Let's Talk Freelance With John Morris

1. Trailer: When I was in the army, we had an institution called the Center for army lessons learned. And they would interview soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan about the techniques, tactics, and procedures that they were using in country. And the point was to continually identify the things that we're working and use them to train soldiers, getting ready to, to play over to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now there's a military instructor. I worked with that information a lot. It drove our training and allowed the army to continually get better at its wartime mission. Well, that's the same basic premise behind Let's talk freelance. The purpose is to capture and share all the strategies, tactics, and techniques I've learned and I'm still learning in my 17 year freelance career from landing your first clients managing projects, building a sustainable business, inner game like confidence, work-life balance, and so on. All the experiences that I've had and what those experiences taught me, passed on to you to help you start and grow your freelance or online business bigger and faster. And the reality of that is those lessons don't always fit neatly into a regimented course. So think of, Let's talk freelance as a weekly podcast out course that gives you big lessons to make dramatic shifts in your business. It's not about whiz bang or that one weird trick or gimmicks that aren't sustainable and put your business at risk. It's about wisdom. It's about insight, deeper trues that change the way you think to help you create shifts in your business that can lead to dramatic increases in results. Now what do my students say? Well, Scott calls it CEO level guidance and vital. A. G says it was way over the top as far as new ideas, resources, and content. Chad says, of course is jam-packed with examples, tips and action steps. And Jan said the class helped him to do important research and narrow down what it was his clients really wanted, which was a big roadblock that he had been struggling with. Stephen calls it a great and inspiring format for Skillshare. And ya here calls it a great class. And I have many more reviews just like this. So if all that interests you and excites you, then this course will be for you. And with that said, let's go ahead and get started. 2. EP8: 6 Creative Ways to Land Your First Freelance Client In 30 Days or Less: Welcome back to another episode of let's talk. You're going to get into sixth grade wasteland, your first freelance clients and 30 days or less. So I'm gonna be showing he was like all pathways, resources. What I mean by that is what people do when they talk. Always get clients will just say Upwork. Well, okay, that's how and what do I need to do? Don't need you to Upwork Freelancer.com, etc. St upwork.com or fiber or whatever it is. It's really just going to resource. It's not actually getting a pathway or a method or a way of getting your first client, I want to give you a way to do it or sixth grade ways to do it. The idea here is provided with the full roadmap for each method as follows, starting today and landed for client or the next 30 days or less. That is my goal for you from this lesson. Now, one thing before I started, just a little more fun. Don't be too much into him. He's just getting a little bit more fun. So that said, here's what we're gonna go through the six different ways or video media Freelance Star, it's a scam apprentice inheritance. Can I pick pick your brain? He's got big and the boiled frog. And we're gonna go through each strategy when it is time to process a little bit about why each one works in some things won't even light as you implement. So let's start with video made the Freelance Star. The basic idea here is you're going to use YouTube or some video site if you want to tweak it for podcasting or wherever fits your style, but YouTube's typically going to be the best. You're gonna use YouTube to land your first client. So let's talk about the strategy. The first thing that you need to do is identify a specific problem. You want to just do a little bit of research for your market. If you're a web developer, graphic designer, writer, social media manager, etc. I just want to look in those broad categories and tried to identify a specific problem or a few specific problems that people have. Now again, I want to be clear here, problems, you're not looking at solutions. New awesome thing that you could Advent or whatever it is, you're looking at very specific problems that people are complaining about. So you can look on social media, you can look on places like YouTube in the comments, whatever the case may be, you can go out and do a little bit of that research and identify a specific problem that people are having that you believe you can solve. Then you create that solution. You figured out how to solve it, you create the solution. And then you make a YouTube video showing exactly how to implement the solution. And at the end of the video, you simply say, Hey, if you don't want to do this yourself, you'd rather have me do a four. You just get in contact with me and I'll do it for you. And you link them to a very bare-bones landing page that just says essentially a contact form and can say a little bit about, hey, if you want me to do this thing for you, fill out this contact form, and it can be really, really simple. Now, I always use the example of how I did this to get my first freelance clients, I use Google Shopping feed, which was the thing back in the day, I'd created an XML, custom XML file for WordPress that will fit into the standards that Google Shopping needed for its Google Shopping feed to feed products from a WordPress site into Google Shopping back for WooCommerce and all these things existed. I essentially identified this problem, created a solution. I actually made a YouTube video where I show exactly how to do it. Then in the description or that video, I said, Hey, if you want me to do this for you, just contact me and I had people that started contacting me for that and that's how I got my first few clients. I didn't even necessarily do this strategy all that well, you could do it a lot better than I did and it still worked. So that's essentially the strategy. Now, why does this work? Well, because people get to see you solving the problem. So all the other credentialing and earning trust and all that stuff, It's sort of goes out of the window. There's really no sales process to it because the demonstration of you doing it on video is the sale. Now a lot of people get worried about this because it's like, well, if I just show them how to do it, they'll just do it. Well, again, take mine for example. I had to tweak if I wanted to do this for someone, I had to go into the code that I wrote to create this file and I had to tweak it for their site. And there were some tweaks that I had to make for each site that I did. I still had to write code. Those people either a didn't know how to write code and maybe even try it themselves and couldn't get it to work. Or be they just didn't want to do it. They didn't even want to mess with it and they just hired me to do it. You don't want to you don't have to get worried about them. Oh, if I just show him how to do it, they're not gonna hire me. Yes, a lot of people will, but you don't need a 100% of people that view the video to hire you, you need 1% or 2% or 5%, whatever it is, you just need that small portion that either can't do it or doesn't want to do it. Then the demonstration again basically sells them on, you know, what you're doing, they get to see you doing it right on video. Now a good example of this is tiny hot dogs. What I mean by that is, if you've ever gone to the supermarket, that's kind of a classic example. You've gone to the supermarket and they have the samples. There could be cheese, it could be little Smokies, whatever it is and they give you a sample, let you try it, and then it's either good or it's not. You either like it or you don't. And immediately after you taste it. You either want to buy the product or you don't. The demonstration of you actually tasting the product makes that does all the selling for them. They don't have to do anything else. You either like or you don't either wanted or you don't, and that's it. So this is based off of that same principle. The other thing is it's very little pressure on you because you've already identified the problem and the solution, you've already built it, you've created a video on it, so you already know how to do it. It's actually harder to teach someone how to do it than it is to just do yourself. So you've really got all of that out of the way. And it's a really easy execution process for you. That is video made. The Freelance Star works really, really well. Something you can do if you're comfortable doing that kind of thing with a YouTube video. All right, up next is, It's a scam. So essentially the idea here is to get work on upward. I'd say it's a scam because so many people love to say that, but I'll work. That's just my little inside joke for myself. But here's the strategy and this one we're gonna get detailed here because this is something I've talked about a lot. And really to do Upwork, right? You kind of have to get a little bit detailed. So stick with me here, but we're going to run through the strategy. So the very first thing you need to do is create your account and get approved upward doesn't like me talking about how to get approved. They're very militant about that, so I'm not going to talk about that. You can probably find some videos out there that haven't been taken down yet that we'll talk about that or some blog posts that haven't had cease and desist sent to them yet that we'll talk about how to get approval if you're having trouble doing that. But after you get approved, the next thing you need to do, or the first thing you need to do is build your profile the right way. So here's how I recommend doing that. You want to start by finding an in-demand skill for your category of freelancing. And you can use what you're looking at on this page here, on this slide here is the Upwork skills index. So every quarter Upwork, so far, who knows if they'll stop in the future. But so far every quarter they release, release and Upwork skills index, which outlines the most in-demand skills for different markets. So you can see here we have the most in-demand tech skills. We have the most in-demand to marketing skills and they list out a few others. They just tell you what are the most in-demand skills on Upwork based off of their research in their analysis of what's going on, on Upwork, what are the most in-demand skills? So it kinda gives you a cheat sheet of the kind of skills that thereafter Now, hint, hint when it comes to getting your profile approved. It might help if you have a skill that's in demand, but you can just go, you can essentially just Google Upwork skills index and you can see the latest quarterly release that they've done. And you can look through that list and see if any of these apply to you. And that's really what you want to make your starting point when we say find an in-demand skill, it's best if you can find a skill that's in demand on Upwork specifically, and that's what this list gives you. Once you've done that, then you want to go on Upwork itself and research jobs in that category, in that skill that you've kind of broad scale. Because if you looked at those who's like PHP, CSS, Wordpress, they're really, really broad. So you want to start your research there. But then go on Upwork and actually tried to get down to the level of a specific, specific deliverable that you can and want to do. So the way to do that is just start with a broad keyword, as we mentioned. So in this case, one of those on the tech skills list was WordPress. So you just type in WordPress into the Upwork search. Then you went to 0 on specific deliverable type keywords. So for example, when you type in WordPress, at least when I did it a little bit ago. When you type in WordPress into Upwork search, you're gonna see projects that for things like responsive, building a responsive WordPress website, doing SEO for WordPress websites, doing Google ads for WordPress websites, a transcriptionists for WordPress website, and jobs for a content writer for WordPress website. All of these I looked up and I found these jobs on Upwork. These aren't things I made up. They're specifically on there. The numbers next to them represent them number of jobs that came up when I type in that specific search term with WordPress added to the beginning of it. So WordPress, SEO, WordPress, Google Ads, transcriptions, etc. So that's the number of jobs that come up. You just want to kind of do that and you want to look through the jobs and see, okay, is there something in here that I can and I want to do that as a specific deliverable, responsive WordPress website is a pretty specific deliverable content writer might be a little more general, but then you can dive into content writer and see if they're looking for specific things. Seos, fairly specific for a WordPress website and on and on and on. And you just want to get to the point where you have something really specific that you can hone in on. Because it's much easier to get hired for something specific than it is for something broad. You need a ton more experienced to get hired for the broad match keywords. Hone in on something specific and it's a lot eat can be a lot easier for you to dominate that specific keyword. Okay, once you do that, now, you've got some set of specific keywords. You start searching those specific keywords and you want to analyze each market. And some of the things you want to look at is OK, how many fixed price jobs are there versus hourly jobs? I generally think of fixed price jobs better or at least those are the ones that I wanted to do. And so one of the terms has a bunch of hourly jobs and one has a bunch of fixed price jobs. I'm probably going to start with the search term that has the fixed price jobs. You also want to look at the most common price points through the price points tend to sort of gather around the bottom of the price, prices that are there, or do they sort of gather towards the top? And again, you're probably going to go with a market where there's more money available. You want to look at the competition. So the number of proposals that are eat all the jobs are having again, do those numbers tend to be towards the lower end or the higher end, the less competition probably the better. You can also look at client history. Do the clients in that particular market tend to hire more? That's probably a good sign for you. So there's a lot of filters that you can look through in the search. You just want to look at the ones that matter to you and kind of analyze the market based off those because that's gonna give you an idea. So I personally would want a market with a bunch of fixed price jobs where the price points are at the higher end. There's not as many proposals for each job and the clients tend to hire a lot. That would be my ideal market. So that's what I'm looking for. Now that said, you're really just going to pick the best available because it's rare to find a niche that's perfect, one that hits all of the points that you're after perfectly. So you just have to analyze the keywords and take a look at the one that's the best available. Find one that's close and just get started ultimately, that's what matters. You don't want to over analyze it or overthink it. You could spend then the next year doing that and not get anywhere. All right, so once you've picked, picked your market, then you want to start building your profile. You're going to build your entire profile around the keyword or keywords that you chose. You want to use the keyword in your title. You want to speak to it or about it in your overview. You want to fill your portfolio with only those kinds of projects. You just want your entire profile to be targeted towards that particular keywords. So you send a very clear signal to Upwork that this is what you're about. This is how when you're new and you don't have the job history that everybody else does. This is how you get in front of the right people on Upwork. And then also make a compelling case to those people to want to hire you because you do the very specific thing that thereafter, That's all you do. You're a specialist in it and that just makes them a lot more likely to hire you. Now if you want to target multiple keywords, that's fine. Just don't do it in one profile. Upwork allows you to create specialized profiles. You can create a profile for each keyword that you want to target. They also have projects that you can add into your project catalog. And each one of those can target a different keyword. So you want one profile targeting one keyword, and then just use the multiple profiles and product catalog or project catalog that you can create in order to target different keywords. Again, the big idea here is that Upwork analyzes your profile to figure out what clients who put you in front of, you must make it clear what kind of jobs you want and you do that via keywords. So if you try to be too broad, what happens is Upwork. Let's say you just put WordPress. Well, they might put you in front of a client that looking for a content writer and you're a developer. Or they're looking for someone to build them a theme and you do plugins. You're not even targeted for what thereafter. So you'd have no chance of getting hired for those projects. You want to make it clear. I build WordPress plugins so that you only get put in front of the clients who want WordPress plugins. And now you have a lot better chance of getting hired. Really important when you're new because you don't have the job history that everybody else has. Then again, like I said, it also makes it clear to clients what you do. So when they see your profile, they're like, Oh, this is the person, this is the person that I need. They do exactly what I'm after. Like I said, it's just more likely that Upwork puts you in front of the light, the exact clients or the right clients who need exactly what you do. All right, so once you've built your profile, then it's time to start finding clients. So again, using the keywords that you just identified, you've already done a lot of the searching now is when you can go back and you can, you've built your profile around the keyword. Now you can go back to the search and you could start actively looking for jobs that match those same keywords because you now have a profile that is built to sell you and your services for that particular keyword. So you want to start when you do the search, you want to start with your most strict criteria. Remember, we talked about client history and all of that, the filters that you can use. So you want to start with your most strict criteria, your absolute best. Projects that you're after. So that can be based off the fees slash the rate client history payment verified, whatever the filters are for you that matter. Start with your most strict criteria and bid on those jobs first, you want to maximize your effort by bidding on the jobs that are the ones that matter most to you. Instead of just looking at the list of the feet of jobs as it comes through and just bidding on what you see first, actually takes some time to curate it so that you're bidding on the best jobs first. And then if you don't get hired for those jobs because they're probably gonna be a little bit more competitive. Start widening, widening out your criteria. So loosen up your criteria just a little bit and start. Find the extra jobs that you haven't bid on and bid on those jobs. And if you still don't get hired, widen out some more and some warrants more until you find a job that you get hired for. As you're doing all this, then you also want to make sure that you're analyzing the client. Upwork is all about match. So you want to make sure that the client is going to be a good match for you, not just your good match for them. So that's really, really important. You can look at things like higher rate, how often they hire for the projects that they submit, the average rate that they end up paying, reviews from other freelancers, etc. Just analyze the client and actually give them a look instead of just taking any and every client that comes your way. Also don't bid yet. I don't want you to actually, as you're going through and doing this bidding on the jobs, because you want to kind of go through and do all the research and the Gathering first and then you can come back and get into the groove of submitting proposals. So you can save jobs on Upwork, just save the first ten to 15 jobs that fit your criteria. And then we'll come back and we'll bid on those. So again, do this route a very methodical way. It's gonna maximize your time. And you're gonna see with a lot of the proposals, you're not going to copy and paste, but you are gonna see that a lot of them, you're gonna be saying similar things so you can get a little more efficient in that regard from there then it's about submitting the proposals. So there's a two kind of two parts to it. There's actually reading the job description and understanding what the client wants, and then there's actually submitting the profile or the proposal. So when you read the job description, what you're doing is you're analyzing it for the key hiring criteria. Key hiring criteria are the things the client says in the job description that reveal or indicate how they're going to decide who to hire. And a lot of times clients will tell you if you know what you're looking for, they'll tell you exactly what they're going to base their decision on. You tailor your proposal to that. As an example, when you look at this sentence, try to identify what the key hiring criteria is. It says this is from an actual job over and Upwork says I'm looking for a specialist that can assist with optimizing Google ads and SEO to drive more traffic and conversions. When you read that, what do you think the key hiring criteria isn't all of that? Well, I can tell you it's not the years of experience that you have. It's not how hard of a worker you are, not how reliable you are, just not how passionate you are about marketing. These are all things that I see people write in their profiles. It's not any of that. What matters is proof that you've boosted traffic and conversions in the past. What they're really after here is someone who can drive more traffic and conversions. And if you can show them proof, not that you can. You don't want to make the claim that you can do it. I mean, if that's all you got, then hey, but you really want to show them proof that you have done it. That's way more impactful. That's what's gonna get you hired. You really have to be able to filter all the BS that's gonna be written in a job description. There's tons of stuff that they're gonna be that's going to be written. And you have to separate executing on the project versus actually getting hired first for the project. So there's things that you're just going to ignore when you're trying to get hired for the project that will then be relevant later if you actually get hired and you're going to want to read through. And so you need to be able to filter those things out and really focus in on what is the actual hiring criteria so you can get hired first for the project. So just want to ask yourself, what do you really think matters to the client when it comes to getting hired? And then you're gonna speak to that in your proposal. And really if you do that, if you just do that, you're gonna have a lot better luck with your proposals. Then really getting into, oh, I got to follow this template or you got to see these, say these things are gonna be real salesy, etc. Identify the key hiring criteria, speak to those hiring criteria. And your proposals are going to be pretty simple and straightforward. All right, so once you've done all that, you've built your profile, you've probably gone and found some jobs, spent all your connects submitting proposals. The next thing that you want to do is you want to push clients to your profile from external. Sources. Now, a lot of people I get pushed back on this because this is a long-term play for strategic thinkers. So you're gonna lose some money up front and a lot of people have heartburn with that. But what you're doing by bringing in clients from external sources is you're juicing the algorithm in your favor, which will pay much bigger dividends in the long run. Because the algorithm, because as you bring those jobs in, you deliver, you get ratings or reviews. The algorithm's gonna start to see you as equality freelancer. Now, it's going to send you way more work than if you were kind of stingy and didn't bring those jobs in and he never got hired on Upwork. He got one job and it's really difficult, etc. You just choose the algorithm of them in your favor and AU pay dividends in the long run. There's a number of places external sources you can use to promote your profile. Things like YouTube, social media. If you have a blog, if you have an email list, if you're out doing networking events, etc. Really if you want, if you really want to make Upwork your thing, just funnel all of the external clients that you get into Upwork to juice the algorithm in your favor, which is then going to bring you more work internally from Upwork than if you didn't do it. So that's the basic idea here. That one thing alone pushing clients to profile from external sources, the people that it's probably the biggest separator from people from my students who have success on Upwork versus those who don't. The ones who have had success tend to funnel all of their external clients into Upwork. And the ones who don't have success tend not to. That's just a very clear thing that I've come across with all of my years of teaching. So again, try to get your head to the place where you can do that. Let's talk about while this works, that was the process. I know that was really involved, but let's talk about why it works. For upward. It works because you're feeding the algorithm exactly what it wants. You're giving it specific information so it can put you in front of the right clients that you're likely to get hired for. And when you do get hired because it's something very specific that you already know how to do. You're likely to do a good job delivering, which means you're going to go to grading and you're going to get a good review all of those things Upwork once you're feeding the algorithm and Upwork exactly what it wants for the client. You're giving them exactly what they need. They're looking for someone who can do something very specific. They're looking for a specialist, so you're giving them that and that makes it an easy decision for them. Then for you, it's likely going to be a little bit smaller project. So you're not gonna be so scared of it is gonna be something that you know how to do really well. So again, you're just not, not something that you're gonna be very fearful of. It just works for everybody when you approach it this way. Now I'll give you a couple of resources here. Number one, you can check out my freelancing and upward course here on Skillshare. If you want to really dig into the step-by-step fine detail where I'll walk you through literally building out your profile on Upwork, submitting proposals, etc, screencasts that walk you through it step-by-step. You just go to my profile here on Skillshare, you'll see the course there. It's the only Upward Course. You can dive into that and that walks you through it in detail. You can also check out episode, episodes 56 of this particular course. Let's talk freelance, where I talk about Upwork as well. Again, go into some detail about, about how to be successful on Upwork. So if you really want to do Upwork, I recommend checking out those two resources. Alright, so that was a long one. But it's an important one because I know a lot of people that's gonna be the route that they go. They're gonna go freelance sites, they're gonna go Upwork. A lot of this stuff I'm talking about Upwork, but it really applies to a lot of the freelance sites, particularly the open freelance sites, because they all have to operate in a very similar way. Alright, method number three then is what I call the princes inheritance, and this is using cold email. So you've probably got those e-mails at least in the past from some prints in some far off country who has an inheritance for you. Those are, those are spam emails there, phishing emails, but we're gonna use cold email. We're just going to do it the smart way. So here's a strategy. You want to start by identifying highly qualified clients. Don't emphasize highly qualified clients. Because what a lot of people who do cold email do is they just blast out a thousand emails to 1000 people that they haven't even evaluated. Don't know if they're qualified or not, and they're just sort of playing a numbers game. That can work. But it typically doesn't work as well as doing a little bit of research and finding highly qualified clients and sending them targeted e-mails. So you first want to identify highly qualified clients. The easiest way to do that is just Google businesses in your area. So things like lawyers, doctors, insurance agents, financial advisors, just go on Google and search for lawyer. The Google Maps and you'll get this list of probably, depending on where you live, it could be a 100, it could be 200, it could be a 1000. Local businesses in your area. Just go through those and start going to their websites and seeing if you can identify anything that they're in need of. And we'll talk about how to do that in a minute. But you want to, again, just start by googling businesses in your area and identifying. Highly qualified clients. I recommend professions where they tend to have money like lawyers, doctors, insurance agents. And then once you do that, we're going to uncover their legitimate urgent needs. So what is the legitimate urgent needs? Well, if you're a web developer, it might be that they don't have a website where I live. A lot of the business round here don't even have them. Or it could be that their websites not responsive or it could be it doesn't looked at grade or something's not working, or they could do this or that or the other. If you're a web developer or web designer, it'd be something unrelated to their website. They, you see that is wrong with the website. You're looking for something that is actually wrong with what they're doing. Again, they don't have one, it's not responsive, etc. If your social media manager could be that they're not on social media and or it could be that they were the post or maybe they do post, but they get no engagement trying to identify a problem with what they're doing that's related to what it is that you do. If you're a graphic designer, maybe the web design and the color scheme and the topography on their website is all messed up or the logo is bad or whatever it is. Again, looking for problems. If you're a writer, it could be that they're not even doing content marketing or maybe they're not doing it consistently, or maybe their posts aren't getting that much engagement, etc. etc. Again, a legitimate urgent need is something that is wrong with their website, their business, what they're doing that's related to what you do. That is legitimate, you know, it's wrong, you know, it's not right. There's no you don't have to ask them what they need. You don't have to. There's no question. You know, it's wrong if it's not responsive, it's wrong. If they're not doing social media, it's wrong. They're getting no engagement, something's wrong. So you know, it's wrong. So it's a legitimate need and it's urgent. Their competitors are probably doing it right. Their competitors sites probably responsive. They're probably doing content marketing, they're probably on social media, etc. So it's legitimate and it's urgent. That's what you're looking for. That's how you identify qualified leads because they're in a occupation that has the money that can afford you. And they actually have a real need. You're not just talking about how great you are. You're not writing email that says you're gonna make them a bunch more money or this, or that, you've identified an actual real problem that's hurting their business. And you can solve it for them. And on and on, whatever it is that you do, you can kind of figure that out. So again, we're going to use cold email, do that. The very first thing, once you've identified the legitimate urgent need, you've essentially made of list. You've filtered through all of the hundreds or thousands of businesses in your area and you've narrowed it down to maybe 30 or 50 or a 100. You've created a master list of contacts and of problems that they have. Now you want to actually contact them. You want to write them a cold email. And it's really, really simple. You just say, Hey, I was on your web site today and saw that your site is not responsive, or I saw that your typography is not in a line with the typical standards or your logos. A little Genki, you got to write that correctly, but you're going to essentially tell them that you solve the problem. This, ask them, Hey, would you like me to fix it for you? Because that's what I do. There's really no need to read beat around the bush is particularly with a cold e-mail. You have a very limited attention, attention span that you're gonna get from them. No need to beat around the bush, no need to talk about how great you are, etc. All you really don't need to sell all that much really all you need to do is just ask questions. Hey, it was on your website today. I saw that it's not mobile responsive. I don't know if you know this, but mobile, mobile responsiveness is really important and a lot of people CEC, sites on their phone first. And if it's not mobile responsive, they immediately go to someone else's site. So you are potentially losing a lot of potential clients to your competitors because your site's not mobile responsive. Is that something you've ever thought about fixing? That's it. That can be the email. So you don't need to sell, you don't need to beat around the bush. Just tell them what you saw. You have a real problem that they need solved. Ask them questions and if they respond, they respond. If they don't, they don't, It's really on them because they have a real problem that you can solve. Once you've done that and since that first email, then you do want to follow up. Dan Kennedy talks about this and has specific numbers that he used with a direct mail, actually sending mail in people's mailboxes. And essentially you almost double the amount of response if you send at least three follow-up, in this case, e-mails. So you don't want to just send the email and hope you're gonna send the follow-up emails. If you've ever gotten a cold email like this, you know that they send you a number of follow-ups and they do it again on targeted not qualified leads. So you might be thinking, oh, yeah, that never works. That's because they're not targeting you properly. I get those all the time and they're not targeting me properly. I get web developers who asked me if I want to hire them to do web default mode for me. I'm like, Dude, I'm a web developer. Like Why are you contacting me? So anyway, targeted, qualified leads, simple contact e-mail and then you follow up and you can simply say, hey, I didn't hear back from you. Like I said, your site's not mobile responsive could be causing you potential clients. Just curious if that's something that you would be interested in fixing. It's what I do. I can help you do it. Maybe even include, here's a sample of my work. If you're interested. Ultimately you want to send at least three emails, as I mentioned, and the final email you want to make sure and include some urgency. So say something like This is the last time I'm going to e-mail you. And I say this because I know from my own experience, like I said, I get these on targeted e-mails and even still, they'll send the last one and they'll say something like This is the last time, this is the last email and it's just human nature. I open it and I read it. And if it's even mildly targeted for some reason, I end up responding to it. Sometimes it's just to tell them No. But a lot of times it'll get me to at least ask what's this all about if it's even closely targeted. So that last email with the urgency in it is really, really important that can be the one they might open and read the other ones and not respond. That can be the one that gets them to respond. So just make sure and include that. Now, why does this work? Well, a like I said, you're not blasting out on targeted e-mails to unqualified leads. You're actually sending targeted, highly targeted e-mails to leads that you've qualified that always and forever. Going to lead to better results. Just blasting out on targeted communication to people you have no idea if they need your services or not. That's always going to have low conversion rates. So that's a big reason why it works. Like I said, you know, they need your services, you've identified a legitimate urgent needs. There's no question, you know, they need your services. They probably already know that what you our highlighting is wrong. And they've like in the back of their mind, you've probably done this, you know, something's wrong and you intend to fix it. You just haven't gotten around to it. You keep putting it off. Now what you're doing is putting it in their face, giving them an easy way to fix it. And then it could be the thing that they need to give them that little push over the edge to actually do it. So that's why this works. Can be a very effective method for you getting your first client. All right, next is can I pick your brain? And so this is networking at local business events or groups, could be conferences, whatever it is, it's sort of in-person meetings and I use kind of pick your brain because if you've ever been to one of those that typically once someone knows that you know a particular topic and they need help with it and hey, can I pick your brain? So anyway, that's what tends to happen. Here's the strategy. Essentially you want to find groups 3. EP7: 11 Tips to Get Started Freelancing: Exam marks here back with another episode of Let's Talk freelance. This one, we're gonna be going through 11 tips to get started freelancing. What's really cool about this one? By the end of this, you're going to have actual real-world items that you can use in your freelance business. So you're gonna have your services defined very specifically, you'll have a roadmap for building those services. And if you follow along, you'll have a portfolio built with three to five items in it. So if you look into get started freelancing wants some very specific steps on how to do that, then this episode will be for you. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump in. All right, so a quick look at what we'll be covering. I've broken these tips down into three general categories are activities that are important when you're freelancing. Number one, figuring out what service to offer, that'll be tips 123. Number two is getting clients to hire you. That's tips 4567. And then finally delivering and making clients happy tips, 891011. So that said let's go ahead and jump into tip number one. Tip number one is activity, expertise and deliverable. Now, one of the things to understand is if you're a creative, which I assume if you're watching this and my audience, you probably are in that general area of creative. We tend to come at this from a different perspective than most traditional business because there's an element of self-expression to what we do. And for us, the prime mover, the thing that's driving us is the activity, not really the audience. Whereas for most businesses, the audience is the primary creatives. Essentially say, I want to do web development or I want to do graphic design, or I wanna be a writer. And then they try to figure out what services within that grand or that broad market they can offer that are marketable, that people want, etc. But the thing that primarily moves you that you want to do is the activity. It's a little bit different than traditional businesses that typically start with the audience. And then they say, What does the audience want? And then they orient their activities around the audience. So for them, the audience is the prime mover. So the main point here is that we come at this a little bit different. And so that's why if you've tried a lot of traditional business advice and traditional marketing advice, it maybe hasn't worked as well for you because you're just coming at it from a little bit different angle. Your traditional businesses, they'll hire employees to do the work that the owner, the CEO doesn't want to do if it's a factory, the owner, the CEO, the person who started the business probably doesn't want to work on the factory line. They want to build the grander business. And so they hire employees to do the work that they don't want to do. As it creative, typically, you're going to be both the owner and the workers. So you're gonna be the one engaged in the actual activity delivering the product or service. The whole point of why you're doing this is to stop, quit, quit a job that you don't like and stop doing things that you hate. You're not going to orient around an activity that you don't want to do. So a little bit different. And so the way that you connect your activity, what you wanna do to an audience is activity, expertise and deliverable. And so that's what we're gonna talk about with this tip. The activity is the activity, the grander activity that you want to engage in, web development, graphic design, writing, etc. It's very broad. This is where you start. This is a starting point. You're looking at this activity and you're figuring out how do I take this and how do I turn this into a marketable product or service? Then the next step in that process is what's called an area of expertise. Within that broader activity. What is it that you know best? What is your area of expertise? I can take myself as an example. My activity would be web development. My area of expertise would be WordPress site building. That's what I've done for close to two decades. Build WordPress sites for people. So that's my area of expertise. That's not as broad as web development. It's a very specific niche within web development. So that's the next step that you want to take and you really want to think about what is it that you're best at? What do you really like doing? What do you imagine yourself doing for at least the next five to ten years? And center the products and services you're going to offer around that area of expertise. So that's the second step. And then finally, the third step is the deliverable. Within your area of expertise, for me, WordPress site building, what deliverables can you produce for people? So some examples of WordPress sites that could be built our membership sites, e-commerce stores, online courseware, libraries, just typical blogs, business websites, etc. There's a bunch of different ones. You want to really narrow down to the ones that you want to focus on that you want to offer. You could do a little bit of research online to see if it's a marketable service of people are actually hiring for that. You could search for. You can search for it in Google, you can search for an Upwork. You can look on Fiverr. You probably already know if it's something that people are after. I mean, I don't have to do any research to know that people want e-commerce sites and membership sites, online course libraries. Again, you just want to pick within that what it is that you want to ultimately deliver for people. For me, it tends to be membership sites and online course library's, those two things are related. I use the same software to build them. Those are really what I focus in on. Those are my deliverables. That's the point that you want to get to. You really want to get to having a finite set of deliverables. We're going to talk about why that is as we go forward. But it makes delivering, it makes marketing and makes everything easier. When you're not trying to sell web development, you're trying to sell a specific deliverable like a membership site or an online course library. You know exactly what to put in your portfolio, you know what to tell people about what they get when they hire you and all of these things. It just makes more sense. When you have something specific that you're offering, that's the point you want to get to. It's really the first thing that you want to do before you get into anything else freelancing wise, because it's so much harder to do everything else if you don't have some specific deliverables that you're going to create for people. So first, first tip, that's why it's number one is probably the most important thing that you can do. If you haven't done it yet. You don't have to spend hours doing it. You just use this thing through this probably in about five to ten minutes, nail some things down and now you have them set. Okay. So that leads into tip number two then which is reduced scope to eliminate fear. Now, I've talked about this in a previous video. I'll include a link in the little card things at the top. If you want to check out that video where I go in more depth about this. But you do know, you do not want to have to learn something new to deliver, especially when you're getting started because that is what creates fear. That's what makes you nervous. That what can cause you to wig out? What can cause you to never take your first client in the first place. You don't want to have to learn something new in order to deliver. You. Make it easy for yourself when you're working with a client. You challenge yourself when you're learning. Don't challenge yourself when you're delivering for a client. At least until you get some experience and you're comfortable working with clients and you feel comfortable doing something like that. But when you first getting started, I strongly recommend against doing that. It just makes everything a whole lot harder. Like I said, you don't have to take on some herculean challenge to prove your worth. This isn't freelancers survivor. And you don't have to prove to everybody how great you are. You want to make those first couple projects you work on simple, that you get a good start and you can learn the freelancing skills, as opposed to having to constantly be worried about the core skills, skills that you still need to learn. On the execution side than just stay well within your comfort zone. And you're gonna be a lot better shape. On the learning side then, like I said, is where you can challenge yourself and grow your comfort zone. Honing in on the deliverables, like I just talked about, does 90% of this because now you're creating a project with a finite scope, you're creating a membership site. There's only so many ways that you can do a membership site. And you can really reduce that scope and really create it as more of a product than a service. Same thing with an online course library. You can, you can bring that scope down into something finite. It's not just, oh, I'm doing web development for you and they're gonna throw anything and everything at you. So honing in on the deliverables does 90% of this, because you're not offering a generic service. You're offering a specific deliverable that's finite with a limited scope. So again, that's why step tip number one is so important. All right. Once you have that figured out, then tip number three is to pre-plan and build. So once you have your deliverable identified, build it. Do a couple of projects just on your own for yourself. Build an online course pro library so you get some experience with it. Think of it as a demo for potential clients to look through. If you are going to tell someone, Hey, I'd build online course websites and here's what it looks like. You could actually let them login to that site. They can route around and so forth. Now you don't have to do that, but just build it like that's what you're doing. If you're really feeling for risky, build maybe three to five of these. So you get really comfortable building and delivering on these deliverables so that when you go to actually work with a client, you're not worried about that part of it. And then you can also take those three to five things and you can make them apart of your portfolio. You can take screenshots, put them in your portfolio, maybe offer them as demos, etc. Again, you have your portfolio build-out, you have some experience, and you have 90% of the work done beforehand. You've already built these. Now when someone hires you to build it, you don't have to recreate the wheel. You don't have to do it completely different than what you did from the items in your portfolio. That's why they hired you. They look through a demo. That's what they hired you based on. So you can just create that again. And you already have 90% of the work done. Now developers have an advantage because you can pretty much build the whole thing beforehand. You just change out logos, colors and you're probably good. Actually did this for a long time. Where I had what I call these clone sites that I offered. It was essentially some well-known sites that I built for some well-known online marketers. And a bunch of people wanted me to build a similar site for them. And so I already had the code already pre-built, already had it pretty much ready to go. 90% of his village just had to change out logos, colors, and so forth. And they would still pay me $3 thousand a site for those bills and they took me maybe a couple of days. So again, you don't have to take on this herculean challenge and recreate the wheel and, and create the biggest baddest newest website or what logo or whatever it is that you do. You don't have to do that. You can create really simple things for people. Just deliver well, communicate well, and be a good service provider and they'll hire you again and again and again. So pre-plan and build, like I said, developers have an advantage for other freelancers. What I recommend is you try to categorize your audience. So let me try to give you an example here. Graphic designers could break their potential clients down into restaurants that want branding kit or a logo or whatever it is that you're gonna do for your deliverables, could be real estate agencies, it could be online brands, etc. You want to try and categorize them. So another example is website templates. If you go on rat Bootstrap or any of the really the bootstrap related template site. You'll see templates for e-commerce stores, personal portfolios, online courses, local businesses, etc. They're categorizing though their audience. And then they're making templates specifically for different parts of their audience. So that if you're a restaurant owner, you go on there and you go, Oh, here's all the templates for restaurants and here let me buy this one. You want to do a similar thing if you're not a developer. Because that's going to help you to kind of figure out, okay, what, what kind of logo Am I going to put in my portfolio? What things am I going to build or what am I going to specialize in? Again, just try to categorize your audience and create different, different types of products or n, or deliverables for the different categories that you identify. Okay, next up then is your portfolio. As you probably know, your portfolio is gonna do 90% of the selling for you. So you want to make sure that you have one. Having something is better than nothing. This is a piece of advice I've given for a long time. But it would be better for you to create a bunch of projects on your own like I recommended previously, and put those in your portfolio, even if they weren't for clients and it would for you to have nothing in your portfolio. Because at the end of the day, clients just want to see what you can do. They just want to see what you're capable of. They don't necessarily care so much whether or not it's for an actual client, at least when they're looking at your portfolio. Obviously testimonials about your customer service and all of that's going to help. But at the end of the day, they really just wanted to see what it is that you can do. And so having something in your portfolio is way better than having nothing and it's gonna do 90% of the selling for you. Now, what I've found over the years is that the two things that matter most are visual appeal and relevance. So it's sort of like I always use the analogy. If you go into, if you go to install a new app and you're looking for a new app on your phone. We're not supposed to do it. But a lot of times how good a particular icon looks, kind of pre, pre-sales us on the app if it has an ugly looking icon. And we go in and we looked at the screenshots and the screenshots are ugly, looking like how many times have you seen that in glabella installing that app, it looks ugly. It's probably clunky. It probably doesn't work that well. Even though the visual appeal actually has nothing to do with whether or not the app functions all that well, especially the icon. Clients do that exact same thing when they're looking through your portfolio. Visual appeal matters. So put some time and effort into making sure your thumbnails and the graphics and the screenshots that you take for your portfolio, look good and present them. Well now, for some, for some of you that's gonna be difficult. You might be a back-end developer. I've added a accountants that have asked me about it Writers. You got to do the best that you can do with that. I mean, there's only so much that you can do. But oftentimes I'll tell for example, with a writer, you know, create, create a thumbnail that you would use depending on what kind of writing you do and what the project is. But imagine that the piece of writing that you want to put in your portfolio is a blog post. And you were gonna create a thumbnail for it. Put that as the thumbnail for the portfolio item. It doesn't have to be just a picture of the text. It can be a thumbnail that you create. And then throughout the portfolio item, maybe you can have little snippets of texts and so forth. But again, you just want to find a way to make it visually appealing. Of course, the second part is relevant. So it needs to be really relevant to the deliverables that you're offering. Again. Oh hammer this throughout. That's why you pick a finite set of deliverables. Don't just offer web development because then you can put any random thing in your portfolio and it may or may not be what that particular client is after. However, if you are say, saying building online course libraries and all your portfolios, full online course libraries, that's highly relevant to someone looking for a developer to build them an online course library. So you want it to be relevant. Pick specific deliverables, and then fill your portfolio with those particular items. Now volume is a corollary. Volume can matter, but it's hard to do when you're just getting started. Because 20 in 20 items in your portfolio volume wise is probably not going to, depending on what you do, but that's probably not gonna be enough. When volume starts to matter is when you have a 100 things in your portfolio and people look at it and go, oh my gosh, this person is super experience. That's when volume starts to matter. But the difference between 1015 times in your portfolio isn't really going to matter. So again, it's hard to do when you're getting started because you're not going to go out and just build a 100 sites. And I don't recommend that you don't build 100 sites on your own to put in your portfolio, that would not be a good use of your time. It would be better for you to build three to five, get some clients and then start filling it with client work. And if you get to a 100 clients, hey, then the volume will work in your favor. Now, as I've said, pre-built can be both demos and fill your portfolio when you have no previous clients. So if you haven't done any previous client work, again, do your prebuilt to fill your portfolio. And if you want to offer demos, you want to actually allow people to login and root around in a website or whatever it is that you do, however that would work, then you can do that. That's your portfolio. Next, let's talk about free work because that's one, a big one that comes up. So it can be an easy way to get some early experience and some items for your portfolio. So I'm not, I'm not a 100% against it. However, free work can be a bit of a trap. Because especially if you're working with family members and you do something free for one family member and then they tell someone else in your family now they want you to do it for free. And it can start you down this path of just constantly doing free work for people. So it can be a little bit of a trap, but if you position it correctly, if you message it correctly, then it can be very, very valuable to get that experience and get those items for your portfolio. I personally recommend charging at least something, so it can be extremely low, but you want to set a, the expectation that you're going to charge it might not be what you deserve, it might not be what it's worth. But you're going to charge something and you're gonna give the if it's a family member of the family discounter, friend is a friend discount, etc. It can be extremely low, but you want to charge something in my opinion, so you can kind of figure that out on your on your own, for your situation, your personality. But at the end of the day, it must be relevant. That's again, going back. Don't just do free work to do free work, to put something in your portfolio, do relevant free work. And if you have a family member that wants you to do something for them and it's not relevant specific to your deliverables. I recommend passing on or if you just want to be a nice person by all means, but it's not something that I would put in your portfolio. You have to assume when clients are looking through your portfolio that they're not going to make the connection. You might know, as a web developer debt because you built an e-commerce store, it would be pretty trivial for you to then switch over and build an online course library. E-commerce store is probably a little bit harder to build. Then of course, Library put clients don't know that. You can't assume that they're going to make that connection. So you can assume if they see e-commerce project in your portfolio that they're gonna go, oh, well then he can easily do an online course library. They're not gonna make that connection. You have to make the connections for them. And the easiest way to do that is just to make sure everything in your portfolio is relevant and the free work that you do or the low-cost work that you do is relevant to what you're going to offer. Of course, I recommend that you treat it like a fully paid gig. The whole point is for you to get experience doing this, to get your feet wet, to get some sense of how this is all going to work. So even if it's a good friend of yours or a family member, etc, I highly recommend you treat it like a fully paid gig. So run it like you would just run a fully paid gig, whatever you think that looks like. And then kind of adjust from there. Based off of the experience that you get from that. Then I also highly recommend very strongly. I don't think there's probably a point of doing it if you don't do this. And that is to require the client to give you a testimonial afterwards. Let's kind of the whole point. You're not making a bunch of money off this because you're either doing it for free or really, really low costs. So the money isn't the point. The portfolio item, yes. But really, you could you could build those sites on your own for nobody and have the portfolio item. The only real reason to do free or low-cost work is so that you can get a testimonial along with it. So I highly recommend that you make that a part of the negotiation when you're talking to the person, Hey. I'm gonna charge you a really low price or I'm gonna do this for free. But what I want in return is a testimonial when this is all done. And that's gonna really help beef up your portfolio and get actual client testimonials in their future. Clients don't have to know that you did that work for free or for low cost. It doesn't really matter. They just need to know what it was like working with you. That's what really matters to them. All right. Next tip number six, and again, we're under the getting clients section here. So you want to think about non traditional streams of clients. So traditional would be things like freelance sites, job boards, social media. Non-traditional might be things like meetup groups, cold email. Some niches content marketing, because a lot of freelancers, in particular niches don't do a lot of content marketing. The thing to keep in mind is that crowded marketplaces, while they do have more potential clients, they also have more competition. So a freelance site like Upwork? Yes, it has a ton of clients. Yes, they're ready to buy and I'm not saying you shouldn't be on Upwork, but there's also a lot more competition over there. So you don't just want to focus on the traditional ways of getting clients. You want to look for non-traditional ways where there's good demand but not near as much competition. When it comes to those marketplaces, almost always, the increased competition outweighs the increased number of clients. So if you take, again, we'll just take a freelance site like Upwork. Yeah, there's a bunch more clients on there. There might be, let's say, a 100 thousand clients, but there's likely millions of freelancers. So even though there's a lot more clients, there's way more freelancers than, than relative to how many clients there are. So it almost always outweighs the increased number of clients. Now the exception here is that if you can establish yourself in a crowded marketplace, then it doesn't matter how much competition there is. P 0 at the top of that competition, you're 1234, top five, top ten on the list of people in that crowded marketplace. And now the marketplace is going to focus in on you. I mean, that's sort of a sad fact of these marketplaces is that 80% of the work probably goes to 20% of the freelancers there. So if you're in that 20%, that's a good place to be. So that's the exception to this rule. But again, you just want to look for non traditional streams of clients where you can sort of wiggle your way and especially when you're new and it's gonna be hard for you to compete on these packed marketplaces. Essentially you want to zig when everybody else is zagging, find places that either they don't know about or they're just too lazy to pursue. Now I'll give you an example. Insurance companies, they have new agents go around their neighborhood putting fliers on, on cars. Now, that might sound really stupid to you. It sounds extremely tedious to me. But these big $1 billion insurance companies have their new agents do this. Why? Yeah, it's extremely tedious, but it works because it's not how everybody else markets. Everybody else markets via radio and TV and the Internet because that's the easy way of doing it. So they're taking the easy route. Sometimes you can take the hard route and it is harder, but there's way less competition. And so you're able to actually get your feet wet and get those first few clients when it would be difficult for you to go into a pack marketplace or a traditional avenue for marketing yourself and be able to get your voice heard and cut through all of the other noise and competition that's out there. So I'm not saying only do nontraditional streams with clients. I'm just saying do look for those on top of the other things that you're doing and that can help you to get those first few clients. All right, and then let's look at our last tip for getting clients and that's the yes-no balance, how you sort of manage workload and so forth. So early on, I would say yes, a lot more than feels comfortable. It can be it can be tempting to kind of be a snob a little bit early on and to be frustrated about having to do things that maybe you take on projects that maybe aren't exactly what you're after right up your alley, maybe their price lower than what you wanted so forth. But you really should be saying yes, more often than feels comfortable when you start take projects at prices lower than you might like to. Because you'd literally can't afford to be a snob. You need the revenue coming in that's going to help you to do more marketing, to do some of the things. Get more confidence to do all of the things that you need to do in order to get more clients, higher price projects, etc. You also just simply need the experience. Even if it's the experience early on is gonna be more valuable than the money that you make from the project. I know that can be hard. Especially if we're in a tough financial position, can be sound, rich or quaint coming from me. But I think long term you'll, you'll come to see that it really is true. The experience early on as much more valuable than whatever money you make even if you're getting paid extremely well. Of course, you need the portfolio, you need the testimonials. Again, you can do that stuff without you can do the portfolio without client work, but client work is always better. Again, you need the money, you need some money to get rolling. And that's just going to make you confident, frankly is gonna get you a little bit addicted to doing this. And it's really going to provide a lot of motivation and drive for you to keep going. So again, you should be saying yes a lot early on. As you gain experience and your demand increases, then you're going to, that experience is going to help you. It's going to help get your name out there and be more in demand and that sort of thing. But it's also going to help you to really focus in on and hone in on what it is that you want to do. And that's a big component of this because again, if we go back to the beginning, the whole point was to stop doing things that we hate to do. That's why we kind of pursue freelancing. Whether the job you have now is completely unrelated to what the activity you want to do, freelancing or you're doing it, you're doing the activity you want to do, but you're doing it for maybe you don't like your boss or you just don't want to be in a corporate environment, or you just want to go out on your own. The whole point is to stop doing things that you don't want to do. As you gain experience, you're going to really be able to hone in on what that looks like for you, what that picture is. And that's when you're gonna start saying No more often than probably feels comfortable. Because what'll happen and I've experienced this myself is as your demand increases, then you're gonna get to a point where it's really hard to say no to money. If you can't figure out how to do that, you're gonna get burnout. I had I won't say quite a nervous breakdown, but I was really close. It was probably close to a decade ago now that this happened to me. But I hit a point where I was completely burnout and it really affected my health, my work, everything. And it was just a matter of, you know, I grew up poor and I had people want to give me money to do so for him. And it's really hard for me to say no. I had to learn how to do that. What you do instead of just saying yes to everything as you raise the level of your clientele, the kinds of people that you work with, the types of projects that you work on, how much you're getting paid for them and so forth. And you're essentially going to do less work, but make the same or more. That's really what you're after. So that you get more free time. You're not constantly spinning your wheels working on projects for clients. It's also going to raise your status because now you're working on these big, bigger projects. Some people get annoyed when I say this on here, but I have worked on projects very Inc. Magazine and Lewis Howes and do some stuff for Tim Ferriss and all these other people that I can name. Working on those projects helps to raise your overall status, which helps you to charge more and to be more in demand. So again, being selective as the demand rises helps you to then be able to charge more and become even more exclusive. And of course, like I said, it's going to free up your time. And you're gonna be building a business or slash career that's sustainable mentally and emotionally. It's not sustainable to just constantly be saying yes to everything, especially as the demand increases. And that's also how you transition from lower-cost projects to premium projects, is you start saying no to the lower-cost stuff and you have this other premium stuff and eventually the work that starts coming in as all premium type stuff. Alright, so that's tip number seven. Now we're gonna transition into the tips for delivering on projects for clients. So tip number eight is focusing on what clients care about when it comes to the delivery of the project. For developers out there, the example I use, his clients don't care how well your code is documented. Now, I get pushed back every time I say this. So you're saying you shouldn't you shouldn't comment code, How dare you lead? That's like blasphemy in developer world. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. What I'm saying is clients don't really care. You might yes, you might have that one or two clients. If you're working for a company, they're going to care. But clients on the whole don't really care about that. That's not what it is that they're worried about. And so yes, document your code, but just don't realize just realized that that's not what's going to make the client overjoyed if you really did a good job of documenting your code that caused you to deliver a week late. The client is gonna be upset that you didn't. You delivered a week late, not happy that you documented your code really well. Again, for freelancers in other niches, graphic designers, writers, etc. There's probably things like this that you can find that you're focused on, that clients aren't, aren't really that worried about. For example, clients don't care how well you organize your Photoshop projects unless you're delivering the Photoshop project to them. But if you're ultimately delivering a JPEG or PNG or whatever, they don't really care what the underlying, how well the underlying Photoshop project is organized. It's things like that that clients don't care about. Um, so again, do those things for you. Do those things because you're an organized person or the matter to you, whatever, not saying not to do them. Again, just recognize they're not going to matter a whole lot to clients and especially won't make up for missing out on what I call the big three. The big three things that clients do care about. And those things are quality, speed, and communication. If you just focus on those three things when it comes to how you deliver, your gonna be in better shape than 90% of freelancers out there. So quality, speed, and communication. And as you might have guessed, the next three tips are gonna be talking about how to do those three things. Alright, so number nine, Let's talk about ensuring quality. In my experience, high-end quality comes from repetition. It's very hard to have super high-quality when you're doing something for the first time. And that's in virtually anything that you might do. The very first time you do it, it's not gonna be as good as the 10th. And the 10th won't be as good as the 50th and the 50th won't be as good as the a 150th. High-end quality comes from repetition, air go. I just wanted to say that word. That's why they're in there. But EHR Go, finite deliverables help a ton here. So going back to tip number one, finding finite deliver, deliverables helps a ton because now again, you're not offering a general oh, I'm doing web development, I'm doing graphic design. Your work on any and every project? No. I'm doing logos or I'm doing brand kits, or I'm building online course libraries. Or if I'm a writer, I'm writing specifically about this particular topic. I'm writing about tech topics or whatever I'm writing about marketing topics, etc. The more you do that same thing over and over and over. That's where high-quality comes from. You just get really good. It's not rocket surgery. To figure that out. Another way that you can ensure qualities with a project roadmap. But again, when you do something over and over, you can really hone in on these project roadmaps. Now, what I recommend as soon as you're done watching or listening to this, that you pick your deliverable. That's the very first thing that we should do, at least one, you can have probably three to five. I wouldn't have too many more than that. Otherwise, you're not really narrowing the list. But it pick at least one and then make a list right after you do that, make a list of every step that you think right now that it'll take to complete it, even if you've never done it and just write down a list of okay, here's what I think I need to do. I'm, I'm gonna build an online course library. I'm going to use WordPress or I need to now install WordPress. I need to install maybe a learning management system. I need to build out these page. Just make a list of what you think it will take to complete that particular project. Then go and build one, the pre-built that we talked about. Go and build one and use your list and follow that list. And as you go through that list, inevitably, you're going to find holes. So you're going to find things that are missing. You're going to find more detail that you can add in here, etc. And just update, update that list as necessary. And now you're going to create a roadmap of what you're going to do in order to deliver on that deliverable. And then build another one another. By about the third inner rate iteration, you'll have it really dialed in. You'll have three items for your portfolio. You'll have three sets of code or Photoshop files or whatever it is that you can 4. EP6: Upwork Exploitatie Part 2: Build Your Profile: Hi Maurice here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk freelance and Upwork exploitative body part 2, where we're going to be talking about building your profile. Now one caveat before I get into this, recently, upwork has sort of changed its approach to how it deals with content creators. They've been starting to issue a lot of take-down notices and cease and desist letters to people who do screenshots or screencasts of the back end or the inside of Upwork. I personally have had a couple of YouTube videos taken down, but taken down I've had several cease and desist letters given to me. So for the foreseeable future until upward changes, it supposition or something else happens related to that, I won't be doing screencasts from the back-end of Upwork simply to avoid all of that sort of mess. I don't know if legally they can really do that, but I also spent some time I'm really going to spend a lot of time worried about or fighting. And it really ultimately, I don't think matters in terms of what you actually do because it's just filling in some boxes. So anyway, if you're wondering why I'm not screen casting the backend that that is why. So again, like I said, we're going to dive into how to build your profile according to the strategy that I laid out in part one. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive in. And the first thing we need to talk about is the difference between generalized profile, specialized profiles and project. So Upwork lets you create a general profile and up to two specialized profiles and also be able to add sort of one-off projects to your profile. Now, just a little bit of a humble brag here. Way back in the day when I first started talking about Upwork. Nobody was really talking about special at specialization back then with your profile. And it was probably close to a decade ago that I started doing that. Now, it's an actual feature in their system. And I know that people from Upwork, I've watched my videos because I've talked with them a lot about it. So I just want to say it was 0 concrete proof. I'm saying that I'm responsible for this feature, so you're welcome. But it is, it is honestly an important thing. An important thing that they've added that I think is very valuable for, for you and it's a great thing, okay, so you should be using these things as best you can and we're going to walk through some ways for you to do that. And I'm going to give you my general advice on these. And so we need to think of it kind of like levels. You have hyper-specialized, specialized, and then general. So let's talk about that a little bit. So when I talk to freelancers about how they should craft their services, how they should figure out what services they're gonna offer based off of their general sort of skill set. Because most freelancers go into freelancing saying, Well, I'm a web developer or I'm a graphic designer, or I'm a writer. And they don't necessarily have some super highly specialized thing that they want to do. Like for example, if you're a developer, you don't necessarily know that you want to go in and create plug-ins for WooCommerce. That's not necessarily what you set out to do. You like coding. And so how you can do the different ways that you can do that. You kinda open to all of them. Same with graphic design writing. I imagine I'm, I'm not necessarily one of those people, but I imagine it's similar to that. So what I tell freelancers to do is to follow this pattern of category subcategory and end result category being sort of like what you would do for if you are a web developer, be web development that because of the broad category, a subcategory might be WordPress and then an end result might be WooCommerce websites. So each level is a little more specific. Well, you can use your three Upwork profiles to follow this. Okay, So one for the end result. So you might use WooCommerce, WordPress speed optimization, beauty tips, articles, logo design for plumbers, etc. Really specific, the end result is it's moving it from being a service to being something very specific, almost like a product. And the example I like to use is, if you're a photographer, most people don't come into you for photography, right? They don't come into a photographer for general photography needs. What they come in for our senior photos, or they come in for wedding photos. Those are actual end result. Those are more products than they are services. Okay. So that's the, that's the area of the realm the end result operates in. So again, you can see these examples of WooCommerce website, speeding up your WordPress site, a beauty tips article, a logo for plumbers, etc. They're very, very specific and you can use one of these profiles for that. So one of your specialized profiles for that, you could use one for the subcategory. So. You have this really specific profile that's going to fit very well with the strategy that we talked about, about relevance and specificity in part one. And if you haven't watched part one, I highly recommend you do that because I'm going to be referencing it quite a bit. But now you kinda come up and you expand what you can offer, sort of one level, and that's the subcategory level. So now if you're a developer, it might be just WordPress. So you're not just doing WordPress sweet optimization, but you're doing general WordPress stuff. Maybe you can do plugins, you can do themes, and so someone can see the O, you can do this other stuff too. Or for a writer might be instead of doing specifically beauty tips articles, which happens to be your specialty, you say, Oh, I can do other sorts of writing two, so I have article writing. Or if you're a graphic designer, maybe it's not so specific as Logo Design for plumbers or logo design for real estate agents is just sort of more general logo design that you can do. So again, you can use one of your, your specialized profiles for this. So you have one that's really specific, one that sort of upper level. And then you have your shorter general profile, which is for the category. And that you can have it be web development, you can have it be writing, could be graphic design. And so what happens in that way, you're hitting every level that a client may want to hire you at from the very broad, where they just they need a rider that they maybe want to work with on a ongoing basis to the very specific, whether they have a very specific project that they need help with. They need someone to come in, execute on the project and get out. And so what it does is it helps you to build those upstream services that you can grow into as you get jobs on Upwork. So you're not stuck with this very highly specialized niche. You're open to all of these other services and you can start getting work for those four or in those areas. Now, obviously this isn't a hard fast rule. You don't have to do it this way. You could definitely do it other ways. So for example, you could do maybe your general profile is WordPress and then you have your two specialized be WordPress themes and WordPress plugins. That would make sense that, that would see someone doing it that way. So again, it's just not a hard fast rule is just one approach to, to how you might do it. Ultimately, you want to focus on what it is that you want to do and what makes sense for the kind of work that you want to do. Okay, So don't get so wrapped up in what's going to get me hired and just just bending over backwards to do whatever you have to do to get a client hire you, and you end up doing things that you don't really want to do or you're not really all that good at. You want to focus on what it is that you wanna do. And then use the different profiles that you have available to you in ways that make sense for you to kind of build these upstream services. Or where when someone looks at your profile, that makes sense, Hey, you're a WordPress developer. And then if I want a theme, I can learn more specifically about what you can do with WordPress themes. Or if you're applying to a job that has, that's asking someone to build a WordPress theme. You can include the profile for that. That's all based around WordPress themes and it's more relevant to them. So again, just use all of these tools to your advantage Ultimately. Now of course, we also have to talk about projects because Upwork let you create individual projects was set prices that you can offer to clients. So this is essentially fiber. This, it's their way of competing with fiber. If you look at it, it almost looks, looks very close to two, how fiber does it as well. So that's the big idea here. And again, this is a good thing. This is, it's more stuff for you to do, but it's a it's a good thing for you to be able to do. On the client side, actually, Upwork has done this a little bit to where they allow clients to create very specific things that they need. And they, they, the, the freelancers can come to them and apply for their very specific projects. So they've done it on both sides. But what it allows for you, what it allows clients is they can hire you for a specific finite service that already kinda has everything decided what the deliverables are, what the price is. And so instead of you having to bid on jobs, they can come to you and just hire you based off of one of your projects, just like they would over on Fiverr. Now, you should do this. This is everything that you can do to increase the chances of you getting hired. You should do that. You just want to keep what you offer in line with the other services that you're offering because you want your job has to hop job history to be as congruent as possible as you get more work. So you want everything to make sense. So you don't want to put in your profiles, your general and your specialized profiles that you do WordPress stuff and then go over to projects and have a graphic design project or a writing project. It just, it's not congruent. Okay, So you want to have things that are congruent across the board when it comes to the projects that you offer because you want to become known as the sort of go-to guy or go to gal. For whatever kind of work that it is that you ultimately do. And it's not just about clients looking at your profile and saying, oh, this is the WordPress person or this is the WooCommerce person, or this is the logo person. It's also about the algorithm. It's also about the algorithm being very clear on what it is that you do and making sure to show your profile in search and the suggestion listing to show it to people who are highly qualified for what you do. So you have a much better chance of them clicking through them, inviting you, them hiring you, you're doing a good job than being satisfied. All of it goes together. And again, a lot of this is based off what I talked about in part 1 of this series. So if you've watched that, you'll understand what I'm saying here, but you just want to keep the algorithm straight. You have to sort of tend the algorithm a little bit. You know, it's kind of, it's kind of like a child that you need to constantly point in the right direction and that's what you're doing with this. Now, if you really want to get strategic, you could use your projects for the end result. Remember we talked about the end results are very specific senior photos for a photographer, it might be a specific kind of article for a writer or a specific kind of website for a developer. So you can use projects to offer that because projects are very conducive to this sort of end result type format. Okay? They, they, they are positioned more as projects in and of themselves. If you go on Fiverr, you know, it's not I'm going to a lot of the listings over there aren't. I'm going to offer you Greg graphic design services. It's I'll build you a logo for X amount of dollars or whatever. So it's very end result for focused already. So you can use projects to offer your end results very hyper specific type offerings. And then you can use your specialized profiles as sort of one level up and your general as a catch-all. So going back to our example of WordPress, maybe you use WordPress as your general for your general profile. And then you use WordPress plugins as one specialist, lies profile and WordPress theme as a another type of specialized profile. And then in your projects, you go into specific. So maybe you say, I'll build this, this WordPress theme or I'll build a WordPress what base website for real estate agents? I'll build a WordPress base website for plumbers and I'll build a WordPress based website for insurance agents, etc. And you get very specific with it. And you can have in your project screenshots of a template that you've already created or, or past ones that you've done for clients in that particular niche. So if I'm a real estate agent and I want a website built for me and I go to your projects. I don't have to go through 0. Here's one about a plumber, Here's one about insurance agent. I can go to the project that says, Hey, this is for real estate agents. I look at what's in there and it's all about real estate agents, all the features of a real estate agent website. You know, all the pictures and things that I see are all based around real estate. It's speaking directly and specifically to me. Okay, so that can work really, really well for your projects. So ultimately again, the whole idea is just to craft, to think about all of these tools that you have available to you and craft a congruent approach to how you're going to do it. That when someone lands on your profile, it all makes sense, and it all makes sense to the algorithm. So here's some examples that we can go through. So let's say your projects are a WooCommerce website, WordPress landing page, WordPress website for realtors, WordPress website from mechanics, et cetera, like I mentioned. And then you can do a specialized profile with siem development and plug-in development. And then you can use your general profile to be the end-all be-all WordPress wizard. So that's one example of how you might do it. And again, I'm throwing a number of examples that you, but ultimately, again, just think it through and figure out what makes sense for you, What's congruent for you and the services that you want to offer. Okay. So now that we've got that out of the way, let's go ahead and start talking about the different components inside your profile. And the first one is your title. And there are three elements to a perfect title. Now, keep in mind, you can always easily include all three elements, but if you are able to, then the better it's going to be, the more visual get, the more people kinda stand up and pay attention to you. But this is what the ultimate, the perfect title includes if you can get to it. So number one is a callout. So you want to talk, you want to call out to who are your ideal clients. So in this particular example, that might be worth WooCommerce people or might be WordPress themes, or it might be a WordPress plugin or it might be beauty tips are to whatever it is you want to call out to whoever your ideal clients are for that profile. Again, this is going to be different for, you know, your specialized profile, your other special, your general PRO, all that. It's going to be different for each one. But you want to think about that, the service that you're offering or that project. And you want to think about who are my ideal clients. And you want to have some sort of call out to them in your title, then you want to have some sort of unique identifier, okay? You want to have something that makes you different and speaks to the specificity. You engage in. So you might have something like fashion e-commerce. So if you specialize in building e-commerce sites based on WooCommerce for fashion sites, then that's going to be something that's unique to you, where you're going to speak directly to people in the fashion industry or maybe it's tech products, you're going to then include that instead. Don't get, the thing you don't want to do is do what a lot of people think when they see this as o all include fashion, all include tech, all include, all, include all of these. So that now I show up for all those searches. The problem is, is when a client sees that they look at it and I go, well, what is it that you really do? What is it that you actually specializes at fashion is a tech. What kinda e-commerce site do you actually build? And you don't make yourself unique, you just make yourself look kinda stupid actually, because you just look like you're spamming the title, okay, so you pick one. And again, this goes back to the idea of category subcategory and result, and orienting your profile around one specific thing that you're going to deliver. When you do that, then it makes, this is easy. You know what this is, it's whatever it is, whatever that is for you. And then finally, you want to include, includes some sort of proof. So what proves that? I know what I'm doing. So you might have something like a 100 sites plus develop. So now the way that you put this together is you've probably seen how a lot of titles on Upwork use a pipe delimiter and it'll be like to be WordPress, WordPress, e-commerce, WooCommerce, you've probably seen something like that. Well, a lot of times, the way people do that is it's just sort of random. They're actually all they're doing is they're doing the call out. They're just putting the names of different things that they want to try and hit in the title. This is being more intentional and more specific about it. So you might do WooCommerce and then a pipe delimiter, fashion e-commerce pipe delimiter, and then a hundreds plus sites developed. That would hit all three of these. Okay? Now again, it's not always easy to do. Sometimes it can be difficult for you to hit all three of these. So you hit as many as you can, you do the best you can with it. But if you can hit all three, you're going to hit the three main things that you need in order to get someone to click on your profile, which is you're speaking to them. You do the very specific thing that they need, the end result that thereafter. And you have some sort of proof that shows that you know what you're doing. You know, if you do that, I'm confident that you're going to get a lot of clicks to your profile. And of course you've got to do the rest of your profile to get them to actually invite, invite you to get hired, but you will get clicks on your profile from your title if you do it this way. Okay, so next let's talk about the overview, which is the next big piece that you have to your profile. So there are three unique strategies that I've found to work well. And I'm gonna go through each one. I've just given them some simple labels. One is direct, one is content, and one is personality based. Okay, so let's go ahead and dive into the direct. So step one is you want to have just some sort of proof to start off your direct appeal. A direct appeal is exactly like it sounds. It's just an, a direct appeal to, to your ideal client. You're not beating around the bush. You're not given content, you're not using a bunch of personality. You're just jumping right in and making a direct appeal. To do that, you need to start off with proof because it doesn't matter what you say. If they don't believe you, you need you need to first prove to them that you know what you're doing and that you're someone they should listen to. So some examples of proof could be volume, right? The amount of sites that you built might be an example or the amount of logos that you've built, the number of different clients that you've worked if et cetera. So volume is one example. Note of notoriety. So I built I built a website for Pepsi or I'm known as this type of person or whatever, anything, no notoriety related credentials. So if you have some sort of certification that is relevant to what you do, then you can say, I'm, you know, ABC XYZ certified developer. I've got this accreditation, et cetera, et cetera. Testimonials is obviously a good one. People talking about how amazing you are and get these aren't, this isn't everything, but any sort of proof that you can provide to start off with that that's what you're after. You just want to prove to them that you are someone that they should listen to you and that you know what they're doing. And these are some examples of how you might do that. Okay, from there then you want to start to speak to your specialization. So you can literally start the paragraph by saying, I specialize in and I recommend you do this just so you get yourself into that mind frame. There's no need to be cute or change the words. A bond or anything like that I had were just making a direct appeal. So you can say I specialize in and then you just state what your specialty is. And again, it's for that profile, okay, so whatever general specialized project, etc. You just want to state what you do for that particular protein irrelevant to that profile. Clearly, directly in succinctly, you don't get credit for writing more words, okay, so. Keep it clear, keep it direct and keep it succinct because clients don't want to do a bunch of reading. Okay. So you just state it as, as, as directly and as briefly as you can what it is that you do. So you might say something like, I specialize in building WooCommerce website. You can see here that that's not a very long sentence. It just states directly and clearly what it is that you do. Another example might be I specialize in writing blog articles for the fashion industry. Again, that makes it clear if I see fashion writer, I might be like, Okay, I need a fashion article and then I jump in and then I read this line. I specialize in writing blog articles for the fashion. Like there's no ambiguity around that. This is what I do. I write blog articles for the fashion industry, okay, that's what I need, That's what I'm after. This is someone who does exactly what I mean. Another one might be I specialize in creating logos for local businesses and local business I need a logo. This speaks directly to me. Okay, Then after you state your specialization, step three is your call to action. Now there's a couple of ways to do this. First is the hard close. And this is where you would simply say, click the button to hire me or invite me to your project. You're telling them directly to hire you. That is a hard close. Now, you can use this as you start getting more work and you can't respond to every invite or message. A soft clothes will often lead to more people contacting you and then you kinda have to convert those people into actual hiring clients. But as you start getting invited to more projects, as more people start hiring you and you don't really have time for that, then you can move to a hard close. You'll have fewer, fewer people out of contact you, but the ones who do will be more serious because you did a hard close. So it's actually a way of sort of weaning out the people who aren't as serious as you might want. Soft clothes is a little it's called a soft clothes because it isn't telling the client directly to hire you. It says shoot me a message and we can chat more about your projects. So you're not actually asking them to hire you yet, you're just asking them to get in touch with you. So it's a little bit softer, close. This works really well when you first start out. Because it gets people messaging you and get you talking to people, gives you more opportunity to convert them. You can talk to people and sort of get a better idea of what it is that they're really after that becomes information that you can use to tweak your profile. And then it just operates off of the principle that familiarity breeds trust. The more we talk, the more as humans, the more we talked to someone, the more we tend to trust them, unless of course they're giving us off a bunch of red flags. But generally speaking, the more you talk to someone, the more you're going to start to trust them, then you would just some random stranger that you've never talked to before. So if you can get them to message you and you start chatting back and forth, That's going to give you an advantage over people that they're not chatting with and they're just looking at profiles. So again, familiarity breeds trust. Really good to use when you first start out. And like I said, if you move, they don't hire you. You're gonna get valuable feedback for the next time. And if you're talking to enough clients, eventually you're going to figure out what to say in order to get them to hire you. And that's going to help you change what you tweak, what you say in your profile, tweak how you interact in your messages and you'll start to kinda get in a groove of how to do it. So soft clothes again, a really, really good when you first start out all that information is very valuable. Okay, next, let's then talk about the content approach. That was the direct approach. Now let's talk about the content approach. And the content approach is useful when you're in a highly competitive niche with a lot of really good options for for your clients because a lot of them are going to be doing the direct appeal. A lot of them are going to have the testimony was a lot of them are going to have the proof elements. They're going to have the job success score. So it's, you have to do something different to be able to stand out in that type of environment where all of the things that you would do in the direct are also being done by everybody else are a lot of enough other people that's hard to compete. Content is a different approach, approach to take. So the very first step in the content approach is the hook. You need to hook them in reading what you have to say. So an example might be, let me just show you how to create an e-commerce website that makes sales. Now, I want you to understand that doesn't necessarily sound all that epic or high-five issue or whatever. But I want you to understand the context. Imagine your client and you are on Upwork and you're looking for someone to hire. And you've read through now ten different profiles and they all start off with, I've worked on this many websites. I have this accreditation. I'm this I'm that I'm this III. Right. Which is what they're gonna say. And sort of is OK. Again, given the right, the right niche. But then you come across this one that says, well, let me just show you how to create an e-commerce website that makes else and you're, you're wanting to create an e-commerce website. That's why you're trying to hire someone. You're like, wait a second. They're just going, what is this like? I'm not seeing the same things that I'm seeing on other profiles. Okay. So that, that's an example of a hook that you might be able to use to hook someone in. Not saying this is going to work in every scenario, you kinda have to have a read on your market to understand what that hook, the hook would be. Okay, so don't just take this as verbatim, I'm just going to use this. You have to think about your market and think about what the hook by being you might take a couple tries for you to really figured out, but you need some sort of hooked to hook them in to get them to actually read. Now, some ways that you can do that or figured that out. Think about what is their primary or wish or desire from the service that you offer. So I don't actually want an e-commerce website. I want money, right? That's what someone who's running an e-commerce website once. So that would be the primary desire wish from the service that I offer. E-commerce is just a means to an end. So again, this could be money. It could be traffic, who believed it could be Google ranking? They're sort of different ways that you can do this. I mean, ultimately they, they, they break down. There's some primary things that the desires and wishes breakdown to. But you can sort of fudge a little bit here because people may be focused on not just money, but traffic or leaves or Google ranking, et cetera. And so this kind of leans into the discussion between means and ends values. If you've never heard this, this might be pretty eye-opening for you. I know it was for me the first time I heard it, but ends are, like we said, there's sort of the primary desire, the thing that everything, the things that everything ultimately funneled to right there, what people ultimately want. And they're pretty standard. They don't really change all that much. Wealth, Health, power, fame, and romance. If you kind of look at all of the things that people do in their life, you'll find that pretty much all of them sort of pushed towards one of these five things. There might be some exceptions out there. But generally speaking, these are the things that people are after. Okay, so ends are typically always one of these five things. Traffic to a website. We'll ultimately what you're after is wealth, right? You don't want traffic just for traffic sake. You don't want to leave just for League. Say, you don't want Google ranking just for Google's, it's all ultimately pointing towards wealth, towards money, towards revenue. Okay? So that's the ends value. Means are how they in their mind see getting to that ends value. So an example might be a higher Google ranking. Because if I get a higher Google ranking, that's going to bring more traffic to my website. If I get more traffic to my website, I'm going to sell more of my products and I am going to make more money. So I see a Google higher Google ranking as a means to the end of more wealth. Okay, So another example might be articles that gets shared on social media. They get shared on social media. Again, it's gonna bring me more traffic. I'll sell more stuff, I'll make more money, et cetera. A high-quality logo, more prestige and credibility, convert more visitors, make more money. Okay, so the logo is what I see as a way to get the thing that I really want, which is more money, potentially sort of more fame in the form of prestige and credibility, et cetera. So you want to speak to the means value in your hook. A lot of people, a lot of people here that are, are they, they, they learn about this and they make the mistake of going for the end value, right? But if you go for the n's value, it's going to come across as spammy and hyphae. You and you don't have to do it, okay? They know in their mind that the higher Google ranking, they tie it already in their mind to making more money. You don't have to make that connection for them. It's already there, you can whatever it is you can be, you can safely assume that whatever they see is the means value. They have already connected it to, to the, the n's value. And I'll just give you an example. Let's take Upwork, right? I don't have to explain to you that if you do well on Upwork, that that's going to lead to, you know, making more money, you know, that you probably look at Upwork and thank God, I just need to crack this nut. And if I can crack this nut, man, I can I can really make what I want to make, make them kind of money that have automatic have the kinda life's like you already do that. I don't have to speak to that. You're doing that yourself. And it's safe to assume that if I start talking about that stuff, you're immediately going to turn off. You're gonna go, you know, people don't like talking about those things, especially this day and age. Okay, So in your hook, all you really need to do is speak to the means value. And the end, they'll connect it on their own to the n's value. So you don't have to do that forum. The other thing is, is anymore, a lot of times speaking to the end value and saying you'll make more money, saying things directly like that can potentially violate Terms of Service on Upwork or ad platforms really in a lot of different places. It could even potentially violate laws depending on where you live. So you have to be very careful about speaking to the ends value. All you need to do is speak to the mean value. They already see it in their head as a means to an end. So that can be a way to craft a hook that can really grab people's attention. And then just specifically with money, the farthest that you should really go is saying something like make sales or get clients or get customers, that sort of thing because your shortest safe there. Okay. I recommend that you use, you qualify, you use qualifying words. So potentially make more sales, possibly get more clients, might get more customers. Okay, So that's, that's making it so that you're not giving the impression that you're guaranteeing that something's going to happen. If you, if you get into that zone of guaranteeing that this or that is going to happen, then that's where you're starting to to ride the line and potentially violating law or TOS. So and, and especially if you're doing that about making money, you're not really saving those zones. If you stick to sales clients, customers, add those qualifiers. You're sort of safe there if you go all the way, you're really in the danger zone, you'll notice that one of the ways that I do it personally, I've even done that, I think a couple of times and it's become so internalized. I think I've done it a couple times in this video is I I'll I'll say I'm confident that. Okay. So my missing, I'm confident you'll get more sales or I'm confident you'll get more clients. I'm confident you'll get more customers. That's me expressing an opinion on myself. That's not me guaranteeing anything. Okay. So that keeps you safe from TOS laws, people that want to try and get after you for, for that sort of thing. So you just have to be specific with your language and avoiding talking about Ns values using qualifiers. That's the best way to do that. And frankly, it's more accurate overall because while I might be confident which I am, if you do these things, I am confident that this is going to help you. I don't know you like I don't know how you're going to implement. I don't know. There's all these other things. There's just no way for me to know, right? For me to get to the point where I'm going to guarantee something to somebody. And it's the same for you for your for your clients. So again, just stay in that zone and you'll be in sort of the safe zone. Okay. So once you've got the Hooke figured out, you're speaking directly to the means value that thereafter, then it's time to actually write the content, right? So you, you are actually going to give them some content in your profile. Now what you do is you give away the what, okay, you're going to tell them what to do. Clients are going to pay you for the how anyway, okay, So an example I might use is, okay, if you want to have a successful e-commerce platform, what you need to do is don't use WooCommerce like everybody else's. This is going to look like everybody else's. What you need to do is actually just create one from scratch, make it really custom to the products that you sell. So you can have all of these different custom items that a lot of the other custom e-commerce or the other e-commerce sites out there simply aren't going to have, you can add in some tracking that's going to allow you to really track your visitors, what they're looking at, how much time they're spending on a page, what buttons they click. You can do some really in-depth tracking. So create a custom solution, do in-depth tracking. And then the final thing that you need to do is you need to have products and services that are highly unique and different from what everybody else is offering. Okay. So I just told you three things that are the what. Now, if I told you that, you might look at me and go, Great, How am I going to build a custom solution? How am I going to include this tracking? How am I going to offer? Where am I going to find all of these products that are unique from everybody else? How am I going to do this? Okay? So I gave away content. I told you what to do. You still can't do it. Okay? And that's what the client pays you for. So your profile should tell them what to do and leave them in position where they go. Okay, that's great. But I don't know how and then they hire you for the house. So that's the idea here. What it does is it one establishes credibility on the topic because it allows you to speak about something and talk about something and demonstrate your knowledge as opposed to you telling him I know a lot. You actually demonstrate it and that's especially good if you're, if you're new, you don't have a bunch of reviews, high job success score, any of that stuff. You don't have it, The job history for them to look through. You can establish credibility by simply speaking about the topic and offering content and also sets the frame for what matters. You're telling them what, what matters when it comes to the thing that they're trying to do. So you're framing now framing the conversation. That's a way for you to take control of the conversation that's happening and then position your products and services to, to sort of match the frame that you've established. Now, when you write this, I suggest that you stick to seat three sort of big rocks. By big rocks, I mean, large topics don't get super in detail. You want to stay really broad. And again, stick to the what and you'd really don't want to go more than three because you're not going to have someone read some 18 page diatribe that you have outlining your entire philosophy on whatever the top on article writing for the fashion industry. Or you just want to stick to 33 sort of big rocks that you can cover quickly. You want to oversimplify it on purpose, right? Simple. Simplicity is alluring people like people who can make things simple. So you want to oversimplify whatever it is that you're doing on purpose, right? If you're, if you're writing blog articles for the fashion industry, you might say, you know, you're, you're, you're what to do might be okay. When you're writing an article for the fashion industry, It's different than other niches. A, because it's so competitive. B, because it's fashion and it's not some how-to information or them learning steps to do this. To do that, you are, you are trying ultimately to sell some sort of fashion products. So these articles are different. So there's three things that you need to have a successful article. One is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 3 is blah, blah, blah. Right? Now, when you go to write the article, there's probably a lot more to it than that, but you want to oversimplify on purpose. So what they read it, they go, Oh yeah, simple, that's easy, but I still know how to do it, right? So it makes, it gets them excited. Simplicity just automatically gets people excited. So oversimplify on, on purpose as much as you can. You want to keep it brief and when to keep it light. You want to keep it focused on the why of each what. So you tell them what to do. Hey, first you need, for your fashion chips article, you need a strong hook. Why? Well, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Second thing you need is you need a really good featured image. Why? Because it's fashion. People look at the, the, the image first. Third thing that you need in Babylon. And so for every, what you're really talking about, the why not the how. Again, this is Upwork profile. This is good. By the way, this is good to use also if you're just creating content for YouTube. If you're creating a course like I'm doing here, you gotta get into the details of what That's, what are the half, that's what people want. But if you're getting like a YouTube video, you can keep it real light and airy on. If people want more, they can hire you for your services, they can buy your course, et cetera. So this is good for any kind of content, but especially on your Upwork profile. So again, just focus on the what and then the why of, of each one. And that's essentially and then make it three big rocks oversimplify on purpose and that's essentially your profile. So now you're demonstrating expert knowledge or setting the frame and you're hugging and clients to read your hope pole profile because they' 5. EP5: Upwork Exploitatie Part 1: Master Strategy: John morris here and welcome to episode number 5 of let's talk freelance. This is Upwork exploratory Part 1. So we're going to talk about how to turn the world's largest freelancing platform, which is Upwork into your personal client getting platform. So this is, this is going to be the first in a series of episodes that I'll be doing for this, Let's talk freelance course that are all about Upwork. And today's episode is really going to be all about strategy. We're going to be digging deep into up orcs algorithm and specifically how to exploit it because there are loopholes that exist that you can to this day still exploit. So we're going to be talking about how to do that. That's especially true if you're new to Upwork or you have an existing profile that never really took off. I've seen it work for both people who are absolutely brand new and then also people who have had essentially dead profiles. They've been able to revive them. So we're going to talk about, I'm going to show you what to do. And then however it works for your situation that that's really up to you. And like I said, I've seen this helped people hit the ground running and even resurrect virtually dead profiles and even help people who are successful on Upwork. I'll show you an example of that. People who are already successful having a lot of getting a lot of clients and again, having a lot of success helped them to squeeze even more out of the platform, which is their words, not mine. And the thing about it, the reason why this is important is because Upwork is a real opportunity. No, It's alluring because there's so much work that goes through there on a daily basis that's available to you as a freelancer? The last time I looked, it was over 8 thousand projects and over $2 million per day that goes through there every single day. So that's a lot of opportunity, That's a lot of potential for you to take advantage of. And if you can figure this system out when, but the algorithm sort of starts to point in your favor. It really can take off for you. So again, it's, it's, it's a worthwhile endeavor here. So it makes sense that a lot of people want a piece of that. It makes sense that a lot of people tend to focus on Upwork and look at Upwork because there's just so much opportunity. And that's especially true when you consider that the people that are there, the clients that are there, they're there to buy. That's the only reason for them to really be on Upwork. There's not a lot else to do for them except hire someone for their projects. So There's not a lot of of, of pre-work or there's not a lot of beating around the bush that you have to worry about on Upwork. It's right to the point they're there to buy, they're there to hire somebody. And so again, if you can kind of figure out how it works, how to set up your profile, how to bid in the right way. There's just a ton of opportunity there for you. So it says direct access to a whole gaggles of ready to hire clients as you're going to get. And of course, there are other platforms that do this exact same thing and I would say this exact same thing about them. A lot of these things are true for them, except for Upwork is by far the largest one out there. So there's just a lot more work, a lot more opportunity there for most people. Now, all of that, everything I just said is why it's a real opportunity. It's one of its biggest strengths. It's also part of the biggest problem with Upwork is that lots of freelancers want a piece of that action. There's tons of other people for you to compete with millions of freelancers. In fact, and so it's hypercompetitive. Now every project that you might bid on is going to be inundated with other proposals of other freelancers wanting those jobs. And so you have to go into it, ready to compete. You can't go into it just thinking, Oh, I'm just going to go in there and half put up my profile and just kind of phone it in. And think that you're going to be able to compete with people who've literally spent days, weeks, months, read a ton of blog posts, taken courses, all of these things to figure out, Upwork. If you just go in there and throw up or profile, you're not likely to be able to compete in that environment because it's hyper competitive. So you can't just show up and start getting clients you have to compete. Now, this is made even harder if you're brand new to the platform. Because if you're brand new to the platform, Upwork uses a ratings and review system that helps clients to find the breast freelancer for their job. That's their stated goal, help clients find the best freelancer for their job. And that upward, that rating and review system is how Upwork does it. That's the algorithm in a way. So much of the hiring that happens is based on that CISM Upwork is very algorithm driven. And so when you're brand new, you don't have any ratings and reviews. You don't have any of these things that are central to the system. There's nothing for you to prove to a client that you can deliver on their project or to Upwork and its algorithm that you are a good freelancer and can deliver on projects. And so the question in all of this, if you're a new freelancer, you're someone who's had trouble struggling on there or you've had success in you want to get even more out of it, is how, how do you compete? How do you compete in that environment with these things stacked against you? Is it even possible? And if so, what do you do? Those are the, those are the main questions here. And so that sort of leads into my own personal experience with Upwork. And when I first started on the platform. I struggled like most people do. A lot of people when they first get on the platform, Do what I said. They sort of phone it in. They don't really understand how it works. They think they're just going to show up and get clients. And so they struggle when they first get on the platform and I was no different, I went through that exact same thing. So I built my profile. I sent out a bunch of profile proposals and nothing. I didn't even get a response from the proposals that I sent out. They were probably that bad. And so I did like most people do, I walked away kinda with that mentality vol, this is a scam. I'm not whatever they're just trying to get people on the platform Like that whole negative mentality that you've probably seen out there from time to time. That's really exactly what I did. But I also couldn't let it go because I knew what an opportunity it was. And at that time there wasn't a lot of other opportunities like this. The industry has opened up a little bit since then. And I would say that there's some other platforms, fiber in particular and some others that, you know, you can, you can work your way into. But at that time this was sort of the really dominant platform. There wasn't necessarily a ton of other really good options out there. And I'd also seen others, you don't people, the people who do YouTube videos and they, they write their blog posts and this and that. I've seen people who'd had success and you could go on there. I had a client account. You'd go on there and see other freelancers who do your earned 40 fifty hundred, two hundred, three hundred K off of the platform. So I'd seen others who had success and what kept going through my mind is what were they doing that I wasn't how did they get started? How did they get to this point? I've always been had a very skills-based mindset. I don't think in terms of if something bad happens to me that I'm cursed or, or any of those sort of, you know, overtly dramatic ways of thinking about things. That's not really how I've ever thought about things. It's always been a skill based mindset. I think that really comes from playing sports when I was a kid. There. They're very much is that sort of approach to it that you can learn how to do anything. You just have to develop the skills to do it. And so I kept wondering, what skills do they have, what knowledge they have, what do they know that I don't. And so I started researching. I read everything that I could on Upwork how its algorithm worked, and so on. Just trying to fill my head with as much information as possible to sort of crack this nut to figure out Upwork so that I could take advantage of it like so many others were. And one day I came across a couple of blog posts. Those blog posts of now since been deleted. This was back when Upwork was, there was sort of the freelance site wars going on. And now the Upwork was trying to prove how superior their algorithm was. And so these posts in general laid out how their algorithm worked and why it was superior to their competitors at the time. And for me, it was like a gold mine. And they were trying to show why they're algorithm has superior for me, it was, oh my gosh, this is like goldmine for this goal information. For me to figure out what, how this thing actually works and what I need to do. And it made very clear to me what I was missing and what I was doing wrong. And some of the things that I needed to do in order to have success though those blog posts again, now they've, they've deleted them because they, they, they sort of realized that their algorithm, it's kinda this proprietary trade secret type thing. And so they don't want that information out there because the people who have access to it really kinda do have an advantage over people who don't. And so those blog posts had been taken, taken down. They were overly complicated or complex or anything like that. So it's not something that is easily forgotten or anything like that. Just if you don't know it. If you don't know it and you don't necessarily understand the platform. And so again, it, it sort of just changed my whole perspective on Upwork. I changed up my profile. I altered my bidding strategy and I sort of went back at a pork. And this is what happened. Within just a few days after I changed everything and started bidding differently, I landed my very first job, which was for $2191.78. And then I landed another one like that and another and another and another. And you can sort of see here how it went. And within about three months, I had made over $14 thousand. So I went from not getting any response at all to not only getting a response, but getting hired, getting hired for fairly decent sized projects. And like I said, earning over $14 thousand within the first three months starting really from scratch. I didn't have any I didn't have any previous client work that is bringing onto the platform and forms in the form of reviews or testimonials or or anything like that. I didn't really have I had some sites I had built either for free or for myself that I was able to put on there in terms of the portfolio, but I really didn't have anything. Significant that I was able to put on there for clients. I was really starting completely from scratch. And then of course, since then, I've went on to create an upward course that really just outlined what I did and it just outlined what I figured out and what I learned from those Posten in the time since having actually implemented it and worked with other people and so forth. And thousands of workers have, have taken that course. Many have had success and they've taken the time to tell me about it. You can see a few of those here. So Stephanie, I started of course three days ago. Within a few days, got the rising talent badge. Me world took this course five days ago and create an Upwork profile and a $200 jobs right off the bat. Just then was invited to was in got an invitation from talent specialists over on Upwork, had a bunch of interviews that came in. Db injury, landed a few, looks like $7,500 jobs. I've got three jobs within the first week, et cetera. And all of this is really about is getting that those first couple of jobs and maybe a $100 job, or they may be a seventy-five dollar job or they may be like me where there are $2 thousand job. It's really just about getting the ball rolling on Upwork because now you start to build that job history and you can get things going. But in the time since that I originally created that course, I've learned a bunch more about the platform. And so I wanted to come back and I wanted to update the information. It's not because anything in that course is necessarily wrong or outdated. That's one of the things that was up org is they really are kind of stuck because of their business model. They can't make too many sort of fundamental or big changes to the platform. And how the algorithm works. They've certainly added new features. And they've changed things a little bit. But they can't make like core fundamental changes because of their business model that's tied to their business model. That'll become more clear as we go through this. And so, you know, everything that I teach in that course and about Upwork is really about cutting through all of the other nonsense and getting to the core, understanding the fundamentals of how the algorithm works. When you get that, then you can create your profile bit in a way where ten years from now it's still going to be effective. It's still going to be the correct information because they can't change it until they change their business model. That can't really change their algorithm. And I really don't see them change their business model at this point. So what it really is about is I've just gone a lot deeper with it. And I feel like I can provide more clarity, more nuanced, and more specificity to what you need to do to understand those fundamentals and be able to get what you're after out of Upwork, which I can believe to help you, help you have even more success. And this really came up because I recently got this e-mail from a student of mine. And it just kinda made me realize how much more I could provide even to very experienced workers. So this was from a Walter and he said, I did your upward course and I'm getting amazing results. No, I'm not a beginner and was insanely successful in Upwork already. But you've given me some extra juice and we sort of went back and forth. And it really wasn't about him getting started or anything like that, is really just about him understanding things that allowed him to be even more effective and get even more results. And so it just sort of made me realize that I have a lot more value to give even to people who are really experienced on the platform. So that's sort of why I decided to kinda come back and do this series on Upwork. So I'm going to be going through in this series the updated that updated Upwork information and hopefully help you to get started if you're new and have even more success if you're established. Or maybe more likely for some of you convince you to jump back into Upwork like I did all those years ago. If you've tried to end, you couldn't find success to be one of those people who's able to resurrect a dead profile. And so in that vein then I want to start with the most important thing to understand about Upwork. And that is the client perspective. This is, this is sort of a thought experiment in my mind that makes it most clear that really get yourself inside that client perspective. So start by imagining your client and you go over on Upwork. And if you can, actually, I would recommend you get a client account and go over there and actually do some of this. So you can see it real life, real time from the client perspective. But for this, for this thought experiment, imagine you're the client, you hop on Upwork. And let's say you run a search to find a freelancer. And let's just say that you type in WordPress developer over in Upwork search to find you a freelancer who can help you with your project. And let's imagine that you find to freelancers that you like. And you were able to look at them and compare their profiles side-by-side, comparing them line for line. And let's say that on those two profiles, the title, the profile overview, the portfolio, all the information that was there on the profile. There were virtually the same, use, a little bit different wording and so forth, but they basically said the same thing. There are WordPress developer they can do plugging into steams this, that the other sort of the same information that you're going to find there, except for one big glaring difference. The profile on the left was packed with ratings and reviews. There's a really high job success score. There's a bunch of five-star ratings. Clients we're aiming up and down about how great they are. And then the profile on the right had nothing. No ratings, no reviews, nothing because that person was brand new to the site. If you were looking at those two profiles, who would you hire? I think it's important you stop and think about that for a minute. A lot of people might try and justify why they, you might try and higher than the new person. But the reality is if you were actually the client and you were in that situation and you were looking at those two profiles, no doubt that you would be more likely to hire or at least give the person who had the more ratings and reviews the first shot at it. Now they may come back and say something you don't like in the messaging and that may cause you to, but you're gonna give the first shot to the person that's proven that they can deliver for you, all else being equal, that's what you're gonna do. So not even that the other person with no experience, no readings, no reviews is bad. They don't have bad reviews. They don't have a bunch of negative marks. They just don't have anything. It's more the unknown, the fear of the unknown. People don't know anything about you when you're brand new. And so they're ultimately the bigger question mark. And so again, everything else being equal, and I want to highlight that everything else being equal because part of what we're going to talk about is making it so that everything else is not equal. That's part of the answer here, but everything else being equal, the client's going to go with the safer, safer bet. And that's essentially the scenario that you face as a new freelancer on Upwork. You are that new profile with no job history, no ratings and reviews. And you can't really blame the clients because if you were in their shoes More More often than not, you would do the exact same thing that they're doing. So it makes sense why it happens. And the ultimate thing that I'm driving to is you have to ask yourself, in that situation then if I would do the same thing as them, what can I do to get the clients to take a chance on me as the, as the freelancer. And that's really the core of the strategy I teach. It's about getting them to take that chance. It's about what you do to get them to take a chance on you. What I figured out after reading those blog posts, It's what I've taught thousands of other up workers who've had success. And it all sort of goes back to Upwork, stated goal for their platform, which is what I said, to connect clients with the best freelancers for their job. And the trick and that is the for their job part. And that's because everybody else focuses on the best freelancer part. That's where they put their attention on and long-term, that is what's going to matter. So they look at things like job success score, ratings, reviews, job history. All of that is what I refer to and what Upwork actually used to refer to. This as a little insight into what was in those blog posts. But all that is what I call Rank. And it's how Upwork ranks or rates you as a freelancer, based on client feedback, based on ratings, reviews, that sort of thing. But that rank is relative. Now we don't actually know exactly how Upwork scores freelancers, right? We don't know that because they don't detail everything that goes in there algorithm. It's a lot like Google. They're not going to tell you exactly how it works because then a bunch of people will just go in and gaming. But for argument's sake, let's say that you score at 95 out of a 100 rating as a web developer. So when Upwork looks at you, if you think of like the Madden games or the NCAA football games, if you've ever played, those are the basketball games where they give a player a rating out of a 100. Let me imagine it's the same idea here. And so you have a 95 rating as a web developer. Well, that's great. But that's means almost nothing for someone who needs a transcriptionists. And the basic ideas about that is your rating as a transcription is might be 0 because it's not what you do. So Relevance also plays a part in this, again, some insight into what I read in those blog posts. So how relevant your skill set is to the client's project or in this particular case, their search term because Upwork will do both search and suggestion, so can go on and search for a freelancer. But also after they post their job, they're going to see a listing of suggested freelancers. And so, and those things may show up in different parts throughout the site as it evolves and listen that I don't want to get into too much detail because it's really irrelevant to, to, to understand the core of how the algorithm works. But relevance is a key part of who shows up in those lists because. If you're a 95 as a web developer, but I need a transcriptionists. I don't want to see you. I want to see transcriptionists. So there has to be an element of relevance to this. The thing is, is, this is where New Yorkers can turn what is their disadvantage into a sort of advantage. Now, to understand how to do that, we need to sort of take a little bit of a detour because the thing about all of this that I've covered so far, Upwork actually doesn't know all of this. They know new freelancers are at a disadvantage. They know new freelancers don't have rank. They don't have ratings add-on for groups that don't have job history. They, they know all of these things. So they've developed a really sophisticated algorithm and a method for dealing with it. Just going back to the relevance for a second, it was a simple example to say if I want to transcriptionists, I don't want to see web developers, but it's a lot more detailed than that. If I'm in the WordPress space and I want a WordPress theme. I don't necessarily want to see people whose profile is all about creating plugins. I don't need a plug-in developer. I need a theme developer. So the algorithm in that sense, it's a lot more sophisticated than what people realize and we're gonna get into that. And all of that is because Upwork knows all of this stuff that I'm talking about at this point and it knows new freelancers are at a disadvantage. And so they tried to do things to make up for it. Now the question is, why? Because under understand how to exploit these loopholes, need to know why Upwork would try and make up for it. Why does Upwork care? Why do they care about new freelancers? And the answer is, the new freelancers are the lifeblood of their business. New free that it's not just, oh, we need new freelancers, like just this vague thing of all, we need freelancers in new freelancers into our business to keep it fresh or whatever people say out there does not what it is. It's a very specific strategy and it's critical to Upwork growth. And that's not just me saying it. So this is a quote from Bonnie Sherman who is she doesn't work at Upwork anymore, but at the time she was a former VP at Upwork and she was speaking at a conference. And this is what she said. In the beginning, we differentiated ourselves with a time tracking feature and Freelancer guarantee. So again, we differentiated ourselves, we set ourselves apart from the other platforms that are out there. This is how we compete. They, they use corpse speak, but ultimately this is their competitive strategy. So at first it was their time tracking, time tracking, but she says, as you grow your marketplace, if you manage your supply and demand well. So supply and demand, in this case is the supply would be the freelancers and the demand would be the customers. Customers are paying. They have the demand or the clients they have the demand. Now you need the supply of freelancers to fill that demand. So if you manage your supply and demand well, you have the network effect, which you may have heard of in reference to Facebook. The basic idea behind network effect is that when you get on Facebook and you start adding all your friends, it becomes really difficult for you to completely move to another platform and leave Facebook. Because now in order for, let's say you go to Twitter and order for Twitter to be useful, you need to bring all of your friends with you or you need to make new friends. There's pain that goes along with moving between platforms once you reach a certain level of integration into the platform. So she's saying If you manage the supply and demand well, you have this kind of network effect, which makes your marketplace hard to display. So it's the same idea behind what happens with Facebook. It makes it hard for clients to want to go somewhere else. And it makes heart makes it hard for other networks to compete with you, other freelance platforms to compete with you. Because as upward grows, we gain a wide breadth of skills covering even those that are hard to find elsewhere. Now let's subtle. But essentially what she's saying is that as the platform grows and adds new freelancers, they have freelancers with skills the other platforms don't have. And so clients have to come to Upwork as a platform. They want to go to a platform to find those people. And now they hire someone that, you know, they, they start to get rolling on Upwork and they keep finding the people they need on that platform. And they ultimately end up staying at Upwork because they're finding that their needs are being met. They're finding all the skills that they need and they're having good success working with freelancers and so forth. And on the flip side, freelancers come to Upwork because all the clients are there. And so they, they they stay there because they're getting hired and so forth. And so it's this network effect that sort of snowballs. And it's all driven. The key point here is it's all driven by having freelancers that have skills that are on other platforms. So new freelancers are sort of the linchpin of upwards grow strategy, of its competitive strategy. And that's essentially why they care so much about new freelancers. It's how they can be and grow their business by continually attracting new freelancers with new skills. So it's really critical to their business is not some. Nice to have wished, wish it happened. It's essential to the growth and success of their platform. And they know it. This is the VP, former VP talking about it. They know it. So it's critical, but it's hard to do if all those new freelancers aren't able to compete on the platform because they don't have ratings and reviews and so forth. And they're constantly having to fight with people who do for jobs. So Upwork has a problem. They have this core competitive strategy that relies on new freelancers. They have an algorithm that isn't all that friendly to new freelancers. And so it gets a, it gets a little bit difficult for them to manage. They have to do something about it. Plus, it's very hard to evaluate new freelancers because you don't know anything about them. They haven't done any work on your platform. So you don't know if they're any good. You don't know if they're gonna make clients happy. And so again, Upwork knows all of this and the question is, how did they resolve it? And so that's, that's really the crux of what I want to get into. And to do that, we want to consider these two posts from an Upwork staff member names for Valeria k, at least on the on the community forums. That's what she's called. I'm going to read through these because I think it's important for you to hear all this. So she says, we value the reputation built by freelancers who have been on the platform for a long time. So we value that reputation. They do show prominently in search when their skills and work history match the requirements of clients who are searching. So we are going to take care of existing established freelancers. However, professionals who recently started their Upwork careers and have shown great results will be given a chance and access to good opportunities as well. Okay, so that's the first one. Next one is from John Kay. He's quoting Valeria. And she says, I would like to note that search results will vary depending on who searches and the time of search. That way we want to make sure that every professional gets a chance to be discovered and every client finds what they're looking for. Okay, so those two quotes from Valeria both speak to how they're dealing with new freelancers and freelancers that have yet to be discovered now these were several years back and again, these have since been deleted, but they give us insight into how Upwork thinks. And Upwork, by the way, has a habit of doing this. They delete those blog posts, they've delete forums, that's anything that reveals too much about their algorithm. They tend to go back and delete and these very much do. But here are the relevant quotes. We want to make sure that every professional gets a chance to be discovered. And professionals who recently started their upward career and have shown great results will be given a chance in search and suggestion listings. So the whole point of this is Upwork surgeon suggestion listings are not a top-down rank of freelancers. If you search for WordPress developer, it's not the absolute best in the first spot and the second best and the second and the third, fourth, fifth on down the list. It is not a top-down rank of freelancers. They are rotated and they will specificly include an insert. New freelancers don't have job histories, who don't have this, all these ratings and reviews, they'll include them in those those listings. They might put them number one in the listing or they might put them number three or five. They'll put them on that first page when someone does a search or they'll include them in that listing. When someone submits a job towards the top in order to help them out. Because they know that nu for new freelancers have a hard time. They know they have to help new freelancers, so they're going to give them a boost. They're gonna give them a little help and ultimately try to figure them out more than anything. Now, if you have a client account and you do a search for a freelancer, it's obvious if you do different searches throughout the different times of the day or different days, you're going to see it's always different. It's never the same. There's the results are always rotated. Now, the more established you are, the better work you do, then you're going to tend to be towards the top more, right? You know, you might you might show up on the first page 70 percent of searches, whereas someone who's brand new might get in for 10 percent of searches. So over time you're going to show up more and more and more. But they're not a 100 percent top-down. The same people rank. It's not like Google wherever we were. Once you get a ranking, you sort of tend to stay there for awhile. That's not how it works. It's rotated. And again, Upwork those brand new accounts into those listings all the time because they have to they have to. Otherwise new freelancers With have no shot. And Upwork, ultimately Upwork would suffer. Their growth strategy would suffer because new freelancers come on. They get no work and they leave, they'd go somewhere else. And they go to the Upwork competition. So again, Upwork has to help them and that's really the key. It's really the key to this whole thing is that time period when you first get on the platform and Upwork is testing new, they're trying to figure out, figure you out, trying to figure out what you do and can get hired for Ru, any good, et cetera. What are the thing? How can they, what can they do? Who can they put you in front of for you to actually get hired for you actually deliver, et cetera, or you just, nobody's going to hire. You don't have a skill set people want and you don't do good work and people hire, you, get bad reviews, et cetera. They're trying to figure you out and test you. And so if you can perform in that testing period, then Upwork will start to show you to more and more clients. And that's when things can really sort of take off for you. But if you don't perform, that Upwork is essentially going to dead your profile and you're not going to show up in front of anybody. And oftentimes now, they'll even boot you from the platform. I get people who will message me from time to time say they were kicked off of Upwork because they didn't they didn't get hired for any jobs. So Upwork tries to really curate and keep their platform clean. And 7 haven't, you know, millions of dead profiles. They'll just delete the profiles if you're not getting work. So again, it's really that crucial time period and that's, that's the thing that I figured out. That's the thing that those blog posts taught me, is going all the way back to the beginning and how to use relevance to wedge your way into AP works good graces. During that testing phase. Relevance is the key to this whole thing. And that's why my profile took off and I suddenly started getting all the clients. I'm like I said, mean like $14,000.3 months. And and all of that, That's an all of the students that have had success from what I've taught them. That's why, because they figured out how to master that testing phase and pass the tests that Upwork is going to give you. Now, last thing before we get to the pay off on all of this in that testing phase. One thing to keep in mind, it's not just about getting hired and getting reviews and ratings. A lot of people tend to focus there. They tend to immediately go to getting hired and doing good work. Well, I'm a good freelancer. I know I can deliver, et cetera. It's not just about that. Upwork is going to test you on three key things. Click-through rate, higher rate, and satisfaction rate. And so I wanna go through those real briefly. So Upwork is going to put your profile, as I said, in front of potential clients. And as I said, they rotate their search and suggestion results and they will put you up at the third position on the first page. When someone does a search, the very first thing that they're going to look at and test you on is if people even click to look at your profile. And so again, it's why getting a client account and doing a search for the terms that you want to show up for and looking at the other profiles to see who you're competing against. I don't think you should go in and copy those people. A lot of people will tell you that there's, there's some problems with doing that because a lot of those people actually just got lucky. They got on the platform long time ago. And that's why they rank as high as they do the profiles really not all that good. Maybe they're being rotated from Upwork algorithm and they're actually really ranked around page 10 and their profile is not all that good. You don't really know. Okay, So it can be a bit of a, can be a bit misleading to just go over that all, I'm going to copy these people. But again, the very first thing that they're going to look at is your click-through rate to people, even click through to, to view your profile. If they don't, then you can't get hired. You can't do good work, you can't do anything if they're not clicking on your profile. So you have to pass that test first. Because again, it doesn't matter how good you are, how great your profile as if no one clicks on it in the first place. The next thing that they're going to look at is your higher rate. When people do click through and look at your profile, how often do they end up hiring you? Again, if your profile can't get you hired, then it's no good to Upwork because you're not getting hired, you're not earning the money. Clients aren't happy, et cetera. So you have to have a profile that gets clicked on. When it is clicked on, you have to have a profile that get you hired. And then finally, they're going to track the satisfaction rate when people hire you. Are they happy? Do they leave positive reviews, et cetera, et cetera? So you have to pass all three of those tests in order to be in upwards good graces in order to satisfy its algorithm and what it is looking for it. So you need a profile that entices people to click. When they do click, it gets you hired. And then it also sets you up structurally to be able to make clients super happy when they work with you. Because you're not doing a bunch of Random jobs that you may not be well suited for and you're just taking any work you can get. Okay. You're, you're structurally set up to be successful. And like I said, the key again to all of that, to passing all three tests. And getting through this phase is Relevance. Relevance is the key to it all. So we can sort of dig into that now. So let's go back to our thought experiment that we did at the beginning. Again, imagine you're the client, and this time let's say that you're looking for someone to speed up your WordPress website. That's actually what you need a WordPress developer for. So earlier when you search WordPress developer, the reason you were searching for WordPress developer was actually you wanted someone to speed up website. And so this time you search for WordPress speed optimization. And by the way, it's been awhile since I looked. But there are quite a few projects over their clients looking for that kind of thing. So I didn't just make up some random term here. There's actually a little bit of a market over on Upwork for WordPress speed optimization. So this is a real example, but let's say you use search for WordPress speed on optimization. And let's say again fine to profiles that you want to look at and you're looking at them side-by-side. And, you know, you have the one with the extensive job history and reviews and you have the brand new one that has been thrown in there to test the situation that you're probably going to be bn. And so you're looking at these two profiles side beside. Now, before I give you the answer on this, if you're that client doing that search and you're looking at those two profiles. One was extensive job history, one that has nothing because it's brand new. Just try to think. What would make you click on one of those in the search results? What would make you take a shot and higher that newer freelancer that doesn't have all the job history and so forth. What would what would make them stand out to you? What would what would convince you to give them a shot? I think it's important because the idea is that you come up with are now you're, you're you're thinking you're asking the right question. And 90 percent of the battle is just asking the right question. And the ideas that you come up with, the answers that you come up with will probably be some pretty good ideas for helping your profile stand out beyond what I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you the foundational thing. But that's the question you should be asking yourself. If I were the client, how we're looking at those two profiles, what would make me hire me? What would they have to be said for me to take a shot. Okay. So and write those things down. Now, let me sort of give you the answer. And again, not surprising, the answer is relevance. So what do I mean by that? Well, as you're looking at those two profiles, again, imagine one of them is a more general sort of WordPress developer like you might see over there. And yeah, they have a lot of ratings and reviews. They have a high job success score, all of that. But their profile only briefly mentions speed optimization, or it doesn't even mention it at all. Maybe it doesn't even have it on there. If you were the client, what's the thought that would immediately run through your head? Even though they have all the ratings and reviews, even though they look like they know what they're doing when it comes to WordPress. What's they immediately, immediate thoughts that you would have would be least seem really good, but can they do what I need? And I have an example of this that happened with me a few years back with my wife. She asked me to run to the store and get her some contact solution for her her contacts. And so I went to the store. I assumed as I was going there, it was going to be obvious. Now, if you have contacts, you may know what I mean, maybe chuckling because you may know what I'm where I'm going with this, but I assumed it would be obvious. 6. EP4: Instant Influence Part 1: Vision: Hey John Morris here and welcome back to another episode of, Let's Talk freelance. There's going to be instant influence Part 1, how the world's most infamous speakers motivated, motivated millions to their cause. And we're going to be talking through some non marketing examples on that. I'm going to show you how to then apply those marketing to business to help you get more clients, to have more impact with the client you do work with you could use in your personal relationships, dating, et cetera, influences really the substrate upon which our interdependence society works. So it's a very valuable tool, valuable skill to learn. And we're going to be talking about one principle of influence today called Vision. So on August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Junior gave his famous I Have a Dream speech, which ignited a movement that's still running strong today, 58 years later, nearly 34 years later, Marshall Applewhite, the leader of the hells gate or Heaven's Gate cult, convinced 39 members of that coal to ingest poison in order to ascend to the next level of human evolution. Something that we look back on now and it sounds crazy, but he was able to convince 39 people in his Colt to do that. As you know, Adolf Hitler was able to inspire an entire nation distinction and participate in genocide. And Mahatma Gandhi on the other side, inspired a nation to pursue and ultimately achieve its independence from colonial rule. So what do all these people, what do all these sort of famous people or infamous people from history have in common? Well, they used vision to attract, inspire, and influence others. And that's what we're going to cover here in this episode of Let's Talk freelance, we're going to be covering vision and how to create it, and then how to use it to motivate others. Now, a real big caveat before we get into this, some of the examples and I'm going to use here and I've already used are nefarious. They're not positive examples and negative examples. There are people using vision for evil purposes, but the principle itself is agnostic. It doesn't, it doesn't really care or know how you're going to use it sort of like nuclear power. It can be used for good or it can be used for evil. It can be used in a bomb to decimate the population, or it can be used to power a million homes. So I obviously do not condone or encourage its use for nefarious purposes, but I think I'd be remiss not to talk about some of these examples where people have used it even in evil ways to influence millions and millions and millions of people. And my mindset is I always try to learn from everything, even things that I find despicable, even things that, you know, I don't agree with, whatever I always tried to learn from everything. So again, me talking about certain examples in here is certainly not me condoning the things that happen there. Okay. So the other thing here is this is an excerpt of my upcoming book and online course which will be called instant influence. And in that I'm going to be 0. I cover 18 principles like this one. So this is one of 18 to help you generate instant influence, whether that's online, it's in-person, and every part of your life, business relationships and friendships. As I said, it's sort of the matrix code influences the matrix code. When you live in an interdependent society, when your survival is literally dependent on other people, you, there's people that, that stock the grocery store, that you go buy groceries at. People that bring the gas, ship the gas to the gas station. They could they create it, they ship it to the gas station where you fill up with gas, the energy that lights your home. We all live in an interdependent society where we're not dependent on one another necessarily, but we all help each other in a way to survive in that sort of environment, influence the ability to influence those other people, is really, again like the matrix code. It's the substrate upon which success and the ability to get the things you want out of life rests. And put simply. Vision may be the most effective form of influence when done correctly because division properly constructed can cut straight to someone's soul and trigger deep emotions in them that they'd otherwise suppress or ignore. Just like the examples that I mentioned to begin this. So it can cut through all the noise that's out there online. All the people that you might be competing with, all the people that are out there trying, vying for the attention of your prospects. All the J. Dennis, all the skepticism, all of that stuff can really be cut through with a vision properly constructed. And so that's what I want to give you. In this episode. We're going to go deep into this. So in a certain sense, you can't really influence a person into taking an action until they see the vision for why and how, et cetera. Now, sometimes. We'll create that vision for themselves. But as an influencer, you can't really rely on that. You must construct and communicate it for them. You must give them the vision or trigger the vision for them, instead of hoping that they'll create it on their own. Now, my favorite example of this is a strange one is so unum opera wall, the TV series Man Hunt, which is about the Unabomber anyway, it's not actually, the example is not actually the umami himself. It's a, it's a character in that show. It's one of the FBI agents. Now, that might seem strange, but it's really one of the more powerful examples of using vision to influence others that I've seen. So I want to, I want to set this up. There's a scene in the final episode where james Fitzgerald, who's the FBI agent who caught Ted Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Jane Fitzgerald, in real life, the real for James fits your health, is the one who, who was able to catch Kaczynski. And they're in this big there, in this big warehouse, in this one of these final scenes of, of the season and fits Joe does trying to convince him to Kaczynski to bleed guilty. They wanted them to plead guilty because they didn't want him going up on the stand and reciting all of his beliefs and making a big show out of the trial. And so they brought in Fitzgerald, who was the guy that had caught him to try and convince him because he understood Kaczynski better than anybody else. So he's trying to get Kaczynski to plead guilty. And Fitzgerald knows that take his Minsky abhors the thought of living sort of your typical suburban, you know, nine to five job type life. His whole philosophy was that industrial society was killing the human race. In fact, his manifesto starts off with, the industrial society has been a disaster for the human race. Something along those lines I'm paraphrasing, but his whole philosophy was built on the idea that industrial society was killing the human race and that was the source of all depression, addiction, and human suffering in the world. And Fitzgerald knew that and Kaczynski believed that we needed to revert back to a more primitive lifestyle where we provided for our own survival directly. Hunting, gardening, living small, really shoeing, all forms of technology. And he was really serious about he met pretty much all forms of technology and he had lived that way for several decades himself. He lived in a cabin in Montana. There was no running water, there was no electricity. All he had was really primitive tools like an ax and a hammer. He would go out and he would hunt his own food. He had a garden where he would do gardening. He lived the way that he thought that the human race should live in order to be more happy. And again, if you get a chance, I know this might not be for everybody, but if you get a chance, I would recommend you read his manifesto. You can just Google Unabomber Manifesto. The manifesto itself is actually, it's more just, he was an intellectual, it's an intellectual exercise. There wasn't anything in there necessarily nefarious about killing people or anything crazy like that. You know, he obviously did the het. So there was something there, but the manifesto itself doesn't really go into that. It's more just an intellect, if anything, it's more boring than it is anything else because it's like reading a scientific paper almost. So anyway, if you're up for it, I would recommend giving it a read to, to understand a little bit better about this and why what Fitzgerald does work so well. So anyway, he had lived like this for several decades himself. And he really believed it. It was a deeply held belief. And that was why he started mailing as bombs is because he felt so passionately about it. And he was trying to get people's attention according to him. So it was really about it really got to the very foundation of who he was as a person. This wasn't just some idea he had, he felt it in his soul essentially. And Fitzgerald knew that Fitzgerald himself had gone through a little after interacting with Kaczynski, Fitzgerald essentially felt like Kaczynski had a point. And he went and lived off the grid for a time being trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. And so if it's judges really understood him, really knew him and sympathize with him really in a lot of ways. So in this scene in the TV show towards the end, again, Fitzgerald disguise, trying to cut, convince consists Kaczynski to plead guilty. So here's what he says. He says, and again, these are his words, these are not mine, so I'm gonna say it how he said it. This doesn't necessarily represent my beliefs, but I want to give it to you how it was set. So this is what Fitzgerald said to convince me to try and convince him to plead guilty. He said, You think death, this is worst thing that they can do to you. They won't even give you that because we don't execute the crazies slowly, you will be adjusted pills, electroshock. Electroshock therapy, threat, punishment, reward, until finally you're cured. It might take years, but it's going to happen. You will be normal and you'll rejoin society. You'll get a credit card and an apartment, business casual wardrobe, y'know, some of those tops with penguins on them. You get a job behind a desk where your work obediently nine to five, your face. First paycheck, you'll get a cell phone. Next one, you'll get a TV. You know, if you splurge, you can get yourself on a window and every night you'll fall asleep watching that TV. And every night you're gonna go everyday. You're gonna go to the mall. You're going to walk around Circuit City. You're going to look at the big screen TVs and think, shouldn't get myself a 20 inch or should I keep saving up for the 27 inch? Add on all? And as you're thinking about this sipping on your orange julius, someone is going to recognize you and say, once you that Unabomber guy, the guy that wrote all that stuff and code all of those people. And you'll go, Yeah, that was me but I was very sick, but I got help and I'm much, much better now. Thank you. And then you're going to go back to watching your TVs and you won't even remember that you wanted anything more than this. Seated. You predicted all this in your manifesto. Many tame and conformance type seem to have a powerful need to depict the enemy of society as sick so as to delegitimize they're valid complaints against society. This cabin used to be a symbol of moral courage. And now they're going to just point to it and say, You've gotta be insane to live this way. I know you're not crazy. Every time I stopped at a red light or I follow the arrows and ikea, or I sit and I wait and I listened for the modem, the dial up. I can see the systems that are controlling our lives and I feel my freedom being hemmed in and I hate it. What you have to say about the world, it matters to the future. And so that was what Fitzgerald said to Kaczynski in this TV show. Is that actually what he said? Probably not, but the scene in the movie is really compelling. It's on Netflix. By the way, if you haven't seen it, it's really worth watching. But Fitzgerald was that Kaczynski if Kaczynski didn't plead guilty, his lawyers were going to pursue it in Santa, you'd fence and undermine everything that he wrote. But if Kaczynski simply pled guilty, they wouldn't need that defense and his ideas would stand. So he was really trying to get at the heart of what Kaczynski stood for. Because the thing that mattered to Kaczynski the most was his ideas. And those ideas, That's why was the whole point why he started sending the moms because he was trying to get attention for his ideas. He had talked and written about it for a, for a while and had never really got anybody to pay attention to him. And so it wasn't until he started sending the bombs that people started paying attention. And so now Fitzgerald is not trying to make him not care about his ideas. He's not trying to, as Aristotle would say, he's not trying to change his core elements. He's not trying to change what he values. He's not trying to change what he believes. He's understanding what those things are. And he's painting a different picture. He's painting a picture of how Kaczynski can get what he really wants by doing, what Fitzgerald wants him to do, and how if he doesn't, he's actually going to lose what it is that he really wants, which is for his ideas to be taken seriously and understood. So at that moment, for that person, that vision was very powerful. It's almost overwhelming. And like I said, it's, it's really worth watching the entire series just to understand that scene and the use of vision in and in my opinion. So it's a really good effective way example of how to use vision, which is why I'm sort of sticking with it and going into this much detail about it. That said, communicating vision does have to be done, right? So if you just go and throw out a bunch of hyperbolic, hyperbolic what-ifs or imagines it's not going to be believable. The use of vision is not going to work. You have to have credibility. Sure, but your vision has to have credibility. Can't just be imagined if you made a billion dollars in five seconds, right? That's not going to work. In the show itself. Kaczynski wasn't actually initially persuaded by Fitzgerald. But as this trial went on, all the things Fitzgerald said started to come true and suddenly the vision that was planted and consist skis head by Fitzgerald, it came to life. He started to see what Fitzgerald describes what's going to happen, starting to happen step by step by step. And it made that suddenly made that vision more powerful. So it eventually ate away at him and he started to realize that Fitzgerald was right and ultimately he bled, pled guilty. So it illustrates one, the power of vision, but also an important point about the vision that you craft in order to influence others more than anything else. It has to be real. It has to be something that over time your proven to be right. And just I'm going to inject a little thing here. No, if you want to talk about a higher level of marketing, a higher level of, of how you get clients, how you get business and so forth. The key word for you to consider is narrative. And you'll hear that a lot in the political realm. But the idea is to create an overarching narrative that Isn't about your products or services. It has nothing to do with your products or services. It's about really about communicating a larger vision that then ultimately leads to your products and services. So let's just say that you were, you were someone who owned a prepper website. This is the simplest example that I can think of, but you want a prepper website and you wanted people to buy your products and services. Well, instead of talking about how great your backpacks are or how tasty year MREs are. Instead, what you could do is go out and start talking about why prepping white people even need to care about, about prepping. You might talk about, you know, what's going to happen with the economy and maybe there's going to be nuclear war, whatever. You might find that distasteful, I get that with this particular example. But you can do it in, in other ways. And the big, again, the big thing is, is that it has to be true so that over time, as you constantly can communicate this larger vision and this larger narrative, you, people start to see over time, hey, this case, right, or this Gauss, right? And over time you become more influential, you become more impactful because you construct a vision that actually turns out to be true. So again, more than anything else, it has to be real. And vision sits at a higher level than just sort of your tactical marketing. Where you're, where you're getting. You know, you're, you're, you're creating a landing page and you're writing a headline and your benefits in your headline and this and that, that's all tactics and that's fine. But the things that are really persuasive existed a much higher level than that. And the other thing is, is that your vision also doesn't have to be positive. In fact, very often positive visions are harder to get people to accept because they see it as hype. So if you say something like imagine waking up tomorrow and you have dozens of new client requests flooding your inbox or probably written headline or a sentence like the timer to, unfortunately. But you know, that all sounds great, right? If that were actually true, but most people, they're going to hear that and there's gonna be a rate that's just hype, that's a bunch of hyperbole. They're just trying to give me to buy some whatever, whatever it is that they say. Most people aren't going to believe that. And that tends to be the case with positive vision. So people in, and that's because people are Jaden and skeptical. But if you look at the vision that Fitzgerald constructed, it wasn't a positive vision. It was a negative vision. He outlined a future that Kaczynski did not want. So negative visions can be a way to sneak in under people's skepticism. Radar. Again, as long as it's real now, again, you might get some pushback or you might be saying, well that's just fear mongering. Well, there's a difference between fear, fear mongering and painting an accurate vision of the future, right? So again, that's why it's so important that it's real if you're just throwing out all these negative things to scare people on you. It's not based on anything real. That to me is fear mongering. But if I tell you, Hey, don't go outside, there's a lion out there. And there's actually a line out there. That's not fearing, alright? That's giving you valuable information, that's going to help save your life. So again, ultimately the biggest thing that matters when it comes to communicating vision. It has to be real, it has to be based off of, has to be based off what's really going on. The other thing that's really neat about this is that you can sort of get outside of your traditional niche that you might feel like you're stuck in and talk about other things that matter to you. So, for example, for me with teaching freelancing, one of the things that I genuinely believe is that I think given what's happened with the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of people working from home, a lot of turmoil in the economy and so forth. And just a lot of things that have happened that have sort of changed people's perception. I think we're going to tend to move more and more towards sort of a freelance work from home type setup. I genuinely believe that. And so in communicating vision about that, I can bring in things where I talk about the economy that I'm interested in. I'm interested in those things. I want to talk about those things. I'd like to talk about them when I talk with other people. And like my little brother who haven't, I talk all the time. We talk about the economy. We talk about cryptocurrency, you know, we talk about and potential economic recession or collapse or whatever. We talk about those sorts of things. Now if I were to just stick in my niche or niche, your freelancing, that wouldn't really be relevant. But if I were to talk about in the context of, Hey, you know, there's a really strong potential for her another economic recession. I did this in an earlier episode as a matter of fact, where I talked about that because I do think that the that the case or that that's very likely it happens all the time. Well, I can talk about that stuff in a way that sort of makes sense for why that would relate to freelancing. Because I think freelancing is a really great way to be able to position yourself to survive. Sorts of recessions and be able to thrive because you're not stuck to a paycheck. You're not beholden to someone else who, who really isn't boss or CEO, whatever. Who's really the one that's deciding what you make and how much you earn and those things you're doing it yourself. And it's harder to figure that out, is harder to figure out how to do it yourself. But once you do you have more control, you have more stability because you actually know how to do it. You actually know how to go out and get business, you know how to go out and get work, you know how to deliver directly for client. So it just gives you a lot more power, a lot more control. So again, in communicating vision, I could talk about all those things and they make sense. Again, do it in a way where I'm not fear mongering. I'm just talking about the reality and talking about things that I genuinely believe not everybody will agree with me, but the people who do will then be much more likely to listen to me when it comes to what I have to say about freelancing and how to actually go about creating a freelance business in a freelance career. So again, that's one of the I haven't written it down here, but that's one of the side effects of using vision as a tool of influence. That's really nice is it allows you to expand the topics that you're able to talk about. Which also makes listening to you on a sort of day in, day out basis when you're creating content for social media or you're uploading videos to YouTube, writing emails, blog post, whatever you're doing. In terms of putting out content, it allows, it, makes it so it can be a lot more interesting because you're not talking about the exact same thing over and over and over. So the question then becomes, how do we do this? How do we construct a vision like this? I'm giving you examples, but let's talk about how to do it. And the focal point is always whatever decision that you're trying to influence them to make. So infants Job's case, it was Kaczynski is decision to plead guilty or not. Think of that decision point. If you've ever done like a process map, you have the decision diamonds, right? Well, this is a decision diamond and the decision that you're wanting them to make, buy my product or not, hire me or not, or whatever it is, that creates a fork in the road from which you can then construct a positive and a negative vision of the future. Because if they hire you, they buy your product, they do what it is that you want. You can construct a, a positive vision about what will happen as a result of that. If they don't do what you want, you can construct a negative vision of what will happen. And that's essentially that, that event is the key to everything you'd essentially say, here's what happens if you do x, and here's what happens if you do y and you really should talk about both, okay? You shouldn't just stick the positive, you shouldn't just stick to the negative. You should include a little bit of both, but also you need to read your audience. Is your target audience the type of people that are going to be really sensitive to a positive vision, that are going to be really sensitive to hype and that sort of thing, then you may have to go the more negative route. But if you're, there are certain niches out there. And maybe if you're talking about something related to spirituality, where if you went really heavy on the negative, that might turn a lot of those people off, okay, so you have to read your audience, you have to understand your audience, but you have the ability to do both in whatever way you want because the decision creates that fork in the road about what's going to happen going forward from this point. Okay, so that's that's the beginning of it. That's the that's the fork in the road, That's the pivot point for your vision. And then from there, it's simply about communicating division. And you could do it in several dimensions. And having access to these different dimensions helps you to understand how to really flesh out division and make it real. Now, there is something underlying this that's important for me to cover before we get into this because this is going to feel a little tactical. But from a strategy perspective, looking at the bigger picture. When you do this, you really need to understand how your client or potential client or customer sees the world and thinks about this sort of thing. You don't just want to start throwing out a vision that they don't really relate to, that they don't really see things that way. Now, the flip side of that is a really, really simple way to do that, is to just communicate how you see things and be consistent about that. I don't ever try to, to, to, to pander to your audience and talk about things that you don't really believe you don't really think. Because then that's going to create this inconsistent message. And you're going to attract people who don't necessarily see things the way you do if you constantly communicate the vision as you see it legitimately for real, the way you see things, you're going to attract people who see things the same way and you're going to repel people who don't. And the audience you build will be a, an audience of people who are in tune with what you're saying and then you don't have to sit there and guess how they see things. You can just Go with what you, what you believe, what you see, and you're always going to be on the right track, okay, but there has to be resonance between the vision, how, how you communicate it and how they see it, for it to really hit home for them again, that was the power behind Fitzgerald's vision for Kaczynski. Is Fitzgerald really empathized? He sympathized with Kaczynski. He, he, he thought he had a point, he thought he had, his ideas, had some merit to them. So much so that he even went and lived off the grid for awhile himself. So again, that, that sort of empathy, that, that sort of understanding of your audience is important. From there then again, you can communicate division in several dimensions. So the first dimension is far. So how will that decision stretch into the future? So an example or a way of doing that might be here's what your life will look like. It's sort of predicting or projecting into the future. That's the far dimension of vision. The next one is wide. So how will the, the decision affect others, your family, your community, your country, the world, et cetera. You can pick out the elements that are most relevant to what you happen to be communicating. Whether it's more of a local issue or it's a nationwide issue or whatever. Again, it's just how it will affect others. High is how the decision will affect your own aspiration. So your goals or the person's goals, dreams, hopes, fears, et cetera. Deep is how the decision will affect the person internally. So how they feel, how they think, what they believe about themselves, the ramifications of the decision and how it will affect them internally. And then the final dimension is the now. So what's the immediate impact of the decision? What happens immediately after they make a choice and choose a path and go down one of those forks, what happens right now, okay, So those are the, the five dimensions of vision that allow you to flesh out a really, an end painting, really clear picture of the ramifications of the decision that they're about to make. And that's the whole idea here is you are providing context to, to the decision that they're making. It's not just a decision whether to hire you or not. It's a decision that has long range ramification G, you're going to flesh that out for them and paint they make a vivid picture of what that looks like. So when constructing a vision for the purposes of influence, you really want to try and hit every one of these dimensions, of course, space and time permitting you might not and be able to sit there for three hours and lay this out for someone. Or maybe you're running an ad and you have limited space to be able to do that. But if you can, you really want to try and hit every dimension because certain dimensions resonate more with certain people. So some people are more concerned about how it's going to affect them internally. Whereas some people are more concerned about how it might affect others or what it means for their future, or what it might mean for their kids, et cetera. So you really want to try and flesh out every dimension of the vision if you can. Now, the vision that Fitzgerald laid out is a good example of the far dimension. If, again, if you go back and go through it, he showed Kaczynski what his future might look like. So that he really stuck to the far dimension and even on its own, because it was so detailed and so relevant to Kaczynski. It had a ton of impact, but very well could have added to that. So if we were to take his lead and continue on using the other dimensions, adding on top of that far dimension, then we might say something like the following. And before I do this, I want to note what I'm going to say here is not a comment on mental illness, illness, or treatment facilities for me, I'm simply communicating the vision in the way that Kaczynski himself would see it. So again, it's important to understand their perspective and communicate from their side of things. So this is how Kaczynski would see it based off of having watched a show, read about him, read his manifesto. This is about understanding him. So it's not my own personal view of it. I just want to make sure that that's clear. Okay. So if we were to continue on then with what after what he said and we might say, think of all those people out there who you impacted with your message. You've heard the people out there, the people who whisper to their friends. And always kinda got a point. Imagine what those people who you had the potential to influence, who you had the potential to save. When they hear that you've been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenics. What are they going to think? And all the future people who desperately need to hear what you have to say. But now, no, it's just the savings of madman. So that would be an example of wide how the decision affects others, how it affected the people that we're listening to him and that really that's just one slice of the wide contexts I just talked about the people that were that that resonated with what he said. He could talk about all the people who didn't and how they would make fun of him and they would call him names. You could talk about how it affect his family. You could talk about how it might affect the world. Look 20 years from now. Nothing's going to change because you were just a crazy madman. And so, you know, the world's gonna go further down this path. There's all sorts of slices of wide, but that's one example of how you might talk about the wide, how the decision will affect others. Okay, next up, your dream of saving the world will die with you're not guilty plea. No one will listen to a diagnosed quote, unquote crazy, especially when you're all over, all over TV after you've been adjusted, apologizing, saying how sick you were and you're all better now and you don't believe any of that anymore, your entire life's work will be out the window. So again, this is a slice of how the decision might affect one's aspirations. So the high dimension here, and it would affect how it would affect his goal, his aspiration of saving the world, of changing the world. This is an example of how you might do that. Alright, next, and what about you? We will never even remember. You wanted more than a ho-hum, nine to five life, you'll become just another cog in the system you despise and other sheep sleep walking his way through life. Of course, as you get closer to death, you'll likely start to remember the feelings that were buried deep inside of you from the therapy and the pills will start to rise to the surface. And you'll suddenly realize your entire life was a lie. But only after it's too late, you'll look back on your life and all you'll feel is regret. So again, this is example of deep how the decision will affect one internally. And there's a little bit of the far dimension added into that. We project into the future of how it might affect him when he's towards the end of his life. And then we take it internally so you can combine dimensions like that as well, but this is an example of how it would affect them in, internally. And then finally, where do you think you'd go from here? Pills treatment therapy. Pills treatment therapy day after day after day. It doesn't matter how long it takes. They've got all the time in the world. They'll keep you there treating and adjusting you as long as they have two until you finally break and you will break. Either way, you're going to be locked in a, locked in a prison for the rest of your life. The choice is whether you get to keep your dignity in your mind or not. And so that is an example of the immediate impact of the decision. The immediate impact of the decision. If he's diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenics is that he would go into treatment. And so, and that was something that he absolutely important and wanted nothing to do with. Essentially said he'd rather die than do that. So that was the immediate impact of the decision. So that's the noun dimension. So again, those are just some examples of how you might do it. Those are all just little slices of how you might create vision for each dimension. I would recommend that you really dig into those and start to think about ways that you could do that and create that kind of vision. And just to continue on, one of my former clients bent settled. He talks about the late Jim Camp. So Jim Camp was an instructor for the FBI's hostage crisis negotiation unanimity. That's I got that right. And he's considered by many the world's most fear negotiator. And he after his, his career in the FBI are helping the FBI. He would he went on to teach other business people on high-end business people how to negotiate. He would as a platform, as a service negotiation services for clients. And a lot of times when someone that one of his clients was negotiating with found out that Jim Campos, who the other company at hired. They would just immediately sort of come to the table and concede because they didn't want to get into a negotiation with Jim can't because he was that good. And so one of the things that he said essentially is that you can't persuade anyone of anything without a vision. So again, in terms of hostage negotiation or business deals, whatever it is, you can't persuade them anything without vision. Meaning that people must have some sort of internal and vision in order to take action. And like I said the beginning. Now sometimes they'll constructed themselves. You have people out there that want to believe that they want hope they're seeking it. And so they'll fill in the blanks for you. That's why it's pretty well known in the online marketing industry that no matter what you sell, no matter who you are, what you sell, if you put a product up for sale and you market it pathway decently, you're going to have people that buy because there's people out there that want to believe maybe they like you, whatever it is, they want the hope and they will fill in the blanks for you. But that's a fairly small segment of the people that are out there. So you can't really rely on that in order to have a successful business that grows. In order to have a successful business that grows, you need to be able to convince people that are also skeptical. And so as an influencer, you want to be capable of constructing that vision for them and getting them to the place where they see. I need to I need to invest in this person's products or services. So again, as camp said, they have to have some sort of vision. In order to take action, it's just a matter of are they fill in the blanks that you leave out or are you constructing a full vision for them, giving you the best chance to to to have them say yes to whatever it is that you want. So again, you fill in the gaps and get them to see and feel something that they either desperately want or that they desperately want to avoid, again, that positive and negative route in terms of creating vision. And it's also a tricky balance between desire and believability. That's another sort of element to this, too much desire. And they're going to start to freak out a little bit and they'll become, they'll become skeptical. And that's characterized by the phrase, too good to be true. You've probably heard that before. People have that sense. And so the hafta wanna create desire, but not so much that they start to think, Well, this sounds too good to be true or create it without any sort of believability elements to it. So that they, again, they start to say it's too good to be true, the more you raised the desire, the more you have to provide evidence and proof in order to, to, to, to alleviate that skepticism. Now, of course, the other side is, is not enough desire and they're not going to care what you have to say. And that's characterized by the phrase, so what, who cares, why it, why do I care about this? Okay, So It's, it's a tricky balance between the two. Ultimately, the only way to know how your audience really respond is to, is to start and then continually communicate vision and then just pay attention to the response. There's really no other way to do it. It's not something they can sort of pre-planned. You just have to start doing this in whatever way that you can sort of figure out to do it, have an idea, execute on an idea, see what the response is, and go from there and keep trying different things. And I've given you a lot of different ways to do this. A lot of different dimensions that you can operate in multiple different examples of how you might do it. And so again, it's just on you and your creativity to get out there and experiment with this. Now, a good exercise here is to construct your own vision for yourself. I actually did this several years back. I was reading some marketing material about building a client avatar. And one way to do that is to imagine your ideal clients perfect day. What they're perfect day would look like. And you write it all out in detail from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. So what they eat for breakfast, what they do first, what they do second, if they work out, did they go to the gym or do they do it at home? Do they go into an office or do they stay at home and work at their computer, et cetera? You write out every single detail of what you believe is your ideal clients perfect day to give you sort of an insight of what they're actually going through and what that who that person is. You know, if if you're the ideal client for you is someone that works from home, well then or wants to work from home, then you went necessarily talk about the information included in what you talk about wouldn't include how to write a resume and get hired at a job because that's not really what they wanna do unless you are going to talk about remote work, but you would tailor the information you provide, the way you say things, all of those things to what that person actually wants, what they want, they're perfect day to look like. And so again, this is an exercise I did a few years back. Well, when I started doing it got me thinking, what's my own ideal day? That's, that's sort of what hit me at a deeper level. And so I actually wrote it down. And oddly enough, my days now look almost identical to what I wrote down. So again, a good exercise for you to understand vision is to create one for yourself, creating a vision of your ideal day for yourself. If you go back to Fitzgerald's, 7. EP3: The Purple Cow Principle: Hey John Morris here and welcome back to episode number three of let's talk freelancer. This one we're going to be talking about the purple cow principle. And I'll be telling you the story of the salsa dancing marketer and his secret to standing out and see your competitors, how he leveraged that secret to grow a multimillion dollar business. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive in. So I believe it was Riley's continuity summit three conference which was back in 2011. These were conferences that they did back in the day. The, the big name sort of internal internet marketers. Ryan Lee was well-known for being good with continuity, sort of membership sites, monthly payments, that sort of thing, which has become really big now. And so he, every year he would do this continuity summit. So I think this was the third one. I believe this was 2011. And that event was held in Stamford, Connecticut. Funny story actually, when I was flying out to this event. So to give away the story a little bit here, but I was at this event and when I was flying out there, I remember I landed and I got a taxi from the airport. I landed in New York City, I believe it was. And I got a taxi from the airport to the hotel that I was going to be staying at. And I got in the taxi and we're about halfway there and the guy was like, hey, by the way, do you know how to get there? And I was like, No, I thought you didn't because I told him the hotel name and everything. So I ended up I just recently got I think I just got my iPad. If I'm remembering this right. And there was Google Maps on the iPad, so actually had to bust out my iPad, look up the name of the hotel and my Google Maps and then use the GPS on this iPad. Or maybe you I don't even know if I had the turn-by-turn directions at that point. I think I just had to tell them where to turn based off of the map and actually tell the taxi for how to get to the hotel I stayed at anyway. Little side story, but I thought that was kinda funny anyway, it was held the Stanford, Connecticut, a client of mine had asked me to go and help run the booth that they had there. So that was pretty common for a lot of these events. You'd have these really to gather these big name speakers. And they'd get all these people to attend, and then they would, of course, charged for tenants. The speakers would often have products that they would sell at the end of their speeches. And the organizers of the event would get a piece of that. And then they'd also let people set up booths at these events and they charge for that. So it's just a way to really try and monetize these events. So this client of mine had a booth that they had there and asked me to go and help run it because I knew the product really well and I getting answered the questions and that was a good talker and so forth. So I went out there for that. And that was really the first big Internet Marketing Conference that I'd been to. And so I was I was really excited about it because I had, like I said, I'd started kind of in the internet learning web development and getting into the internet marketing side of things actually started with the internet marketing side, not really as a web developer. And so I had seen a lot of these guys that we're going to be speakers. I'd bought products from home, I'd see them online and so forth. And so being able to go to this conference where they were going to be there, I was pretty excited about it. And it had speakers like Yannick silver and Matt backpack, if I'm saying that right. And Niantic silver in particular, he was really one of the he was one of the early guys that was really big. I don't know if he's really so big anymore. He's kind of hung almost kinda retired a little bit, I think, but he was back in the early 2000s. He was one of the really well-known guys and I had started falling on bought some of his products. And so heat for me, he was a really big name at that point and I was really excited to see him speak. And again, like I said at that time, the conferences were really popular and not as popular anymore. But back then these things were really popular. And this continuity Summit was one of the bigger ones, wasn't the biggest one. There's one called The Big seminar that I think was probably the biggest one that happened every year. Because continuity Summit was pretty big and Ryan Lee was pretty well known. So anybody, everybody who was anybody was, was going to be there and of course little old me, I was a complete nobody but I was going to be there as well run in this booth. And so as the conference went on, this strange things started to happen. Word started to spread about what people were calling the salsa dancing guy. Which sounds sort of weird, but what started to happen? And like I said, it was kinda weird. How much people were obsessed with it, how much they were talking about, how much the word sort of spread around the conference to where everybody started talking about it. And I'm not like especially then I'm not like a social butterfly, right? If I, if I, if I go out to, if I go out to some event or some party or whatever, I'm not the person that's going to be bounced around, happy go lucky talky, talking to everybody. Now I'm going to be a little more shy type. I'm not necessarily overly adept in social situations, so. I don't always quite understand them, especially back then, I hadn't done near as much of the networking and YouTube and the talking that I I have done at this point. So I didn't really understand it. I just, I'm a real sort of logical linear thinker and I'm like, it just didn't make sense to me. I just kept thinking. We're at a conference with Niantic frequent silver. Like who cares about the salsa dancing guy? Why are we talking about salsa dancing? It makes no sense. So I didn't really understand it, but everybody kept talking about it and I got to the point where it was just something you couldn't really ignore. Well, that salsa dancing guy was Lewis Howes. Now, yeah, I don't know if you know who Lewis Howes is, but he's fairly well known these days. Today. He's one of the upper echelon online business celebrities quote unquote, In that same vein, sort of as Gary Vee and Tim Ferriss and all of those people that create content online or well-known online, they're sort of business celebrities quote unquote, he's, he's in that same vein or that same echelon of people. He's been on Ellen multiple times. It's been on a number of TV shows. He has a podcast that he's interviewed all kinds of people on, including Kobe Bryant of all people. So again, he's fairly popular, fairly well-known. But back then he was relatively new and unknown. Nobody really knew who he was. And he was sorted known as the LinkedIn marketing guy. He'd wrote in some books about LinkedIn yet courses on LinkedIn and using LinkedIn to market and so forth. Which is interesting given the resurgence that LinkedIn has made recently. But that was sort of what he was known for, which is very different from what he's known for now. Well, that conference sort of changed all of that because of the salsa dancing thing. Everybody wanted to meet him. And as a result of that, he was able to network a lot easier, a lot better than probably most people. Probably he would have been able to had he not had the salsa dancing thing about him. And he created a lot of relationships from that event, that from what I could tell, again, I'm not with him every day, but from what I can tell from the outside, you know, things really took off for him after that point. So from again, the outside view from my side looking at it, that conference was really sort of the the turning point for him. And again, a lot of it revolved around this thing that he knew how to salsa dance. And he had this whole story that he would tell about how he learned and where he went and the experiences you had salsa and so forth. So I ended up hanging out with him one of the nights we were there, everybody sort of went out to one of the local bars there. I think it was in New York City. And I hung out with him for a little bit while we were there. I eventually ended up helping with one of his membership sites that he had back then. And he's like a really cool, really laid back guy, real smart guy. So it's one of those guys that you don't mind seeing succeed, right? You're not like, God, that guy is successful now he's a really cool guy, really laid back one of the better clients that I've ever worked with, and he's really smart, so it's not not surprised that he's been so successful. So I don't want to overemphasize this. He's a really smart guy. He's made a lot of decisions and moves since then that have also obviously helped them to be as successful as he is. But like I said, I remember I was there, I saw what happened and saw how his career sort of took off after that in some of the people that he was working with and it was pretty obvious that he made a lot of connections at that event that allowed him to the open doors, that allowed him to be able to take advantage and be successful from that particular event. Anyway, all of that illustrates what Seth Godin calls the purple cow principle. So if you've never read this book or heard him talk about this, then here's the kind of the gist of it. So imagine that you're driving down some country road through some rural part of the country. It could be the Midwest or maybe it's upper New York or wherever it is. I've never been to upper New York, so I have no idea if this is what upper New York is like, but whatever makes sense for you in your head, imagine you're driving down some country road through the rural part of the country. And as you drive your passing farm after farm after farm, you just driving on and on for miles and you're just going past, you know, all of these different farms on and on mile after mile. And all of the farms are roughly the same. They all have big red barns that have huge fetched in pastures. There's cows out in the field. And imagine that you just drove on for miles and miles, seeing the same farms with the same cows for hours and hours and hours and you just kept going and going and going. And then suddenly as you approach one of the farms, you notice out in the field there's a purple cow. Will immediately, if you saw that purple cow out in that field, that would strike you as different nodes, strike you as odd or even. But it would be remarkable. It would be notable, would be noticeable, something worthy of sitting up and taking notice. And you might even stop and walk over to the fence and take pictures of the purple cow because it's so remarkable, it's something so different and interesting. You want to stop and go over there and see what's going on. And When you got back home, you might even tell all your friends and family, hey, you guys are never going to believe this. I was out in the middle of the country, yada, yada, yada. I saw this purple cow and they're going to be like No way, no way that there's a purple cow, no such thing as purple to exist and you're gonna bust out your pictures. This is why you took the pictures. You're gonna bust out your pictures and you show them the purple cow. And even still there going to be like, I don't know, That's Photoshop and that's this or that. So you can hop in your car and you take them out there to show them the purple cow and they'll see the purple count like, Oh my God, It's a purple cow eye. And this sort of lore of this purple graph, cow would grow, right? You chosen pictures and then they, maybe they'd see the cow. They might tell their friends, Hague, joan, the purple cow, the picture of the purple cow. That's not real. Oh no, I went out there with them. We saw the purple cow. It's a 100 percent budget and on and on and on and on. And word of this purple cow, if this really existed, would probably spread pretty quickly among your friends and maybe even beyond that. And it might even, it might be even interesting enough to become a local phenomenon. People wouldn't, might travel to that area to go see the purple cow that became this big deal. And if you think this is silly, well, you can think of Bigfoot as somewhat of an example of this. A big foots nostril obviously. But a lot of people still like to travel to these different areas. And there's whole, all these tourist destinations that you can go to that are oriented around Bigfoot with people know isn't real, but people still go and visit and check it out and it's a fun thing for people to do. And so it's become sort of a local phenomenon. So it's purple cow could be something that ends up like that, especially if it were real. So the bottom line is that story of the purple cow would get passed around a hundreds, maybe even thousands of different people. And the farmer who owns the purple cow did absolutely nothing. There was no marketing, there was no slip tactic, there was no whiz bang, whatever, no technology, no nothing. That, that story of the purple carrots so remarkable. It would simply spread on its own. That could be an entire business, become a tourist business for that farmer. That he does nothing to promote, that he did nothing to do with starting because the purple cow in and of itself is so remarkable. Okay? Now, in a way, that's what happened was Louis, for some reason, at that particular moment in time, those people, knowing how to salsa dance was remarkable enough for people to care, for people to want to tell that story and pass it around that particular confidence. And people cared, people wanted listen, now they wanted to meet the salsa dancing guy. And so the story got told, it took off and to his credit, he parlayed that then into growing a, an even more successful online career to a podcast that's really well-known and interviewed the people that he's interviewed on that podcast, bent on l and all of those things. He was able to parlay that into that kind of success. So the question becomes then, how do we use this? How do we do something with us that can help us to grow our business, to grow our freelancing business or whatever kind of business you might have. How can we use this purple cow principle to help our own business? How do we get our story told and passed around, leading to new clients and customers with very little marketing effort. Because the thing in of itself is so remarkable that people simply want to talk about it. So that's the idea here. Now, an extremely shallow thinker would say, and go learn how to salsa dance, right? They would just try to verbatim copy what Lewis did. Or maybe they might alter it slightly to hip hop dancing or something like that. That's what a shallow thinker would do. They're just looking to copy. They're looking for the easy route out there, looking for hack or a trick or a gimmick. That's how a shallow thinker would approach this. And that completely misses the point because that's what work then for him in that very specific context. If you've learned salsa dancing today, it might be that 90 percent of people won't care one bit. Okay. It happened to be those people at that conference at that particular time trying to recreate that is a fool's errand. Okay. So it's not about just copying what he did. It's not about becoming a dancer, learning any kind of dancing or anything like that. That's not what it's about. Unless by chance that might actually make sense. In your, with your audience in the market you're in whatever you're doing, but that's very unlikely, okay, so that completely misses the point. The deeper lesson is to figure out how to be remarkable in a way that matters to your audience is natural for you and can last and grow over time. That's the really important thing. Louis didn't start out salsa dancing as a tactic. He didn't. I talked to him about this. It wasn't something that he set out doing to be like, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna do this and then people are going to think I'm unique and they're going to tell my story like he had no idea this was going to happen. He started out salsa dancing because he he grew up, he played football and he was into sports and then he had an injury that ended his football career. And he was in kind of, uh, he had been in kind of a bad place. And he took this start taking this approach to life where he's going to try a bunch of different things, okay. That weren't sports, that weren't football related. He's going to try all of these different things and just kinda put himself through all of these different experiences to kind of find himself a little bit. Actually later got into handball and he was on the US National handball team and I believe participated in, I'll think of as the Olympics. But it was like nationals or some, some international competition that he competed in. And again, that was after the salsa dancing, the handball was a thing that a lot of people that came be kinda, kinda became another purple cow for him. And that leveraged this idea that he was an athlete. It made sense for he loved playing it. He was an athlete and so he went and did that and he would talk about it. And it was a, it was a unique, remarkable thing that people were interested in that made them pay attention to him. That was outside of the business lessons he he was teaching, but he could then use that attention to then help grow his business. So again, it has to matter to your audience. It has to be natural for you. And then you want it to be something that would last and grow over time. If that were the one critique that I would make of Lewis's approach. And I think probably why he's sort of changed W doesn't really use necessarily that way of being remarkable anymore, is that it has to be something that can last and that can grow over time. And being a salsa. So the answer loses its novelty after while the handball thing. Eventually, he couldn't play anymore. He got older and wasn't able to compete with the people that he had to beat out to be on the team and that sort of thing. So you want to, you want to have something that can last and grow over time or at the very least be able to adapt like he did. Okay, So again, it's not just all I'm going to go learn salsa dancing, I'm going to go loop, learn hip, Hip Hop dancing, or I'm going to go become a handball player. It's not about copying or swiping or any of that stuff. That's all shallow thinking type stuff. It's about understanding the principle. And the thing here is it doesn't have to be glamorous. Like, Oh, he's a salsa dancer. You played handball or this or that or the other. It doesn't have to be glamorous like that. In fact, many of the most powerful ways of doing this, they're usually not going to be glamorous. So for example, when I was working with Ben Settle in Troy, Brassard, they have a company called learnings stick. And in that company, they were friends with a guy named Vance Morris and I, you know, I got to interact with me. It's a little bit I got to see some of the stuff that he taught and they would talk about him and so forth. And Vance's known for what he calls his deliver service now Institute, which is DSM-III, which is yes, as it looks, It's a play on the name Disney. And the reason that he did that is because Vance help create and then he ultimately ran chef monkeys, which is Disney Disney restaurant that Disney owns and operates and they have a character-driven restaurant. I've never been there. So I'm just talking based off of what I know from the stories. But essentially it's Disney sort of restaurant that they have. And they run. And so because he helped create that and then ultimately run that and he got first-hand experience with Disney's hyperfocus on service. Disney is known for really high-quality services. Service at their venues, you know, their theme parks or restaurants, et cetera. That's what they're known for. So I've never been to one, so I haven't experienced it firsthand, but I have heard the stories I've heard from these guys. I've read them online. You can go online and find a bunch of these places. Them great. The themselves are great. I, people will talk about the theme parks and all the stuff and all that. But it's the people that operate them that you hear the most stories about. Because they go over the top not to just make not to just provide good customer service, right? That's not what I'm talking about here. It's about creating experiences for their guess, I was just reading a story online about a guy who was taking his son to Disney for the first time. N his grandparents, his parents, this kid's grandparents wanted him to have a really good time. So he bought, they bought him a bunch of these Mickey bucks, which are the money that you can essentially spend at the theme park, I guess. Again, I've never been, but they gave him a bunch of these Mickey bucks and they went to the theme park and eventually went to one of the gift shops. And they were looking around and they found this thing they wanted to purchase, Buzz Lightyear toy that he wanted to purchase. And they went up to the counter to make the purchase. And the dad was about to tell the kid here, hamming your wallet. And I'll help count out the money and take care of that part, which is as a dad that I often find myself doing that because they don't know how much money it can out in this or that or whatever. Well, as the dad was kinda turning to do that. The the person working at the register said, we'll take it from here, dad. And so the person from the register started talking to the kid directly, bet down at, down at his level. They sat there and talked about the toy for a little bit and how cool it was. And then the the employee help the kid, you know, count out the money and get get changed. Taught him about taxes, about why he had to pay the taxes and this whole experience that the employee created for this child. And the child, the dad telling, sitting there watching is the one telling the story that I read. And he's just, the kids just overjoyed. This person took this much interest in, spent five minutes or more help having just paying for, just a simple thing of paying for this toy, turned it into this life-changing experience for this kid. So much so that the dads getting teary-eyed and goes online to write a blog post about the experience. I mean, you want to talk about word of mouth, you want to talk about remarkable. You wanted to talk about people wanting to now go and experience that. And there's no marketing, right? You're getting customers coming in without you having to say anything because the stories are out there being told. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about when we're talking about being remarkable. And Disney, according to valence, has this top-down when it comes to their amusement parks and their theme parks and everything. They have this hyper focus on creating these experiences. They tried to empower their employees to look for and find these experiences everywhere they can, so that when their guests com, they're constantly having these experiences and it makes them want to come back and makes them want to talk about it. And that's how they, they sort of grow their, their theme parks. So there's this top down approach to this of, of pushing this and making it a priority. And so they go over the top to do it. And like I said, you can search online and you will find story after story after story about. And all of them are amazing stories that might make it tear up just a little bit and make you really want to go to the Disney theme park to see what it's, what it's all about. That's a purple cow, that's the kind of thing that we're talking about here. So what Vance does is he teaches, teaches people how to create these kind of remarkable experiences in their own business. He has some courses and trainings and so forth. And that's sort of his thing that he does. And what he stresses is that it really all centers on simple customer support, customer service. It's not anything glamorous or know anything whiz bang or super fancy or anything like that, is just people caring about other people and genuinely trying to give them a remarkable experience. So it can be as simple as that. It doesn't have to be something. And we'll whiz bang or whatever. It can be something simple, like just providing over the top, not, not good now, but over the top customer support, turning it into a inexperience for the clients that are working with you are the customers that you have. Now, that idea, it's not going to get you a bunch of likes on Instagram. So I'm gonna go viral on YouTube. But if you actually implemented in your business, it will move the needle if you actually do it and, and become known, become remarkable at outstanding customer service. In fact, according to Troy, He's used that simple idea to build several multi-million dollar software companies. Talks about last time he talks about his training. I've talked to him directly about it multiple different times. It's something talks about all the time about simply using customer support as a way to really grow your business because it's a big thing for people in this industry. And having worked with them, they do do some uncommon things. So for example, every new learning stick client they make, they create truly will record a video. And you'll make that video just for that person. And Hill. Mention them by name. And he'll say thank you, welcome. Tell tell them how excited they are to have him on board, et cetera, and actually make a video specifically for that individual and send that video to them maybe a minute and upload it on Vimeo. And then they shoot that personal link and say, Hey, I created this video for you. Check it out. And of course, a lot of people when they first get that email or like now, Okay, here we go. Just going to be another standard sort of marketing video. And then they open it. And then the first five seconds says, Hey Bob, and like wait a second, what? That's me. They said my name. Hey Bob, just wanted to say, thanks and welcome bubble, bubble law. That creates a remarkable experience for those people. When's the last time you bought a software product and had the CEO of the company record a video welcoming and welcoming you and thinking you specifically by name. As I ever happened to you, I never happened to me. I remember when it first happened, when they did it for because I'm a client as well. Before I start working with them. And full disclosure, I don't work with them anymore. So this is not me talking about a client of mine that I work with. Now I used to, but this is just me talking about experience I had. And so, you know, when I first got that, that video is like, Holy cow, That's amazing. Okay. Now, do you think that kind of thing is going to make an impact with somebody? I can tell you from the people, the customers that I interacted with when I worked with them? It does. It absolutely does. There were so many people that would write into the support desk and be like, holy cow, like this is amazing that That's awesome. You know, I didn't I didn't realize this was going to be a video to me, actually, to me. So it makes an impact on people and they really appreciate it and like it. And it's a really simple thing. It takes about a minute for them to do. It's a higher end service. So it's not a service where you're getting 1000 new customers a day. All right? So he's not creating thousands and thousands of videos. He's making a handful of these. Every week. He's probably doing a handful of them. But it makes an impact and makes those people want to stay around longer. And so they have really high retention rates. So for that industry, because again, in software that's a really uncommon and really remarkable, that's a purple cow. So that's the idea here. The idea is that you have to think about the principle and see how it applies to your industry. Another example is 75 hard if you've, if you've heard of this, this is an online fitness world. It's not really a workout program, it's more of like this challenge. And the online fitness world tends to be very tactic focused. So you have things like muscle confusion or keto diet, carnivore diet, et cetera. Not saying those things are bad, I actually do the carnivore diet. And it's really helped me a ton. But it tends to be focused on tactics and there's a lot of hype. A lot of outlandish claims get rip dabs, lose 30 pounds and seven days, all of these things. And after a while, people just get jaded. They get really skeptical about that kind of thing. Because they tried to, they probably tried a bunch of this stuff and it didn't work. So the next time they hear all these claims, they just don't believe it. And that's kind of what the fitness world right now tends to be a little bit. And so 75 hard doesn't make any hard claims like that. And if you go on there, if you go on their site, they don't make any hard claims. They show success stories of people that have lost weight, have gotten better shape, have put on muscle. But all of them, all of those also say that that's not the main benefit that they got from it. And he he says on the page where you sign up, it's not the real goal. Fitness is not the real goal. You will get in shape. But that's not the real goal. It's about mental toughness and discipline, which speaks to a kind of deeper truth. Because that's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to admit when it comes to fitness, right? Everybody gets tactic folks, they tell you It's not your fault. You just didn't know about muscle confusion or you just didn't know about the keto diet or you just didn't know about whatever tactic that is the linchpin of their product. It's not your fault. You didn't know about that. When the reality is, is it probably is most people's fault because they didn't stick to the program. They, you know, they they went off of it after a week or they had too many cheat days or whatever. That's the reality of it. In the reality is it's about discipline, about mental toughness. And so he just sort of embraces that head on and says The real goal is about creating mental toughness and discipline. And yeah, you'll lose some weight. Yeah, you'll put on some muscle, but that's not what we're really doing here. And 75 hard sort of blew up. It'd be kinda, kinda became this big thing for a while. Everybody was talking about it and that means people still do it. Still fairly popular. But for a while there it was like all you heard about was a 75 harder thing, hard thing. And then again, in that industry, that is a purple cow. It's something that's differ in a way that's sort of, that's remarkable and appealing. So it's not just different for different sake, but it's, it's different in a way that's remarkable. And it's also appealing to the people that you want to attract to your business. So that's another example. So what's your purpose? How do you figure out what your purple cow is for your business? So as a freelancer, it could be a lot of things. It could simply be the product or service that you offer. So alertness stick is another good example. What they offer, They case you don't know if you've never heard of this company. They essentially, what it does is it allows you to be able to create your own mobile app, but it's done in a different way. First off, the mobile app is native. Okay? So you're not using aggressive web app, it's an actual native app. And in the management of it is a lot simpler and a lot easier than a lot of the other the other services that do this kind of thing. You're not the one managing it. And the price points a lot better than a lot of the ones that are out there. There's no initial setup fee and so forth. And so there's a lot of things out about it, about it that are unique. And even still that idea, There's certainly our competitors, but it's still relatively few amount of competitors when you compare that to some of the other markets that are out there. So the product itself is sort of a purple cow. Being able to create your own. Mobile app is something that, you know, it's not something that you can just hop online and five-minutes and happy, you know, have done that. That easy. It's still a bit of a purple cow itself so that it could just be the product or service you offer is a purple cow, could be the delivery experience that you give to clients. So again, an example of that is Disney going way over the top to make your clients happy in and not just provide good customer service, but make it remarkable, make it an experience that they remember and that they're overjoyed about. So that could be your purple cow. It could be how fast you deliver your service. Now, as example, may not necessarily stick out to a lot of people today because Jiffy Lube has been around for awhile. But I remember when Jiffy Lube first became a thing back on and I think it was when I was a kid. It was a big deal at that time because you used to have to take your when you took your card and get an oil change, you take it in and it would be hours and they might be working on fixing someone's fender over here. Just you just go into some regular mechanic. And then Jiffy Lube had this idea. I don't know if they were the first, but they're the first that I knew of where they were like now we're just doing oil changes. Okay. And so then they could get people through really quick because that's all they did was oil changes. I don't know if they do more stuff now. That was the marketing at the very least that they did was about coming get your oil change was like 30 minutes or less. That was a big deal and that was a big part of how Jiffy Lube became as big as it as it is now you find a Jiffy Lube just about everywhere you go, at least in the United States. So that was all just about speed was about how fast the service was delivered. So that could be your purple cow. I could be add-ins are add-ons like consulting and coaching that you provide with your service. You could include a course that makes it remarkable. It could be simply your own personality, right? You're someone who's really nice to work with, or maybe you're funny. Don't, don't, don't be afraid to inject that into what you do. Maybe you really black and white. One of the things that a lot of clients appreciate about me is I'm always focused on the bigger picture and the next steps and being really task oriented. So I might be on a meeting with the client. We have this long meeting where we talk about all of these things. And I have this habit of when we get done with all of that, I get back to and go. Okay. But now what like what are we doing as a result of this? Because that's how my mind focuses. What are the actual action steps that we're going to take as a result of this. And I have clients that really appreciate that. And that's one of the big reasons why, you know, I've been with them for years and years and years is simply that, that part of my personality. So again, it could simply be your own personality. Now another one for me was the fact that I knew marketing. I had done marketing myself. I knew content creation. One of my clients happened to be kind of the, the main software company in the WordPress space for building membership sites. And so they had a lot of training on marketing and content creation that I had. I had access to some of it I helped teach and create, so I knew marketing and new content creation. So if you're looking for a developer to help you build your membership site. And you can hire someone who's a developer, who's good developer and can build you your site. Or someone who's a good developer can help you build your site just the same, but also can probably teach you a few things about marketing or content creation, running your membership site, dealing with members, et cetera. You're probably going to hire the other one because you're getting more out of it. So that was a big one for me, was also declines that I'd worked with. So having worked with the Lewis houses and Tim Ferriss and Inc. Magazine and Michael HIIT and all of those things. A lot of people hired me just because they wanted to pick my brain about that insider information. I had people that literally told me they hired me because well, if you built it for so long, so let's Michael Hyatt. You bolt it for Michael Hyatt, I knew you could build my site, but also I wanted to get some insight on how he runs his membership site, right? So I had people literally hired me just for that. So that was another one that I had. So those are just a few examples. Okay, those are examples trying to spark ideas for you. The bigger thing is the principle. That's what smart freelancers will do. They'll dig in on the principal and develop multiple ways to leverage it. And then don't just go with one. You stack multiple on top of each other to create an over the top remarkable experience. So maybe you'll pick, when you're thinking about what service you want to offer, you'll pick one that's a little more unique, that's a little more purple Kalish, and that's one thing you'll do. And then maybe you'll do something with your customer. Maybe you'll create the videos that when people hire you for their service, you'll create a video that you dress them to. Hey Pat, really great to have you on board. Thanks for hiring me really excited to work with you, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you'll add that to your and, you know, maybe you'll you'll do some of the stuff I recommend in terms of a delivery schedule where you actually write down how you're going to deliver. So the overtime you get faster and faster and then you deliver really quickly without a bunch of headaches and an issues coming up along the way, which makes the client really happy and you do a really good job of communicating and. When you're on meetings, you really pleasant to work with your kind of funny. And you always keep things task. And you just stack all of these on top of each other to create that over the top experience where they're just like, wow, this is amazing. This was awesome. I loved working with this person. And so the thing to do is just put yourself in your client's shoes. If you were hiring you, what would make you say, Wow, what would you want to happen? How would you want the experience to be? What's something that you could add in that they'd go I can't believe they're doing that. I can't believe I can't believe IT service or can't believe it add on. I can't believe they're giving me this. I can't believe they're doing this for me. This is amazing. Like how did they make money or how did they do that? I don't understand. Like try to think of things that you can do that that would make someone say that and just brainstorm as many ideas as you can. And then from there, kind of filter it down to okay, here's four or five things I can do right away. I can implement these right away. These aren't going to be hard for me to do. And these are gonna make a tremendous impact on my delivery or my marketing or whatever, and then implement those things because nothing happens until you actually do something. So brainstorm, filter, implement. And for those of you, if you're just getting started, you might be thinking, okay, this all sounds great, but I still have to get clients. I'm still getting going. So how how can I use this to help me land my first few clients or I've landed one or two, but I'm trying to get my next one. How can I use this? Well, a if you get your next client tried to turn that into an over to the Top experience and see the result and see, see, see what kind of reviews you get, then see how that affects them. Maybe one to give you referrals and people that they know that want to work with you and just see the result of that. But in terms of just getting your first few clients, I mean, this is the thing where if you create this kind of an experience and you know, you've done it and you know, it's over the top, then this is where you can do free work for 8. EP2: Pandemic Proof Your Business and Life: I'm here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk freelance. This one we're gonna get into pandemic proofing your business. And so when I say that, the very first question that you might have is, well, why worry about it? So let me, let me talk about that a little bit. If you look just in the US and I'm sure you could look at other countries and probably find a similar pattern, maybe even worse. But if you look at the US, you'll see the most recent US recessions. So 2030,001, 1990, 1980, one, 1973, 1970. You can go all the way back to the start of the US. And what you will find is that there's some kind of recession every ten years or so. So these things are constantly coming up and constantly happening. Yet what I find are what I see a lot is people tend to fool themselves into believing that this recession is the last one or that somehow the economy is going to get fixed and there's, you know, maybe there's some new party in power, some new politician that's going to fix everything. And this will be the last time that we have to deal with them with this. And people sort of fool themselves into thinking that that's actually going to happen. Well, the sobering reality is it hasn't happened for nearly 250 years from all the way back to the start of this country. So you're probably going to in your life face another two or three, or four or five recessions or more. If it happens every 10 years, I personally will probably face another four to five recessions in my lifetime that I'm going to have to deal with that are going to be in a lot of ways devastating to a lot of people. So knowing that, knowing that it's coming, knowing that it doesn't matter. Again, the political side of it is really irrelevant through all of the last 250 years when this was happening. There's been all sorts of people in power and different parties and all of that. Lots of promises made and so forth. And yet the recession's continue to happen. So again, knowing all of that, knowing that it's coming more likely than not at some point, why not be a little bit prepared for it to not just survive and not be taken by surprise by it are completely wiped out by it. But also these recessions tend to, to represent opportunity. For example, when, when the stock market sort of taint when the coronavirus started, I actually at that time went in and bought several key stocks when they were at a really, really low price point. Now, you know, a year or more later, a lot of those stocks have started to, to resurrect and come back. And I had to wait. But now i've I've probably quadrupled or more of the money that I invested at that particular time. Because in those, those recessions is not just a downside, there's an opportunity as well. So why not position yourself to not only survive, but actually be able to grow through those recessions as well. I think that's what smart people do. I think that's what people who tend to be wealthy do. And so what I want to show you in this episode is really my approach to the whole thing, how I deal with it, and how I think about pandemic proofing, not only my business and my life. When I say pandemic proof, you know, I mean Pandemic Recession, whatever the cause is. That's really what I'm talking about. So that's what we're going to get into. And for me this was a lesson learned the hard way. It's all colored by what happened to my family when I was a kid. And to put it very simply, my dad wasn't very responsible. I didn't know that at the time. But as an adult now, who knows more about all of this? I can say that it was really kinda his fault. He really was the one to blame. Might sound harsh, but that's really just the reality of it. So what happened is in 1989, my dad, my little brother and I, we were in a car wreck. And that car wreck was was pretty devastating. We were all injured pretty badly. My dad chipped part of his spinal cord. Now, today they call it that turned in today what they call a high-functioning paraplegic. So most of the time when you think of a paraplegic at someone who has no feeling or movement from the neck down? My dad's was a little different because his spinal cord wasn't completely severed. It was just chipped. And so what happened is that the nerves from his neck down, we're just sort of fire erratically. So he has to take special medication all the time no matter what, that just keeps his nerves from doing that in order to be able to to function. Otherwise, he would be in just constant spasms all the time because his nerves would be all out of whack. So he takes his special medication that he has since since he had that that wreck and that allows him to for a long time he was able to walk. He actually worked for after this accident, believe it or not, he actually worked for several years. At Nebraska furniture Martin in Nebraska. And he would he would deliver furniture and he I mean, he would he could walk. He was using a dolly. He would carry furniture around. This was all after this accident had happened to him. The problem was that he did like most people do, he had minimums on his auto insurance. There was no he didn't have any health insurance. There's no business insurance. He didn't have any savings. He'd crude had accrued a ton of debt to start a business. He had a fairly successful plumbing business. But after all of this happened, he wasn't able to start that business backup. There was the physical side of it. We had accrued so much business debt and didn't have any kind of insurances that now he was on the hook for that debt. And after the accident, it took him a whole year to he had to re-learn how to eat and how to write and do all of the, re-learn all of the muscle memory that we all sort of take for granted. He had to re-learn all of that stuff. So he was out of commission for a full year and the business, of course, he wasn't able to pay debts. He had all this health these health bills that he now had to pay that he didn't have insurance for, and so on. And he was reliant on a court case against the lady that had hit us that ended up not going his way. And so he was stuck with the bill for all of this stuff. And again, didn't have any insurance or anything like that to help kind of get through it. Now, you know, a lot of people might look at that and think, well, dang, that that's not his fault. He didn't plan to get in that accident. He didn't, you know, he he he didn't it wasn't something that he did on purpose or anything like that, which is true. But at the same time, again, MY older as an adult and maybe it's my military experience calling my perception a little bit. But, you know, he had every opportunity to do things to make sure no matter what happened. He he he would be able to survive that all this bad stuff wouldn't happen to him. He could've had business insurance, he could have had health insurance. And I today as an adult, like it's hard for me the way that I think about things to understand not having those sort of things. Now, I understand not everybody agree with that perception. But ultimately what happened is this whole experience. It essentially ruined his life. And it made my childhood, my family's life as tough as it was and it made his life as tough as it was ever since then. Never really, I would say fully recovered from that even to this day still still affects them. Obviously the physical side, but also the financial side. So it was a, it was a hard lesson. Again, whether you agree with my perception of it or not as a child, that's a really, that's a really poignant lesson to learn as a young child to see that happen to go from essentially living a middle-class life to suddenly, you know, having your life thrown upside down and in disarray watching this happened to your dad, into your family. Watching your family's life essentially be, be thrown upside down. Those are, again, a very powerful lesson that, that really stuck with me. And it's sort of colors all of this and the way that I view things and is maybe why I am so proactive about how I plan and prep for things that no matter what happens to me, I'm going to be ready and I'm going to be prepared. Of course, I did what probably a lot of people do. And this is where I get to eat a little bit of humble pie here, but later as an adult, I honestly wasn't much better. I had what I call, still had what I call that poor man's mentality, which is this idea. It'll all work out. I always say people who watch too many movies, which I love movies, I watched a bunch movies. But you know, in movies the good guys always tend to win in the end. I kinda make that joke with my boys from time to time, we'll be watching a movie or show or whatever. And I'll always say, but the good guys win in the end. Because that's how movies tend to go. And people tend to start to believe that that's actually how things are going to be. But I've seen that it doesn't always work out in the end, not just with my dad, but in the military. You know, when I was deployed to Iraq, I saw plenty of situations where it didn't work out in the end for people. And it's really sobering lesson to learn. But at that point in my life, I hadn't learned that lesson. And so I was at that time, I was actually doing well in my freelance business. I was on retainer with a client. I was earning about $6 thousand a month from that specific retainer. In total, I think I was around 12 thousand a month in revenue between all of my freelance clients. I really hadn't started doing anything with online courses or anything at that point. So this is all freelance work. And I'd done what most people do, right? The American Dream bought a big house, got a new car. I was spending stupidly on. I think I had five big screen TVs at once and just a bunch of nonsense that I didn't need. And somehow I wasn't paying off debt. I had all this debt that I was begging monthly payments on, but I wasn't actually focused on getting aggressive and paying it down. I just sort of had in my head that this was going to go on forever. And I just was hoping it would work out in the long run and so forth. And then I had what I call the pucker moment, which is the initial signs of trouble. The, the initial something wasn't right and and it became a huge wake-up call for me. So what happened is that particular client of mine started hadn't having trouble in their business. And they started to mention things or make little side comments here and there. Yeah, we really need to make things work this month or need to get the revenue up or whatever. I wasn't involved. Any of that was just a developer at the time. But it was just a little side comments that that stuck out to me. Eventually. They they told me or asked me if I would be willing to cut back on my what I was doing for them and move down to $4 thousand a month with that particular client. And then ultimately it got all the way down. They really had trouble and I got all the way down to where it was a $1000 a month that I was on retainer for that client. So over a fairly short period of time, I went from $6 thousand a month retainer all the way down to $1000 month retainer with one particular client. That's a huge drop. And, you know, for I think for a lot of people, that would be devastating, that would be life changing, that might just kill everything. You know, that can make the house payment, can't make the car payment, that sort of thing. Now, I was fortunate that I had been through what I went through as a child. It made me not take things for granted. It also made me a little bit of a fighter. I was used to fighting for, for what I wanted. I was used to having to scratch and claw and so forth. And I found that I find that a lot of people are the opposite. They clam up, they sort of check out. I've watched a client of mine do that. In fact, when this particular client, when things got tough, they would suddenly disappear for a week and you couldn't get anything out of them. They weren't doing anything that would just sort of sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. And that's like the worst mentality to have when something like this is happening, happening. So I've seen other people have the opposite response to this sort of situation. That wasn't my response. When the first initial signs that something wasn't right started cropping up, I paid attention to it and I started planning. That's what that was like. Like I said, a huge wake-up call for me. And I realized this may not go on forever and I need to start adjusting. I was still making good money at the time. But the way I had constructed my life and all the debt that I had in the payments that I had, that drop would have just killed me. So I started planning and working. By the time it actually got down to $1000, I was almost wanting it to. I've done so much prepping and planning and changing up my business. I was almost wanting to not be on retainer with them anymore because I was ready to move on. Now, I've worked with them a really long time. They're like family to me. So, you know, it's hard to just just walk away. But I had got to the point where I was ready to just sort of be done with it and I was almost wanting it to be over by the time it got to that point, I had made up enough of the income to where it wasn't going to be and made a bunch of changes in my life to where it wasn't gonna be an issue. So that was sort of my approach and my mentality to the whole thing. And in a way, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because that moment made me reevaluate everything. And that's one of the things if you take nothing else from this particular episode, because I want you to take some time and really just evaluate your situation. Are you actually doing? The things that you wanna do? Are all of the things that you have and maybe that you're buying or whatever do you really need to do really one is that what you really want or you just following this idea that's been put in your head of what success is supposed to look like. Because I realized as I started thinking about it more and more, I had a really big house at a really nice car. We live in a really great neighborhood. We were literally lived right on the backside of the elementary school. My kids could walk like a minute to school. And, you know, it was it was sort of if you again were to package up the American dream and take a picture of it, It's sort of what it was. But I realized that I didn't really care about any of that. Now, I could live in a cave in the middle of nowhere and I wouldn't care as long as what I was doing, what I loved on a daily basis. My kids actually didn't really like going to school and we were more we're more along the lines of homeschooling. And and I had wanted to homeschool my kids for years. My wife, she didn't she grew up similar to me. She didn't need like all of the space. She had a little she had a little room in the house where she had a TV and a little chair that she would sit in and she'd watch TV and hang out with the kids and hang out in there. And it was just a small little space that she needed. She didn't need all of them. I had a big basement downstairs. It was trying to find stuff to put in. Like all the walls were empty. There's all of these shelves that were just empty and I start trying to find things to put in there. We were like making up stuff to try and use all the space because that's just not our personalities, just not how we are. Now today. We live in a tiny house and I have a little a little spot in one of the corners with the L-shaped desk and some computers and stuff. It's not a it's not a huge space. I don't need some big office to do what I do. And I like it. It's nice and cozy and it's perfect for me. And so I realized as I started thinking about all of this and really started to ask myself some tough questions. I didn't need all of this stuff that I was putting into my life. I was trying to fill a void was stuff that was never going to fill that void. And so what it really came down to is me wanting to do what I love on a daily basis. Which is teaching, which is this what I'm doing right here, right now. And so I reoriented my life entirely around that. That's why we moved to Missouri. I mean, a big part of it. Obviously, my wife was involved in that and she had her reasons. But for me, that was the big reason why we moved down here. We bought some land, we built a tiny house. I've eliminated essentially all of my debt. Mortgage, no car payment, no credit cards. I paid off several her student loans. Several my student loans. I had one student loan left. That really the only reason I paid it off is because there's the potential that those student loans might get forgiven. So I'm just sort of waiting that out to see what's going to happen there. But if that doesn't go through them, I'll I'll pay it off and be done with it. But that's the one piece of debt that I still have left from back then. And that's it. There's nothing everything else has been paid off. And so when you do that, it it extreme lowers your overhead extremely. I could live on probably around a $1000 a month. That's how radically I've reduced my debt. I have a utility bill that I have to pay, which is not much, especially here where I live. You know, food. That's how many food that's about it. There's not much more. I don't have a mortgage and I'll have a car payment. I don't have any of that stuff. I paid all of that stuff off. You know, the only things that really pay for Internet I gotta pay for. And then it's all want to stuff Netflix and Disney Plus and ESPN Plus and all of those sorts of things that I want to have that if I really needed to, I could just completely get rid of. So again, I could probably if I absolutely had to, I could live on less than $1000 a month. That's how radically I've reduced my debt. It was I mean, it was 7 $8 thousand a month I needed back when I was doing what I was doing before in order to to each month in order to pay all my bills just at a minimum. That didn't include the like although want to stuff. So again, radically reduced my debt and my overhead. That's allowed me to be able to invest in crypto stocks, mutual funds. And I, I add more to that every day I'm going to end. I'm constantly doing that. That's what set me up to be able to make some investments back when the coronavirus hit and the stocks were way down and I was pretty confident that these ones we're gonna go back up once everything kinda got back to normal. And they have but I wanted to be able to do that if I didn't have the money saved up to be able to make those investments. And all of that then sort of already around, orients around and allows me to be able to do what I love to teach what I want. And in a way where I don't have to worry about the financial side as much. I can come on here and teach what I actually think and what I actually believe and what I actually want to teach, as opposed to having to constantly think about, will this be a big hit? Are people going to, will this go viral? Is, is going to be popular American and being a bunch of money off of this or that or whatever. That's not what it's about for me because I want to worry about that. I've built my life in such a way where that's not a consideration, I'd have to do really terrible to not be able to make $1000 a month. So the point is, is that it's true freedom. That to me, that's what true freedom is. So many people in their heads, they think of it in terms of, oh, I want to make a million dollars, I want to make all of this money. And that's what's going to going to going to set me free. And what I'm trying to tell you is that You can actually do it the other way by being smart about how you, how you spend your money. The thing really assessing what it is that you think you need in your life, radically reducing debt, then you can, you can have true freedom without having to be so focused on making a whole bunch of money. Okay, that's, that's really the point here. And so like, like I said, that's the flip side of this. You are a pandemic or session collapse proofing your business and your life? Yes, that's part of what this is we're making, we're insulating you from all of the potential bad things that could happen. But also creating true freedom or you're not tied to a job or even your business, even a freelance business, like I talk about all the time. There's lots of freedom and a freelance business. But it's not complete true freedom or you can do exactly what you wanna do on a daily basis, minute after minute, hour after hour. You still have to work with clients. You still have to perform work that maybe you don't want to do that day. So again, it's not that true kind of freedom. Now, yeah, you're still gonna work. I mean, I still work, but it's because I'm doing something I love. I've been waiting to get on here, finding being able to find a time to be able to get on here and record this episode. Because I've really wanted to talk about this. I've just, I've got a baby in the house. Other people that live here. I've had to work around that. But I'm excited to get on here and do this. I'm excited to go to work. And I just want to say, I wanna kinda the caveat all of this. I'm talking a lot about myself and it might seem like this is just me being arrogant or whatever. I'm simply conveying my own experience. Okay, so I don't want you to read too much into this in terms of I'm trying to talk smack or whatever. It's really just about me conveying my experience to you. And I've experienced something that has been really powerful for me and I want to share that with others. So the only way I relate to it as through my own experience and that's why I'm talking about my own situation as much as I am. So anyway, again, you can, you can, you can create all of this and you can do it without being, becoming a mega millionaire. So that's the whole point of this. That's sort of a, that's a really long introduction. But I really want to hammer home why this is so important. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump into then what to actually do, how to actually create this. And this is really essentially kinda my 8 plan. It's the things that I think about on a regular basis and how I'm constantly positioning. And I'm not a prepper, right? I'm not this isn't a prepper thing. I'm not stacking MRE's and my bunker or anything like that. This is this is more about positioning yourself. Tweaks that you can make, that, that aren't necessarily just going all in on. This recession is coming in, it's going to end the world and all that sort of thing. That's not what it's about. It's about, you know, it's come, there's something common at some point and you so you just want to position yourself for when it happens. You're both protected and have the ability to find ways to grow and actually benefit through those things that come up, those, those situations that arise. Okay, So first one, obviously radically eliminate debt. I've mentioned this several times, but this is probably the most important. It's the linchpin of all of this. My older brother is a perfect example of this. So I've talked about him. He used to be an insert assurance agent and he didn't really enjoy it. It wasn't what he wanted to do in life. He did it because it was good money. And he along with that, he also ran a few other business. And like I said through with all of the things combining actually made pretty decent money. But they were constantly still broke, even though they had a good revenue coming in. They were constantly broke because they did the same thing I was doing. They spend money on dumb stuff. And so they had huge amounts of debt, so much debt that they couldn't keep up with it. And so one day he had an epiphany. Yeah. It's kinda funny for me to think back on him and I never had a discussion about it. We never really talked much about it. But the change in him was, you could see it. It was immediate and it was actually after my wife and I decided to move to Missouri and build a tiny house, we had sold our house and we moved and talking to him. Now, after the fact about it for him, that was a big moment of the entire time before my wife and my wife and I actually moved. People have been asking me about it, asking us about it. And I kept saying, Hey, we've we've talked about because we had we had talked about it for years, wanting to build a tiny house. She would watch the TV shows on people building tiny houses and all that stuff like we were into it. This is the thing that we talked about for a few years wanting to do. And I reached a point where I was like, I'm sick of talking about it. Either we're going to do it or I don't want to talk about it anymore because we just keep taught. I hate when people keep talking about something they're gonna do and they just never do it and it reaches a point where you're like, you know, they're never going to do it. But they discontinue to talk about it. And I'm like, I'm not going to be that person. I don't want to be that person that drives me nuts. And so I kept talking about that as sort of the reason why. So we've talked about it for years. All of our family knew we had talked about it for years. We've talked with them about it and I said I'm I'm tired of talking about it. I'd want to do it. So either we're gonna do is we're going to stop talking about it. So we decided to do it and, you know, talking to him now, like I said, he said that was a real sort of wake-up call for him because it was like he saw someone doing not necessarily exactly. He didn't want to do exactly what we were doing. But he saw someone doing exactly are roughly what he wanted to do with his life. And it was like it's time he was time for him to start doing it or quit talking about it. And he completely changed his life. I mean, to be honest with you, you know, he was he was dealing with an alcohol problem at the time, was overweight, tons a debt just not in a really good place. He complete changed all of it, stopped drinking immediately, started getting healthier. I mean, he lost like 60 pounds. They as I mentioned, I think I have it on here at some point. Yeah. So he got serious. He quit selling insurance and he started driving over the road. And within a year, they eliminated over $42 thousand in debt in one single year, which is amazing. And it was essentially everything but their student loans. Now. And then right after that they sold their house. They made over $50 thousand on their house or something somewhere around there. I don't know exactly. And they move to their dream town in Minnesota. So they had lived in this town in Minnesota. They loved it there. He had left to come back to the Nebraskan, be closer to his older two daughters. That didn't live with him. And they had graduated, his two daughters had graduated and they sort of moved on. And so him and his wife decided to move back to this town and Minnesota that they loved. And after he had paid off all the debt, they had radically reduce their debt, their own monthly overhead with super low because they didn't have all this debt stacked on them that they are trying to make payments on and so forth. He got a job coaching football, which is what he loves. And he's able to do it at a small school that he doesn't make he doesn't really make that much money, right? He doesn't. They don't pay a ton of schools like that now his wife has a good job up there. And so she actually makes most of the money at now. And That's how they that's part of how they cover everything. But he doesn't make much and yet he's still able to do it and they're able to still still live comfortably and do what he loves on a daily basis. And she does what she lives on a daily basis because they have almost no debt and they don't spend stupidly. So point being is, again, you don't have to be this mega millionaire and focus on constantly making all of this money. If you really take some time to reduce debt and think about the things that actually want and need in your life or what matters most. And it's one of those things where you can tell someone till you're blue in the face. You've probably heard before, hey, you know, figure out what you want, what you love to do in life. Figure out what matters to you, and just focus on that. You've probably heard I'd heard it 1000 times. You don't really understand it until you do it. So let me just add to the pile of people that have told you you're going to be a lot happier if that's what you do. So again, that that's sort of his story and like I said, it gets to do what he loves day in and day out and he's more, more happier. It's funny because everybody knew, everybody that knew him, knew that he wasn't gonna be happy until he started coaching football. That that's what he wanted to, that's what his passion in life was. And then he was able to create a way to do it. And he's I mean, he's happier than I've ever seen him. And in total, they actually make less than they did before. But they have more money because they've reduced so much debt. They lived where they've always dreamed of living. They both work in dream jobs. They're just simply happier and every aspect of their life. Now, as far as the process is really pretty simple, you've likely heard of it. But just in case you haven't actually had anybody tell you this before. It's essentially for reducing debt is essentially called the snowball. So what you do is you select one piece of debt that you're going to knock out first, usually your high-interest debt. You can think about that a little bit. Balanced between, you know, if you have a $100 thousand in high-interest debt and you have, you know, 2000 dollars on the smaller, maybe lower interest that maybe you pay off the 2000, 1.2000.11, because that $1000 is going to take awhile for a $100 thousand is going to take a while for you to pay off. I mean, there's a balance there. We usually at your highest interests debt that you're going to pay off credit cards is what it is often for most people. And so what you do is you would credit cards, you take one credit card. You put everything else on minimum payments. If he can get forbearance is you get forbearance is on on everything and you try to squeeze out as much money as you can that you are able to pay towards debt. You get rid of your Netflix and Disney Plus and all the things that you don't absolutely need and be absolutely ruthless with this. It's not going to be forever. Okay? It's just for this extreme debt elimination period. Be ruthless with it and get rid of all of that stuff. And then you put all of that extra money towards this one piece of debt and pay it off as quick as possible. So instead of paying payments on everything, all right, you're paying a 100100 there, whatever. And maybe you can pay $500 toward a high-interest credit card every month or 1000 you're able to figure out and then, you know, you're, you, you're able to pay that off really, really quickly. The whole point is to get that first piece of debt paid off as quickly as possible and that starts to snowball. Once it's paid off, you roll that payment into the money that you're paying. All the money that you're paying towards debt. So if I was paying, I had a $1000 that I was paying towards this debt and now I get that one paid off. I'm going to then turn and focus that to another piece of debt and the payment that I was making, you know, the the $100 payment that was going to other card gets rolled into the snowball and as you pay off each debt, you're able to, each piece of debt you're able to make a larger payment every month towards these other pieces of debt and it sort of snowballs. That's why it's called a snowball. Until you're paying huge chunks every month towards your debt and getting it paid off as quick as possible. And that was how they were able to pay off $42 thousand in debt in one year. They didn't start off paying, you know, they start off paying $3 thousand a month towards their dead. They start off with maybe 500 or a 1000. But then it snowballed and became 1500, and then it became 2500 and then it became 3000. And next thing you know, they're just paying off huge amounts of debt. They also did sell stuff that they didn't need, so they had a lot of stuff that they sold. He had some photo booths extolled, the D cluttered, and they then took all of that money that they think that a car they even sold. And they took all that money and instead of blowing it, they spent it on reducing debt. And that's how they were able to do it. So that's sort of the snowball. And that's what I mean by radically eliminate debt. For most people. Just a year or two of this, You'd be surprised if you actually sat down and did the math for most people just a year or two of this kind of radical debt elimination. And your financial situation be a 1000 times better. It took them, it took them a year to basically unvaried themselves. That 42000 basically got them on buried. They did it again the next year. And then that put them sort of on the positive side of things to where now they weren't underneath water, they are just keeping their head above water. They were standing fully above water and they were in a much better financial position. And that's really the key to all of this because when the next pandemic hits or the next recession hits, you're not going to be thinking about all of this debt and all of these payments that I have. How am I going to make these payments, et cetera, et cetera. You're going to have extra money sitting there that you can start to think a different way. Hey, are there, is there something I can invest in? That is downright now that I know is gonna go back up an airline stock or a cruise ship stock or some crypto or whatever it is. Is there a way that I can actually use the money that I have here to be able to grow through this or as a result of this and not just be able to survive it. It allows you to be able to think differently, which is then the linchpin for everything else that we're going to talk, talk about going forward. So radically eliminating debt is really the key to all of this, okay, from here then it's time to start building up your savings. So as you eliminate your short and medium term debt, you're going to move into a period of tackling your longer-term debt. A really good example of that is student loans. Are they in a lot of people might have a 100 thousand or $200 thousand in student loans. Well that kinda debts gonna take awhile to pay off. And so you can continue to tackle it and so forth. But there's an opportunity for you to, along with that, then start also thinking about some savings mice. One student loan that I have, for example, it's not that much. But like I said, the reason I'm not paying it off is because well, if they decide to do forgiveness on those loans, I might as well take that free money, so I'm just sort of making minimum payments on it for now. On, on won't do that forever. If something doesn't get done soon, then I'll just go ahead and pay it off. But that's a good example of just kinda putting that on the back-burner. Now I'm focusing more on savings and investment and so forth. Now when it comes to savings, I recommend that you have a full year's worth of quote, unquote survival, money saving. A lot of people will tell you, Hey, you want to have a full year of full year salary saved up or whatever. That might be a lot of money for. For some people, I don't think that you necessarily need a full year salary because that assumes that you're going to continue to, if something really bad happens, you're going to continue to live the way that you've always lived and you're probably not going to and you don't really need to. I mean, you shouldn't be honest. So that's why I call it survival money. Money that you would need if you, if you look at all your bills and you're like, well, if things really got bad, I could get rid of that. And I could get rid of that. My Netflix mind, Disney, my this, my, that I could get rid of all of this stuff. The only things I really need are this. And that comes up to however much per month. And then you times that by 12 and that gives you your years worth of survival money. And if you want to pad it a little bit, by all means, but you want to, that's your first aim. You want to start building towards that full year. And the reason we want a full year, the coronavirus pandemic is a really good example. If you look at the coronavirus pandemic, I mean, it was a good strong year where things were were pretty bad. And so if you only had six months of savings saved up, you could be in a tough spot after six months. So, and the reality is, is too, is that you probably will spend a little bit more than what you plan. So you want to have a full year, years worth of survival money. If you go back and look at most of the recession's throughout history, they tend to be about a year. So again, that if you have that, that kinda just sort of gets you over the hump really, no matter what the recession is, what the problem is. There are some that were longer for sure. But a year generally is going to put you in, in a good spot. So that's, that's sort of your aim. But it's also important to recognize that savings accounts right now, for the most part, essentially worthless. They don't, they're not going to earn you all. They're not going to earn you very much interest on what you put in there. It's barely better than putting just having it in a checking account. So and they like, they don't even, they don't even keep up with inflation. So right now they're essentially worthless because interest rates are so low. So when I say savings, that doesn't necessarily mean that you actually have a savings account. I don't have I used to have the same as in cow. I don't have a savings account now. I do different things with it. So mutual funds are R1 example. They're a bit more risky but not so risky that it's just this huge, this huge risk that you're taking. But they provide a higher returns. You know, you might get an 8% or 10 percent. I mean, some years some of the mutual funds will have a 30 percent growth. Now some years they'll take a 20 percent hit two, so it is a bit more risky. But when you're thinking of savings and putting money into an account and then letting that money, like having that money grow for you, not just sit there. And well, mutual fund is an index fund. Those are good ways to be able to do that and you can still withdraw. There are tax implications and for some of the mutual funds there may be penalties and so forth. So you gotta, you gotta do some research. But again, it's, it's, it's, it's a place that you can put your money and have it actually grow for you as opposed to just sitting in a savings account and then you're getting earn like $0.14 over the course of her hair, her whatever it is you've gotten going to learn any, earn very much of anything. A lot of crypto bring banks is another example. They offer returns for holding certain cryptocurrency. So for example, coinbase has 4%. If you hold the USD coin, I think it's like 4.2 or 4.6. If you hold tether, there's another one that they give you like 2% plus or whatever. Those aren't as high. There's not the eight or 10 they're going to get from a mutual fund, but they also are probably a little bit less risky. The USD coin is tied to the US dollar, so there's not the volatility there. And the way coinbase does its lending for crypto is a little safer than some of the way, the way some of the other exchanges do it. So again, all of these things have risk. You have to assess them, you have to research and you shouldn't just do what I'm saying and not do any of your own research. But these are options of ways you can put your savings into something that's actually going to grow at a fairly significant rate. 9. EP1: How I Fooled Inc. Magazine: Hello and welcome to what I'm calling episode one of let's talk freelance. I'll talk about that in a second. But this one is how I fooled Inc. Magazine. This is a lesson and leadership responsibility and owning your worth in freelancing. So before we get into the actual episode and the content of the episode, I want to take a minute and have a talk a little bit about this idea of the new, Let's talk freelance. Because if you have been a part of this program, part of this course before, you'll know that I've done pre, previous episodes of this. You'll see those here listed in the course, listing here as well. And I'm, I'm sort of changing up what I'm doing. And it's just, it's really just a growth thing for me. You know, when I, when I started this before I had an idea of what I wanted to do from a big picture level. I wanted some sort of ongoing course because there's things are always changing and freelancing and having not just access to update it information, but just someone who's their kind of motivating you, encouraging you, sharing with you what they've learned and so forth, I think is valuable as you go through this journey of being a freelancer. I know for me a lot of the times I've I've done it alone and so I don't want you to feel alone. I want to be there with you as you go through it. And at that time I was taking questions and you know, as a content creator or as kinda still figuring myself out. And so I was doing what the typical content creators tend to do, which is they, they look for trends on Google Trends or they look up topics based off of Google searches and that sort of thing. And I've evolved quite a bit since then. And so this program will evolve as well. And really ultimately, to get to the point of it, what I wanna do in this program is I want to share the experience of experiences that I've had over the years that have shaped who I am and have brought me to this point that I'm at in my life because I've done a lot of things from freelancing to course creation, to being in the military, building, a tiny house. My kids way back in the day going through a divorce, I did a tour in Iraq. There's a lot of things that I've been through in my life, a lot of experiences that I've had that I've drawn lessons from. And so I want to share those experiences and share those lessons with you ultimately to help you down your path as a freelancer, a business owner or an entrepreneur, someone working with the Internet to make a living, all, all of those sorts of things. And so that's what I really want to focus on. This is going to become much more of an experienced base program. And really the way I look at it is, you know, really what brought it up for me is my 13-year-old son has got into game development and so he's doing he started working with Roblox And Roblox Studio and making games. And he made a game that has kind of got a little bit of traction on there. And so he had gotten popular enough. We had someone who asked him, told him that they would hire him to build a game for him. Which is really cool, right? That was kinda mind-blowing to me that at 13 years old, old, he's already kind of at that stage. So he came to me and was asking me about how he should do the payments and so forth, how he should handle getting paid because they said that they could pay him the money for it in a couple of weeks. They didn't have it right now, That's a typical thing that you've probably experienced if you've done any sort of freelancing. And so I explained to him how I handle payments, how I think he should handle it in the situation that he's in. And he was like, Oh, that he was very grateful. Which, you know, from a 13-year-old child, that's, that's a rare thing to get. So he was very great films like that makes complete sense. And he was suddenly all of the pressure was off of him about how he needed to handle the peanuts. And I just thought, man, all of the experiences that I've had throughout the years or what led me to the point to be able to give him that advice. And so I kind of feel like I'm taking the approach with this program of what would I tell my son's in these situation? What would I want my sons to know if they were to follow down the same path as I am or similar path, because I have one of them who might actually be going down a similar path. So what would I want him to know, what, what I share with him? And so that's really what the program is going to become oriented towards. Hopefully you're along for the ride, hopefully you get value out of it. But that's the path that I'm sort of gonna go down. So Episode 1 here then is really revolving around the experience that I had with my ink magazine or one of the experiences that I had with ink magazine. I've talked about this before, but on that project I worked with a guy named Louis shift. And Louis shift was a was a he was a pretty well-known author, ran his own business, but he also worked with Inc. Magazine as a director there. And he was a guy, just just kinda took no BS. He busted my chops more than any other client that I'd ever had. For example, when I first started the project, I told him they give me access to the site in a little bit of the code and I kinda look through it and I just told them it was a mess and I just wanted to scrap the whole thing. And he really pressed me hard on that with good reason because he had spent about two years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to get that site built. And so for some 20-something kid to be like, Hey, I just want to scrap it and start from scratch. I mean, that made him really, really nervous because he felt like he was pretty close to getting it launched. Although if you saw the code and how it was built, he was nowhere near getting a lunch, but he didn't know that. And so I told them I wanted to scratch, scrap the whole thing and start from scratch and he pressed really, really hard on that. I ultimately ended up getting my way and it worked out pretty well. But it was one of those things, just an example of how he just really pressed me hard on everything. Every idea had every opinion I'd had because he had been through multiple developers. He'd been through trying to do this multiple times. So he sort of heard and seen everything. And when when I would have an idea or an opinion or a way I wanted to do things. He would question it at all. There was nothing that slipped by him. He would question and then when I give them those answers, he would question those answers. Well, why, how, how long is it going to take, really, it's going to take that long. Why is it going to take that long? And just constantly pressed me on everything. That's another fact. I remember one time I went to New York City to meet up with him and there there was another client of mine that was there for some sort of conference and so I was hanging out essentially both of them and they were those two were connecting and I was kind of a part of that whole thing. And so I was in New York with him and he he was wanted to first talk about his project. So it's other client was just kind of sort of tagging along as we were talking and we were talking back for that that point we had been working with each other while and I've gotten used to how he was. And so we were talking and I can't remember what the exact it was a feature that we were talking about that we're going to add to the site. And the typical thing where, hey, I wanted to do this and I'm like, well, I'm gonna do it this way and he's like Why? And we just were gone back and forth like to grumpy hope men. And I could see in the other clients eyes him just sort of looking at us like What in the world is going on here like these to her or nattering back and forth like two old men. And so that was kind of the relationship that we ultimately developed because I got used to him being like that. And so again, that's just sort of how he was, That was his mentality and that was his personality. However, even though that was his personality and he constantly busted my chops on things, even still. He couldn't know if I was right or wrong because I had way too much knowledge on the topic, I knew way too much about it way more than he could ever know. Not just that he knew that he could ever know. And so I can convince him of things that he had no context to question or really understand. He had to take my word on a lot of things and because of that, I was able to take control of the project. Even though he was a guy that was not willing to give up control very easily because he simply did not have the knowledge to be able to fully understand whether I was right or not, whether I was telling him the truth or not. Now, this isn't a thing about lying to your clients or anything. The point is is that they are so far removed from you in terms of the knowledge on the topic. And even someone who's really detailed, really smart, really tries to dig in and tries to do everything they can to educate themselves and to hold you accountable. And all of these sayings, they're just so far apart in terms of the knowledge that they just can't do it. And so I was able to do things and convince him of things that maybe I didn't tell him the whole story and I had a good reason for not doing that. Or maybe I wanted to do it away where there were ways that were closer to how he wanted to do it, that I could have done it, but I wanted to do it my way. Okay, There were a lot of those things. And so the example that I like to use is it's a lot like Michael Jordan versus a kindergartner in basketball. The kid, the kindergartner, they simply can't win. It doesn't matter. They can tug on Michael's arm. They could try and tackle the heck. They could grab a hold of his leg and try to hold onto it for dear life, it wouldn't matter. Michael would win that game if he wants to know every single time. Because the gap in skill between Michael Jordan or any NBA player or even to a high school or college player. The gap in knowledge between those two is so big structurally, the kids simply has no chance of winning. It's built into the entire context of the situation that that kid just does not have a chance. And this is the same with you and your client. You are the expert and your knowledge is so beyond There's there's just no way for them to really know or to really fully be able to question you. Now, that is a blessing. And it's also a responsibility. It means you can absolutely get away with things, but it also means that whatever happens in the project is ultimately on you. It's ultimately your fault because you are the experienced one. You are the adult in the room, so to speak. And so if you're an experienced freelancer, then really what this is is a lesson in responsibility and a lesson in leadership because it's your job to lead the project. You're the one with the knowledge. You're the one who knows, you're the one who knows better. So it's not enough for you to just default to what the client wants or take the client's lead. The one with the response or the experience, you're the one with the knowledge, you're the one with the expertise. So it's your job to lead the project and it's on you to take control of the project. And sometimes, yes, Sometimes you have to do it in ways that that maybe aren't a 100 percent on the up and up or whatever it is, maybe sometimes you have to leave out information with a client or whatever. But it's ultimately up to you to take control because the health of the project is at risk. What if we go back to two Inc. Magazine? He'd been working with developers for close to two years. He spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get that site Bill. And I I I wasn't a part of those projects, but I can almost guarantee because of his personality and actually knew some of the people that he worked with and I know their personalities that he led that project through all of all of those those working with those developers. He was the one that took control and they would, they would sort of back down and follow his lead. And the dead ended up being a complete mess. Whereas I took control, I did what I did and some of the things that I did to convince him to do things my way. And I got the site built and launched in 30 days and he was more than happy. So I did it for a particular reason because if you let the client take control, they'll make an absolute mess out of most any project because they're like a kindergartner with a new toy. They don't know any better. So it's on you to take control. And the big thing if you're an experienced freelancer again, is if you're having trouble with a client, it's ultimately your fault. If you're constantly running into the same issues, if you're constantly finding yourself running into problems with clients, it's ultimately your fault. You're the adult in the room and you haven't done something. I don't know what it is, but there's something that you haven't done to make them fully trust you, to make, put their faith in you and let you lead. And you have to figure that out really before you can go on because otherwise they're just going to continue to make a mess of it. Now. Sure. There are some clients that are just obnoxious. Alright. There's some clients that there's just, no matter what you do, they're going to be obnoxious like that. They're going to make a mess of things, but they're actually more rare than most admit. And if you look in the freelance world, it's sort of a common thing to knock clients and not clients are crazy and clients are this and clients are that. What I see when I see that is inexperienced freelancers or freelancers who don't know how to take control of projects and who don't know how to lead. Because the truly obnoxious clients are a lot more rare than most people are. Admit. What it really is is clients that are starting to freak out because they don't trust the person they're working with fully. Because they're not sure if that person really knows what they're doing or that person really has their best interests at heart. There's something in the relationship between the freelancer and the client that's causing the client, client to act that way. Now I know some of you listening to this might want to push back on that. Might want to know no, no, not me, not me. But I'll say this. If it's happening to you with most or all of your clients or even a majority of your clients, it should be really rare that that happens. So if it's happening more than that, that is a telltale sign that something is off. Okay. So again, you may not want to admit it, but the proof is in the pudding. And if it's happening more and more often than you'd like to the point where you might even complain about it, then that is a, a telltale sign. Even if it comes down to two client ignorance, quote unquote, it's your job to educate them. It's your job to tell them why that is on you. And you can lament that fact. We're like, No, that's not my job. Why should I have to do that? You are going to continually run into problems with your clients. So ultimately, at the end of day, as I said, it's or lesson in responsibility and taking responsibility for yourself, for the project and for your client in order to make your life easier and make their life easier. And at the end of the day, why would you listen to them? This is one of the things that I don't understand sometimes about the complaints that I see from freelancers is why would you even listen to them? Most of the clients that I work with, they'll talk to me and I'll kinda it's like it's like a kid who's telling you something that you already know. Aha, aha, aha, aha. And then I just do what I'm gonna do anyway, or I tell them why we're not gonna do it that way. That they're what they're talking about or whatever. There's no reason for me to listen to them when it comes to if I'm working with a client on the technicalities of building a membership site. Now if we were talking about marketing or you're even content creation or something else, then yeah, I might be like, Okay, let's do what you wanna do. Or, Hey, do you like the design and how this looks or whatever you okay with these colors, that sort of thing. Okay. But we're, we're getting into the technicalities or we're talking about the architecture of a membership site, which is something that I'm really big on. It's probably the most important thing about bullet Building membership site is actually the architecture of how you construct and put all the pages and the memberships and stuff together in order. So it doesn't get just so confusing that members have no idea what's going on. If we're talking about that. I don't care one bit what a client says. I don't care what they prefer. I don't care what they think is right? Or they have some new cool idea that they wanna do. I tell them straight up, you're going to confuse the heck out of your members and it's going to cost you revenue. There's no point in doing it. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. This is how it should be done. Okay? And the reason I do that or the reason you should do that is because you are the expert. You're the one who knows. So again, why would you listen to them? Why would you care what they have to say on something that you are the expert on that have no context, no information, no. Anything on There's no reason to listen to them. Yeah, you listened to them to be nice. But then you commonly explained to them why they're wrong. That's part of your job. That's part of what you need to do as a freelancer, as scary as that might be. Now that we'll lose you some clients for sure. But those are the kind of clients so that you don't really want. Those are the obnoxious ones. Now, if you're a new or aspiring freelancer, then hopefully this is a little bit inspiring to you, this, this lesson because you almost surely know more than you think. And what I want you to do is I want you to think about all the hours that you've put in studying the topic that you want a freelance on, practicing it, learning it, mastering what you. I spent hours and hours and hours many late nights over the course of several years studying code, learning how to code, learning how to build websites, studying WordPress and membership sites and architecture and all of those things. I spent years and years and years learning that stuff before ever took my first client. So think about all the time that you've spent doing that and then realize your client has probably done 0 of that. Any client you work with will have probably done 0 of any of that. If you're a graphic designer, your clients have probably spent almost no time learning graphic design, maybe a little bit, but probably not that much. If you're a writer, maybe a little bit more clients might have done that since content creation is a big thing, but nowhere close to the amount of time that you've put in, specifically studying, writing. So the amount of knowledge that you have, even if you've only been doing it for six months or a year, or three months, or even a month. You could probably in one month, learn as much as most clients will ever learn in their entire lifetime about the topic that you're going to freelance on. Now there's probably some exceptions when it comes to topics out there. But most likely you're going to very quickly no more than they do. That's all that matters. They don't. The only thing that matters is that you can deliver on what they want better than they can themselves. Okay? So again, just think about all the hours that you've spent studying the topic and realize that your client just has nowhere near that much experience and they never will because it's not what they do, it's not what they're interested in. It's not their expertise, et cetera. It's yours. Okay. So again, what do they know? They've they've they haven't done any studying on it. So what did they really know about the topic? And so again, what that means is you can probably start freelancing. You probably go freelance a lot sooner than you think. I find with a lot of new freelancers, they build this wall in their head of, oh, I've gotta get to this point. I've got to learn this stuff. I've got to know this and I've got to know that I've got to be able to deliver like this and that. And they build up this mountain that they feel like they have to climb in order to be able to take on their first client. And what I'm telling you is that that mountain is probably a lot smaller than you think It's insecurity often that's driving it, not the reality of what you actually need to know to deliver for a client. That's fine. We all go through it. It's not some accusation or judgment of you. I mean, I went through the same thing. So it's not a problem, it's not a thing to be ashamed of. It's just you need to recognize that it actually is insecurity that Dr. Dre is driving it, not an actual reality of what you need to know. Okay, So again, you can probably start doing this a lot sooner than you think. And when you do start doing it, you can have a little more faith in, a little more confidence in yourself, then you probably do right now again, as a new or aspiring freelancer, a lot of new freelancers go in insecure, unsure, and that's what causes them to let the client lead. And that drags you through misery. As the client runs you and circles all over the place. And you're like, why am I doing this freelancing thing again, have a little more faith, have a little more confidence. Know that you are the expert, you know, way more than your client almost assuredly. So you're the one that should drive the project, not the client. Even if you don't know everything, even if you're not all that experienced, You're still more experienced than they are. Ok. And then as you go, you're going to, you're going to learn, you're going to get better. And you're going to be able to control and deliver for clients even better. So you might be wondering, okay, great, That's awesome. What do I do with this? Okay, so how do I, how do I implement this or what do I do with this in my actual career? So the first thing that I would say that I do is every project is that for every project, your very first priority really is developing a vision. A vision of how it should ultimately look or be done, be completed, et cetera. Whenever I sit down to to build a website, to build a membership site for people. I talk with them, I tried to get a handle of what they're trying to do, what their priorities are, all of those things I take in as much information as I can. And then from that, I work on, I think solely about how I want it to look. The ultimate vision of how I want the website to look and function in my head and develop a vision first. And to me, a vision is a plan of what you're going to do, why you're going to do it that way, and how it ultimately benefits the client. Those are the three components in this particular contexts that make up a vision. And what you really need to learn to constantly and consistently communicate that vision. Communicating vision is how you overcome your clients, getting antsy clients, not sure you know what you're doing. Clients starting to ask a bunch of really weird questions or start to sabotage the project and all of those weird things that can happen with clients. You communicating vision is literally you leading them. It's you talking about where you're headed, where things are going, why they're going that way, and how it ultimately benefits them. What you're trying to do is connect your way of doing things to their emotional needs in order to get buy-in. In order to get them to truly buy into your vision. When they truly buy into your vision, all of the nonsense goes away. That's how you know, they've bought in, by the way, is all the nonsense will go away if you're still experiencing nonsense, that means they haven't fully bought into the vision. You need to work. You need to work on communicating it to them more clearly. Maybe part of that is you need to get more clear on it and that's fine. Work on that and then can communicate to that, that to them. Maybe it's that you just haven't done a good job of communicating it fine, keep trying. And with time as you do this, you're gonna get better at it. You're going to be able to more clearly communicate to clients. I've got to the point now where usually in the first meeting I can communicate a really strong meeting to my clients based off of what they tell me in that meeting right there, I can create a real communicating really strong vision to them. Get some solid by n, and get me to the point where I can get the project done before they really start questioning. Clients will always kinda usually have to communicate with them multiple times and reassure them and communicate the vision several times throughout a project. But I can usually create enough space at the beginning to where I can actually get it done. So by the time they come back to start questioning on my I'm pretty much done with the project and it doesn't matter at that point. So but again, you're, you're, you're connecting your way of doing things to their emotional needs in order to get buy-in. Buy-in is what matters. It's rarely talked about in our world, but it's really critical. I personally, I won't move forward with a project unless I get like a 100% buy-in because I know if I do, the clients just going to sabotage, they're going to come up with all of these good idea fairies are all these weird questions, these what-if scenarios, all of those things that just derail the project, they add unnecessary complexity and they really don't matter. Almost always are irrelevant. And again, it's a symptom of not having enough buy-in. So until I get that buy-in, I don't move forward with the project all walk away from a project if I can't if I'm not able to get that buy-in because I just don't want to deal with the mess that it creates when you don't have it. And again, it all goes back to communicating, vision, what the plan is, and it needs to be a good plan. But as you get better at what you do to become more of an expert, you'll, you'll develop good plans. But that's not enough. That's, I guess this is the point I'm trying to make to you. It's not enough to just have a plan of what you're gonna do and you'll be able to communicate why it's better than the alternatives and then how it ultimately benefits the client themselves and gets them what they want emotionally. But in a different way. In a way that, that, that is falling you getting to do it the way you want to do it. And if you, just as a side note, going back to just one of the very, very few things I learned in my business marketing as I was getting my I don't have my degree in business marketing, but unlike a few classes away and never finished it. But as I was going through getting that degree, are working on getting that degree. One of the very few things that I learnt, actually learn from it was about Aristotle and talking about his ideas on persuasion. And essentially, that's what he said. You need to, you need to connect what you want, the action you want them to take with their, what he called core elements. So beliefs, values, those sorts of things. What they, how they see the world, their worldview, and what matters to them instead of trying to change that. So that instead of trying to change what matters to them, you simply need to connect the action you want them to take with the values and beliefs and things that they already have, those core elements they already have. That's essentially what we're doing here. We're just connecting how we wanna do things to their emotional needs in order to get that buy-in. Another thing, especially for those of you who are new to freelancing is I recommend that you take the time to figure out how good you are to sit down and actually get a sense of where you fit in the grand scheme of things. So maybe you could, there's some sort of tests you can take or you can have, you know, do some sort of peer review or get an expert to analyze and give you some feedback. Or you can just go and research other people who do what you do and see where you compare skill wise. But you want to know what your skill level is because it removes a big question mark and it removes an insecurity. It's the insecurity that drives not being afraid to take control, being afraid to be assertive, being afraid to lead is based on the fact that you're insecure about whether you know, really know what you're doing. Okay, so by taking the time to figure out how good you really are, where you really stack up in the grand scheme of things. It removes that question mark. Now that doesn't mean that you're going to be the best. You probably aren't. I'm not the best at what I do. I mean, maybe if we talk about membership sites with WordPress and wishes member of that specific thing, maybe I am, maybe I am the best in the world because it's a pretty small niche, right? It's a small enough niche where I'm capable of being the best. But WordPress development, it's nowhere near the best. General web development in nowhere near the best course creation even. And then all the content creation know I'm not the best. Okay? So it doesn't mean that you have to be the best in order to start. Just means you need to understand where you're at. Oh, I'm I'm kinda middle of the pack. I'm proficient. I'm I'm good, good enough at what I do. I'm kinda like everybody else, but I'm good enough to be able to deliver. Or you might find out that, Hey, I'm not as good as I thought I was. There's people that are out there that are actually quite a bit better than me. And what that does is it helps you to know that. So they can develop a plan of attack on how to get better. But you really need to know, constantly know where you're at so that you can go in with confidence. You're not constantly questioning that you don't constantly have this insecurity behind you. You can reach a point of confidence. So you go into projects knowing that you are the expert, okay? And now you can lead because you know best, you know better than the client. And there's 0 question about that in your mind. That's the point you really need to get to two. Now that doesn't mean that you need to have that before you start freelancing. It doesn't mean that your first project or your secondary third, it's going to happen, but it's something that underneath you trying to get clients you're working with clients. Is you working on your skill level of your core skill that you do, whatever it is. Right underneath of that, you also need to be constantly evaluating and assessing and having some sense of where you are so you can develop the confidence. The confidence is what's going to allow, allow you to lead. Because again, as an example, I'm not trying to be overly brag a dose. This is just where I'm at when I sit down with a client or kinda membership site or build a course library or whatever it is that they do are doing for them. It like there's no there's no question in my mind that I know better than them, that I know more than them. Again, not trying to sound arrogant, but there's just not a question. And I can talk with anybody for five minutes and it becomes obvious to me. So that's the point that you want to get to. So you have that confidence. Again, if you're new. Another piece about this is don't over-complicate it. I see this a lot with, with new freelancers is there. They tend to over-complicate what they need to know and what they need to be able to do in order to start getting clients, in order to start doing paid work, et cetera. All you're doing, this is as simple as it is. All you're doing is taking something that you know how to do and you're doing it for other people. So there are people who get paid to walk dogs. That's what they do. They know how to do it. Other people are willing to pay them to do it. So that's what they do. And if you don't fully believe that in, Go on Fiverr and you can browse around, look at the kinds of things that people get paid for over there. Things like PowerPoint slides. A whole section of thing, of jobs over there for doing dances on tiktok. Of all things. There's basic audio and video editing. There's all kinds of really simple things that people are getting paid to do by other people. And they're getting paid a good chunk and they're earning a lot from it. If you do the math on what they charge and how many projects they've completed and so forth. They're doing pretty well, doing some really simple things that don't require necessarily a ton of silt skill. So it's a lot of really, really simple things and you don't need to over-complicate it. All right? You don't need to know. You don't need to imagine that you have to have this great skill level or you need to be doing something super complex. You don't need to be, okay. You just pick something that you can do that not everybody else can do. Okay. And and it's, it's, and then you want to look at NOT will people pay you for it, but our other, are they already paying others for it? And again, a site like fibers are good site to look at or Upwork is a good site to look out for that kind of thing. Or just in general, you think about it and it's obvious to you, Are people actually right now paying others to do this thing? Are they paying them to build websites? Absolutely. Are they paying them to create logos and do graphic design and letterheads and this and that and the other, whatever it is the graphic designers do. Are people paying for that? Absolutely. Are they paying for people to write blog posts? Absolutely. Are they paying for landing pages in WordPress? Absolutely. All of these things you just, are people actually paying right now for it. And just pick something that you can do that you'd like doing that, that you enjoy, that you want to do, that you can do on everybody else can. And other people are already paying for it. And it's that simple. If you can say yes to those things, then you can get paid to do it too. Okay, so don't over-complicate it. And think that you need to have some complex skill or years and years of training and learning and all of this stuff in order to get started. Like I said, your clients have almost 0 knowledge all of this. So very quickly you can be beyond where they're at and be able to then get paid to do it for them. Another thing is I would recommend that you started as a side hustle. That's kinda become a big thing, which is a good thing. I think it's a good thing that side hustles have have taken off. And just so you can start as a side hustle and just let it grow from there until it overtakes your, your regular job. So it doesn't have to be either or it doesn't have to be all I'm quitting my job and I'm gonna go freelance or I'm not going to freelance because I like my job and I'm gonna stick with it. Start freelancing as a side hustle, start working on projects for people. It's good to be in a position where you don't need the money. That way you can turn away clients that don't fit. You can start getting good at that. You can start building up a clientele of people that you actually like working with. You can focus on working on projects that are the right kind of projects. So you're not just taking any project, willy nilly, you're able to be picky and selective and work on only the things that makes sense for you. And then you can just grow that. And as it starts to overtake you, maybe you start making more money. It starts up to making more, taking up more time. All of those things. It starts to overtake your main job or your main gig, whatever it is you do, you can just keep letting it grow and eventually transitioned to freelance full-time if you want to. Or you can say to stay a side hustle forever. It's really up to you, but it doesn't have to be either or. And that's exactly how I started. No, I at the time I was actually mobilized for the military. And so this is back when I was doing, I was doing teaching. I was training soldiers, deploying, and all of that. And I started doing no learning web development and doing freelancing on the side. And, you know, as I had several years where I was doing that for the military. And over that time period, I started growing my freelancing. And by the time I got to the point where I was done, I was ready to be done with the military. I had built up my freelancing side of things to the point where I could just do that full time. And so that's what I did. And it made for a a pretty smooth transition by the time I got to go full freelance full-time, and it's now been over 11 years that I've been freelancing, working from home full time. I haven't haven't had to get up and go into work. Have a boss really? I mean, clients. You could debate that, but an actual consistent boss or any of that for 11 plus years and I did it all starting out as a side hustle. So that's a lot of information tied around this idea that I picked up from this experience that I had with ink magazine. There's a lot there to process and if you need to go back through and watch it, absolutely do, I would recommend, you know, maybe going back through at 1.5 speed and one in quarter 1.5 speed. I usually watch things at 1.5 speed, you know, and and kinda maybe seen it a second time that that usually helps me. Most things that I I can zoom my watch multiple times or I consume multiple times, helps me to get it better. And ultimately from it, you know, pick up a few things, a few key takeaways, and some things about what you're doing now that you're going to change. That's what matters. Okay. You don't have to just do exactly what I say. This is not about I'm not big anymore on the step-by-step, one step. Do I think people situations are all different, contexts are all different. So I'm just sharing my, my, my experience, what I know. And it's ultimately up to you to take that and figure out what fits, what, what can you change about what you're doing now that you think might help you get better results based off of this and create a plan of attack and then go implement that plan. That that's really what to do with this. So, there you go. That's, let's talk freelance episode number one, the new let's talk for you. Dance. If you do have questions, let me know in the discussion below. I'd also be interested to know your, your key insight or your key takeaway from this episode. Just put like Epi 1 so I know which episode you're referencing and then let me know what your key takeaway, your key insight was. From this episode. I would really love to hear that stuff. It helps me to understand your thinking and so forth. It makes the content better as we go forward. So there you go. Thanks for watching and I'll talk to you next time. 10. BONUS: Tornado Principle: I got this question from Tim from my email newsletter at sort of solicited questions, what were people dealing with, what were people struggling with? And this question from Tim was staying focused and effective in business under extreme external pressure. And so I'd kinda followed up and said, You know what he meant by extreme external pressure, pressure. Could you give me some sort of an example? And so his example was, he said an ex-wife who burned everything down, ruined my closest business and personal relationships and put me into complete financial ruin with intent. So deep, deep financial and personal stress has left me flailing and I'm a month and a half into my first real opportunity for recovery. I feel a lack of clarity as to the best course of action to push push my head above water for good, to focus on the work which I am, which I am good at instead of the stay alive struggle. Now this is sort of an interesting question for me because I can relate to this and a very specific way. It goes all the way back to when I was in college, but dream growing up in high school was to play football on specific way. I grew up in the state of Nebraska. I wanted to play for the hometown team. I wanted to play for the University of Nebraska. And I had gone my freshman year to a smaller school in that area and I decided to transfer an attempt to walk on at the university. And so I had spent the first semester just training, running, lifting, doing all the things I needed to get ready. And then it was right at the beginning of the second semester when they had the the open tryouts. And so I went to the open tryouts and there's thousands of people that show up. I think that year they said there was between 23 thousand people that showed up to these open tryouts. And that year they took ten people from those open tryouts as sort of into this initial sort of walk on period. And I was one of those 10 people. So I kinda made that first step. But there was now another kind of cut before you got to be kind of on the team and be a part go through the spring program and all that sort of thing. And so here I was all right In the, in the right on the doorstep of this dream that I had had since I was a little kid to be able to play for this team and make this team and do this sort of thing. And I was at the same time dealing with a lot of external pressure at was, you know, I had moved in with my girlfriend at the time. There was a lot of financial stress, the stress of just doing all the things that had to do for the walk on program and all the working out in the practices and so forth. I remember I would get up at 04:00 AM to be able to get in by five AM to go the walk-ins, walk on how to go in early to lift weights. And then I would lift weights till about seven. I would go eat. I had class at eight. I'd be in class all day. Then I would have afterwards we'd have our winner conditioning and then we'd have seven on seven drills and I'd be at that till about six o'clock at night. And then I'd have to go from that straight to work and work till about 10 o'clock at night because I was my family was not wealthy. I had to pay my way through college. So there's a lot of things going on around this whole thing. And I unfortunately at that time had not learned yet how to focus in that circumstance. And I ended up coming really disillusioned and ended up not putting in a full faith effort to what was ultimately my my big dream at the time and ended up not making that second cut. And so again, sort of relate to this idea of, you know, I've, I've gone through this thing. I'm sort of on the precipice of putting it all back together. And I should be focused, right? I should be able to, to, to, to push through this, to muster the energy and be clear about what I need to do. But I'm really, I'm not feeling, I'm feeling a lack of clarity as in terms of what to do. So I can really relate to this. And so I do have some ideas about this and some things that you can do specifically three things that you can do. But before I do that, I want to sort of talk about what it is not. And I think the big mistake that people make is they think that focus is about discipline. And I don't think don't focus is about discipline at all. And if you just take some time and you think about the moments when you've been really focused in your life, when you've just had that laser focus, you were really doubt in newer just cram and through things getting things done, did it really require a lot of discipline? Did you have to force yourself to do it? In a lot of ways. Simply having to force yourself to do something. Is what creates a lack of focus. And so to me, it's not really about discipline and it's about a number of other things. And a good example I think of is and my kids, when they play Fortnite, sure, it's a game, but it's a competitive game, right? And it requires a lot of focus and effort and energy and they get frustrated with it. And it's not just them sitting there. It's not leisure to them. They're competitive kids. And so when I watched him play, I mean, there are times when they're playing this game, they're so focused. I could literally stand right next to them and scream in their ear and they wouldn't hear me there that focused. Now, you know, a six-year-old and an 11-year-old don't necessarily have a lot of discipline in terms of forcing themselves to do something that they don't want to do. Most kids generally, or are they really only do things that they wanna do and don't have that sort of discipline yet. They can be laser focused. And it's because they're doing something that they really wanna do. And that's, that's the first thing. The key ingredient that I want to point out when it comes to focus is that you have to love what you're doing. If you don't love what you're doing, focus will always be hard. You will always be thinking about the thing that you do, love doing. That will always be drawing your attention away or you'll be thinking about all the other things that you could be doing. And a lot of people, a lot of people fool themselves. I see a lot of people get questions from especially young kids in web development, but even older people, but oftentimes it's from young kids. They'll, they'll assume that they're supposed to like web development. They're supposed to love it, It's great job. They've been told how amazing it is and all of this stuff. And they're supposed to love it. But the entire time they're doing it, they'll say, Well, I find myself wanting to play video games or I find myself wanting to watch movies. I can't find the focus. And what I always tell them is that that's a sign that maybe this isn't what you really love to do. And it doesn't matter how much someone else tells you you should love something. If you don't love it, you don't love it. And so again, just, just trying to force yourself into loving something that you don't really love, you don't really enjoy. It's not in the DNA of who you are. It's never going to work and focus is always going to be a problem. So you have to start off with doing something that you love as clean as chez is, that may sound. A lot of times things are cliche because there's truth to them. So you really have to start with something you love to do and you need to take the time and think about it. Stop. Don't just assume. Don't just say, Well I should or I'm supposed to, or I have to write, That's always going to be hard. It's better for you to make a change now, no matter what age you are than it is for you to continue to try and force yourself to do some thing you don't love and get nowhere. So do the soul searching. So you have to love what you do. The second thing is, like I said, I don't, I don't think focuses are about willpower, discipline. It's about motion. And if you think about any of the times or you've got really, really focused, what happened is you started off doing something. And often the phrase that people uses, they sort of work up a ladder, Right? They kinda just the kinda get emotionally invested. They kinda get a little sweaty and a little they get going, they get rolling, they get momentum started. And once you get momentum started, then it just sort of naturally goes from there. And so what your focus has to be on is, again, not willpower, not trying to force yourself or make yourself, but a doing something you love and then be getting the ball rolling. Because once the ball gets rolling, if you really love doing it, is going to continue to roll. And you'll take the next step and the next step and they will just before you know it, you'll be sprinting, accomplishing all this stuff. And you're not really thinking about it. You're not really having to focus or try to focus and be disciplined and so forth. So it's really about motion. And when you understand that, you understand the two sort of key things when it comes to motion and focus, which is a, okay, how do I get the ball rolling? And the trick I always use is with myself as well. Let me just do this one thing, right? And I know once I do that one thing, there's a really good chance I'm going to do, see what the second thing could be, and I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. So just just do one thing and that's how you can often get started. And then once you've got going, then realizing that you have to sort of orient your life and the people that are around you, family, friends, whatever, and your life as a whole around your ability to focus and stay focused and keep focused and keep rolling for hours and hours and hours and not do things. Alright, so if you haven't to get up to, to, you know, work a nine to five job. And you start you work up a ladder and get rolling at 11 o'clock at night. And now you want to pull an all nighter that becomes problematic. And so the best thing that you can do, first off, is to try and get away from that 95. It might be better for you to make a little less money at first, or at least the same amount of money that you're working at your job now and then quit that job. Because now you can orient your life the way that you want. So that's sort of one example or having conversations with a spouse or kids about, Hey, when you get in the zone, you get in the zone and you just got to go. And so eliminating the things that could come in and stop your momentum and kill or distract you from being focused. So again, it's becomes about keeping the momentum going once you have it and writing it out until you're either physically, mentally, emotionally, or creatively exhausted. And then allowing yourself at that point to just check out and like not have to continue to push yourself to do something. You've you've done three days of work and three hours and now you can take the next two days off being okay with that. Having your life oriented in a way where you can do that and you know, you're not going to be missing out on something or you're not going to get yourself fired or whatever it is. So trying to find ways to keep that momentum going. The third thing then is focusing on one step at a time. So you don't want to, you don't need to try and focus on the next 100 steps. Okay? When it is, at any given moment, you only need to focus on the one thing in front of you. And I think what a lot of people do is they start thinking about all the things that they need to do. And they sort of get overwhelmed and stressed out and anxious and so forth. And so then they end up doing nothing, which now makes the situation entirely worse. And so you don't need to know what even the next step is after the one you're taking, you'll only need to know what the one you're taking now is. Once you've taken that one, the next step will become clear to you and you'll be able to sit and have some time to think about it from a different position is sort of like if you're, if you're climbing a mountain and you know, you can't see all the way up to the top of the mountain. And let's say it's a everest, a really tall mountain. You don't know the path up at the top, right? You have to get up there first before you can see where you gotta go. But to get all the way up there, you have to get the next 10 feet. And then once you get those 10 feet, now you can see where the next 10 are and the next 10 are. And you have a general idea and the general direction of where you're trying to go. But you have to start walking before you can actually figure out exactly where you're going to need to step and exactly where you need to go. Even if you've been up this mountain before. This time, it's going to be a little bit different. The lowlands escape will have changed a little bit of the ice and the snow is different. You're going to step here this time instead of there. The details always change. And so the only way for you to really know where you're going to have to take that 99 step is for you to take the first step and then the second and then the third. And so that's all you have you, you can focus on is the step that's right in front of you. And when you do that, you become laser-focused on that one thing. And you don't allow the bigger picture, the grand scheme of things to sort of overwhelm you and slow you down and get you frustrated and get you anxious or leave you confused. So the question is, and a lot of times they'll people sort of rebut that width is, I want to make sure I'm going in the right direction. Now. I want to make sure I have all the information. I don't want to waste time, et cetera. But all you can ever do at any given moment, no matter how much information you collect, is make a decision based off the information you have at that given moment. So does that mean that the step that you're going to take is going to be perfect. It's going to be exactly what you needed to do. No, it may be completely wrong. But the only way you're going to know that is to take that step. And so you just have to look at the information that you have at any given time and take that very next step and that in and of itself will provide you feedback and provide you more information than if you were to go out and try and research everything. And I'm not saying don't, don't do that. Research is certainly one of those steps. But you can't spend forever doing that and then not taking any steps, right? Action is what provides clarity more than anything else. So again, just focus on that one step in front of you. That will bring you more clarity. That will help you to figure out what to do next. And then you just keep doing that. So you just constantly keep asking yourself, what is the next best step that I can take at this moment? So I think if you combine those three things, you're doing something you love. You learn how to create and keep momentum. And then you focus on one step at a time. That's, that will be sort of the way that you're going to really create this kinda deep laser focused that the image that I sort of always have in my mind when I think about the stuff for myself is sort of sitting at a desk typing on my computer. Like in the middle of a tornado, everything is swirling around me. There's houses fly in and pianos flying out of the roof and cars and animals, and it's all swirling around me. But I'm in the middle in the eye of the storm. I don't notice any of it. I don't see any of it. Just continuing to do what I do is everything swirls around me and nothing's going to break my focus. And so that's, that's the mentality that I have when it comes to the sort of thing. So again, I think if you do those three things, it's going to allow you to create that ion, the storm sort of mentality and that kind of focus for you to be able to accomplish and do whatever it is that you want or need to do regardless of what's going on around you. So that's it. Take that for what it's worth. Hopefully that helps you in your career and in your life and so forth. 11. BONUS: How to Get Started Freelancing: Hey, John Morris here. Welcome to the very first episode of Let's Talk Freelance. And I wanted to kick this whole thing off by talking about how to get started freelancing because it's one of the most common questions that I get. And I see a lot of a lot of freelancers source struggling with this. So I wanted to tackle this right off the bat and kind of give you the big picture overview of how to get started and how to grow your freelance business. So you have conceptually the idea of where you're headed, and I think for a lot of people that that's gonna help you to really get going. So the first thing that I want to tackle with this is, ah, something that I see often and maybe for you, this will be the thing where everything else in this lesson maybe you don't need. And this is like the one thing that you can sort of learn or get through and actually get started without the rest of what I'm going to say. But that is to to be honest, and what I mean by that is what I see often with this with this particular question is, it's not really about information. It's more about fear. Ah, lot of we'll call him wannabe freelancers or aspiring freelancers. When I really dig into it and get to talking to them, they actually already know what to do to get started that So So that's not the problem. They just think they know have convinced themselves that they don't because they're scared to put themselves out there. They're scared of what people might say. They're scared of what family and friends might think of them. Or they're scared that they might actually get clients and then not know how to deliver or fail at delivering and be this big thing. So there's a lot of these different fears and insecurities around this, and a lot of times, what happens is that gets kind of projected onto Well, I don't know what to Dio, so I just want you to take a second before we get into all of this and really ask yourself . It may be the case that that you don't know where there's some gaps and holes on DSO fourth , and that's perfectly fine. Everybody you know, kind of starts not knowing how to do this. But really, ask yourself and think about Do you really not know what to do? Or is this really more about fear and uncertainty? Ah, and so forth. So just something worth considering you might, you know, you might find that you actually do already know what to do. And it's just about making that leap of faith. So anyway, something toe to consider. I think I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that. Of course, I'm gonna go through a bunch of details here from the very beginning of how to get started and so forth and may and fill in some of the gaps that you might be missing. And also, I think, some things that will, if you are experiencing that fear, I think will help you to kind of get over in understanding ways that you can approach this that helps alleviate some of those things. So that said, Let's let's dive into this. So the very first thing that you need to figure out when you when you decide that you want to freelance is what services you're going toe offer, and I mean that you need to figure that out very specifically what you'll offer. So what a lot of people do is they say, Well, I'm a graphic designer. I'm going to be a Web developer. I'm just gonna offer those services and sort of kind of think that that's good enough. And it's not really good enough. You have to be a lot more specific about that, and you really have to nail it down to the specific what I'll refer to them as end results . I'm gonna talk about that in a minute, but you really need to nail them down to the specific and results that you're going to offer. The reason why is when you start thinking and end results. It's It's the way the client already thinks. And so when you put your services out, it's going to just make more sense to the client and could be easier for you to get hired. But the other side of that is a lot of times there's your people that are just starting out . Freelancing are in the learning phase of their actual skill set. So if you're a graphic designer, one developer, a writer, you're still partly learning how to do graphic design or learning how to do Web development so forth. And there's all of these things that you can learn under those categories under Web development under graph design, There's all these different skills that you could learn how to do out there. And so you sort of think that you have to learn all of this stuff when really you don't. Instead, what you need to do is figure out what you're gonna offer and then learn how to do that very specific thing, how to deliver on that very specific end result. And so it really shrinks the amount of stuff that you need to learn upfront. Not that you shouldn't learn all that stuff down the road, but it really shrinks what you need to learn up front to get started. And that makes that whole learning process even easier. So there's lots of reasons why to do this. But those are some of the big ones for you, and it's just the first thing that you need to figure out. So when it comes to figuring out what services to offer, the very first thing to think about is your category. So ah, it is you know, I'm gonna be a web designer, Web developer, that sort of thing. Now, this is the one place The one thing that will mention here is that this is the one place where it's all about you. And so that's the key thing when you're thinking about the general area that you want to operate in the general category. Um, because most services, especially these days with the way the Internet is and so forth, they're gonna have a market. When you're at this general level of graphic design, Web development, writing, etcetera, there's gonna be a market. So you don't need to worry about profitability all that much. It's gonna be profitable. You just need to pick the thing that you enjoy doing most, and you, like you already know what that is. But sometimes people have hesitation about always they're going to be profitable and so forth again, most things that this general level are going to be. It's just a matter of how you put your packages and your offers together and so forth. So really focus in on what it is that you really want to do. Not what you think. It's practical, not what other people have told you you should do, etcetera what it is that you enjoy most. So this is the one place that you get to do that because from this point forward, it becomes all about your client. So really, take this for yourself and do this for yourself and that's going toe. Ensure that you're not miserable in your business. You're more passionate about it. You put in the effort and the work that you'll need to in order to be successful. Okay, so that's the category again. Like I said, you probably already know what that is. The next step, then that you need to get to because again, that's not enough. We need to get more specific is to the end result. So the thing to remember is that the majority of your clients don't want a service so they don't want graphic design or Web development or whatever. They want a logo or they want a website mock up. You know where they want the website itself or they want a mobile app. Clients think in terms of end results and objects, not services. So your service offerings should reflect that. So they make more sense to the client. You're offering them the exact thing that they actually want. Now, fiber is a great place to figure this out. And I know a lot of people get caught up in the pricing and so forth. And, like all fiver, forget that for a second. I'm not saying that you should price the stuff. The wait is over there, but when you go over there, you'll see that they already kind of have it parsed out by end results. So if you go, if you go under graphic design on fiber, you're going to see things like logo design and brochures and posters and car wraps. They're all individual things that are being delivered and results, not services. That's what you want to do. And like I said, five is a really good place to figure that out. There's a phrase or ah, acronym that that we use. It's s a a piece, kind of like sass. This is saps, So its software as a product, um, and fiber will help you to figure out which which, um which products as services or which services products are popular in your category. So use that as a tool to go through and look at that. They have a drop down on the right hand side when you look at a particular category that you can switch toe bestselling. So that's going to show you the best selling products in that category. And that just looked through those. And you're gonna start to see a lot of trends and get some ideas off of things that you can offer. So let again fibers a good place to do that research. Okay, so you know that that's a lot for for this video on that particular topic. Talking about the the category and the end results. And there's there's more than we need to get to in terms of talking about pricing and exactly what's gonna be in each of your product and creating tears. And there's a lot of technical stuff to get into in terms of figuring that out. But the big thing toe know here in this particular episode is that's the very first thing that you need to do is figure out your offerings what comes with each one, the pricing, all of that. Now, if you do want to do a deep dive on that. Then I recommend that you check out my what services to offer course, which is a part of my freelancing. Wanna one Siri's? You'll find it right here on skill share on my profile page. So you already have access to it. Just just go ahead. And if you want to dive into that, check out that that course that gun and goes into all the technical stuff there. Okay, so once you have your offers nailed down, then the next step in terms of getting started is you need to start getting clients. And one nice thing about this is if you really nailed down your offer, like I just explained then and you do it based on real world data, that's 90% of the battle. Because if you put the right servicing offerings in front of the right people, they tend to sort of sell themselves. So again, if you can get that right, the actual getting clients and selling yourself part gets a lot easier. Still, though, we need to find clients, we need to let them know about what we do and so forth. So how do you go about getting clients and There were several things that you can do, but I'm gonna cover what I call the Big Three platforms in person and content. So you've likely heard of freelancing platforms like up work or freelancer dot com. And the nice thing about these platforms is they do most of the work for you in terms of getting clients to the site, so there's a lot less just marketing work that you have to do. You have a bunch of clients that air just showing up, and you just kind of have to put your yourself in front of them so it can be a little bit easier in that regard. So take up work. For example, Up work has thousands of new jobs. They get PLO posted to its platform every day. So there's plenty of work that's going through the platform, and you don't have to go out and try and get those people to show up to your site, so that could be helpful Course. The downside of platforms is there ultracompetitive, so there's millions of freelancers on a lot of these sites, and they're all fighting for the same projects, and so it could be difficult for you to stand out and get hired, especially when you're brand new to these sites and just getting started. So when we start to talk about Okay, what do I do? How do I get get clients on these particular platforms Now the thing about these is there they're all just a little bit different. So if you take up work versus fiver versus top talent, I've chosen know specifically because those were all freelancing sites. But they're all completely different. Up work is sort of more votes open, sort of General service type platform. It's probably what you more think of when you think of a freelancing platform. Fiber is all of their stuff is more product ties, so it's really more. Seems more like a store. And so what you would do there is totally different top. Tal is a curated platform, so the big thing there is not once you what you do when you get on the platform, it's getting approved and on the platform in the first place because they just don't take very many freelancers. So they're all completely different, and they require completely different approaches. But the biggest piece of advice that I can give you that will is gonna apply to any of these platforms is to just take some time and and look through and find the people that are the top freelancers on these sites and analyze what they do. So if you can get a client account, which, for example, you can get a client account on up work, and I advise this all the time. But if you could get a client account, go on there and actually do searches for your particular niche. So if you're a logo designers in your client's side of your account, look for logo designer logo design and look at all the freelancers that come up now you're seeing things from the client's perspective and look at all of the top freelancers, ones of their charging most, making the most to get the most work, etcetera. Look at them and see what they're doing. Or if you can't do that, for example, topped Al, you're not gonna be able to do that. Do a Google search on day. Try to find information on people who have used top tile, have had success on top towel and see what they're saying about it try to just find as much a research and information as you can about people who were having success on whatever platform it is that you're trying to figure out. That's the most effective way for you to figure out what's working and what's not and said guessing or or even even reading the stuff that the site itself puts out. A lot of times they're putting out what they want, not what's gonna be effective for you. So you have to take that stuff with a grain of salt. So again, look at people that are doing a good job or having success and see what they're doing. And don't just look at one or two. You really need to look at a bunch of them dozens and dozens of them, because what will happen is as you do. You're going to start to see trends and common denominators and so forth, and that's going to allow you to pick out the common themes that apply to all of these top freelancers. And then you can and make sure when you build your profile and so forth that you include that stuff in your profile that is one of the surest ways for you to be ableto analyze and figure out a platform and figure out what to do and have success on it without having to guess and learn everything by trial and error Simply model what successful people are already doing. Now, if if ah, up work is one of the ones that you're you're wanting to get on, I do again have a course here on skill share that you already have access to. That I've done all the research for you essentially have taken everything that I learned a new working on upward plus stuff from other top up workers and so forth. I've kind of put it all together in a course to just show you what to do in order to have success over on up work. So again, if that's something you're interested in, just check out my profile page. Of course, is there it's the freelancing on upward course. Can't miss it. All right, so that is platforms. The next one then is in person. So to me, this is one of the most underrated ways to get clients. But it was very, very effective for me, so I joined some local business meet up groups. When I used to live in Omaha, Nebraska, I don't live there anymore. Uh, I moved down to the Ozarks, and it's a really small town around here, so there's not near as much of this stuff, um, as there was there. But when I lived there, I joined. I think it was just to local meet up groups, and each one meant met once a month, every month, and every time that I went, I would get 2345 leads for people that had a project they wanted someone to work on or looking for a developer to hire or whatever it was. I would always get multiple leads to every single one of these business meetings that I went to, and the really interesting thing to me is that they would come from people who literally had never seen any of my stuff. Most of these people, I was just meeting for the first time, and so they never They didn't know who I was. They hadn't seen any of my stuff and they were just basically handing out work to me. So it's some weird thing about when people meet in person like that. They just sort of There's this natural trust in these business meetings, um, and so forth. And they would just assume that I was good and they would want to hire me. I got work from it like I did projects and and so forth as a result of that, most of the time, those people never even looking at any other stuff I'd ever did. So it's a bit back baffling, but it happened consistently over and over and over and over for two years until I moved moved down here. So if you're in an even a moderately sized town, you know there's probably business. Meet up groups in your area. Oh, if there's not, there's you probably live semi close to, ah, decent sized town that that would have them and it could be worth travelling. I mean, you have to check it out and see. But in my case, it would have been it would have been work traveling an hour, maybe even to every month, twice a month for the amount of leads and work that I got just sort of handed to me just by showing up. So again, it could be worth traveling Even if you're not in a bigger town now, usually you can find these online. You could just sort of Google local miss like meet up group or business, meet up group, local business, meet up group. And then, you know, whatever town you're targeting there and you can find a lot of these online, they all have websites and so forth. But even if not, you know, if you have the local people that you work with So lawyers, realtors, plumbers, electrician's, that sort of thing, all these professional services, these meet up groups are really big in these industries. I know how I actually got introduced to. It was through my older brother. He got, he got into insurance. And, like in the insurance industry, this is just one of the things that they teach new insert insurance agents about the group's how to go into the groups and all that stuff. So it's just a thing that every insurance agent learns how to do. And so that's how I actually learned it. But in all these different industries, these air, these these groups are a big thing, so you can go to one of these people that you know, if you have an electrician's or ah, lawyer realtor. Whatever. Just ask him. Hey, are you Are you a part of any local business? Meet up groups? And if they say yes, just asked him, Are you guys looking to add, Ah, graphic designer, Web developer, whatever it is that you do, and they'll know I mean, the rules were pretty clear. Ah, In most of these business meet up groups, they'll know a lot of times they are. These groups are starving for people that offer kind of digital services like graph design and writing and Web development, that sort of thing. So a lot of these local groups are starving for those sorts of people, and so they'll know. And they'll either say yes or no if they say no and say, Well, if you ever you know, if whoever you got ever leaves, just let me know. I'd like to join. Or do you know of any others that maybe I could check out and so forth? And most of these people, they're well versed on this stuff, So they're gonna be able to give you some information and give you some leads to start looking it up. So don't be afraid to ask the actual professional professionals that you work with or you see your so forth. They can often give you a lot of information on that, right? So that's local business. Meet up groups. The 3rd 1 then, when it comes to getting clients, is content and content has sort of been my bread and butter. I mean, you're probably here watching this now as a result of some content that I produced, and it's a very effective later to get clients if you focus on the right things, because now there's so many places to put content out these days. Blogging, YouTube videos, podcasts, social media. No, it's just it's so prevalent on. All these systems are designed to surface content. So even if your brand new if you create something good, your content can get surfaced and shared and liked and so forth and next thing you know you can start right off the bat. There's there's all kinds of stories of people who their very first piece of content sort of went viral or took off a very minimum, and they just sort of went from there. Now that doesn't happen. Don't get discouraged. I mean, you know, I spent a lot of years really just grinding away it stuff before my stuff took off. But no again. It is just such a a simple and easy way for you toe. Start getting your name out there. Now there's a couple big piece of advice I'll give you here, having done this for over a decade now, the very first thing and the thing that I think it's a lot of people really confused when when they start thinking about this in terms of offering your services is you need to focus on metrics that matter. So one mistake that I see a lot of people is they think they start thinking in terms of content that they're thinking about their content in terms of what they see or what they themselves can consume. And a lot of times that content is coming from people that are doing things that they're not doing. So what I mean by that is, you know, if you go to create a YouTube video, you might have watched or think start thinking of it in terms of people that you've seen or heard about, like some of the more popular YouTube tubers right now, anyway, are like peut pie mark a plier the polls, Even though a lot of people like him, you know, those are some of the more popular ones. There's other people that are out there, and so you might start looking at those people in sort of analyzing what they do and so forth. But the problem is, they don't do what you do right. They're comedians there, entertainers and you're not. You're a service provider, so they make their money through ad revenue, merchandise, sales, sponsorships, that sort of thing. You make it through providing a service, so the kind of content that you need to create to build, trust and get people to hire you. That sort of stuff is never going to go viral on a site like YouTube and get millions of views and be super popular. It's just not those platforms air not designed for that kind of content. So, you know, if you take me, for example, let's say I do a coding tutorial that's never going to get 100 million views. Some of my most popular YouTube videos air in the 100,000 range in terms of use, and that's over the course of nearly a decade. Okay, so they're just not gonna ever get superpower. Even some of the Ruli popular like coding tutorial people are out there. Think Brad Travers. See, maybe one of the most popular, the most I've ever seen on one of his videos is six or 700,000. And again, that was over the course of several 100 years. Now that that can seem like a lot, it is a lot for for what we do. But if you compare that toe comedians or like a music, that sort of thing, I mean, it's you see them all over the place that have hundreds of millions of views or in the tens of millions of views at at least so your stuff is just never going to be that popular right , because that that stuff is made for those platforms. A little platforms are made for that stuff, so the point is, you're playing a different game, and you'd be surprised how well you can do and how much you can make from a couple 100 highly targeted views, views that are attracting the right kind of people who are perfect, their ideal for the services that you offer a couple 100 views from. Those people can do a lot in terms of getting getting work in client work, etcetera. So you really have to focus in on the metrics that matter and not get caught up in trying to be Go viral, be this super popular YouTube. You're not a youtuber. You're not a blogger, you're not a podcaster, you're a freelancer, and you just use those as tools to help you sell your services. It's a totally different game, and therefore the metrics that matter are totally different. The metrics that matter to you, our bottom line revenue, how maney people hire you, how much you could charge those sorts of things, not views, not likes, not shares. It's actual bottom line business numbers, and it's not true. This is another one. That I hear. A lot of subjection I get is not true that if you take, if you just got more views that would automatically lead to more sales, it doesn't because the kind of content that you have to create to be persuasive and to attract the right kind of people that would actually want to hire you. That kind of content, naturally, is the kind of content is not gonna go viral. Okay, so it's just you really have to focus. And I understand the metrics that matter. All right, So the second thing then, is when you're creating your content to lead with value. And I know this is a very cliche term and maybe vague term at this point, but it is 100% true. And the way that I mean it here is you don't just want to go out, and I still see people doing this is it's important to address it, But you don't You don't want to go out and just start blasting your link out all over these places and saying by my stuff, if you a lot of those places, if you do that, it's going to get you might not get you banned from the service by the service. But you're gonna get a lot of people that just straight a block you or won't follow you or ignore you or whatever, like it's just not gonna get you any sort of traction. It's Not only is it not gonna lead you get you the numbers on the site like likes and shares and followers and all that, but it's not gonna lead to sales either, because you're not doing anything toe be persuasive or to be compelling or to get people to want to even pay attention to you. The big. The very first thing that you have to do when it comes to content is to get people to pay attention to you. And you're never going to create a little snippet. That is, ah, compelling enough that it being about selling your services, that's gonna that's gonna get people toe. To do that, you really have to get out there and lead with value and create content that you know that it educates and entertains and inspires people, Um, and in particular, the exact people that are gonna be interested in your services. Then when you do that, you can include a link to your services at the end, and I refer to this is the 99 1 principle. So it's 99% content and value 1% selling, and you can look at just about any piece of content that I create for YouTube or instagram on my blog's etcetera. You can look at it just about any piece of content that I've created, especially last probably 234 years, and you're going to see this principle at work you're going to see. It's 99% content, 1% selling. And if it's not, it's because I just did a bad job on that particular piece of content. So again lead with value. The third thing, then, is to focus on problems in your content. So when you're trying to figure out what kind of content to create, don't think in terms of like the shiny utopia that you can create for your client, you want to think in terms of more in terms of like the dirty, ugly dystopia that they might be currently experiencing and how to help them out of that. So the analogy that I like to use is imagine you you have a thorn stuck in your side, and the pain is excruciating. Every time you move, it wiggles a little bit deeper into your skin, and the pain gets sharper and more intense until you almost can't bear it and then you have two people that come along. One says, Hey, you know, it looks like you're feeling bad. Sorry about that. But I've got just the thing for you. It's my new proprietary wellness system that's gonna help you feel great in and make Ah, you know, all your dreams come true, etcetera. They're focusing on the positive side of things. Okay, then the other person says very simply to you. Hey, I can show you how to get that thorn out of your side of those two people, which are you going to immediately leapt to, which is the easier sale. So I think it's obvious that's the 2nd 1 So if you focus on figuring out and creating content around the actual problems that your clients air having, then you're always gonna be kind of on the right track. That doesn't mean that every single piece of content is gonna be a home run. But if you're constantly doing that, you're gonna end up with more doubles and triples, then then then not so again. Focus on problems and with your content and solving them for people, and you're gonna be on the right track. So again, that's a lot. But, uh, again, if you want to dive into using content into client. So if that's something that you want to go further with again, I have Ah, of course, on this on my school share profile, turn content and the clients goes into a lot more detail on that and just kind of shows you exactly what to do. Okay, so we've talked about getting We've talked about our service offers. We've talked about getting clients. Now it's time to talk about delivering. So, uh and you know, in a lot of ways, this is This is one of the most important things because it's not just about delivering. It's about delivering anyway that makes clients want to hire you again and give you referrals. So if you don't know this yet again, this is sort of a get starting episode. And so, uh, I'm making assumptions about where you might be in the process. But if you don't know this yet, repeat clients and referrals are the key to a freelance business is very difficult to stay a flow and make the income you want to make. If you're not getting those two things, so these things are very critical, and they come down to how you deliver. So the experience that you give clients as you work on their project project. So there's two things that will give you, uh, here that I think most that are more important than I think most people tend to realize. And we'll give your clients. You do these things. It will give your clients that wow factor that makes them want to hire you, and that makes them want to tell people about you. So the 1st 1 is speed now, stepping back a second. Yes, you have to do things right. You have to deliver a good end result. Okay, so I'm taking that as an assumption that you already know that you have to do good work. But then on top of that speed is something or how fast you do that do. That is one of those things that can blow clients away because with most freelancers, time is always a problem. From the client's perspective, you know, things never move as fast as the client wants them to. So if you can reverse that or flip that and get things done faster than they expect. I mean, they're used to dealing with people with things get done there, just assume it's gonna get done slower and more time than what what they expect. So if you could do it faster is just gonna boggle their mind, and they'll just they'll have no choice. They will feel this innate desire to talk about it, and they're gonna talk about it to the people. They know their colleagues and so forth. And that's gonna be this sort of implicit referral. It's not them going, Hey, go hire this guy. It's just like, Hey, I was working with this this person and they delivered so fast and blow and they just can't help but talk about it. That's where your your best referrals come from. So against speed is a thing that that that you can do that will really make that happen. Now, how do you do that? How do you deliver fast? You boggle the mind with how quickly you deliver. Well, there's there's two things. The 1st 1 is is simply to set expectations, and this can be incredibly powerful and really has nothing to do with actually how good you are at delivering. It just has to do with with thinking this during setting expectations correctly. So when I worked with clients and built membership sites, I would always tell them that you know my projects. We're gonna take a month. And there were two reasons why I did that. A I knew if they went to someone else, that was about the time frame that they were gonna tell them anyway. So I knew it wasn't, like, crazy out of line with what a client was gonna expect. That's what most people were going to tell them. But I had done it so much that I knew that I could actually do it in, like, ah week. So I would tell them a month to give me plenty of time in case something crazy came up, and then I would actually build it in like, a week. But I wouldn't tell them I was done until week two. And so what that did is it gives me a lot of gave me a lot of buffer time in my own mind. If I was, you know, feeling unmotivated, I'd still would get be able to get done in plenty of time and because I had told them a month, but I was delivering in two weeks, it would it would blow them away. So I was moving slow for me, and it kind of helped keep me saying and not feeling overworked. But from the client's perspective, I was moving fast, and I did this for years and years and years and years, and every time, uh, the client would remark about how fast I did it every single time. So it's something that if you if you just simply set expectations properly if you really think about it. If I had told them that I was gonna be done in a week because I knew I could get done in a week, which is what a lot of people do, they'll say, Oh, I could do that week. I'll be done in a week. So if I had done that and then something came up or whatever, maybe I was procrastinating or feeling on whatever something came up and I delivered in two weeks. Now they would be annoyed because I told him a week, but it took two weeks, whereas when I told him a month and deliver delivered in two weeks, they were overjoyed. If you look at that, I'm still delivering in two weeks, both times. So nothing's changed with the amount of time it took me to deliver. The only things that has changed is how I set expectations. So it's a really simple thing that you can do to make your make your delivery appear faster when maybe in reality, you're just delivering in the in the same amount of time. But you're making it appear faster so that clients are are blown away by it. So it's a really it's a really nuanced and technical thing, but it's convey a very effective thing that doesn't take a ton of extra work on your part. So that's the first thing. The second thing, when it comes to speed to speed is that that I would recommend is to have a delivery plan. So don't just wing it right now in the macro steps they're involved with delivering on a client project. Estimate how long you're going to think you think each step will take mark down, out, mark out key decisions that the client needs to make along the way and just build a road map for how you're going to deliver and how you plan for the project to go. Now, the first time you do this, it's not gonna be perfect. Hey, that that is just the way it is. But learn from each client experience in each time you do it and update that road map. And with time it's going to get more and more precise. And eventually what's gonna happen is like, this is just gonna become the way that you deliver and you're gonna crank through that road map and there's just no second thought to it. And you're gonna have zero doubt in your mind about how long it's gonna take when you're deliver what you're doing. There is no uncertainty, so there's no fear. You know exactly what you're doing every day. You know how long it's gonna take. You know what key decisions need to be made, and you know you'll know if you're off tracker on track. Eso it. It just makes delivering a lot. Ah more gives you a lot more sanity when it comes to your delivering. But it also over time you'll deliver faster and more reliably, faster So and that's gonna get you that wild factor that's going to get you that speed that you need, right? So speed overall is that first thing kind of X factor. The second thing is communication, So freelancers are notorious for communicating poorly and clients having to drag updates out of them. So again, that's an opportunity for you to set yourself apart to give that wild factor that other other freelancers aren't doing. So if you communicate well, you will set yourself apart. Now, as far as how to do that, the biggest thing is to think of ways that you can be proactive in your communication. So not just responding well, when, when? When someone messages you, you need to do that, respond promptly. Respond. Well, don't put it off. You're gonna have to do it anyway at some point, so you might as well just do it now. So that's kind of the baseline. But the other thing is being proactive, actually giving them updates when they're not asking for it or asking for key decisions when they're not doing things that are proactive in your communication that keeps them in the loop. So think of some ways like think about your If you've written out your delivery roadmap, think about look at it and think about some ways or some places where you could proactively communicating would be natural again. Key milestones, key decisions. You know, 12. BONUS: How to Rank In Google for Key Freelancer Searches: everybody. John Morris here back with another episode for Let's Talk Freelance And this one I'm going to be going through my S seo strategy or my strategy for ranking in Google. And I say my I think current for the current period we're in right now. You could almost kind of call this the way that you rank it. It's become a pretty, pretty standard, pretty established way of doing this, but something that if you've if you've never seen and in particular some of the detail that we're gonna go through here, then this might be very eye opening for you about how to go, how to go about planning and structuring your site anyway to help it rank for your most important keywords to know what those keywords are etcetera. So with that said, we're gonna get started using Google's keyword planner tool. Now, you know if you have another keyword tool you want to use, if you're you're familiar with this sort of thing, you could certainly do that. I like Google's just because it's kind of straight from the horse's mouth. It's free. You do need a Google ads account, but and you do have to believe. I believe you have to. When you create an account, you do have to give them credit card information in case you run ads. But you don't ever have to run ads so you don't actually ever have to be charged for it and get it straight from the horse's mouth. But I'm gonna so I'm gonna do this in In Google. If you have another tool or you want to use another tool for you feel free to do that. It's generally the same idea, but in Google ad, you're gonna go to tools and then you can come over here to keyword planner. And when you do, you'll see a page that looks like this. So what we want is discover new keywords, and what we're gonna do is we're really doing research and trying to find ideas. OK, so this is really a sort of a day searching phase, kind of an experimental phase to try and figure out what are the best keywords, what keywords do we want to rank for and so forth? And so I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of use the example of graphic design, and I'm just gonna type in graphic design like this, it very broad, very general, and then kind of look through it to see what we confined. So we're gonna go ahead and get results here and then I always search by average monthly searches. So this will tell you how many searches of particular keyword gets on an average month, and you'll see graphic design gets 100 35,000. It's a very generic term. It's not a term that we're necessarily gonna want to try and ring for, because as a freelance graphic designer, there's a lot of that can be very muddled. That could be graphic designers looking for information about how to do their graphic design and that sort of thing. And they're also could be people in there looking to hire graphic designers, and we don't really know that with just that generic keywords. So we're looking for something more specific, and in particular were looking for something called commercial intent where we're looking for people who are wanting to buy quote unquote or a keyword phrase that the people who would do that search are probably looking to hire a freelancer case. We're taking this from the perspective of I'm a freelance graphic designer. I want to create content that attracts people looking to hire freelance graphic desires, not content that's going appeal to other graphic designers, but instead, people wanting to hire graph times. That's a distinction that throughout all of this you're gonna have to continually make. Okay, So what we go down through these keywords were just looking for something. I'm gonna expand this out so we can actually see these. We're looking for something that gives us an idea of that commercial intent. And so as I go through this, the very 1st 1 that comes up is graphic designers near me. Now, the thing about that search that would be a really good one. The thing about that particular searches is gonna be very location dependent. Google search results, depending on where the search is done, Ah is going to It's going to change who shows up so you could try and optimize that for all you optimize for that all you want. But Google is really gonna kind of hijacked that a little bit. And if the person doing the search is not near you, that you really gonna have a difficult time ranking for that. So the best thing that you can do is try toe rank for the general keyword of graphic designer. And then if someone happens to be in your area, you'll have a better chance showing up for that. That sort of local search. So normally this would be sort of a good one. We're going to kind of skip that because of the way Google handles those. But the next one we see here freelance graphic designer. So the fact that is designer, the type of person that would be searching for freelance graphic designer is probably someone who's looking for that, potentially looking to hire someone. So we're gonna go ahead and check that one or mark that one, because that seems to have a little bit of a commercial intent to it. Next we come down. Graphic design websites Graphic design logo Maybe some of that, uh, graphic design companies. So again, someone searching for graphic design company is probably looking for to hire a company, hire someone to do do graphic design for them. It's not 100% but that's probably a good guess or good bet. Ah, famous graphic designers. That sounds a little bit more informational could be commercial, but it might be just someone looking up that information out of curiosity Graphic design services. Ah, motion graphic designer Graphic design agency. Okay, so this is essentially you. There's firms down here, so this is essentially what you want to do. You want to go through here and you want to find 3 to 5 of the the highest traffic keywords that have high commercial intent related to what it is that you do in. In this case, it's graphic design, and that's again the broad search we did up here. And we're just going through these keywords looking for commercial intent and volume. So we've identified 3 to 5 that probably air people looking to hire somebody, and they have a decent amount of volume. And so what we want to do is we want to orient all of our content around these particular keywords, and we're going to use this strategy that's called cornerstone content. And then supplemental concert may have heard of that. Um, I'm gonna go through in detail. How do you actually do that? And set that up on your site. So the first thing we're gonna do would just start with the 1st 1 here. You would essentially repeat this for every every one of these keywords. So you had created piece of cornerstone content for freelance graphic designer. Another one for graphic design companies. Another one for graphic design services. Agency firms, etcetera. So each one of these would have a piece of cornerstone content and then supplemental content around it to support and help that cornerstone content rink again, I'm gonna show you how to do all that, so we'll start with freelance graphic design. Just take that. And you want to come over and just do a Google search for that term now and what we're looking. We're looking for two things here. The first thing is the ads. We want to see if people are running ads and we want to know how much they're paying. So we see five or up work designed crowd all running ads here. And if we come back over here, we can see that the range that they're paying is on the low end. They're paying $4 on the high end, they're paying $12.40 for a click of one of these ads. Okay, so that that tells us that this is probably a key word that has high commercial intent because they wouldn't be paying nearly that much if if it didn't, and you can kind of come through here and see the difference, you'll see this one here, this name a dollar, 40 to $2. Famous graphic designers where I said it. Maybe it's not as much commercial intent. You could see the low ends a little bit lower, a little bit lower here, etcetera. Computer graphic design. This is a lot lower. So what's what that's telling you is that advertisers who probably tried to bid on some of these key words and found that they just don't convert very well. So the key words that don't convert very well tend to have a lower bid range, whereas the keywords they convert better have a higher bid range. Because the advertisers figure that out now they're all bidding on the same keywords, and the prices have to go higher and higher and higher. That's generally how it works so again, having that high range this range of 4 to $12 tells us that there's probably some good commercial intent here paying $4 for a click eyes quite a bit. So that's the first thing that we're looking at. The second thing then we're looking for is we're looking for some sort of content oriented page here that is ranking. So you see, here we have freelance graphic designer jobs on. Indeed, that's not really gonna be like a blawg post. That's just gonna be a list of search results. That doesn't really help us. 10 Best freelance graphic design jobs that's on up work. And this is gonna be a list from their site. Freelance graphic designer jobs higher. A freelance graphic designer on fiber. None of these air content. But if we get down here, we see this 15 places defined graphic design work. Okay, so that's a good sign. You also see these YouTube videos down here. So this is a good sign, because what it tells us is that there is room for a block post, which is what our cornerstone content is gonna be. There's room for a block post to rank and get on the first page here among all of these big sort of giants of up work, zipper, cruder fiber. These are all big companies. They're probably playing lots and lots of money to try and get these to rank their creating lots of content around it. They probably have teen teams of people, either employees or contractors. They've hired to create content, to try and get these to rank and so forth. And so there's a There's a lot of money that's being pushed to try and get thes drink. But you see, we have this block post that sort of pops through. Okay, so that's what we want to see. We want to see that there's an opportunity for Block Post to reach Drew on these these keywords, these high traffic important keywords and the more block posts that that popped through than the better. That gives you a better sense that there's there's there's room for that kind of content here. Now I'll tell you right up front that the search years freelance graphic designer and then the the actual post is five places to find freelance graphic design work. So the Post is targeting graphic designers, but the key word is probably people that people that are looking to hire a graphic designer So right off the bat, this probably isn't a good fit for this search, which, actually again gives us gives us a sense that there's opportunity here because this this is still ranking here, even though it's really not a good fit for this actual search. So that's what we're doing here. We're just looking forward to see if there's block posts. Now what we're gonna do is we're actually and click through into this block post. And first off, you just kind of go through and read it and see how good of an article it is. I mean, this is a pretty short article, you know. It just tells a little bit about each one. It's not necessarily the most epic content or post that's probably ever been written, so that's a good sign. It's still ranking on the first page for this search, and it's not necessarily the greatest post out there. So again, another good sign. So what we want to do is you want to take this u R L we want to copy it, and we're gonna head over to uber suggests. But before I do that, I want toe to talk just a little bit about this article. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna create a piece of cornerstone content. So cornerstone content is content that is not designed to rank for your most important keywords. In this case, one of them is freelance graphic designer. We're going to write a post specifically aimed at ranking high in Google for that particular search. And it's also something that is going to to to serve our business interests. So it has to play a dual role of ranking high, but also sort of pre selling our services. And so what we're going to do in order to do that is what's called an advertorial. Now, if you're not familiar with what an advertorial is, will come over here, but it's something you see these ones up here and I highlighted this one. If you look at this, this is ah, believe a page from a magazine. But if this were in a magazine and you looked at this when you first looked at it, you would think that this is just another article in the magazine. But actually, this is an at okay and and that's essentially what an advertorial is It's an ad that's ultimately meant to look, look more like an article. So instead of you know, a lot of the ads, that would be in a magazine where you can tell it's just a picture of the product and its by my stuff. It's clearly an ad. This is meant to fit in a little bit more. I make you think it's an article and actually be an article a little bit, but ultimately be an ad for selling something. That's the kind of thing that we're going to create for our cone cornerstone content. Now there are some steps, and there's kind of an art to doing that, and doing it without you probably have seen somewhere. A lot of times at 10 tends to be diet pills where there really sort of just like scam me Comptel. They have fake comments on the Post and that sort of thing. We're not trying to do that. We're gonna get people real content, but we're also gonna pre sell our services, so we're going to do kind of an honest advertorial, but it is an advertorial. So I've included a document with this particular lesson where I walk you through the steps of how you actually create your advertorial and thinking about the headline and so forth and all of that. So, um, make sure and download that document toe help you write the advertorial and actually write the cornerstone piece of content. Um, I'm not gonna cover it. Cover that particular, particularly in this video, because that's what the document is for. But just know you cornerstone content is your advertorial. It's about creating content that's useful but also pre cells your services. Okay, so that's the That's kind of the step at this point is to create the advertorial. Now what we want to do is we want to go over to. Like I said, we copy the link of this. Now we want to come over here to uber suggest, and we drop in that you are all right here into uber suggests. So if you're not familiar with uber suggest you just Google Uber suggests you see the name right here. It's on Neil Patel sites o Neil Patel dot com. Just click that link, and then you will be taken to a page where you can enter in ah, search term, Just drop in that link and hit search and you'll see a page that looks similar to this. And what we're looking for is the article that we just identified. Now, in this case, it happens to be on page two and if we come down here, it is five places to find freelance graphic design work. I believe it was. And what we're looking for is the estimated visits. So you can see this gets 570 estimated visits on a term that gets roughly six almost between six and 7000 searchers a month. Now that might seem low to you, and it is. And that sort of goes back to my point that this the this article for this search is not a great fit. That would be my guess why it doesn't get more searches. But what we want to see is we just want to get some search of volumes to get an understanding of how many people are actually clicking through to an article that ranks first on that page. So when you do the search for this and you see this, you see that it's a little bit lower 570 you kind of have to. You have to think this through a little bit, okay? It's not just something where you can just kind of mindlessly step through this stuff. You're gonna kind of think it through and realize, OK, this isn't a good fit. Let me look at some of these other ones here. So one that stood out to me if we come back up here is one for fiber because it says Hire a freelance graphic designer services online fiber like it's telling its saying exactly what it is. And it's about hiring. So it's like, OK, how much does this one get? So if I put that into if I put that into uber suggests, you can see it right here. This is actually on page one. It's about what, the sixth or 7th 1 down here. It gets 21,002 and 55 visits. Now are all of those from that search term? Probably not, but you can see something that is is more highly. A lot of those are probably their internal to as well, because he's something that is more relevant to that. That search term is going to get more search volume and the fact that this can rank that high on that page and also get this much volume, tells you that that there are people that are looking for this specifically like this is exactly what you want Higher. A freelance graphic designer, you want to show up? If you're a graphic designer, you want to show up for that term. Okay, so this again tells you that there's some value in the search term. So we're just evaluating kind of the search term at this point and getting an idea of traffic estimates. I'll just tell you, if you can get 21,255 visits, have you got half of that or 1/4 of that 5000 visits to an advertorial like we're going to write, get ranked on Google, get that money, show up for that search term and get that many visits 5000 visits a month to an advertorial , writing it the way that I'm going to show you that pre soldier services, I just have a hard time believing that you're not gonna have more work being thrown your way than you know what to do with. That's a lot of commercially high commercial intense searches and then sending it to an advertorial the way that we're going to write it, I just feel like you're going to get a lot of people converting. And you're just like that. One term alone could be more than enough to just send you all the work you could ever handle. OK, so we're dealing with really big numbers here. And if we do this right on were able to get ranked on that first page, then it can really just completely change your experience with freelancing and getting clients and so forth. Okay, So once we've done all this, now we have Okay, we've We've looked up our search term. We figured out a search term that it has high commercial intent, high volume, like we want to rank for this term. We've looked at some an article that currently ranks for it. We think we can write a better article. We've verified some traffic numbers again at this point. Like I said, the thing to do is write the advertorial. I'll show you in the document how to do that, that you're cornerstone content. You create that first you post that Get that all done, okay? And essentially, at the end of it, it's gonna link to It's going to do a soft sell to your services, so that's gonna link to your sales page so that pre cells you link to your cells page that sells. It's a two step marketing approach, which is, I highly recommend. That's the way that you go about it. Instead of sending people directly to your sales page in this day and age, you really need to pre sell a little bit in order to create some context about you to give people a little bit value upfront to get them to trust you a little bit and then send them to yourselves Page. And that's what your advertorial is going to do. Okay, so we've got that done. Now, the next thing we need to do is that page on its own on its own, that quarter sawn con. If we just leave it, it's not gonna It's not gonna rank. Okay, so we need to, uh, the likelihood of it Ranking is very low. So what we need to do is we need to now go out, and we need to great supplemental content that's gonna link back to our main content. That's going to create a lot of back links. And people, as those pieces of supplemental content get more link juice and popularity themselves, they're gonna pass all of that to our main page and we're going to create. You know, this this sort of this this kind of storm of content, I guess, is that all points back to our main page that constantly is trying to rank it higher. And we're gonna constantly create new content around the same idea to constantly be pushing up that cornerstone content higher and higher in the rankings. And then once it's up there to keep it there because you're always competing with other people creating content. So the next thing we need to do is figure out OK, what are my condo? We figured out the content idea for for the cornerstone content. Now we need to figure out the content idea for the supplemental content. And so I like to use a site called Answer the public dot com. So if you just go to answer the public dot com and you type in a search, it will show you All of these different is gonna give you a ton of different ideas. So this first sort of graphic graph here is questions. So it's gonna be a bunch of questions related to the search term, Then propositions comparisons, and then it lists Alfa. The different ideas by alphabetical is, and this is using real time search data. If you look on one of these charts, the darker green color is gonna be means. It's more popular that you sort of a form, and it's based off search. But it's also based off social, so they kind of use the algorithm to figure out what's the most popular. So the darker green stuff is gonna be more popular content You can see here 67 questions 63 Propositions 21 comparisons like There's a lot of different content ideas here. So I did a search for freelance graphic designer. That was our search term that we figured out. I'm gonna start there. I'll show you another search. You could do here as well, but you're gonna have to sift through through this again now because it's like I told you, you're always There's always the difference between other graphic designers who are maybe doing this searcher or their find The system is finding related ideas that appeal to them. And there's appealing to people who actually want to hire, So you're always gonna have to sift. So, for example, you see here where do freelance graphic designers get work? Someone looking to hire you? They could probably care less about that. That this is a search for other graphic designers. So this isn't a good idea. Where, Where to? Freelance graphic design again. Where to hire Freelance graphic designer. That is someone who is looking to hire. So you're gonna mark down this keyword now and you're just going to kind of go through all of these, right? Where to find freelance Graphic designer Now again, Where to find freelance Graphic design work. That's probably not when you want where to find work, where to advertise for Like Okay, so, of this little section right here, two of these, Where were the higher freelance graphic designer? Where to find Cree Laugh. Freelance graphic designer are probably two that are related to We are going to appeal to the people that you want to attract. Okay, you're gonna sort of Mark those two down and then you're just gonna go around the rest of this wheel and do the same thing, and then this one and you'll see some overlap, okay? And then this one and then maybe go through these right and they will be overlap. And you might find, you know, they're 60 here, 60 on the next. On 20 etcetera. You might find 15 or 20 content ideas out of those those hundreds that are actually going to people toe the appeal to the right people. I mean, it is what it is. You have to follow the data and then create that, that that sort of content. But the thing to keep in mind is you'll notice that these these ones for higher and finding tend to be a little bit lower search volume you're going to find as you do this throughout your sort of S e o life. You dig into this that the higher the commercial intent oftentimes is gonna be the lower the volume or the more specific the search or the term or the phrase the lower the volume. Okay, don't get caught up in volume so much. It's important that you don't be writing an article that gets one search a month, but 50 searches a month that have really high commercial intent. Think about that. If you had 50 people every month who read an article of yours and half of those people said , You know what? I want to hire this person. That's 25. That's more than most ast faras. I don't do graphic design, but I know Web development. That's way more work than I could ever hope for if you had, if you had a search that got 50 Search Era turned. I got 50 searches per month, and 10% of those people wanted higher you. That's five people a month. That's still for me, would be more than I could take on. I could do maybe 1 to 2 projects per month because I did look much larger projects. Now, if you're doing smaller projects, maybe it's more. But then you'll also likely to get more people to convert over and hire you because it's a lower price point generally, So it all depends on the scenario, but you really want to think more about the commercial and 10 of a search than the volume. You keep volume in mind, but don't get caught up in just wanting big numbers. Okay? It really doesn't work out that well, so I can just go through here and find all of the different search terms that are related to to our main keyword here. Now, another search that we could do here because again, we don't just want to do this mindlessly. We want to think about, Ah, the process here. So we did. Freelance graphic designer. But what about if we did a new search and we did Member are fiber? We did hire graphic designer. You can see I've already done The search is prepped for this, but come in here and do higher graphic designer and it'll take a second for it to kind of sift through all the data and pull out what's relevant. But now we come down here. When you see again, there's a lot less. There's a lot less terms that show up, so this has 18 questions, But companies that hire graphic designer what is higher? Graphic designer What industries can you hire graphic designer wear to hire graphic designers places how to hire? So this is one that we haven't seen yet. How to hire Graphic designer. So that's an idea that we could pull out of. There it may be. Write an article on how to hire a graphic designer where you lay out criteria that says, Okay, when you go to higher graphic designer, you want to do this? This, this, this, this and this. And make sure this and this and then at the end of that be like, Oh, yeah, by the way, I also do graphic design. If you wanna hire me, I do all that stuff. Here's my cells Page. Okay, so again, another idea. What companies? What industries? How etcetera. So we come down here. Propositions higher graphic designer for logo. Okay, so if you do logo design, you may want to make it Ah, whole article or maybe even a sales page around this one. Ah, higher graphic designer for T shirt. This gives you another one that you may want to do If you do t shirts for games etcetera Higher graphic design in India, Mumbai, Pune, a Kolkata. Okay, so you can see maybe you want to do Maybe you want to do an article on your particular area . Maybe you live in Boulder, Colorado. So how to hire freelance or higher freelance graphics? Higher, Higher graph graphic designer in Boulder, Colorado, and do an article on that. Or maybe you want your Maybe you want your cells Page the title of your sales page to say, freelance graphic designer for Higher in Brought in Boulder, Colorado. So you're doing freelance graphic designer. You're talking that keyword were also targeting the location in Boulder, Colorado. So now you help ghoul to know that you should come up for those location searches. Anybody searching in the boulder color RATTO area for a graphic designer? You want to come up for that? So maybe that helps you understand your sales page should have that headline. Okay. So again, you just want to come through here and look at the different ideas, and you see this? It doesn't really have anything for the comparisons, But you can come down here and you could see more ideas. And again, you're looking for 45 ideas. You know, 5 10 ideas out of here. You don't need 3000 pieces of content, right? If you can get to 30 content ideas 40 50 somewhere in that range, all in content that we're gonna create supplemental content where we're going to write a piece of content. We're gonna link it back to our advertorial. So that's that's ultimately the strategy is you create 1/4 stone piece of content that's really juicy for search engines, really high value. But it pre cells are services, and so them. If we start getting back links to it, then it's it's more likely to rank for key search term. And then we're gonna take our supplemental content. We're gonna create a bunch of other block posts that then link to that cornerstone content to pass up that sort of link juice is what a lot of people refer to it as over to that main piece of content. Okay, so we've got that sort of laid out. You got your cornerstone content. You got your content ideas for you, for your supplemental content. Now we need to talk about the linking because you don't want to. Just when you write a piece of supplemental content include one link and it be the exact same keyword phrase that you link every time back to your corner stone content. Google's onto that and you ultimately get penalized for that. They're actually actively penalizing that now. And even if they don't find you out right away, they'll eventually find you out. And if they're not, you know, uh, if they weren't actively penalizing for it now, they would at some point and I would kill you. So what you want to do on the way I write my articles is I take the idea and I just write the article. I don't think about keywords. I don't think about search engines. I don't think about linking any of that. I just write the article and make it high value. That's what I really focused on is making useful for someone who the title. Maybe it shows up in a search. That title shows up, they click through, they read it, and it's very, very useful to that particular person. Okay, that's what I focus on when I write it. Once it's written. Now you want to go back through and you want to find natural places to link up articles. You don't just want to link up your main article. Okay, you're cornerstone content, because again, Google's onto that. So you wanna have 4 to 5 links? 3 to 5324 links throughout every block posts that you write and these are gonna be a lot shorter. Your car cornerstone content is gonna be a lot longer. Probably 3 to 5000 words. These are probably going to be 500. 1000 1500 words gonna be shorter articles going to beam or more specific to a particular topic. But you want to include 4 to 5 links to different articles throughout your site. But you always want to include one back to your corner. Stone content. Okay, so what happens is you might write 10 articles and three of them linked to this one. Article on three linked to another article on four to this article, but nine of the 10 all link to your cornerstone content. What that tells Google is that is a page that has a lot more high value. That's something that you are essentially pointing out that says this is an important page , and so then they're gonna pay attention to that page, and that's gonna make it more likely to rink. And when your individual supplemental articles rank higher. That juice will get passed to your main page, and that's how you ultimately rank. The more cornerstone articles you rank, the more each one of those gains in value. And you're linking back to cornerstone content. The higher your cornerstone contents got rank. And of course, it's gonna be getting its own back links and shares on Social and that sort of thing. So that's that's the basic strategy. That's how to go through and actually figure out data driven ideas for Cornerstone content for supplemental content and so forth. I highly recommend reading this internal linking article on joost dot com. I'll be sure to include a link probably in the community section for this. Um, yeah, I'll put it in the community sectional include a link to this, uh, this article because it's really helpful and goes into a lot of detail and talks about how to do the internal linking and why it's important and all that sort of thing. So if you're gonna do this strategy, I highly recommend this. The internal linking and how you do it is one of those details that's really important. If you don't get this right, everything we've done up to this point like could get thrown off by just not doing this right because Google is pays a lot of attention to how this is done. So definitely recommend reading this article. All right, so again, that's the strategy now. No, I I could see there being a lot of questions about Okay, how do I write my articles? How do I What what's a formal I can use for my block posts? Etcetera, etcetera. A lot of questions about around actually writing the content and for the cornerstone content have included included the advertorial I looked through that also, you can check out my turn content in declines course here on skill share. So you already have access to it because you're here on skill share. That's where I go through, and I talk very much in detail about how to create your content and all that sort of thing , using different tools, content ideas, that sort of thing we cover. There's some overlap with what we covered here, but there's a lot of new stuff in that course that really digs into the detail of creating compelling content that sells your services and so forth, so check that out. It's on my profile again. It's turned content into clients. All right, that will do that for do it for this episode. Hopefully you got something out of that again. Let me know what questions you have in the community section. I definitely want to make this you centric, answering your specific questions and so forth. So feel free to hit me up with any questions you have about this or anything else related to freelancing. And I love to do an episode on that. All right, that's it. Thanks for watching. We'll talk to you next time. 13. BONUS: Package and Price Your Freelance Services: Hey, John Morris here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk, Freelance. This one. I'm going to be talking about figuring out what services you should be offering and getting into how to pack a gym. What features they should have how to price all that sort of thing. And this comes from a question I got from fond Celeste. And also gym tan kind of chimed in over her here on skill share. And so I want to again, this is all about answering your questions on things that you're dealing with. So I wanted to make sure ah and tackle this. I do have ah, full course on this as well. If you want to check my profile, it's the freelancing 101 What Services toe offer. And I show you one approach to it over there. This this episode I'm gonna give you a different one. And so maybe you can combine the two Ah, and kind of figure out what you want to do. Just a little bit. If it were me, I would probably, uh I would probably do what? What? I'm gonna show you here. So, um, with that said, Let's go ahead and dive into this. And what I'm gonna be talking about in this episode is what I call the four p's of product izing your services. So as I've mentioned in previous episodes, when selling your services, it's not enough to say that I do say I do graphic design or I build websites or I'm a photographer or I am a writer. You need to be more specific and detailed than that much more detailed, in fact. And that's what the four p's do. They help you to methodically design a robust service offering. That's exactly what your potential clients want. And that's no hype, no gimmick. You're going to know for sure there's gonna be no doubt in your mind that this is what your clients want because we're gonna use data to help us build this. So that's that's the idea here. Now, just fair warning because I know my own personality. It's really easy to hear what I just said and go, huh? I'll just wing it, but I'm telling you, it's gonna bite you if you're falling short at all of your income goals and you're not doing this. 99% of freelances I work with and talk to it comes back to this, so ignore it at your own peril. In any case, I'm just going to show you what to do. So the four p's our product package premiums and price. So let's start with the actual product. If you haven't heard any of my previous talks about this, you might be thinking, Well, wait a second product. I thought we were offering services, and this is the first big tripping point for most freelancers. So here's the insight. The majority of clients don't want a service. They want a thing. So if we take graphic design, for example, most clients don't want graphic design. They want a logo or a website mock up or a poster, a brochure or a book cover. Whatever it is, that's what they actually want. They just know they have to hire a graphic designer to get those things. So when marketing your job is to make it easier that for them to find exactly what they want to eliminate as many questions and doubt and confusion up front as you can. So instead of offering generic vague and confusing services, you wanna offer clear and specific products. So logo design website, mock up design book cover design, etcetera. Now, of course, you have to figure out what those products are now. Fortunately, there is a site that already does 99% of the work for you, and that's what you're looking at right here, which is fiber. So we're going to use writing as an example. So what we'll do is we'll go over to fiber and we'll click on the writing and trend will hover over the writing and translation link here. And then you'll come down here and you'll see article articles and block posts will go ahead and click on that. And then once this loads, I'm gonna x this out. You'll see over here on the right hand side, we're gonna click. Best selling now, depending on when you look at this, you're going to see different things. But what this is is a list of the best selling service offerings in the articles and blogged posts Niche over on fiber. So if you're an article writer, you're staring at a list of exactly what the clients in your market want already product ties for you. So if we go through here, you'll see one of the things that's highlighted. It is S C O. If you come down a little bit further, you're gonna find things again. We have another S e O S C E O s C E O S E o travel. So this is something that's very specific travel Copyrighting wine copyrighting. Let's go down here a little bit further again. S CEO s C O S O. So the point here is that as you go through this, you're going to start to see trends like this. You're going to start seeing things like S CEO over and over and over again, or you're going to see little niches like travelling lifestyle. Uh, at different times that I've been on here. It's been health and beauty. I've seen funny video game articles. I've seen a French article. I've seen natural hair articles. I've seen soccer articles writing about pages. There's all of these little different niches. So 11 of the first things is going to do is just give you ideas on different sort of niches that you could do. You might not have known that there was a market for funny video game articles or French articles or about pages, Right? So just gonna give you a bunch of different ideas, but it's also gonna help you to see trends, right? So Ah, you know, of the of of these eight there of these top bestselling articles on block posts, you know, there's there's a few that say I just write articles. A lot of them are very niche optimized. So in S e o optimized article or 1000 word article on health and Fitness or 1500 word article on natural hair care or whatever it is. So your job here is to just troll through here, look in the top menu right up here for what fits with what you do. So if it's digital marketing or graphic design Web development, etcetera, look in the menu. Or you can just simply do a search for what it is that you do and find a niche that's related to the surface service services that you offer again. Graphic sign would fall my photography riding, video eating, whatever it is, find it over here, turn this to best selling and then see what you can find and what you want to do. You want to narrow it down to a core service that you'll offer. So instead of being a graphic designer, you can create a brand perfect logos for bloggers and online business owners. So if you look over here, logo design is a big one here, poster designed brochures, car wraps can all just ideas. You want to nail it down toe one core service that you're going to offer. So instead of being a graphic designer, you're a logo designer. Now that doesn't mean that that's all you're gonna do. We'll talk about that in a second, but that's your core service, and it really needs to be the thing that you enjoy doing most, and you feel like you're best at, because that's where you're gonna be your source of strength and your source of power When it comes to being a freelancer. That's the thing that you know down Pat. This I can do this day in and day out all day long. For me, that was membership sites with WordPress and wish this member for you. It might be logos, or it might be hand coding websites from scratch. I don't know if you really want to hone in on the thing. Don't worry about the money and and all that part of it right now. What is it that you want to do, wake up on a daily basis and do That's really what you want to pick. So again, just troll troll through here and so forth. Um, and figure out what your core services and no to the again to the big question you might be having right now. Is this too niche? You know, how can I charge higher prices for such such a small deliverable, like a logo or whatever? We're gonna tackle that here in just a minute. But by the time we're done, you're gonna have a robust full offering. But you need to start with The core service offering that's been researched is specific. And you know, lots of people out there want it. And again you can. You can test that or look at that by looking at how many people in CSE Article one K if you just go through and look all the ones that that pointed to S e 0 217 and just sort of add up the numbers you would probably find thousands, probably tens of thousands of of people who have been hired. Or they sold thousands of these products for seo optimized articles, so you can get an idea of the numbers. I won't worry about it too much right now, but again, you can get that idea. So do they do that research first and figure out what your core service offering is Okay, so once you've done that, now it's on to the next piece. So that kind of gives you your core product that you want offer. You've turned your service from a service into a product, something specific, something niche, something you love to do something they're really talented at. Now it's time to package that. So now there were product izing our services. We have to be a clear about exactly what a client is getting and what they're not. That's the packaging, and again, this is This is really the transition from service to product. With the surface. It could be open ended, and that might seem like it's great until you actually get in there and a client says What can you do this? And can you do this? And can you do this? And can you do this? And I think a lot of the fear that people have around freelancing comes from that that they might be asked to do something they don't know how to do. When you product ties your services, you make it clear up front what you will and what you won't do. You don't worry about that now. You're just doing things that you know already know how to do. So. It's another advantage here, but again, we have to be clear about exactly what they're getting and what they're not. And that's the packaging. So let's take logo design. For example, If I hire you to create a logo for me, how many variations will you make for me to choose from, or how many revisions will I get? Do I just get the J peg? Or do I get the source foot? Photoshopped files as well. How long is the turnaround time? All of these different questions because we're no longer offering an open ended service. These are the kind of things that clients are gonna ask and wonder, and the packaging answers them up front and gives different clients different options at different price points. So if they have more money, they can spend more. If they don't have as much, they can still hire you. So once you've nailed down your core, I'll call. I'm gonna refer to these as service as a product. So it's s double A a P. Kind of like Sasse. Have you ever seen that? And this is a legit term. This is actually in Wikipedia, so it's Wikipedia, an official, but it's s a P, and it stands for service as a product. But once you've nailed down that core your core sap, you'll offer. Now you want to think about what you'll include in it, so you wanna have try to have at least three different variations or packages that you're offering. So, for example, you may have a basic level where they get one variation of the logo. One revision and just the J peg, and you offer that at a really low price. Or you might have a medium where they get three variations. Three very revisions in just that J peg in advance, where they get unlimited variations and revisions, plus all the source files and 100% license to modify and use as they see fit and all this other stuff. So now you would have three different offers that appeal to three different market market segments. So, as you can see, this is where you really start to flush out your offer and make it robust. And, you know, it's just a za site notice. No wonder that the people who actually do this, they just make a lot more because they're appealing to all these different price points. Plus, they also have premium services where they can charge more on so forth. But again, we don't want to guess at what these things should be. We want it to be driven by data, so we do the research and again, fiber is a great place to do that research. So again, let's look at another example. Let's take graphic design for a second. Um, so we'll head back over to fiber and this time will go under graphic design here. Actually do a search just to give you a broad look here, So we will do a search for graphic design again. I'm gonna change this to best selling, and again we'll look at some of the top ones here. So we have flyer design, personal professional graphic designer T shirt design. Ah, vector rise. Any logo, etcetera. OK, so again, you just have a number of different options here. And let's say you just you want to do logo design, as you're You're sort of core offering here. So let's just click into this one here. I will scroll down to this part right here is what we're after. Compare packages. So you already see right here they have these different packages. Ah, it's just laid out right here for you. And this is one of the just This is one of the top best selling services on here's number seven or number eight. Whatever it waas. So, uh, this this does very well and you can actually look at the units sold. I think we go back over here. This one has 530 units sold. See, this one has 100 1 plus K one K plus etcetera. So they've sold a lot of these. So this gives you some sense of what actually works. Okay, So that that's the data that we want to rely on and fiber list he's on here not just by number of units sold what's actually best selling. So this showing up as number seven or number eight tells you that it's not just how maney they've sold, but they probably sold more of these premium packages than maybe some other ones who've sold more units. But this one has made more money because it sold some of the higher price stuff. Okay, so again, it just it's rule world data that we can rely on here, and so you'll see how they package their services. So you have a basic package where you get the low, the the logo is transparent. You get ah, high resolution, you get one initial concept, uh, unlimited revisions and the delivery time is one day, OK? And then, you know, if we go go along here, we see that with this package, you get the source file. With this package, you get a social media kit and you also get a vector file. So with each package, you just get more. So now you're seeing, like straight up what it is that people are offering what they're including in their packages, what they're charging for those packages and this is just one. So we can come back over here. We can click into this one. Scroll down to the packages, and you can see it's a little bit different. So ISAT print Ready Source file. Double sided, etcetera. Ah, come back over here on. Let's just do this one here, see what it says. Okay, so high resolution source file. Commercial use. That's one that was on the other ones. Number of images, etcetera. OK, so for whatever it is that you do, you can come through here and see exactly the what they're offering. What the features are, what the pricing is and so forth. So this gives you a really good starting point to start thinking about your packages. Now, one thing I'll point out here. You might look at what's being offered here, too, and the pricing and think 00 man, that's Ah, nothing for my services. And is this what I'm gonna have to sell my services for? So just keep in mind that this is fiber literally sets an expectation about its pricing in its name. So everything tends to be lower here. Um, I see the prices for Web development on here, and I think, what the heck? So I wouldn't get too caught up in that? No, because I've sold sites that are People are doing the exact same thing on fiber that I did . I've sold sites for 10 times what they charge here, so just don't get too wrapped up up on it. The pricing your offer on your site can will be different. This just gives you a starting point to build your packages, to take them from services into products and packages. So what you want to do is you want to just go through these and write down all the things that you can find that are included in the premium version. So in this top version here, of all the different offerings that you look at, so we saw three different ones and each one had something a little different. Go through and note every single one of those things because that's now giving you your feature list for your product or your service as a product. And we're just gonna nor the standard and basic for right now. And I'll show you why. Um, but again, write down all of these things over here that are included in the premium version and get a sort of a list going here. All right, so now we can go back to the main search. So in our case, it was graphic design. Now, you want to look through here for any service offerings that are closely tied to your core offering or anything you immediately think of that might be closely related. So in our example, our core offering that we're doing is logo design. Well, when I think of that, I immediately think of Web site design, obviously, because I'm a Web developer. So oftentimes someone who needs a logo will also need a website. So let's go over here and let's do a search for website design like this. And now we want to look for four service offering where the price listed is a little bit higher. So we're gonna ignore some of the 75 125 that sort of thing. You know, this might be something that you look at in here. Um Or maybe you want to go something that's a little bit in between there. Let's just go ahead and click on this one. that 600 here. So again, here's the packages, so you can see for this. Um, we're gonna focus on the premium side here and just take note of what's included and and see OK source file. Commercial use, responsive design, number of pages, screens. So this is now for website designed. This is $1800. It's more of a premium package, and these are the things that they list out as the features. So I'm not saying you for your graphic designer, you should be doing logo design and website design. What I'm saying is, is that you should figure out for you what works best together in your particular niche in individual services that are sort of related because again, if I want a logo, there's a good chance that I want a website as well. So it's a natural up sell. So again you wanna figure out what that is, and then you want to come in and mark down all the features for it, and you want to go through four or five of the the higher price servings ones that services ones that air about in this range, and you want to know trends and common themes. You write down all of the things. Like if you go to another one, these things may be different. Can you want to write all of those down? So now you have a logo design package. You have a website design package, and you've got the list of features for each. So you've got a basic offer, which is logo design. Now you've got a intermediate offer, which is logo plus website design. Okay, so they're just doing logo designed website design. What we're doing is logo design. You could just get your logo, or you can get a logo and website if you need both, and we're gonna charge you more. Okay, so, yes, we're combining the logo and website into your media offer. This makes it a natural progression and an easy up sell for people. Do you have to do it that way? No, but I would recommend that you do do it that way because it's just going to allow you to get to a point where you can charge you have these really robust packages where you can charge a lot more for your for your services. Okay, So the last one then that you might be sort of guessing or wondering about is our premium offer. And again it needs to fit and flow naturally from our basic and intermediate. So again for me. What immediately comes to mind from logo design Website design now is branding kit and all the different graphics that someone might need. So we again want to use data, and we want to look for that now. One trick you can also use here have sort of mentioned is you can use the fiber navigation itself. So you have all these these main categories, but you have the sub categories underneath it as well, and these exist for a reason, right? They just don't just randomly put these here. There's a lot of data and research that's gone into this. So this tells you that these sorts of these sorts of sub categories are the kinds of things that people are actually looking for, and they wouldn't put it here unless it was popular. So again, if we look at a graphic design menu, then this is sort of what we see and we have logo design. We have website design, the other one that stands out to me. Everyone. I think a branding kit is business cards and stationery. So again, those three things sort of all go together. And they're really popular because they're listed up here and these two are listed one and two. This one's over here a little bit, but they're very popular, so it gives us an indication that these are the kind of things that people are after. So again, if we look at our package, we have website design. We have lower resigned, but we don't have business cards and stationery. So maybe we could add that as 1/3 element to create our premium package. So we are. Our packages would be the basic is logo design. The next is logo plus website designed. The third is a branding kit that includes the logo. Includes the website includes all of the different Ah, stationary. Now this is the point at which knowing you're naturally has an impact because you know, is your niche primarily business people. Will they even need business cards? Do they care about stationary and all that? So you want a mat it to be a natural fit for them, so the better you know your niche, the more you're gonna be able to answer those sorts of questions. If you have absolutely no idea about your niche or you haven't had current clients at this point, you actually can sort of skip that because fibre tells us that there's a niche for these things. Logo design with, ah, Web and mobile business cards a station. So even you don't necessarily need to know that you're you're niches, business people. You can just say, OK, I want to do these things. So my niche now will have to be business people. So you don't necessarily have to go and do some research to figure that out. As long as you're willing to say, OK, I want I'm gonna work with business people and understand that if you're gonna offer these sets of products, they're going to appeal to that specific set of people and people who don't own a business . They're probably not gonna be interested like a generally a brick and mortar. But even some Internet stuff, but they're generally probably not gonna be interested in stationery and business cards and so forth. So you need to now no. Okay, my niches, business people because I'm choosing these. Okay, so again Ah, you really want toe. You really want tohave The people you're trying to help drive this or at least understand that the services you choosed off are going to dictate the people that are most likely to want those services. But let's assume that business cards estacion R e r a good fit. And let's just go into this business cards and stationery subcategory here. Now, in this case, fiber gives us a custom page that Onley includes these pro verified projects here. That is a really good sign for us because they wouldn't dedicate this much time and create a page like this if it weren't a very popular and lucrative niche. So this this gives us an indication that our premium service is probably going to be, um, is going to be something that's in demand. So again, here I'm looking for Ah, anything. I'm looking for big numbers here. So the biggest number I see here is $1000. I'm gonna click on this and we're gonna come down here and we're gonna look at the packages . And now you can see exactly what a stationary kit includes people are paying 1000 1525 $100 for this. Um, we come back over and we look at it. So he's had this year, he or she has had to people that have hired them. You see, over here, if you look at some other ones. 17. So, I mean, you could maybe look through a few of these to get to get an idea, but again, this just lays out for you. What's in it? Print ready? Double sided source, file design concepts, revisions, delivery time. This tells you the features that matter. So and again, they're they're charging $2500 here on fiber and have a had actually had people that have taken them up on that. So, um, it gives you an indicator that they're on the right track. So again, you just want to note all of this stuff down here. Um, you know, look again. Look at some others. Look for trends. Look for common themes. Look for things that are different on each one. That maybe this one doesn't have the others do and know all of that thing. All of that down. So those are going to be our features. So again, that's our premium package. So we have logo designed website design and a stationary kit. That's our brand kit. And if we just went by the fiber prices that we've looked at so far, you could charge $4345 for that package. And that's a real price that people are actually paying. Lots of people are paying every day for the services individually on Fiverr. Okay, so that's still a pretty good price, even though it's, ah, fiber. So, uh, again, that gives you an indication of how building this package this way leads you to a place where you can have a really premium offering. But the pricing is kind of the last piece, so we'll talk about that here in a little bit. But that is essentially packaging your services. So I hope that you can see how much more appealing this is to a client, how much clear the offer is to them. And it is for you and really, how Every question, including the number of concepts, the number of revisions do they get is a double sided. Is it print ready? Do they get source files. How Maney Design concepts. What's the turnaround time? How many revisions? All of the questions that a client's going tohave. They're answered upfront. It's all handled upfront. It's clear. Clients know exactly what they're getting. That's 80% of the battle as a service provider. That's the problem with just saying I'm a graphic designer. What's the very first question they're gonna ask you? Well, I want a logo. Do do. Do you do logos? I want a website. Do you do websites? I want a stationary to use. If they have toe and ask the question, you're gonna lose 90% of people right there. So by packaging product izing, you answer that all the front. You make it clear that's 80% of the battle. So your job is to go through and do all of this for your service. You may not be in graphic design, but the same process. The process is the same. Start big with graphic design or Web development and then find something specific that you really want to do. Start there. That's your basic service. Now think of what naturally fits of this. What's a natural progression? What's the next thing. Maybe if you're building websites, the natural progression for you is a phone app. And if you could do that, Okay, Now I offer fun up. Well, what Airfone APS going for on here, etcetera? So again, that's your job is to go through and figure out your packages and exactly what they're going to clued what all the features are and so forth. You should have a basic intermediate on advancing again. Don't worry about the the pricing too much. I would make note of the fiber pricing, but don't settle on it because what I'm gonna show you next is how we can actually crank up the value of all of what we're offering and how we can charge even mawr for our services while also making ourself unique. So again, I would say positive video at this point and And go and do this before you move onto the next next part. Or if you, your little type person that likes to go through all all at once, that's fine. Just make sure you come back and then sit down with this. And actually, when you actually go to do this, Okay, so that said The next thing on the list, then, is premiums, and again these air going allow you to charge more. But they're also important in making your service offerings unique and standing out because you see here there's a lot of stuff that's the same. You go from one to the other, the other the other together, and it's the same. It's like, Well, which one do I choose? You want something that you want a way to to set yourself apart and make yourself unique. So that's anything extra that you want to add to sweeten the deal. So if we took our graphic design example, this could be a one. Our strategy session included on Lee with the highest your package. Or maybe every tear gets a two minute explainer video where you explain why you built this logo this way and water, what's all the science behind it, and so forth of the website or the app or whatever, but you didn't see that included with any of these. Those are just some ideas, uh, that it came about with up with off the top of my head, but you want something unique that you're not seeing that you think is obvious. So whatever it is, just whatever makes sense. It needs to be relevant to the main product. But it needs to be extra, something that's not expected in order to push them over the top to buying. Now. My little pro tip here is this is where you focus on your competitors and what they're not giving to their clients. So you want to get creative and try to find things you can do extra that will make someone hire you over the thousands of other people who do the exact same thing that you do. And that's something you always have to remember. Whatever it is you do, there's probably 210,000 other people who do that exact same thing. So why should the client hire you and, well, I'm better. There's probably someone out there better than you. That's just the reality. So you have to have something hard, something tangible that sets you apart, and that's what these allow you to do. So how do we research this? This is where we can finally get off of fiber, so instead we're gonna go to Google and we're gonna look for other people who are doing exactly what you do. Um, now, most of time, you can just add the word freelance to the front of your coat. Core service. So for logo designer, we'd search for freelance logo designer like I've done here. So just type that search into Google. And for a health beauty article writer, you might search freelance health and Beauty article writer, etcetera. Whatever makes sense. But what you want to see is other freelancers offering the same or similar services as you because now we're gonna analyze their stuff, figure out how we can be better. So going with our freelance group logo designer example, these are This is obviously the results that Google gives us. The first thing to look at here is the ads, actually, not the organic results. Now the thing with the organic results is we don't really know why those air ranking that's all based on back links, and I'll click through rates. And there's a lot that goes into the core Ganic rankings. The ad rankings are a lot simpler. It's who's making the most money for Google. So that's not just it's not just how much they're paying per click, but also how many clicks they're getting. Okay, so these are these are gonna show up based off of that. So these air people spending real money and people are clicking on these, and that's why they're showing up here. So it's a lot simpler calculation. So, generally speaking, we can know that they're probably converting on their sales page at a decent rate and are making money if they're adds air still here. Otherwise they'd stop running the ads. Now, you know, there can be outliers. Someone just put up their ad that day and the totally tanks, And that happened to be the day that you looked at or so forth. So you know that that's something to keep in mind. But we're not just gonna look at one anyway, and you don't want to look at this just one day, okay? So you want to look at it. Maybe over the course of a couple of days, you want to look at multiple different ads and click on him and so forth, so well, account for that. But again, this generally is going to tell us who's doing well and who's not All right. So in any case, when we click on one of these will just click on this top one right here that takes us over to this low logo. Majestic. Ah, here. And what I'm looking for is I'm looking for the packages. So you see here it says view packages. I'm gonna click on that, and we get a very similar thing to what we saw over on fiber. These are These are the packages and the features of each packages that they're offering. And what we want to do here is we're really just looking for ideas. What are things we can add to our packages? Ah, as bonuses that are unique. And we are You see several different things that we didn't see over on fiber. So we're seeing it's one dedicated designer, three dedicated designer, a industry based designer. So we didn't see any of that over on fiber. We're also ah, we're also seeing the turnaround time. So 24 to 48 against. We did see some of that over on fiber. But here the times air a lot shorter over there was no. The lows we saw was one day most of them were, like, three days. So here we're seeing 24 hours, etcetera. We're also seeing this chat live in the phone number here. Didn't see any of that over on, fiber. Um, you'll see over here. I think we also get you hear stationery, business cards, letterhead, envelope. That gives us some sense that Hey, this was a logo design. This is their goal logo package and includes stationary. That sort of gives us a new idea that Hey, we were on the right track with this. Now, are all of these things good ideas? Not necessarily. Like, for example, as a solo free freelancer, I'd never offer 24 7 chat support. That's just something I wouldn't offer for my lifestyle. I don't want to do that. So I'm not saying you come in here and just be like, okay, copy all this stuff down. I'm just going to this. You have to think about what you want to do on what makes sense and so forth here. But the bigger point is you want to use this to to brainstorm. You're your own ideas. Um, come up with things like add things you're not seeing over on fiber that makes sense to you and then come up with things that that they're that they're not doing okay. Or another thing that you can do is you can look at multiple different ones of these if you click on the different ads. And a lot of times what you can do is you can actually get to unique by, um, you can get to unique by combining things from two different people. So let's say we click on this one and we see you know, we see something that we didn't see on here. But this one also doesn't have something that this one had. Okay, so one is doing one thing, and one is doing another thing. We can be unique by putting those two things together. Okay, so you're just looking for things that you can add to crank up the value to be ableto charge more so Ah, that that's the I d here. That's the whole point of of looking up these packages, um, and and looking through this, we're also see pricing, which gives us a good a good idea of what people are charging for this sort of thing, and it allows us to just flesh out our our features. So the trick here is to really think through what would have meaning and impact for your your clients. So don't just add things to add them. Had things that matter and will really make the experience of working with you remarkable things that make them say, Wow, I'm getting that along with this. That's crazy. I mean, 24 hour chat support. Don't get me wrong like I look at that and I'm like, Wow, really, I wouldn't do it. But that's something that makes me go Wow! Or 100% ownership rights to to the PSD and all that sort of thing. That's something that would make 14. BONUS: How to Create a Job-Getting Portfolio: everybody. John here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Freelance. So this one where we were gonna be getting into portfolios and how decree an attention getting portfolio. A persuasive for portfolio one that's not only going to get people to pay attention and actually click on the items and so forth. But when they do will go a long way towards selling your services, because a good portfolio can can really make all the difference when it comes to getting hired and so forth. So this is one of the things that you really want to take some time with, and you really want to nail down because it could just make that much of a difference in your freelance business. So with that said, Let's get into this I'm gonna start off first off with some portfolio rules. Some things to keep in mind as you're building your profile portfolio. If you follow these simple things than your portfolio B'MORE attention getting at a little wow potential clients more, and I'll help you to get hired more so The first thing is to to show Onley your best work. The big reason here is you don't know what item a client is gonna click on and look at and used to evaluate you So you don't want to fill your portfolio with just a bunch of stuff that you've done, where some of them you look at it and you go, Well, that one's maybe not as good these air a little bit better, etcetera. I hope they click on those all that. You don't want to do that because you just don't know you can't control that. And so you want to make sure the stuff that's in your portfolio is your absolute best work . It's more important to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to this, because you only have a few opportunities to to convince clients toe while clients and you want to maximize those. And the reality is, if you have a portfolio of 100 different projects, clients not gonna click through all of those, they're probably Onley gonna click through 3 to 5 or so and look at them, so show them the 3 to 5 that at your absolute best working. If you have to rotate those out as you do more work, then then so be it, Uh, the these can change and so forth. So again on Lee, show your best work. 2nd 1 is no matter what industry you're in. And I really want to emphasize this. I've done videos on the path it in the past, I think, on my YouTube, but also even in some of my courses where I talk about, even if you're a back end developer, which is maybe one of the hardest things to to create a portfolio for because you really riding a bunch of back and code and don't have much to do with the front end. But no matter what industry you're in, try to make your portfolio as visually appealing as possible. Now, if you're a graphic designer photographer, something like that where it's very visually oriented, this really should be your bread and butter and know that you really do sort of have an advantage, because this is what you dio. So this should be a little bit easier for you. I think a big thing here is to look at some of your competition and look what they're posting. You really have to have a sense of where you stand when it comes to the people that you're Pete competing against some. Sometimes I get people who will say have created my portfolio. I've done my bio and all this stuff, and I have done everything you've said. Um, but I'm still not getting hired. What's the problem? And I'll cook over and I'll click through the portfolio. And the reality of it is, is that their work just is not as good as the people they're competing against. So when a client sees it in the context of probably having seen other people's portfolios, it's just not as good. And so you really need to have some sense of that. Don't avoid that competition. Use that toe, fuel you and drive you. But you really need to understand where you fit in in that competitive environment. So look at some of the work that people that you might be competing against are doing and try to get a sense of where you fit in. And if you're not reaching that bar, then get up to that standard and focus on getting better and all that sort of stuff. But when you actually go to create your portfolio, make sure it's as visually appealing as possible. I've done this just about every time that I mentioned this or tell people about this sort of chuckle and non their head in agreement. But I've had APS on my phone that the APP did exactly what I wanted it to do. I looked at the reviews, the reviews, er, all really good, 4.5 and above that sort of thing, all the features or what they want. But I didn't install the app on my phone because of the way the icon looked or because of the way the interface waas. It's just how people are. And it's especially that way today when there's so many different options. And there's people who are making things pretty, so to speak, that people just sort of think that way. We're a drawn to pretty things. Like it or not, that's just sort of the way it is, So make it as visually appealing as possible. The final sort of rule here, then, is relevance. Should you only want to include projects that are highly relevant to the services that you're offering because you want to position yourself as a specialist if I'm looking for ah logo. If your portfolio has website designs in it, I don't really care about your website designs because that's not what I want. Or if I'm looking for landing pages. And you sure show me a portfolio no full of of Kanda Blawg designs or something. It again it doesn't really matter to me because that's not what I want. Bill, I want to know if you can do the exact thing that I want done. That's why Positioning Shelf is a specialist is important. But it's also why making sure your portfolio is relevant is important as well, because they're gonna That's how they're gonna be evaluating you. It's not. Are you good? It's Can you do the thing that I want and are you good at it? It's sort of a dual question in their minds, so you want to make sure it's highly, highly relevant. Okay, so with those rules sort of out of the way. And in that context, now we can start to look at how to actually build your portfolio pages. So this is a wire frame that I've done for a portfolio home page. I'm not a graphic designer, and so I do my best with this sort of stuff. However, this the big idea here is the layout. That's really what I want to focus on when it comes to this, because I think that's what's important. So we talk about having a page where we're gonna show off. Our portfolio will get into the individual item pages, but this is the home page here. We want tohave, a featured project right at the top and this feature project. You want that to be the one, the one that you absolutely want them to click on. And if you featured at the top like this, they're very likely to do that. So you need to. When you're thinking about what's the best item to put here. What's the best to feature? It's a combination of things. It sort of depends on your industry. If you're a graphic designer, it's probably the one that you think is the best looking, the one that's really going to show off your skills and so forth. But there is sort of this other caveat are thought to give to. It is, well, who's the biggest name client or most well known person that I've worked with If that's something that you've done, then you may consider putting that they're so for me. I would put My Inc magazine project here. It's not necessarily the most visually appealing project. It's not bad, you know, especially given the time that it was created. But it's the most well known company that that I've ever worked with. So it's going to be something that that people are gonna really be attracted to. And when they see that click in Latin and then the story works really, really well as well, for for my potential clients. And then I have a good testimonial from the person that I worked with there. So for me, while it may not be the most visually appealing thing because they had a very specific design that they wanted, and I didn't necessarily have a ton of input there. But it is the most sort of influential in my mind because of what the project is, who it is, how it went down and so forth. So you have to think that through a little bit, and it depends on your industry and so forth. But you want the project here that you think is the most commit, convincing the most compelling is the most likely to convince clients to hire you. So you want to feature that at the top here, use your best image on the left hand side. Here, have a little title here. This really should just be kind of the the name of of the company that you worked with in the name of the client and that that's really the thing that you're trying to draw people with for me. If I put into magazine right there, then that would sort of draw people's attention. A little description. You could probably just pull this from the item page and we'll talk about that just a second, Um and then ah, but in here for them to click in view the full project. So again, we're just trying to This is the one. We want them to click on this one for sure, and it's gonna put our best foot forward. So feature that at the top here and don't get too focused on colors are that sort of thing , even necessarily the layout, although I would probably do a left to right like this just so you can get all this information above the fold. But it's really mawr. The concept of the idea of putting your best project right up top right up front, above the fold so they can't miss it and very likely to click through and view that particular particular project next, Then down below here, we want to have again. We're saying 3 to 5 of our best projects. So you would then just put images for these. You could maybe put a title above or below or have when people hover over it, they were able to see the title. However, you kind of want to lay that out. But these is just meant to represent the rest of your project that they can then click on and view and then down below. Here we always ask for the sale. So even though this is a portfolio were always asking for the sale, Uh, something that a lot of people miss when it comes to selling their services. But we don't ask for the sale, they don't give them opportunity. So yes. So we put something here, a headline like Ready to get started, and then if you're ready to get started working with me, click the button below and then have a button like you here below. That says, Hire me or learn more about hiring me or whatever, and this can send them to your full sort of services sale speech. Because this is really just your portfolio. This you can send them to your full sales page, where they can learn all the details off your services, your packages what, what it cost, how to get in touch, all that sort of thing. You can kind of send them there if you want to send them right down to. If you can link directly to the quote, work less form. I don't think that's a bad idea. I would sort of test it and linked directly to the quote request form and see if, if you're getting people submitting that form than great, maybe don't mess with it. If not that, maybe you need to do a little bit more convincing and then just send them to the top of of your hire me page. And if you're hire me pages set up right, it's gonna have your core offer above the fold as well, and a button that says click to hire me, so it's gonna going to sort of make sense in this con context. But you want to make sure you always think all this stuff through bigger picture from a client's perspective of when I click this button. And it says, Click here to learn more about hiring me or click here to hire me when I click that button . What I see next should meet my expectations of when I click that button. Otherwise, I'm gonna get confused. I'm gonna get a little bit annoyed on, and that's gonna be something that could cause you to not get hired. So whatever you put here, make sure that when they click that what they see next makes sense for what they clicked. Okay, so that is the portfolio home page. Now, when they click on a particular item, gonna have something simple like this. So our image over here is gonna get be sort of our final image, our best image of the final product. It's done and so forth. These images down here, what I recommend is doing progress shots. So what you want to do on the item pages you really want to tell the story of the project because again people are interested in stories is going to make people actually read what you have to say here. Ah, and its stories do 90% of the selling for you. So you really want to tell that story and on the left were telling that story through imagery. So we're showing the final end result, and then we're showing progress shots that say, This is how it started. This is halfway through a bottle ball and you just sort of show the progress of how the project came together. Whatever that is for you again. I don't know exactly what freelance service you're offering, but you wanna have some sort of progress. And my dad does commission work for paintings so he would have the final product here, but then he might have his initial wire frame. Here's sort of a Maybe the first level of color. This is now it's halfway done. You see, like half color, half still wire frame. And then, you know, maybe the final product shot again, or maybe a 3/4 etcetera. So you just want to show the progress of the project as best you can I know that doesn't necessarily work great for every freelance service out there, but as much as you can, you're trying to tell the story. Now we sort of mere that over on the right hand side. So again, we're gonna have the headline again. It's probably just the name of the client here is really all you need to include. But then you want to tell sort of the story of this particular project. So I think it's best to start off with the context of how you got hired. So you want to say how or why you got hired? And so to give you an example, go back to my Inca magazine project. So I got hired after the guy that was building that was in charge of building the site. He had spent two years working with other developers trying to get them toe, get this site built for him, and he'd spent a lot of money on those developers and still didn't have even a beta that he could roll out to this group. Ah, and so he was very frustrated. And that's why he ultimately landed on me doing his project. So telling that story. That context of that sort of sets up how the project, how you're going to explain what happened with the project. So it's important to include that context now. It's not always something as compelling or interesting of a story as that. You still just you want to set up the context for for the project. Next, you go with challenges with this project. So again, with the magazine project, I would roll into the big challenge and why he was having so much trouble with other developers. Building the site is because he had location based chapters for his membership. So if someone is in New York or someone was in San Francisco or someone was in Philadelphia who had joined this membership was really high end membership. You had your business had to be making at least $2 million per year to be even qualified to apply for this membership. So he had these different chapters, and he was creating content that was unique to each chapter. Some was some was, ah, consistent for all three chapters. Some he wanted it to be different, and so he wanted someone when they belonged to, say, the Philadelphia chapter when they logged in to be able to see just the stuff that was relevant for the Philadelphia chapter and again that could be content specific to the chapter or content that he said, Oh, this is for everybody So that was That was sort of a challenge. And he wanted to be easy, for when his his writers were creating content, they could click a box or whatever on and they could they could select. Which chapter would goto just work? And there were some other things that needed to show up unique like that. But that was the big challenge. That was why he was having so much trouble getting it built. He was doing it in WordPress. And that's just not something that's native to WordPress. So taking a step back from that again, this is starting to become an interesting story. If you're a client, you're reading this. You're going okay. Wow, this is interesting. I can relate to this. That's a very unique challenge. It's probably in most cases of the people I worked was a much bigger challenge than what they had with their project. So now they're saying, Wow, okay, he's able to do this and face this challenge for this big company, you can probably tackle my project. So the next, then is how you overcame it. So again, as an example magazine. What I did is I wrote, I just I custom coated some algorithms that would allow me to be able to identify the person logged in what chapter they belonged to. And then I could do some. I wrote some page templates that were unique to each chapter for the theme. I could do some templates switching, and there were There were some widgets where I just did some some ah, switching in terms of the widget. Ah, and what it was displaying based off the chapter. And once I knew and had identified what chapter they belong to. Then it was easy for me to filter the content and to do the template, switching and so forth that I needed to do in order to display it properly. So it's pretty simple, but I just essentially wrote some algorithms to be ableto identify that road some metal boxes for the WordPress editor screen, where people, the writer could just check a box that this is for San Francisco or this is for Philadelphia. And then my algorithms in the back end when I went to display content would do all the work of figuring out what was supposed to be shown. So again, I'm talking a little bit more explaining this. You want to keep this concise as possible. But again it shows. OK, now that sounds complicated. If they're able to do that, if this guy is able to do that, he's probably gonna be able to do what I need, toe get done. And then you go into the client reaction. So with that project the guy worked with Lewis was a static. Hey, was not He's not the type of guy to get really super excited, but the ultimate result we could You could maybe sort of mix this client reaction versus combined with end result, because what I would say in this particular case is that I was able to get him a beta launched within 30 days of starting the project. So he had tried for two years to get it done with other developers. I was able to get it built for him in 30 days, and so he was obviously is ecstatic about that, and then you could include the client testimony of what they say and always try to get a client testimonial from people. That's a mistake I made early on. I didn't do a good job of that. I missed out on a lot of good projects that could have done that with. So I'm really be laboring telling this whole story because I think as you're hearing it, you can see how that would be a compelling story to a client. Took two years had this big challenge. This is how he overcame the challenge. This was the result. I got the beta launched in 30 days, and here's what the client themselves actually said about working with me on this project. It gives life to your portfolio. It's more than just some pictures and a little description. It gives value in life, and it's interesting and people want to read it. That right there we'll do 90% of the selling for you. Just telling that story. I sold more stuff based off that story than I can even probably imagine. So you really want to try and do that in this portfolio item page a lot of people get caught up in the design and the look and the so forth, and that's important. But it's really ultimately about the story stories, what are what sell. And that's what you want to tell here, you know, always gonna have the best story for every client. I get that, but as much as possible, you really want to speak to emotion. You want to speak to what it is that they're they're wanting and what they're after. If someone who has been trying to get their site launched and that was who I targeted membership site owners who were kind of struggling to get their site launched someone who's in that scenario, they'll really relate to the two years and lots of money and they'll see that I was able to help this guy for this company. They'll see what the client said. It will give them hope that I can actually be the one to help them get over the hump. And that's really the biggest thing. When it comes toe potential clients again, the higher you is them having that spark of hope that you're legit, that you can actually get it done and they'll get over this problem that they're having so really, really important to do that. So again, Like I said, I know, I know if kind of be labored this, But I just think it's so important, that sort of the general set up of your home page and your portfolio items and so forth. Now what I want to do is I want to show you some examples and I'm sure you some examples starting off of people not doing it well, So this is this company logo orbit trying to rag on them. But this is their portfolio. We're looking at websites. They're actually running ads on Google. That's how he found them. So they're spending a lot of money to get people to come to their page and look at their stuff. And when you go to the portfolio section here, if we click on any of these first off, you'll see that there's really no names or anything like that. It kind of don't really know the context of these. And when you click on it, thank you. Just get just get a picture. And this watch demo thing doesn't even seem to work. So when I'm looking at this and I honestly, when I first looked at this and and was like wanting to use his is an example like I really don't know. Are these legit? Are these the jit portfolio items? I mean, it's kind of hard to tell, right? It seems like they are, but you don't get any story. You don't get any information about the products. You just get some pictures here. So imagine your client looking to hire these guys. If you have any doubt that these air legit portfolio items are you gonna hire these people , Probably not like it's gonna give you enough skepticism to where you like. I think I'm gonna maybe try and find somebody else. So again, this is an example of how not to do it to just throw up some pictures and not give any information, not tell anybody you definitely want to make sure any buttons that you have on here work, how they're supposed to work on that sort of thing. So maybe it's maybe there is in this watch demo thing here. It does explain what's going on here. I don't know, but a I want to make sure that stuff works but be like, just in case it doesn't work. You don't want to rely on this thing working 100% of time because you never know what someone's viewing it on and so forth include that information in a way that you know what a low we show up there in plain text here and so forth. So again, that's an example of what not to do. This is another one. Because I was I had some hope with this one. You could see that they this looks need This looks cool. Only they have these different things. But we come down here like I can't even click on these. So it's it's actually worse than the other one. I can't even view and click on any of these projects, and I can barely see what's going on here. So again, I don't really know if these are legit portfolio items. I don't know anything about them etcetera. OK, so that's another example of just stuff not to do. So let's come over here and compute. Compare that to this guy named Bill Ericsson will actually click back here just a little bit, and you can see he has. He features multiple across the top, which is is cool. He has this unit. He lists this This item here he gives you a little bit information about it. He includes the text of testimonial here, which I think is smart. And then when you do view case study, he really is positioning this as case studies, you can see he talks about it a little bit. He lets you be able to click through and view the website. He shows you screenshots. He gives the testimonial. He shows some of the things that were unique about this project that he did. And then again, he includes the hire me at the bottom here. So this is a really good example of how to do that. And compare that to what we just saw. Where I can't even click on images or when I do. It doesn't tell me anything when you click on this, you know this is a project that he did. You get some information about it, you can kind of see the screenshots that he's showing. Here. You get a testimonial from the client he worked with. Get some information about what was actually done on this site. It just gives you a lot more to make a decision on. Clients need information in order to make unformed decision, so you've got to give them that the information. So again, if you compare this to the other ones, it's just a lot better. And so this is This is really what we're trying to do. He doesn't necessarily follow the story approach. He kind of talks about what was needed and so forth, and that's fine. It's certainly better than what you're gonna find most people doing. But I think if you follow the story approach that I that I talked about that's going to allow you to compete with the best of the best, because I mean this guy's I know who this guy is in the WordPress space. He's one of the best of the best. He's one of the top sort of viewed WordPress developers out there, and even he's not doing the story approach. And I think hopefully you'll see at this point how compelling that really is. So I'm really trying to push you toe everything I do. I try to not push you beyond like good enough into how do I compete with the absolute best people out there and win? And so if you do like 50% of what I stay, you're still gonna be ahead of most people out there If you do 100%. I mean, I just really believe you should be ableto get virtually any project you want and kind of be able to write your own check, so to speak. In all its a little sort of hype here cliche. But I really believe that. So again, go back. If you need to go through, I'm gonna include these These documents. Ah, with the download for for this episode go back and and if you need to, I looked through it again and so forth and and really build your portfolio out. This way, you'll be better. Be putting your best foot forward. You'll be a lot more likely to get hired. All right, so that'll do it for this episode. Hopefully. Enjoy that. Get something out of that again if you have questions. If you're going through this process, whether it's this or something else with freelancing and you have questions, be sure to let me know Ah, in the community discussion. That's what this was all based around is helping you through your specific roadblocks that you're having. Ah, and getting you down the path of being a successful freelancer. So let me know what you need. That's what I'm here for, right? That'll do it. We'll talk to you next time. 15. BONUS: Finding Passion In Your Freelance Career: Hey, John Morris here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Freelance real quick. Before I get into this episode, I just want to do a little bit of housekeeping. So I sent out a message over the weekend asking you all about what kind of videos or lessons you preferred. Shorter daily lessons or longer weekly lessons that I've been doing. I just want to get some feedback on where you kind of stood on that so I could kind of put this in the format that that you preferred. It was kind of interesting to me because I assumed the shorter daily lessons was gonna kind of clearly win. But actually it was closer to about 50 50. And so I've had to do some thinking about how to handle this, because I really wanna cater to both groups. And so this is what I've come up with. So what I'm gonna be doing is each week there will be be a theme or set of themes that kind of go along with the episode, and what I'm going to do is make a series of videos. Oftentimes it's is probably gonna be maybe one video when I record it, and then all it's broken up into sections, or sometimes it'll be individual videos. It just kind of depends on the topic. But I'm going to break it up into individual, smaller lessons, but I'm gonna post all of them at once on Monday. So five year one of the folks that prefers the daily lessons you'll be able to go in and consume the smaller chunks of content. But it's gonna kind of be on you to get in there and remember and consume it, how you want and so forth, because I'm not gonna be sending out daily notifications and that sort of thing. So that's going to sort of hopefully cater to those of you who want the shorter kind of daily lessons. You can kind of consume them each day. Ah, as you prefer when you have time and so forth. And then at the end of the week on Saturday, Saturday morning, I'm gonna take down all of those individual lessons, and I'm gonna be packaged then, as one individual lesson and re uploaded and sort of archived as the longer weekly lesson. For those of you who prefer those type of lessons. So again, hopefully that helps kind of cater to both groups. It's gonna ultimately be the same information, but it's just gonna be packaged a little bit differently for a short period of time and then archived a little bit different assed faras notifications gonna send out a notification on Monday when I post the initial sort of chopped up lessons as individual lessons. And then I'll send a reminder on Thursday for the U daily folks toe to make sure and get in . If you want to consume anything more before archive it, and then I'll post another notification on Saturday when I actually turn it into the longer lesson. For those of you who want the longer weekly lessons, you'll have that notification that you could jump in and consume that. So ah, that's sort of how I'm going to run it at this point and see how that goes Course, if you have feedback on that feel free toe, leave me a comment and let me know what you think or if you have other ideas, is so forth. So I'm gonna run with that for now. But I wanted to kind of talk about that since I put out that that that question over the weekend. So getting into then this week's episode, the theme is really kind of about. It's about strategy, but it's also sort of about kind of the emotional aspect of, of all of this of going freelance, of building a freelance business and kind of planning out your career over time in the phases that you you need to go through. And a lot of times I really try to focus on the practical click here, do this right, this, that sort of thing. But I also know, like the biggest moments for me in my career have have always been sort of emotional ones, emotional roadblocks and getting through those whether it's fear, it's doubt or whatever it is. Those have always been sort of the things that have have been big game changers for me, and I know a lot of people don't actually like to talk about this stuff, But for a lot of people, these are the things that can be most impactful. So I'm not gonna do every episode on this sort of topic, but I want to make sure and include them because I think they're important to get started, then with kind of the first phase in the very first thing that you want to think about and really try to nail down. And it's it's often a lot more difficult than you might think a lot of you might have in your head that this is This is what I do. This is what I am. But I know my own experience. I've kind of been continually taught the lesson of digging, continually digging deeper and deeper. And the more that I've done that, the easier things have become for me and get I'll just use myself as an example here. So my first year of college, all the way back when I was 18 years old, I double majored in communications and secondary education, and it's kind of funny for me to look back on now because I can't tell you why I picked those two things. Communications in particular was not a very popular major, and I personally had never really thought about being a teacher before that. I come from a family of kind of jocks and no construction workers. There's no teachers or no communication majors. None of that. But I just kind of went with my gut and what I felt at the time. And those were the two things that I landed on. Then I switched, You know, I changed schools. I switched majors multiple times a left school. I joined the Army. That's actually where I discovered Web development way back in 4 4005 and kind of got stuck on that and took a long, circuitous route to really just about three months ago. And it was about three months ago that everything kind of came full full circle for me because I have this feeling growing inside of me that I had been trying to suppress. But the more that I tried to push it down, the more it kept bubbling up until I couldn't ignore it anymore. And that feeling was, I'm not a Web developer, which is a hard thing for me to admit, because I've got a lot of I've got a lot invested in the fact of me being a Web developer. A lot of my career I've got a bunch, of course, is heck right here on skill. Share that air. That air course what development coding courses. But you know, I spent the last 15 plus years being and thinking of myself as a Web developer. But the more I've interacted with the rial Web developers around me, some of you guys, some, some, some of the people that I work with and client work and so forth, the more I've done that. And the more I started doing the thing that I actually enjoyed, it became crystal clear to me. I'm just not a Web developer like those people are Web developers, like in their soul and in their bones. I enjoy webbed of all my enjoy building things, and I'll always do it. But it's just not who I am at my core. No, it's not what I think about when I lay down at night and can't sleep because some ideas running through my head. That is never about Web development. And it's not what keeps drawing me back toe work When I'm doing anything else. It's just simply not my passion like that. As much as I want it to wanted it to be. It just isn't so what is teaching, doing this, teaching and talking about communications like I love to talk about how people communicate . If you'll notice with a lot of the stuff that ideo, I sort of couch it in. Okay, here's the sales. Here's how to do a sales letter. Here's how to create content or or that sort of thing. But ultimately it all sort of falls back to how people communicate with one another. When I'm my little brother and I go for a drive or walk or whatever, when you start talking, it always flows back to communications and how people interact. That's just where my mind naturally goes, and in particular, persuasive communication. And that's probably why that when I ever I did sales, I was always good at it because I really geeked out on it. I would spend a lot of time thinking about it. So the part that I I always loved most about that was was teaching my employees how to sell . That was the part that doing the trainings is so forth, watching them flourish, watching them grow. I got more joy out of that than any of my own successes, So the point of all of this is I often no wonder where I had where I would be if I had figured all this out 20 years ago. In a way, I I did, but I just didn't fully accept it. You know, if I had gone with my first intuition, which was right where where I would be. It's kind of hard to imagine for me how much further along I'd be if I had been pursuing my true passion this whole time. And so that's why I'm sitting here telling you all of this, because this is where you need to start building your freelance career. You know, with anything in life, but especially your career and freelancing, you need to start with what it is that you want to do, what it is that your passionate about because you'll waste so much time if you don't on the thing that did it for me, and maybe this will affect you in the same way. But I was watching a Gary Vaynerchuk video. I enjoy his stuff, so I guess I'm a Gary V Homer. But I was watching one of his videos and he was talking. He was talking about social media, but it kind of struck me in a different way and he said, and I'm paraphrasing this but he said This is just what you're going to be doing for the next fist 50 years of your life. So be patient. And he was kind of telling people like a lot of people are trying to go viral and get 10,000 followers in the first month and all this sort of thing. But if you really just step back and look at it and just accept the idea like this is what it's gonna be for the next 50 years of your life, you've got time. Just relax, be patient, be helpful, give value, and it'll it'll come around like it will happen if you just stay sort of consistent within . Just do what you love. And, you know, like I said, it struck me in a different way. The more I thought about that, the kind of the deeper it hit for me, and it made me realize that teaching Web development isn't just isn't what I want to do for the next 50 years. I when I sit down, when I stop and think about that, it doesn't excite me. What does excite me is teaching people have to be persuasive, teaching people how toe build their careers and kind of get through all the stuff that I know that I have gone through with my own journey and so forth and teach people how to get the things they want in life and all the dreams that they believe in and so forth. How to make those things reality. That's what I want to do, whether that's you know, that's practical or not. Whether that's that's something that that you know is is legit or not, whether I have the clout to do that, it it doesn't really ultimately matter to me. In the end, it's just what I want to dio and I really only came to this about three months ago, so it's just what I'm gonna dio and and and so that's Ah, Ever since I've made that decision, things have become very clear for me and everything has gotten a lot easier for me and the results that I've getting I'm getting have started to tick up as a result of that because now I'm doing what it is that I really want to dio And of course, I believe freelancing is the best way for people like me. You know, who maybe didn't have the best childhood, don't have a large support system or a network of family and friends to help them were kind of out on their own, trying to make this happen. I feel like it's the best way. Send the simplest way to break out of a corporate 9 to 5 sort of world and start building something of your own. That's what I did. That's how I was able to do it. And I can, ah, 100% see myself helping people this way for the next 50 years. When I sit down, think about that. It excites me. So the point of telling you that all of that all my entire story, everything is I want you to really think about what it is that you love to do. Don't pigeonhole yourself. Don't think just because you've been doing this thing that that's what you have to do. I want you to sit down and imagine the next 50 years. Imagine sitting down every day for 8 10 12 hours a day, doing this one thing. What is it? What is it that gets you excited? Is that the thing that you're currently doing? Or is it something else entirely for me, it was something else entirely. So if you figure this out now, you're gonna be 20 years ahead of where I'm I was that next up is finding your why. So I got a message the other day from ah, student on skill share named Fawn, and she mentioned her reason for wanting to freelance is kind of part of, ah question so forth. But she had mentioned her reason for wanting to freelance, and it was her daughter who has autism, and she not only wants to build a business that can help her support her daughter, but it's something that her daughter can do later in life, and they can kind of do it together as well. And when she posted about that, those things always just sort of hit me like kids is you know, that's it's the number one most important thing for me, like everything that I do has to do with my own kids and so forth. So I thought I thought about it a lot, and when I think about it, I imagine several years from now as her daughter gets older. Now this mother and her daughter, working together on a daily basis, laughing, crying, struggling, succeeding with doing it all together, building something for both of them. So try to imagine that and then ask yourself, Can you even begin to imagine how hard that mom would fight for her child? It's immeasurable. I don't think you can even put it in tow, measurement or words. Now compare that to somebody who's who has some sort of fate. Vague goal, like I want to be a millionaire Who do you think is going to fight harder and persist? More keep going when things get tough, work longer hours, not take no for an answer. The mom fighting for her daughter and their future together, or the person chasing a bunch of pieces of paper. To me, that's the importance of finding your why. It's what gives you the energy to persist. Now that doesn't mean that you sort of a shoe money altogether, right. I'm not one of those people that just thinks money is the root of all evil, but I do think you have to put it in its proper context. money is a means to an end. It's the ends that matter, not the means to getting there, so it plays an important role. But it cannot be the end of itself if it is. If that's something that you're focused on, if that's what you think that you want, you're always gonna fall short and I'm I can say this sort of unashamedly, I guarantee you money is not your end goal. There's something deeper. You're just struggling to figure out what it is or may be afraid. T really admit it. Whatever it is, that's not the end goal. So you have to go deeper. And like I said, you might again. Well, why? Why do I have to go deeper? You have to think about why do you want that money? What is your deeper purpose? What's deriving you? What vision do you have for your future? Who else will that a vision effect and what those people mean to you? There is always something deeper. You just have to find it, get clear on it and latch onto it. And this is sort of the next important step in your career, because without it you just you're not gonna be able to put in the work that you need in order to be successful. And like I said for me, I really relate to fawn story because my kids are my primary motivation, and it's not just because the, you know that's not some random thing. It goes back to how I grew up going through the things that I went through, like my mission in life is my kids will never experience that. And I know there's something to be said for kids going through adversity. And maybe I wouldn't be as driven as I am today. Had I not gone through that and so forth, I get all that. I don't care because I went through it was absolutely miserable, and I'll find some other way toe help my kids to be motivated or, you know, like it's just it's not something I'm going to allow toe happen and that's what drives me. So that's why I I can get up at 4 35 in the morning, every morning, even though career wise, I don't necessarily need to like I'm constantly pushing Mawr and Mawr and more because I'm never I know my dad had a successful business. He had a successful career and then got into a car accident when he was 38. I'm 38 today. Well, not today's on my birthday, but I'm 38 now. So for all intents and purposes, my dad probably could have assumed that his life was made. He had a successful, very successful business. Things were going well. Life was sort of on autopilot, and then he got into a car wreck and it all fell apart. So and at the same age I am now, So I just understand that it can go away at any moment. And so I'm constantly driving and pushing and thinking of things that I could do to make sure if something ever happens to me that these things are in place, like there's all sorts of things, but that's what drives me. That's what motivates me. And when people tell me, Oh, you shouldn't be doing this, sir, Why are you doing that? Or they want to hate on something I put out or whatever. None of it. It all pales in comparison to my kids, the life that I'm trying to give them what I'm trying to to do for them and nobody can dissuade me. Nobody can discourage me. Nobody can stop me. It doesn't matter what anybody says. Like I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because it's for them. Not for a bunch of pieces of paper, for for money, I would have given up years ago. So again, this is really the next important phase. Because when you find this coupled with you, couple that with what you love to do and you you bring in this hole deeper purpose and why like finding motivation is simple. It's right there in front of you all the time. You love doing what you're doing. You have this deeper motivation pushing you and like you can just keep going and going and going. So again, really take some time to think about this. Go beyond okay? Yes, we all want to make money. But why? What is the deeper purpose and get clear on that? Because that's gonna be a really important stepping stone into the next thing that we're gonna be talking about, which is finding your tribe. There's just really great video from this guy named Simon Senate. You may have heard of him. He's kind of got some some videos that air popular used on some Ted talks and so forth. But this particular one eyes about finding your why, and it's finding your y as a company and in it. One of the things he says is that people buy from other people who believe the same things as them, and he uses Apple is an example. And keep in mind this Ted talk was in in 2009 which is around that time, you know, Apple was pretty much dominating everything. So he was talking about Apple, and he was talking about how Apple's marketing is different than a lot of its competitors. So when they do their their advertising and so forth, they don't just coldly list the features and benefits of the product products, like a lot of a lot of computer and phone companies, do they first talk about their why what they believe as a company. And so he sums it up. As again for Apple. We believe in challenging the status quo. Everything we do is about challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently, so the way that we challenge the status quo and think differently is to make our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We happen to make computers now. Of course, you can debate whether or not they actually live up to this, especially to this day. But the point is that the way they sell their products and services is by starting with their why, why they exist as a company, what's driving them. And that helps them to connect emotionally with others who think like they dio and people buy their products not because necessarily because it's a superior product because as Mawr ram or a faster process or more storage space. I mean, most of the people that I know who have Apple products don't even really think about those things. If you ask them about that on their phone, they probably wouldn't even necessarily know. Whereas when you look in the computer space, especially around that time, like it was all about the processor speed, how much ram you again and so forth? And here Apple is selling their products, really not even talking a whole ton about those things they would they would information was there, But that wasn't the sort of the core marketing message of their ads and so forth. And so they were just doing things completely different. And again, people didn't buy their products because of those things. They bought it because they connect with what the company believes, because they believe those same things. And owning an Apple product was one way that they could show who they are to others. So that was kind of the whole point of his talk and the importance of finding your why and using your wise a company to connect emotionally with your your customers. So let me give you another example, and I have sort of alluded to this in some of the earlier episode. But my tribe is people who are in a similar situation to what I was so like. I've sort of talk about with my own life, but maybe it's people who maybe had a rough childhood or early adulthood. They don't necessarily have a big support system, a bunch of supportive family and friends or college buddies or that sort of thing, and they're kind of on their own to make their life happen. But deep down they believe that they are meant for Mawr that they're destined for something greater. This has been one of the things that's been a core sort of driving force in my life. When I was 21 I basically had a successful career. I had been promoted to sales manager. I was doing very well as a sales manager. I was sort of on the fast track toe, not only managing my own store, but managing a very large store would have been a six figure income doing that, probably within the next 2 to 3 years. I probably would have been able to do that depending, but like I had that. But what I was doing was selling shoes, and I'm not ragging on the people that do that, whatever. But for me, I felt like there was mawr toe what I could give the world than that. I was really good at it. But at the end of the day I was just selling shoes and so I believe that I was destined for something greater right or wrong. That's what I believed, and so the people in that sort of same situation situation who believe that same thing about them That's my tribe because that's me now, despite how I grew up in all the things that were stacked against me, I always believed that I was destined for more, that I could achieve something greater. And I fought my entire life to make it happen. And where I'm at now, it has exceeded my wildest dreams as a kid. And so now what I want to do is I want to help others in the same boat do the same thing. So when you sit back and think about that, what do you think is more powerful, that emotional connection between me and the people who can relate to what I just said? Who? When I'm saying that they kind of start to tingle and their emotions start to flare up and so forth, that emotional connection between me and those people are just a bowl of the list of products and features. What's a more powerful, persuasive tool? What's a more powerful connection? And just to be clear? Like I said, with Apple, you do get into that list and features and benefits. You have to tell people what your product or service does and how it will benefit people. But that's not where you start. You start by connecting with people on emotional level. So what I want you to do is to just take some time and think about the kind of people at her kindred spirits the people who believe the same things is you and that you feel naturally inspired to help. That is your tribe in your source of of your ideal clients and the rest take her will take care of itself. When you get this right, the thing about freelancing in business is you. You could choose whatever it is that you want to dio. So you don't have to pigeonhole yourself in tow doing something that you don't want to do or with people that you don't want to work with or people that don't necessarily inspire you. All I'm saying is, of all the things that you can do that are out there, why not do the thing and work with the people that you feel that connection with that you feel driven toe help because you can do whatever you want, So why not do that? That's going to give you more motivation, mawr inspiration and drive you And despite what a lot of people might think that like poo poo on these ideas, well, you've got to focus on the money in this, that or the other. But the way the world is today, in the Internet and so forth, you can make money at just about anything, right? There's a group of people out there that that is probably large enough toe whatever it is that you want to do to sustain your business and in your income goals and so forth. So again, with all that in mind, why not choose the people that you have that that air kindred spirits that you feel that connection to and allow yourself to be naturally motivated and just going back to these 1st 3 parts? Cause I think they're so important again. When you look at you doing what you love to do your you have a deeper purpose and sense of why and you are connecting and working and helping people that you truly care about that are kindred spirits, that you're driven toe help when we talk about this idea of motivation and perseverance and persistence. That's the that's the stuff of persistence. That's those are the ingredients that lead to being driven and being driven in your career . Like all the practical stuff, all the click here do this. That or the other like that's all good. But if you're driven like you, you power. It's way more important your power through all that. You're gonna figure that stuff out like being driven is the core piece on. Once you have that down, everything else sort of falls into place. Okay, Now is where we can get a little bit more practical. And we could take everything that we've done up to this point kind of put it into something that makes a little more sort of immediate practical sense. And that is when we're talking about this this tribe of people that were going to help, it's how you're going to help them. So now we can kind of get into the what, and this is kind of a magical combination of knowing your tribe really well of it being people again, This why it's important. It's people that you understand at a fundamental level because you believe the same things . You value the same thing, so you really get them at that fund a little fundamental level. And so, you know, your tribe, and you also know what they're trying to do. You know, the problems that you're that they're facing, and you can kind of figure out how what you do connects with that so that you can help them get what they're after. So from this perspective, you're not just a graphic designer, okay? You're helping seen but single moms to create a professional brand through graphic design so they can make more in their business and have more free time to spend with their kids. So do you see the difference between between those two things with the former, you just sort of a service provider? You're doing what thousands of hundreds of thousands of people out there can do. And you're just one among many. But with the ladder, you're a friend. You're a kindred spirit who truly gets your client, and you're helping them to execute on the single most important thing they're doing in their life. Right? So you're you're sort of a co conspirator in helping them to make their dreams come true. Who do you think they're gonna have more loyalty to? The person who coldly list features and benefits and provides the service and says, Thank you and see a C on your way, or the person who, like, truly understands them and truly gets them and so forth. And I know what a lot of you are thinking. For a lot of people, this is scary to be vulnerable on emotional like this. And you're thinking some of you are thinking, Well, can I get by without doing this? Can I just You know, there's lots of people who provide services on and so forth, and the answer is, yes, you can, right? You're gonna have to be a lot better at what you dio right so that you can really show that you're gonna have to understand that you won't gent engender a ton of loyalty and you're probably just not going to do is well and be a successful is. You could be if you were to do this other stuff. And so again, my thing is not to teach you how to get by like I'm calling you to be, as at the absolute best you can be to show you how to be great. Now, if you decide on your own that you want some different version of that. No judgment. Like do your thing. This is your life, your business. Do what you want, OK, I totally get that. But I'm gonna show you how to be great, how to go to the highest level and to push towards that highest level. That's sort of my job. It's your job to then figure out how you want to implement that. But I'm just saying, if you if you take this route, this is how you're gonna gender deep loyalty. This is how you're going to get people who come back to again and again and again the people who really don't care what you charge, who like Apple Products. I don't really care about the features and benefits and how much processor, speed and ram and all that sort of thing right there buying your products and services. They're working with you because of who you are, of how you get them because you're kindred spirits. That's where the loyalty comes from. So again. Do what you want with that, but that's how you get to that next level on be drawn only driven, but also have clients you're working with who who just are. They're downright loyal and and won't leave you because you really get them on a fundamental level. So again, that's how you get loyalty, which leads a long term clients, which then ultimately helps you to execute on your dreams, your why and all the things that you want. And so it's on that foundation. Then all the whole entire point of this again, I'll I know it's a lot of emotional, intangible sort of stuff when you step back and look at all of that. That's the foundation on what you can build your business on. That's when, then the practical stuff, the click here do this. That sort of stuff has life to it has energy to it. It's not just from both ends. It's not just you, coldly sort of stepping through these things, you know, and it's also on the other end. The things that you're saying aren't just sort of they're hitting people on it's cold features and there's life in it. You're doing it with a purpose. They're reading it, they're connecting with it there, resonating with it, and that's how you again, how you really That's the foundation of a truly great successful business that really helps people. And I think this is one of the things that you know. It was Maybe to throw out here is it doesn't necessarily mean that you're always going to make the most money. I do think that for most people, you probably will make more money going this route. But you are going to impact the most people. And for me, the older I get that that has more and more importance in my life like legacy becomes more and more important again. Those two things often go hand in hand impact and money. So it's not like you're gonna be broke but helping thousands of people. But there's more to it than money. There's more to it than than sort of the material stuff, and I don't want to get to woo on you. But just how you create a business that you really care about their you're really invested in that you're proud of and also you're really successful doing it. So again, my job to tell you this stuff, your job to take it, how you want implemented and use it, how you want But to me, that's the foundation of a business that's driven that has purpose, that that really can't fail because you're so driven and so motivated and so in touch with the people that you're trying to help, that you're gonna figure it out. You're going to make the right steps eventually, and it's gonna happen. So that's the episode for this week again. Like I've said, take all that for for how you want implement that, how how you would like, Um and hopefully that gives you some sense of kind of the emotional aspects and some of the things that you want to do in order to build a business that's driven, that you're motivated to be a part event. Ultimately, that makes you happy. I was like, That's the point, right? So, again, that's episode for this week. Thanks for watching. We'll talk to next time 16. BONUS: How to Pick a Profitable Freelance Niche: When you decide to start freelancing, the very first thing you need to do is figure out your niche. If you're like I was 15 years ago, you'll have no idea what I met mean by that. What the world is a niche? Why do I need one? Can I just wing it, though there's some of the common questions that I get, so that's what we're gonna tackle in this article. By the time you're done, you'll know what in niches, why it's critical to your success and freelancing, and you'll have yours all picked out and ready to move on to the next step. So specifically, What we're gonna cover is what in it is why you need a niche, the three criteria for a perfect niche, how to find your niche. And then I'm gonna give you some eye opening and, frankly, weird example. Which is that a rial to show you the kind of things and help you toe, bring storm and get ideas and so forth. So if you're ready for all that, let's go ahead and dig in. So let's start with what a niche is and will use Google's deputy definition here and specifically, we're looking at kind of the 2nd 1 here and this one down here, and we'll start with both of these A relevant, but we'll start with the 2nd 1 So a niche is denoting or relating to products, services or interests that peel appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. I really want to focus in on this small, specialized section of the population. So let's say you're a Web developer now. I use the words market or industry one work when referring to terms like Web development as a whole, because Web development is a broad activity that a compass encompasses a lot of things. So within that you could be a WordPress developer and APP developer. You could specialize in no Js or PHP. So if we were to break this down, I made this little graphic that looks like this. It would look something like this. So you have your market or industry up here, which is what development. And then within that you have little niches within sight inside of that, like WordPress and Shopify templates and so forth. That's the basic ideal. Now the tricky part here is there are no hard, fast rule separating ah, market from a niche. So, for example, PHP could potentially be considered ah, market. It's still a broad concept. In fact, PHP would encompass WordPress woo commerce landing pages, eso a number of these in here. PHP would encompass that, since all of those things are or could be built using PHP. So the way to think about this and I made another little graphic to represent this The way to think about it is as a hierarchy. So you have Web development on top. You have PHP within that within PHP, you have WordPress within WordPress tree of WordPress plug ins within where press plug ins . You have WordPress e commerce plug ins and then you specifically have something like woo commerce. So this is essentially when we talk about niche ing down, this is sort of what we're talking about. We're getting mawr and more specific as we go down this little hierarchy here. So one last example toe to take this home. So let's take the idea fitness again. The word fitness is abroad. More market or industry. Within that you could be a bodybuilder, a runner. You could be on a key toe diet on a vegan and on a vegan diet, trying to lose weight, trying to gain way you could be an athlete and on and on and on, you could break it down in 1000 different ways. Important thing here is understanding how your niche effects. Everything you're going to do is a freelancer. If you want to be a fitness freelancer. Okay, that's great. But what kind of fitness are you helping bodybuilders or you helping vegans? Are you helping people lose weight or you helping people build muscle mass? You have to decide fitness is too broad of a topic toe offer services in for every possible segment that exists. And people aren't going to believe that you can be an expert in marathon running and building muscle mass. Or at the very least, they're gonna believe someone who focuses solely on marathoning is more of an expert than you who happens to do both. So by trying to appeal to everybody, you end up appealing to nobody. No, that's getting a little bit into the next section a bit, so let's just go ahead and dive into that. Why do you need a niche Why's it so critical for freelancing? And being successful is a freelancer. The bottom line is, is just gonna make your life 1000 times easier and can be a lot easier for you to be successful as a freelancer. Why? Well, this is where we need to have the specialization talks, the specialization talking. It's you probably heard the saying Jack of all trades, Master of none. And as I'm sort of researching this, I I see there's been a little bit of pushback on this idea idea recently. A lot. People asking, Why can't you be a jack of all trades? And I want to be very clear about what I'm saying. You might not believe that old saying. You might believe that you can be a jack of all trades, and that's great. I might even agree with you in some respects, but most people don't. So when I say to specialize, I'm not saying you should never learn another skill or pursue other interests or even off offer other services. At some point, I'm saying, purely from a marketings perspective that specialists win. Why is that? Because specialists are more believable. Like I said, most people will not believe that you can be a master at PHP node Ruby, go building membership sites, building e commerce sites, building landing pages. You might think you can do all the things, those things, and you might even see how they could be inter related in some ways. But most people don't. They just don't believe that you could be a master all those things. So when you specialize, when you tell people I'm not necessarily great at these things. But I am great at this one thing, you gain instant credibility. So one example that I like to use is imagine that you have a clock pipe in your house that you can't fix. Who do you call? The majority of people will call a plumber, even though most handyman conduce the same job. So that's the idea when when you have a specific problem, most people are gonna call someone who solves that specific problem. And so you specialists just ultimately end up ah being more believable than someone who tries to position themselves as good at a bunch of different things. Specialists are also value. More often. Specialists get asked to do things that the generalised can't. So for me, mostly clients I built membership sites for they have their own in house developers. So why would they hire me? Was because this was the one thing that I do. This is what I specialized in so I could build their membership site faster. I knew how to set up all the technology without having to figure it out and read a bunch of technology documentation. I knew what pages they did and didn't need, and I knew about marketing, membership sites, all of that stuff. And so because I could do all of that stuff, I could do it faster. I already knew how to do it. I was simply more valued and appreciated by those clients in that specific thing than their general Web developer was. That doesn't mean that their their general Web developer didn't know more than me wasn't better than me and a lot of other things and that they didn't value that person. But because I could do this one thing in that area, I was valued more, and that just tends to be what happens. So as a result of that, all those all those things that I just mentioned that specialists tend Teoh doom or and and get paid more. So if we look at our example of a plumber and a handyman, so a plumber. This is from home advisor dot com. You can see the cost of a plumber can range from 175 to 4 50 For a typical job. They ranged from 45 to 200 average flat rate, maybe around $300. So I generally focus in on this 45 to 200 if we take that same idea and we look at a handyman again Home Advisor So it's the same site. Usually charge around 60 to 65. Ah, depending on where you live, it could be 55 to 75 about the highest it gets is 125. So that court sort of fits in with our idea that a specialist in general will make more than a generalised, and this gives you sort of some data toe. Look at that. Now, if you're a new freelancer, you can take all of this and you can multiply. Multiply it by 100. The way to break into an industry when your new is to out specialize the existing providers . So if there a bodybuilding coach which is fairly specific in and of itself, you be a chest mush muscle specialists. So you're focusing in on one specific group. So people who really want to focus on that they'll be more likely to go to you over just a general bodybuilding coach, because you've positioned yourself with someone who does Onley that. So when we talk about Picking and Mitch, what we're really talking about is specializing thes two ideas are intertwined. In fact, you might hear me or others use the phrase niche down, and I sort of referenced this earlier. What we're really saying is B'more of a specialist specialized even further, and that's just gonna make your freelancing career a lot easier. So hopefully at this point I've convinced you of the need for finding a specific niche. Now let's get in to how to actually do it. Now that you know you need a niche, what does a good niche look like? How do you even know when you've got it right? And I've got three criteria that I look at whenever I analyzing it, So it's you what and who. So we'll take a look at each, so we'll start off with what you want, and we're gonna go back to our definition of niche. And now we're going to look at this definition here, the one I mentioned earlier and in particular, the way it's used in a sentence. So he is now partner at a leading law firm and feels like he has found his niche. You probably heard this term before, and so it's not. We're not using one or the other niche talking about in an appear marketing sense and also niche used in this way, talking more about what you're meant to do in that sort of thing, right that we're using both. So when we talk about this one, we're talking about hit, you know your place in life, what you're meant to do, your passion, your destiny, these air all the different ways that we describe the idea. But it's critical. It's justice. Critical is the other one where we talk about the specialized section of the population, and I know that you'll have people who tell you that this doesn't matter, that you should focus on what makes the most money or what's most practical, practical. And I'm just gonna come out and say that they're just wrong. And if you actually look, most of them don't even follow their own advice. That's the reality. There's a ton of things that you're gonna have to do to start and run a freelance business , especially at first. There's gonna be lots of long nights. Lots of hard work. Doubts, fears, insecurities. Really. You're staring at a mountain that you'll spend the rest of your life climbing. So what's at the top better be worth it. Otherwise, you're just going to give up a some point, so you have to start with what it is that you want to. Dio doesn't have to be specific. In fact, it really shouldn't be. Here's where getting you can sort of get away with, and you should be saying something general like Web development of graphic design. That's for you. That's what you will like to do on a daily basis. The big thing here is to imagine the next 50 years of your life. Imagine doing this activity day in and day out for 12 to 16 hours per day. Does that excite you Or does it sound awful? That's how you know if we excite you, you know you found your niche. If it doesn't, then you need to keep looking. So the big thing here is just to make sure and follow your instincts. So that's the you. Next is what they want now. This might seem obvious, but it's more nuanced than what most people think. The big idea here is. Most clients do not want a service. So let's say your photographer. Most of your clients aren't gonna want photography in that general sense. They want wedding photos or senior pictures. That's why it's no surprise. You can look at a lot of wedding sites and they're just like this. They list wedding photos or senior pictures on their sites because they want to make sure potential clients see that. Yes, I do do wedding photos, and they know that's important because they know what the majority of work that they get is . So again, this is just another clear sign that that people really don't want a service. They want an end result. Let me give you another example. If you're a Web developer, your clients don't want Web development. They want a website or a landing page. If you're a fitness coach, your clients don't want fitness. They want big muscles or ripped abs or longer life span, etcetera. The point is, clients think in end results, not services. So when you're thinking about what services you could offer and how to specialize and Mitch down and all the things that we've talked about thinking and results think of your services , morass products. Now I'm gonna show you how to do all of that in the next section. But first, let me finish up with the final point here, which is the final criteria for a perfect Mitch is who they are. So who are you providing the service? For now, you might think, Well, everybody right, and you can do that. But again, clients is getting clients is going to be harder, and you'll make less. You won't be appreciated. All the rules that we talked about with specialization, they still apply. So what do I mean by who? Let's say I decide to be a fitness coach. My what is specializing in running? Let's let's imagine for a second I'm a marathoner. I'm definitely not But let's imagine. I've competed and done well in several long distance running competitions, and I can help a lot of people with what I know. Well, there's all types of different people who run might have marathoners like yourself who want to compete. You might have high school athletes looking to get into college or go to the Olympics. You might have single moms you might have over the weight. Dad's trying to lose weight, and we could go on and on with different examples. You'll see a good example of that. Right here I turn fat Dad's into fit that this is someone who is specifically targeting overweight Dad's with their service. So if you look at this, all of these people, they want and need different things marathoners, they're gonna want more advanced training, right? They already run a lot, but they're gonna want some sort of edge to get to that next level. Maybe you can give that to them. Maybe, maybe not. But that's what they're gonna want someone who's overweight like an overweight dad. However, their problem probably just starting out, so they need to eased into it, and they may be care more about losing weight than winning a competition, so their goals are different. What they need are different. If you look at single moms now, Ah, it's no coincidence that when I do fitness coach for single moms, you'll see here how to squeeze fitness into a busy, life fitting fitting fitness into your life when you're a single parent. How a single busy mom exercise for single moms with no spare time, etcetera, right? She's busy, got work, got kids. She wants to stay healthy and look good, but not spend hours at the gym. So what? Her her criteria, her needs her once are different than the marathon, or which may be different from the overweight dad. So trying to develop a service package and marketing messages and all the things you got to do to sell your services tried to trying to do that in a way that appeals to all these different people. It's impossible, and again by trying to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. So it's important to know who your services are catered towards. Makes it easier for you to market, get hired and deliver for those clients. You also gain deep loyalty from these clients because they appreciate you catering specifically to them. So those are the three criteria, and now we know what we're after. We know what boxes we need to check. Now, it's just a matter of going to find it. By the way, if your brand to brand new to freelancing and you're going through this and you're a little bit confused on how to get started, what steps to take what you're gonna be doing after that, then considered taking Look at my Beginner's Guide to Freelance course right here on skill share. It shows you what those steps are. The steps that you need to take how to start and grow your freelance business, how to start getting clients right from the beginning. And again, you can access it right here on skill chair. Just go to my profile. You'll see the Beginner's guide to freelance there. Check that out. That will give me an idea what to do after this. All right, so let's talk about how to find your niche. So here we're going to do three things. We're going to use data to brainstorm niche ideas. We're going to check the viability of the Prophet bill, profitability of each idea. And then we're just going to simply decide on a niche. Now the critical mistake. This is a critical mistake here that a lot of freelancers make. They get everything that I've set up to this point, all the criteria and why it's important specialization. But then, oftentimes just start thinking up niche ideas and guessing, and that's not how we're going to do it. Wouldn't you rather know for sure that your niche idea is proper profitable, that it's something that people actually want? Well, that's what we're going to do, and we're going to do that by heading over to Fiverr. So I know immediately fiber takes some heat because of its pricing. But that was sort of intentional on their part, their strategy to break in into, ah, market with some dominant players, and it worked. And now you're seeing them expand and prices are starting to rise, and so forth me might even take a lesson from that from your own approach. But the big thing for us is how they categorize and product ties their services. It's perfect for figuring out what niches in our particular market are hot. So again we head on over to fiber if you haven't. And let's just take a look at their top menu here and we'll do this. Graphics and design one here Now, right away, you're going to see things like logo design. You'll see business cards and stationery. Ah, Flyers, T shirts and merchandise. Photo shop editing. There's a number of different sort of niches under graphic and design that you're going to immediately see here. That can give you some ideas for what your niche might be, or some niches that you could could bring. Storm your Web developer. We had over here under programming and tech again some of the ones I mentioned earlier. So WordPress mobile, APS e commerce. The thing to keep in mind is they wouldn't put these in their menu if they didn't know that they were popular services. You could take junior development, for example. I mean, that's a thing. People run Juma sites and developers build them as a freelance Web developer. Get people asking me about it and so forth, but you'll notice it's nowhere on here. There's probably some stuff under website builders in CMS, but I would doubt that there's a ton of gigs for it now. That doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't do junior development. But it's just important to know how popular something is. There isn't, and this kind of just gives us the answer. They're telling us what's popular by what they're putting in the menu here. So the thing to do is figure out where you fall on this menu and just go through it and write down the ideas that appeal to you. Maybe you want to do logo designing for your graphic designer. Maybe you want to do portrait's and character characters, etcetera. So just go through here and right down. Some ideas were just brainstorming here. Nothing set in stone. So we're just writing down ideas, things that appeal of us, that 50 year vision. Oh, I could do that for the next 50 years, that sort of thing. All right, so the next thing that we want to do is we want to click on a specific server, so I'm gonna go into programming and tech and click on WordPress. I have this up already, just for to make this a little bit quicker and then you want to change this sort by option here to best selling. So what this is showing us is showing us the best selling gigs under the subcategory. So under the category programming the in tech and then under WordPress. So we're now seeing what it is that people are what services? People are actually buying real world data. So this is very, very valuable. I want you to just look at what this is showing us, right? Uh, you know, if you remember our hierarchy before this is exactly that. But it's driven by actual revenue revenue numbers. And look at some of these niches. WordPress customization complete website in Nevada WordPress theme. That's a very specific fix. WordPress CSS 1000 plus people have have taken him up on that WordPress custom is ations a business website. Ah, that's a sort of general general responsive WordPress website with beaver builder, which is a very specific plug in. So my guess is if you're in this space at all, or know anything about any of this, you might not have thought that of a couple of these, even thought they were a thing, let alone those being one of the best. Some of the more best selling products here on fiber of the Avada theme in particular, is one that stands out to me. That's something I never would've guessed Beaver Bowlers a little bit more understandable. But again, some of these are just things I never would have thought thought off. If we scroll down a little bit, then you can see this one right here that I want to point out. So says I will do WordPress speed optimization with G T metrics. Now that's very specific. Is WordPress its speed optimization and then its speed optimization, according to a specific site that does that kind of analysis. GT metrics And you see, it starts at $45 he sold over 1000 of these. So doing the math. That's a minimum of $45,000 he's done. He's made doing this one very specific thing. So if that doesn't open your eyes to what's possible and the power of being specific, and I guess I'm not sure what will. But again, the idea here is to go through this list and just look at the numbers. Look at the price points. Look at the different things that people are offering and how many people are taking him up on those things and just get ideas, you know, pick things out that appeal to you and just make a list of all the different niche services you could offer. Like I said, nothing's been decided. Nothing set in stone were just brainstorming ideas. So the thing to do at this point is go and make that list. Really, Before you move on with anything else, we're gonna move on to checking the viability. But you really want to go on, make that list using fiber first. All right, now that we've got our list, what we want to do next is we want to further authenticate the viability, and we're going to use up work to do that. So fibers one place. It's a very large one of the larger freelancing platforms. Up work is probably the largest, or at least up there in terms of its size as well. So if you're finding something that is doing well on both of these platforms, then there's that's probably a good sign that this is something that's viable. Now. You know you can forget for a second. Your hate for up work. If you hate up work or you never plan on freelancing on there, that really doesn't matter for what we're doing here were simply using it as a research tool because it's the largest freelancing platform out right now. There's thousands of new jobs posted to it every day, and we can look again at some real world data to see if our niches market viable. So if you don't have an up work account, go ahead and create one. You want a freelance. You want a freelancer profiles that we can look up jobs and we're just simply just going to do searches for our niches. So you want to start with the list you just created, and you're going to search them one by one on up work so we can take some of the examples that we found here. So I pulled up WordPress speed optimization. This is what you see at this particular time. No, as obscure is, this niche might sound. There's 176 jobs 176 people that are looking for that kind of thing on up work right now. And if you notice the quality of the two clients on the site? Here. Payment verified. One K plus spent payment verified to K plus meant payment. Verified. 20 K plus spent no payment Verified. 300 Spence. Not as necessarily Good. But you're seeing that there are some clients on here who spent some money on the site. Um, and and so you're getting ah, you're getting some quality projects. Five star ratings for the clients, etcetera. So, again, this was our most obscure niche that over on up work, In my opinion, it was We're not doing wordpress. Specifically, we're not doing anything like will commerce. We'll talk about that later. But this is wordpress speed optimization, so it's very, very specific. Okay, now let's take a look at another one called WordPress security. So this one currently has two returned 57 jobs, and I'm just sort of pointing out that this is the first way that you evaluate market viability. You look at the numbers here it's, ah, 176 jobs. Here it's 357. If we did for ah, General search for WordPress would be thousands. But just to see what kind of results come up and so that's the first criteria. But there are two others, and I'm gonna talk about that specifically with this search here in a second. But just to lay them out for you, The three criteria that I look at our number of jobs, the quality and relevance of the jobs and then the quality of the clients. And so we've already talked about number of jobs that's pretty self explanatory. Generally, more is going to be better. But you also want to look at how relevant they are and how good of projects they are. So let's talk specifically about this WordPress Security was 357 jobs posted here. But if you look at, uh, if you look at these, they're really not about WordPress security. CMS developer developer needed for building a website. This one is cleaning malware from website, so there's one senior server, admin and WordPress manager. It's a feature job that kind of just throw those in there, but that's really not I mean, they're securing might be implied in that, but it's not specific to that. Migrate existing work WordPress multi site to inert new server instant like it has nothing to do with WordPress security specifically. So this is a negative sign in terms of market viability. If you do a search and most of the jobs that come up are not related to that search like upwards going to try and show you things. So if you find find jobs that are not very related to that search, that's a negative sign in terms of market viability. Now compare that to this search here, which is woo commerce. You can see first off a lot more jobs, but if we start looking at thes okay, woo commerce. This is e commerce development. But his tag woo commerce at two had building to our website, and it's tagged woo Commerce Building AECOM a complete e commerce platform and is tagged woo Commerce phone case site builder. So they're looking for an e commerce site and his tag work will commerce, although they did tag some of these other ones. Woo commerce expert um, this one's a little bit off Fix fix is to learn Dash membership site, but they do put woo commerce in the description, so there must be something with that payment error. And here's Woo commerce in a great party booking function. Tag woo commerce Will commerce will cover like you get the idea. Not everyone's perfectly relevant, but there's certainly a lot more relevant than what we saw when we did WordPress security. And like I said, there's 1575 jobs here, so that's a sign of a more healthy niche. So that's the kind of thing that you're working for on. That's one way to assess the quality of jobs in the niche. But that's not also not the only way, another way to do it or to sort of deepen the way we analyze the particular niches to use filters. So here I'm gonna come in. I'm just gonna turn on intermediate and expert here. I'm gonna turn on payment verified, and then I'll just do one K and five k here. So essentially what we're doing here is we're filtering for jobs where the client has marked experience level there after as intermediate and expert. This is important because when they fill out the job, they're given these three choices, and they're sort of shown price ranges for this particular this particular niche, what it's gonna be and So if they're selecting expert, they're seeing a higher price range. So clients who have selected this go in knowing they're gonna pay more, and they specifically selected that option. So this gives us an idea of clients that are willing to pay mawr for the freelancer they hire. Here's their payment method is verified. This is important because it means that they've kind of actually done all the steps they need to do on their end. And then just the budget Here, one K 25 K 5 K. Plus, It gives us an idea of of the budgeting here. And so you can see we have 571 jobs that were found. So roughly 1/3 of the jobs that were found are are meeting the criteria that we've set here upward does do a little bit of fudging here. So you see here, this one actually is not a fixed price project. It's six months, 30 plus hours a week for those six months. So we're up work is kind of assuming like you're gonna make at least one K from that particular job. You know, if there, especially if the experience rate is intermediate or expert. It's not. The budget isn't set necessarily at one k 25 K but they're kind of making exemption that you're gonna make that if you're working that many hours for that many months. So it's a little bit of fudging, but it is. It does sort of make sense. So again, the fact that a full third of these fit the criteria that we just said is a good is a good sign. That means there's a decent number off of high paying jobs in this niche. Now, if we take that same thing and we go back to WordPress security here and we'll do intermediate expert payment verified one K five k, and we'll filter for that. Now we see there's 100 49 jobs that show up, which is fine. It seems like, Oh, there's a lot more higher percentage, But again we run into the same problem. They're not related to WordPress security. So core PHP senior server and especially the fact that you're getting interesting and featured jobs like upward is just throwing stuff at the search to see what sticks. This is them experimenting. Essentially, that's a bad sign. It means there's not a lot of good jobs here. So lay Ravel level developer needed fixed. No Js site needs sales reps for Web hosting company I mean, none of these air related to WordPress security, and there's a ton of feature jobs in here. So that gives you some sense that there was one job we found on the other search. And then when we filtered for sort of standard filters to make sure we're gonna make some decent money off the project that one got, that one got removed. And then there's nothing on this search that fits those criteria. That is a clear sign of a niche that is not market viable. So that's how you could tell the difference between one that is and one that is. And of course, there's greater. There's gonna be ones in between. So again, that's how to assess the quality of the projects. And then the last thing that we want to look at, as I mentioned is look at client quality and you've sort of already seen this a little bit . As we've gone through this, it's this part right here, and we kind of filtered for it. Payment verified. Five star rating. 80 K plus spent payment Verified. Five star rating. 20 K plus spent etcetera, etcetera. So as you're going through and doing this and let's just say go back to Ah woo commerce here. So as you're going through this, you know, I grew 571 jobs. Another step that you can take after you've done these filters is go. OK, let's look at these clients. 10-K plus meant 10-K plus spent 80 K plus spent 100 spent five star rating payment verified 10-K plus spent six K 20 k 40 k 40 k 00 Well, there's one of those, and sometimes what will happen is you'll do a search and the jobs will be relevant so it won't be like we're per security. Where they're not relevant, they'll be relevant. But when you start looking at the clients, you'll see it's zero payments not verified. Zero payments Not verified. Four. Star rating. Etcetera. Right, so that just gives you another way to assess the market to look at OK, it's got a lot of jobs, is got. It's got a lot of high quality jobs within my budget and so forth. But what about the clients? Are the clients spend actually spending money on the say and so forth? Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't bid on jobs where the client hasn't spent any money on the site. Sometimes new clients can be clients that end up being lifetime clients and so forth. But generally speaking, if you if you're gonna get hired, you know the odds are going to be in your favor If you are getting work from someone who has already spent $10,000 on the site, so you're probably gonna bid on that job first. And then if you don't get that job, that's when you can look at the That's when you can look at the job where the client hasn't hired anybody yet. So it's just about a hierarchy of how how you been on these particular jobs. But again, we're just doing research here, and this is another way to do that. One other search weaken do here just kind of give you another example is if we do ruby on rails, you're going to see here zero span payment. Unverifiable payment on verified. Zero spent payment verified. Zero spent these air, the top, these air, the jobs that are showing up. First we look this assorted by newest, but you can see there's a number of these in here. $10 spent the payments verified, so you get the idea of the difference, whereas in something like Woo commerce when you scroll through, you might see a lot of payment verified. People who spent money on the side have five star ratings, whereas one like this where there's a lot of payment on verified, no ratings, no money spent, etcetera. That helps you see the difference in terms of the client between the two different niches. So that's the process. You essentially go through each one in your niche ideas, and you do this analysis and then figure out which niches are more viable. It does not mean again that you need to pick. You. Just find the votes viable one and it's, ah, a mathematical equation, and you figure out the most vile one. It's You don't have to do that. You can do it you want. I mean, there's something to be said for picking and Mitch that maybe you're more interested in. Maybe it's a little bit less viable, but you're more interested in a lot of times. The fact that you're interested in it will be the thing that sort of carries you through, and it's viable enough that you'll be fine. So it's not a mathematical equation. But the point is you want to at least know what you're getting into. A moderate leave. Like I said, a model a viable naturally love can still be quite profitable, but there's almost nobody hiring in a niche. The projects are all low quality with low quality clients. You have to know that, Hey, if I go into this niche like I may have a hard time finding work, or I may be working with clients who don't pay very well or difficult to work with etcetera . So you at least know what you're getting into, and you can adjust and prepare or just switch your niche to something a little bit different that that actually is a little bit more viable. So that's the idea here and then the last thing to do then is just to make a decision and own it, and I mean, there's nothing I can really give you here this one's really on you. I can't make this decision for you, but I will say this your first niche does not have to be perfect. In fact, it's not gonna be It's your first time doing it. I've given you ways to research and so forth, but it's just gonna be off in some way. What's more important than getting it perfect is getting it done. So I get. I get people who contact me a lot and will say you have been trying to figure out my niche for the last six months. That is the absolute wrong way to go. That's the worst thing you could do is to not do anything because you just can't find the right Mitch. That's overthinking it. And I I relate to that cause I do that same thing. But the thing you want to do here is just do your best. Pick one and move on and start working and then adjust as you go. And because you now know how to do the research and look into things you could keep doing that this is a one time thing, so you can just keep doing it and figuring out as you go, and you can always refine it or change it later, The end of the day. What matters, and this is cliche. But what matters is action. That is where change comes from, so it's just not knowing how to do it. It's doing it. That's what matters now again. By the way, if you are interested in since we're on up work, if you're interested in up work to get using up work to get freelance clients, 17. BONUS: Build Your Freelance Website With WordPress: once you have wordpress install, then we're gonna do some basic configuration. We're gonna install our theme and do some plug ins. And so I'm just going to show you what I use the theme I use the plug ins I use and so forth here and sort of the configuration that I do. So the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna go through and we're gonna create some pages. We just want to create these first right off the bat so we can link them up and some of the other stuff that we got to do. We're gonna put anything in them quite yet. So where you gonna run through and create the So the 1st 1 is about? You just put in the title and hit publish, and that's all we need to do for now. And then we'll just come up here and do new page again. And so we'll just run through all these rural quick, right? So the next one is portfolio. I can spell it correctly, published that Yeah, a new page and we'll do clients and then services contact, and then we'll finish up with blawg. Okay, So that gets our basic pages in place. Now we can use those in our menus and so forth, so we just want it again. Run through. Get those those created real quick. Then we're gonna come down here to the setting section. We're going to kind of run through some of these. We're not gonna go through every one of these, but there are few that you want to look at. It will go to General the 1st 1 Your site title and tagline will probably be set to something similar like this I would generally recommend unless you have a brand that you know that you have, You're looking to establish that sort of thing. If you already have that and know what that is, that's fine. But otherwise, if you don't, I would just use your name so I would put John Morris and then you just the tagline what you do. So I build membership sites in WordPress. Something like that. Keep it really, really simple. This stuff can show up in different parts of your site. Throughout WordPress. It's not supercritical outside of probably this, but again, you just want to set it. So in case it's being displayed in the code somewhere or whatever. I would recommend setting years time zone, actually, because when you go to publish block posts and so forth, having the right time set here makes it a little bit easier, especially for on a schedule posts and so forth. So for me, I am central time. So let's Chicago. So I'll just set that you can do your date formatting and and so forth if you if you prefer a different day and that sort of thing and then when you're done hit, save changes all right, next will come over. And actually we can skip writing will go to reading. Now here, we're gonna select static page for our home page and we're gonna on Actually, we didn't create our home page, So let's create that road quick. That was one of the ones we needed to create. So it's come over here and type one called home and published that. And then now we can come back refreshed this page, do static and now will select our home page and then for a post page, we're gonna select blawg. I recommend keeping these, uh the way that they are full text all that go ahead and hit, save changes and then come down here to Perma leaks. And my when I do my install on my system and automatically sets this to post name. But if not, just click this post name and then hit save changes on that. So that's the basic configuration of WordPress that I do Nothing super complicated. Next will want to come in and install our theme. So we're gonna go to appearance and then themes and we're gonna hit. Add new and we're going to search for one and you'll see it's in my search here. Ocean WP. This is the one that we want. This is we're gonna be using l a mentor to do most of our page building. This theme is is meant to work with it. L a mentor does have its own thing called Hello. You can use that if you prefer. If you know about little mentor in, you want to use that one. I just prefer ocean to BP because it has some things in there to complement l. A mentor that the hello theme doesn't necessarily have something is going to go ahead and install this one. Okay, once it's installed, you'll see the button will switch from installing toe. Activate. Just go ahead and click. Activate. And that will make the theme active on your site. It recommends these extra plug ins. Of course we need elementary. Will get that in a second ocean. Extra WP forms. I don't I don't Generally install obviously installed aumento elementary, but the other ones I don't generally install. So I'm just gonna dismiss this and then next we want to go over to plug ins, and then we're gonna do add new an organ, install all of our different plug in. So the very 1st 1 is l a mentor, and it is in the WordPress repository, so you can see here. Just go ahead and hit Install on that one, and this will do the same thing. So it's gonna stall for a little bit, and then once it's actually installed than this will change to inactivate button. You can go ahead and activate on it. Okay, so it's done installing. We'll go ahead and hit. Activate on that. That will activate the plug in. There is this sort of set up thing. If you want to watch this and kind of go through this. You can certainly do that. I'm not going to, um and then we'll kind of go back to plug ins and add new. And it might be a little bit easier when we're doing this to not activate it right at first . Because then you could just go through this quickly, so got elemental or installed. Next, we're going to do Yost s CEO. This is S e o. Plug in helps kind of reconfigure site for S e o. Uh, I installed this on all my sites. So the about the only ones I don't installed on an actual membership site that I'm building for someone that's not gonna be public facing, So it doesn't really matter because all the content contents gonna be protected anyway. But for a public facing site, especially if you're gonna be doing blogging, I would recommend you assess CEO. It just kind of does all this stuff for you that you need toe have done OK, that's installed. We're not gonna activated yet. We're gonna come back over here, and we're going to do one called monster insights. And this is a stats plug in. So you can see here it will connect your Google analytics and it will pull in some of that data and to give you a view of your analytics here inside of the dashboard again, any public facing site. Actually, I do, in solace for membership sites as well, so that you can get an idea of what pages people are on and so forth. So definitely recommend this one. And then the last one is custom, CSS and Js. So what this allows you to do is put CSS or Java script into your site without half having toe hacking theme files. I mostly do this for I obviously is. A developer will sometimes do CSS or Or javascript that I want to do to to do whatever. But the main thing is, if you have a Facebook pixel or Google some sort of Google AdWords or whatever pixels and things are out there that you might need to install, this makes it a lot easier to install those things without having toe touch your themes or do anything with code and so forth. So that's my recommendation there. OK, so the last one, then that I'm gonna I'm going to install is I'm going to install Elemental pro now. Elemental pro is a paid plug in. I'm trying to do as much of this at free as possible. However, element or pro adds a lot of very useful things in particular. The scene builder that's important for for building your site. So I'm gonna install elemental or pro. I'm gonna hit already. Have it. And I've downloaded. I'm gonna upload plug in choose file. It's in Ah, the downloads here under Element or pro. Gonna grab that and then install that. So that's gonna upload and install. Okay, so that is uploaded. Now, what I'm gonna do is just go over to installed plug ins and I'll just hit Select all that on uncheck l A mentor and I'm gonna activity and will activate all of these. Okay, so now the thing here is, this is what's gonna happen. Once you do that, you're gonna see welcomed element of pro connected activate configure your Google analytics settings. You know, if you go to Joost sc Oh, it's just open this one in a new tab here. The USS CEO has a wizard that you can walk through that you see right here, configuration wizard, Probably monster insights has, ah, similar thing that you can walk through. So these are a little bit different. I don't want to bog down the videos by going through every single one of these. They're really just the religious wizards that are gonna walk you through everything. So if you see something like this, click click to set that up click to connect and activate for L. A mentor pro and go into Joosep's CEO and do the Do the Wizard and so forth and just kind of walk through that stuff and get it get kind of a basic set up is what it's going to do. So then, once you have that done that we can move on to the next part where we're gonna go ahead and start building our pages. The next thing I mean do here is get our theme set up. So there are a few things that we want to change about a femur that I generally change about the theme elementos going to do a lot of the actual page building, so it's not too much, but there are some kind of general configuration things that we want to do. So in order to do that, go to your home icon. You'll see visit site. I'm just gonna open that in a new tab and just write it first. We can kind of look at the theme here so you could see ocean to BP's, a really bare bones type theme. It's meant to go with L. A mentor, and so there's not necessarily a ton to the design, but it does have features that help it work better with L. A mentor. So there are a few things that I want to change. Like this peach style I don't really like. We're gonna change your foot or a little bit down here to match our our name and who we are at our logo, all that sort of thing. So in order to do that, go ahead and click. Customize up here and this will take us into the WordPress customizer. This is where all your theme options are going to be for pretty much any theme, but especially Ocean WP here, and it's going to allow you to kind of change all of this different stuff. Okay, so we'll kind of just run through these a little bit. So the 1st 1 is the site identity. I'm gonna uncheck display site title and tagline we're gonna use. Ah, we're gonna upload an image for our logo so we don't really need that will select site icon . And here I I just tend to kind of use my ugly mug on my sites here. Just I'm mainly going for personal branding, so I kind of just used my picture. If you have a logo, you have a brand in a logo and so forth and then feel free to use that here. Okay, so once that's done will just kind of click out of here. Next thing we're gonna go to is this general options and here under page title, then we'll come down and change the style hidden, and that's gonna get rid of this page title that I don't really like. And so then we'll kind of come back to the beginning here. Next one is top bar. That's this area, peer. You can put like a secondary menu. There's some different things you can put there. I generally don't use it, So we're just gonna come into general and we'll click the unclipped, The unequal top. Our option that will get rid of the top bar for us. Okay, next is header and will come in here. And what we're looking for is our logo. So we're gonna go ahead and I'm gonna have a logo that I tend to use. Yours can be whatever you want it again. Your logo. Um, the one thing again. Keep in mind it. When you upload this logo, it's gonna get rid of your your sight line your site name and tagline. So you want to make sure that whatever you want it to say here, see how I got rid of that John Morris. So you want to make sure that whatever text you want here, you put in your logo. Ah, as well. So that's our logo. Pretty straightforward. Next will come down. I'm going to go into our footer now. This light grey area is if you want to have widgets so you could have like, a popular posts or links to services, etcetera. Not a bad idea for our purposes. I'm just going to keep it simple. So I'm gonna go into footer widgets, and I'm just gonna actually disable that and that will get rid of that little area there. And then we're going to foot her bottom. And I'll just change this to copyright John Morris like this again, You conduce whatever you want here in terms of your copyright or whatever you want to put down here. I'm just gonna do some simple like that. Okay, so that's kind of a basic kind of just set up of the theme to kind of get it to where? It's kind of ah, standard sort of bare bones, I guess, a little bit theme and get rid of the stuff that we don't really like. The other thing that that will want to pay attention to then is the menus. So we want to have our menu across the top here. Um, we don't have Ah, we don't have a menu or anything like that. We don't have a template that that we've created, um and so we want we want to go and actually get that set up. So we're gonna hit, publish, and then we're going to one of the reasons I open This is a new tab. Then we'll just go ahead and click out of the customizer. We're and come over here in appearance and menus. I like doing this in the back end here, and we're gonna create our menu, will just call it Primary and hit create menu. And they were just gonna add in the pages that we created so home about portfolio, clients, services, contact, contact. I'm gonna leave out Blawg. There's probably some debate about whether to put blogging there or not, but I'm kind of lean more towards the sale side of, you know, everything up there. I won't be to be related to the sale of my services. And so I'm not gonna put blogging there because bloggers something that could click off and they could go into my blawg And you know who knows where they end up again? That could be debated. I I imagine people have different opinions on that, so you can kind of decide on that one. But I'm gonna leave it out for our purposes here. Okay, So then the order that we want this in is we want home about. We want portfolio, clients, services and contact. Now, if you want to outline for a sales page, that's pretty much it right there about So you're gonna were gonna basically tell people who you are. This is where you're gonna really kind of sell people on you. So this is where you talk with clients you've worked with Or, you know, you went to some prestigious school or you graduated, you know, top of your class or whatever it is about you that makes you unique and someone worth hiring. That's what's gonna go on about course your portfolio is gonna be the your portfolio samples and so forth clients and testimonials. So this is gonna be highlighting clients you've worked, if with and what they've said about you here. We're gonna outline our service packages and then, of course, contact getting in contact with you. So go ahead and hit Save menu here and down here under display location. We want it to be main. And there we go. So now we can go back to our site and we've got our logo. We've got our menu across the top. We've kind of got our basic sort of template e an outline for our theme. So that's getting ocean WP kind of set up. Don't worry about the sidebar here. That's something that again when we use the l a mentor, most of our pages aren't even gonna have that that side bar. And then when we get into our blawg, we you know, we can talk about how we want to set up those witches and so forth, so that is setting up the theme. Next, we're going to start creating our pages. So the 1st 1 we're going to start with is our about page. I'm gonna click over here into pages finding about Paige and, well, I'm gonna open in a new tab again and will come into the actual edit page here, and then we're going to click edit with L. A mentor. So we're gonna create most these pages with L. A mentor. This makes it a lot easier. Very first thing we want to do is come down in the settings, and the page layout will want to change that to L. A mentor. Full width canvas will get rid of the entire menu, and the footer and everything full width will help us get rid of the sidebar, which is what we're after here. So we're going to keep this kind of full with look like this So you can kind of build this how you how you want, But I tend to build these in a particular way. So the very first thing that we're gonna drop in is a heading here, and this is just going to be my name. So AMISOM do about John Morris, and we're actually one of the things that we can do here is you notice how the color is this blue. It's kind of a weird color. Doesn't really fit with our design. So you can come over here and you could do dio default colors. They could see we have these different options here. I'm gonna just pick this Joker option for now to keep it simple. But that's going to change our ah, our title here too. It's gonna be black now, so ah, that that that's a simple way to kind of change the default colors. You can also do that with the default font so you can come in here and you can click the different fonts that you would like to use. I'm gonna keep at what it is for now. Um, but those are some options in terms of that. So getting back into this, I'm gonna actually change this to an H one. We're gonna center it and then in the style, I'm gonna come into topography, and I want to make this quite a bit bigger. So let's go with 44. Seems about what what I'm after. And then we can go. So with L. A mentor, you have the heading here I don't want to do is like a full tutorial in elementary. But I do want you to understand what I'm doing. So I took this widget and dragged it into this area here, and that creates a section. So I have a section and then within that section, I have this heading element. So in the section right here, I'm gonna click. And now I want to go to advance. I'm gonna do a little bit of padding on the top. So I just want to create a little space here. Probably do about 25. Something like that, in kind of play around with whatever makes sense. If you want a preview, you kind of come over like that and that will give you a preview of what it's gonna look like, we'll clean all that up here in a bit, and then I'm gonna come back in here. I'm gonna do another heading under here, and I'm gonna do this sort of thing. Ah, I specialize in building remember, ship sites and WordPress will clean that up. Okay, so I just want to like state. Clearly, I'm not assuming I don't know what page people are gonna look at. I don't know if they're going to see my other stuff. I don't know any of that. I'm not gonna make any assumptions about that. So I'm gonna again just state kind of clearly what it is that I do now for this one. I'm gonna change the text color just a little bit, just toe kind of offset a little bit from the title. Now, when I want to eliminate some of the space between these two things here. So I'm gonna go into the heading here, and I'm gonna unclip this link values I'm gonna do top. But I'm just going to kind of give it a negative value here. Sometimes you have to do this. Ah, in l a mentor because some of the built in sort of spacing and so forth. So I'm just going to kind of keep it like that. Um, you know, those of you that are better designers, you can probably kind of come up with better design and so forth. My big thing here is I want to focus on the actual persuasion elements here. So keep it simple of the headline about you. You state what it is that you do here in sort of the sub headline. The next thing that we're gonna drop in then is an intersection. We want to make sure we get that in this top section. I'll show you why here in a little bit. And then on the left hand side, we are going to do an image and for our image, we're just going to use a picture of ourselves. I'm never comfortable with this either, but you just gotta let people see you and and get some sense of who you are when I add a little padding on the top of this intersection here just to create some space between it and this top headline here. So that looks kind of good enough. So then we'll come over and we're gonna go over to the text. Enter. The main thing about this, this page is this right here. So we're letting them see us were telling us, telling them who we are. But here is where we're actually doing any sort of certain persuasion. So this kind of, ah, pattern that I like to follow here. So the very first thing that I like to do is I just like to kind of introduce myself and give a little bit of personal information to kind of humanize myself. So I'm gonna say something like, Ah, I'm John Morris. I've been a freelance Web developer for 15 years, so that's establishing a little bit of credibility, a little bit of authority based on experience. So I've been a freelance Web developer 50 for 15 years. I'm married. I have three kids and one on the way. The whole idea with this is just to make it seem like I'm not like to start off not pitching them right just like this. Make this feel like an about page. But in reality, we're, of course, selling people. That's what we're I mean, that's what the site is for. Have three kids and one on the way. I live in the Ozarks in Missouri and and you could use and, er, if your grammar don't like that, you can get rid of it. I specialize in building Membership Sates in WordPress. So again were not assuming that they see anything. So everything that we right, we're gonna we're gonna, like, repeat ourselves a bunch. So when I specialize in building membership sites in WORDPRESS Okay, now, that's kind of making it a soft sort of intro. Get them going. And then now we're gonna start toe really kind of hit them with proof. In my 15 years, I've built hundreds of different member sites for all kinds of different clients and industries, which is true. So again, we're speaking to experience volume that that's a thing that kind of people will use to evaluate someone if you built a bunch of of something than that kind of gives you credibly that you know what you're doing. Also, variety is another element of this. I've done it for different clients in different industries, So I built hundreds of different membership sites for all kinds of different clients and industries. Um, some of my more well known projects are the ink small business Owners Council for Ink magazine. I've worked on projects for Louis House. Just trying to keep this a little bit concise. Whose house? Ray Edwards, Tim Ferriss, Jefferson Best key and hundreds of other regular Joes. And no, maybe possibly Joe's and jeans. Okay, so just what I'm really doing here is I'm trying to speak to the authority and the people that I've worked with an established credibility without it being, like super over the top, uh, coming across like I'm just sort of bragging. So just trying to make it feel like I'm talking about my experience, But really, what I'm trying to do is hey, I've worked on these projects for these people. If I build membership sites for them, I can probably build a membership site for you. Okay, so this is a big This is kind of the big block here. You If we were to break this down into three elements, it would be this right here. What you specialize in here, any sort of credibility that you have. So it again, I graduated top of my class, right? Graduated. I think it's suma cum laude. E from my school. If that's what you have, that's what you have. Or I've built, you know, 1000 different of these sorts of sites. I've made 350,000 different logos, you know, or my teacher and fifth grade once said that I was awesome. Whatever you have, you want to put it here and establish authority in your about page. Your about page is not just about you. That's not what it is. It's they're to sell you. Okay? So, credibility, what? You specialize in credibility. And then the third thing is how people can actually go about hiring you and so forth. So once we've established credibility, I built you say I've worked on projects Louis House, Ray Edwards, temperatures, Jefferson, Becky and hundreds of other regular Joes and Janes. And one thing that I do in particular here it kind of goes back to what I specialize in. This mayor may not apply to you, but I want to throw this out there just in case this this is something that you need to specify. So I build my membership sites in WordPress using no, the wish list, remember? Ah, plug in L. A mentor and the ocean every GOP scene. If you're comfortable using those technologies, then I'm a great fit for your project otherwise, and you just kind of try to say, this is sort of nice as you can, Otherwise I'm not. Not any be better off looking for another developer. So basically, I'm just want to make sure it's clear that when I build my sites, this is how I'm going to build them. And you want to really again. If you have this, you really want to establish this one. It qualifies your prospects so it makes them. I don't know how many times when I've done this, I'll get the email and they'll be like, uh, I'm totally fine using those technologies, whatever you think is best, like it gets them to qualify themselves to you and put you in a lot better position, but also just for me. I'm not gonna build a site any other way. I just don't want to work on that sort of project. So this is where you can kind of specify the comm project to work on the projects that you won't. Okay, now, if you're building logos, a za graphic designer. Maybe that doesn't necessarily apply 100%. So it's not Ah, something that has to be in here. But what I would really encourage you to do is focus on building a particular kind of thing or doing a particular kind of thing, like building a particular kind of site with very specific technologies or doing certain kinds of logo's etcetera. Have something A that you really you focus in on and specialize in. So it smaller. You go with a niche, the easier it is to dominate that niche. And usually most niches air. Gonna have enough work that if you completely dominate it, you have more work than you know what to do with. But also it just makes your life easier delivering on those projects like you're just not gonna be working on things that you hate doing. Okay, so that's really what this is about. I'm really not interested in building membership sites with any any other technology. So I've done it. Not really something I enjoy, not something I need to dio. So I'm just not going to do it. So I want to make sure that that's very clear here. Okay, so then the last thing then is we kind of tell them we've told them about what we specialized in what we do. We've given them some credibility and proof. The third thing is then how to hire us. So I didn't say If you'd like to learn more about hiring me for your project, you can see my portfolio view client reviews, see my service. Ah, packages and get in contact with me here. And then I'm just gonna link this to the home page. Okay? I'm not gonna do that here, but that's what you want, Dio, you just like this word here to the home page. You don't have to do anything fancy with highlighting keywords, or you can maybe say get in contact with me here. You can link that, but I'm I would pretty much just link this year to the home page. The home page is ultimately going to be our sales page, but we'll talk about that hearing just just a second. OK, so that's our basic sort of about page here. One other thing that you could you could potentially do here, that I would probably do is come up into here and We're just looking for the button. So come down here. I'm gonna put this in a new section and I'll show you Why here in just a second, But we'll click here, and you can dio. Ah, and actually, let's do let's do ah, title or heading real quick ready to hire me? Well, center that, and then we'll go back to the button and, you know, click, click here to learn more or whatever. Whatever you whatever makes sense. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. I'm gonna add a little bit of patting on the top here. Something like that. Okay, so something like that again, I'd probably go through here, you know, maybe tweak this design wise a little bit. Um, Meyer Fact that's coming here. And let's just do some padding on the bottom. Let's make this probably just do 35 then the bottom 35. Give us a little bit. Okay, So So something generally like this. The big thing here is this part right here. Okay, so that's that's really what we're we're after. We want to get this written out. Um, I think I may increase the size of the topography here just a little bit. So just to give it a little bit better, So see what that looks like on 16. See if that Yeah, So something like that. Um, again, I'm not the greatest designer in the world, but this gets the information across who I am a picture and then sort of talks about gives the credibility and the three things that we need to cover. We have a link down here. That's obvious. If you're ready to hire me, click the link. Learn more. Now, the big thing here with this is come up here and we're going to right Click on this and we're going to click. Save this template. Okay. And we'll just do about and we'll hit. Save. Now we'll talk about why that is in a second, but we want to just make sure do that hit update here. And now we can come over here and view page and looks like our font stand stick. So let me go back to edit with our font colors didn't stick. And I'm pretty sure I know why. Uh, come back in here. Let's go into full fonts. Default colors will pick joker again and then we need to hit. Apply up here. I clicked out of it before without hitting. Apply. So now, for go to view page, those colors should stick. Okay, so there we go. That's our about page, that we've kind of got that down. It does the things that we need to do. Remember to link this this up and then we'll talk about We're gonna integrate this into our home page of a little bit later date. But this kind of gets the content written down. So take the time now to go and write your about page, and this is is your about page. But it's also part of what's going to be your sales page as well. The next page we're going to create then is our client testimonials paid directly and create this before portfolio because we're portfolio, we're gonna pull in some of these testimonials, so we want to have those first so that we can then create our portfolio page pages. So in order, do that will need a plug in in order to help it work with l. A mentor. And we're going to use custom post types. So the plug in that will need. We're gonna go to plug ins and add new It's called custom post types. You I and so we can just write to see It's right here. Custom post types. You I What this does is it creates a front, an interface that allows you to create custom post types that have until right, any code. And it makes it really easy to create these custom post types. And I like using custom post types because it gives me a whole separate sort of piece of content type that I can then use to to put that stuff by itself So it doesn't get mixed in with posts and pages. So you see, we have cpt you I down here going to add edit post types and will come in here, and I'm gonna the one we're gonna create his testimony else will give it that slug. But plural name is testimonials, and the senior name is testimonial. Now there's a bunch of options down here for additional labels that you can add for different parts of the u I and then also different settings that you can, uh, look at. I mean, the two, the two main that I pay attention to our has archive. You see, it's set to false by default. Sometimes you might want it to have an archive. In this particular case, we're going to create our own testimonials page that's gonna list them all. So if we had archive Page, what kind of duplicate that? So we're gonna leave that toe false, and then the other thing down here is what it supports. So you notice that by default is title editor and featured image? You may want to add some of these other ones here. I think for a testimonial, we don't We don't really need any of the rest of these, so I'm just going to stick with the three so words sticking with the defaults here. But if you want to go through and look at some of that, you can. So I'm just gonna click add post type. You'll now see over here we have this testimonials menu item here so we can go in to add new and are you going to do is go through and just add all of the testimonials that you have for clients. So right now we're just getting our testimonials from wherever they happen to be at now, whether they're on up work or you have, ah, another site or they're just collected that you might have. Or as you get new ones, etcetera. You want to get him into the system here. So the title of this post is gonna be the name of the clients, whatever their name is, and then the content is going to be the actual testimonial. So you just write something like this, Okay, Something simple like that. And we'll go ahead and save the draft on that. And then the next thing we want to do is click over on document and we want to do the featured image. So hopefully you have images for your clients. If not, I would definitely ask for them. It definitely makes things feel a little bit more real. So I just have some sample pictures that are used will drag that over here and let that upload, and we'll slick that and that will be our featured image and will publish. And we can view the testimonial. It's gonna use this sort of the default layout that we have for our single posts. Now the nice thing about this with Ella mentors, we can come in and we can edit this. We're not gonna worry too much about it, cause it's more the archive that we're worried about. But you can see this gets the data into the system, which is the big thing that we're worried about. So you just go through and add all the different testimonials Ah, that you might have. I'm not going to sit here and add a bunch, make you watch that. But you go through and addle the ones that that you have. And then the next thing that we want to do then is we want to build our individual page in our archive page. So this is where the l a mentor, Ah, pro theme builder kind of comes in tow play. You see, we have templates here. You'll see you have theme builder here. And when you add a new template, you can come in here and select what kind. So we're going to select a single, and now we have testimonial here, where we can select the post type. We're gonna give it the name single testimonial, and now we can go in and actually weaken, weaken, Design that page that we were just looking at. So this page here, how it's blown out picture and all this this allows us to come in and design this page. So the other nice thing about element or is it, has templates in here already, So it makes it fairly easy for you. Toe design some of this stuff. You also have your templates that you've you've saved here as well. So again, it makes it a pretty simple um And then they have the categories in here where you can go through and look at the different the different examples that they have and so forth. So I'm just going to start blank like this and keep it pretty simple. When you're editing in the theme builder and you're reading ing like a template page, you'll see this over here Post title post excerpts. So this is related to the actual post data. So it's gonna change for every one of these. So this is what we're kind of after. First thing I'm induces Dragon an intersection like this, and I'm gonna change the orientation to be 33 66 then I'm going to drag in the featured image on the left, and we'll just kind of, well, actually will set this toe custom. So what I do is I put that over. I right, click and inspect, and I see what the actual size is. So to 76 by 2 76 is what it's getting shrunk down to. So I'm just gonna make this image to and 76 wit. So that and then hit, apply, and Elemental will actually crop this to that size. So it remembers 300 by 300 downsides. 2 to 76. Now it's to 76 by 2 76 That's just a performance thing for your Web page, but that's what I like to do with it. And then what we're gonna do is going to come over here and we're gonna put post title right here and then and you see, it's populating with what it has the data has, and then we're gonna put post content down below that. And so now it has the content of that. And so now we have. This isn't you know it's not necessarily the most greatly designed thing, but it's a heck of a lot better than this, OK? And we're not really gonna send people 18. BONUS: I Just Built Your Freelance Website For You: Hey, guys, down here. So last week I was going through showing you how to build your freelancer website, and I kind of reached a point where I felt like, you know, this is one of those things that I've done so much, um, that I'm frankly, pretty good at. And it's it's super easy for me to do. I decided that I was just gonna kind of build it for you. So what I've done is I've built a complete template, has all the pages already designed and laid out and so forth for you and all You really have to do it. Once you get it all installed, I'm gonna show you how to do that. Needs to go through and just kind of make some changes that are make it more relevant to you because I just kind of put in some generic stuff there. So what I'm going to do in this episode is I'm gonna show you how to use this. Now, the download for this is gonna be in the project section. So you see the project tab here in the course. Just click that over on the right hand side. You'll see a download for episodes one through 100. When you click into that, you'll see the downloads here for Episode eight. So when you get that download, what it will look like is you're going to see this right here. So I've included a net export of the pages, the projects and the reviews, along with the page templates and the theme templates. However, this all dot xml I'm gonna show you how you can just import this one file. So I've included the rest of this just in case you want to do this piece by piece. However, this one file right here all dot xml we can import that, and it's gonna import all of the other stuff for you. So if you have a fresh start fresh site, this is probably the way to go. If you have an existing site, you may want to do some of of this. I would maybe for you, you might not want to do import the content from the pages of the projects of the reviews. Um, and then you would do the page or theme templates, then page templates just kind of depends, but I'm gonna show you how to use all here. All right, so we'll bring that over here. Now, this is Ah, there's a few assumptions here. First, we're assuming you have a wordpress install. Um, also have L. A mentor and elemental pro. Already installed l a mentor. You confined in the theme repository or the plug and repository so you can just come here, add new search for elementary. You find it their elemental Perot. You do have to go to L a mentor dot com and you have to purchase it. I know for some of you that may be annoying, but we really can't do what we want to do without l a mentor pro, because that's how we get the theme builder. And the theme builder is pretty important for this template. So their lowest cost is I say, I think 50 bucks. So you know, if that's an investment, then you can make that I highly recommend that it just makes a lot of this so much easier, right? So, assuming elementary, elemental pro. Also for the theme, I'm using Ocean WP again for that you can go to the themes and you can do the add new. It's in the theme repository can just install and activate it right here inside of your WordPress install. So it assumed this assumes that you have that all done element or elemental pro and ocean WP and again, I kind of show that in the last episode, if you want detailed walk through of that, you can see the probably the 1st 15 minutes of the last episode. I do that now. What we need to do is we need to install one more plug in. So we're gonna go plug ins, we're gonna go to add new, and the one that we need is custom post types. You I So I'll do this and custom post types you I is what we're after. So we're gonna install this and what this does is allows us to create custom post types without having to write the code to do. It's We haven't interface that we can do. Do it right here inside of WordPress. So we'll install and activate this and you see, it's now activated here, and one thing you'll notice is that for me, these now come up this projects and their reviews. That's because on this side I'd previously installed the plug in and created these, so they just kind of come back once I reinstall the plug in. But if we come over here to see PTU, I and we do add edit post types and then we view post types. What I've done is essentially just created one called Project and one called review. So if we were to go in and we were to actually creating new one, and it will give me a warning, But you type project like this you would type projects like this and then project like that and that's all you have to do and hit, add post type and all the rest of the settings are gonna be just fine. You don't need to edit the rest of them and then for review. You would just do review and we would do reviews and then again review down here and had add post type. Okay, so that's how you create those. Like I said, mine have already been created here on. That's why they show back up here. So that's the really kind of the first mega step is installed. The this plug and create those two custom post types now Once we've done that, we can do our import, and it will import all of the content that I've created, sort of the dummy content that I've created for this. So in order to do that, we'll go to tools and we will go to import. And you may need to install the WordPress importer down here. So just go ahead and install. Now. Sometimes it's already installed. Sometimes it's not. Once it's installed, just hit run importer, and then we're just going to come over here with are all gonna drag that right here onto this choose file button and then hit upload file import. And this again has all of the pages, all of the posts, all of the projects, all of the reviews, all the page templates, all the theme templates. All of that's already in here. Um, so you want to sign these to an existing user download and import file attachments? Some sites are going to be successful in doing that. Some aren't. You can see here it and fail. Fail to import the media again. Depending on your site, it may import the pictures that may not. There's not really a ton. I can do about that. But the nice thing is, it doesn't really matter, because this is all just dummy content. You heard our place it all anyway, with your own screenshots and so forth. So it's not really a big deal. In fact, it's probably better. It doesn't import it, because then you don't have it cluttering up your media library. But if we take a look at this, then we can come to posts and you'll see we have our post. We go to pages. It's gonna imported all of the different pages that I had created. If we go to projects, you'll see the dummy projects that I've created. Same for the reviews, those air all here. The other cool thing, though, is if we go to templates, it's imported All of the templates that I created to and if we go to theme builder, it's important. Port it all of those as well. So it makes the set up for this really, really easy Now. What will happen if you come over here to visit site? At this point, you're going to get kind of a mix, because when L. A mentor imports the theme builder templates, it doesn't automatically start using them because it doesn't. It doesn't want to assume that that's what you want to do. We're gonna have to set those so you'll see that the home page is sort of set like this. If we click through to say about your kind of getting half of what I created eso you're getting kind of the bottom half, but you still have some of this stuff at the top. Same if we click through to, say services again, you're getting part of what I created, but not the whole thing. So I just want to show you that Don't freak out when you go to view and it looks like this . I think with these templates, this is where a lot of people kind of get frazzled because they did the import. Now it doesn't look how it's supposed to. We're gonna go ahead and sort of fix this stuff. So first thing that I want to do actually has come here to the home page and I want to go into the customizer and I want to edit the theme because there's things about the steam that we need to change. Um, that a I don't really like or be. They just sort of messed up the template. So I want to get that out of the way. So the 1st 1 is if we come down into general options, you'll see page title. We want to go to style. And when you want to change that to hidden and that's this little thing right here. So we're gonna get rid of that. So there's that and then we're going to come into top bar General and we will just unclip this enable top are that's going to get rid of this up here because we don't want that either. And then come down and let's go to Header and we'll go to General and Header border bottom . We're gonna get rid of that, cause that'll mess up our final look and then footer widgets down here. We'll just turn that off. We don't We're not gonna use any foot or widgets. We're building in L a mentor. Um, so that's kind of the basic stuff just hit publish. The last thing then is for this. You will have to come into header and logo and set your logo here. So that's something that you want to do? I'm gonna just leave this kind of how it is for right now. But whatever your logo is, you want to come in and set it here because the template that he used pulls the logo from what you said here. Okay. So, again, whatever your logo is all right? We can go ahead and ex out of that. That gets us a little bit closer here. So we're a little bit closer toe toe what the final output is, but it's not 100%. Right? So the next thing we need to do is come back over inside WordPress, go to templates, go to theme builder. And now we just need to sort of enable every one of these. So what I do is I just sort of opened this in a new tab, each one of these, like this all at once. And we're just gonna go through and say we want to use these as the template for pages and posts and I'll show you the that that in here in the 2nd 1 to get all these open. Okay, So if we go to the 1st 1 than what we want to do This is a single review. So this is if someone clicks on one of our reviews, they're going to see this a single review that we've created. And so we want to set the temp that we want this to be the template. All we have to do when we click in here has come here under display conditions, and it actually imports the display conditions. From how I set them when I set them when I built this, it just doesn't make him active. So you don't even have to change this. All you do is coming here and hit saving close. And now this will be that template. Once it saved, you can come up here in exile and we literally just walked through every single one of these and do that same thing. So this is the individual project. Template saved. We exit out. This is our archives. So it's already set to all archives. We can save and close that. And then we x this out are 404 page getting see? It's already set so we'll save and close that on the next one is a single post. Again. It's already set So it's really nice that we don't have toe. There's not a ton we have to do here. We just kind of have to click through this and settle these. It even includes this. So this is an individual Plage template. We're having it set for all pages except our about our services are portfolio reviews, etcetera. And actually, this one here looks like may have been a mistakes will exit out cause that says exclude from all which is not what we want. We want to exclude it from our about our services or portfolio reviews, etcetera because we're going to use our own template for those pages. And so if we set this as the template, then we go into elementary will start with this template as our starting point. We don't want that. Actually, we can add a condition here and we'll changes to exclude. This will kind of give you how you do it anyway, So pages and then here, we're going to do about our, uh, did about we're going to contact. That was probably what the other one was supposed to be, was contacted, somehow got my stuff. Anyway, these air, the pages, they're the ones that are in the menu. You see the menu kind of behind here. These the ones we want excludes will hit saving close and that will save and close. And then l a mentor footer. So this is the footer display conditions. We want this to be the footer for the entire site. So again it's already set. We just hit saving close and the same thing with the header. So this is the header template and we'll go to display conditions. Entire site save and close. Right? So once that's all done, then we can go to view page and we could go back to our home page here and now we're getting mawr What this should look like. So if we scroll down, this is what the template is intended toe look like, So you can kind of see this is the home page. It has a combination of all the other pages. So if we go to about then we're going to see this is our about me show. Some recent projects are social media. If we go to services, then you'll see that this is our services that we've created. That's our services page portfolio featured projects recent projects. This is our portfolio paid. So everything's looking how it's supposed to look minus Like I said, the images because some sites on port, um, some sites won't it just kind of depends. And here's our contact page. Okay, so this is essentially how it's supposed to look. If we go into a portfolio and we go into an individual item, then we should also see that this is our individual project template. So that's all set. Same with reviews. We click into reviews and go to an individual review. Then that is all set as well again, minus the image. So now how do we had portfolio items? How do we edit thes and so forth? That's kind of probably the next big thing. So if we go to dashboard, you'll see you now have this projects, and there's two reviews. Menu item. You can create these essentially just how you would create post. So if we go into projects, you'll see this is listed out by Post will go into one here, and you can see it's it's really pretty simple. Once we get in here. So the name of the project or The name of the company is the title of the Post. Here's the content. This is what's gonna go in if we view this project. This content is what's gonna go up in the top part right here. So that's the content. Go to the document. The featured image is the featured images that's gonna show up over here. You're not seeing it because it didn't get imported like it was supposed to, as I mentioned, So we'll go ahead and let's just add something in like this. It's probably not gonna look the best because it wasn't designed for this. But we'll go ahead and update that, and we'll give it a look here and you'll least get a sea where it's supposed to be. So there's where the image goes. Now you might be wondering about thes features. So these air, actually, uh, what we're doing here is we're using custom fields so you may not be able to see your custom fields you see right here I don't I can't scroll down to see custom fields. And so what we want to do is we're gonna go to the three dots up here, goto options and then you want to come down here to advance panels and check this custom fields on like that? So you see that this brings up something interesting here, You notice that reloaded and I still don't have it. This is one of the things with their custom post type. So, actually, let's go back over to our custom post types. I'm glad this kind of came up would go to edit post types and then we will go down to the options here or scroll all the way down. And here you want to make sure in turn on custom fields under both of the review and the projects. So that's why it was doing that. We can scroll down and then hits a post type, and then we can select over two reviews and we'll do the same thing and enable custom fields and save post type, and then we'll be able to go back into our projects and our project. And now we'll see the custom fields down here. So what? The way this works is you see, we have feature one title feature one description feature to title feature to description. So we come over here feature one title feature. One description feature to title feature to descriptions. So that's how these maps. So you'll just have to, and they need to be these names if they should populate in here. When I when all of this gets pulled in, he should already be in here for you to see. But if not, you can come down here and hit Enter New and you would just typed feature one title. And then you put the title in and you'd hit Add custom field, and it would add it for you. And then once you have, once you have added on one post and it should show up in the drop down down here now from that point forward, so when you create a new project, you won't have to re type it. You'll just select it from the select down by a drop down box here. Okay, so that is, that's essentially how you do and create each review or each project for your portfolio. Same for reviews of ago, over two reviews, and we go to the the top one. Then you will see that we have client title, so if we view the review, then you'll see that there's a title right here. That's the custom field. The name is the title of the Pope is the post, and this is the content of the post. So Jeff Jefferson is the title. Here's the content. Here is the client title skin. Same thing if it's not there to get it in her new. Otherwise, it'll be in the drop down here. So that's how you create the reviews that go here. That's how you create the projects that go here and that when you create them here that populates them, not only populates it here, but if we go to the home page, it's all set up to populate here. Under recent projects under reviews, you don't have to do all this stuff manually. All you have to do is create those projects and those reviews in the back and interface like you would opposed until auto populate in here. Okay, uh, one thing you'll definitely want to do is you probably want to edit this with L a mentor, the home page, and come in here and change your services to what yours actually are. You'll also want to go over to the services page and you want toe change and make change them here as well. So that's pretty much it that that's kind of how to use this. Hopefully that gets you going and gives you something, a base that you can start with for your site. Or if you just want to use it as is, you certainly could. This should work for most services. If you do want to edit, one thing you have to keep in mind is you. You want to keep in mind the difference between ah, page template and a theme template. So we come here under templates. You'll see that for pages, there's home contact reviews, portfolio services about all the things that are linked in our menu, these air all page templates. Okay, so those air those air just for those individual pages, they don't really affect anything else. We come here to seem builder, however, we have single review single project archive for a four. These are all the things that would normally be built into a WordPress theme. We've created him here in L. A mentor and are using them as essentially our theme. So header footer, an individual page, etcetera. So sometimes when you want to edit something, it's gonna be in a page template. Like where I just showed you. Sometimes it's gonna be in a theme template file. So, for example, this right here would be in a page, tempt in the page template all of this page template page template. But this down here is actually built into the footer theme file. So this part and this down here So that would be if you want it at it, this you'd have to go into the steam footer file, uh, over here in the theme builder right here. You go into this template to edit that. Okay, So you just when you open toe, edit this an elemental or it's gonna you'll see here it says, Header, footer or if you enter this go to edit this, it's going to edit the rest of the page. So it's gonna show you what you can and can't edit. But when you're trying to find stuff, that's the difference. Sometimes it's a page template. Sometimes it's a theme template. And then specifically for portfolio and reviews. This portfolio page is a page template. But if we click into an individual project here. This is actually under a theme builder. This single project template and single review template for the reviews. The reasons that is done that way is so that you don't have to constantly rebuild each one of these pages. All you have to do is add content to the projects and the reviews. How I showed you and these pages will be built automatically according to the template. So actually, using it is easier. It may be a little bit more confusing in terms of understanding how it's all built, but actually using it, it's a lot easier. Okay, so there you go. That that is again, that's the template. Like I said, hopefully that gives you Ah, good starting point. And you can go in and edit how you want or use, as is etcetera. So it just hopefully this helps you get over this hurdle. Have you noticed this is one of the bigger ones for a lot of people is actually getting their site built, So trying to give you everything that I can in order to do that on hopefully this helps with that. All right, that will do for that. So thanks for watching 19. BONUS: How to Estimate the Time and Cost of Projects: Hey, guys, down here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Freelance. So this one we're going to be getting into estimating the time and cost of your freelance projects, which could be difficult to do and can costs, um, some unrest with your clients when you those estimates are off. And so I'm gonna show you their process. I used to get really accurate with that and the spreadsheet that I used to kind of figure it all out, So that's what we're going to get to in this episode. I'll show you where to download the spreadsheet and how to fill out and all that sort of thing. Along with that, I'm also doing a weekly challenge, So I'm gonna I'm offering a $50 Amazon gift card to anybody who go through the lesson, completes the worksheet exports as a pdf like I show you in the lesson and then uploaded to the project section when you uploaded to the project section completed that will enter you into sort of a random drawing for the Amazon $50 Amazon gift cards. I'll choose someone at random from the people that have uploaded in order to do that you need to submit your project to the site here on skill share before Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. I'm going to be pretty strict with that so that I can get the someone picked and get the Amazon gift card out pretty quick. So that's the deal for for this week. Go ahead and go through the lesson if you want to get in to get the enter to win that Amazon $50 gift card than upload your project to the project section and, more importantly, help you to get accurate with your estimates and so forth going forward. So that said, let's go ahead and dive into a lesson. The very first thing you want to do is actually download this spreadsheet that we're gonna be using for this class, because that's the primary thing we're gonna be going through here. So you want to make sure and download that and have it open. This is a different class, puts the same idea. You go to the projects and resource is section over. On the right hand side. There will be a resource is kind of section, and then you could you'll see the download here, it'll be named indifferently. Probably project tracking or whatever, but just go ahead and download that and then open it up. Once you have it opened up, it should look something like this. And this is what we're gonna be going through. And I'm gonna show you how to use this to estimate the time of the cost of your freelance projects. Once you have the spreadsheet downloaded and open and you're ready to go, then the first thing we'll do is fill out the details at the top here. So we'll give the project a name. You probably already has one from from the client, But I'll just call this Project X kind of sounds cool, and then the contact the name. So we'll just say John Doe, Whoever your contact name is, there's a company name. So was do X Y z company for now, um, and then the date that you're going to begin, So let's just go. No, November 1st pick a date here, but whatever date you're gonna begin, just put the date in and then come down here and you'll see the hourly rate right here. We're going to use this to calculate costs. So you definitely want toe change this toe what your hourly rate is now I want to make sure it's clear up front with this. This is an estimator for a fixed price project. So that doesn't the decline isn't necessarily going to know what your hourly rate is. And by putting it in down here, you can actually play with it a little bit to see how changing the hourly great will affect the overall cost that can allow you to go up or down based off what it is that that you want toe how much it is you want to make off the project, but put it in here. And then when you go to give this to the client, this is something that you can potentially remove later. But we use it for the tracker here to help us estimate the cost and not have to constantly put it in so forth. So go ahead and put that in, and then that will complete sort of the details section of this of the spreadsheet. Now what we're gonna do is we're going to just write out our list of tasks in order to complete the project and the big thing here, this kind of main thing of this spreadsheet. But the big thing here is just to first do the list. So don't worry about the description or estimating the hours or any of that. If you haven't actually listed this out before, then you want to take that and list out these things because is going to kind of get it out of your head is gonna help you to sort of plan and outline your project and that that that takes a big weight off your shoulders first off and then it makes it easier to come back and estimate how long it's actually going to take. So I'm gonna use my myself as example. Let's imagine that I were building a membership site. So what I do is I would just sit back and kind of take a big picture view and say, Okay, what are the major steps that I need to take in order to build a membership site? So the first thing that I might write down is, uh, I might have to get the domain and hosting so I would write, possibly get domain and hosting and hosting, and I would probably say Get and set up domain and hosting. Okay? And so that would maybe potentially be the first thing. Next thing would be install and configure. WordPress. So there's a certain configuration that I I generally use install WordPress theme actually again install and configure WordPress or I'll just make it themes a little bit shorter. Install and configure plug ins create create admin pages. So there's been a membership site. There's usually different air pages and admin pages and so forth. So you got to go through and create all of those, um, see, create membership, create and configure membership levels. And then let's do configure wish list member because it's the actual membership site plug in. So it's gonna be ah, little bit mawr involved. Configure, uh, integrations. So that would be the payment integration in email integration and so forth. Um, build theme in L. A mentor that I usually use Almonte and L a mentor for my sites, and I'm going to go through and I'm going. I will actually build out the header and a footer in the sidebar and the individual post pages and archives and all of that in L. A mentor and have it control those things. That way I can design him the way I want without actually having to read any code. Okay, so, again, this is not a big deal here, but that sort of gives you an idea of you. Take the project and you sort of break it down into its steps. And you list out all of the task here. So that's really the first big thing that you want to do. Get that out of your head. Try to BTO detail as possible, but don't over. I mean, for example, when I when I write Cree admin pages so there for memberships like there's a nonmember air page, there's a wrong member air page. There's a cancelled member air pages after registration after log in, ah, log in page sales page forum potentially etcetera. So there's a whole bunch of pages, but I'm not gonna list all of those out here, Okay? I'm just going to list that I'm I need to create those pages for yourself. You know what those are? Or you could have a separate note where you write those down. But for the client, you just want to give them kind of the major phases of what's gonna happen as you build the site so they get some some detail behind what's actually going on. So again, just list out those task. Don't worry about descriptions or hours or any of that. Just go through a list out. Those task for whatever your project is next is the project description. Now there's imagine. There's a little bit of kind of impetus to maybe skip this partner, not do this or just kind of rushed into this really quick. But actually, this is This is quite important because what we're doing here is we are. We're kind of justifying to the client the hours that this is going to take our estimate for our time because the client might look, might look at again. Let's just take create admin pages. They might look at that and go Oh, well, that's you know, that's a 10 minute. That's a 10 minute step when in reality when you start to look at all of the different pages and what needs to go into them, a nonmember air page, for example, for a membership site actually has a number of needs to perform several different functions and has a number of of moving parts to it. And every time I create one, that page alone usually takes me about an hour in and of itself so that one page will take me potentially an hour. So you kind of have to give them, Ah, a little bit more detail for them to understand why this particular task is being estimated at at this many hours. Okay, so well, that's essentially what we're gonna do with the description. I'll take again, create admin pages. So if I look at it, there's 1234567 potentially eight pages. So create a admin pages that helped the membership site function, including log in pages, air pages, sales page and others. Okay, so that just gives them some sense of, Oh, he's not creating two pages. He's creating eight pages. It's log in pages, air pages sales page. That gives them some sense that there's more to this than just the two or three pages. Okay, ah, creating configure membership levels. So you know that there's when you create a membership level and you configure it, there's probably six or seven different tabs and the plug in that. I use that you that there's options for you don't have to go through and set every single one of those. But there's a number of things to look at and consider, so you'd want toe make that clear here. So again, the idea behind the description is you just sort of giving them some sense of what's actually entailed in that particular step. So when I come over here and I estimate this in, say, five hours, they don't go Holy cow five hours. Why is that to paint was it and take it to, you know, to five hours to create two pages? That doesn't make any sense. I feel like you're tryingto pull one over, and then you can. You know, there's something here to give them some idea, and if you have to, you can explain it. But, ah, that's the basic idea behind this description here. So go through and create all the descriptions here, keeping in mind. This is for the client. This is sort of this is not for you to know what to do. This is for them to understand what the step is. and how involved or not involved it might be. Our next step, then, is to go through and actually estimate are ours here. So we're just gonna look at East Task and we're gonna give some sense of try and figure out how many hours we think that's going to take us. There's a couple of things that I do here. I could see these being debatable, but this would be my recommendation. Very first thing is, any task has a minimum of an hour. If you look at a particular tasking like there's no way that's going to take an hour, then you may want to consolidate it with some other things and how you listed out here. So, for example, consult installing configure WordPress. Installing WordPress is not going to take me an hour by any means, but going through and configuring. No, it maybe not get to an hour, but it might be 15 20 minutes by the time that I get all done. So it's starting to push that that a little bit. And so I'm just. Everything is a minimum of an hour. You can in the spreadsheet. If you want to do, say, 1/2 hour like that if you really want toe to do that. But I always just do any. There's nothing less than an hour, and I have to consolidate tasked in order to make that happen than I do that. But that's the first thing. The second thing then is try to estimate at this step how long you actually think it's going to take. Not oh, I'm gonna add in some buffer time. I'm gonna take what I think it is and double it or whatever. You may have heard some of that stuff. Don't do that yet on this step here. You want to go through and just figure out what I think it's actually going to take so set up domain and hosting potentially. I mean again, a minimum of an hour stolen. Come figure WordPress. An hour stolen configure theme That's going to take about an hour installing figure plug ins and our create admin pages. This is actually probably closer Toe five, maybe six here create and configure membership levels. I'm gonna put at two. It depends on the complexity of the site. The less complex it is. I might go down to one, but most of them are always fairly compact. So I'm gonna set to configure wish this member one configure integrations gonna put to build theme and elemental. I'm gonna put five, okay? And so that that's going to kind of give me some base toe work with here. Okay, Now, I I think I need to actually come through here, and I'm gonna copy this, and that should give us our estimates, and then here, I need to expand this down to 18. Okay, so that puts me at $2000 and you notice what I did there. I just I went into and I copied this down so that it was because this is a calculation. It takes the estimated hours times the hourly late gray and says the cost for that step. And then this just does a some of these cells right here. Okay. So anyway, if you need to just that as usual work, spreadsheet. Feel free to do that, but you can see I have ah, total cost here of $2000. So this is think of this is kind of like a minimum price and actually need to adjust the hours here as Well, change this to 18 and that gets me 20 hours. Okay, so think of this as as sort of, Ah, minimum price. We're going to talk about why that is in just a second. But again, just go through all the task that you listed and try and give the most accurate amount of hours. That's gonna It's going to take for you to complete a particular part of the project or each step of the project. Enlist those out and kind of see what the cost is and that will give you a sense of what the minimum you're going to be able to charge for this is Now that you've got the hours listed out, you've kind of got a minimum price. You have a sense of whether it's gonna be within your budget within their budget, but also what you want to make on the project, etcetera. Now we come in and I always add buffer time into my projects because there's a couple of reasons first. And the main thing is is that I find that often, whatever I estimate, something is going to take. I'm usually short. I'm I tend to be I guess optimistic in my in my timing. And so things always just end up taking longer than what I imagine they're going to in my head. And early on I had sort of, Ah, quasi. I mentor of mine, Give me some advice and and they said, Take whatever you think it's going to be and triple it And I've heard people say double it , that that sort of thing. But you want to add in some buffer time here because things are probably gonna take a little bit longer than what you think they're going to take. The other thing is, is that you're sort of playing with the overall cost here, and you can play with that in terms of the hourly rate. But you can also turn play with it in terms of the estimated hours and again, this is for a fixed price project. So ultimately, what the client is gonna be looking at is the overall price not necessarily the individual pricing here, and you actually have the option of not even giving them this. This is for this is for you primarily. And then you can give them this to them if you want. In order to justify your pricing. Or if they question your pricing, you can send this to them and show them how you figured it out. But it's primarily for you to figure out what to charge for a project. So that said, we're gonna add in some buffer time. So what I didn't really do, actually is I don't triple, but I do double. But you could do double or you could do time and 1/2 kind of depends again budget. You know what you're able to charge, etcetera. But if we come through here and we just I change these estimate hours, I'm just gonna double all these and we'll say 12. Actually, this one, I might just do time and 1/2 to give me three extra hours double double on some of the bigger ones. I won't necessarily always do double. Let's just do eight here about time and 1/2. Okay. So that now you come back through. And you can you see that we're up to 3500? That's a pretty decent price for most fixed price projects for my membership sites. I actually charged a minimum of 3000 and a maximum of around 5000. Usually, that would include if it was a $5000 project. Who would use a custom plug in that they wanted me to write for them Custom plug in development. And that was a minimum of that was a minimum of 10 hours. Okay, so that was gonna be a minimum of $1000 just for a custom plug in development. So Ah, that was how they I got from the 35 up to about the 5000. So this is really in line. I mean, if I look at this, this is really in line with what I charged. So it's pretty accurate. And I had people who paid me that all the time in order to do projects for them. And then, like I said, you can come down here and you can sort of play with the price of Let's say we're way out of budget. We can do $50 an hour, and you can see how that affects the price. Um, that one's maybe a little bit obvious, but let's say we do 70. You can see. Okay, that's what it is. Or maybe we want to make a little bit. Mawr. You do 125 and see that this is the price of project. So it allows you to go through and just play with once you have the task list out to play with the hourly rate to play with the estimated hours and kind of figure out what what you can charge. And then you know how to justify and so forth and just kind of play around with it a little bit until you confined to knit into something that's gonna be accurate, that if you give it to the client when you do, it's gonna feel really and you're gonna have justified your pricing and so forth, and then just gives you some some sense of what to charge. Plus the overall hours. I think this is one that maybe people don't think about as much. But you can see here I'm estimating 45 hours for this project, so if I worked eight hours a day, it would take me just a little bit over a week. I could probably do this in a week of a full time, uh, of working on a full time, but maybe I have like three other clients. And so I'm only able toe work on this for two hours a day or three hours a day. Well, now I'm looking. Let's say it's three hours. I'm looking at 15 days that I'm gonna have toe that's gonna take me toe. Get this done. So now I have a sense off. Okay? I can tell them I know what to tell them in terms of the overall time frame for the project . So 15 days, maybe I want to add a little bit too. That's all, Tellme. Three weeks or a month. So again, it not only the cost, but also the time that you can tell them that you're gonna be able to get it done. Okay, so that that that's the main part of it. Now there's some things long term that you want to do in order to make this even more accurate. So I'm gonna talk about that in the next lesson. But this is really the main. The main portion of this is planning it out, writing down the task, writing down the hours, playing with the timings and the our little bit and getting it sort of honed in to where you think it's a good project estimate. Now, this next step is is really important because this is the thing. The first time you do this, you're just gonna be guessing. And that's the reality of it. And it's probably gonna be, ah, decent amount different the actual time it takes you and so forth is gonna be different than what you estimated. And so this this next step is really, really important. And that is to track the time it actually takes you to complete this, because what happens is when you track the time now you're getting an accurate assessment of what? How much time? It actually takes you to do a particular thing. And if you track that over 234 10 15 20 projects that really allows you to hone in on these estimates and know how long something is going to take you, which you're gonna make your price estimates accurate. They're gonna make your more accurate. They're gonna make your time accurate, estimates more accurate, and clients are going to greatly appreciate accuracy is one of the hardest things when it like pricing and time. It's one of the hardest things for a freelancer to do in a lot of freelancers, Really? Don't do it that well, and clients just sort of deal with it. But if you can be really accurate with your estimates and gets a point where you're actually delivering ahead of schedule for clients client to really gonna appreciate that And that's a simple thing that you can do to really stand out and justify higher hourly rate prices. So again, just track what? What? How long it actually takes you to do each one of these? Now you can just have ah, note on, like, keeper, a note pad or something and write it down. But there are also tracking software for this kind of thing. So when I see people recommend from time to time, is this one called timely? It's kind of, ah, tracker that will allow you toe track times. The time you spent on different projects has availability on a lot of different devices and so forth. Uh, the pricing for me is a little much is about $100 a month. Um, I don't know if this necessarily justifies that, but if if that works for you, then that's maybe something you can look at, although they do have, I guess, for individuals. I hadn't noticed that for individuals. So it's a lot cheaper so that that's actually a lot better for you don't have a team members that you need to worry about and so forth. This is, ah, pretty decent pricing here. Another one is toggle so kind of does the same thing. Um, And you see, the pricing on it is in line with the individual pricing four Timely. So $9.18 dollars, etcetera. So these APS make it a little bit easier for you to track the time, and you can break them down. Um, it kind of says on the sales page, you can break them down by project so you can actually mark thing things that you did the time that attracts you working in, like, see you at photo shop open and you're doing something in photo shop. You can tag that to a particular project, and so you can. Over time, you'll know how much time you actually spent on projects and tasks and so forth. And this will allow you to be really accurate with your timing. So however, you do it, just make sure you're tracking your time so that you know how long you actually takes you to do things and over time to just be a lot more accurate with your estimates. It's important clients. They're gonna appreciate that on that's gonna help you to build a reputation of being honest and accurate when it comes to people working with you on projects. The last piece here, then is I just going to show you what you can do if you If you do decide, you want to give this to a client, I recommend for a fixed price project, not including the hourly rate in it, because it's just it's gonna become a topic that it can open up a can of worms that you don't necessarily need toe to deal with. And so what I would do is I would just kind of highlight this and then just change the text color the white So it looks like it kind of disappears and then come over here and you want to download as a PdF. So when you downloaded as a PdF, then this cell is it going to be something that they're gonna be able to click and see. Oh, there's now a degree in here and so forth. Okay, So just downloaded his pdf and then send them the pdf. I wouldn't ever directly send them this as an excel file. And I would never include the actual hourly rate in there either. Just because for a fixed price project, you know, if you're doing an hourly rate project, you don't need to really do this necessarily can do it to estimate the time. But you're just gonna track your time, and that's what you're gonna charge them. But for a fixed price project, I would d completely decouple it from the hourly rate from the client's perspective. And so I would just do that and go with whatever your estimate is. And then if there's some pushback or they wanna, you know, talk about adjusting the price or whatever, then you can come back in here and play with this a little bit and kind of get where you need it to be. Your play with ours, etcetera. So that's kind of the last step with this before he sent to the client, make sure and just kind of hide that hourly rate because for a fixed price project, it's just like I said, I'll open a can of worms so you don't really need to get into. And to be Frank in all the years of me, I've been a freelance for 15 years. All the years I've done fixed price project, I never once had a client asked me about the higher hourly rate so they don't really care. And then if you just don't kind of put it in their face, it's not gonna be anything that becomes a big issue. So there you go. 20. BONUS: Manage Scope Creep & Pushy Clients: everybody. John here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Freelance. So this one, I'm gonna be getting into talking about scope, creep and how to deal with that expectation management. It's one of the big things I think it's after learning how to sell your services. I think it's probably the number one skill after the biggest skill to learn after you learned how to sell your services. So this comes from a question that I got in the course. I'm probably gonna put you the name. I apologize. But Jiao, I'll say, um asked this question. So after selling a project on the project being considered finished, how do you deal with change requests and bug corrections? So, for example, you sold a Web application in the client, validated it and accepted it. Project is now closed, however, a month later, the client wants to change to the Web app. A new feature, Let's say how do you go about it? Do you charge per hour? You have a maintenance fee for this kind of thing? What if a client found a bug in the Web app after he has accepted it, so there's actually a number of different scenarios here. That sort of changed the equation a little bit. It's not gonna be the same for every one of these scenarios, whether it's a bug fix. Ah ah, Feature requests, etcetera. So I'm gonna go through all of this. This is this obviously is tailored towards web development. This this course, of course, isn't necessarily aimed just at Web development. Although I know I have a lot of Web developers in here, but what I'm gonna cover is gonna apply whether you do Web development and we're talking about bugs or it's it's writing and it's they found a typo our whatever they want something added to an article that you wrote, etcetera. So you can apply this in a number of different scenarios, no matter what kind of freeing freelancing you do. So there's four things that I'm gonna cover four ways to deal with this and then I'm gonna give you some key phrases at the end that you can use that you can take when you're interacting with the client. And you're having those conversations about this. So the thing to understand is, ultimately, this is just scope creep. You might call it uh, when I saw this, I thought merely popped in my my mind was delayed Onset scope, creep. You might call it that, but ultimately it's just scope creep nonetheless. And I'm judging by a the fact that that you're even asking the question sort of tells me because for me, the answer is very clear. Um, and how to deal with it is very, very clear. And so the fact that you're even asking the question and I don't mean this in a derogatory way I'm not trying to get on you. But it just sort of tells me that this thing, this kind of thing, probably happened in the project as well, because usually clients, if you've dealt with scope, creep, and you've you've done your expectation management throughout, every client's gonna try and push the scope. There's rare that a client doesn't try to do that. If you've dealt with it and you've handled it in the project, this kind of thing, where would happen way after the project tends not toe happen because they already know the answer because they probably heard it two or three times. So I'm guessing that this happened through throughout the project as well. And that's why they can even justify. That's why they can just find even asking for this because they feel like they've been able to push the scope throughout the project. So again, really, all it is is just scope creep, and it's just managing scope creep. Whether it's in the project where it's after the project, it's really all of the same. Like I said earlier, managing scope and expectations is the most important skill. After learning how to get clients, I truly believe that the example that I like to use is when it comes to estimating the time of a project. You know, if you tell a client that is gonna take a week and it ends up taking you two weeks, they're gonna be upset. But if you tell him it's gonna take four weeks and it takes two weeks, they're gonna be happy. Generally speaking, the amount of time the project is exactly the same. But how you managed expectations is the different between difference between a happy client in an upset client, a client that's going to come back to you for repeat business, a client that's going to give you referrals and a client that's not so managing expectation and understanding that nuance and how to deal with scope, creep eyes a part of that. That's one of the most important things you can learn after you learn how to actually get clients. And actually all starts with how you sell your services. So over on the right hand side here, what you're going to see is this is this is a screenshot from an actual contract from a real client of mind that a signed contract and you can see here I quite literally just lay out everything that I'm going to do. And I take this from my delivery road map. I mean, these air macro steps. These aren't all the detailed steps, but these are the macro steps, and I literally just lay them out. And this is under a section called Scope in the Contract. So I put in the contract exactly what I'm going to dio. And so when the client goes through and they read it and they see it, they sign it. This is the agreed upon scope of the project. So now I have an actual legal document that clarifies and defines the scope. This is developed over having built these projects and done these this kind of work over a long period of time. You know, if you're unsure about what should go in here, I actually just haven't really mentioned this course all that much. But I have a new course. It's called Estimate the Time and Time and cost of your Projects. I also added that here is a lesson, the last lesson or episode before this when I also put that kind of compound that course and put it in here. But if you go through that either the course or the lesson here, it's going to show you how to create this list. So take that list and just drop it in there under scope, OK? And that will help you create a well defined scope. You can negotiate scope at the point of the contract. So now once you get in to the actual project, then you have something to refer back to when you tell them while that's out of scope. Okay, so you have to manage those expectations from the very beginning. It's really even before the contract again. One of the things I talk about is specializing. And when you create your your sales page for your services or a video, or whatever you do to talk about not only what you do but also what you don't do. So I would tell people, Hey, I build membership sites with WordPress in this plug in called Wishes member, and then I would specifically say, like, that's what I do. I would specifically say I don't really work on other types of WordPress sites. I don't really work on just sort of general PHP projects. Those aren't a good fit for me. So if that's what you have, then you probably want to find someone else that is managing scope from the very beginning . So again, if you're doing that from that point and then you do it in the contract here, you are signaling to the client that you are paying attention to scope. And so when they go, if they go to try and push the scope, they're going to do it 10 into the tentatively because you've done all of this expectation management, and then I'll give you some tools for how to deal with that. So I'm really hammering this particular point home because it's the most important part. If you get this right, you're going to deal a lot less with these scope issues both in and after the project. Now the second thing that comes into two and that really what I was talking about deals primarily with with feature requests it can deal with with this sort of thing with with bug fixes. But bug fixes really come down to your guarantee. Now when I say guarantee, a lot of I think Web developers in particular I could even see that being the case with a few write articles for people or do graphic design be like guarantee? Right? What is that? But if you look at a lot of service providers that have been established mechanics and things of that nature, you'll find that they have some sort of guarantee. It's very nuanced in particular, and that, you know it has to be because of the kind of work that they do and freelancers in general do they tend to have a guarantee, and I would recommend that you do have a guarantee one. It helps give your client peace of mind, but also again is another way that you can set the conditions for some of these issues that inevitably will come up. So a couple questions? A Do you have a guarantee? Be what does it actually say? So if you look at the picture on the right here again, this is my actual guarantee again, that I pulled from that same contract signed contract. It's and I called it. No, my isn't broke guarantee to kind of get the point across that it's really about If I broke something so you can see what it says here we guarantee a week for 30 days, during which time we will identify and fix any bugs that may occur. Our guarantee. Onley covers items we are contracting to build that break. For whatever reason, it does not cover new features, wholesale sale site changes or anything a reasonable person would not consider a bug. It also does not cover changes, and then this went to the next page. But it basically says it does not cover changes that might occur from you installing a new plug in or a theme. Are you changing the site in a major way and that causing issues because I didn't break it . So that was essentially my guarantee. For 30 days. I'll fix any bugs that I is actually my fault. And I created if it was truly a defect in what I did, so you can take that same sort of idea and apply it to whatever it is that you do. But when you specify this again, you've set the conditions you set the context, the expectation expectations within which you are going to manage bug fixes. And then, of course, as I say the bottom here, no new features. And if they added a bunch of stuff and host wholesale site changes and so forth, it essentially avoided the guarantee because I can't control all of the different things that in a WordPress site what they might install. So take some time, think about what makes sense for you in terms of guarantee and what you're freelancing, but have a guarantee, because again, peace of mind for them. But it also allows you to manage. Scott was just another tool for managing scope, and things are gonna happen. It's just inevitable, especially if your Web developer, but I can imagine it with articles and graphic design and so forth. Things are gonna come up, so address it proactively instead of reacting to it when it happens. And that's what I guarantee allows to dio. Okay, so once you have those things in place, you've identified scope from the very beginning. You put it in your contract, you have a guarantee that talks about how you're gonna deal with problems afterwards, like you really set the conditions of the expectations and the scope. And now from there, it's just a manner matter of how you manage it. So if it was a bug than it was really, truly a defect in my work, I was very liberal with my policy because I wanted a good reputation. So I've even gone as far as 90 days out on a bug fix. Even though my policy says 30 days and I've set that expectation, I've gone as far as 90 days out on a buck fix because I didn't want that client toe. I wanted that client to be happy. I didn't want them to say bad things about me, and so I would go above and beyond for stuff that I actually broke. That was actually my fault. but because I said the expectation that I wouldn't. When I did that, the client actually recognized it and was appreciative. It wasn't just something they expected I should do because I had already told them I wouldn't. But now I am. So it changes the entire context of how you're doing this. So you're in a way, you're still doing the same thing, right? You're going, You're fixing the problem beyond what may be a reasonable scope. But now you're doing in any way where it's actually the client season and appreciates it. And because they know that you're going, you're going beyond your policy. They just don't try to push for all this other stuff along with it and the one client particular where I got. There's about 90 days on the bug fix. I end up getting multiple referrals from them. I have testimonial. That's all testimonials that are on my site from them. So really worked out well for me, made them happy and lead to more business for me. So again, if it's a bug, if it's actually a defect in your work, I would recommend being liberal with your policy, even though you said it a 30. You really want to make clients happy and have them say good things about you. So that was my approach to it. If it's a feature request, it's super black and white. That wasn't a part of the original scope. I can do it for you. I'm just simply write up a new proposal on a new contract and thing to keep in mind with this is I wouldn't get upset about this. This is one of the ways that you primary ways that you get repeat business again if you doing all the scope management from the very beginning. When this client comes back, this is essentially them coming back for repeat business. And they're gonna know if you set the scope and manage expectations from the beginning, the client will know that when they come back, that this is a new feature and that they're gonna have to pay extra for it, so I wouldn't get upset set with it. I would just view it as a way to get new business down to the specific question of Do you charge an hourly rate or do you have a maintenance fee? I've done both. I've been. I've been hired on retainer by clients, which is sort of like a maintenance fee, although not exactly the same thing. Um, and I've also just charged them. You know, when they came back, I just truck wrote a proposal in charge them. I don't think that's really the big the big question. You could do that however you want. It's really up to you. I don't think that that really matters Me. I think over time, what I preferred is if they came back to me, I would just write up a new proposal. I didn't really like the the retainer worker maintenance fee type things because you have to manage scope a lot, a lot no more aggressively when you're in those situations. So ah, I I ended up kind of settling on just writing up new proposals and again, No, I have a lesson in here. I talk about how to estimate the time and cost. Just do that. Just follow that lesson, the worksheet that I give you for that lesson. That's the one right before this one. I think Episode nine and just follow that at every project to Dio. And it's easy whether It's a small one like this or a big one whatever. So again, a view feet feature requests after the project is as repeat business. Okay, so final thing that I want to give you is some phrases to manage scope because it can be difficult when you're actually in the back and forth to to say the right thing to Maine. A scope these air, some phrases that I've found over time have worked really well. So when someone when a client pushes scope when they say, you know, this is the fine scope of what you're doing, they're like, Well, can we add this or can we do this or whatever? If you're gonna answer Yes, then And there are times where I would even though something was out of scope, I would do it. So if it was really minor, that I might do it, or if it was something that sometimes when you you write out the list of things you're gonna do for a project, you miss something. And so if they identified, you know, maybe they didn't realize that I had missed it, but they brought up something and I realized, Oh, I missed that, then I would definitely do those sorts of things. So those of the situations where I might do something or if it was a client that for whatever reason, I was really trying to is a really well known client. I might go even further with with scope a little bit. But whenever you say yes, you don't just say yes. Okay, so you want to use these phrases? So the 1st 1 if you're going to say yes, is this is technical, a scope of the project. Normally, we need to write up a new contract for this, but and then you insert whatever the reason is so I might say, but it's a really minor thing. It'll take me maybe 10 minutes, so I'll go ahead and take care of it within the current contract and budget. Okay, so you always want to make sure whenever something is out of scope, no matter how minor you say this is out of scope. Normally this is what we would do. That is how you set the expectation of how these things air are, are are managed so that when you come back the next time and we'll talk about the next one and say, No, I'm not going to do it for whatever reason, Then you can say this is beyond the scope of this project. I'm happy to do it for you, but we need to write up a new estimate contract for it. I can get you an estimate on what it would cost to be like to Bercy. Just let me know anyway. So now when they've pushed the scope and you've said yes, they've already been conditioned for what they're going to hear when you say no and, ah, lot of times what would happen when I would use this? No phrase is. Actually, they wouldn't They wouldn't have me do the estimate it would. Actually, they would just add No, it's not a big deal. You know, Maybe that something will take care of our we'll do later or whatever. So it actually worked to get them to bring the scope back into where it's supposed to be. There were some times where they would say, Yeah, let's go ahead and do it night right up, and then I would just make more money on the project, so it was fine. But these two phrases. If you use them consistently in your communications, whether it's written or verbal, then it's really gonna constantly put scope into the client's kind of psyche. And they're thinking, and all of this stuff that we're talking about is really going to kind of go away because you've said it 15 times throughout the project, whenever they tried toe, push the scope. You've noted to them that this is out of scope, and I'm going to do it or I'm not going to do it. Doesn't really matter. You've set the expectation of this is out of scope. So those phrases work really, really well. I would. Honestly, you could take these almost verbatim. You know, you you could adjust them a little bit to sort of your tone in your style, but have used these for years, and they work incredibly well for managing scope. So there you go. Hopefully that fully answers your question and gives you kind of everything that that you need to deal with scope, creep and manage these sorts of of issues. And again, I just don't think there's really not a big difference between in Project and after project , its scope creep at the end of the day, and if you manage it throughout, you'll just have less and less of these problems. 21. BONUS: How to Become a 6-Figure Freelancer: Hey, John. Hair back was another episode of Let's Talk Freelance this when I wanted to get into making six figures because I know that when I first started freelancing, that was a big goal of mine. I know a lot of freelancers. This is one of the first things that kind of focus on and set as a goal. And so I wanted to talk about it because I went through the experience. The first few years I was freelancing. I kind of had. This is a goal out there, but I really didn't have a definite plan or approach to how I was going to do it. And then once I got more serious about it and actually made a plan, that's when it actually happened. I was nowhere close in those first few years, and then once I made a plan I actually was able to achieve. It was a little bit easier than what I thought it was. And I have also knows a lot of freelancers who have done it, don't necessary like to talk about it. They'll spend a bunch of time telling you why you shouldn't care about making six figures or they'll give you some generic tips or secrets that kind of just generally apply to freelancing. But they don't really give you a methodical approach. And and really, what are the keys to hitting that six figure mark? So that's what I wanted to do, just kind of give you step by step what I did. And you can kind of take that for what it's worth and how it may or may not help you. So with that said, the very first thing that you need to do that I did is you need to do the math. And the big point here is just a simple question. How many hours per week do you need to Bill and at what rate, in order to make six figures in a year? So do you know the answer to that question already? If you do not, then your six figure goal isn't a goal. It's really just a dream. It's kind of just a pipe dream that's kind of out there, but you don't have a definite plan for actually achieving it. If you don't know the answer to this question, and probably if there's anything else that you take away like there's nothing else that you take away from this episode. That's what I want you to take away, do the math, understand what you need to do and actually have a definite plan. Whatever your income, coal is whether it's six figures or not know the math, because that's the only way that you actually have ah strategy or plan to to reach that. So I use this equation. You just take 100,000 divided by 52 weeks and then divide that again by the hours per week that you're going to Ah, you plan or you estimate that you're going to build for and that's going to give you your minimum hourly hourly rate. Now, the reason that I do it that way is because I think the hours per week is the thing that you can control the most through the thing that you can think about the most. You might say I'm gonna work 40 hours per week. Yeah, you've got to get the clients to build up the clients to be able to log that many billable hours. Understandable, but you could have sort of set how many hours you wanna work per week, so that if you do, that equation is gonna tell you what your minimum hourly great is. And then you can kind of just play with those two numbers, hourly rate and hours per week. Now what? So if we just look at some hard numbers here, you take 100,000. Let's say we're building 50 hours per week, which is a lot, but let's just say we're doing it. That's 2600 hours billed in a year, which means you would have to charge $38 per hour. Now. I think that would surprise a lot of freelancers because I get emails from freelancers who want to make six figures, but they're only charging $25 an hour. So what that means is you would have to log 76 billable hours per week. That's actually pretty hard to do, especially when you start looking at what clients will bill how many hours, though Bill on Ah, an average week. I've found that at least for what I do in my niche, and it can very quite a bit, but 5 to 10 hours wasn't was a number that I could sort of bank on and playing around. There were some clients that build a lot more. There's some claims that build a lot less. But generally, if I planned around 5 to 10 hours per week per client, then that was the number I could plan around. So if you look at that and you and you do the math, you would need 8 to 15 clients active clients logging 5 to 10 hours per week in order to hit $100,000 if you're only charging $25 per hour. Basically, the point is, if you charging $25 per hour and you have a goal of of hitting six figures, it's almost unattainable. It's it's very difficult to do. 8 to 15 active clients is a lot. You would be pretty miserable, at least for what I do with Web ball. But maybe some other niches that's not so bad. But in any case, the point is you want to figure out these numbers now. If you compare that sum to my hourly rate, I charge $100 per hour, so if you take 100,000 divided by 100 that gives you 1000 hours that I need to log in a year in order to hit $100,000 in revenue. So if you break that down, that's about it's a little less than three hours per day, or 20 hours per week. That's a lot more attainable if you're getting 5 to 10 hours per week from clients, while I only need 2 to 4 clients that I need to to have as active clients in order to hit that income goal. So again, big point that the first thing is, do the math, know what these numbers are, know how they work and so forth. And then the other thing is understanding how many clients you need and recognizing that it's usually a lot easier to charge more than it is to get more clients. And when you hear people talk about oh, you shouldn't care about making $100,000 or trying to reach that mark is gonna make you miserable and this and that. What they're doing is they're trying to hit the $100,000 mark by getting more clients, not by charging more and the approach that has worked best for me again. I'm just telling you What I know approaches work. Best for me is to charge more toe focus on being able to charge more and having more and more premium clients. That way, you're not running yourself ragged. You know, you're not just taking any old project, you know, overworked, you're not miserable, and you're still able to make what you want to make. Whether it's $100,000 whether it's a little less whether it's a little more, whatever it is, charging more per hour really is the way to get there. And that's that's kind of what I want to show you here, okay? Or the point that I want you to get from from this first part. So that said, then we get into how do we do it? So the second step is defining a unique selling proposition, and this is the answer to How do I charge more for my? How do I charge more for my services? So the big idea here is the reality is, you know there's 1000 other freelancers, at least who do what you do and many of whom frankly, are going to be better than you. Talent wise, there's a I work with developers with clients of mine that are way better than me on a daily basis, far in a way better than me. Then, about every project I've worked on with clients, there's been a developer involved that was way better than me. But I generally most of those developers. I tend to make more than them and do better than them, simply because it's not. It doesn't come down to talent. Okay, so the thing you have to think about is what makes you unique. Why should I hire you over the other 999 freelancers who do the exact same thing? Because they're out there now? When I asked that question, the most common answers that I get are things like, Well, I'm better at what I do. I'm more reliable or a lot of times I'll here I really need this. But none of those answers air very compelling to a client and a client really doesn't care how desperate you are. In fact, the opposite the more desperate you are, the less likely they are to work with you. So again, those those those answers really aren't going to kind of move the needle when it comes to convincing a client that they should hire you and also pay more for you. So how do you do that? Well, here are some of the answers that I gave and could give to clients of mine. And remember, I'm in a very specific niche building membership sites with WordPress and then a very specific plug in cold wish list member. Okay, so one of my answers to the questions of why should they hire me over the other thousands of developers out there that do what I do? Well, one of my clients is the software company who built a membership software that they're using to build their membership site. So the company that builds this plug in wish this member there one of my clients, I build all of their sites. I do a lot of their content, etcetera. So that's fairly compelling to to someone in my niche actually helped write the A p I rapper for their software. So the softer has an A p I. And then we have a PHP rapper class that I wrote so I know it inside and out. I know it really well. I know the FBI really well, So if you want to do some of the A p I again, um, there's probably not anybody besides the lead developer of the plug in that knows it better than I do. It was also the lead instructor for their certified developer program. So that was a program where I taught other developers how to use the software to build membership sites. So I was the one who taught everybody else out there that, uh, I might be competing with. I built and I run their own membership site, this client. I've worked on some really big, successful online memberships for people like Michael Hyatt Lewis House Inc magazine. I know how their sites run. I know how their memberships or build. I know how they market their their membership sites, etcetera. So if you look at those things compared to, I'm better, I'm more reliable. They're very specific. They're very. They're very real relevant to this particular set of clients, and it has nothing to do a talent or reliability. It's 100% unique to me and could be never, never be matched by another developer is very appealing to my potential clients, and and so that's the point to charge 100 200 or more per hour. You can't just be good and be reliable. You have to stand out and be unique in a compelling way. So that's what we're after. And if you really this defining a unique selling proposition and getting to this point where where you can figure this out, this is the key to charging more. Charging more is the key to be able to reach whatever income goals you have and everything sort of centered around this. So if you tent, spend some time to do this and figure this out, this could be the thing that court sort of set you free Well, when it comes to your freelance income, and that's really what I want you to get out of this. So, But again, the question is, Well, how how do I figure this out? So you guys are probably if you listen to me for any amount of time. You heard me sort of go on about this ad nauseam. But the reality is is just the truth. You start by defining a highly specific niche. So again I build membership sites using WordPress and a specific memberships. I called wish list member within that niche. All the things that I listed above, they matter tremendously outside of it, there almost worthless. Nobody cares. You probably don't even know what the certified developers programme is, right. You don't care. But people in that niche do know what it is. They do care. And the fact that I taught it means something to them. So the more specific you get with your niche, then the easier it is to be the king or queen of that niche again. Within that niche, I'm maybe one of the best in the world. Outside of that niche, I'm just another I'm just another freelancer. I'm just another developer, and that's the point. You want to figure out what that niches for you. The next thing, then, is niche specific authority. So it's really just what I said within my niche. All those things I listed give me authority outside of it. They don't. So what you have to do is figure out what matters to your particular clients in your specific niche and create, and I want to highlight that word create, not hope, not wish not wait, create proactively go out and create authority around those things that matter to your clients. So to give you an example, let's say that you decide you want to build landing pages on WordPress, and I'm using that that example because I've had students of mine be very successful with it. Now, if you're a designer developer, you might be. You might be tempted to focus in on how good your designs look or the technology that you use to build them. That's a typical approach that a developer or designer might take to say a landing page. But in that niche, what do clients care about most? Well, I can tell you it's conversion landing pages air all about converting visitors into leads or customers. And that's the number one thing that people in that niche care about. So the design, the technology, all that other stuff it's fine. But it's all in service of increasing conversions. So when you think about that, then you can ask, How might you develop authority in that niche? Well, create some landing pages and you could do it for a client. You can just do it for yourself. Somebody you know, you could start off doing some free stuff just to get something built. But don't just build anything that I want you to have strategy behind this. That's that's really what I'm trying to get at. But create something and then whether maybe there, if you're doing it for a friend or family member for free. Or maybe you're able to get a client or whatever it is and they start getting traffic to that landing page tracked the conversion rates on that landing page No, and actually come up with some results that you can mention study landing page conversion, figure out what works to increase those conversion rates, become an expert in conversion, blogged about it, etcetera. You could go out right now. You could build a landing page around any topic you may never ever intend on selling anything on it. But you created landing and page around a particular topic, and you confer 2 to 3 cents a click. Send traffic from Google ads to those pages, so for about a dollar, you could get 50 people to a landing page. So for 20 bucks you could get, say, 1000 people to a landing page and you could track the conversions and say, Oh, it converted at 56%. Hey, now you have some real data, and you can take that template. You can take your knowledge and say, you know, created a landing page that can four x y Z niche that converted at 56%. You spent 20 bucks to do that to create that authority. But that's gonna go a long way with potential clients. You do that four or five times. Maybe you spend 100 bucks, and now you have four or five things that you can list as a conversion expert on on your profile and so forth. So you're just going to get a lot more client to be able to chop charge a lot more, Which is the key here. If you can say something like something specific, like for most websites. Aiken, triple your conversions with my specifically designed landing pages or whatever it is vs Hey, I bill nice looking landing pages and I'm reliable. That's just not gonna move. The needle is much, so it's all about authority and Mitch specific authority view. If you want to charge more this is the the correlation I want you to get. If you want to charge more, you have to increase your authority. The more you increase your authority, the more you're able. Gonna gonna be able to charge more. It's not ah, 100% about talent. A talent is what allows you to build authority, but it's not. The correlation isn't direct. If you have a bunch of talent, but don't go out and build authority, that doesn't mean you're gonna be able to charge more. And I think that's a missing piece for a lot of freelancers who are really good at what they do but haven't thought specifically about authority and its tie to how much you can charge. So again, that's one big thing that I want you to get from this. Okay, the final piece here. Then, when it comes to your needs, selling proposition is an irresistible offer because ultimately all of this that has to translate into a precise offer that hits the nail directly on the head of what your potential clients want most. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that in the next section and where you can learn how to do that, but it's it's very important. This is really what we're driving out with all of this. And I'll just say this if you can buy in the three things we just talked about, Ah, specific niche, high authority within that niche in a compelling offer that hits exactly what your clients want. I'm just telling you, selling your services, raising your prices, getting the best, the best clients, and then ultimately making six figures and beyond, or whatever it is, it's gonna be a lot easier than you might imagine. You're gonna be light years ahead of other freelancers who really just don't think about this stuff all that much. So this stuff might seem a little eat as a Terek and weird. But, you know, you might have the tendency to say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it really does like doing it is what separates the freelancers who can charge what they want to charge and make what they want to make from the ones that are still just kind of struggling around trying to figure it out. Okay, so we talked about an irresistible offer, and I said I mentioned that in the next section, so the big thing here is you want to develop data driven service offerings. That's the next big thing. And I find a lot of freelancers just sort of guess when it comes to what services they're gonna offer and what they're going to charge, it's if you do that, you're just gonna be miserable. I prefer to use actual data to figure out the services clients are actually buying right now and what they're paying for within a particular niche and less guessing is just gonna lead to less struggling and less failing. That said, I have a whole episode here and let's talk Freelance Episode three Where I go through that in detail it's a screen cast where we go on fiber and we go on other sites and I show you how to figure all of this out. So I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel. Put that back in here. Just if you're at that point or when you get to that point, just go to Episode three and it's just gonna walk you step by step through how to do that. But just to focus on this, this is really, really important. You want toe. Combine those three things specific niche, niche authority and then a compelling offer. If you get the 1st 2 But don't couple it with a compelling offer, you're going to suffer as a result because it's just not the exact perfect offer that clients want. Next thing, then, is to build a system of clients are system to get clients. So another common mistake that I see. And this is something the famous online marketer Jeff Walker, he calls it hope marketing. So you decide to put up a freelance or decided freelance. You put up a profile on a freelance side, or you build a website to sell your services. And then what? No. Maybe you write a block poster to or you throw up some stuff on social media, but now what? And what I find it is. Most freelancers don't have a set consistent, daily, reliable system for constantly bringing in new clients. They set ah, set of actions that they can go out and take on a daily basis that they know that will bring people into their system. And once they're in their system, then they'll be methodically converted into clients. A lot of freelancers just don't do that they just sort of wing it. And that's where the income instability that you hear so many freelancers talk about that's where it actually comes from is not having that reliable system. So the point is, you want a well defined and planned system. Now there's a bunch of different ways that you can do that. But I'm just going to tell you what I would do if I were starting all over from scratch. Some of this I know some of you are gonna vehemently disagree with, but it's what I did. It's what worked for me, and I've seen others do it. I've advised other students to do it, and it's worked well for them. So this is what I would do if I were starting over today. So the very first thing is I would create an up work account, which I know is blasphemous. But there's just so much opportunity over on up work that you can't ignore it. There's thousands of new jobs posted every day, and the clients are there ready to buy right now, so there just isn't a Mork captive audience of buyers waiting to give you money again. I know a lot of people say, Well, there's there's junk projects and there's bad clients in this all that there is there's thousands, hundreds of thousands of clients over on upward, probably, I think, even in the millions. So, yeah, you're gonna It's gonna run the full gamut of clients that you could find, but there's also good clients. And yes, those jobs are a little bit more competitive, but at least you have the opportunity to compete. Whereas if you just put up your own website and nobody ever visits it, you're not even you're not even competing. You don't even get a shot at it. And we can take an example that we use before WordPress landing pages. I confined jobs over there right now for $1500.1000. There's some even for 10-K plus over there, and you just not gonna find a site where that kind of money is being thrown around on a regular basis, and that's for one search. You find those projects those kind of projects all over the site. Yes, you can find the $5 projects, but you can also find the $1,011,500 projects. They're both there. It's just a matter of knowing how to find them, knowing how to bid on them, knowing how to deliver on them, etcetera. So it's really about doing the right things and taking the right steps. And if I always recommend people get a client account over there, you get a client account and you look at some of the freelancers over there. You'll find people for 203 104 105 $100,000 over on up work. So there are real freelancers. Making real money again is just competitive. So, you know, for all the hand wringing that some people do about the site as a new freelancer, Like I said, you're just gonna have a hard time finding this much opportunity and you were out. So my regulations ignore the naysayers and remember, it just comes back to doing the right things, taking the right actions. And if you do that, then you're gonna be going methodically. Doesn't mean you're immediately going to land a $30,000 project. But it means you're gonna be taking the right steps to get to the point where you start getting some of those those higher paying projects, um, and and be able to use it as a tool. And I'm gonna show you I'm gonna show you what to do and how toe do solve this. Now I will say full disclosure. I do teach a course on up work where I show you how to do all this. Build a profile, right? Proposals been on jobs, etcetera. So I may be a little bit biased, So take it For what it's worth, you don't have to use up work, but that's the big thing here. If you prefer using another website, by all means, feel free to use it. I just think for starting out. It's the largest freelance site out there. There's a lot of opportunities, and so I recommend it. If you do decide you want to use up work, I would strongly suggest you already have access to the course. So there's no sales pitch here. I would strongly suggest taking my upward course. You can find it on my profile. It's just gonna walk you through what to do and how to do the right things. So there you go with that, so creating up work account once you're up Work account is created. Now you need to build your website. And so the big thing here is and this is where I I tend to lose a lot of people. But if you do this, it works really well, I did this when I first started, and it just it works tremendously. So the idea here is we've created an up work account, but we're not just gonna We're not just going to sit around and hope that up work brings us everything. We're not gonna rely on upward. We're building a real freelance business. OK, so we're not when there's no hoping allowed in a real freelance business business, you don't get a hope for anything. You go out and get it and create everything that you need. Okay, that's the idea here. So we're going to do what every other business on the planet that has an online presence does build a website, market your services and get clients all on your own. So we're going to create, we're gonna create our website. We're gonna blawg, we're going to do social media, we're gonna run ads, we're gonna do all of that stuff, but at the beginning, we're gonna take those people. And when they decide they want to hire us, we're gonna move them over to up work. Now, that's where I lose people. People, Wait a second. Why would I had put in all this effort and all this work to then take the client and just give it toe up work? And now they charge their fees and all this stuff, and I'm basically just handing them money. Well, there's two reasons. First off is if you bring a new client upward so they don't have an account on up working all their completely brand new. You bring them over there, they create an account and then they hire you. All of the standard fees that up work normally charges they don't charge. So you're actually not handing them anything? You're not losing out. So that's the first thing. A lot of people don't know that a lot of people that hate up work know that and don't talk about it because they want you to hate up work. But that that is the reality. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that that allows you to then juice the algorithm. So up work And again, a lot of people don't fully realize this is very algorithm driven. And so the morning it's based primarily off of your job history and your feedback that you've gotten from clients. So if we bring in our own clients over toe up work now, what happens is we start to do we start to add to our job history start to add to our feedback. I'm assuming that you do good work and you're gonna get good feedback if you get bad news, the thing I get, some people who like Hey, I got a bad review from a client, and now I'm you know, I'm screwed over on up work. Uh, I don't know what to tell you. You get a bad review like it doesn't matter what, where you're at, you be anywhere if you get a client that's not happy, like that's gonna screw you anywhere. So I'm assuming that you're doing good work and that you're gonna get good reviews. But if you bring clients over there and you start getting that job history, you start getting those reviews. Guess what happens up. Work has now has data on you because that's the biggest problem you face when you first get on up work and you have no job history. They have no data on you, so they don't know. Have any way to know if your trust, whether you're not so there's no data, there's no trust. You bring it data, you give it data, and now it starts to learn more about you. And after you get a couple of projects that you've brought in over toe up working to get some dad on, you get good feedback. The projects go well, all that sort of thing now that it's essentially juicing the algorithm and now it starts to work in your favor. And what ends up happening is you end up getting mawr work from up work than you ever brought it. So this is what I did early on. I brought a few projects over toe up work on my own, and then the algorithm basically turned in my favor, saw me as a reliable freelancer, and by the by the time I had to like back it off, I was getting 30 plus job invites per month from up work, and these were large high, paying thousands of dollars per project projects so and I could only do one or two of them a month. So I was essentially overrun with potential work because I had 30 plus people inviting me another projects. I can maybe take one or two. That's the point you want to get to and building your website and and pushing people toe up work in the beginning allows you deduce the algorithm so you can get to that point then later on, what will do is as we establish ourselves on up work, we get more job history. You get more feedback, we get testimonials, we get items to put in our portfolio were taking those portfolio. I'm is also putting them on our website. We're taking those testimonials and also putting them on our website. We're building out our website. We're creating content. We're blogging, we're doing all of the regular business stuff and we're doing it while we're getting up work over on upward primarily. But we're building out our main site and then once we get to the point where we're like okay, I'm getting enough people asking me on a monthly basis to hire them from my own website. I'm gonna stop sending them over toe up work. I'm just gonna let them hire me here on my own site. And now that's when you kind of break free from up work. You're not reliant on up work. You could still get work from it if you want. But now you've kind of built out your own site and you usually can charge more. You'll make more, etcetera. So that's the big idea. We're just using up work as a tool to allow us to build out our credibility in our authority. Um, and having it send us work, reducing the algorithm all that. But it's ultimately a stepping stone to building out our own site and having our own site. So that's the big idea here, when it comes to, there's a number of pages and things to do when it comes to building your website. I talk about that in episode seven and eight. So if you're the point of actually building your website, check out episodes seven and eight. Once your website is built, then you need to market your website so you need to start blogging and I blogged articles. YouTube video, social media, post podcasts, all the stuff again. If any of you follow me outside of here, you'll know that I do all the that stuff. I blawg. I do YouTube videos. I do social media. I do podcasts. I do advertising etcetera. So you want to do all of that stuff to market your website? There's a lot to that way more than I created a whole two hour course on it, so it's way more than I want to put into an episode here. But just go to my profile and check out the turn content into clients course, and that's going to show you how to go about marketing your website, everything that I do nothing held back or anything like that. Everything I do to market my own stuff. So if you want to learn that again, just check out the turn content to clients course on my profile. Okay, so you've got your up work account, U boat, your website. You started marketing your website. Another thing that you could do that's really effective is to network locally and then push those people toe up work. So I was a part of to to meet up groups and every meeting that I went to, I always got clients, all right. Got leads for different projects. Some of those people hired me. Simone didn't. But I was always getting at least one, sometimes more leads every time I went to one of these meetings. And the really the big thing about this is that every single one of those people that either hired me or introduced me to somebody or gave me a lead or whatever, not a single one of them ever asked me for a portfolio asked me what my girl for my website was. None of them had seen any work that I had ever done, and they were willing toe recommend me as a lead and hire me for their stuff and that for someone who's new, that could be a big advantage because you don't necessarily have that stuff. You want to try and have something you can show people. But a lot of these groups, they just don't ever ask for it because they just people have this thing where if they meet you in person, that a lot of that stuff just to get a read of you that they like you. A lot of that stuff just sort of goes out the window so they could be really effective in that sense, and you might wonder. OK, well, where do I find these? So a couple places? There's a website called Meet up dot com. That's a good place to start. You have to create a free count over there, but once you do, you can type in your location, and it'll find groups that are registered on meet up dot com in your area. I live in a small, small town, and I even still have several relevant ones around where I live here now. So and it was much more when I lived in back in Omaha, which is a much bigger town. So that's one places. Meet up dot com. Another thing is, you can just ask the local professional. So insurance agents, lawyers, doctors, plumbers, home mortgage realtors, financial experts, any of those people, a lot of those industries meet up. Groups are a big a big part of how they go about getting work, and they rely on their them pretty heavily. So just ask those people. Ask your doctor, your lawyer your realtor. Whatever. If you have those things that you, your plumber that you contact asking what? They're part of these groups, they say yes. Say, Hey, are they looking for a a Web developer? Graphic designer? Whatever, writer, whatever it is that you do, um and I'll just tell you yes or no. I mean, there's this one over here. This is, you know, and he's If you do that, that's an easy way that you can do it as well. Okay, so last thing then with the meet up groups is just a few tips for how to deal with these groups. The first big thing is picking the right kind of group. So the tendency would be, let's say, I'm developer. I want to get in a meet up group with other developers. The problem with that is those people are doing the same thing that you're doing, so they're not necessarily likely to have work to give you because they're taking it for themselves. So you won't really want to try to stick to a more general career and business oriented type of group. A meat out, meet up dot com. They have a category of groups called Career in Business. What you Want is you want the people in the group itself to be people that are targeted for your services. So I was in a group with, like I said, lawyers, insurance agents, auto body was one of, um Ah, Realtor home mortgage. Those were a number of the people that were in the groups that I was in, and they all kind of had websites or we're thinking about websites or whatever. They were all targeted for my services. So you want to get hired by the people in the actual group, which is a little bit different than how a lot of these people do it. But again, you just want to pick the right kind of group so that that you have people that can hire you for your services, as opposed to people who do exactly what you do. Then that there's just not gonna be much work. That's probably gonna come out of that second thing is pick the right size group, so some groups have thousands of members. Some have less than 10. I found that 22 50 members is a is a good size. There's enough potential for work, but it's also everybody's gonna know. You can kind of stand out. You could be the only person in the group who does what you do at that size. And so it's just a lot easier for you to kind of be the go to person for this kind of work , and that helps you get a lot more work out of those groups. The final thing, then, is to just focus on helping people in order to get helped. So you want to remember that these are all business owners just like you. And so they're looking for work just like you. So if you do your best to help them get work, they'll return the favor. So let's say a friend of yours and say, Hey, you know, I'm looking for a plumber. I had this thing happened with with my my plumbing, and they're kind of venting to you about it. Wherever you can say, Hey, you know, I'm a part of this. This local is business group, and we have a plumber in there that's really good and send them to that plumber. Tell them to say, Hey, tell him that I sent you over there and then when you that that plumber though that person goes to that plumber, let's say that plumber will know that you sent them and they'll be more likely to hope you back. And it it sounds kind of like Oh, yeah, yeah, whatever. But these groups air oriented around that particular thing and they really do. That's where a lot of of my referrals came from because I did a lot in the group. I would teach different classes on technology based stuff like social media and so forth. And so then I would get referrals as, ah result of that, I helped people just, you know, with their phones. And you know, the typical thing if you're a developer, like how you end up being the tech person for anybody, any group that you belong to. But in this case, it can actually come back and benefit you. So that's the whole idea. Help, help people. And that's why they don't ask for portfolios and stuff because they see that as you're hoping them you can run circles around them around that particular topic, and they're like, OK, this person knows what they're talking about and they don't have any problem recommending you. So that's the whole the whole netw 22. BONUS: How to Craft a Winning Proposal: Hey guys, Jon here back with another episode of Let's Talk Freelance. So this one, I want to talk about crafting proposals. And I wanted to talk about this because this is really kind of the core activity when it comes to getting clients as a freelancer proposal creating pre a proposal crafting is really kind of Ah, fundamental thing that you're gonna have to do. You have to build those and present those declines, whether you know it's in the form of an actual proposal that you're writing on a freelance light site like say, up work or freelancer any of the others. Or maybe it's something you're doing in person and you need to create some sort of presentation. Or maybe it's just something simple. Like, uh, how you go about writing your services. Page is not exactly a proposal, but anyway, it kind of is. And so again, this is just a core activity of actually selling your services and getting getting hired that you're going to do a lot throughout your career. So if you can get really, really good at it, it could be a lot easier for you to get clients. So that's why I wanted to talk about this today. In particular, I'm gonna be going through seven principles of creating proposals that are really fundamental to creating a proposal that is going to be persuasive and effective and hope you get hired. And these are things that I've just sort of learned over the years that whenever I include the more of these that I include in a proposal, the more likely I am to get hired for that particular project. And again, these aren't these aren't step by step. Do this first, do this. Second, do this. Third, this this episode. I kind of wanted to give you more of the art of creating proposals so that you can apply in all these unique, different ways and different situations. I just think that that's going to be long term, more beneficial. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive into this. So the 1st 1 is it's a simple one, but it's important one, and that is as much as possible. You want to try and use the client's name in the example that immediately comes to mind for me is, uh, with all the YouTube and stuff that I do on social media about every day. I'll get some sort of email from somebody pitching me on there s CEO services or their translation services or this or that. Whatever content writing I get a lot of those and some of them are really good, and some of them are really bad. And some of the bad ones almost inevitably start with Dear Web master. And as soon as I see those, I immediately throw those out. I don't pay any attention to them because I know that the person has no idea who I am. They're sitting there writing this email where they're pretending like they know who I am, and it's specific to me. But it's really not. In fact, a lot of these will say, Dear Web master, I'm an avid reader of your blog's John Morris online dot com. Well, if that were true, my name's right in the u. R L. And it's on about every post I Satan about every YouTube video that I create. So if you actually were an avid reader of my block poster of my YouTube, you would know my name so immediately. The thing that they've done right off the bat is lie to me. Well, why am I gonna pay attention? Is that person why am I gonna listen to anything they have to say? So I immediately throw these away. But the big idea here again is this. People like to hear their name, and it's gonna earn you a second or two mawr attention if you can get away with not including it. But you really have to nail the subject lines where it seems like it's coming from someone , um that they know and and get that All right. But again, just getting using their name is gonna get you that extra second or two of attention, get them to actually pay attention and read and and appreciate the fact that you've actually done some research. Now, sometimes you can be more difficult than other times to get that information. So it up works a good example. It doesn't include I'm pretty sure in the past that used to include the name of the client . It doesn't anymore. But a lot of times, if you look through the feedback that freelancers have given on a particular client, you'll see somebody mentioned their name and So ultimately, the point is is whatever it is. Whatever, however, you're doing this proposal you want to do, take the time to do that research and figure it out and include the person's name in the proposal. Other context, like a presentation you might be doing in person than this is a really sort of a given. You're probably gonna know their names. So it's not as big of a deal, but in particular in an online setting where you're going back and forth and you may not be talking to each other, face to face or even seeing each other. Using a person's name is is really important. So, as much as possible, try to do that. The second thing, then is include relevant work. Now this again is, Ah, pretty standard one. You know, you're often going to include your portfolio and things work that you've done in the past. But the insight here and the emphasis here is on relevant work, so it would be better for you to include one or two or three pieces of relevant, highly relevant work. Then it would for you to include six or 10 or 20 pieces of stuff that's not really highly related to what they're after, because clients they don't. They don't want to know that you can build everything under the sun. They just want to know if you can build their thing. And so if you're the work you include with your proposal is everything. But what they're after is really not gonna help you. And a good example from my own career is my first client. Ah, I had a plug in that I had built. They were so they were Ah, WordPress plug in company. And they built a membership site software. So I hope turn a WordPress blogging to a membership site. And a lot of the those membership sites on the people building them wanted sort of community, social network type, uh, features to go along with their membership site. And so I had built a plug in that had some of that in there, and they saw that I had built that plug in. Then they were really interested in it. And one of the big reasons why I got hired is because they wanted access to that plug in, plus my knowledge, because I'd done a lot of research on all of the different sort of user functions and functionality inside wordpress. They wanted access to the knowledge that I had about doing that. I ended up writing several plug ins for them that were community based. So again, just you're gonna include you work, you know that. But you want to make sure it include relevant work, and then you also want it to be your best work because you don't know what they're gonna look at. So you want to make sure that everything they're looking at is your best stuff so that there's there's no let down on anything, right? So that's the 2nd 1 The 3rd 1 then is you want to make sure and clearly tell them how you're going to help them. And in particular, you want to try to build a vision of what their life is gonna be like after working with you. So you want to focus on benefits, so some of the things that you're gonna help them to do and some of the the positive things that they're going to get, But really more than that, you you kind of want to focus on problems analogy. Oh, is used is that if you have a thorn in your side and someone comes along and is giving you some pitch about well being and fitness and how you're gonna feel better with their little program and so forth, you know that that that that's not really gonna be what what's on top on the top of your mind? What's going to the top of your mind is the thorn. So if somebody else comes along and says, Hey, I'll show you how to remove the thorn you're gonna go with that person first. So that's the whole idea. Here is you really want to try and focus on, Understand what your clients problems are. A lot of times, though, they'll mention them in their projects of their proposals. Who you really want to read through those and really pick out things where they sound like they're frustrated? Those air pain points. Those are gonna be the things that you can. If you can demonstrate, they they're not gonna have to go through that anymore. That's what's really gonna persuade them to hire you. So ah, lot of a lot of times freelancers will look at those things that the clients, right? And they'll be kinda snarky and judgmental about it. And like, Oh, this person sounds like a joy to work with. You have to understand again, if you had a thorn in your side, you probably be a little grumpy. Well, that's kind of how they're feeling. And so you actually want to seek those things out? You want to look for them and then show them how you're going to alleviate those things. Now, one of the things that I found that works really well here. I just made this name up, but I'm gonna call it Ah, visit Moughniyah. Well, right. So it's this idea of creating a vision through testimonials. And so the what we're really getting at it is you want to talk about the success that others have had, because sometimes if you you talk about yourself too much and how great you aren't, it can kind of come off as bragging and arrogant. And and that's not something you ever really want to do. We always want to kind of come off is reasonable on humble and so forth. Um and so if you do that, it's gonna make persuasion a little bit harder. And so it's going to set up a context for working with that client that could be a little bit adversarial. But with a visit. Moughniyah well, essentially, what you're doing. You're talking about other people or other clients of yours and the success that they have . So one of the stories that I tell all the time you may have heard this before is My Inc magazine story. And I tell how the guy who hired me from there he had been trying to get his membership site built for almost two years had hired a number of other developers, had spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get it done and wasn't able to get it done before he finally found me and hired me. And then I was able to get his beta out the door within 30 days. So that is It's again, is somewhat talking about me. But I'm primarily focusing on the client and their problem and how I was able to help them , and I kept it real big picture. It doesn't have to be super detailed on and so forth, and that creates a vision of if someone's going through a similar experience where they're like, they've been trying to get this site builder. They've been trying to get this result and struggling, and then they hear that story. They're going to relate to that part of it. And then the fact that you were able to help that person get that result that quickly is going to resonate with them, it's gonna be compelling with them. So as much as possible if you can use testimonials, but not just Here's what the client said Use it to build a bigger vision of how you're actually going to help them solve the problems and get the benefits. Ah, that there after. So that could be a really effective tool for for doing this for implementing this principle . Okay, next up is demonstrating your expertise. So the big idea here is that demonstrations trump indicators. So what do I mean by that? Well, things like your portfolio testimonials, ratings, all of these things are just indicators of your competence. They're not actual demonstrations. Um, whereas if you if you can do something that will specifically demonstrate what you're capable of, that's gonna be a lot more powerful in the analogy that use. I just did a YouTube video on this, so some of you may have seen this. So this is a little bit of repeat of that, but I wanted to share it here as well because I think it's important. But the analogy I like to use is if you go into a supermarket a lot of times, we'll have those little sample stands. Let's just say they had their They have, ah, package of sauces there. They're trying to sell. It seems like every time I go into the grocery store always trying to sell sausage, so for whatever reason, so anyway, let's say they have the summer sausage that they're trying to sell, and they've cut it up into little hunks, and they put it in little cups. Now imagine if you went up there and they had that. But also next to it. They had a pamphlet, and you could read a pamphlet that told you all a bunch of information about about the sausage and how it was made. Testimonials from other people ratings from sausage review sites or companies or whatever that stuff would all be. You know it be useful and be helpful, But you have the sausage er sitting right there for you to sample. And so all you have to do is take a bite and you'll decide, then, if you like it or not. So the that is a demonstration versus a pamphlet of testimonials and things which would be an indicator. And again, demonstration demonstrations are just much more powerful. In fact, the more you can try and demonstrate No, your your expertise, your competence, the less you're gonna have to sell because it's gonna be obvious that you know what you're doing. It should be obvious that you can help people. Now. The way that I discovered this, an example I like to use is I was when I first got on up work, I was having a lot of trouble like most people do. I was running into bidding on jobs, not getting hired. It's all the people getting hired for $5 an hour on projects and so forth, and so is really frustrated. Got the point where I was really, really frustrated with it. And so one day I was just going through do bidding on jobs and so forth, and I was just kind of feeling feeling a little bit nihilistic. And so I just got this one and I just kind of said, Screw it. And I went on there and I just told the guy exactly what to dio. I was just kind like, Look, if nobody else, if I can't have this job, nobody else gonna have it. So I just told him what to do because it was kind of a simple thing. It was a smaller project, and I was just like, I was gonna tell this guy what to do. Ah, and be done with it. So I just went on and told him what to do. And I assume that he was just gonna take that go do it and and be done and never hire anybody for the project. But instead, to my surprise, he hired me to do it for him. And that sort of taught me Tommy a couple things. One. Some clients can know exactly what to do, and they still don't want to do it. They can know exactly what to do. That doesn't mean they know how to do it. But it also taught me the power of demonstration and So that's kind of been my basic approach to how I get clients ever since. And and frankly, that's also been my approach. As I transitioned into teaching and how you get students is share openly and freely the what? As much as possible. And then you sell the how and again to just kind of be be frank. That's one of the big reasons why give so much free content away on YouTube and on my blogger on my podcast and so forth is because I'm a teacher, right? That's what I That's what I do now That's kind of my core thing that I do now. So I just go on those platforms and teach and kind of give people it's giving people Ah, a sample of that sausage, and if they like it that I have opportunities for them to tow, take more to get more. I have more courses, premium and so forth, and that's that's really the basic approach, and it's worked really well. Well, for me, both freelancing, teaching, etcetera. So again, the more you can demonstrate your expertise as opposed to talk about it, the easier it is for you going to be for you to sell your services for you to get hired and so forth. And so just think about that in terms of all of the different things that you might be due to marketing yourself from how you're writing your proposals to now, what you're doing on social media belonging. If you're doing YouTube any of that stuff giving away openly and freely the what? Telling people what to do and then selling the how either they don't know how to do it, they might know what to do, but they don't know how to do it or they just don't want to do it. And they're gonna hire you to do it for them. So that is number four number five, then is be sure to include something specific, a specific kind of tips. So you want to give them something that's direct an actionable so that they contest you? And so whatever their project is, you want to try and find something that you can give them and say, Hey, go do this right now and that's gonna help you with this particular thing or go look at this and that's gonna help you understand this. You want to give them something direct and actionable, so they contest your expertise. And what happens is if they go and do that, which most of them are. If you give them something direct and actual, they're gonna go try it. If it works, then you're gonna be hired without too much more back and forth, because now you've given them something that nobody else has. You've helped them actually take a step before they ever hired you. And again, that's just a really powerful demonstrations, the best kind of demonstration that you can give them of your expertise. So again, try as much as possible to give them something specific beginnings and an example that I can tell you to try and maybe give some meat to this is was probably 45 months ago, I had a guy who contact me out of the blue. He was a translation freelancer. That's the service that he provided. And he contacted me out of the blue and he didn't tell say, Hey, I'm a great translation ist. Here's all my clients that I've worked with, etcetera, etcetera. Instead, he attached to file and it was a translation. Fallon says, Hey, I translated this video for you. Here's the file. You could just have it. Reason I'm doing it is if you are in need of translation services and you can look through this and see how accurate it is. If you want more, you can hire me for I forget what it was. X cents. Ah, minute to do translation services. So I happen to be at a point where I was looking for that sort of thing and had to thinking about it, and he contacted me. As timing was right, I went and I looked at his translation and it was spot on and so ended up hiring him. And that's the person. Whenever I do translations now that's the person that I contact me does all of my translations. And so again, he did that by just going in, giving me something and demonstrating that that he was he was capable of providing for me as opposed to talking about himself. So again, as much as possible, try to give people something specific and actionable that they can rely on. And if it works, then is hiring you is gonna be sort of an afterthought, right? Number six, then is asked a question. So this one's a little bit counterintuitive for some people. You don't just want to ask a question to ask the question, but the whole point Really, what you want to get going as you want to try and start a conversation in this process, because the more people it's this weird thing of human nature that the more people talk to each other, even if the conversations aren't necessarily where you're getting to know this person on a super deep level, you know, the more that you talk to someone, the more you interact with someone, the more familiar you start to feel with them, and the more familiar you start to feel with them, the more you start to like them and trust them. And in this particular context, the more likely a client is gonna be toe hire you so as much as possible. You just want to try to get a conversation in a back and forth going, and that's gonna breed familiarity. That's gonna breed trust, and that's gonna help you get hired a lot easier. Now that doesn't mean that you don't keep it focused. You don't you're not going to sit there and and go off talking about all these other crazy things you keep kind of focused on what's going on. And that also doesn't mean that if they're ready to move forward, you go. Hold on, Let's let's have a conversation first. That's not what I'm saying. But if you're submitting a proposal to someone who you've never really talked to before, um, or maybe just a little bit as much as possible, you want to try and just get the conversation going, keep it going. And the more you do that, the easier it is gonna be for you to get hired. So asking a question is a great way to do that. It sort of puts the onus on them to respond to you. And then from that point forward, you can kind of use questions. You can go back and forth and use questions to keep that conversation going as much as possible, right? That's the six thing, and then the seven thing then is to end with some sort of call to action. And again, this comes from me from my experience in direct direct face to face direct sales. Now I did all sorts of things. This will choose cars, knives, tools, all sorts of different things. And the one of the first biggest lessons that we learned was that if you don't ask for the sale, it's one company I worked for had done some research on. It was like something like 80% of the time. When you didn't ask for a sale, you didn't sell the product s o. It's just your numbers wise, you are more likely just just by asking, you're more likely to get the sale quote unquote or get hired simply by asking. So you always want to end with some sort of call to action. The way to do it is have some sort of definite action that you want them to take as a result of hiring you. So you want to think about this beforehand? What is ultimately the purpose of you submitting the proposal now? Yes, Ultimately it's to get hired, But are they? Are they likely? And this this is a true question. You need to ask when you're analyzing this. Are they likely to hire you? Base just off of this proposal. Now, if you're on a site like like up work. Then that might be the case. You know, if you're contacting someone out of the blue, probably not. And even on up work. Almost every time I smooth a pro proposal somebody wants, they would want have questions back and forth or they would want to jump on a phone call, etcetera. So you have to really think about what is the next step towards getting hired. That kind of makes sense in the context of where you're submitting this proposal so again, just have a definite action that you want them to take. You know, again, jumping on a call is probably the best if that makes sense for you and the context of when the proposals being submitted. But again, most clients who contacted me via email or on up work or any any time online. If that's the context here, they're gonna want to get on a phone call almost always. So if you offer at first if you submit this proposal, do all the things I've talking I've talked about and then say, Hey, you know, after you read this, if you're if you're interested, all we can jump on a call Andi, talk more about it. They're gonna want to do that. Anyway, the fact that you're offering is going to be something, a lot of a lot of freelancers, especially in the space I was in Web developers. They don't necessarily want to jump on the phone. They're trying to avoid that. I actually hated getting on the phone for that, but I would I would do it because I knew that that was gonna be the simplest way to close the deal. And every time I I'll be honest. Not every time that I submitted a probe proposal did I jump on a phone call. But every time that I did, I got higher. So that that I mean, if you can get him on a phone call and you're just halfway decent on the phone call, you can probably get hired as a result of it. So again, that's usually the best thing to do. But you gotta, you know, adjusted based off of the context of where you're submitting this, it could be email or whatever it is, you know, if you can do in in in person, you know, if you're close enough to do in person, then that's even better than a phone call. But whatever it is, you always want to end with what you want them to do. You need to specifically tell them. Hey, you know, let's jump on a phone call or hey, click the hire me button on this up work page or hey, submit the quote. Request form boat below you. You want to give them a definite action that you want them to take and include that at the end. All right, So just to recap, then the six things are You want to try and use the client's name as much as possible, include any relevant work. Tell them and build a vision for how you're going to help them make sure and demonstrate your expertise that you know what you're talking about by giving away that what openly and freely give them something direct, direct and actionable to do in order to test you that that what you're saying actually makes sense in that you know what you're talking about. Ask, try to include some sort of question that you ask and then always end with some sort of call to action and just add on the called action. It could be a simple is, you know, email me back If, you know, shoot me an email and let me know the answer to the question or email me back. If you have any questions, like just it could be simple, but end with that called action. If you do those seven things and apply them contextually to the project or the scenario that you're using this in, then I'm I'm just confident you're gonna have a lot more success when it comes to your proposals. All right, so that'll do it for this episode again. This this course is very Q and a driven. So if you have any questions, relate to this or anything else when it comes to freelancing, be sure toe toe. Ask those in the community section below. I love to answer your individual questions. Let me know what you thought of this episode and again, as always, Thanks for watching 23. BONUS: How to Get Clients In Competitive Markets: Hey, guys, don't hear back with another episode of Let's Talk Freelance. So this one, I'm gonna get into how to compete in ultra competitive markets. And this comes from a question I got from Nicole that I wanted to go through. It's a little bit longer of a question when I read through the whole thing because there's some details of that I think are important. So Nicole's question was a John. I've been really enjoying your blogger. I just finished reading the foolproof way to package and price your freelance services. Which, by the way, for those of you watching, I did an episode of on that here and let's Talk freelance of video episode where you can walk through and I show you how to do that. So if you're interested in that, you can check that out here anyway. Says read. Read that and really liked how you dug into fiber to do your market research. I thought, Ah, you'd have some good insight on an issue I'm facing. I'm picking up side hustle doing pre proof reading, and I'm having trouble finding unique selling points. It seems that clients don't really need much regarding extras Ah, lot of people just used Graham early and call it a day. Also, my competition is willing to charge so unbelievably little that I don't see prices my way in. I also have a full time, rather inflexible job, which means I can't necessarily promise lightning fast responses or turn around. Top sellers on Fiverr have very basic offerings to proof read pretty much anything. Top freelancers on up work received generic reviews that don't provide much insight as to why those freelancers were chosen on a more positive note, What I have managed to accomplish is landing a great repeat client by posting my offering to proof read for free on subreddit r slash blogging. Once he saw how many errors I caught that were missed by word Graham early and himself, he became a plane paying client. Unfortunately, the Post got removed by the mods shortly after. Because free offerings on that suburb that aren't allowed, I find that a surprisingly large amount of suburb had some allow free offer posts. I really want to make proof reading work because it seems like such a good fit, but is my best choice at this point toe learn and add a whole new skill like s e o optimization not opposed this, but I want to make sure I try everything I can first, to make proof, reading work. So I'm not really gonna talk too much about the add on and, uh, with S e o. It could be. But if you really don't want to do that and you really want to make proof reading work, I think you can make proof reading work. And I think you kind of already have the answer here. And so I want to go through this internal colts questions also give you some insight into how to compete in really competitive markets like this. And the first thing to understand is, this is just typical of ultra competitive markets, and that's why I harp on picking and niche so much. That's why it's so important, because when you really dig into picking your niche, you can figure all of this out ahead of time and find little gaps and little segments in competitive niches that maybe aren't being served as well. And one of the way, just the simple ways that you deal with the ultra competitive market, is you niche down to a point where it's just not as competitive where people aren't really focusing on that. And it's specifically there, just kind of focusing more generally, and that allows you to out compete a lot of other people. So again, that's why I harp on that so much. I've done a whole lesson on that here in less suck freelance again. So I would recommend that as something you look at because it's just gonna again. That's one of the simple ways to do it. But when you couple a number of different tools and services along with other freelancers, that air complete beating really hard, it can start to seem impossible to get clients you can wonder. Well, how do you compete? And the non sexy answer is quality, which I know a lot of people kind of here in the I A. A. Yeah, but I wanna walk through some specifics with that and some examples to really give you some insight in how to do this, not just okay, I know quality, but how do you actually do it? So the favorite? My favorite example that I like to use is a restaurant called Zombie Burger, which is in Des Moines, Iowa, where I used to live for about 10 years and they do hamburgers right. There's nothing revolutionary or newfangled or anything like that about hamburgers. And there's tons of competitors, both direct and indirect, from what you might call lowballing fast. Few chains like McDonald's and Wendy's and that sort of thing Teoh grocery stores, even that sell pre made Patties and on and on and on mom and pop shops that do hamburgers, local restaurants and cafes. There's tons of competition. There's tons of people that are doing this. You can go to just about any restaurant, almost or a gas station or convenience store even and find a hamburger. So again it's super competitive. So how did they come Beat Pete? Well, every time I've been to Zombie Burger, it's packed, and it's always at least a 10 minute wait. Teoh even order, And so how did they do it? Well, one of their most popular hamburgers is a $12 hamburger called the Walking Dead. So it's a double cheeseburger. Essentially, it's topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, onions and then macaroni and cheese. On top of all of that, and then they they actually take macaroni and cheese, the deep fry it, and that's what they make the bun out of. So it's not actually a bread bun. It's this deep fried macaroni and cheese. Ah, and again it's one of their most popular burgers. Very unique, very different. And they charge a premium price for it. Of course, it's not the only one that they offer. They have all sorts of crazy hamburgers, one called the Dead Boynes, one called undead Elvis Planet Terror, the Namesake Zombie Burger. And there's a dozen other dozens of others burgers that are named this way. All equally is crazy, delicious and expensive. So the point is they don't compete on price, right? They don't try to out McDonald's McDonald's. They offer something completely unique and different, and then they charge premium prices for it. They compete on quality. Okay, so that's one example. Let me give you another one. You might remember several years back there were these ads that started. They really kind of took over Facebook for a while, and it was for this thing called the Grid and almost every ad that was on Facebook for a while, least that I got was was an ad for this thing. This this thing called the grid. They were just flooding the platform. Well, the grid was supposed to be this new revolutionary ai Power ai power platform for building websites. So the whole idea is would ask you a series of questions like your favorite color and that sort of thing, and you would It was related to your to your preference and such. And then it would just sort of kick out this fully responsive, beautiful website that was supposed to be exactly what you would have Bill if you had designed it yourself. Because it's based off a I and all this stuff. At least that was the promise. And I remember at the time I got inundated with questions from people about this thing. So, you know, is the grid going toe obsolete Web developers? How are we going to be compete? What should we do? Etcetera? And I would get those almost every day for six months while they were going through this promotion. And then it launched. And predictably, it was nothing like the marketing videos had suggested. There was a lot of bugs and problems from the very start support was not good. Ah, there were lots of promises that were made and not kept. And if you go to the grid dot io right now, you'll see them acknowledging all of it and promising to fix it. And it hasn't taken over. The Web hasn't obsolete ID developers there, still hundreds of thousands of developers that are happily employed. So what's the point of all of this? Point is, there's lots of Boogie Men when it comes to freelancing. It could be technology. It could be other lowballing freelancers, bad freelance sites. The list goes on and on, but the solution is always the same. It's quality. Do a better job. No, As Nicole pointed out in her question, even she's been able to find and highlight all the errors. Graham Early Mist and retained one client that way. Well, guess what? That's almost always going to be the case when you're competing against a tool. Technology has obviously gotten better, but it's not yet better than humans and someone who's an expert in a particular thing. So tools like Graham early, they are aimed at the low end of the market lowballing freelancers. They're aimed at the low end of the market, the people who can sacrifice quality for price. There's that segment in every market in the world. You know, you have Pinto's and you have portions. You have McDonalds and you have zombie burger. You have Wal Mart and you have Target, which I'm being a little bit cheeky there. But you get the idea. Every market has this. It's always there. There's a low in, and there's Ah, high end segment. And the high end segment is the segment where quality is of utmost importance, where they're willing to pay more to guarantee that it's done right. To not have to worry about it, to not have to fuss with Grant Graham early or some lowballing freelancer, and they'd rather just pay someone to do it for them. And they'll pay someone who's an expert well, to do it right so they don't have to worry about it. So when you're in an ultra competitive market, guess what happens. Most people of the low end is always the larger, and there's more people in that group, so most companies go after that low end, right, so the high end is not nearly as competitive in just about every market that's out there. You're not gonna top find a ton of zombie burger competitors out there, right? It's one of a a few very unique restaurants that you're going to find. You'll find 4567 McDonalds, probably in Des Moines. You'll find one zombie burger and not really to many other restaurants that are like it. So again, those air the clients that you go go after those high end clients and you compete on quality you're not even in the saint is all. You're not even the same world, almost as those low in the people appealing to the low end. And so you're really not your competition and becomes a lot less competitive. Now here's the kicker with all of this is that Nicole actually already gave herself and you a Prue proven formula for doing this. So remember when she said she posted a free proof reading offer on Reddit? Someone took her up on it, and she found a bunch of errors that that the he and the tools had missed, and he immediately became a paying client. Well, that's perfect, you know, you. Now you know exactly how to sell your services to people. The trick now is to scale that marketing formula. So read it doesn't allow free offers. Who cares? Retta is far from the only place or even the best place to promote your services. You have a proven strategy. Just need to adapt it to different platforms now. So what I would do if I were Nicole? This is exactly what I do. Create a video where I go through a document that's been through Graham early. So maybe just take a document running through gamma early, see everything, Graham early catches, then go to the next phase and go through and show all the airs that Graham early, Mrs. A creative video. Doing this, demonstrating this and then at the end of the video had simply point people to you your l where they can get a free review of their documents. So say, hey, if you use Graham early and worried that you might have missed some stuff, or maybe you haven't even used Grandma and you just want to have someone review your document, I'll do. I'll take a look at your document for free etcetera and and send him over to some girl at that. You Earl. I would create a simple form, or people could just submit their document and their information for that free review. Now, the thing to keep in mind is that right there, those people submitting those documents they're highly qualified leads that you should be able to easily convert into paying clients. You're literally having people just show up in your email inbox that are high quality leads for your freelance services. So that's the thing to keep in mind and put in proper context with this. Now each review that comes through I do it a certain way, right? I have reviewed the document. I note the number of errors in the document. I'd respond to the person and say, Hey, I found X number of heirs in the document. Here's an example of a few of them, but I wouldn't give them all of it. I wouldn't give them all of the answers, right? You promised them a review to see if there's any Ares. It's kind of like how ah, Turbo Tax or H and R block? I think it is. We'll do a free review of your taxes and they'll let you know if there were any mistakes. Well, I've done it. And what happens is, as they say, if there's any mistakes, will redo it for you at this price. So they're still charging, ultimately for the service. But what you're getting free is whether or not there are mistakes. This is the same idea, right? So you just say, Hey, I found 18 errors in your document. Here's a few examples of the things that I found and then just say if you like me to go through and fix the document for you, this is what I would charge to do it. And they'll either take you up on it or they won't. But because the quality of leads coming in there specifically looking for that thing, my guess is you're gonna have a really high rate of conversion to to paying clients as a result of that. And ultimately, how many do you need? Right, If you get paying clients that are consistent as a result of doing this, paying what you charge you might need, what, five or 10 maybe 15 will, if you can create that over the next year or so. You now basically are set for life with how many clients you have. So again, it just could be a really effective way to market your services and then to get exposure on the video, I put it on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and linked in all of those places have ad platforms. Eso I would use their ad platforms to promote the video. Eventually you'll get, I would guess you get some organic traffic as well. You get some free traffic. But even if all you ever got was paid traffic, most of these platforms you can pay 2 to 3 cents per view for four videos. So that means you could potentially get ah, 1000 views of your video for 20 to 30 bucks. So again, if you look at 1000 let's say 10% actually go to your website and fill out the form. That's 100 people. 10 of those people ultimately become 10% of people. Ultimately, campaign client. That's 10 paying clients that you spent 20 or $30 to get. Now will the rates be that high? I don't know, but it's absolutely worth finding out because I would guess 10 Client 10 Paying clients is a huge return on investment for 20 to $30 so it's just a really simple way to to sort of set this up. And then I would just make sure and give the video catchy title something like How Graham Early is making you look dumb or something like that. Ah, in order to help you get some of that organic traffic and get people to actually click on it and view it and so forth. So if I were starting today ah, that that's what I do now, by the way, this is this whole content process I just described. It's ah, it's what I walk you through this process, step by step in my online class, turn content into clients, which again you already have access to as a skill shared member. Just go to my profile, but it's the exact process that I used day to day to sell all of my products and services. So if you're interested in learn more about that particular process, I would check out that course. But once you have that set up, I just let it run. No, In fact, I did this very thing several years ago to get my first few clients. Um, now, mine was creating a Google shopping feed file from a WordPress blog's So I'm a coder. And so I figured out how to take ah wordpress blawg. Back then, there was no woo commerce. There was none of the shopping cart products that are plug ins that are out there. And so you would have to if you wanted to. E commerce site. You essentially have to use posts or pages in your word breast blawg to create ah e commerce site. And so I figured out how to then create an XML file code an XML file that was that was tailored how Google Shopping Feed wanted it on. And so it would just autumn. You could have a u r l that you could set in Google shopping feeding. Every time you got a new product, your block would be automatically submitted. Like I figured this out. Um, and so I created a video where I showed how to do it. At the end, I said, Hey, you know, if you want to hire me to do this, you can go here and that's how I got my first few clients. So it works really, really well. You're addressing a very specific problem that people have you're doing. Anyway. That demonstrates that you know what you're doing right from the start. You don't have to try and convince people with testimonials or any of that stuff. You're just showing them that you know how to do it. And then the people that are sort of on the low end that a really, really focused on price and so forth they'll just take your video and try to figure it out themselves. But the people that have money that are the premium clients that just don't want to do it or they want someone who will do it right, and they don't want to screw it up, they're gonna contact you and they're gonna hire you. And those are the clients you want. Because then those are the clients that we contact you later for something else, which is exactly what happened. Me. That's how I started my freelance business. So again it works really well. It's just a matter of being creative, believing in yourself. Ah, and doing it. So that's my answer to no cold question. Hopefully, that gives you some insight and also how to compete in ultra competitive markets are just, at the very least, how to go out there and be proactive about getting clients. How to set up a system that will bring clients literally into your email inbox. Once you get this set up and running and you don't have to go out and trying to find clients, the clients are coming to you, and that's a much better position to be in. So, like I said, hopefully that is helpful for you. If you have a question, of course. Be sure to ask me your question. That's what this course is focused on. That's what I'm here doing. And so I want to tackle the very things that you're dealing with, just like I've done here with nickel. So all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thanks for watching. We'll talk to you next time 24. BONUS: Quitting Your Day Job and Freelancing Full-Time: everybody. Welcome back to Episode 14 of Let's Talk Freelance. This one we're gonna be getting into quitting your job to freelance full time, which could be a major transition for a lot of people. It's something that I went through, so I wanted to talk about how to do that. What I think is the best way to do that. In particular, I'm gonna be going through really what I think of the four phases that you should think about her, that you should go through in order to make this transition, to make it smoothly and not get yourself involved buying, not get yourself in a position. Ah, where you're kind of behind the eight ball and there's a lot of anxiety and all that sort of thing cause I don't think that's necessary. Ah, and I think there's a way that you can do it, that that's a lot more feasible and a lot more. You know, it's just a lot more calm on is gonna be a lot easier and really set you up to have success when you do finally go full time. Freelance. So this comes from a question I got from Ryan. So Here's the question, he says. Thanks a lot for your resource is online and just want to hear your insight about job transition from a regular job to freelancing. Which is better to quit a job and work full time as a Web design freelancer, slash entrepreneur. Or start taking free projects first while working on a regular job and only quit when I already have paid. Brought projects. Or at least if you still remember when you started how long it took before you got paid projects. After offering free projects clients. I'm actually in the stage of Trump job Transition, and I'm 100% ready for Web design. However, I'm hesitant to quit my job because maybe it will take many months or a year before getting paid projects. I know my question is a case to case bases, but by hearing your experience and advice well, unlike me a lot. Thanks so much. Okay, so there's there's a couple things here. I do think there's a little bit to be said about what kind of personality you have, So if you're the kind of person that if you know that if you started to freelance on the side that you may not be as motivated to freelance, and it may be difficult for for you to do that. And you kind of need tohave the pressure on you in order for you to perform. Then you you might it might be okay for you to just quit your job and go full time as a web designer freelancer, because you know that you need that that extra pressure. And but you also know that you can perform under that pressure. And I've met people like that in a ways. When I was younger, I was I was probably that same way. And so I understand that I still think that there's these kind of four phases I'm gonna show you. I still think you should go through these, but you're for you. It might just happen a lot quicker, and you might pull the trigger on quitting, quitting your job a lot quicker, but I still think that there's some prep work that you can do. So I still think there's value and what I'm gonna show you here. But you're really if that's you, you are really the only type of person that should just quit their job and go full time freelance Anybody else? If you're not the type of person that needs the pressure and knows you can perform under the pressure I strongly recommend If you're not 100% on that, I strongly recommend not doing it because it puts you in a real bind. And what happens is this is what happened to me. Sort of early on is you get caught in this mentality of trying to make everything work within, like, a week or a month. And so you end up just kind of hopping from from different technique or tactic or strategy to try and get your freelance career going. And you never really stick to something. And what's more important about freelancing than finding the right method for getting clients or whatever? What's more important than that is just being consistent and building something with a strong foundation for the long term. So again, if you're not 100% sure that you're the type of person that would thrive in that environment, I recommend really going through what I'm going to show you hear and only pull the trigger when you're really ready. That's not an excuse not to do it. But I think you'll see with this prep work that you can do that. You being a good you feel like you're in a good spot. I'll just kind of become obvious that you need to leave your full time job. Okay, so that said, Let's go through these four things these four phases. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to build up a savings savings is going to give you some peace of mind for when you actually go to make the transition. And this is the first thing you need to do because it's gonna be the hardest. So what you do is you figure out what your monthly expenses are, just go through and kind of figure out. What do I need to make in a month? In order for me to be able to pay all my bills to get groceries to do that sort of thing? You really should know that number anyway, just from a financial health perspective. But it's even more important for what we're gonna do here. So just take some time. I do this probably every three or four months because, you know, I pay things off and builds change and so forth, and I always kind of constantly getting updated number on it only takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes to do it when you actually sit down and do it So you can kind of figure this out, exclude anything that's kind of like a one time sort of purchase that isn't going to be something that you're gonna be paying on a regular basis, because when you go to make the transition, you have to know that some of those purchases that are feel good purchases that are maybe one time purchases or things that you're gonna have toe you have to hold off on for a little bit until you get stable. Ah, in your your freelance career. So try to really it narrowed down to what your your month to month expenses are and figure out what that number is. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you just wanna have ah ballpark number there. The next thing is to look through that stuff in is and see if there's anything that you can get rid of toe, lower your expenses. The lower your monthly expenses are the better off you're gonna feel, the easier it is going to be to make this transition and you really have toe, you have to juxtaposition those expenses and whatever. Therefore, maybe it's Netflix or HBO or whatever. You have to juxtaposition those next to how you're going to feel when you're able to freelance full time the freedom you're gonna have, the ability you're gonna have and so forth. And what's more important to you, So really be. Try to be a little bit ruthless with this. Will you really want to lower that monthly expenses as low as you can? As you make this transition, you can. You can kick it back up later once you get established. But as you make the transition, you really want to lower the overhead as much as possible. So look through that. Are there, is there debt may be in there that's about paid off that you could maybe take a month and just put it all towards that and get it paid off for their things. You can get rid of expenses, things you're buying, etcetera that you could hold off on for a few months while you make the transition, etcetera. Just go through and kind of look at that stuff. The third thing in as a freelancer, really, just as a human being who is concerned about their financial well being. The most important thing that I think you can do is to start a savings account. Like when I started a savings account. It changed my financial life completely because what I noticed is that when I the feeling you get from spending money, how that can be kind of that can feel good. Putting it into a savings account and watching it grow has a very similar effect. And so it can. It can start to feel really good to put money into a savings account and watch it grow. And now you're doing something where that that's more financially healthy for you instead of spending that money on, you know, if you're like me junk that you probably don't need. So whatever you're doing, even if united involved in a transition to freelance, if you don't have a savings account, start a savings account and start putting money in there, and you're going to see how much more motivated you get to do that. Next thing is, then you want to save up 3 to 6 months worth of expenses because your transition could take . You know that amount of time you could see a dip in your income for that amount of time. So if you can't, If you're making the transition and you can't get back up to where you're able to pay your bills within 3 to 6 months, then it's probably a good idea toe to step back, maybe go back and find a little bit of a regular job for a little bit and reevaluate. That doesn't mean you're giving up. It just means if you try to make the transition and you really can't get to where toe where your you have to be making what you were before. But you can pay your bills and feel comfortable and so forth. We can't do that in 3 to 6 months. Then that means you just need to come back and do some more research to do some more thinking. Do somewhere, figuring out, maybe get a little bit better. Ah, at whatever you're freelancing and and take some more time to do that and then go back and try and transition again. So it's never. There's never a moment where you give up on any of this. It's just I'm gonna try and transition. If it works great, I run with it. If it doesn't, I just step back, reevaluate. Figure out what I need to get better at, get better at it and then try and transition again. If that doesn't work, you step back and do it. It's just a constant process until you make the transition. So at some point you are going to make the transition is going to happen. It's just a matter of you getting to the point where you can do it. So having that 3 to 6 months worth of expenses gives you peace of mind to be aggressive with your freelancing, to really go after it. To really try and make this transition happen and not have to worry about expenses, you have those covered for 3 to 6 months. Six months is best, but if that's gonna take you super long time than maybe it's three whatever, but just get that saved up to give you that piece of mine. So just a quick example of your monthly expenses are, say, $1500 a month. Then you would want to have anywhere from 45 100 to $9000 in your savings account. Now that might see. I don't know. That may seem like a lot. I mean, it seemed like much whatever, but that's what you want to get built up. And if you have to start, if you have tow, like, build a profile on up work or some site real quick and start taking work that way without doing all the other prep work that I'm gonna show you here and you side hustle money, do that if you have, too. If you just looking at your expenses now and saying, Man, I just can't say that I don't have any room A. I would question that. I think if you really look at your expenses, there's things you could get rid of that would help. You would be able to save up this money, but to then start doing some side hustle work if you have to, in order to save up that money, but very important that you build up that savings before you go to do this transition I'm just telling you from. I've I've done this multiple times. I had multiple false starts with my full time transition and having money in the bank on and having a plan like I'm gonna show you here. It just it makes a lot easier, and it makes it a lot more likely that you're actually going to be able to do it. So this may be a tough on. This may be something that you're looking at going, I don't know, really. Dig into and see if you can make this happen because it's just gonna make your life a heck of a lot easier. Right? So that's the first thing. Second thing then is there's a lot of research that you need to do as you transition into freelancing. I talk about this a lot and all of my courses we talk about researching your niche and determining what services to offer, figuring out what to charge all of these things. Another one. I maybe don't talk about as much, but is psychographic. So psycho graphics are figuring out the needs and wants of of your your your potential clients, their fears, their dreams, psychology for getting inside their head and figuring out their psychology. So all of these things, they take time to research. They take time to figure out. And you want to do all of these things before you ever open your door to start selling your services because these air going to determine what services you're going, Teoh offer who you're gonna offer them to, what messaging you're gonna have when you're selling those services. When you get into creating content, what kind of content you're going to create all of that stuff is driven by the research that you do. And I think a lot of people skip the research part, which is a huge mistake because they jump into trying to go full time too quickly, and now they're under the gun there behind the eight ball. Whatever. How do you want to use? And they just I got to get I can't spend all this time just doing research. So if you do the research beforehand, do all of this before you make the transition. While you're still working your full time job when you're thinking about okay, I want to start going freelance and need to start building my business The very first thing you can start now doing on nights and weekends is doing this research. And I've got I've got courses like the turn turn your content into clients course, which talks a lot about research. I have, Ah, course on, um, are you offering the right services so freaking out where services offer have episodes inside, Let's talk freelance, that talk about all of this stuff. So go through those, start doing that stuff on nights and weekends now, before you transition. So now you have a good idea of what you're gonna offer, what you're going to charge who you're offering it to. What are their hopes? Their dreams, their fears, their needs, their wants, etcetera, like you know who you know them inside and out. And all that research is done before you ever actually make the transition. So you can really take your time to dig into this. So do the research before you make the transition. And again, this is your type person. That's like I want to quit my job. Now, wait. Have just a little bit of patience and discipline to do this research first before you do that. And then build up your savings so you could be building up your savings and doing the research at the same time. So these don't have to be one, and then the other, you could be doing these at the exact same time, so it gives you something to do while you're building up that savings. All right. Next one is then start working on your platform. You know, a lot of people, they want to just go on freelance sites, and they just want to get work that way, and they don't want to have to do any. It's getting mawr and more difficult to do that. You probably know if you've been on any of these freelance sites there really competitive and there things that you can do to compete. You know, I obviously talk about that. My upward course that I have here on school, sure, but ah, you know, it's just getting more and more competitive and relying on a platform like that 100% I just think, is, ah, bad approach. And it's risky because you never know what's gonna happen with the platform. So I advise freelancers, and I'm really try to push you guys too. Think of your freelancing as a full fledged legitimate business. Treat it like it's a business, not just some side thing that you're doing okay. And part of that is building your platform, having your own platform going out and getting clients yourself. OK, so while you're again before you make the transition, this is something that you can be doing that you you want. You're ready to make the transition. You've got your money saved up. You've done your research. You've now done all of this stuff like building your services sales page. You're building your profile on a freelance site building your portfolio. Once you've done got the psycho graphics and done the messaging, you can build some of these pages and so forth. Once this stuff's all done, it doesn't have it can all be drafted or not live than you could boom. Make it instantly. Make a live one day. All the research is done. You have savings ready. You've built up a platform. You know you're ready to just turn it all on. It all happens all at once instead of you now. Oh, I quit my job. Now I've got these 15 things that I gotta dio Another part of this is generating a year's worth of content ideas for a block. This is about again treating your business or treating your freelancing like a real business. You know, in this day and age, if you're not creating content online, you're gonna have a really, really hard time. Content is the cost of doing business online. These days that includes freelancers. You'll find some people who may have may not do that as much may have kind of gotten away with not being able to do that most of the time. What you're gonna find with those people is that they started a long time ago. Before this was the case. Before content was the cost of doing business. They built up a reputation. They built up kind of a following on a platform or whatever, and they built authority on a platform and there just simply benefiting from that. And you're just not in that position now. That's just the reality. Trying to do that now is a is a heck of a lot harder. Or there's someone who built a thorn, a lot of authorities somewhere else. So they're like a ex Google engineer. Something like that that wrote five books and was really famous and so forth again you could go that route. But that's going to take you a lot longer than it would be for you to just start creating content. So I mean, you can. There are ways around this a little bit, but all those ways air generally a lot harder than just starting to create content content is one of the easiest ways to start getting clients. So what I recommend is that you sit down and figure out a year's worth of content and ideas for your blocking. And this is something that I cover my turn your content into claims. Ah, course you have access to it right here on skill share. If you're gonna create content to sell your freelance services, I highly recommend you go through that course because it just literally lays out my process for getting freelance clients for selling my courses for everything that I do online. So ah, this and it will show you how to do this year's worth of content ideas and then right the 1st 3 months of content. So I in that course I recommend that you start out doing one piece of content a week, so three months would be 12 pieces of content. 12 articles, 12 videos again. That's not that much. That's not gonna be all that difficult for you to do once you kind of get into the groove of it and how I show you how to do it. Ah, you'll be able to knock that out pretty easily. So again, spend all your time while you're saving up your money doing do the research. Now start building your platform. Build your services sales page, build whatever profile during a bill, build your portfolio, start creating content, get a backlog of content built up so that now you have all of this prep work done and then the final phases to go live. Okay, so turn on the sales pages, start publishing your block post, make your profile active. And the great thing is, all that grunt work is now done. Now it is simply you doing the two things that you're always going to have to do as a freelancer, which is marketing yourself and getting clients and delivering for those clients. So you have all the research done. You have savings built up, so you have some time to transition. You have your platform built and done. You have ah initial run of block posts that you can publish out, and you kind of give yourself some breathing room there, etcetera. Now it's just it's just hitting published on those posts for a while and then started and create new ones. It's marketing. It's delivering etcetera. And I think if you do it this way, not only is it gonna be more peace of mind, it's gonna make a easier for you to make. The transition is going to make it. You know, it's gonna be a lot less anxiety, but you're also more likely to be successful because that's the reality is like I mentioned the beginning with me. You can go to transition and it not work out. That's entirely is a reality. Now that doesn't mean we're gonna give up. We're gonna go back to the drawing board. But what if you do things this way? Has, as I've outlined them here, you're more likely to be successful the first time, so we never have to go back and redo it, and that's really what I want for you. So that's kind of my full answer to this question. I think those four phases are really the way to go. Ah, Ah, As you make your transition into full time, it's gonna give you a lot more peace of mind is gonna help you to be a little more likely to be successful in making that transition. So hopefully get something out of that. As always. If you have a question that you would like me to answer, be sure to submit that in the community section below. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to answer your questions, help you over the roadblocks that you're dealing with. So again, be sure to put those questions Community section below. All right, that will do it for this episode. Thanks for watching. We'll talk to you next time 25. BONUS: How to Create a Profitable Online Course: Hey, John Morris here. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk, Freelance. This one I'm gonna be getting into creating a profitable online course, something I've talked about in terms of supplementing your income as a freelancer, something I've done a lot of. I feel like I can provide a lot of value in terms of how to actually go about and do this. So I'm gonna walk through kind of the steps of how you would create your course and how to make sure it's profitable and something that's actually gonna be a benefit for you if you're gonna put in all that time and effort. So that said, Let's go ahead and jump right in. So the very first thing that you need to do is pick a topic, and I believe anybody who ever asked me about creating online courses I believe that getting the topic right is 90% of what makes it profitable. And there's a lot. There's a number of things that go into that that will go through. But if you nail the topic, you're gonna know because when you put it out there, the response that you get is gonna be dramatically different then when you if you if you don't get the topic right. So when you're sitting down to think about the topic, really put some time and effort into this because this is this really is the thing that you can do from just a kind of broad picture sense to give yourself self the best chance toe. Have a course that's really going to help your business, so it's worth putting in that extra effort. So a couple of things to think about when you're picking the topic first, you want a topic that has a large interest. So lots of people who want to know how to do it and that that's a little bit obvious. But there's some nuance to this. So the example I give here is if you're creating a course and you're thinking about well, I could create a course on Java script in general, or I could create one around No Js. If you do a little bit of research, you'll find that there's 12,100 searches per month on Google for the keyword phrase, learn JavaScript, whereas there's only 1600 per month four learn No Js doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't create the node course. But if that's the only data that you have, then you might think about creating the JavaScript course first. Now, that's just kind of Ah ah, basic example. But that's the idea here is you want to do a little bit of research, find whatever information you can and get some sense of what different topics that you might do have a larger interest group. That's just is just obvious that if you find something that has a larger interest group, you're more likely to have more students. Be interested in taking your course. Okay, next up is what I call unique authority. So you want to pick a topic that you also have some sort of unique authority to teach the topic. So some reason why people should listen to you about this particular topic because now I could go and and create a course on you know how toe drive a backhoe. But why would people want to listen to me when it comes to that? I've never actually driven one before in my life. I know nothing about it. There's nothing about me that has any authority. So you want to have something that you have authority in and, if possible, something where you have unique authority. So just his example to get a little meta here. I'm teaching a course on how to create courses. So what's my authority for that? While I've created 19 online courses already? No. I started out as a freelancer, and courses were kind of a a side gig, really for me, and now they're about half my business, and I earn 50 K plus per year from my courses, and it's kind of been steadily growing every year. And and and ah, unique thing is that also an instructor for the U. S. Army. So I was taught by the US Army how to teach, and the context of that was teaching people who were going to a war zone. So there was a lot that we learned in order to be effective instructors in that. So that's something that's unique about me that I could highlight Ah, when I'm talking about how to create courses and how to teach and so forth. So you want to try and look for for something along those lines if you can, uh, at the very least you need some sort of authority. Why should people listen to you? And then the sort of the cherry on top is if you have something unique that you can mix in there with that All right, Next up, you want you want a Corsa has very topic that has a high perceived value. So what they're gonna learn is worth a lot to them. And the two examples I give here to kind of juxtapose are how to make 100 k year freelancing versus how to build a website template. If you look at what the end result is, how to make 100 k per year freelancing, forget for a second whether you believe that or not, Let's just say you did that Skilling of itself is probably a lot higher perceived value for most people than how to build a website template. Now it's true that if you learned how to build a website template that could lead you to a career that makes you 100 k per year. But there's a lot more steps involved with that. Whereas the the actual exact topic of making 100 k per year freelancing eyes something that directly has that perceived value. So you want to try and think about and again. All of this is really just nuance, its not necessarily about thinking about a whole different industry or anything like that. It's OK. I have this broad range of topics that I'm an authority in, that I could talk about. How could I talk about it in a way that has high perceived value? So it's not necessarily rethinking the entire course it's or or topic. It's maybe just changing and altering it just a little bit. So again, high perceived value is another key point and finally relevant. So it's relevant to your particular audience because your audience is who you have authority with already. And so you want to try and appeal to those people and have something that's relevant to them and all of these other factors to give you the best chance of having success with your course. Now, this is all sort of in the context of being a freelancer. So the thing to keep in mind is, if you're a freelancer, your best audience is your clients. And so you you really want to think about your course in the sense of thinking about how you can create it. Course, that would be a natural fit for the clients you already have. So if you're building websites for people, maybe you do a course on S E O that that And if you know, a lot of your clients are ask about our interest in S E O. Maybe you could create a course on that, and it becomes a great natural fit for your particular clients. So again, those are the things to keep in mind. Large interest, unique authority, high perceived value and relevance. If you nail those four things, you're going to set yourself up toe, have a great chance at at having a profitable course. In fact, I would be I would be very surprised if you were to really nail those four things and not have your course really take off. So again, it's worth taking the time when it comes to picking a topic to To go through these things and think about these things and figure these things out doesn't mean you're gonna be right . The first time doesn't mean you're gonna be right every time, but the more you think about them. The more you'll home that tuition, the more you'll get a better sense and you'll have some home runs that you'll have along the way. And And if you keep, keep creating courses. That's just gonna help you to build out your business and such. So again, spend the time at this part because I again, I believe it's 90% of what makes, of course profitable. All right. Next step, then, is to create a course outline. Now, this is one of the things that I've learned from teaching on skill share is the idea of process over product. I was actually worked with someone from Scotia on the course, and this is one of the things that that they kind of harped on, which is to focus on the process, not the end result, because students are. If you start focusing when talking about your course on on the end result too much, it starts to become high p and sort of overblown when students really they kind of already know what the end result is that kind of know what they want. What they're really focused on is how you're going to help them get there. And so you really want toe When you're creating your course outline. You want to focus on that process and outlining a process so the first thing to do is outline the macro steps. So think about what you're teaching, whatever it is. Underwater basket weaving, how to create a course, etcetera. What are the major steps to accomplish the task and then just list those out and you want to keep them them action or he entered. So by doing this, that's kind of the whole point is you're focusing on action. You're focusing on keeping it it process focused, but you really wanted to be a list of steps to take. So think about the major steps that you would take in order to in order to complete that task or get that end result and just list those things out. So example I have here. If you're teaching someone how to shoot a basketball, you might talk about thing might talk about things like how to grip the ball properly, how to set your feet, positioning your arms and elbows. The actual shot follow through etcetera. So you would just sort of list all of the different parts out of shooting a basketball on all the different mechanics and just kind of keep them those macro steps. You're not digging into any of the details of what proper group is yet. You're just saying, Hey, you gotta have a proper grip. Got to set your feet properly. You have to position your arms and elbows, right? You have to follow through all of those things. So again, you just kind of list those things out and and keep it big and broad. You should really shouldn't have more than 7 to 10 macro steps. If you do, your topic is likely to broad or you're getting to micro focused on the steps. You're you're not keeping them at a macro level. You're kind of digging into the details a little bit. You want that first sort of pass of creating the course outlined to just be macro steps? You can get it out of your head. You should be able to create that. That part of it, these macro steps and really just a couple minutes. You should know kind of what those are already. If you're gonna teach a class on this particular topic, so just kind of write those things down. And then, as I kind of mentioned, you want toe stick to to action words, so words like create position set etcetera because it keeps the action oriented feel to your course. That will be the number one critique that you will get from people when creating course. If you don't really keep it focused and use action words and keep it focused on action and process is that they'll feel like they just feel like it will tell you it's not as action oriented. It didn't feel like they were actually doing something. Ah, as they went along. So you really want Teoh as much as possible. Keep it focused on process keeper, action oriented use action words, etcetera on that's going to give it that that overall feel along with it actually being sort of action oriented, right? So once you have the macro steps, then you want toe outline the micro steps for So for each macro step simply just list the micro steps to complete that macro. Sepp. So again, going back to our example, if we focus in on the macro step of gripping a basketball properly While there's a number of things that you need for that you need toe, uh, place the air hole between the middle and index fingers. You need to line up your fingers on the seams. You want to leave a little space between your your palm and the ball, etcetera. So those are all different things that you would do when it comes to gripping the basketball. And then, if you go to you, go on to the next one of setting your feet properly, will you want your feet shoulder with the part, etcetera. You just kind of go through and list all of the micro steps for each one of them of those ah, macro steps, and that's gonna just outline the entire process. That's the first thing that you want to do is just kind of go through an outline. The entire process. We're not gonna We're not gonna get into anything any technique wise or strategy wise, your just literally making a list of exactly what the process is. That's the very first thing you want to do with your course outline, because now you literally have the steps that they need to take in order to accomplish this goal or this task laid out in detail for them to take. The next thing that you want to do then is you want to add value into this. So the way that we add of value is we include things like insights, examples and tips and so forth. These air that this is the area where you can draw from your own expertise and draw from your experience and inject that into the course. So insights are there, approaches ways of thinking, techniques, exercise, anything that you found helpful in terms of how you think about this particular macro step . So when it comes to gripping the ball properly, maybe you have some way that you think about how you grip the ball. Or maybe you have some exercises that you do that's gonna, ah, get people to grip the ball properly, etcetera You want you want to include those things so that people have a better chance of being successful at completing this macro step. Okay, you also example, So examples help to illustrate what you're trying to say. It also helps you to share your experiences and how you learn these approaches, and it just helps people to better understand what it is that you're trying to say. I'm trying to. As I go through this, you'll note, I'm I'm using examples, Aziz, much as possible. As we go through on and talk about all this, then the final thing is tipped. So these are you wanna include plenty of tips on how to do each step right? So things that you've learned about how to accomplish it, whether it's faster doing it right or doing it properly, etcetera. These are all individual ways that you can add value to your course. And this takes your course beyond just a list of what to do, which, frankly, for most topics, you're probably gonna be able to find that just about anywhere. Get that from just about any anybody. This is where you add value, make your course unique and make your experience and the expertise that you have. This is where you inject that into your course and give it that extra value, but that they can't necessarily get from somebody else because nobody's had the exact same experiences that that you have and thinks about it in the exact same way that you do So. This is where you're injecting your uniqueness into the course, your expertise and your adding a ton of value. And this makes it a true sort of download of your experience to your students. All right. The next thing, then, is if you're gonna do do power point slides, then you can import this into power point. So the power point has a nifty little import feature where if you use, I'm calling it power point notation. But if you write it, create a text file in a certain way, then you can easily import that text file into power point and it auto creates the slides for you. So, as an example, this course, this outline you're looking at right now was created that exact way actually created this in a text editor first using power point notation, which is really simple. And then I just imported it into power point, and it created all the slides for me, and I was literally ready to go. So for me, it it makes it easier to create in a text file first. So I'm not worried about all the display. I'm just focused on getting the content down and then I just imported into Power Point. That's all set to go. I'm including a sample file with this episode that's gonna show you how to structure that text file using power point notation. Like I said, it's really, really simple. You'll take one look at it and go Oh, well, that's really easy. So But I've included that simple file you can download with this with this episode. Just go to the resource is section The projects and resource is section over on the right hand side bar. You'll see a little section to download the documents for this and other lessons, and this will be included that that text file will be included in that download. All right, so then the next thing that we do, once you've got your course outlined, we want to script your course. So for each lesson, when it comes to scripting, as scripting is somewhat optional, you may not need to do that. I don't script every course that I do, but at a minimum, you just want to use your course outline as a guide to keep you on track as you record. So I'm my text file that I just mentioned that I created and I imported into Power Point. I have the slides over on the left hand side of my screen as I'm recording, but on the right side had a side of my screen. I have the notes that I wrote in the text file that so I can kind of see, I have more detail in in the text file, then what's put on the slide. So I have more I can talk about and so forth. Um, and I have that available to me here so I can kind of see what's upcoming and so forth. So at a minimum, use your course outline as a guide to keep you on track as you record. So you don't go off on tangents. You don't forget what you're trying to say. It kind of keeps you focused. You can hit point by point. You can deliver the information in this concise a package as possible. Now, if you're nervous, you're worried about recording and that sort of thing. It's 100% okay to write out an entire script for each lesson. So to actually sit down and script out everything that you're going to say for each lesson . My turn content to clients course was 100% scripted. So if you've taken that course, or if you want to check it out, take a look at it again. You have access to already already right here on skill share. But that course was 100% scripted, and I just simply read the scripts as I recorded. So, uh, and I would guess that most people probably would not know that before. I just said it here. So it's 100% okay to do that. If you feel like you need to do that. And if you're someone who gets nervous on camera recording or your brand new and worried about good kind of rambling and going off on tangents and so forth, then I would recommend scripting. And as you script, it's gonna help you be more concise and precise with your speaking to where you won't have to script as much going forward. Now when you're writing the scripts, just don't overthink it too much. You want to cover all the points from your outline and just right how you talk, it doesn't need to be anything super flower. You don't need toe. You try and do anything to be, like epic or anything like that or super compelling Just right how you talk, deliver the information again. Includes insights include examples include tips. And I think those are the things that people are really gonna dig into if you include ah lot of those things in in your course, and then I would recommend you just read your script out loud once or twice before you record. You'll find things that when you wrote it, it sound good. Sounded good. But when you actually say it out loud, it sounds kind of awkward. So just go back and rework those things. If you focus on just writing how you talk when you create the script, you won't. You won't have near is many of those. So I should just be a few that you need to clean up a little bit. And then once you've done that, read back through it again and just make sure it sounds. It sounds how how you wanted to and then you should be good to go. Doesn't take that long. You can read through the script a lot faster than what it takes to write it. So, um, it really isn't that much extra overhead to repair it once or twice and kind of get it cleaned up. How you want it to be, so that scripting your course again, this is sort of optional. Like I said, you could just use the course outline to keep you on track. Or if you really need to feel like you want toe script, it'll out them. By all means. Go ahead and do that and just simply read it. The more you do it, the less sort of monotone you'll feel. Um, and the more comfortable you'll get. And it won't your overtime. People won't be able to tell that you're really reading. All right, next up is recording your course. So the very first thing to do is for each lesson. You want to figure out what format you're gonna use. So you're going to use a talking head of screen capture a power point or something else creative that you might want to do you want to just before you start recording. You actually wanna look at each lesson and just kind of planning. Okay, that one's going to be a talking head. That's gonna be a screen capture That might be a power point, etcetera, and just kind of have a plan in your head before you start. So that's the first thing when it comes recording your course. Then we'll talk about some of these different types. So the again the common ones air talking heads, screen capture and power points. I'm gonna cover those for talking head videos. I use a logic tech tech brio, four. K Webcam. I think it was $99. It wasn't really wasn't all that much, but that's what I use I have. I do have the DSLR camera that records video and so forth. But the set up, really the set up could get a little bit complicating with getting lighting and all the different settings and so forth right, especially in different environments. And I found that at the end of the day, the quality for what I'm trying to do really isn't all that much better than what I can get from my four k webcam. Because my DSLR camera is not four k so and then the logic tech wed webcam has ah right light system and adjust the lighting and the color balance. And although that that stuff to kind of get everything right, so I really don't have to think about it. And the videos usually turn out better than what I can do with the DSLR so and it's four k . So if you really want to up load something at four K, you can you can do that. So that's what I use for the webcam I use. Ah hyo peel pr 40 microphones, kind of ah, known as a broadcast microphone. Um, it was a little bit more expensive. I think I got a kid with a microphone and the shock amount and the arm for, like, 350 bucks. Um, I can't remember exactly where I got those, but I'm pretty sure if you Google Ohio PR 40 you'll see some some ads or something come up for the different packages on ah particular site that I got it from. But use the high o p L P R 40 microphone. Um, I like it because it is a dynamic range microphone, but it's still it doesn't sound too hollow, so you still get a decent amount of base with it. so you don't pick up a ton of background noise with it, but you still get a good sounding audio from it. And then I use a Steinberg. You are 22 USB audio interface, so the Ohio Pier 40 is an XLR microphone so it won't plug into my computer via USB port. I need to have something to connect the microphone through to be able to plug into the computer. And that's what that uh, Steinberg you are 22 does. You could also use. They have different amplifiers and different things that are out there. But I found the The Steinberg is just really simple, just kind of you plug it in and it works, and I didn't have to fuss with too much in terms of settings and so forth. So that's that's my set up. I use that for just about everything that I do. I mean, I'm recording a power point here, but I'm still using the Heil microphone to record it Now. There's lots of other options that are out there. You could really dig heavily into it. You know, my advice is toe not complicated too much in my experience, really. What it comes down to is, is getting your where your recording set up, right so that you don't have a ton of background noise and getting the source recording as high quality as possible. And then if you do that, then what, When you go into editing, that's kind of the second part of it is is really nailing down the editing. And once you have a routine for your editing for your environment, you can really just kind of sit down record and go, and it's really easy, so that takes a little bit to figure out. But you know, you don't need to spend $700 on a microphone, etcetera. The one thing I would say is, I personally have avoided condenser microphones because I'm generally in environments that have a little bit of background noise and the condenser mikes. In my experience, maybe they're better now because it's been a few years, but in my experience they tend to pick up a lot of background lines. They sound really good. Your voice sounds really good, but they tend to pick up a lot of background noise, and so they just never really worked well for me, So that's something for you to think about as you as you go through this kind of pens on your environment, your set up and how much you want to spend Ah, and so forth when it comes to talking head videos, the in terms of the video quality quality. Obviously your camera matters and so forth. But a lot of you know, phones, webcams, a lot of the stuff you're gonna you're gonna buy today you would get today is gonna have good video quality. The big thing is the lighting. So for my lodge attack again, reason why I like the logic is because I just have a simple desk lamp where the light will actually kind of flip up. And so I just flip it up and point it at my face behind my computer screen. I turn that on and I turn on my logic tech so that that, uh, desk lamp make sure I have enough light coming in. And then the logic does the rest in terms of any balancing the colors and the lighting and so forth and make everything kind of look right. So again, another reason why I kind of recommend starting with something like that. Unless you know you're really good into photography and you know how to do all that stuff. Then, of course, you you can go that route. But lighting is really the key toe video quality. Okay, next is screen captures, so I use Camped Asia Studio. Um, it's a it's a paid software product has a lot of options. One of the big reasons why I do it is because you can record an edit right in in the same software I record, and then it just pops it into the editor I can edit in there. Um, the editors good enough, you know, and it when it exports, that exports files that have a good balance of quality and size, and I'll have to think about it too much. So if you have the money Camp Teacher Studios, a good option on ah, good free option is screen cast. If I I've used this before and when I was in a situation where and maybe didn't have access to Camp Tasia, it's a chrome extension, and it has a very powerful and very feature. Rich include Webcams and and so forth. So that's a good option for you to look at. I think they do have a pro version that you get access to some more features, but it's not nearly as expensive as Camp Taser studio. So those are some good options in terms of doing screen captures. Another thing I would say is, what I always do is I. A lot of time screen captures involve a Web browser. They may not always, but this still really applies. But most of mine involve Ah ah, browser where I'm taking a screen, capture the browser, and the big thing there is to just plan your tabs. So instead of having to remember what you're gonna click to when you're showing people something on the screen cast actually just open everything that you want to talk about in a new tab. So that way, when you go to talk about it, you're talking about one tab and then you click to the next tab. If you forget what you're gonna talk about, that will be a reminder. And also then people have to wait for the page to load, and you don't to edit all that stuff out and so forth. You just click to the next tab and go through what you want to talk about. And it's as concise and precise as possible, which means less setting for you and a less annoying experience for your students. Now again, I'm talking about an Internet browser. It would be the same thing if I were recording something in an application, I would have all the applications that I wanted to tow go through open, and I would maybe have them positioned a certain way on on my task bar or whatever, so that I could click through each one kind of in order and I wouldn't lose track of keep me on track and so forth. So just plan your tabs, that kind of act like slides to just keep you on track. Another one kind of a principle that I apply so record big edit small. So generally I record the entire screen. And then if I want to, um, focus in on something that I can just zoom in in editing and do that and what? That what that does it keeps you from missing something because a lot of times into your recording, you know, it's kind of hard to see where the exact recording marks are. You just kind of lose track of it, and you want you go upon click, go up and click on something, and then you find out in editing. Well, I wasn't recording that part of the screen, so now I can't. I don't even have access to to that. Whereas if you record everything and then you edit down, you won't miss the click. Now. The one thing about that is, if you record if you have a large monitor and you recording and saying 1920 by 10 80 the font size on, say, a Web browser and application can start to look be pretty small for people, especially when you imagine that video being uploaded online into a smudge, smaller size player. It could be hard for people to to read things, so some of that you can deal with an editing. But one of the things that I do is I'll just increase the font size in an application general again. For me, it's a Web browser, and like in chrome, you can just hit control Plus, and that will increase the fonts Isil record big, but also crank the font size up so that I'm getting everything. But also, everything is sort of legend. Bill and I had to learn the hard way. Some of my early courses, um I recorded big and I didn't increase the font size. And so I had code That was really hard for people to read. And so then I learned I needed increase the font size and my applications and so forth so that people could read it. So if you're going to record big, just make sure you you look at the font size and think about that. Andi People being able to read it all right, next up is power point. So again, already talked about taking your course outline and important importing that into power point. So that makes it really easy to create the slides. One thing I would say with your slides don't get too cute with your slides. You can see my slides here. They're really basic. It's really about disseminating the information. It's not about how fancy your sliders. And I only point this out because I used to spend a lot more time designing quote unquote my slides that I did thinking about the content because I thought it was about how great the slides look and it's really not. It really is about the information that you're providing. So don't get too cute with your slides. Keep it simple. Keep it easy to read and alleged ble, Um, and and it really remember that it's about the information you're presenting, not necessarily the way your slides look. Of course, you don't want him to be hard to read or anything crazy. That's why I keep a simple black background with white text. It's very, very simple. Um makes it easy to read and so forth. Use your bullet points to jog your memory and keep you on track. So that's fairly standard and straightforward. I would say, Um, you know, you don't you just want to try to much as possible to keep it so that you're not just reading word for word from the slide. Now you're gonna read from the slide. You're probably gonna read everything that's on the slide. We used to have mawr that you say beyond what's just on the side. Otherwise, people could just download the slides and why why do they need you? They can just download slides and read through them. So try to ad lib as much as possible on adding information at in examples and analogies and etcetera toe go beyond just the slide. The sliders really meant there just to jog your memory and keep you on track. Otherwise, people just kind of feel like they're being read to, um and most people do not like that experience. That's another complaint that you'll get right away if you do that. Okay, so just some general things in terms of recording your course that apply to all your videos . 1st 1 is eliminated. As much background noise as possible. I know it can be hard. I live on a farm. We have lots animals. We have dogs, We have chickens. We have horses, etcetera. I've got, you know, uh, soon to be three kids in the house s Oh, I get it. But as much as possible, you wanna eliminate the back growing background noise that you can, I usually turn off my heater air conditioning, whichever happens to be running at the time. I have an air purifier that I turn off, and I make sure I mute my phone and my tablet and I actually mute my computer as well. So I don't get any rogue sounds coming through that so just kind of develop a process of Okay, these are all the things I gotta mute. I got to turn this off, etcetera, nominal record in the night. I kind of turn everything back on. But you won't eliminate as much background noise as possible because once it's there, you may or may not be able to edit it. And if you can't, then that means you either gotta live with it and leave it or you have to re record. Um, so it's It's a lot easier to just kind of deal with it from the very beginning. One thing that I learned is to record at a high volume without going into quote unquote the red. So when I say going into the red, it depends on what software using if using audacity or camped, Asia has. When you're recording in camp, Tasia has a little audio levels thing that you'll see. And when you go into the red, that means you're going above 0.0 decibels, and that's where you get into things kind of getting blown out and getting distorted when when you go to play it back so you don't want to go into the red. But you want to record at his high volume as possible without going into the red to clean a clean separation between your voice and the background noise, the more of a separation you have decibel wise between your voice and the background noise , the easier it is gonna be to edit out that background noise when you go to edit. So before you sit down, actually start recording your videos for your course. Do some do some test recordings, um, and play with the volume in whatever software you're using to figure out what's the right level to get me as loud as possible, but without me going into the red when I raise my voice a little bit, or maybe get a little bit too close to the mic phone or whatever, you want to find that nice balance, and that's gonna help you to be a lot more. Chris. When you go into your editing, your audio and that kind of goes to the next point, which is getting close to the microphone, don't be afraid to get close to the microphone again. You don't wanna be necessarily right up on it, depending on what microphone you have. But the closer you are, the more of a separation you're gonna have between you and the background noise, because you are the thing that's dominating the front of Ah, that microphone. So again, just kind of play with that play with distance play was volume, etcetera. And remember, audio is the most important part of video. You probably heard people say this. You probably heard me say this, but the thing that will turn people off the quickest is having bad audio versus having bad video. So people will be willing to tolerate a lot more that video if the audio eyes Chris, so really focus in on your audio. Another thing that I learned is if you mess up, you just simply stopped speaking for five seconds. Meyer Fact, I've already done this once in this recording. Maybe you'll go back and see if you can figure out where it was, But if you mess up, just stop. I just stop speaking. Account toe. Five seconds in my head. I clap my hands next to the microphone and then I pick up where I left off for if I had to go back a little bit, I just I just start talking again. What that does is it gives you a crisp. At that point, you have some dead air, and then you have a clap that creates a spike in your audio so you can see it. And this is if you've ever watched you know, the of you. I'm sure you've seen where people go. Okay, on a movie, they're like, OK, take 32. And then they clapped down the little the little, the thing, whatever that thing is, that makes a loud sound. You're basically just mimicking that. That's what you're doing. You're just okay, This is take 32 clapping. It creates a spike in the audio's. When the editor goes back, he can look at the different spikes in the audio, and he he knows. Okay, I need take 32 so we could literally go. Okay? Want to and count the spikes. Here's 32. That's the take that I need now. It's gotten more sophisticated since then, but that's the general idea behind it, so you can do that with your recording to help you to identify those spots. When you go into editing, it helps. Clearly, cream clean break makes a lot easier for you to add it. All right, so that's recording your course. That's a bunch of things that I've learned over the years in terms of how toe how to record your course and get the best out of it at and again, ultimately at at the end of the day. It's about just sitting down and doing it and getting it done, and the first time you do. It's not gonna be perfect if you have to re record a couple times there. I still to this day I've been making videos for 10 years, and I every record videos all the time. 26. BONUS: The Apostle Principle: Have you ever had a client that you were just sure was going to hire you? But then, in the end, they never actually pulled the trigger where maybe you bid on a job on a freelance light site and the client disappears without ever hiring anyone. Or maybe worse. You've never even gotten any of these bites to begin with. Or maybe you're new, and you're just trying to figure out where to start on, where to begin and how to get people to pay attention to you and hire you in the first place. Well, in this episode of Let's Talk Freelance, we're gonna talk about why clients say no and then what you can do to get them to over the hump, to get them to say yes. And it's all based around this concept that I call the apostle principle. So we have to start with the problem. And as I mentioned, it's this problem of clients just never getting to that. Yes, and I had a client that did this once. He went back and forth with me for almost a month, and he asked me legitimately close to 50 or 60 different questions about my services and I got very, very frustrating. And then ultimately he ended up not hiring me, which was incredibly annoying. But it did make me take a hard look at what I was doing and think hard about this question . What is it that causes clients to say No? What is what is it really that gets them to that point or keeps them from getting over that hump? And so the answer in a word, is fear or said another way. They don't believe you, and I use this analogy. You know, I went to this experience. I went Teoh Higher baby sitter once on care dot com and I really felt the emotional back and forth that potential clients go through. It really opened my eyes to their experience. So imagine if this were you. You go on care dot com or some other site. You start looking through all the profiles of baby sitters and everyone you look at their something that's just not quite right. Something that just feels off to you when it comes to your baby, your child, someone you'd lay down your own life. Or are you just going to say ask good. I'll just try this one and let's see what happens. It's not very. It's not something that's very likely to happen. And this is the problem for most clients. To them, their project is their baby, so they're not just gonna hire anybody. And I find a lot of freelancers don't really fully grasp the gravity of what's happening, and this is where they get stuck because clients are only gonna hire someone if everything feels right, if their 100% sure anything short of that and they're just not going to do it. So saying good enough when it comes to your marketing, by which I mean your profile's your website, etcetera. It simply isn't good enough. And so, ah, lot of freelancers end up floundering and getting frustrated. Some give up completely and go back to their 9 to 5 left for wondering what if some just struggle along that way, scratching and clawing for every client, Never really get over the hump to get to the point of freelancing where it's not so much work, but there is a better way through all of this, and that is trust. Now. You probably heard me talk about this before, but we're going to really get into the science of trust and specifically what to do to get clients over the hump. And again, this isn't some uber sexy gimmick or technique, but it is a tried and true fundamental. And when you understand how to cultivate trust specifically in a virtual world than everything sort of opens up now. Suddenly all of your marketing just works, and clients start showing up at your virtual door instead of you having to chase them down . You gain greater control of the interaction. You dictate the terms you charge what you want. You get the respect and appreciation you deserve, and freelancing ceases to be a struggle and instead the reality. Imagine when you first started. Now I know that sounds a bit far fetched, and it's true that one you get this handled about. Everything is suddenly perfect. But when you make that flip, it's night and day. The pressure is gone. The anxiety, the fear, it all evaporates. But, like I said, cultivating trust with people you've never met in a virtual environment, it's not a given. It has to be done consciously and precisely. People online are skeptical and skittish, and you have to nail it just right. And I'm not the only one that says that you may be familiar with a gentleman by the name of Michael, 40. If not, Michael, 14 is a sort of world renowned copywriter. He's one of the call, one of the yogis in the Internet marketing online marketing space, so has helped generate over $300 million in sales in his career. And I came across an article the other day that sort of inspired talking about this where he said Today, I believe percent persuasion has much less to do a selling than it has to do with building believability and trust. Not only are people more educated, they're also more cynical and skeptical than ever. They never believe anything, at least not at first. And your job is to get them over that hump. It's to. It's to build that believability and trust and get to the point where they will say yes. So if you're looking for the path forward, how do I market myself? How do I sell myself etcetera? That is the path forward, believability and trust. You have to get them to that point before there'll ever even considered hiring you. Everything else. A lot of people like to push back and don't necessarily think this, But it's true. Everything else is secondary to believability and trust. If they don't believe what you're saying, all the claims in the world aren't gonna matter if they don't believe it. That really is the key to this. And if you've been struggling, that's the first place you need to look. So how do we do this? Well, as you might expect, it's been studied, and there's a kind of developing science of trust. Psychologists have identified eight elements that factor into how and why people do and do not trust one another. And it's based off what the leading psychologist in this area, Ken Rottenberg, calls the BT T framework, so Bt T stands for basis, Domain and target. So basis is how do we define trust? What does it mean to be trustworthy? Domain means how trust operates in our day to day life, and then target means who are the targets of this trust. So we we will start with the basis what is trust? How do we actually define it and because I know this. This takes a minute because these terms air new and may seem a little weird at first. But once you understand the science, creating trust becomes a lot, a lot less complex. You understand exactly what it is and how to do it. So you have a path forward. Plus, I'm gonna help you synthesize all this into action steps a little bit later. So again, talking about what trust actually is So Rottenberg again. According him defines it as reliability or promise fulfillment. Emotional trust involving refraining from causing emotional harm and honesty, telling the truth and having good intentions. So if we were to sum that up into a nutshell, it's trustworthy. People do what they say they're going to do, so they fulfill their promises or they hold true to their word. They don't try to make people feel bad. So they're not hard to work with in difficulty and say mean things and so forth. And they're honest. They tell the truth and they have a good intentions. So when a person and I want to highlight this phrase, when a person demonstrates these three things to us, we, as people feel as if they are a truck trustworthy person. Now this comes down to the smallest details showing up for meetings on time e mailing the client client back when you say you're going to telling the truth, even if it might hurt you in some way, being easy to work with and respectful. All of those things sound simple, but you'd be surprised how many freelancers fail at that basic stuff in small ways. In fact, if I were, I'd bet if you were to look at your interactions with clients, you could find areas where you've undermined one or more of these principles, and it may not be a deal breaker in that particular instance. But when these things start to add up over time, it erodes and eats away at that trust. And then on the flip side of that, even Mawr. When you think about how to sell yourself to potential clients and whether it's on your website or in a freelance profile or in person, however you're doing it, you have to start to look at in what ways are you demonstrating, demonstrating not telling the these key trust traits, if at all. So again, if you're having trouble getting clients to hire in the first place. This is the first place to start looking your profiles. Look at your your sales pages. Look at what you're talking about when you talk about person. Are you took focus more on the benefits and the features and all the cool things you can do in the talent side of things? Or are you focus more on the believability and trust side of things. You should be way more focused on the believability on trust side of things in ways that you can demonstrate that now, if it's not obvious and clear to you than to you than the chances are, clients aren't getting it either. And maybe make just be why you're not getting as many clients as you like to are getting heart. Getting hired is harder than it needs to be, so we'll talk about specifics on that in a minute. But before we do that, we need to get into the dimensions of trust. So again, going back to Rottenberg, we really as humans relate to trust in the falling way. So we have the cognitive and effective, so it's thinking and feeling that someone is worthy of our trust, so it's not just enough to think that they're trustworthy. We have to really feel it at a visceral level, and we'll talk about different ways to do that. Then we have behavior dependent. So this is us trusting others, and we have been behavior and active being trustworthy ourselves. Now the important thing to look at here is understanding how skepticism effects, behavior dependence. Because we're analyzing our clients with behavior and acting. This whole thing is about him behavior, an act enactment, really. But when we're analyzing the client, we want to know what it is that makes them trust others specifically us. So you have to understand the role that skepticism plays and behavior dependence, getting them to trust you. And you have to realize that in sales related transactions, people start at no. They start skeptical and skittish. They don't trust you, so you it's your job to move them from from that point to both thinking and feeling that you are not trustworthy, to get them over the hump to feeling that you are, that's your job. You have to do that. It's not on them to get there you have to get them there. That doesn't simply happen by you saying I'm trustworthy. A client's immediate response to that will be, Yeah, well, prove it. And again, that's why demonstrating I'm harping on this again and again. That's why demonstrating trustworthiness is so important. So again we'll get to that in a minute. But it's absolutely crucial to this. Okay, finally, then we have the targets of trust. So relying on Rottenberg one last time, he identifies two dimensions in which trust primarily operates. The first is specificity, so either specific groups versus groups of people and then familiarity, familiar or unfamiliar. And to me, this is the really good stuff. I think the stuff that's really I opening, because if you take a look at the situation that you're in when you first interact with the client wherever it is here, you can clearly see why potential clients are skeptical and will default to saying no. Plus, you can also see what you need to do to flip the script and cultivate that trust. That's because you start off as unfamiliar and among a group, which is the worst possible place that you could be. You're simply a face in the crowd, and that's even worse if your group has a brat. Bad reputation. So think of lawyers are salespeople, these air groups that most people look at, and they have sort of a negative view initially of those people. So imagine if you're a lawyer trying to convince someone to hire you toe be to be their client. You not only have to deal with just the natural skepticism, you have to deal with that negative connotation that people have or that negative idea perception that people have of your group as a whole. Okay, so you have to remember those things. So lawyers, salespeople, if you're a developer, unfortunately, there's a lot of that still out there. It has gotten better over the last several years because it's become a more sophisticated, established profession from what it was back in the early two thousands. When I started, when I was really everybody viewed developers as hackers. Essentially, it's gotten better, but there is still some negative perception out there that you have to deal with, and there's also a general perception of dealing with freelancers as well as sort of one man bands, and you know people that could be flaky. And if someone's had negative experiences in the past, all of these things or things that you have to deal with and you may immediately respond to that by saying well, but I'm different, but the client doesn't know that. And to them you're just another face in the crowd, okay? And you start off unfamiliar and you're unfamiliar group person in a group. Okay, so that's gonna be how they identify you. They're gonna identify you as a developer, a graphic designer or a writer, and they have no other context about you and with how most most freelancers present themselves. The Onley context that they do gain about you comes from a freelance profile or a sales page on your website. Now you have to think, Is that how you really get to know people in real life? No, it's not. So your job is to move your you in their mind from an unfamiliar group member to a familiar individual. This is what people like Gary Vaynerchuk mean when they say create context. The more they know about you, the more familiar they'll be and the more they'll see you as an individual, not just a developer or a graphic designer. And then if you do it right, what they come to know about you, the context they do get will be that you're someone who will do what they're say they're going to do. You don't try to make people feel bad and you're honest. So going back to the basis of trust, how we identify or define trust, the context you should you create about yourself should all point to you being those things . So that really is the game here, right? Creating context and fill demonstrating your trustworthiness before you hired before they hire you. And doing that in a systematic way. That doesn't require you spending 17 hours a day on Instagram or chasing clients around the Internet, instead getting them to come to you funneled into a process that systematically but builds that familiarity and trust and pushes them over the edge of hiring you all. With little to no input on your part, that really is the game here again. I know that sounds far fetched, but that's how I've run my business for over 10 years now, and it's not as complicated as you think, And so all of this leads us to what I call the apostle principle. And the possible apostle principle is very, very simple. Even God had to prove himself. Now, I don't know. I'm not necessarily getting super religious about this. I'm not necessarily super religious myself either. However, whether you believe these, these stories are literal. These things are things that happen or they're just stories. The the fact that the Bible is as influential as it is Christianity is as influential as it is, and these stories have become a popular as they are. I should tell you something about the way that humans think and even the most powerful being in all of the universe. According Teoh, the story had to prove himself to his most loyal followers. So just to give you some examples, the Apostle Paul now he originally persecuted Christians. He was as far to know as one could be on the idea of Christianity. And then Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. He saw firsthand, he saw the proof himself and was instantly comps converted and became one of the biggest proponents of Christianity and maybe one of its most influential people from that point forward. So again, Jesus had to show up to Paul, though for that toe happen, he had to give him proof again. There's the story of doubting Thomas. He didn't believe Jesus was resurrected until Jesus appeared before him had him see and feel his wounds. Now there's this negative negative connotation, a little bit towards doubting Thomas, right? Jesus said that, You know, blessed are the ones who don't have to see and feel and still believe. However he still did it, he still showed up. He still proved himself to Thomas. So again, that should tell you something about the way that people think. Of course, there's Peter. Peter didn't believe that he would be trade Jesus. Jesus had told him that he would the betraying three times before the rooster crowed, Peter swore up and down that he never would. Then he did, The rooster crowed, and Pete Peter immediately realized that he had immediately repented on. That became sort of the saving of Peter. So again, this all just goes to this idea that even the most powerful being in the world had to prove himself to the people that that were his closest followers. Whether you believe that that's little or not again, that should tell you something about the way that people think about the way that we are wired as human beings. So that is the apostle principle. And so that leads us to now thinking about okay, what can we do in order to then demonstrate and prove ourselves to to the people that we want to convince to hire us, right? How can we do, in a way, what Jesus did for his followers? And so that leads to two. There's two main ways that we're gonna do this. The one that you're gonna be more familiar with is what I call on site proof. So this is gonna be the stuff that happens on your sales page or on your cell site on your profile. Things that you can do in those places toe add believability to what you're saying. So data charts, graphs, studies. Now, remember, when we're talking about proof, proof isn't just that you're a good person, right? Or that you're a good freelancer. Proof is providing evidence and proof for everything that you say, because if every word that comes out a year. Mouth is backed up with proof than the arguments that you make in your cells. Pitch become hard to refute. So you wanna inject believability in tow? Absolutely. Everything that you say. So this is where data and charts and graphs can help you to do that. Testimonials obviously, is gonna be a pretty clear one. Authority testimonials. So you may have heard me talk about the fact I work with Inc magazine and I have testimonials from the guy worked with their or some of the other projects that I've worked on those testimonials people who are authorities in your particular market or niche. Those hold extra weight. I've seen sites that have done six figure launches sites I've helped build do six figure launches and they do that off the back of four or five authority testimonials. So they hold a lot of extra weight. So that's something if you can get it is very powerful before and after. If you see any fitness product out there, this is the main way that they're sold. Just do before and after pictures. It's a very compelling way to provide proof demonstrations. So this is something that I've talked about a decent amount. One of the simplest ways to sell your services is to actually just find a problem. People are having create a video illustrating how to solve it. And then somewhere in that video, the beginning of the end, both you say, Hey, if you don't want to do this, if you just want me to do it for you, you can hire me to do it over here at this girl. And people don't have to see a bunch of testimonials and all this other stuff because they've watched you solve the problem right there in front of them. So there's no doubt in their mind this is actually how I got some of my first few clients was creating videos and doing this exact thing. Another one is a client list you may have seen been on other people's freelancing profiles would have this big list of clients. I talk about clients that I've worked with them time again. It helps to provide, you know, maybe you don't necessarily have testimonials from those people, but you have them. You've worked with them, and so people say wolf, they So until has worked with them, then I can work with this person as well. Case studies again. That's another common one that's a little bit more kind of like a testimonial, but it's a little bit more in depth where you actually break down. You know what the problem the client was have having or what they were after you go through some of what you did in order to solve the problem and what what the result was afterwards . So it's sort of a a detailed breakdown of how you helped a particular client. One client of mine has done this with some videos that worked really well for them as well . So it's a little bit more in depth. It takes a little bit more to it, but they could be very, very effective form of proof PR media exposure. So if you're featured in a magazine or a newspaper, whatever, you've probably seen people that put as seen in on their website. Those sorts of things can also add proof there really easy to put like logos and stuff on there and add just a just to feel of proof to your to your site. Authority quotes. So this is one you go back earlier. And if you actually look at this video, I took a quote from an authority and use that as a way to sort of back up an argument that I was making so that again, this isn't necessary. This is not a testimonial. This is using quotes to back up things that you're saying points that you're making etcetera. So that could be very powerful awards if you won awards, those are obviously gonna add credibility certifications. If you have any of those stories stories simply, just people tend to believe stories. My wife and I actually joke about this because she'll come home. Sometimes it's a, well, someone so work said, or, you know, my friend or my family member said. And I always I always kind of a quip back with, Oh, someone said, Huh? Like just because someone says something doesn't mean it's true, right? But people tend to think that way. People tend to believe that way when they hear a story. We just kind of tend to believe it's true, so stories can can add an element of proof and become across as believable, even though there may not be anything there to actually back up what you're saying. Metaphors, eyes another one. A really good metaphor can help make something click in a person's head. And when that click happens, we tend not to question. If it makes sense to us, we tend not to question it, so metaphor can do that unique mechanism. So you may have seen this where someone will be selling a product and they'll be like the unique science behind why this works like Dyson vacuums for a long time or a good example of that. They would talk about how they're vacuums were different, and they would sort of explain the science a little bit that this is a unique mechanism, so you can use that as well. A guarantee is a really simple way toe. Add credibility to your site, and then when I talk about a decent amount, specificity the more specific and be with numbers and data and so forth or even your stories, etcetera. The better the more specific you are, the more believable that's going to be. This is a really big one that I think a lot of freelancers miss is they tend to talk in general terms trying to keep things in sync. Not that is necessarily thinking that that specificity is gonna matter too much, but it actually does. If you're going to say that instead of saying, you know, I've worked with a well known you know, a well known company newspaper in the UK doing graphic arts, you should specify that company if you can't specify the people that you've worked, how long? How many projects, how many of this that whatever the more details you can be, the more believable if this. So that's on site proof. This again, is all stuff that's related to really specifically your sales page or profile. You're going to see a lot of this stuff places for this stuff on site, like up work or freelancer wherever all of this stuff is important. But this is a one time thing people land on your site. They see it. It either works or it doesn't. And that's getting harder and harder to do these days because people are more and more skeptical. You can turn the tide in your favor, even Mawr, by creating mawr context. Outside of that, in fact, creating pre context in the sense that people know a lot about you before they ever get to do sales page. You still include all this stuff on there to really ramp it up. But they know even more about you before they ever get to your site. Your profile etcetera, and that's what I call offsite proof. So the thing to remember about this is it's about cultivating trust in a virtual environment. On site proves someone comes your profile or sales page and known nothing about you. But today's virtual environment is social. Social media is the Internet these days, so it's very, very important. I include I include blog's. I include YouTube. I include all of these things into this social aspect. They may not specifically be social media sites, but they are context creating sites. They are places where people can get to know more about you. And, you know, so much of social media has become content based that it's all kind of melted together, so there's content. But there's the social layer that sort of wrapped over top of that. That's the environment that we are in today. There's no way around that there's no escaping that. It may change in the next 5 to 10 years. But today, that's the environment that we're in. And so creating context through demonstration, showing people. What you can do is the most powerful way that you can create the kind of context and build trust, just showing them, showing them what to do and that is content marketing. So it's really, really critical that if you haven't yet, you start figuring out ways to do this. And that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that you necessarily need to start a blogger. YouTube General content Today can be an INSTAGRAM post. If you're a graphic designer, you absolutely 1000% need to be on instagram showing off your work. It could be that simple. The projects that you're working on are just start making things right. If you don't have any clients and you just you're going through school, whatever it is that you're doing, you should be posting that on social media. Just as an example. My dad is My dad's an artist, he's a painter and, you know, for a while he we've talked back and forth about Hey, what can you know? I do toe sell more. My painting, some more my classes, etcetera, and I've just constantly harped on him about this. Finally, he got an INSTAGRAM account. He finally he started posting this stuff on face his Facebook, his personal Facebook. And it's taken off, especially his Facebook site, because he has a lot of people. He had already had a lot of people that he knew on there. But every time you post is painting, it just sort of takes off. And he's building things Page that is showing off his work and helping people to get to know him and building context. People know my dad's what's considered a high functioning paraplegic, so we can still move his arms and his legs. But it's limited, so people know that about him. So the fact that he can create the kind heart he does with that just led lens even Mawr sort of fascination. Teoh what he does. So anyway, all of that is him creating context, and so once he started doing that, it just sort of took off. So it could be that simple, right? If you're a developer, you can go on stack overflown, answer questions, or, if you're a writer, you can start writing on medium. Or maybe you can go on core and answer some of the questions and write creatively. There are start posting stuff on Twitter. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be just block posts YouTube channel. Those things are great, but those air longer form pieces of content. And really, I think if you're just starting out getting good at micro content on Instagram, on Twitter on Facebook, shorter things that get attention will serve you a lot better starting there and then you can move into the longer form stuff like blog's or you do. But at the end of the day, do whatever you want to dio whatever is comfortable for you. But you need to start doing something to create that context. And one of the things I talk about specifically when it comes to creating context is not just about talent, right. We talked about how that's important and you want to show off your work, but also every now and again, take a picture of you out, no goofing off or if you have a family, a picture with you and your family or one of your kids or whatever that all Kurt helps create context around you to get to know you as a human being. Okay? And that's really the mindset to take. When you're doing this in the social environment is how would I get to know someone in real life? What are the things I would talk about in real life? What? I just start showing them pictures of my artwork. If I were standing in front of them here, here, here, here, here. And that's all I would do. They ask me, Hey, but you know, are you married? And I just showed him a picture of my artwork. No, like that one. That's not how it works. You need to think about that when it comes to how you interact on social media. Another just pro tip will give you. When it comes to this, it's much more important who you comment on and what you comment on other people's stuff than the stuff that you post. In fact, I would say if you really wanted to make a designation for this is state taking instagram, for example, you could just post on your instagram primarily your artwork, maybe some other stuff now and again. But spend the bulk of your time not doing that. But going on other people's stuff and commenting on their stuff and leaving comments there and making sure that the stuff you're commenting on, the other people commenting are potential clients or followers or students or whatever of yours. Okay, that will get you a lot further commenting on other people's stuff than you trying to figure out, What Post can I can I write? What Twitter to tweet? Can I right? That's gonna make me go viral if you pay attention to the people that go viral. I'm actually paid specifically attention to this on Twitter lately. The people that go viral, yeah, they get a bunch of shares and likes of of their post and all that stuff. Rarely do they pick up a ton of followers on Lee. If it's a very specific context, where there's a match between the people that are seeing that tweet and what the person does, there's a really good match. Then they'll pick up a ton of followers. But I've seen 90% of the tweets I've seen go viral. That person doesn't pick up a great amount of followers as a result of it, so it doesn't have any sort of long term effect. It's just a one hit wonder sort of thing. So again you're Mawr, you're going to get more out of commenting on people's stuff, commenting in a way that it's a it's your potential. Clients are going to see it, then you will trying to go viral by what you post. Okay, so that's something that may seem obvious to you now if you're you know, if you're really sabliere socially but took me a long time to figure out. So again, that's that's really the idea going back to what I mentioned about the a possible possible principal. You have to prove yourself. You have to create that context. You have to build that trust, you know, even God himself had to do it. And so you have to think about all of these different ways that you can do that. All the different examples I gave you of on site proved Just go through that list and see what you can confined that you have that you can dio and add that to your site. If it's not already there, you're upward profile of your freelancer, your five or whatever. That's anything that you find in there that you can add. Go ahead and do that to create more believability about you and the services you offer. And then when it comes to creating content. I've talked about some things here, but I would leave you with some homework, and that is, if you haven't yet go take my turn content in the client's course, that course specifically runs through how to do the content piece of this. How did this off site proof part and it's gonna walk you through everything in detail. So I highly recommend that at some homework as a result of this All right, so that'll do it for this episode of Let's Talk Freelance. Hopefully that gave you an insight or a take away that has changed. Your thinking is gonna help you in some way to grow here. That's ultimately my goal Hill here. If you have a question or something you like me to cover, be sure to leave that in the comments, and I will cover that as well. All right, we'll talk to you next time 27. BONUS: How to Get "Lowball" Clients to Increase Their Budget: Hey, buddy. John here. So I've got a bonus episode for you. So these are episodes I'm gonna do from time to time that don't necessarily fit into kind of a full length episode. Or maybe it's something I just want to share with you right away. And so I'm gonna do these bonus episodes of periodically won't be every week or anything like that. But just whenever I have something sort of extra to share with you. And so this one, I just got this email. So I wanted to share this with you. I talked with him, and he's cool with me, sharing this with you guys as long as I keep his information private. So we're going to refer to him as Travis going forward. And he sent me this email and it says over transparency video just made me $1000. Says hi, John. Just want to thank you. Your video made me $1000. Almost instantly. Check the screenshot. It's unbelievable. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through this, this screenshot that he sent me. I'm gonna kind of break down what's going on here? And the premise here is This is when you're on a freelancing side, or maybe it's even your own site with a quote request. But the idea is you have someone who is under budgeted for a project, and I get this kind of pushed back a lot. When I talk about up work, a lot of people will tell me I actually just on my pork course had someone submitted screenshot the other day where there was a project that was under budgeted and a lot of people really get hung up on this. But I made this video this over Transparency Video, where I talked about what to do. And my main advice, really, most of time is just to move on. You know, there you can't get hung up on those sorts of things. There's all sorts of projects on up work. Matter of fact, this one happens to be Facebook on instagram marketing, and I happen to be looking that up the other day for some other reason on up work and saw several jobs where they're paying 40 50 $60 an hour for 30 40 plus hours. So they pay er, paying several $1000 for this project. They're playing a decent hourly rate so you very easily could have just went on and bid on another project. However, for new freelancers, when you knew on up work Ah, lot of those projects that are budgeted correctly will have a bunch of people bidding on them, and it could be difficult to compete on those, Whereas these projects that are under budgeted either aren't gonna have as many people bidding on them because the freelancers realized there under budget. And they're just gonna move on like I suggest you dio or the people who are bidding on them aren't kind of the top freelancers and chill, you have a better chance of actually getting hired. So this is one of the ways you can get some of your first jobs on a freelancing site is by going after these projects that other people are shying away from but doing it anyway, where you can still get paid close to what you should actually get for the project. And that's essentially what he did here. So that said, What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna jump into the screenshot he sent me. This is a message between him in the in the client. It's kind of the back and forth and what he wrote the client over on up work. I'm just kind of gonna break this down. He follows what I laid out in the overt, transparent parent. See video pretty much to the T. And so you don't have to worry about going toe watch that video because this act would be a better example, because I'm gonna break it down with an actual real world example here. And so that's what I want to do and show you how to do this and what he did and how how he made it work for him. All right, so the very first thing he says is he said, I've looked through your project again. I'm gonna be honest and just be the one to tell you. I know probably a lot of these other freelancers are gonna tell you this because they want to get the job. But I'll be honest and tell you now This for first section is really, really important. When, when I use the phrase over transparency, this is what we're talking about. And I wanted a phrase to distinguish it from brutally brutal honesty. It may not be the best of the right phrase, but I wanted something to distinguish it from brutal honesty because we're gonna be brutally honest. But it is important that you point out that you're about to be brutally honest. You kind of put it in their face and make them see that that instantly creates believability for what you're about to say. So it makes everything else that comes after this a lot more believable. The other thing here is that sort of plays on a client's natural bias. So they say, I know a lot of these other for the answers aren't going to tell you this. The thing about most clients is they're already thinking that they already have skepticism already have doubt they have a little bit of suspicion about the freelancers. And then that's sort of where this fear of budgeting correctly comes from. We'll talk about fear here in just a second, but when you say a lot of these other freelancers probably are going to tell you this again , it makes you just instantly believable because you're saying something that they themselves already believe, but that most freelancers aren't gonna say So it just makes you You're being brutally honest. It makes you come across honest. But you're also doing in a way where you're putting, like, pointing out that you're being honest. And so it's important to establish that credibility for what you're about to say up front before you get in. Otherwise it just sort of it just kind of sounds like maybe a little bit like your whining a little bit. And, uh uh, you're not really giving them a compelling reason why it should matter. Tow them. OK, so that's the first thing. The second thing, then, is these next couple paragraphs where he says, this is probably a $1500 job Just by looking at it, you can go on, hire someone for 3 to 700 but you can get 3 to 700 worth of work on the prat on for a project that is really about $1500. And my hunch is what's going to happen is that marketing expert that you're working with is these. They're gonna work slowly to increase the budget toe what it should be anyway, or they're gonna flake out and they're not going to deliver everything there's gonna turn it into a nightmare for you. You're gonna have to go back and hire somebody else and go through the whole process. And I'm gonna be your probably ultimately gonna end up spending more on wasting a hell of a lot more than you would if you just pay the right price for it. So there's two things that if you're taking notes, you want to write down here risk reversal and fear. So let's talk about fear first, Okay? Because one of the things that I see a lot of freelancers misunderstand about under budget is they think the client it becomes kind of accusatorial. They're just cheaper, They're greedy or they don't have any money or this or that. When most of the time for the client, what it actually is is fear and risk. And so the more money that they're spending on a project, the bigger the risk, the more fear they have. And so they underbid it in order to lower their risk and lower their fear. You have to realize a lot of these clients. This is a big first step for them. I mean, I remember the first time I hired a client on Fiverr or or up work or wherever they give us . There was some fear associated with that, and so this is kind of a big thing for them. And so there's a lot of fear and a lot of certainly a lot of doubt and so forth. And so again, it's fear that's really ultimately driving this most of the time. And so what? In fear and risk. And so what you have to you do is sort of turn those two things on their head, and that's what you're doing here. And it's reality based because I've talked a lot of freelances about this situation and the very first thing that they say when I explain under budgeted situation like this, it would be like, Oh, well, they're gonna get screwed And that freelancers gonna flake or they're gonna do this or they're going to do that That's exactly what we think. So all we need to do is just tell the client the truth, which is Guess what? That freelancer probably isn't going toe deliver. They're probably going to do a bad job or they're gonna flake out at some point. And so forth, and then you have to take it further. This paragraph right here, the second paragraph is really important. It's sort of like twisting the knife. You have to you have to take it all the way around and say, Get to the point where you're saying you're probably gonna end up spending more money and you're certainly gonna waste a lot more time going this route. And again, that's reality based I mean, the magazine project that I worked on. He had been trying to get that site boat for two years. He spent thousands of dollars on other developers and ended up spending, you know, a lot more time and a lot more on money trying to get it built, and then finally went to you know, someone that I charged more than those other people for sure, but went to someone who was an expert in it and got it done, and I had a built firm in 30 days. So you really need to talk about that reality of how they're they're likely to get screwed over. You don't have to use vulgar terms like that, but they're likely to get screwed over. You need to do that risk reversal, and you need to use that fear and put it back, kind of turn it back on them and get them to be now more free earful of hiring the person who is under budget. The freelancer that is is is bidding at their lower budget. Get them or fearful of them than they are. Then they are view at the higher budget. Sounds kind of crazy, but as you can see here, it worked perfectly. So that's what all of this is. And really, what we're trying to get to at this point is just to open a crack in their thinking, to get them rethinking their their lower budget and so forth and get them to reassess. If can't get him to do that at this point, they're gonna move on. You probably never hear from them again, and so be it. And that's one of the things that I mentioned in that video is that you have to keep in mind. This isn't gonna work. Ah, 100% of time, maybe even 50% of the time. This isn't something that is gonna work every single time. Hey, this is really just taking a shot and and spending 5 10 minutes to write out this message and then see what happens. And every know, every so often you'll get one of these to come through. And when your new that could be really important and and help you kind of get on a path where now you don't have to even bid on these jobs. So again, it's sort of taking a shot. But this is the best. This is the best foot forward you could do. This is the best way you can handle it. They don't hire you after this. They're just never going toe hire someone at that higher budget. Or at least not yet. They're probably gonna have to go through getting screwed over first before they do that. So we're doing the best we can with this situation, and you'll get some of these with that will click through like it did for Travis. Here writes the next he follows up and this this next sign it kind of section here is really sort of brilliant. There's two things Ah, that at work here. So all use s And, um, I think it's d. That's what I'm thinking anyway, said again, It's a $1500 project. So that's what I would charge normally because it seems like you have maybe a little bit lower budget. I would do the project for 1000 but anything lower, anything lower than that just does not match the scope of the project. If I break it down into working hours would be something like this. And he does this breakdown. And then he says, total 40 hours of 37 50 an hour, 1500 per month, minus my discount. 1000 per month. Okay, so the first thing is, he's he's being specific. You saying this is a $1500 job? Well, you gotta You gotta back that up with something again. You always have toe, give proof, give credibility and so forth. And so he's backing that up by actually laying out the amount of hours, the price per hour, and that equals up to $1500. So be specific. Back up. What you say have proof, etcetera. The other thing is the discount, which is the d. So the discount is really what pushes them over the edge. It is what gives them a reason to go with you and to go with you now. Because now if there believing what you're saying, right, if they're going along with what you're saying and they're like, yeah, that's probably right. Now they're thinking their head. Oh, I'm gonna have to pay $1500. So you've said it 1515 100. You said it a couple times at this point, but that now you say. But I'll do it for 1000. So this sort of positions you is a good guy in that positions them as so I can still get 500 remember there their whole thing is risk that like, ooh, I can still get $500 off of what it actually should be. So it just gives them a really compelling reason for for them to to go with you and to go with you now and again. You know, this is the absolute best that you can do, you creating a really compelling sort of message and a compelling offer to them. And if they don't take this like there's nothing else that you can do, you just gotta move on at that point. Okay. So ah, client who's at all following along with you with this, like it's gonna be really hard for them to say no to this. And then he does the last thing here that says So. Is this something that's within your budget for this project? He asks for the sale, and of course, you can see down here. I've marked out his name, but he says, Hey, Travis, let's proceed So that got him the job at $1000. So it's a little bit less than what his normal price would be, but as you can see, he was ecstatic about it. So again, sort of. The steps here are over transparency, risk reversal, specificity with a discount. And then the last one is to ask for the sale again. You do that on these sorts of projects. It can be a way for you to get hired for these at a price that's closer toe what you should be getting hired at, get you some of them first few jobs on up work. If you want a bid on these and again, it's just the absolute best that you can do to deal with this beyond just moving on to something else, so hopefully that's helpful for you. Hopefully get something out of that. You can use that as one of the tricks in your tool bag throughout your career to help you. And let me just say this is something that outside of this particular situation, the outside of this context, the different ideas here of over transparency and risk, reversal on fear and specificity and discounts and asking for all of those things are individual sort of tricks or not really tricks. But individual skills sales skills, we might say that you can use in different combinations or in different scenarios and different ways. So getting familiar with these is something that is very highly valuable to you to use in multiple different ways, and you're creative. You'll figure out how to do that. But, ah, these air important skills that you can learn to help you sell your stuff better in all sorts of different ways. So again, like I said, hopefully that that's something that's helpful for you to know that you learn from and you can can use some at some point in your career.