Freelance Transformation

In the past 99 episodes, numerous guests have shared their freelancing journeys, their setbacks, and the revelations that allowed them to build successful, sustainable freelancing businesses.

In honour of this arbitrary and yet very special number, episode 100, Matt has sorted through the catalogue of FT episode and brought back ten of the most epic guest insights shared on the most popular episodes of Freelance Transformation. These are the mic drop moments, played back to you, along with a bit of explanation of why they are so important for all of our freelancing businesses.

This episode features advice from Einar Vollset, Patrick Mckenzie, Nagina Abdullah, Naveen Dittakavi, Joshua Lisec, Brennan Dunn, Michael Port, Laura Elizabeth, Jeffrey Shaw, and Kai Davis.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode100

Why do your clients buy your services? Why is someone willing to pay you for your skill set? What are they really buying? To get clients, you need to understand the underlying human psychology at work.

Dov Gordon, from the Alchemist Entrepreneur, helps consultants and coaches find their ideal clients through structure and process, instead of jumping straight to tactics. Dov shares why clients buy, how we get their attention, his 6 step marketing process, and why some people can seem to make any client generation tactic work, while others just can't seem to get clients.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode99

A common objection about running a service business, such as being a solo freelancer, is not wanting to just trade time for money. But that is only one model to run your service business, and it's not the most useful. Instead, think about your services as a product that you're offering. A client signs-up, and you perform some defined result for them, and they pay you for that result rather than for the number of hours that you spent working on it. You can achieve financial success if you can build your service as a system that you can deliver over and over, instead of creating a completely 100% custom solution each time.

Frank Bria calls this strategy the creation of a High Ticket Program and has applied it when consulting with Fortune 500 companies on multiple continents to help them structure and sell their own offerings. We are talking anywhere from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars in services sold. Frank shares how he thinks about turning a custom service into a repeatable high offering that you can sell at a high price over and over again, including the 5 key building blocks that are at your disposable when creating your own offering.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode98

Josh Steimle, founder of the web agency MWI, started out building sites in 1999 and now sells 7 figures worth of business per year. Josh struggled between 2007-2013, and almost had to close his doors. But he persevered.

Josh built up his business through persistence and by becoming a thought leader in his niche by implementing strategies such as writing for Forbes. Josh shares how to win clients through influence, how to build a scalable agency, and how to overcome the challenges along the way.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode97

Are you you asking your clients to pass along your name to anyone they know who needs work done? Once in awhile you might get a lead, but it doesn't yield a lot of business. Sound familiar?

Well the good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Steve Gordon, author of Unstoppable Referrals, shares how to build a systematic referral system.

Steve has published hundreds of articles on marketing and selling high trust services, learned in his previous career as the CEO of an engineering consulting firm. Steve shares how you can consistently earn referrals in a way that works and generates value for everyone involved.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode96

What type of clients will you take on? What rates will you charge? Having the answers to these questions can help you very intentionally make the rest of your business decisions throughout 2017 and beyond.

To help you in this process, and in the spirit of the holidays, Freelance Transformation has a small gift for you. We are going to go through a small exercise together that Matt's students have universally found helpful in defining what they want their freelancing to look like, and consequently, how to make better decisions in their freelancing.

http://freelancetransformation.com/episode95

Khierstyn Ross, of Crowdfunding Uncut, is a crowdfunding strategist, working on campaigns that raise hundreds of thousands of dollars on Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Khierstyn didn't start there of course, but discovered what she was best at and most enjoyed while working through client projects. Once she decided to niche down, she became one of the highest in-demand crowdfunding experts.

Khierstyn shares how she went from a generalist to a specialist, what that did for her business, how she built authority in this space, how she finds clients, and how she prices herself for a service where the results are so uncertain.

http://freelancetransformation.com/episode94

Mark Fromson is a freelance digital project manager who works for agencies rather than the end client. Agencies frequently rely on freelancers as a way to gain access to skills they otherwise wouldn't have, and to be able to grow or shrink their team to meet a changing workload.

As a freelancer there can be some advantages to having agencies as clients, such as the possibility of working on larger projects than you're likely to win on your own, collaborating with a team, and not having to be the one that goes out there and wins the end client.

Mark Fromson shares the ins and outs of what agencies are looking for in a freelancer, how to connect with them and build long-term relationships, and the pros and cons of targeting agencies instead of the end client.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode93

Joe Sanok, founder of Practice of the Practice, shares how you can stop thinking of selling your services as a strictly time for money deal. The secret is thinking about your business as a system that you can build processes around, rather than doing everything yourself.

Joe will be sharing how he built his counselling clinic so it ran without being completely dependent on him, how and why he decided to start coaching other practitioners, how he productized the services that he offers to them, and how he built highly systematized funnels for finding and winning them as clients.

http://freelancetransformation.com/episode92

Jana Sedivy performs customer experience research for B2B companies. She helps companies that create and sell software to other businesses better understand their customers and identify ways they can improve the customer experience. Jana has worked with companies such as Adobe and Nuance, and she also holds twenty-one technology patents and is published in peer-reviewed user experience journals.

In this episode, Jana shares how she got started consulting and how you can start building the authority and connections so you can start winning these big clients as well.

https://freelancetransformation.com/episode91