client work to make that happen, then do it. 3. Set aside one entire day for business tasks. This is usually hard for most people, especially if you are asking the question of the day here. But by doing so, you know that you are doing what you need to continue with the business moving forward. If you don’t need a full day, make it a half day. Even tell your clients that during that specific day you aren’t taking any phone calls or meetings.
Mon, April 30, 2018
How do you build a good freelancing profile in the field of web development considering the competition?
I hate to break the news, but there isn’t a hack here. This takes time, effort, consistency, and most of all, doing good work. If you were to take several names of those “freelancer profiles” that you respect, what do they look like? Have they been in the game for a long time? Do they market themselves effectively? Do they work with some of the best names? How do their clients talk about them? and maybe the most important aspect of their profile is… What sort of focused solution are they providing? The reason this is important to pay attention to is that I guarantee you that every single person you respect, has invested a great deal of time to hone their craft. They aren’t jumping over to the newest shiny object in web development every 3-6 months. They get great at one thing and evolve with that. They become the goto person for that particular technology. That’s not to say that they didn’t start by being a general web developer. Most have in fact. But they quickly realized that they were great at one thing, or enjoyed working on a specific platform, or even found themselves working with some of the best companies in a particular industry. By focusing on that, it allowed them to focus the time and energy on that thing and not all the things. They then rise quicker through the ranks, or as you said, build a good freelancing profile, because they are providing value in ways that generalist developers don’t. The companies and people they work with spread the word among their colleagues. Their street cred rises and things like testimonials, projects, and even rates begin to stack up. There are other ways in which to market yourself to help boost your profile too. One of which is through podcasting. Let me explain what I mean by this. When I first starting down the road of becoming a WooCommerce developer, I was coming from a Ruby on Rails and custom PHP development world. Very much a generalist. I wasn’t known in the WordPress space at all. But I did enjoy listening to podcasts and talking geek with other developers. Through the socials I had a conversation with another dev who was building a business as well and as we were sharing experiences, we both had toyed around with the idea of starting a podcast. A month later, we did just that. It was a round table like discussion talking about any and all things WordPress with myself, him and we’d bring on another dev or 2 to join in. The podcast itself only lasted 19 episodes, but his company wound up being bought out by a very premium WordPress agency and I become known in the WordPress space as the WooCommerce guy. Maybe a year or 2 later, I would be talking with Troy Dean, founder of WP Elevation, an accelerator course for WordPress consultants and very well know in the WordPress space. He had mentioned that his business mentor said to becom
Fri, April 27, 2018
How does the house run with 2 stay at home, freelancing parents?
This question is inspired by 2 people, one is Scott, a Feast member, who sent me an email yesterday that said “I don’t know how you find the time to do all you do.” Then another person who I’ve known for some time through Twitter, Amber Turner. Go check out her site and amberturner.com . She posted a great article talking about her life transition in both her freelancing and personal life. In this article she talked about and I’m paraphrasing a bit here, on how the content around freelancing talks about things that other freelancers have done in the past, but are out of touch because they no longer do freelancing. Or content that’s focused on the business end of freelancing. This content even talks about how freelancing can give you the life you want, yet doesn’t talk about the life part of it, or the journey as they walk through it. You aren’t alone Amber. I’ve noticed both of these types of content a lot lately too. Freelancing has been around for a while now and I feel that if you are a few steps removed from your last freelance gig, then you may also be a few steps removed from what’s working today. I also talk about living the kind of life you want a great deal. I try to mix in what’s going on in my life with the house, family, friends, etc, but I know I could provide a bit more of an insight as well. So that’s the inspiration for today’s show. My wife is a newly minted freelancer, and she’s doing that so that she can be home with TJ, our one year old son. She has some clients and so has some work to do, but is able to manage them during naps, waking up before TJ does and breaks during the day. Since I’m more established, I tend to work full long days and the majority of the income for the house. One thing that we both want though is to be home for TJ, take him to things like Gymboree and swimming lessons, spend some time in the yard because it’s an awesome and sunny day. In order to keep us both on the same page so that we can get stuff done, we coordinate our calendars at the beginning of the week. We make sure that if one of us has calls to take, that the other blocks that time off in case TJ is up and about (which means that we have to chase him down from playing with cabinets and cat food). Another thing that we do is make sure that we each get time to our selves. Whether than means getting out of the house to meet up with friends for an evening, or if Grandma comes over to babysit for a little bit while we get out for a nice quiet dinner. A final thing is that if one of us has a deadline or some high priority work, the other makes sure to block off, even change around their schedule so that there’s TJ coverage. May even be that to ensure a quiet house, a store run with TJ happens. Communication is key here. Let’s be real, the house wouldn’t be in order if it weren’t for Joanna. She really is the glue that holds it all togeth
Fri, April 27, 2018
Should I niche down to a specific industry in my local area?
I hate to answer a question with a question, but are you focused on local businesses? If so and the size of your market can't support your business then focusing on a specific industry may be too restrictive. For more on exploring your market and the industry head on over to read, listen and explore the Step By Step Guide to Specialization On the flipside, if you can have a handful of outstanding, recurring, residual clients in a specific industry that support your business, you can charge a premium for those services.
Wed, April 25, 2018
What payment structure should I do?
Congrats on landing the gig — I’m assuming that you don’t have a signed contract in place yet though. Because the terms of payment should definitely be included in your contract. If you haven’t set the expectations during the sales process of how you are to be paid, then you could potentially be on a bumpy road. Not saying that they aren’t expecting to pay you, but they may have different expectations than you do. There’s different structures that businesses have in their minds, 50/50, 100% at the end, 30/30/30, NET 30-90, and so on. So I would encourage you on your next sales call, to iron out those details so that when it does come time to pay, the terms are set in your contract, and that everyone is on the same page. For this particular instance though, you’ll want to definitely get half up front. The reason being is that you want your client to be engaged and invested in the project as much as you are. If they haven’t paid you, then there’s no skin in the game from their end. If you are paid 100% up front, then there’s no skin in the game for you to deliver quickly (other than you being a stand up person, right?) Depending on the size of the project though, 50% may be extremely high, and so you’ll want to flatten that out a bit more, maybe 30/30/30. If the project is a lengthy, on-going type of project, maybe come up with a weekly or monthly rate. These all lower the risk level for you and your client, but put enough of an investment into the project that you are both engaged and motivated to stick to the priority of the project.
Tue, April 24, 2018
Are you comfortable?
If you aren't uncomfortable while learning a new skill or pushing the envelope of your business, then are you really moving forward? Are you going to reach your goals? Public speaking is something that I am mortified of doing. "But you've got 2 podcasts and have spoken at conferences and meetups?" Yup, but it still terrifies me. But I know that by putting myself in that position, I will grow. With the amazing feedback, I get from folks like yourself, what I talk about helps them and so why not do it. Hearing how others are reaching their goals in building their businesses in the way they want fuels my fire. If I can play a tiny part in helping them overcome some question, hurdle, struggle that's just a bonus. Anytime I've ever put myself in an uncomfortable position like that, I've come out on the other end in a much better place. I would encourage you to think about when the last time you felt a bit uncomfortable.
Mon, April 23, 2018
What do I do first thing Monday morning?
Being a freelancer for 15 years, I've learned a few tricks. Knowing how to start the week off on the right foot, starts with planning Monday morning before Monday! This is critical for me since I feel like if I don’t do my weekly review on Sundays, I’m lost. I feel behind on the week because my review is usually about an hour of time. In this episode I walk you through my 10 steps to performing a weekly review so that you know your week starts off on the right foot.
Fri, April 20, 2018
What happens if you can’t define a scope of work on a call?
Firstly, there’s no moving forward with a proposal if you can’t nail down a scope of work right? Often times if you are in one of these conversations, you can tell within 10-15 mins of it that you are in one. It’s usually filled with meandering paths to loosely based goals. The best thing about these conversations is that they do lead to paid discoveries. These are lower risk, high reward engagements for you and your lead. How you ask and present this is the best way to get these types of freelance engagements.
Thu, April 19, 2018
Have advice for soliciting podcasters to be a guest?
When you are freelancing you want to get out there on podcasts, guest blog, and anything else that puts you in front of potential clients and people who will buy from you. getonpodcasts.com - Kai’s lessons help quite a bit and landed me on a few. For soliciting, the key is first finding podcasts where you can add value to that audience and then pitch that host with that value add, first and foremost. I dive into 5 tips in this episode to keep you on track so that you can get yourself the most out of you podcast tour.
Wed, April 18, 2018
What is the best way to get income fast?
I’m going to start by saying that this question seems to have a sense of urgency and a result of lack of planning. That’s not a knock by any means, I’ve been there :). So I definitely am qualified to answer this question. You may be surprised at some of what I say in this episode, but as a freelancer, there are times when a reality check needs to happen and brutal honesty is needed. I outline 3 things you can do so that you can get income fast.
Tue, April 17, 2018
Why do things that don't scale?
In the service based industry, if you delight and make an impression on your leads, clients, and past clients, that will continue to ripple through them and the people they know. Look, as a freelancer you have the best opportunity to make an impact on someone else, whether that’s them personally or professionally. Why not do it? That is the stuff that doesn’t scale.
Mon, April 16, 2018
How to work from home effectively?
As a freelancer, it's such a luxury to be working from home. However it is so easy to be distracted when you work from home. As a was having a conversation with another father at my nephew's little league game over the weekend, we traded our best 4 tips to work from home effectively. The 4 tips are: 1. Discipline 2. Making sure family respects the work place 3. Get out 4. Support Regardless if you are a developer, designer, marketer, writer, in sales, etc, these 4 tips will help you work from home more effectively.
Fri, April 13, 2018
How to get the messaging right to attract customers?
There’s no easy and quick answer to getting the messaging right. You need to learn what it is and apply that learning over time to really get it right. The best things that have worked for me are: 1. Conversations 2. Testimonials 3. Support Get yourself away from the generic headers and think about what your clients are saying and use them. That’s where you’ll find the right messaging to attract the best kinds of clients.
Thu, April 12, 2018
Do you schedule in time for exploring or reading articles online?
This is a great question, because as a freelancer, you should be mindful of where your time goes. I don’t schedule the time in specifically, however I do read a ton. I tend to read articles more at night or early morning after waking up. This often times is the best time for me because it’s quiet, I don’t have to think about anything else and it allows me to wind down or up, depending on the day. I do read tons of articles, and I do have a process around them, I just don’t schedule the reading time in. I just do it when I feel like it and pick off the articles from the list. In this episode you'll hear how I process an article to read so that I don't go fumbling around down rabbit holes and more importantly take action on the article.
Thu, April 12, 2018
Do certifications work for growing a freelance business?
There are many certifications out there in the market that a freelancer can grab. It can help your business grow, both as social proof, but also in your lead generation and sales. If you are specializing your business, sometimes you focus in on a particular piece of software that helps your clients’ business. Sometimes you focus on a specific coding language. Sometimes you focus on a platform. If you are focusing on these things and know them in and out, having a certification in them gives you that badge of honor. It says that the company recognizes you as someone who can work in all the nooks and crannies of that thing. If it’s something you can justify and get that return go for it. If it’s something that is more of an ego thing, then maybe check yourself on it.
Tue, April 10, 2018
How do you prevent, manage scope creep in your projects?
Scope creep worries even the most experienced freelancer. After a heard lesson early on in my career, I don’t look at scope creep as being something that’s a bad thing anymore. It’s more of an opportunity to be honest. Now don’t get me wrong, scope creep when handled wrong can kill everything about a project. The deadline, profitability, the trust. So it’s so very important that scope creep is handled in the best way possible. Remember scope creep starts with a simple ask. Usually, it’s the client asking if something can be done. Don’t immediately jump on it to get it done, but don’t immediately dismiss it either. Take note of it. Write it down some place even. Time to keep track of it. You will learn the easy 3 step process on how to handle scope creep the best way possible so that you can maintain client trust and successfully complete the project.
Mon, April 09, 2018
How do you handle two target markets for different services?
It is natural as a freelancer to want to look down the road of another path. Catering to 2 target markets is not easy, especially if they are vastly different. If you are building a product, course, writing a book, whatever that thing is alongside your services, it's not uncommon to feel overwhelmed. It’s definitely hard and something that I do struggle with. The biggest thing to do is remained focus on the tasks at hand. It’s too easy to get overwhelmed or get off the rails with the shiny objects. Setting goals and knowing what those incremental steps to achieve those goals help greatly. A lot of it is planning and being effective in that planning. Implement quickly, fail fast, learn and improve, seems to be the recipe for me.
Fri, April 06, 2018
How do you get away from a client that is most of your work?
As a freelancer, there needs to be a balance between your business moving forward and your clients’ businesses. As a freelancer you should think like a business owner, not an employee. If your business is not moving forward, your clients will ultimately suffer too. It’s a scary thing because you have all your eggs in one basket so to speak. If that client doesn’t need you anymore, then what? I think this is a question that most freelancers ask themselves but are hesitant to act on it. I get it, if it’s the bulk of your income, what can you do right? You don’t want to rock the boat. In this episode you will learn what the very first step is to get out from that one client being more of your income.
Thu, April 05, 2018
Is automation necessary to grow a business?
Instead of thinking about automation as this big complex behemoth, think of it as something that connects 2 actions together that makes your life easier. So when I started freelancing, I would meet people for sales meetings at their office, at a coffee shop, or restaurants. I wanted to save a few minutes so that I could grab a cup of coffee for everyone at the meeting, so I used automation to connect my Google Calendar to Evernote.
Wed, April 04, 2018
What software tools do you use for business? What is best?
As a freelancer, you are always looking to optimize your tools and work with the best out there. But “What is the best” is such a subjective term. When looking for tools, it’s easy to get into the features and all the shiny objects thinking that you need it. Often times you get so into the tools that you don’t actually get work done. I suggest you work backwards. What I mean by that is start where you get money. This episode covers the things to think about from working backwards in your business. I also share the tools I use in my own business, and why.
Tue, April 03, 2018
How to you manage your existing clients when you start specializing?
If you are involved in a project or client but at a point where you are starting to figure out your niche. Or maybe you are starting to specialize your freelance business even more to refine your services. It’s always tough to try and figure out how to handle the current clients. There are several things you can do though and one thing that you have to do. You have to finish the job. Plain and simple. Whatever you said you would do, you have to deliver on that. Then based on if they fall into your new specialty, how can you serve them best. Present them a no-brainer offer and have them as your very first client under you new business services.
Mon, April 02, 2018
Is the income from freelancing reliable?
“Freelancing” itself is a business and reliability of income for any business depends on the health of that business and the processes of getting the income. If you build a business of your own, which freelancing is, you need to understand all the aspects of the business, at least at a basic level. You should always be learning, marketing, and growing. Evolving your business processes as you grow. You make your income reliable, by doing all these things in your business. There are no guarantees of course, but if you’d like to have your income reliable and build yourself a future-proof business where you are the brand, freelancing is the way to go, and it can lead to reliable income.
Fri, March 30, 2018
How to do research and land that first client?
Want to specialize your freelance business? This is the 5th episode in the series to niche down and I'll walk you through how to find and land that first client. There are 6 steps that you need to do in order to find and land that client. Can you land 1, 2, maybe 5 new clients in this first test of your market? Obviously, it depends on your availability and service. But if you can land one or 2 then you’ve moved in that direction towards your specialty. It may not seem like a lot, but you need that first step into it. As you learn from these interactions, talks, and projects, you’ll position yourself better for the next round. You’ll start to build a library of case studies related to the specialty. And more importantly remain on track because you have focused your organic sales around a specific market and away from being that generalist.
Thu, March 29, 2018
How do I find out if the niche has value?
In freelancing, the best way to research is to talk with people. You want to jump into some quick and easy questions. 1. How is everything going? 2. What made the decision for you to choose me over someone else? 3. Is there anything that I can be doing better? As you wrap up the conversation ask them if they know of anyone like themselves that has a similar project and that you would appreciate a quick introduction. Now if you don’t have any past clients in that quadrant you built out in "How do I choose the niche?" because you are just starting out or you haven’t worked with anyone that you really enjoyed yet, you can still do this. Take the 3 questions above with you and start up some conversations. To make it less overwhelming, go to the event and have 3 conversations at a minimum where you get these answers. These conversations will also lead in to you getting work overtime because you are talking about that “one thing” and starting to lay the groundwork for being the expert.
Thu, March 29, 2018
How to say “no”
The very first step in specializing your business is to say "no". Once you identified what it is that you don’t want to do, then don’t do it. It sounds simple, and it really is that simple. Remember you are a freelancer and can do anything you want to shape your business. The very next lead you get that requires you to do anything in the right 2 quadrants that you defined in the last episode, "How to choose your niche", say “no”. It’s not about finding and launching yourself into a brand new business direction at once. It’s the incremental changes that you do in your business, the “testing” in your business, the small steps you take in your business to progress forward, that gets you to your destination.
Tue, March 27, 2018
How do I choose the niche
In this episode, you are going to develop a working niche and specialty so that you can vet it out. You are you going to define the likes and dislikes of both projects and clients in this episode. By exploring your past and current projects and thinking about certain questions and aspects around them, you will end up with a basis of an industry and a problem you are solving for someone. This will be what you use as a starting off point for exploring your niche further to see if there's a market for it and most importantly profitable.
Mon, March 26, 2018
Why should I niche or specialize?
You have heard that you need to niche down or specialize your business for a number of factors. I share with you 4 reasons why you should specialize your business. Point #4 is something I haven't heard many people but in realty it is THE reason you should start specializing today if you haven't already.
Fri, March 23, 2018
How do you manage time wearing so many hats as a freelancer?
There is this huge sense of overwhelm at times, but it’s important to remember what you need to get done and what you’d like to get done. So Google and many other companies have adopted an 80/20 rule. I myself like to employ this method too. Which basically says that 80% of the time you work on business stuff, 20% of the time you work on your own stuff. I use this with regards to 80% client 20% rezzz. I often ask myself: 1. What sort of impact does this have on my business? 2. Will this make an impact on my business today? next month? next year? 3. Am I already exploring another rabbit hole? That helps me in figuring out the shiny objects. The biggest takeaway for you is to understand the want vs need - if you are feeling overwhelmed with all of the things you need to do, take a step back, take a 10-min break, re-focus on what’s important for the next couple of hours and then focus on that.
Thu, March 22, 2018
How do you build a sales pipeline
Sales is hard as a freelancer. Even myself tend to leave it behind until I need it. But that's the wrong way to do it. Freelancing businesses need a healthy pipeline in order to be stable, profitable, and build a successful business. There isn’t a silver bullet or magic beans when it comes to this. It will take time and effort, but well worth the work when you do it. I'll share with you the 10 steps I use in order to keep my sales pipeline healthy.
Wed, March 21, 2018
How to start building an email list as a freelancer
One of the mistakes that I didn’t do early on in my freelance career was to build an email list. Not having a list, or rather not spending some amount of effort into building one with high-quality emails, put me in a bad spot because I didn’t have any way to reach out to folks for referrals, outreach, overflow work, announce new services and solutions, and most importantly have a pipeline of leads. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. Not every single person on this list will be who you want to sell to. Some of these people on your list are people that you want a network with and want to know about your services. If you have been freelancing for some time and still don’t have a growing list outside of your clients then you’ll want to do this so that you can get the word out about you and your services. Trust me, you may think that folks know what you do, even folks that you talk with regularly. Well, they don’t! Here are the 5 steps...
Tue, March 20, 2018
What do you do when crisis hits?
Your client hired you as an expert, they expect that you’ll know what to do and if you don’t that you’ll figure out a way through the crisis. You and your clients are in business together, work together and I promise you, in the end, it’ll all work out for the best in the end. Some things to think about when you are presented with such a crisis: - Put together a timeline of events - Back any evidence up with data, leave any opinions at the door - it’s so easy to be angry and let emotions get the best of you, but in the end that does no one good - If you don’t have evidence, get some - Put together some recommendations past the event - If this is affecting business today, figure out steps needed to address it until there’s a remedy - Ask your client for their thoughts and suggestions - Keep open communication, even make yourself available in ways that you never have - After careful thought and consideration of options, put together a game plan to implement and stick to it
Mon, March 19, 2018
How do you maintain client expectations around services you provide?
Managing client expectations is one of the most important pieces of your freelance business. For one, most of the time you are working remotely and not seeing the person on an every day basis. So trust and reliability can wane very quickly. During the sales process, you as the professional are earning the trust of the client with your experience and knowledge around the services the prospective client is looking for. This is when that trust is being earned. During this time is when you should be talking about the aspects of your services that you will do. Equally as important though is outlining those aspects of your services that you will not do. I’ve seen people, and I too, have gotten into trouble where there wasn’t a clear definition of services. There isn’t anything wrong with explicitly telling a lead what you won’t do. Look, most won’t know that SEO and development of their website are 2 entirely different aspects of the live site. They just see it as work on the website.
Fri, March 16, 2018
How did you specialize your business?
This episode is a bit different in that you'll get to hear a bit of my story that I've never really spoken about too much. Our businesses are personal. As much as we want to keep personal feelings and business separate, there really is no line in between. Looking back at clients projects can help enlighten some of the likes and dislikes you had in regards to them. But your emotions and feelings and even ego can get in the way of opportunities that can allow you to get closer to your life goals. Thank you Sara for the question. Go check out Sara's journey at http://sara-dunn.com/
Thu, March 15, 2018
How to get clients when I have no portfolio?
Having no portfolio really shouldn't stop you from getting clients. It's more of an opportunity for you to scale back a little bit, solve a problem, and get quick wins for you and your clients. By showing what you can do and deliver on what you say you will earns trust and that above anything will get you more clients.
Wed, March 14, 2018
How do I raise my rates?
In order for you to continue to do business and have a successful freelance business, or even side hustle for that matter, you'll need to raise rates. It's easier to give your new rate to incoming leads and projects, but often times the hurdle is with current clients. If you are looking to raise rates with your freelance clients, I share with you my 3-step process to do this in this episode. If you want to be profitable, sustainable, and have successful business, you will have to raise rates.
Tue, March 13, 2018
How do I talk to a lead and turn it into recurring revenue?
Let’s assume 3 things: - You’ve defined a service offering - You have an ideal client - You’ve vetted out the lead to a point at which you are at a tipping point of moving forward But the sticking point is recurring vs one-off work. There are 3 steps to help you sell someone your recurring service. 1. Re-establish the trust factor 2. Compare the benefits of recurring vs one-off 3. Show them how it gets them to the end quicker
Mon, March 12, 2018
What social media platforms to spend time on?
As a freelancer or consultant, it's hard to set aside time to try new social platforms. So Joe reached out and asked me "How do I determine what social platforms to spend time on?" He followed up with "How do you know you'll get something from it?" The short answer to that followup is that you don’t. The long answer is that you need to be aware of why you are on the social platform in the first place and if your audience is there as well. A few different criteria to pick which platform to try 1. Does my current audience exist there? Will my current audience exist there? 2. Why am I expanding here? What’s the purpose of me being here? 3. Know how I’m going to measure success 4. Give it 3-6 months, but abandon quickly, because as you mentioned, it can spread yourself thin and can be a huge time.
Fri, March 09, 2018
Social Media Marketing, is it worth it to do?
If you are wondering if you should focus on social media for your marketing and sales, I share my answer with you. Forbes says that it is 50% less effective than in 2015. Of course, it is! But you don't have to be.
Thu, March 08, 2018
How do I get my clients to value my work?
If you are looking to build recurring revenue in your freelance business or your side hustle, you don't just need to show that the value you bring, but also have customers and clients recognize that value. It's not too difficult to do, but you should address it as early on as possible.
Wed, March 07, 2018
Do you struggle with work, family, sick kids, etc?
The struggle is real no matter how long you have been a freelancer. I think at some point in every work-from-home person's life they are faced with this, especially if they have kids. I answer this question and give my 6 tips and tactics to make sure that I stay on point, that I am able to get stuff done, and that I'm ultimately able to be home with my wife and son.
Tue, March 06, 2018
How do you celebrate milestones with your clients?
Creating a lasting memory with clients can be the way to creating a long-lasting client. We tend to beat ourselves up over the smallest of mistakes and quickly gloss over the biggest of wins. Celebrating a milestone, whether that's a launch of a site, creating a new logo, even moving something like a new feature to staging for testing, gives you and the client an opportunity to connect in a unique way to celebrate the hard work. By adding in some personality into a win, you can really put your stamp on the memory of a client. In this episode I share 5 ways to add your stamp to the next milestone in your project.
Mon, March 05, 2018
What's the best way to pivot if you are serving a new niche?
This is always a question when you start to build recurring revenue. It's something that is scary because you don't want to turn down work. In this episode I share 5 pieces of advice to pivot your business.
Fri, March 02, 2018
What are emerging platforms for freelancers?
A question from Justin Jackson of MegaMaker is a great one and one that I think alot of freelancers wonder about. I go pretty in-depth in my answer this time and highlight some priorites and opportunities.
Thu, March 01, 2018
What should I do if the prospect won't tell me the budget?
As a freelancer and consultant profits should always be front of mind. Profits will go right out the window if you are dealing with a lot of tire kickers. You want a lead or prospect to be as close to the buying decision as possible. Make sure that they've properly thought their project. If you still can't get them to say what the budget is, then it's as easy as telling them why you need it.
Wed, February 28, 2018
How can I spot a problem client before they are a client?
In freelancing or providing services you'll run into problem clients. Being able to spot them before they become a client will keep your profits and sanity intact.
Tue, February 27, 2018
What are the costs involved in becoming a freelancer?
If you are working a full time job and thinking about quitting to become a full time freelancer, this is a question that has to be running through your mind. Freelancing is a HUGE risk, there's no doubt.
Thu, February 22, 2018
What is this show all about?
If you are a freelancer and have any questions about building your business let's chat!
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