A while back I said Shane Pearlman is the Godfather of Freelancing.

If that’s true, than Bill Erickson is a made man.

I’ve been a fan of Bill  since I stepped on to the scene of WordPress some time ago. From a distance, he has a really lean and mean service product.

“Your WordPress website in 5 days all for twentyfive-hundred smackaroos.” My headline not his.

How does he achieve that AND land $20k clients?

We’re going to find out in this episode!

Episode 50: Interview with Bill Erickson

Listen to the audio version or subscribe on iTunes

Systems, data, and more data

People thought I was crazy when I recruited my cousin, former VP of operations for a manufacturing company.

What does he know about tech and WordPress?

Nothing. That’s the point.

What he does know is how to analyze where our time and costs are going and how we can improve in those areas to help build a sustainable system.

This is exactly the approach Bill uses to run his day to day operations.

With anywhere from 8 to 20 projects in the pipeline, Bill has fine tuned his process to accommodate scheduling and execution. It’s not all guess work either, he studies the data like a mad scientist to understand his most profitable areas with the intent to drive revenue.

Oh and he’s a one man band — very impressive.

Contracts

Live and die by them.

After hearing how Bill structures his client contracts, you might feel a bit inferior. It’s OK, that’s why this podcast exists!

Learn from the “war stories” he shares and pay close attention to his method of collecting payments. He ties payments to productivity and not  an arbitrary payment schedule based on time.

Invoice client’s on the start of work vs waiting until a set calendar day. Loved this.

What do you think? Are you going to change anything in your business now?