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 ...
Jun 20, 2018•7 min•Ep. 83
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 epis...
Jun 19, 2018•7 min•Ep. 82
“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 j...
Jun 18, 2018•5 min•Ep. 81
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. 🤔
Jun 15, 2018•7 min•Ep. 80
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 ...
Jun 14, 2018•8 min•Ep. 79
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, no...
Jun 13, 2018•5 min•Ep. 78
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 billa...
Jun 12, 2018•5 min•Ep. 77
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 ju...
Jun 11, 2018•7 min•Ep. 76
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.
Jun 08, 2018•6 min•Ep. 75
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 abo...
Jun 07, 2018•7 min•Ep. 74
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.
Jun 06, 2018•6 min•Ep. 73
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...
Jun 05, 2018•6 min•Ep. 72
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...
Jun 04, 2018•6 min•Ep. 71
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 thing...
Jun 01, 2018•7 min•Ep. 70
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....
May 31, 2018•6 min•Ep. 69
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...
May 30, 2018•6 min•Ep. 68
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 ...
May 29, 2018•6 min•Ep. 67
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 bu...
May 28, 2018•6 min•Ep. 66
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 busine...
May 25, 2018•9 min•Ep. 65
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 ...
May 24, 2018•8 min•Ep. 64
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 performi...
May 23, 2018•9 min•Ep. 63
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 cli...
May 22, 2018•8 min•Ep. 62
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 ...
May 21, 2018•7 min•Ep. 61
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 prob...
May 18, 2018•9 min•Ep. 60
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 ...
May 17, 2018•5 min•Ep. 59
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 ...
May 16, 2018•7 min•Ep. 58
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 cons...
May 15, 2018•5 min•Ep. 57
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 a...
May 14, 2018•7 min•Ep. 56
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...
May 11, 2018•7 min•Ep. 55
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...
May 10, 2018•7 min•Ep. 54
