Freelance Transformation

Noah Fleming has a successful consultancy, is author of the book, Evergreen, and is a coach in Alan Weiss' private program. Noah dives deep into what it really means to create value, use value-based fees, and how to identify and find the clients who we can deliver value for.

Spoiler: Value has nothing to do with time. http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode60

Bryce Bladon, author of Hell to Pay, loves to write and makes his living writing. When he saw that the national average income for freelance writers was only $22,000, he knew that he had to do something different. Bryce discovered that he was most successful when he niched down and started charging what he was worth rather than selling himself as a commodity.

Bryce shares today how he built up his consulting and writing services over the past seven years to now earn six figures a year and gives advice how any freelancer in the creative fields can do so too. He gives advice on how you can niche down and specific examples of niches in writing and also explains how to get away from hourly pricing and start charging based on value.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode59

Aaron Vidas proves that it is possible for a solopreneur to sell into big businesses. Aaron has built three consulting businesses to revenues of over $1M dollars. He has worked with clients ranging from solopreneurs to the boards and CEOs of $250 million plus companies. He did this by slowing working up the value chain and talking to a lot of people.

At the end of the day, Aaron knows that big companies are all composed of people, so you just need to find out which people to talk to. Not so intimidating after all. Like selling to anyone, you have to position yourself as the expert and know that you can solve their business problems to make the business more efficient and make more money.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode58

James Knight had the cushy corporate job, at Google no less. He did great work and was well taken care of. Yet two years in he left to become a freelancer and ultimately started building an agency, Gradient. Why did he do this? And how did he pull off this transition that many people daydream about, but are terrified to go through with?

James will take us through this journey, and the practical details such as how he found his first few clients, the decision to go further from freelancer to agency, taking on a business partner, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode57

You, dear listeners, have emailed me with great questions about freelancing, and if you have signed up for my mailing list (hint hint), you'll have received a personal reply.

Celebrate the Freelance Transformation Podcast officially turning a year old, I provide expanded answers to the questions that I see the most often.

I share my thoughts on overcoming fear, defining your niche, defining and improving your worth, getting paid upfront, and finding time for both client work and marketing and sales to get past the feast and famine cycle.

http://www.FreelanceTransformation.com/episode56

For Nick Disabato, freelance consulting in not a temporary between-jobs solution, it is his life. Listen to how he created a successful independent consulting business, Draft, with just him and an assistant while making decisions along the way that have improved his work-life balance, his mental health, and his overall happiness.

Nick loves his job, but he knows that he has to maintain boundaries between work and life to keep from being overwhelmed by work, so he is very careful about setting expectations about off-hours and vacation time so he can take time off and keep his clients happy. To do this, he has also been very careful about who he accepts as clients and has set up a careful application process to only work with the clients he knows will be best for him and allow him to provide the most value to. But Nick also knows that he doesn't want to be stressed out and selling all the time. He lets loose on his mailing list and writes about what ever he feels like, sometimes business related, sometimes about sandwiches! He gets to have fun, and also gets leads and an audience to sell his ideas to, such as his new Kickstarter book.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode55

Recurring clients give your business greater stability and sustainability. They are gold. Tommy Joiner explains how he and his partner built up a content marketing business Gingerbread Marketing, based on recurrent clients, selling monthly packages.

Tommy tried converting his last business, based on email marketing, into using a recurrent strategy by offering retainers rather than one-off projects, but it didn't stick. His clients didn't get value from the monthly packages. When he set up his current company, he and his partner decided that recurring revenue was important to them so they chose to specialize in something that is inherently recurrent, blog posts. Check out what decisions he made to create a successful business.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode54

Trying to get the attention of a large agencies and consistently have agencies as recurring clients is difficult at the best of times. Nate McGuire, cofounder of Code My Views, has figured out the unique challenges that agencies face to specially cater to them, creating a successful technical firm.

In today's episode, Nate tells us how he and his partner built up a business targeting agencies and specializing in converting their clients' ideas into code for word press and other platforms. He walks us step by step through his sales funnel, from outbound campaigns to tech briefs to sale, and the practical day to day operations to meet the unique demands of agencies.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode53

Podcasting can attract and sell to your ideal client and establish you as the expert before you even meet. Jason Bay built a coaching and consulting business, GenY Success, based on the strategy using podcasting to win clients.

In this episode, Jason shares why his podcast is an effective lead generation tool and the critical strategy behind starting a podcast that will reach your perspective clients and turn them into leads. The secret, a common theme for Freelance Transformation, is first identifying and reaching out to your ideal client.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode52

Why does a client decide to buy services and products from you? What can you do to break down the barriers to buying? Sean D'Souza, author of The Brain Audit, explains the process that goes on in a potential customer's mind as they decide to buy or not, and what you can do so that the customer buys from you.

Sean shares with us the main concepts in his book, The Brain Audit, how to apply these concepts to your freelancing business, and explains how he has re-envisioned his work-life balance so he can spend more time with his family and away from work for 3 months every year.

http://www.freelancetransformation.com/episode51