In this episode, Matt answers some of the frequently asked listener questions about freelancing.
Does working remotely mean no local clients?
How do I start getting clients?
What is a fair price to charge?
How much time should I spend on client work?
With connections come opportunities. Connections can lead to mentors, new clients, speaking engagements, publications, and collaborations. But how do you meet people and intentionally build connections?
Michael Roderick is a relationship designer, a master connector. Michael has a talent for connecting people who can mutually benefit from each other's expertise. Here, Michael shares how you can build your own connections, why connections are so important, who to connect with, and how to maintain these valuable relationships.
There are a lot of great reasons to get industry experience first before setting off on your own. When Ram Castillo graduated from design school, he acquired experience by working at a major agency. How did he get into a design firm when no one was hiring designers? He took a job in the mailroom. While he delivered mail and fetched coffee, he also had conversations with some of the top designers in the world who gave him insight into how projects are run in the real world and how to balance quality with budget.
Ram shares how he rapidly built a career working at major agencies and on major brands, how he created mentorship opportunities for himself at every step, why he constantly stood out, and how and why he transitioned all that into freelancing.
If you are a small solo operator or you have a small team working on software development, efficient project management is just as important as it is for larger teams in enterprises. However, does it make sense to implement something as heavy as agile methodology, designed for the big teams, if you are small?
Jason Mundok, co-founder of Elusive Moose, has taken the principles of agile project management and rescaled it for his one-person software development consultancy. He shares how using an agile-like approach keeps his projects on track, saves time and money, and creates happy clients.
https://freelancetransformation.com/episode77
Working remotely is a big part of the freelancing dream for many of us, working from your home office, and having the ability to travel anywhere even with very short notice. The bottom line is that there are some freedoms that come from not having your geography dictate who you can work with or how you work with them. For instance, when you work remotely, you don't end up losing a half day of work every time you have to drive somewhere to meet a client and then realize that the client didn't have all the much to say.
Laura Elizabeth has figured out the formula for working remotely with clients around the world while sitting in her home office in a fairly small town in the UK. Laura has built structures and processes that let her work effectively and efficiently with her clients, independent of geography, while also building amazing client relationships. In this episode, Laura explains why clients hire her instead of someone local, how to deliver on great work, and how to being remote has become an advantage rather than something that gets in her way.
Brennan Dunn was a guest on Freelance Transformation all the way back in FT 006: How to be a High Value Consultant with Brennan Dunn. Brennan, of Double Your Freelancing Academy, is back again in episode 75 to describe the successes of his students from Double Your Freelancing Clients and Double Your Freelancing Rate.
That's right, episode 75! Of course, we have you, wonderful listeners, to thank! And to thank you properly, at the end of the episode, Matt and Brennan describe a unique opportunity for FT listeners for Brennan's latest course, Double Your Freelancing Academy, a high intensity course that will give you the equivalent of an MBA in Freelancing!
https://freelancetransformation.com/episode75
There are just not enough hours in the day to hustle through client work and also build relationships with prospects. It is easy to neglect one or the other group. But what if both groups were the same, client and prospects? There is so much potential for repeat business and long-term engagements!
Dan Englander, author of Mastering Account Management and The B2B Sales Blueprint, digs into how to manage your client accounts so you can build longterm relationships with your clients. Dan explains how you can build mutual understanding with your client, how to figure out your client pains, how to keep the client form going quiet, and how to decide who to work with.
http://freelancetransformation.com/episode74
Does this scenario sound familiar? A prospective client comes to you with a set of specifications for a project they want done. You clarify the specs a bit, quote the project, hopefully win the work and deliver? What could go wrong?
Plenty. For starters you’re doing the client a big disservice by expecting them to know what they want, rather than you, as the expert, recommending a solution. And you’re doing your own bank account a big disservice as well, since simply executing work a client gives you turns you into a commodity labourer, instead of an expert. That means your rates and ability to attract high quality clients will suffer accordingly.
So what’s the alternative? Figure out what the client really wants and the problem they want to solve.
Eric White, from Think Motile, uses a fascinating framework called Jobs-to-Be-Done to dig out why someone is looking for a product or a service, such as consulting work. Eric shares some of the tools in this framework that you can use to figure out what a client actually wants, what is prompting the client to desire this project, and ultimately how that allows you to deliver much better results for your clients and yourself.
Finding and on-boarding new clients is time-consuming and emotionally straining. So why not focus on the clients you already have? Chances are, you have much more to offer your existing clients than what the original project addressed which makes existing clients a valuable asset to your freelancing business.
Christopher Hawkins shares how he maintained a six-figure income by selling to existing clients and created a sustainable business and income stream for himself. He explains how he changed his perspective when approaching client projects from looking at his project in isolation to seeing how it fits in with the bigger business goals. He also explains how to build and maintain client relationships so selling to existing clients is more like catching up rather than pushing a sale.
Ready to start selling to your existing freelancing clients?
Today's episode features the story of a someone who is always pushing himself and taking on new opportunities, passionately living in the moment and loving what he does for work.
This is the story of Kevin Rogers, now a prominent copy chief (http://copychief.com/) who connects clients with freelance copywriters and coaches freelancers along the way. But his current position is a long way from the 18 year old comedian who toured the country for a decade in a beat up Chevy Nova, hoping he would have enough gas to make it to the next gig. It was an awesome life for a twenty something, but not sustainable.
Kevin shares why and how he made the transition. Kevin's success can be attributed to his inspiring personality, his desire to strive to be his best and constantly challenge himself, and, of course, the many mentors who showed him what was possible.
You've made the leap to freelancing, you have clients, you're making money, and everything is going good... until taxes come due. In this episode, Raj Bhaskar, founder of Hurdlr, gives a crash course on how to navigate taxes as a freelancer.
Raj talks about how to manage your freelancing finances, and especially, figuring out your deductions and making your that you are compliant with the tax regulations in your country.
Disclaimer: Everybody’s situation is different, and of course, different places have different laws. So before implementing anything in this episode, SPEAK TO AN ACCOUNTANT. Seriously.
Quitting your job to freelance doesn’t have to mean a step backwards in pay. Today’s guest, Matt Olpinski freelanced for years on the side, while going to school and later working for a great agency. But at one point, Matt hit a cross-roads and realized that the opportunity to go freelance full-time was bigger than the opportunity to continue his employment career.
Since then, business has taken off and Matt’s freelance clients have even included American Express. And he’s turned down full-time employment offers from the likes of Uber, Tiffany & Co, and even Ogilvy and Mather. And did I mention that he’s still in his mid twenties?
How did it all happen? Matt applied consistent effort to the right areas of his business, like web presence, networking, and positioning.
Companies are constantly presenting pitches to stakeholders and potential clients, or presenting at conferences as keynotes and internally to show the progress of projects. Yet there is so little consideration for the presentation itself, which means that there is an expensive problem of effectively communicating their story and ideas. That's where Nolan steps in.
Nolan Haims is in the business of visual communications: he helps people communicate with fewer words. What that often means in practice is creating very effective presentation decks in PowerPoint, Prezi, and other presentation tools, or training his client’s employees to do the same. But it's not just about making the slides pretty, it is about designing the content to tell a story, which is why this is not so much about technical work, but about consulting.
Jane Portman started out as another designer on Odesk charging $20-$30 per hour for small projects. But when her first son was born, her priorities changed and she realized that she could be doing much more to sell herself and earn a higher income. So she decided to start targeting clients in the United States from her home in Russia and focused in on UI/UX.
Jane shares the story of her transition into consulting and provides wonderful examples of how she positioned herself as an authority in UI/UX. She also shares a remarkable wealth of resources to help others make the same transition.
Kate Kordsmeier built an amazing freelance writing career straight out of college. Kate is a food and travel writer who has been published in over 100 publications, gets to travel to cool places, eat fancy foods, and most importantly, is great proof that being a freelance writer doesn’t have to mean spending years carving out an existence and living as a starving artist.
Kate breaks down how she got started and built up her freelancing business, what her lifestyle looks like as a freelance writer, how she juggles her projects and stays organized, and details what actions you can take to start now.
Whether you choose to build an agency or be a solo entrepreneur, you will need clients, and if you want to grow, you will need to figure out systems to find and close big clients. Jason Swenk has mastered the process of finding clients, working with them to develop a proposal and win the project. He did this as an agency owner himself for 12 years, working with big clients like Porsche, AT&T, and Home Depot. After he sold his agency, he has been consulting and helping digital agency owners figure out their strategies to build and scale their agencies.
Jason shares the secrets on how to specialize, find brands, reach out to targeted companies, turn research into proposals, and close the deal. Jason learned all these secrets by having to figure it out on the go while scaling his agency, and shares them so you don't have to make the same mistakes and go through the same stresses.
In productized consulting, you package up your services and offer the same set of services to all your clients. So rather than customizing every project for a client, you instead offer a set menu of services with standard pricing for each service. Of course, each project will be different since each client is different, but the processes and the systems are the same. This approach allows you to scale quickly and find security in monthly payments, avoiding the feast and famine cycle.
Matthew Newton, founder of Tourism Tiger, has built a great example of a productized consulting business. Mat knew from the start that he wanted to scale his business, so he set it up with scaling in mind. He tells us why he chose productized consulting rather than building an agency, how he chose a niche, how he markets his business and finds clients, and how he is growing the business.
A frequent and common mistake that freelancers tend to make when approaching a project is to price out a project based on the specifications that the client gave them. This approach places you as a commodity, yet another skilled professional offering some commodity technical skill at some price. This approach doesn't necessarily address what the client really needs, after all, the client isn't a technical expert, that's your job. Your expertise is finding a way to solve the client's problem.
Ben Seigel will share the process of how you can assess a client's needs and even get paid to do it. Ben is the author of Website Planning for Small Business and owner of Versa Studio, a web design agency.
Getting paid and seeing that bank account go up is a very rewarding part of freelancing. But are your finances on track? Are you leaving time for both billable and non-billable work such as marketing, bookkeeping, billing, and so on? Do you know if you are going to be financial solvent three months down the road?
In today's episode, Ryan Battles, expert on freelancer finances and co-founder of Harpoon, shares how freelancers keep their finances on track, the big financial mistakes to avoid, which billing methods work best for freelancers, and where money fits into life.
The vast majority of guests on Freelance Transformation either work remotely or have their own offices as agency owners. In this episode, we explore a different way to freelance and speak with Prescott Perez-Fox who has worked primarily on-site, that is, actually inside the client's building.
Prescott Perez-Fox started his freelancing career a bit differently than the typical path by working with a recruitment agency to find on-site freelance gigs at agencies and corporations that needed a designer for a few weeks at a time. As a result, Prescott had the opportunity to work on projects for some major brands and earn a diverse range of experience.
In this episode of Freelance Transformation, Prescott shares what it's been like working in these different environments and the lessons he's taken from each company's culture and workflow. We also explore the recruiter-based model of finding clients, the good, the bad, and when it might make sense to work with a recruiter.
Noah Fleming has a successful consultancy, is author of the book, Evergreen, and is a coach in Alan Weiss' private program. Noah dives deep into what it really means to create value, use value-based fees, and how to identify and find the clients who we can deliver value for.
Spoiler: Value has nothing to do with time.
http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode60
Bryce Bladon, author of Hell to Pay, loves to write and makes his living writing. When he saw that the national average income for freelance writers was only $22,000, he knew that he had to do something different. Bryce discovered that he was most successful when he niched down and started charging what he was worth rather than selling himself as a commodity.
Bryce shares today how he built up his consulting and writing services over the past seven years to now earn six figures a year and gives advice how any freelancer in the creative fields can do so too. He gives advice on how you can niche down and specific examples of niches in writing and also explains how to get away from hourly pricing and start charging based on value.
Aaron Vidas proves that it is possible for a solopreneur to sell into big businesses. Aaron has built three consulting businesses to revenues of over $1M dollars. He has worked with clients ranging from solopreneurs to the boards and CEOs of $250 million plus companies. He did this by slowing working up the value chain and talking to a lot of people.
At the end of the day, Aaron knows that big companies are all composed of people, so you just need to find out which people to talk to. Not so intimidating after all. Like selling to anyone, you have to position yourself as the expert and know that you can solve their business problems to make the business more efficient and make more money.
James Knight had the cushy corporate job, at Google no less. He did great work and was well taken care of. Yet two years in he left to become a freelancer and ultimately started building an agency, Gradient. Why did he do this? And how did he pull off this transition that many people daydream about, but are terrified to go through with?
James will take us through this journey, and the practical details such as how he found his first few clients, the decision to go further from freelancer to agency, taking on a business partner, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.
You, dear listeners, have emailed me with great questions about freelancing, and if you have signed up for my mailing list (hint hint), you'll have received a personal reply.
Celebrate the Freelance Transformation Podcast officially turning a year old, I provide expanded answers to the questions that I see the most often.
I share my thoughts on overcoming fear, defining your niche, defining and improving your worth, getting paid upfront, and finding time for both client work and marketing and sales to get past the feast and famine cycle.
http://www.FreelanceTransformation.com/episode56