For Nick Disabato, freelance consulting in not a temporary between-jobs solution, it is his life. Listen to how he created a successful independent consulting business, Draft, with just him and an assistant while making decisions along the way that have improved his work-life balance, his mental health, and his overall happiness.
Nick loves his job, but he knows that he has to maintain boundaries between work and life to keep from being overwhelmed by work, so he is very careful about setting expectations about off-hours and vacation time so he can take time off and keep his clients happy. To do this, he has also been very careful about who he accepts as clients and has set up a careful application process to only work with the clients he knows will be best for him and allow him to provide the most value to. But Nick also knows that he doesn't want to be stressed out and selling all the time. He lets loose on his mailing list and writes about what ever he feels like, sometimes business related, sometimes about sandwiches! He gets to have fun, and also gets leads and an audience to sell his ideas to, such as his new Kickstarter book.
http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode55
Recurring clients give your business greater stability and sustainability. They are gold. Tommy Joiner explains how he and his partner built up a content marketing business Gingerbread Marketing, based on recurrent clients, selling monthly packages.
Tommy tried converting his last business, based on email marketing, into using a recurrent strategy by offering retainers rather than one-off projects, but it didn't stick. His clients didn't get value from the monthly packages. When he set up his current company, he and his partner decided that recurring revenue was important to them so they chose to specialize in something that is inherently recurrent, blog posts. Check out what decisions he made to create a successful business.
Trying to get the attention of a large agencies and consistently have agencies as recurring clients is difficult at the best of times. Nate McGuire, cofounder of Code My Views, has figured out the unique challenges that agencies face to specially cater to them, creating a successful technical firm.
In today's episode, Nate tells us how he and his partner built up a business targeting agencies and specializing in converting their clients' ideas into code for word press and other platforms. He walks us step by step through his sales funnel, from outbound campaigns to tech briefs to sale, and the practical day to day operations to meet the unique demands of agencies.
http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode53
Podcasting can attract and sell to your ideal client and establish you as the expert before you even meet. Jason Bay built a coaching and consulting business, GenY Success, based on the strategy using podcasting to win clients.
In this episode, Jason shares why his podcast is an effective lead generation tool and the critical strategy behind starting a podcast that will reach your perspective clients and turn them into leads. The secret, a common theme for Freelance Transformation, is first identifying and reaching out to your ideal client.
http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode52