A few years into building websites for people, in the very beginnings of my little agency, I picked up a book with a pretty bold title: Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss. Picking up that book was one of the biggest game changers of my entire consulting career.
Alan Weiss wrote about how to create value for clients, how the amount of time that you spent on a project should have nothing to do with the fee that you charge, how the very idea of trying to sell your time for money was unfair to the client and to you. I wish I could say that this was an overnight change for me, but it took time for those lessons to sink in and to make the mindset shifts needed to realize that it really is all about finding ways to create value.
Now, I’m very pleased to welcome Alan Weiss, best selling author, and million dollar consultant, on to Freelance Transformation. Here, Alan shares his personal journey through consulting and coaching, how to market yourself as a consultant, what makes a consultant, the psychological challenges of being a consultant and selling, and common mistakes made by beginner and not-so-beginner consultants.
Kevin Gibbons is the founder of the UK branch of Blue Glass, a content marketing agency based in London. Coming off the successes of his first agency, Kevin deliberately decided to challenge himself with something new, building a second agency, Blue Glass, from scratch.
The many mistakes and learned many lessons along the way of building both agencies has allowing Kevin to create an agency that he, his team, and his clients love. Kevin shares his strategy for managing client relationships (spoiler alert, it involves coffee, football, and pubs), winning clients through his personal network and referrals, and how to grow by making the top priority to do great work for your existing clients.
Getting started in freelancing might be a deliberate step or it might happen serendipitously. But how can you make sure that your freelancing business is successful? Eric Covino, founder of Creative Signals, shares his story about building an agency from freelancing.
He started freelancing after he volunteered to make a website for his sensei. Over 8 years, he grew this side interest into an agency, through chance, deliberately seeking out knowledge, learning from mistakes, and actively deciding what he wants his business and his personal life to look like. Eric shares how he got started with freelancing, how freelancing became his full-time job, his decision to build an agency, and how he’s done it in a financially sustainable and stable way.
Alma Abreu, from 360 Agile Pro, is a project management pro and specializes in showing small business owners, start-up founders, and entrepreneurs how to manage a virtual team and how to do project management for service based businesses. She also owns a content marketing business where she applies all of the best project management strategies, allowing her to take a step back from the day to day business management.
Alma shares her story of stumbling onto her perfect niche, trying to do it all herself, getting overwhelmed, and then hiring freelancer writers and editors to complete the content work. Alma went beyond just removing herself from writing content to creating processes to manage her virtual team and training a virtual assistant to do the project management, allowing her to pursue the lifestyle she wants.