Ask Rezzz

Each of these 3 fields are different, yet they all have crossover.

You want to create a done-for-you-service for your clients to elevate above the other freelancers just offering one of these 3.

The short answer to this question is “yes, you can do all of them at the same time, but at what cost?”

• Will you be awesome or just mediocre at all
• Will you get the best results for your clients doing all 3
• Will you get the best results for your business doing all 3
• Will you burn yourself out doing all 3

My question to you would be which of the 3 are you best at?

Start with that one and then slowly move into the others where it fits and can augment your services that you are great at today.

In today's show, I take you through my journey and decision making process to bridge those crossover points to augment and make a more complete service and solution for my clients to get the most from me.

First, walk around town, walk around your city. Find the types of businesses that you want to work with. Take note of their websites.

Create a quick 1-2 minute video, using a tool like Loom, showing them exactly what you can do for them. Bonus points if in that video you tell them exactly the steps they need to take themselves.

Then send it off to them with a link to the video and a quick note sharing with them what you did.

Bonus strategy included with this by way of Justin Jackson in this episode.

Second, is a page from a friend of mine, Matt Medeiros. He hosts a podcast highlighting the businesses and business owners of his local market.

He has a podcast called We Are Here for the entrepreneurs and business builders of the South Coast of MA.

If your local area does not have a podcast, of even if it does, having a podcast and inviting businesses onto it to talk about them, their business, gives immediate wins back to the community and local businesses.

These 2 effectively strategies can show that simply by providing value, you are making an impact in your local community.

What you provide value to those businesses, you stand head and shoulders above the crowd and put a face to the name behind an email address.

Remember it’s your local client base. It’s your neighborhood. Time to remember what allowed the Mom and Pop shows to last those 45, 60, even 100 years in your town.

Be a good neighbor!

This is the worst possible thing you can do. 

It unravels all the hard work you have put in to position yourself as the expert freelancer for their project and business.

In today's episode, I'm going to share with you the 3-part email sequence followup I've used for 10+ years and how it keeps your position as the perfect freelancer for the job.

Over the years I’ve learned that what works for someone may not work for me.

You’ve heard me say “take it and make it your own” before.
The reason I say that is because you have to own whatever it is that I’m sharing with you.

I dive into injecting your own personality into the tactics and strategies you hear on this show (or any place for that matter).

I also ask you a pretty personal question (about me) that I would really love to hear from you on. 🤔

Attracting the large clients is the same as attracting small clients.

Know the problem you are solving for them. This is even more the case for attracting larger clients.

A much more effective way to land larger clients is to seek them out rather than try and wait for them to come to you.

Larger clients are much more difficult to nab, well because they have layers and layers of people in the organization and getting in front of the right person can be much harder.

Most of the times with smaller clients, you are working with the founder or owner of the business.

Depending on what you do, you’ll need to find the appropriate person to get in front of.

1. You can go to that organization on LinkedIn and find who that person is and see if you have any sort of connection to that person. 
2. Ariel Viera leveraged the power of Facebook to get in front of the "right" people with his content just as a bit of marketing, like TV commercials. He didn't ask for a sale, didn't promote, just pushed his content.

In this episode I share with you 4 points from my experience in working with larger brands that you'll want to keep in mind.

My answer is yes.

Sure, you'll get the strange, one-off questions from time to time, but you will be able to engage with someone as if they are walking right into your office.

Shy of getting on a phone call or meeting someone in person, live chat gives a lead that availability to ask questions that your website doesn't have answers to.

Having that quick chat can mean the difference to landing a gig or not.

In this episode, I share with you why I use it and the benefits it's given my business, not just from getting clients.

During that call you are providing your time, experience and expertise to answer questions and/or scope out work.

That is time that’s requested by your client of you to be a part of a meeting that they feel is necessary. It could be about your project directly, it could be about a future project, or totally unrelated to anything that you are working on with them in the first place, but they want to pick your brain.

As a freelancer you should look at  meetings just like you look at any other billable time. In fact, you should look at meetings as even more valuable because you are getting the opportunity to learn more about pains of your client, learn more about their business, and take notes on those things to become even more of an asset to them.

In order to be successful and build a sustainable freelance business where you can stay out of the famine part of the feast and famine cycle, you need to be able to push through those slow periods and not lose your shirt.

An email list is your best asset here.

To minimize the work right now, go into your inbox and/or wherever you keep your communication with leads and build a spreadsheet with 3 columns. First Name, Last Name, Email Address

Now after that, do the same with your past clients by just going into your billing system and pulling out all that information.

You should essentially have one list with 2 segments Leads and Past Clients.

Send an email to each person on that list asking them a simple email. 

“I’m writing today just to ask you one simple question. Would you like to be included on my email list to receive information about X so that you can Y? Also to stay up-to-date with my services and be first to know about any new availability and offers I may have? 

If you want in, just reply with ‘yes’ and I’ll add this as your best email address to my list.”

Remember those slow periods, well this is how you push through those successfully.

When identifying those slow periods, craft a scaled back version of your services and a month or 2 prior to that slow period. Write out a few emails to your list with your scaled back offer.

I’m not saying to discount your services, I’m suggesting you to carve out a slice of your services that you can do, build, implement, and deliver quickly and effectively. Then offer that at a profitable price.

But in this episode, I'm going to share how you can do the same.

In order to do that though, it will time, but something that can be done once and continue to be a profitable means of getting clients.

In this episode I'll share with you the gear, software and host and give you my 2¢ on each of them and why I chose them.

For my mic - Rode Podcaster
For recording - Audacity and Zencastr
For hosting - Transistor.fm

The mic, Zencastr, and Transistor do come with a price. Albeit not too much, but I just wanted to mention that you will need with the gear I talk about, some level of initial investment. 

As you'll hear in the show, I've got a ton of value and return on that investment that I'm not about to turn back now.