Ask Rezzz

I was speaking at a conference of developers and freelancers and presented with this question of meeting face-to-face or everything is virtual.

Being in New York, obviously there are many opportunities to be able to meet people, leads, and potential partners.

When starting out, I did meet lots of leads at coffee shops, their offices, and other places. I’d either get in my car, or hop the train and head on to the location early for the meeting.

NY has traffic and lots of it and the subways have been known to be late from time to time as well, so I always went extra early because I’d rather show up early than be late.

Once there, I’d grab a cup of coffee or drink or whatever for myself and my guest. I especially did this with leads at the first meeting, but would carry that through when they became clients as well.

They would arrive, we’d talk and get to know each other and I would then go ahead and ask whatever questions I needed. Or we would talk about the project tasks and statuses of things. Whatever the purpose of the meeting was.

I’d then hop back into the mode of transportation back home and be on my way with the rest of the day.

Travel time loses profitability

For a one hour meeting, this often times would result in 4 hours of time spent. Between the prep time, travel time, and waiting time, profits literally would fly right out the window.

As I started to notice that an hour spent talking resulted in a half day of actual time, I analyzed that against those meetings that were virtual.

I took into account if they were leads vs clients. And ultimately tracked the time spent and the likelihood of closing the deal.

What I found was that leads that wanted to meet in a coffee shop often would be tire kickers that didn’t result in becoming a client. They were looking to bounce their idea off of me.

Leads that invited me to their office, well they resulted in becoming a client about 65% of the time.

Virtual meetings

Those that I would hold as virtual calls, whether that’s through video or phone, were somewhere in between.

But the virtual conversations I would have took 25% of the time than meeting face-to-face.

I started to key in on the points where I could ask the right questions up front to filter out tire kickers better.

I started to only meet those that had a place in mind to meet me rather than me deciding on a place.

And finally, I would hold kick-off calls when we decided to work together face-to-face.

See the value of the face-to-face can’t be measured to be honest, but it adds to a much higher trust factor that you’ll never get virtually.

Over the course of my career, I honestly haven’t had many local clients, so I when possible, I try and meet face-to-face somehow.

Over time I’ve guarded my time with purpose. I’m only a single person without a sales team. So getting out there and pressing palms as they say, in a sales capacity needs to produce intended results.

For me, it’s unacceptable and hinders the growth of the business to spend a half day to only talk with someone who is looking to get free advice for one hour when they have no intention on paying what I charge.

Lawyers, doctors, and other professionals guard their time, and so I took a page out of their books to do just that.

Most of my meetings now are virtual because I have leads and clients all over the world. That’s not to say though that I don’t meet up with people, I just try and do so as the relationship progresses.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------

Today we are going to set some goals the right way. It’s not December (most likely) and that’s ok, setting goals shouldn’t be just an annual thing.

As a freelancer, you are in control of your day, year, life even. This can be daunting and overwhelming at times. This time of year for me is always when I start thinking about my goals.

It’s easy to remember because my birthday is this month.

For the vast majority though, goal setting doesn’t happen until end of November or in December. I would encourage you to start thinking about your goals a bit earlier than that though.

Goals need to be SMART.

What is a SMART goal

That’s Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-based.

Most times I don’t remember all 5 because for me what I find helpful is that it needs to be specific, measurable, and time-based.

So saying that you want to “increase revenue” is not a SMART goal.

It’s not bound by time.

Something important here is that the clearer something is in your head, the easier it is to break down into smaller chunks and take steps into achieving it.

For example, if I were to ask you what would what would be success for your business a year from now.

And you responded, I’d like to be working with clients who respect me and understand the value I bring to their business. But also like to be making enough money so that I can turn down the other garbage work.

Now I’m purposefully using this as a response to the question because 40% of you, the people that come to my website, tell me this.

Since this is likely to be your response, time to listen up.

We are going to dig deeper here.

Make it specific

The question I would ask is “What does “enough money” to you mean so that you can be selective about the projects you work on.

If you were to say, for the sake of easy numbers, $100k per year. That makes it easy now.

That means you need to make $8,333 per month.

This is specific and easy to track.

The next step is, where does this come from? Does this come from  1 project at $8,333 or 8 project at $1041?

Make it actionable, which translates to being realistic

The next question I would pose is, which one of those seems the best fit for you?

Here’s where the reality check comes into play because you should know from your current experience the types of projects you are currently landing and then extrapolate on that.

If you are now taking on projects at around $1000 but taking on 2 or 3 right now, 8 seems a bit unrealistic, right?

You may want to think about upping the price of a project and taking on less to get to that same number.

And finally, ask yourself, what kind of projects to I have to pitch or go after that fit the type of budget that I am looking for.

Take action and measure

Together we’ve now taken that large goal and made it into manageable, smaller bits that is easier to think about and take steps towards achieving.

Since it’s so clear in your head on what you need to do, you can further break it down into weekly tasks to focus on and set up checkpoints along the way to see where you are. These are called leading indicators.

Rather than looking into the past month and saying “I only made $5k this month, so now this month I have to make $12k. Which are lagging indicators.

If you are curious about what leading vs lagging indicators are, check out the show notes for some more information on that.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------

I get asked this question a lot and to be frank and to the point, I’m going to say to use your name.

Now if you want the case on why I’m going to outline 3 reasons as to why I have this response.

There are obviously cases for both sides, but I want to share with you some thoughts as to why you should think about using your name.

1. People do business with people

This is especially true in the freelance or consulting space.

When you are starting out, there are a ton of distractions that force decisions on you that to be honest, don’t matter.

What matters is getting out there and getting those first few clients. How you get them is by making conversations and talking about problems that you can solve.

Chris Ducker, the founder of Youpreneur, always says that people do business with other people. Forming that P-2-P relationship is the foundation of business.

I couldn’t agree more. Here’s the thing, if you continue the discussion with a random business name rather than your name, you start to dilute the impact your name has.

There aren’t a couple of logos that sit across the table from each other and work together.

When you build trust in yourself and not a business name, that trust is much more solid. It becomes something you can build a foundation off of.

2. You will change direction

What you start out doing today won’t be what you are doing 3, 10, and especially 20 years from now.

When you pick a business name, you’ll probably go with something that is related to the “thing” that you do.

Just as an example you are doing development today but then 5 years from now, create a product to sell. Sure you can use your business name for anything, but people are more likely to follow Jane Smith to the next thing, more so than “XYZ Development Inc.”

This is the very heart of a personal brand. People recognize a person and will follow that person around to their next thing. When a logo changes or shifts direction, people are much more reluctant to shift because it doesn’t fit what the logo once was.

3. Get that business name

Starting out is easy, but building a business and being sustainable is hard.

You may not make it. Let’s face facts, right? Since you are listening to the show, you are trying to build sustainability and I have little doubt that you’ll get where you want to be.

As you build your business and it continues to grow, then you can go out and make everything formal.

See here in the U.S. there are certain benefits to formalizing a business. If you are starting out and not putting all your effort into building sustainability no business name will matter.

Nothing is set in stone other than yourself. Putting your name out there as trustworthy, responsible, organized, and professional is what the focus should be. Build that reputation around yourself, not a business name.

When you are ready and get that business name, that business name will have instant credibility because you are the founder.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

Today's episode are the 3 steps you need to do immediately, to start freelancing as a web developer and get your first client today.

How to start anything is to commit to it. So let’s just get that out of the way now and assume you’ve committed to this.

I don’t think it’s a surprise to you if you’ve heard more than a couple of episodes that finding your niche would be the number one thing to start freelancing as a developer.

1. Find your niche

There’s a very tactful reason for this and that is because the sooner you can focus your efforts on solving a particular problem, the easier it will be to find your ideal client, industry, location, technology, to market yourself to.

This will differentiate you from all the commoditized web development services out there in the market today.

You will start to become a trusted advisor because you understand the business, not just the lines of code.

2. Show up

The second step is to just do the work. Let’s assume you already have done some development whether it’s in school, at a job, or for yourself, think about what you’ve done and enjoyed doing and the problem your code solved and do more of that.

It doesn’t need to be elegant or fancy, just seek out someone or some business that you can help. Either by email, through Facebook, or through a friend. However, it may be, don’t worry about being all perfect with it, just reach out.

• Show them that you understand the problem they have
• How important it is to them (usually by explaining that their problem is wasting their time or costing them money)
• Then that you can solve it for them by sharing your past work

This doesn’t need to be overly complex either. What I did when I first started out even though I had built complex Java applications for startups and corporations in the late 90s and early 00s, I found websites online that their contact form was broken.

Reached out to the businesses either through email or some other means and told them. Told them that I could fix it for them for a couple of hundred dollars and it was costing them business. Because back then, most websites out there, the contact form for small businesses was a means to get customers.

Today it could be reaching out to businesses that have a crappy website on mobile or that their SSL certificate is invalid. In both those cases, Google has said that these are ranking factors in their algorithm which results in less traffic to their website.

3. Get yourself testimonials

This is key because you want to show a track record of solving the problem.

There are 2 ways to go about this.

First is just be mindful of compliments via email, phone, Skype, etc. One-liners like “This saves us an hour a day.” is a testimonial.

Second is asking for one. Through email just simply ask for one, but help them to provide you one by asking specific questions, like “what was one benefit in working together”, “what was the challenge in finding a solution before we started and how did I address that”.

This helps you get more focused responses about yourself and gives your client a specific question to answer rather than leaving it open-ended and them wondering if you are looking for just one sentence or 16 paragraphs.

It’s really that simple and your client will be happy to provide you with one.

If you want a surefire way to get testimonials, check out the Freelancer’s Sales Kit where I provide you with the email templates and a video walking you through how to use them and nudge your client to respond to your request.

There are other steps, like getting paid of course. Which when starting out, then just keep it simple by using PayPal or Venmo or some other means of payment like that.

But you can follow these 3 steps and get started today. Land your first client, and then worry about all the other things once you get this ball rolling.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

We’ve all got them right? Even when we are working on client stuff, there are things that we are passionate about, mess around with, even do as a hobby with no real upside to them other than it just makes us happy.

And so I was I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a full-time job and loves it. He asked me, “how do you make time for your side projects?”

I simply replied, “By doing exactly what you said, make time.”

Now we can’t make time and I want to tip my cap to my friend [Curtis](https://curtismchale.ca) for always hitting me on my head with that notion. But he’s right.

How to prioritize your time

What we do though is prioritize time and make room in our every day for the important things.

Time is the only thing we never get back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. What you do with your time is what you are saying is important to you.

Sure there are times where there are sacrifices to be made and that’s obviously just a way of life. But you can adjust and still cover what you want and need.

Case in point, yesterday at 4 PM I walked out of my office just to grab a drink of water and heard TJ by the front door saying “Daddy, Daddy” as he normally does when he hears me emerge from my office.

I had planned on finishing the day by drafting up a few emails. Which would’ve taken me about 30 more minutes.

My wife said that they were going to go for a walk around the block and asked if I wanted to come.

My answer was simple and quick. “Sure.”

See right there in those few seconds, the priority of the next 30-45 minutes of my day was evaluated and set. Because I do what I do to have the time freedom and flexibility in my schedule to spend time with my family, it was an easy thing to say “yes” to.

Now, what happened to those emails? Well, I woke up a little bit earlier today and wrote them.

So today’s episode is a short one, but I want to leave you with this.

Think about all the things you’ve got going on. All the ideas, projects, and goals you have. Next time you are faced with a choice to make based on the time that you have at the given moment, think about what option aligns with your goals.

Then push the other option aside and if it’s still important enough, create space in your day tomorrow to check it off the list.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

I get asked a lot of questions about what my sales script looks like and how I handle objections during the conversation. As you learned in Episode 102 - What do you use for your sales script?, I don’t have a sales script.

Since I dive deep into my sales process in that episode, I won’t bore you with all the details here.

I mention that episode though because my process preps the prospect of having a productive sales conversation that speaks directly about their project. So much of the sales script is custom.

For me, I’m more comfortable talking with a prospect about the specifics of the project rather than following a specific script. My sales script is given out as an application prior to the call.

That’s not to say that I don’t come to the conversation without any prep. Which is what the answer for today is.

Let’s be honest, it’s hard to answer this question specifically since I didn’t receive any specific objection, but what I’m going to share with you are the 3 objections that are most common in any sales conversation and how I would handle them.

“I’m not sure this is going to work.”

This is something that you may get when first starting out. Mainly because you haven’t put enough in front of the sales call to educate the prospect on the results of your services.

The answer to this question is to followup with some proof of results. This is usually explaining or sharing with them, the results that you have had with your business.

This could be a particular technology, or process, or even new tactics and strategy.

I often run experiments or learn new strategies and techniques using my business as a sort of test kitchen first, before I ever offer it as a solution to a client. This way I can confidently offer it up when the opportunity arises.

“I guess this works for you…”

This is where you will want to share the results of your past clients.

Preferably clients that are similar in nature than that of the prospect. This is so that they can feel that you understand their business.

This kind of social proof builds a track record of success for you to be able to counter this sort of objection from a prospect.

“It’s not going to work for me…”

This is where you outline the process or path from this point in time to what their life will look like after having worked with you.

Make it simple and clear to them of what that transformation will look like.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t complex or time-consuming. It just means that by following the process you have, they’ll be able to achieve the results that they are looking for.

If you take a little bit of time, say 10 minutes, before your next call with a prospect and answer these objections before the call, when they appear in some way, shape, or form on the call, you’ll be able to answer swiftly without stumbling or wondering what to say.

You’ll not just be someone who knows their stuff, but you’ll present yourself that way too. Making a great impression on your lead.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. 
-------------------

I talk a lot about what a niche is and I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding around that as well that I would like to help clear up here.

There are a lot of folks who think that a niche has to be an industry.

So for example, as a web designer he only works with lawyers. Or as a web developer, she only works with doctors.

And because you don’t want to work within those niches that you can not have a niche.

Which is simply not the case.

So let’s define it.

What is a niche?

I define a niche as a targeted audience that you can clearly define who it is that immediately the person reading your site or hearing you talk will immediately say whether that’s them or not.

Of course, if you talking about a specific industry or location or technology, it makes your job easier. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a niche in professional female business owners who are based just located outside the Boston metropolitan area. (and yes, that’s a niche someone has defined for their business).

The key is to define it so clearly that there is no question of what it is.

The biggest problem when defining a niche

In my experience with freelancers looking to niche down, they often say things like “my niche is small business owners who use WordPress and want to growth their businesses and not spend their days running a website” or something to that effect.

And while that’s great, but I would challenge that is not a niche since WordPress is about 30% of the web and every small business wants to grow.

It’s just not specific enough.

It’s fine to have the industry or technology as a part of the criteria in defining a niche, but it’s not enough to narrow the focus.

How to define your niche

It has to be about them, not you.

What I mean by that is when you are working through what your niche is, you have to think about the individual and what they are looking to achieve.

What is it that they do each and every day and ultimately what are they trying to accomplish with their business and life to be quite honest.

The reason for this is simple. This is how they are going to define themselves.

So if you say something like “We help technically savvy businesses increase sales.”

Well, who isn’t going to identify themselves as savvy? As we both know, not everyone is technically savvy and your definition of savvy is different than theirs.

You want to get at the heart of defining your niche by how your niche defines themselves.

If you think you are specific, then I challenge you to spend even more time getting specific, because you are not done.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

Do you drop that freelance client? It sucks for everyone, but maybe the relationship can be saved and even flourish. 

This is always a tough question, because it’s sensitive, there’s a big reputation factor on the line with both yourself and client, and it should be something that’s a last resort.

You and your clients are running businesses, you are adults, having difficult conversations such as this will happen.

First and foremost, you have to deliver what you say you would, as best you could.

I think that goes without saying.

But we’ve all faced situations in our service business where this question can pop into our heads:

• Where a client doesn’t pay on time
• The client is non-responsive
• The client didn’t communicate fully
• There were unrealistic expectations
• Scope continues to change
• You want to move away from that type of service
• Too many bumps in the road and the trust on both sides has eroded away

Areas of responsibility

When this question pops into your head, it’s important to really take a look at the road to this point.

Who was responsible for what and how did each party know that?

What were the terms?

Why did it get to this point?

Having an objective look at the situation may highlight things that can be solved and prevented in the future.

Own your mistakes, even if your client doesn’t own theirs. This is where the high road will always win out.

Set aside time to talk

As much as the conversation is going to suck, you have to reach out and set aside some time to have a conversation with the client.

Ending the relationship should be the last resort, because depending on all the aspects of it, it could get messy very fast.

Instead, see if there can be some level of compromise met. You may have to give a little to get a little here. This is especially in the case of getting paid and timelines. If there has been set terms, or no terms at all, signed in a contract that you are looking to alter, compromise is key.

However, if there is total fault on yourself or your client, then there needs some accountability there.

If it’s late payment, the way to handle that is to stop doing work until the payment has been caught current.

Some explanation here may be needed and proof, so don’t go into the conversation without that.

Don’t point fingers

It’s imperative to not place blame and point fingers.

Explain that there’s an issue in the engagement, and offer up some possible solutions with some hard guidelines.

When you start placing blame, it lowers the professionalism of the relationship further and no one likes to feel like a kid on the playground being blamed for losing the ball.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

The freelance space is getting more and more crowded by the day.

It used to be that all you needed to do was to show up, deliver, and then support to stand out. But nowadays it’s a bit different.

I wrote a blog post titled How to Stand Out As a Freelancer in a Saturated Market a little over a year and a half ago with 10 tips.

I want to share with you something that I’ve found that can make you stand out that isn’t in that article.

But before I do, I want to highlight those tips and if you want to get more in-depth with them, have a look at that article.

• Setup a regularly scheduled time to email or talk with a client
• Be selective about your clients
• Focus on Customer Service as much as one getting a customer
• Be positive
• Remember why you started your business
• Look at other freelancers and agencies and see what they aren’t doing
• Be organized
• Invest vs Expense
• Share your expertise & experiences
• Be the “Go-To” person

All those still apply, don’t get me wrong, but since writing that article, I’ve found a few more things that can have you stand out from other freelancers.

As the industry of freelancing grows and more and more people flood the market, the more it becomes a commodity.

Which basically means that you are competing on price.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to not compete on price. You have to create an experience with your leads and clients. And you have to fully understand the business of who you serve.

How do you serve your freelance clients better?

This comes in the form of specializing your business and really understanding who it is that you are talking with, their problems, and how to build the solution they desire.

By asking tons of questions of your clients, by listening and using the words that they use to describe themselves and their businesses, you start to be able to state their problems before they do.

Albert Einstein said “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”

As a freelancer, you are presented with and often jump at opportunities, like creating a new website or designing a logo.

If you dive deep on defining the problems those businesses are attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important, that’s how you stand out as a freelancer.

Without that deep dive you’ll miss out on opportunities and potentially waste valuable time and resources pushing out projects that aren’t aligned with your clients’ strategies.

You will elevate yourself above the commoditization of freelancing and become an integral partner with your clients and their business when you provide solutions that align with their overall strategy.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

This question came from Mario inside of Feast. And he is starting his career as a freelancer.

In building a website, a landing page to send leads and prospects to, or during a sales conversation, testimonials and social proof are great tools to use.

But when starting out you haven’t built those up yet. So what can you do?

Since you haven’t built up a track record of successful projects with actual results, you can play to the human side of  business.

People to people

People want to work with people they trust, people that are reliable, and people that are likable.

No one wants to have a bad experience. Experience is heavily based on the human element more than anything else.

What is your “superpower”?

The first tactic to do is send an email to your colleagues, friends, and family asking a simple question.

“What do you believe to be my ‘superpowers’ or traits and characteristics that you believe to be unique to me?”

This may seem a bit weird to them to get out of the blue, so frame it in a way that explains why you are asking this question.

In _Will It Fly_ by Pat Flynn, he suggests sending this question from your email address but written from a 3rd-party. In the context of the book, Pat is writing the email so it appears to be a conversation between Pat and your friend, talking about you.

I did this exercise years ago when I read the book and received traits like “Driven, Compassion, Organized, Dedication, and able to see the larger goal and potential hiccups of a project from a conversation.”

Professional Reviews

The next place you can get social proof from is your professional experiences so far.

This especially works if you are working in a cube farm or full-time position.

When your boss gives you your yearly review, she’ll often tell you what you need to work on and what you are excelling at.

Pay close attention to those and make note of what positive affirmations there.

You may not be able to use their name or company, or maybe you can. That would depend on the relationship you have with that person. But maybe at a minimum, you could use their first name and last initial.

Even if you can’t though, with some creative design within the layout, you can simply throw in a quote or 2 into the mix in the right spots that don’t need to carry along a photo or name.

Build the testimonial in your process

The final tactic would be to build in your testimonial asks into you process from the start. This way straight from the first project, you’ll get social proof.

It may not be the best, but something is better than none and you can always change it moving forward.

As a part of your milestone and final delivery process, you can slide in an email that asks your client for a testimonial, or a quick share on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter on how the project went.

Inside the Freelancer’s Sales Kit, which you can find on my website, there is a module that includes the email sequence to get the best testimonials from your clients.

If you haven’t checked out the Sales Kit, it’s a 5 part video course, that in less than hour, you’ll get everything you need to jumpstart your freelance sales process. In each lesson, you’ll have about a 10-minute video that also includes downloads  for:

* Setting up your lead generation forms on your website
* How to craft your yearly offer to avoid the slow sales times of the year
* How to run sales calls with a group of leads at once
* Setup an automated way to search the web for new opportunities
* And of course getting testimonials

There you have it, 3 ways to get testimonials for your brand new freelance business.

* Ask for your superpower that makes you stand out and is unique to you
* Professional reviews
* Starting with the testimonial process in your projects day 1

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------