Ask Rezzz

The product I use for my business that I cannot live without is the one that manages the only thing that I regret not managing from the start.

That is my email list.

There’s a love-hate relationship with this type of question.

Simply because tools or products come and go over time. Either they become obsolete, or other ones come out that is better, whatever the case may be, tools will evolve.

With that out of the way, I will say this. Understanding “why” you are in business and finding a product that supports that will result in you finding a product you cannot live without.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My email list is the one regret I have in growing my business that I didn’t pay attention to from the start.

And to be quite honest, it probably has cost me a ton of revenue in the long term.

The reason it’s so important is that I am in business to help other businesses grow. In order to do that, communication is key.

If that business is for the services side of my business, I need to stay in touch with them at all stages of the process. Before, during and after we work together.

If that business is for folks like yourself who are building a business, I need to do very much the same so that I can share with you what’s working and what’s not working in today’s market.

For a long time, I lived out of my inbox and that was enough. But after a few years, I realized that I needed to better serve my leads, clients, and colleagues.

To accomplish that, I needed to find myself an email service provider.

At the time, that was MailChimp, but I then moved to Drip and ConvertKit.

For full disclosure, I am an affiliate for Drip and ConvertKit. Which means that if you choose to go ahead and use Drip or ConvertKit because of what I mention in this podcast, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Please though understand that I have experience with all these companies and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the commissions I make.

Why did I move away from my inbox?

At first, it was because I wanted the pretty newsletters, I’m just kidding, that was just a bonus.

I moved simply because I wanted a place where I knew all the contacts I had in my business were in one place where I could reach them effectively.

So I went with MailChimp to start because, well it was free. That seemed logical, right?

However, I’m a developer, and when a developer finds a tool or product that allows him or her some level of power to leverage by way of programming with…well let’s say that developer becomes like a bee to honey.

That’s how I was with Drip.

They had an API that few other ESPs at the time had which allowed me to do some interesting things for my business as well as client businesses.

Things like:

• Lead Scoring based on which page a lead would visit. 
• Tagging a subscriber with things versus putting a subscriber into multiple lists.
• Being able to set up simple automation without fumbling around with a cumbersome user interface.
• Insights into what a subscriber has done, like open emails, clicked on links, visited your website and what events like payments happened and when in a nice Activity Feed.

And the best part was all this was free for up to 100 subscribers.

I’ve been a Drip user since early 2015 and still use it to this day.

It’s been powerful in the way I’ve been able to help my own business grow, but also my clients too.

ConvertKit is newer as a tool that I’ve used.

It’s an outstanding platform and where Drip and MailChimp have had difficulties, ConvertKit has picked up the ball and ran with it for me.

ConvertKit is great, especially if you:

• Want to embed multiple forms of different types on your website and get analytics on them without the need of a 3rd party.
• Segment your list based on those forms.
• Tagging of your subscribers like Drip.
• Want to power to create simple, effective automation for your business.

Drip and ConvertKit no doubt are very similar, but differ in some aspects.

Advantage of Drip over ConvertKit

One of the biggest is the Activity Feed that Drip has on it’s subscribers. And if you have a large database of email subscribers or a sales team, this information could be invaluable to you.

Advantage of ConvertKit over Drip

Another big one is the form creation that ConvertKit has. It allows you to create modals, entire landing pages, and inline forms essentially with the click of a button. The analytics of them are top-notch.

Which one you go with really is up to your particular needs.

But the important thing here to remember is that tools come and go. When choosing a product, make it a product that supports your “why” for your business and you’ll no doubt find one that you cannot live without.

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“To bundle or not to bundle, that is the question.” You are going to learn 3 things today to think about when deciding to bundle your services for a freelance client.

This question came from someone in Feast, but I do hear this question and ask myself this quite often.

There isn’t a firm right answer one way or another.

I just think that there are too many factors that can go into this, but I thought that I would share my thoughts around this question and help you decide what’s best for you and your clients.

1. What is your relationship like?

Is this a first time client or someone who’s been with you for 5 years?

Above all, I think this is important when even thinking about discounting your services. Now I’m not a fan of discounts, but when you bundle, that’s what you are doing.

So if this is someone you have had a long-term relationship with and feel that you understand them to stay within the walls of your working relationship well enough, it’s understandable.

I mean we are people right, and we want to help others.

On the flip side, I have a hard standing rule that I won’t discount, whether that’s bundling or not, for new clients. Just because I don’t know how the working relationship will be together.

2. Is there leverage between the bundled items?

Is there an overlap between the projects you are bundling?

Can there be parts of one piece that you can re-use for the other?

If the parts of the bundle are exclusive of each other and you need to spend as much time on one as with the other, then bundling may not be a good thing here for you.

3. Why is bundling even a thought?

You have to be really mindful of profits when it comes to bundling.

If you are bundling to try and sweeten the pot for the client, make sure you aren’t killing profits in the process. Make sure there are some leverage assets that you can share in the bundle, otherwise you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

If you are bundling to get more revenue into your business, this to me is more acceptable than sweetening the pot. But still being mindful of the profits is key.

Did the client ask for a bundle? This is probably the thing I most hang on when it comes to answering this question. This is what I check myself with.

Let’s face it, we can get in our own head sometimes and think that we need to do something when it isn’t even asked. This is the classic case of self-sabotage, right.

If the client or prospect isn’t asking for it, you could be sacrificing a great deal of lifetime revenue from that particular client.

If you do this often, think about how much revenue is lost.

Don’t sell yourself short.

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Are you a freelancer and struggled with putting prices on your website? In this episode, you are going to learn why it's important to address pricing and ways to do it without putting your actual prices up there.

Case for putting pricing on your website

The thought with putting pricing on your website is so that you start to weed out the tire kickers.

This is simply to protect your time and profits.

See you have a minimum per project and the last thing you want to happen is for you to go through the entire sales conversation to get to the point of discussing budget and come to the conclusion that you are miles apart.

By putting your pricing up on your website, you eliminate that wasted time spent.

Case for not putting pricing on your website

The case for not putting a price on your website is often that you don’t want to pigeon hole yourself.

It’s really this fear of missing out that happens here where you think that if you put prices up there and a project comes along that is right for you and they see your prices. They won’t even bother.

Whether it’s your prices are lower than their budget and they feel that you may not have enough experience to do their project.

Or that you are way out of their league with their budget and can’t help.

What I do and why

I put prices on my website.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that putting your prices can be a scary thing to do. You feel like you are locking yourself in, or that you can’t change the prices during the midst of the conversations if they’ve already seen your prices on the web.

Well, that’s wrong. There are plenty of times where during a sales conversation I have adjusted the price up or down to suit the need of the project.

You run your own business, remember?

I put my prices on my website because it frames the conversation from the start. If someone has a budget and whether I can fit or not into that budget, then I want them to know that.

I’m all about not wasting time. I try to answer any and all questions up front and as early on in the process as I can.

If you don’t want to put your prices on your site, I would encourage you to at least put something that opens the conversation and addresses about your pricing.

Stop having conversations with folks that want your service for free.

You can do so in a variety of ways:

• Explain the factors that go into your prices and how your process can affect it.
• Put a price range.
• It builds trust.
• Without prices, there’s a perception that they can’t afford it
• Leverage testimonials in a way to frame your prices.

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This was such an awesome question that someone inside of the Feast community asked during our monthly round up call this month, I had to share it.

I’ve been asked this many times before. In fact, I’ve wrestled with it myself over the years.

Let me quickly paint a picture for you.

The Scarlet Letter of Services or Service Stigma

You offer 2 different types of services to 2 different types of clients. One of those types of clients essentially looks down at the other service for some reason. Whether they believe that the skillset isn’t advance enough, or that those working in that field must not be great at providing other services. Basically attaching a stigma to it.

It’s like “the other side of the tracks” metaphor, if you will.

On the call, it was suggested to create different landing pages for both and hope that the one client you are trying to keep away from the one service doesn’t find it.

This is one option, but I wouldn’t count on them not finding out what all your services are in the end anyway. Thus requiring you more work and more stress in trying to figure out a way to market yourself, but also hide yourself at the same time.

For me, and this could be the NYer in me shining through a bit, it was my decision to just put all my services on equal footing.

Your services are how you serve your clients

If you goto my services page, you will see distinct types of customers and how I can best serve them, even if the services I provide are pretty much the same.

How I can best serve them… To me that’s what’s important.

If you are a blogger using ConvertKit and looking for someone to build out some email campaigns for you, let’s talk.

If you are an e-commerce store using Drip and looking to build out some complex integrations with cart abandonment and on-site personalization, let’s talk.

If you are an influencer running a membership site or coach selling your programs on WordPress looking to grow your membership’s retention rate, let’s talk.

Each of those types of clients are very distinct, but if they know who they are and what they need, they will follow the correct path and won’t care what other services I provide.

Have you ever hired someone to do your driveway? I’m actually in the process right now actually.

Well those that do driveways also often times do chimney work too.

Did I know that? No, but after finding out, makes sense right?

Do I care how they do their work on the chimney jobs? Maybe slightly just from a professional standpoint, but 95% of what I care about is how well they do on the driveway projects.

What sort of substrate do they plan on using? Will this crack in 5 years or last me for the next 20? What kind of pavers work best for my area? That’s what I care about as the consumer.

And I think that’s really what most clients would care about too. How well you can solve their problems?

It’s in our own heads that we think that we’ll hurt ourselves by putting these services side-by-side. When in reality, we are just creating more stress and headaches for ourselves.

Getting clients to respect you

If a client has a rails app and used Drip for their email automation and thinks that I can’t get them great results because I also do WordPress development, then maybe that person isn’t the right fit anyway.

If you’ve listened to past episodes where I talk about discovering your ideal client, personality is a HUGE part of that.

I want our personalities to mesh well together. If they want to test me, that’s fine, but if they put some stigma on me and take it to a point where it is disrespectful, then that’s on them.

If there’s a sense of that during our initial conversations, we will either talk about it, or move on in our separate ways.

It is a missed opportunity, sure, but I want to work with people who will respect what I do and the value I can bring to them and their business.

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This is actually an easy question to answer and I hope that by answering it, you may understand a bit why I talk about the things I do with respect to testing the market, talking to customers, etc.

My biggest failure as a freelance came when I released a product into the wild called WP Field Guides.

My idea was what I built

It was to educate people on the best practices of WordPress and targeted to businesses wanting to manage and grow their website.

I got the idea from the leads that would come into my business, but then either because of budget or timing, they didn’t become clients.

I took those reasons of budget and timing as a reason to build this product that I could offer as a sort of down-sell to leads that didn’t sign up with me.

I went off writing up these guides, posts, created a website, social media profiles, linked up the e-commerce store and laid out all the pieces to fulfill the orders.

Why it failed

Well guess what? I sold 4.

What happened you ask? Well here’s what happened. I took the WP Field Guides as the solution to the timing and budgetary reasons.

I thought that a lower cost solution to their projects where they could essentially manage things on their own but have the manual to do so would be the answer they were looking for.

I was wrong.

I assumed when I should’ve gone out and spoke with the potential buyers to see if this was the solution they were looking for.

After this time spent, all the late nights and resources I put into this, I folded it all up and gave the money back to the 4 people that made purchases.

Validate the idea before building it

I went back to the drawing board, only this time I had conversations with people and found that they didn’t want a DIY solution, what they wanted was a done-for-you solution and they didn’t mind paying for it.

What I realized was that the offering I had at the current time wasn’t a fit because it wasn’t built for the type of clients that were turning me down.

In fact, I learned that the ones turning me down were actually willing to pay a bit more if there was more depth to the services. Which I didn’t provide at the time because: 

• I didn’t think of it because I didn’t have the conversations
• I couldn’t take them on with the way my existing client base 

So as some projects ended, I started to offer a higher end service to those that I spoke with, refined the model and validated the idea for the business with paying customers.

Ever since WP Field Guides, I will always test the idea first with real people and potential customers. Never again will I be Kevin Costner and think "If I build it, they will come."

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Let me provide some context to this question as I think it’s important for my answer here.

This particular question comes from someone who is a web developer just starting out looking to get the attention of other companies looking to hire him.

This person has no experience outside of school and pet projects. They don’t yet have a website either to speak of.

The quick answer to this question is build a site.

Yes it’ll take longer, but you need to keep in mind who you want to attract and where they are.

Let me explain a little bit more of what I mean.

Are you where your potential clients are?

When you put something on Github, the other folks on Github are most likely to be developers.

If your clients are developers, then by all means this is your best bet to help showcase your work effectively.

However in this case, the likelihood that a decision maker or business owner is browsing around Github for well written code in order to go out a hire that developer is very slim at best.

Having a website where you can link up your Github profile, but then have that sit on a page where you talk more about what the project is about, what you did to solve the problem, and potentially talk about the results of that project, resonates more with those business owners or decision makers.

Remember those folks are looking for someone to solve a problem and fill a role. They will pass along your name and site over to the technical person for reviewing the Github profile.

To make the biggest impact, be everywhere that the first and second person you are going to talk with are

Obviously if you want to make the biggest impact, then you’ll want to do both. But to grab attention, the first step is to think about the person you are trying to grab and cater to their wants and needs.

Then put that information where they are most likely to see it.

If putting up a website is too much effort for the time you have, then you’ll want to leverage social media platforms that have the people you are trying to grab attention from. If it’s business owners or decision makers within the business, then definitely want to check out LinkedIn, maybe Twitter in some cases too.

There you can showcase projects, your skills, and even get others to recommend you there as well.

Always keep in mind that you want to be where your clients are.

Where your potential clients are, usually isn’t the most natural place for you.

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Do you ever wake up in the morning and say “I can’t wait get today rolling so that I can have people completely ignore me?”

No, of course not. But that’s what’s going to happen when you do cold outreach.

In general, a good cold outreach campaign yields a 1% response rate.

That doesn’t even mean that 1% are “yeses” either, just means that you’ll get a response.

It’s heart wrenching, it’s soul crushing. It’s the same emotional nightmare of your teenage years during prom season again as an adult.

Set your expectations low

 The first step in this process, before any emails go out is to put your thick skin on, recognize that you may not get one single response, and set your expectations extremely low.

By doing this first, you’ll set yourself up for not feeling defeated or invisible.

It sucks to get no responses, I’m not going to lie, but unfortunately when you have zero relationship with the person receiving your email, the chances are very slim that you’ll be important enough to them to get a response.

How would you feel if you got this email

I try to imagine myself getting this email and how I would feel and react.

I get tons of emails where I can tell immediately that the sender didn’t even bother to look at my site or social profiles or anything about who I am and who I serve.

It doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to hit someone’s homepage and about page to see what they are about.

Which leads me into the next step

Make it personal

By spending a minute or two learning a bit about who that person is or what that company does goes along way in making the email more “you” focused.

If you haven’t heard the term “you” focused before, it’s the positioning of the content to be focused on the recipient rather than yourself.

By taking some queues from the about page and potentially something that the person posted about on social media over the weekend, you can:

• Ask them a specific question to start the email off
• Congratulate them on some award or achievement
• Set a tone to the email based around a casual or professional language

Keep it short to only 1 or 2 sentences.

Make it valuable

You shouldn’t be just blasting anyone that could be a client.

You want to target only those ideal people you know you can help with your services. 

Don’t just email someone because they partly fit your business.

In the email you are sending, give them something of value that they can walk away from reading the email and be better off for reading it.

This can be:

• A resource to download, like a checklist
• Personalized video of a quick win for them to do
• A link to a resource that will help them along to accomplishing their goals

Remember this email is “you” focused and by sharing with them some piece of information that can help them even if they don’t respond to you, will earn you trust them.

Make the next step super simple

Sum up the email, which shouldn’t be more than a few short sentences, with a clear call to action.

Something like “If this sounds like it makes sense to you, reply with a ‘yes’ and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Followup

The last thing is to followup. There are arguments for how much and how often, but I’ll leave that to you.

I like to followup only once. Mainly because I don’t want to bug them if the timing isn’t right, but also because it creates a sense of urgency too.

See in the followup I explicitly tell them that this is the last email they’ll be receiving from me out of respect for their inbox and their time.

This email is usually the one that gets the responses, not the first one, to be perfectly honest.

If you keep these 6 steps in mind in your next cold email outreach campaign, you’ll more likely have much better success than the average 1%.

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Do you have a mantra, a manifesto? Is it something we need? I don’t know, but I’m going to share with you mine.

As a business owner or freelancer we hear that people have these personal manifestos and mantras that they live by. I never though of these 2 "words of wisdom" that I live by as such, but maybe they are. You be the judge.

I had the pleasure of being on Philip VanDusen’s Brand Muse interview series over on his YouTube channel and he asks all his guests this question.

And while I don’t have a set in stone manifesto, there are mantras that do guide me and help keep me on track when things get rough, get too big, etc.

One of which I shared on the show…that’s “Be Consistent”

Be Consistent

It’s something that I’ve heard from many folks that I’ve respected growing up and in my professional career as well.

This is one of the few things that I’ve said to my 1 and a half year old son too since the day he was born.

The reason this is a personal mantra of mine is because I’m a planner and I don’t like to let folks down in any sort of way.

Being consistent means that you aren’t late, you don’t miss deadlines, you are dependable.

This goes for personal as well as professional.

Think about your list of close friends, there is inevitably at least one that shows up to the party late, that the rest of you say “We need to remind so-and-so to make sure they remember.”

Is that the person you’ll call if you need a ride some place, probably not.

That’s who you become if you are not consistent.

Being dependable and reliable in business is an absolutely must for you to be successful. Otherwise don’t even bother.

Don’t be the smartest person in the room

Another mantra I have is to not be the smartest person in the room.

This is something that you’ll hear from a lot of people but that’s because it’s true.

Having a someone who you can gain knowledge from and learn from their experiences has a positive effect on you and what you want from your life.

There’s a reason why you’ll hear about apprenticeships in various fields like tattooing and other artistic areas.

It’s why you hear about how mastermind groups are game changers and people rave about them.

Learning from others is the best way to grow your knowledge and skills so that you can get to where you want to be.

Learning from their life experiences, their business experiences, their mistakes and successes will help you pave your own journey.

When you feel that you are the smartest person in the room, then time to find another room.

You will outgrow them, it happens, and that’s ok.

But by outgrowing those rooms, keep in mind that there is always another room to go into.

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This is the natural follow up to the last episode.

Now that you know what to write, how often should you.

Once you get the juices flowing it’s often easy to then say, I’m going to put out a daily blog post, or a weekly post.

More often than not though, you’ll die out. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that.

I’ll tell you what I tell my coaching clients as well as my service clients, write as often as you can be consistent with it.

You don’t have to write daily or weekly even. If you write once a month to start out, decide on a day of the month, and publish then.

Writing isn’t an easy process, it takes time, research, thought, editing, and even some pretty-ing up. You want to make sure that you have the dedicated time and resources to do this among all the other things that you do.

Here’s why being consistent above all else is important.

People

You write above all else for your readers. If you push publish on a particular day of the week, day of the month, your readers learn to expect it.

It’s why TV shows have time slots. It’s why your favorite podcast releases at a regularly scheduled time.

You, as much as the reader, will learn to expect the content to be there.

Search

The secondary reason you are consistently writing is to be found. How does that happen? Through search.

When you push publish at the same day and time, Google and other search engines get those signals from your website.

Like your reader, they begin to expect it to happen.

See the search algorithm wants to put in the most up-to-date and relevant results for a search.

By producing a piece of content on a consistent day and time, the search algorithm will see that it’s fresh and put it in front of those looking for your article.

As long as people click and read your valuable content, you’ll be rewarded with improved search results for all your content.

Your Next Steps

Write 4 articles, record how long each one takes from start to finish.

Think about how you’ll fit writing among all the other tasks you have to do.

Then pick a day and time that you know you can stick to and put all the publishing dates on your calendar.

If it’s weekly, then you’ll need to write about 4 articles every month, or 52 articles in a year.

If it’s monthly, then you’ll need 12 articles a year.

It’s that simple, just be consistent with your valuable content and you’ll be well on your way.

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With video, social media, and other platforms popping up daily, it’s inevitable that you’ll be enticed to follow and jump all in  on the new platform.

It’s important to remember that putting your content on rented land means that you need to play by their rules and those rules can change in an instant.

Case in point, I started this podcast on Anchor. Then around episode 30 or 35, I noticed that Anchor was injecting ads into the broadcast. Which I fully understand why, but it just didn’t feel right for the show from my perspective. And so I pulled the podcast onto my own website.

You’ll want to produce content elsewhere to get those eyeballs, but you’ll always want to produce content on your own site, in your own blog.

This can be overwhelming, but to give you a bit of a starting point, I want to share with you 5 types of articles to start with.

All these types of articles are tailored specifically to what someone is searching for.

All of these types of articles can work for any industry, business, or niche.

They are known as “The Big 5” and Marcus Sheridan in his book They Ask You Answer is the inspiration behind what this podcast is all about.

The first and maybe obvious one is

Problems

What are the problems, struggles, concerns or issues that people have.

Think about your buying habits and what you research. You’ll search for the negative reviews, the things that could go wrong, and even the bad things could result in you making this purchase.

Instead of shying away from these, embrace them. It builds trust and honesty with the reader and your potential customers.

Cost/Price

People obviously want to know what the cost is, how much are they going to have to spend on your services.

Most freelancers don’t put their price on their website. I do, but must don’t because they feel that they may be restricting themselves or painting themselves into a corner and limiting what the projects they take on.

Now this doesn’t mean to put an article up that has your prices in it, but it can mean that you can speak to what goes into the price.

Which factors affect the price.

Explaining the reasons behind the pricing models and who they suit best.

Even why a certain service costs more than another.

Versus/Comparison

We all do it, we search for comparisons. We read up on which TV is better. Mac vs PC. iPhone vs Samsung.

If you are running a marketing business your customers may be searching for things like SEO vs Pay-per-click or Email marketing vs Content Marketing trying to figure out which is better for their business.

By writing articles that compare your own services together with comparing products and service that aren’t will earn trust and position you with an unbiased perspective on the market.

Reviews

The fourth type of article are reviews.

These are pretty self-explanatory and you may not think to do this for services, but a way to position yourself in the market by giving reviews of other vendors in the space.

Best of

Finally “Best of” articles. These are fantastic for putting content out and ranking for the skills and tools that you use in your business.

They’ll help when potential clients search for things that they’ll want to use in their business. Which will then open the doors of opportunity for you to grab their attention and work down the road.

I encourage you to think about the things you do every single day and put together a list of titles of articles with these types in mind.

Don’t be afraid to mis them up either. You can certainly do an article on the Best Web Developers in Oceanside, NY and include things like cost and reviews in the article.

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