Ask Rezzz

Documentation!

It’s not sexy. It’s not fun, but if you are looking to transition your services into a productized service, you need to  document everything you do.

Productizing your service is all about profits and processes. How you trim your processes over time and become more efficient at delivering your service to your clients, you increase your profits.

The only way to understand your processes to optimize them is through documentation.

You’ll need to document everything from your sales process, onboarding process, how you deliver, and everything in between.

There are tools out there to help, but all you really need is Google Drive.

This will allow you to share documentation with your team or even if you are by yourself, you can see your documentation anywhere on any device.

Please note that when you start documenting, it’s going to add time to whatever task you are doing because you’ll be taking screenshots, copying and pasting things, and bouncing back and forth between windows and tabs.

But there’s no better time than to start doing it today.

On the very next thing you do for a client, open up a brand new document and create yourself a few sections.

Why

Why is this document is important. You’ll want to in a few short sentences explain the importance of this process to your business and your client’s business.

Screencast

Drop in a link to the screencast here. I’ll expand upon this here in a minute.

Process

List out in a step-by-step guide the process. Include screenshots, URLs, etc. Be as specific and detailed as you can be. A good trick I learned was to write this document as if my grandmother was going to read this. Would she be able to go through this document and get the “thing” done.

Important Item of Note

This final piece is just one sentence at the end to hit home the importance of this process.

Yes, it may seem repetitive but with long documents we can sometimes want to skip steps and just get to the bottom. This bolded and underlined statement will reinforce the “why” statement and be a reminder for you.

The quickest way to document

The quickest way to document is to record yourself. You can create a recording using any number of tools now. Screenflow, Loom, Camtasia all make it super simple.

If you press record and then take the few minutes and talk through all the steps, you can then turn that into a document by having it transcribed.

Talking is much easier and faster than typing, having it transcribed for you to then go back through and edit is much quicker.

Using a tool like Rev.com it is $1/minute. So for $5 for a 5 minute recording you could have a 3 page documented process all written up for you.

Throw the original recording up on Dropbox to look back on and put that share link in the Screencast section.

Iterate over time

This document lives as an asset to your business. [Brian Casel](https://twitter.com/casjam) who I learned everything I know about productization says that having a library of documents IS the business.

It allows you to hand off pieces of the business to get done and know it will be done the way it needs to be.

That document is now living for the business and others will expand and change it as they learn to become more efficient with it.

They may even find new ways to do it better and allowing them to change this document only serves the business better.

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You don’t need to spend a ton of money on Facebook or Google Ads to generate awareness and grow your business. Look at Dropbox as a simple example.

What they did was create a free tool that made it easy for people to download, put on their computer, and share files with others.

Simple, effective, and most of all useful.

How can you do this with your services? Easy, create something useful for your target client that you can give away for free.

Let’s say you are an ecommerce developer?

Create a calendar of dates over the year that are important sale days for ecommerce shops to keep in mind.

If you are a designer, how many mockups of websites have been tossed aside over the years? Tons I’m sure. Bundle up a few of them and release that as website templates.

If you are a photographer, package up a bunch of photos and release them as stock photography.

Offer these up as freebies on your website that folks can get in exchange for their email address.

You want to make your free thing specific enough to your ideal client so that it attracts them to you and what you offer.

Grow your audience

Create a shareable loop so that when someone downloads the thing, it’s super simple for them to get a bonus or next thing if they go ahead and share.

This could be as easy or as complex as you want.

The most complex would be to install a referral program where you can have the person share links and can award people who share the most with some prize.

There are plenty of these tools out there like KingSumo, Kickoff Labs, Vyper, and UpViral.

Or make it super simple and drop in share links where people can quickly click the link to share it with their audience.

Make your prize as specific to your ideal client as well.

If you are giving away an iPad as your prize then that will just attract a bunch of folks who could careless about you and your business and just wants a free iPad.

Make it a 15-minute free consultation, social media templates, whatever that makes sense as the next step.

Remember you want your free thing to attract someone who could potentially become a client, so you’ll want to give away something of value to them and their business.

Then as they get that free thing, offer something of more value in exchange for them to spread your great freebie. That creates a viral loop.

Not going to say that it’s going to attract thousands of leads, may not even get you hundreds of leads. But once this is up and on your website, it’s a leveraged piece of lead generation that you now have that is a gateway for leads to your business.

If they come into your business from that freebie, you now know a piece of the puzzle about what is important to them and have a conversation starter.

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In business, there is this scenario that gets created during sales that put 2 parties on opposite sides of the table. But the reality of it is that both parties want the same thing. They both want to be successful with the project.

When the objections start popping up, I like to bring this up to them. I simply share something that I’ve said for years and it’s this. “I want to get you where you want to be as efficient as we can together. We are both working towards that same goal and both are successful when that goal is crushed.”

I had a one-hour coaching session with someone (who I got permission to share this on the show) where she wanted to learn more about how to answer objections of clients and get them to commit but in face-to-face conversations and email.

## Need to come into the conversation without bias

The simple reason is that they’re more than likely been here before. Maybe not to the extent or the exact service you are pitching, but the internet is now 20+ years old and no doubt they’ve had their business website up and running before.

When you come into a sales conversation, you should meet the lead where they are, not where you are.

Don’t assume anything.

Don’t assume that they had a great relationship with a past vendor. Don’t assume that they know what it’s like to get a proposal and what to do with it.

Don’t assume they know what the words mean that are coming out of your mouth. Don’t assume that they even have the most basic of information like who they host with on hand.

Which is why it’s so important to get out in front of these questions by way of your project brief or project application. If there is information that you need to better present your solution and you can get that in an online form someplace and allow the lead some time to gather this information, do it.

Be empathic. Don’t make them feel bad by putting them on the spot with a question that they can answer easily given a few minutes of time.

Embrace Objections

Objections are your opportunity in any conversation to connect with the other person, to ultimately solve their problem.

This is where, in the limited time you have here, to build that trust up even further.

So when you start to hear objections or them becoming a bit apprehensive, come from a place of empathy and understand what their concerns are.

Why are they apprehensive and not ready to say “yes” and start the project right now.

What is the ask?

Chris Do, from The Futur worded this best when he said: “Ask them back for clarity.”

What I’ve found to work is to start asking honest, genuine, questions around exactly what it is that the client wants to be done.

You want them to actually use the words they have in their head to explain what it is that they want you to do.

They’ll often say something that is a bit over the top (or as Chris puts it, “ridiculous”).

The idea is to get them to verbalize it because when they do, it’ll hit them, especially as a business owner, that it is just that, ridiculous.

Plain and simple, just get them to state it by asking questions and re-stating back what you hear. And the key part to this, is to ask and shut up. Let them answer and allow them to see that the request may be unreasonable.

## Lower the risk factor

The ridiculousness usually come by way of asking for a lot of service work for a little bit (or no) money.

At that moment, you know they are risk-averse.

It’s now your job to lower that risk. I’ve talked before about how you can lower the risk factor by scaling back and lowering risk is one of the best reasons to niche down your business.

At this moment you want to express your empathy to their situation. If you know they’ve had a difficult time with a previous vendor or it’s a big chunk of money, restate that by saying “I understand and can appreciate your experience with the past developer, but here’s how we are going to mitigate that and why it won’t happen when working with me.”

I would even ask them what happened with the past vendor. Ask them “What happened? What went wrong or what was it that made the project not as successful as it should have been?”

A lot of times, this is easily responded to because you are a professional and don’t flake on your clients, or that you can share with them exactly why that doesn’t happen when working with you.

The big mindset shift you need to make is to look at objections as opportunities. You should get as excited about an objection as you do when someone sends you a referral. Sales is not a “you vs them” scenario. Objections are simply that point in time when you have a teammate that’s down on themselves and you can come over and pick them back up with confidence.

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I’ve talked a ton on this podcast about outreach strategies because whether you like sales or not, if you are building a business, you’ll need to do some form of sales outreach.

Hate to break the news to you.

A lot of people I talk with, and maybe you have this same question too, ask what is the difference between warm and cold outreach.

Simply put the difference is how aware is the person you are reaching out to about you and the solution that you provide.

Start with warm outreach

If you are starting out, warm outreach is a good place to start because you can build up the momentum and cadence of your sales process.

See in warm outreach, there’s less education that you need to do for that person about the problem they have, results they can expect from the solution to that problem, and you being able to provide that solution.

In warm outreach, they know you and have trust in you at some level. So you can pay close attention to the language they use, objections they have and improve your sales conversations and process rather than worrying about hooking the lead in.

All the tiny asks, getting on the phone, having them fill out an application, even sharing information about budget and timelines, are more likely to be answered because they trust you already. Leaving the biggest ask, signing the proposal, as the only hurdle you really have to overcome.

I like to look at warm outreach as 2 types of contacts, one is my friends and colleagues and the other is that lead that has been reading, hearing, and seeing me talk about my services through my content I put out there.

Warm Outreach Strategy

The first group, the colleagues and friends, are the best kind of warm outreach, because they already know what you do. No need for explaining what you do and as long as they encounter a lead that isn’t right for them or have a client who needs that thing you provide, you want to make yourself available to them for a referral.

Create yourself a list of 25 close colleagues and friends.  Each quarter, send 3-5 of them an email letting them know you are available for work.

Taking only a small chunk of them allows you not to bombard your friends all the time looking for work, but pings them about once a year.

This way when an opportunity comes their way that isn’t a fit for them, you stick out as a potential referral.

The second group, those that are familiar with you because of their own research is another kind of warm outreach contact. They need to build up more trust in you. So you’ll need a bit more education of yourself and the solution than that of your friends.

But there’s some level of trust already built there, which is what you want. Like the first group though, you can focus on learning their language and improving your sales process rather than worrying about hooking them in.

Cold Outreach Strategy

That’s what cold outreach is more about. I’ve gone into a few cold outreach strategies before, so I don’t want to be overly repetitive here.

In cold outreach it’s more about them and where they are, rather than you and the solution you can give them.

If you talk in “you” focused statements, showing benefits and results rather than talking about features and your business, you’ll transition them from a cold lead into a warm lead.

This is what your content should be about.

For every 4 pieces of content you do, at least 3 of them should be addressing cold leads and reaching them in the awareness stage of their journey.

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In A158 How much money do I need to make?, you learned what to take into account when trying to figure out how much money you need to make.

What you’ll learn today is activity based selling. Which boils down to looking at what you can do today, not what happened yesterday, to reach your goals.

What it really comes down to is breaking it into chunks. You started off knowing what things you enjoy and totaled all them up into a yearly number. You figured out what your total revenue number is too based on your aspirations and the reality of your expenses.

Lagging vs Leading Indicators

Here’s the shocking point, you have zero control over this number. It’s solely based on someone else handing over money to you. The amount paid to you is a lagging indicator, it’s the output or result. It’s easy to measure but hard to improve or influence because you don’t have the control.

The concept of activity based selling is a focus on leading indicators. These are the inputs or effort you put forward. They are hard to measure, but easy to influence because they are what you do control.

Example of lagging vs leading indicators

Let me explain this concept with a simple example. For many of us a personal goal is weight loss. A lagging indicator that is easy to measure is the weight lost. You literally go on the scale every week and see the decrease in weight.

But how you reach that goal are leading indicators. For weight loss there’s really 2 leading indicators, calories in and burned. Easily influenced by you and within your control.

Now let’s take this concept and apply it to yesterday’s episode.

Real life business example of activity based selling

Say you want to make $120,000 per year. That means you need to make $10,000 per month.

If you have an average project price of $5,000, you’ll need 2 new clients per month.

All these are lagging indicators. You really don’t have any control over how many clients you get per month. Sure you can hustle and land none, or sit back and get someone to fall into your lap.

Obviously, not the way to run a successful business.

Pipeline Stages

What you do control though is the number of leads, number of sales calls you make, number of proposals you send out, etc.

In between each of those stages will be a conversion rate too. Not everyone who is a lead will turn into a sales call. Not every sales call turns into a proposal. And I hate to break the news, but not every proposal turns into a paying client.

You won’t know this at the start, but you can put an good estimate on them to give yourself some context. As you start using this system, you can then tweak your percentages accordingly to get more accurate numbers.

With these leading indicators in mind, you can take the 2 clients you need and work backwards from there and figure out how many proposals you need to send out.

The math to figure out how many leads you need to talk to

At a 50% close rate, you’ll need to send out 4 proposals a month (or 1 a week).

Say 30% of your sales calls result in sending out a proposal. That means you’ll need to have 12 sales calls per month.

Say 10% of your leads result in a sales call, that means you need 120 leads into your business.

Now you have certain numbers that you do have control over and influence because the number of calls and proposals that you send out is based the effort you put into your sales.

Based around the conversions you have at the present time, you can be assured to get those 2 clients you need per month.

You aren’t looking back at the previous month’s revenue anymore wondering if you are going to hit your numbers.

You simply look at certain key stages in your sales and if you haven’t had any sales calls this week, then time to move some folks through that pipeline to get them booked.

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The mistake most freelancers make after having worked full-time is taking their annual salary and breaking that out into an hourly rate.

This is a mistake for so many reasons, one of which is that what you pay in taxes here in the U.S. as a W2 employed person is very different than that of a 1099 self-employed person.

You will need to cover things like healthcare, social security, and a whole plethora of other things that often times your full-time employer have covered for you.

So before you make that leap, or if you have already and wonder why you feel strapped for cash, this episode should shed some light for you.

Personal expenses

This is the biggest nut to crack and the harshest reality for a lot of people. Your personal expenses can vary from what your groceries cost, how much the mortgage or rent is to how much do you often spend on a pair of jeans.

Be honest with yourself when exploring this because this is the space where you don’t want to skimp on. In fact, if you over budget here, you’ll be better off.

Things to think about here are food, shelter, family expenses, taxes, travel, hobbies, emergency funds, car payment, toys, and so on.

You can extrapolate these numbers just from looking at your credit card and/or bank statements. In fact, I encourage you to do so because you don’t want to be short.

Be honest with yourself here. Then take your monthly number and multiply it by 12 to get your yearly personal expenses.

Business expenses

Next you’ll need to figure out the cost of running your business. This could be things like your laptop, hosting for your website, supplies, contractors that you hire, organizational filing expense, professional fees for your accountant and lawyer, other business equipment.

If you are just starting out, you may not know these, so ask around to get ballpark figure on these if you have to.

Don’t let people, namely your friends and family, who aren’t accountants tell you that “it’s a write off, who cares what it costs.”

A write-off doesn’t mean that you get everything back, it’s often percentage based and you want to keep your expenses low especially when starting out so that your profits, what goes into your pocket, is as much as possible.

Get your estimated business expenses per month here and multiple it by 12.

What is your yearly target

After those 2 areas are figured out, think about what you would like to make for the business. If this number is short of your expenses added together, time to up your revenue goal.

Here’s the tricky part, just because the business brings in $100,000 doesn’t mean that’s what you make. What you make is a percentage of that total revenue minus expenses.

When thinking about the total revenue, it’s best to think about your taxes first. You’ll want to set aside 30% to cover your taxes.

If you want the total revenue of the business to be $100,000, that number should be more like $130,000. This way you know you’ve got your taxes covered before anything else.

I don’t want to dive too deep into the accounting here, but if you want to check out a fantastic book on this, read Profit First by Michael Michalowicz.

In that book, it tells you how to think about your business and numbers by taking your profit first, before divvying out the expenses. This is great, because it automatically gives money in your pocket and then puts a restriction around how much you can spend on your expenses.

How will you make money

Once you have your total yearly revenue number, you’ll want to figure out what that looks like on a monthly, even weekly basis.

This way you can figure out what you need to do today so that you can reach your revenue goals by the end of the year.

This is a process known as Activity Based Selling. Where you know the leading indicators that can have a positive affect on reaching your goals, rather than paying attention to lagging indicators like getting a payment that you don’t have control over.

In tomorrow’s episode I’ll expand upon this a bit more.

For now, figure out what you are charging per project, and how long a project will take. For the sake of this example, let’s assume it takes 1-month.

Divide your total revenue by 12.

Then take that number and divide by the average revenue per project.

This will give you the number of projects you need per month.

Hopefully that number is realistic for you, because if not, you’ll either have to raise your rates, or cut back on expenses.
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As a creative entrepreneur, you decided to start your own business because of certain reasons. Whether that’s time freedom to spend time with your family or travel or no limit on your income potential, that goal is your own.

With all the social media and “celebrity” out there it’s easy to become distracted and get off track.

What their goals is not what yours are. Plain and simple.

Even if that person’s goal is similar to yours, you aren’t the same person. You may not even have the same type of personality. The way that person does something may not be the best way for you to do something.

Look for inspiration

Comparing yourself to someone else will do more harm to you than good.

What you want to do is look at what’s working for someone else and potentially take that as inspiration for yourself.

There are many successful folks building businesses based on their personality and being outgoing.

If that’s not your style, but you respect the way that they are doing sales or handling customers, use that for inspiration.

Take what they are doing and make it your own.

I’ve fallen a few times into the pitfalls of comparing myself to someone else. Each and every time it’s demoralizing because I don’t get the results they did.

Put a ton of work into the “thing” and didn’t see the results. It’s the type of thing that burns your out and can put you out of business.

Catch yourself

Let me share with you what I do when I start to find myself comparing myself to someone else.

I’ve got a photo of myself on my desk of my son and I. That is my anchor.

When I start to get distracted by something new - whether that’s jumping onto the latest social media platform, learning a new tool, or trying a new sales tactic, my eye will catch that photo and bounce me back into my world.

What that does is allow me to frame that distraction into inspiration rather than diving into a comparison of apples to apples.

I’ve been in business a long time and of course, I don’t have all the answers. But I know what can work for me, what does work for me, and what feels right to me.

That photo keeps that in mind. Comparing myself to others both in the online and physical space does me no good.

I’m not them and they aren’t me. There are things that I’m great at that they aren’t and vice versa.

Same goes for you. Your goals are yours and yours alone, how you get there will be on your terms.

You aren’t standing in someone else’s shows and no one is standing in your shoes.

Learn from others as inspiration, make it your own, and you’ll see that you’ll have more success.

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Sticker shock is real sometimes, but other times this is a negotiation tactic. It’s up to you to figure out.

Explain why you are different than others and provide proof

This is where you should be explaining and re-framing the context of your service in comparison with what they’ve experienced in the past and/or your unique advantage.

You want to be empathic to their budget restrictions obviously. Simply re-iterate the results you’ve had with past clients and keeping it succinct and to the point that you are helping them accomplish goals and not only building a website, feature, or blog post.

All these things they have heard from you before at length so no need to re-hash it all again.

Then leave it at that and let them fill in the awkward silence. This will start to tell you if it’s a negotiation tactic or reality.

If they don’t have the funds, be understanding and tell them that when they are ready in the future, you are there for them.

Scale back the work to meet their budget

Scale back scope, don’t discount!

If their budget is way off, then scale back the scope of work.

If you’ve gone through the entire sales process and your solution is much more than what they have budget for, then you think and reflect on why that happened in the first place.

Maybe you didn’t ask their budget early on?

Maybe there was a misunderstanding on what the scope of the solution was.

Whatever the case may be, then on the next project you want to fix that. If nothing else, it won’t waste anyone’s time.

When scaling back, be specific about the results that they will get. You want to share with them that because you are removing bits of the project, that certain goals will not be achieved.

Move on

If you are fully booked, or that this haggle was the latest of a [list of red flags]([https://rezzz.com/ask/client-red-flags/]) simply move on.

Be respectful and empathetic to the budget and excuse yourself from being a viable option for them.

You can do this by saying “I completely understand and respect your budget and working with me may not be the best option for you. If in the future, this project gets more funding, then don’t hesitate to reach out.”

How to tell if this is a negotiation tactic or not?

To tell if this is a tactic or not comes with experience. Without being there and hearing the responses it is hard for me to say definitively or not.

This is something that I help my coaching clients on a regular basis with.

However, here’s an example of a tactic as opposed to their actual budget.

Say you give your proposal that it’s $1000 and they respond that they only have budget for $500. Which obviously you wouldn’t do for half and the fact that it’s so far off, the “Move On” option would be your best bet here.

If after that, they came back with $750, then you know it’s a tactic.

If you find a lead or client starting to increase their budget during the conversation or even via email (if it’s a quick response) then it’s a high likelihood that they are trying to get the price lower rather than restricted by budget.

You can’t fault them for trying. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. But be mindful of your margins and don’t sacrifice the sustainability of your business to land a project.

Here’s an important thing to note here. If they are haggling you on your price, then take that as a red flag.

It shows that may not respect the value of what you do and potentially could be telling of how they may take your suggestions and expertise moving forward.

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Taking payment is complex, but should be the easiest, most frictionless experience for your clients. If you get nothing else from this episode, please take that with you.

Outside the U.S.

There are all sorts of laws and regulations that complicate all sorts of payments. What I’m sharing applies to the U.S. If you are not in the U.S. these companies and services that I talk about may still apply, but I can’t guarantee it. Please do your due diligence to make sure that this works best for you and where you are.

There are a few layers in taking payments that I hope to provide some clarity on. There is accounting software and there are payment gateways. The lines between the 2 have become much more blurred in recent years.

What is a payment gateway?

The difference between the 2 are important. Payment gateways process payments only. They will not reconcile your expenses, can’t generate invoices directly and easily, and will not give you profit and loss statements.

Gateways are companies like Authorize.net, Stripe, and alike that you need to link into your bank account so that when someone pays you online, 2-5 days later, you get that money in your account.

Stripe is by far and away the leader in this field when it comes to taking online payments. It integrates with most of the software out there and has a robust API that if you have developer chops, can build your own software on top of it.

You may be saying, “But Jason, I’m generating invoices from PayPal and Stripe.” And yes, you can. But when I say invoices, I mean being able to set up recurring invoices, allow your client to log in and see their account history, and even manage their own account with relative ease and no intervention from you.

The cost is usually a fee applied to every transaction in the form of a percentage of the total amount. If you have a lot of transactions or a high amount of money going through, you can sometimes negotiate this rate.

What is accounting software?

So what’s accounting software then? These are companies like Freshbooks, Quickbooks Online, Bonsai, and Xero.

These services allow you to link up your bank account, generate invoices, set up recurring billing, and give you or your accountant nice reports.

These often carry a monthly price with them and would link directly into your gateway.

Your accounting software sits as a layer in between your client and your gateway to make everyone’s life easier.

Is it needed? Well that’s something that I’ve wrestled with in the past, especially as I’m seeing more and more advancements from companies like Stripe and Azlo as they build out developer tools.

This is the area I find most interesting because the stalwarts in the space, like Xero and Quickbooks technically don’t have a unique added value other than your accountant uses them. Stripe and Azlo and others have started to crack that nut a bit and put the power back into the hands of the business owner of sorts.

Azlo and Stripe

Stripe as I mentioned is the leader in the space. It’s been the payment gateway of choice for many online businesses for a few years now.

Stripe has been building out bits and pieces of things like the reports and recurring invoicing and such in the last year or so. So it’s starting to become an attractive replacement for the monthly cost of something like Freshbooks.

Azlo is a new player in the space. It’s a bank that has invoicing, takes bank transfers, and you can connect it to something like Stripe. It has an API coming, so that’ll be interesting to see.

PayPal and Venmo

PayPal has been in the game for a long time. It’s this sort of hybrid of all these things and that’s why it’s attractive to most.

It comes with some complexity in understanding the rates it has. Which often times are higher than most other gateways. But also has been known to arbitrarily freeze accounts for unknown reasons. Thus locking up your money, being able to accept payments, and ultimately adding a ton of friction to the process.

PayPal is great for selling smaller product like ebooks or courses, I would recommend staying away from when it comes to selling your services.

PayPal’s experience from a client isn’t always the best either. So make sure you understand what your client will see and go through before you decide on whatever solution you use.

Taking payment online is tough and you really need to understand what you need and are paying for. If you don’t you could be wasting money or potentially putting your businesses life blood, the cashflow, under a lot of friction and make it difficult for your clients to pay you, and you to get your money.

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It’s hard to come up with just one favorite quote, because for me quotes are inspirational when there’s a reference or context to them.

I’m going to share with you my 6 favorite quotes and put some context around them.

Everyday Life

This is something that I heard him say in an interview once. Smart man and absolutely right.

It’s important to remember that you can only control yourself, what you do and how you act. There’s no point in trying to control someone else, a particular situation, etc. It can’t be done.

Show up, give it your all, and do your absolute best each and every day.

Competitive

This is from one of my favorite movies of all time. Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

In this movie, Sean Connery plays the role of a mentor to an upstart police officer, Wesley Snipes. If you haven’t seen it, definitely queue it up in Netflix. It’s a great flick.

I’m a pretty competitive person and when I heard this quote for the first time, it hit a home run with me.

Being competitive you can become cocky or arrogant and that tends to become a pitfall. Whether you are in business, sports, gaming, even board games, you should never underestimate your opponent because on any given day you can be off and they can win.

However, in the same light, don’t assume that what your opponent is saying, doing, or offering you is necessarily to your benefit. Take it as information, but don’t dive too deep into it. Make sure that you stick to what you are setting out to do.

Business Quote

These are amazing quotes from two amazing Brits.

Bottom line is to know your value, don’t waiver on it and go seek out those that can see the value that you bring to their business.

Don’t wait for the business to find you. However you are comfortable in seeking out work, do it and then do it some more.

Favorite Sales Quotes

These 2 quotes are something that freelancers should write down and tack on the wall in front of them.

In episode 151 where I talk about cold outreach strategy, Brian Clark shares a similar sentiment here in that you aren’t going to convince anyone to buy from you if they don’t see that value.

Pippin’s wise words here should resonate with you if you’ve lowered your price or been haggled with at some point in time. No doubt that person micro-managed you throughout the project and quite honestly, a pain in the ass.

There you have my favorite quotes and some context around why I love them.

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