Freelance Transformation

Adrienne Richardson manages Facebook ads. So how much is managing someone's Facebook ads worth? Is it the $100/month that you'll find on some offshore job boards? Is it $1,000/month? What about $5,000 a month plus 10% of the Facebook ad spend? That's what Adrienne's clients pay, and she is frequently booked solid. She's also not a massive agency, as you'll learn, her business is mostly her.

In this interview Adrienne spills the secrets of why she is able to command these fees, and work with amazing clients, despite plenty of other people fighting to charge the lowest fees possible. Pay close attention to why her clients are actually hiring her. And pay attention to how she finds her clients, and I'll give you a hint, it's not super sophisticated, but it's incredibly powerful.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode120

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder of Orbit Media Studios, a Chicago website development agency that gets tonnes of local leads and excels at standing out to clients. How? He implemented a content marketing strategy from the very start, and one that didn't rely on having a massive audience or huge success right out of the gate.

Andy is also the author of Content Chemistry, a beautiful and comprehensive book on content marketing that doubles as his business card when he goes to meet clients. Andy shares how his agency used education to teach his way into landing client work.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode119

Often as a freelancer it's tempting to just work with whatever clients come our way, instead of figuring out who is really an ideal client and what you have to do to get in front of them. But being intentional about finding and winning the right clients can make a massive difference in the kind of freelancing business or agency that you end up building.

Brent Weaver, of Ugurus, shares how he built and ran a web agency for 13 years until selling it. Now he helps other agency owners to build their business with Ugurus. Brent shares his experiences of identifying who high value client are, how to intentionally connect with those client, and the intentionally length process that he goes through when he believes that a client is a great fit.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode118

If you are looking to build up a client base at serious scale, and have leads consistently coming in from your efforts, then content marketing is one of the most effective approaches out there.

Johnathan Dane, of Klient Boost, is an expert content marketer. He built up a $3 million dollar a year pay per click management agency with $350,000 in monthly recurring revenue by relentlessly building a brand through their unique content marketing. Such as animated infographics, or gifographics. Jonathan shares how he used content marketing from the get go to rapidly build up a client base, and how he's continuing to build the agency. Oh and he's got a pretty crazy story of how he first got into business.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode117

Jason Resnick is a solo freelancer that has built his freelancing business very intentionally so that it works in the way that he wants to work. Jason is particular with the clients that he takes on, how he works with them, the highly automated processes that he uses to keep things running smoothly, and the approaches he takes to keep working with the clients.

Jason shares how he built his freelance business, including why he failed the first time he started out, and the specific realizations and changes he made to create a sustainable freelancing business when he gave it a second shot years later.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode116

Jessica Freeman quit her full-time job at an agency, started freelancing, and booked herself up with clients. In fact, she now has a waitlist. Jessica, of Jess Creatives, built up her client base primarily through content marketing. Specifically, she built a blog, email list, and surprisingly enough, leveraged Pinterest as a major source of traffic and clients. It turns out that Pinterest is a very different social media platform that encourages content sharing, making it an excellent tool for getting your content out there.

Jessica shares how she quit her job and decided to go full-time, how and why blogging has been so effective at keeping her booked solid, and how she's been able to build up an audience of prospective clients through Pinterest.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode115

Have you ever spent a crazy amount of time writing a proposal for a prospective client, only to have them say no? Or even worst, go completely dark on you and not respond at all?

Curtis McHale shares his sales process and the approach that he takes to write super short and sweet proposals, only a page and a half long. And even better, he collaborates with the clients on these proposals, so that by the time the client receives the proposal, they have had a significant part in its creation and are completely on board with moving forward.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode114

The story begins with Pia Silva and her husband opening their own graphic design agency, complete with employees and office space, and selling massive $30,000 projects to their clients. Then finding themselves going out of business with $40,000 in credit card debt and no savings after a year and a half.

But rather than giving up, they took a deep look at what was and wasn't working in their business, scaled down the business and what they offered, and started again. Within the first year, they had half a million in sales and had completely turned things around into a successful business, Worstofall Design, where she and her husband, Steve, create Badass Brands for their clients over an intensive 1-3 days.

It's a brilliantly simple business, which is why it works so well. Pia shares how her business model works, why it is so successful, how she finds clients, and so much more.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode113

A few years into building websites for people, in the very beginnings of my little agency, I picked up a book with a pretty bold title: Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss. Picking up that book was one of the biggest game changers of my entire consulting career.

Alan Weiss wrote about how to create value for clients, how the amount of time that you spent on a project should have nothing to do with the fee that you charge, how the very idea of trying to sell your time for money was unfair to the client and to you. I wish I could say that this was an overnight change for me, but it took time for those lessons to sink in and to make the mindset shifts needed to realize that it really is all about finding ways to create value.

Now, I'm very pleased to welcome Alan Weiss, best selling author, and million dollar consultant, on to Freelance Transformation. Here, Alan shares his personal journey through consulting and coaching, how to market yourself as a consultant, what makes a consultant, the psychological challenges of being a consultant and selling, and common mistakes made by beginner and not-so-beginner consultants.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode112

Kevin Gibbons is the founder of the UK branch of Blue Glass, a content marketing agency based in London. Coming off the successes of his first agency, Kevin deliberately decided to challenge himself with something new, building a second agency, Blue Glass, from scratch.

The many mistakes and learned many lessons along the way of building both agencies has allowing Kevin to create an agency that he, his team, and his clients love. Kevin shares his strategy for managing client relationships (spoiler alert, it involves coffee, football, and pubs), winning clients through his personal network and referrals, and how to grow by making the top priority to do great work for your existing clients.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode111