The Freelancers' Show

Panel:

• Jonathan Stark
• Erik Dietrich

In this episode of the Freelancers’ Show, the panelists discuss dealing with inbound communications, what to do if you’re getting too much and what to do if you’re not getting enough. They talk about how difficult it is to manage inbound communication, especially when there is a large amount coming in, the difference between using slack and email, and Gmail plugins to help organize incoming emails. They also touch on triaging your inbox, being honest with yourself as to what you actually will do on your to-do list, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Getting too much inbound communication VS not enough
• Needing better ways to manage inbound communication
• Very difficult to manage when there is a lot coming in
• Do you mean just email or multiple channels?
• What are your channels of inbound communication?
• Working on ways to optimize
• Moving urgent client communication to Slack
• The difference between Slack and Email
• Declaring email bankruptcy
• The ability to ignore email inbox
• Gmail plugins to help
• Buffering emails
• Only checking slack for paying customers
• Go in once a day to clean up your incoming communication
• Not knowing an email is there VS strenuously trying to avoid it
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• Getting Things Done – David Allen
• Triaging your inbox
• Only focus on the urgent to-dos
• Be honest with yourself so your to do list doesn’t get too long
• If you don’t feel the need to get to it within a week, it’s not that important
• Suffering from inbox overload
• To get less email, you can respond less frequently 
• And much, much more!

Links:

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• Getting Things Done – David Allen

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks
• Linode

Picks: Jonathan

• Calendly
• Guide to Winning Clients by David A. Fields
• The Pricing Seminar

Erik

• Getting Things Done
• SiteGround
• Calendly

Panel:

• Reuven Lerner
• Jeremy Green

In this episode of the Freelancers’ Show, the panelists discuss vacations. They talk about the importance of taking time off for yourself, the fact that your business won’t fall apart if you take a few days off, and the unhealthy cultural baggage that makes people feel as if they can’t take a vacation. They also touch on the fact that it’s okay not to squeeze out every cent you can out of your business if that means you can live a happier life, how to set boundaries with your clients when you go on vacation, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Not taking vacations because you feel guilty/fear of failure
• Take vacations and enjoy them!
• Deep misunderstandings on the idea of too much work and no play
• The need to recharge
• Harder to not take vacations when you have a family
• Actually taking a vacation when you go on vacation
• Stress with dealing with clients while on vacation
• Your business won’t collapse if you step away for a few days
• Hustle culture
• Unhealthy cultural baggage
• College started these bad habits
• It’s okay not to make 100% of the money you could if you stayed up till 2 every night
• It’s better to make less and have a better life
• Forcing yourself to stay in work mode
• Working mothers
• Getting more sleep makes your more efficient
• Encourage yourself to stay on topic at work and you will have more free time for yourself
• How do you tell your clients you won’t be available?
• Boundary setting
• Prepare your clients before you leave
• And much, much more!

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks

Picks: Reuven

• Weekly Python Exercise

Jeremy

• Melodics

Panel:

• Reuven Lerner
• Jeremy Green
• Erik Dietrich

In this episode of the Freelancers’ Show, the panelists discuss making a good impression with your clients. They talk about what you can do to make a good first impression, and a continuing impression, on your clients. They also touch on how to get the best exposure on the internet, what content you can put on your website to boost your first impression, where else you can promote a good first impression, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• A lot of questions online about what you can do to get people to notice you
• Where you should and should not put your effort
• In many cases, potential clients don’t look at your website
• Your website isn’t make or break
• Unless you show your website to people, no one will be going there
• Having a website vs a blog
• How to get exposure on the internet
• Hooking blog up to aggregation engines
• Getting the content out on your website is the most important step
• Make sure your content is aimed at your customers, not your peers
• Why people are contacting you
• Giving people weekly reminders
• When you get clients from referrals, how do you hit it off with them?
• Point people to your site
• Having a syllabus on your website
• Pointing to a portfolio
• Using testimonials from past bosses, clients, or peers
• Where else, other than your website, can you promote yourself?
• Building business off your open source contributions
• Walking the “line”
• Building a strong image of yourself
• And much, much more!

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks

Picks: Reuven

• Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? by Robert Kuttner
• Robert Kuttner Talk

Jeremy

• increaseyourconsultingfees.com

Erik

• Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port
• Microsoft Azure

Panel:

• Jonathan Stark
• Jeremy Green
• Erik Dietrich

In this episode of the Freelancers’ Show, the panelists discuss writing better project proposals. Freelancers constantly present product proposals to clients in a way that clients cannot understand, making the client not want to use them again for their product or service. They talk about the fear freelancers have about being called out on their pricing, forcing your clients to be educated about your line of work when they don’t care, not understanding your customer, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• The right way to talk to clients about your good/service
• Don’t present yourself as a commodity
• Write project proposals in a “language” that people can understand
• Not always the proposal is what is bad
• Giving the clients useless updates
• Fear of being called to the carpet of your pricing
• Trying to educate clients when they don’t care
• Simple ways to get your point across to clients
• Not understanding the customer
• Having multiple types of customers
• Feeling like you’re being talked down to
• Most clients’ main priority is that you get done what they need done
• Value pricing
• Clients who like to nickel and dime you
• Clients who fight you every step of the way
• People will hire you because you are the expert
• How to be treated like an expert
• Target clients who don’t specialize in what you do
• Value-based proposals versus labor based proposals
• Sanity checks
• Why conversations
• And much, much more!

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks

Picks: Jonathan

• Goliath

Jeremy

• Remarq

Erik

• Diablo 2
• Capital One

Panel: Reuven Lerner In this episode of the Freelancer’s Show, Reuven talks about the “Genesis of a Course,” or creating a new course. Reuven focuses on  creating training material for businesses and companies. Reuven covers how to come up with new material or courses, demands for a new course, naming the course, syllabus, the takeaway of the course, teaching, competition, and much more. This is a great episode to learn about all the key points to create and launch a new course. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Creating new courses
• Allows you to upsell
• Offer a wider variety of courses
• They (Business)  see you as an authority
• Where to get Ideas for new courses
• Working with clients  to get ideas
• Learning about demand
• Title of the course
• Sending the course syllabus to companies
• ROI of the course
• Teaching a months worth of information?
• Competition means there is a market
• Starting off with the course, targeting, etc
• Using Keynote
• Slide decks
• Time put in to build out a course
• Preparation equals 3-4 days for each day of teaching
• Creating exercises
• Practice adding exercises
• Resistance on a new course
• Give material out as Webinars
• Where and how to announce the new course
• This is going to take weeks and months to create
• And much more!     

Links:

• https://lerner.co.il
• https://twitter.com/reuvenmlerner?lang=en
• https://il.linkedin.com/in/reuven
• https://github.com/reuven

Sponsors/Affiliates

• FreshBooks

Picks Reuven Lerner

• Bluedio T4S

Panel:

• Eric Dietrich
• Jeremy Green
• Reuven Lerner

In this episode of the Freelancer’s Show, the panelist discuss “Business Cards. The Freelancers talk about the uses of business cards in today's job market. This discussion covers the many different facets of how business cards could create networks and conduits for new business. This is great episode to learn about how to positions your business cards in the freelancing world to market yourself. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Do you have business cards?
• Bought a box several years ago - The lean approach
• Putting your business cards in peoples hands and clarifying what you do
• Taglines on your card
• What you do information on your card
• ROI on cards
• Make connections with business cards
• LinkedIn over business cards
• Marketing assets that lead to a digital funnel
• Mail
• Things that stand out and make your business card memorable
• Jump drives
• QR Codes
• The main point it for someone to remember you and want to do business with you
• Digital products
• Coupons for books
• T-Shirts
• Useful things to have to market yourself
• And much more!     

Sponsors/Affiliates

• FreshBooks

Picks Eric Dietrich

• Scishow
• Amazing headphones

Jeremy Green

• Rock and Roll with EmberJS

Reuven Lerner

• Naked Statistics

Panel:

• Reuven Learner
• Jeremy Green
• Erik Dietrich
• Jonathan Stark

In this episode of the Freelancers’ Show, the panelists discuss chaos clients. Chaos clients are long-time clients who are disorganized, reactive, and constantly wait for things to blow up before “pulling the fire alarm.” These types of clients are disruptive to any business, and so the panelists discuss some things you can do if you have chaos clients. They also touch on how each of the respective panelists deal with these clients and their thoughts on the best and worse ways of dealing with a client’s self-inflicted problems. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What is a chaos client?
• What can you do when you have a chaos client?
  • Decide whether or not you want to keep the client
  • Maybe fire them if you can’t see them changing
  • Have individual fire-drill pricing
  • Wait to address the situation in a low-emotion time
• Try to become more proactive in the future with them
• Higher price tags for these clients
• Price tag for your misery vs getting rid of these clients
• Be careful with just raising prices
• Push back in ways that make the client revise their priorities
• Understanding that not everything needs to be done ASAP
• Part of your job is to calm clients down
• Helping a client with an actual emergency vs helping a client who self-inflicts problems
• Chronic chaos clients
• Preventing these “fire drills” in the future
• Only push off other projects when talking with the person of authority on the project
• Pricing can be used to discourage clients from doing things
• And much, much more!

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks
• Linode

Picks: Jonathan

• The Expert Video
• Flawless Consulting
• The Freelancer's Roadmap by Jonathan Stark

Reuven

• Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• Weekly Python Exercise

Jeremy

• Remarq
• The Key to Increasing Your Consulting Fees

Erik

• Horkey Handbook

Panel:

• Jonathan Stark
• Jeremy Green
• Eric Dietrich
• Charles Maxwood
• Rueven Lerner
• Curtis

In this episode, the Freelancer show celebrates its 300th episode. The Freelancer show answers Q&A with past and new members to the panel. Topics cover best practices as a freelancer, making the jump into entrepreneurship, value-based pricing versus fixed pricing, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• How do you get potential clients to talk to you and see if it’s a good fit?
  • Person 1’s Answer:
    • You want to have some sort of process in place.
    • A precursor for working with client.
    • Free 30-minute call for both of us.
  • Person 2’s Answer:
    • Go out to business conferences and business world to meet people.
    • Be willing to make the phone calls, and connect on LinkedIn.
    • You will meet a whole lot of people, and not everyone will be a good fit for you.
    • Then you can start weeding out those that won’t be a good fit.
  • Person 3’s Answer:
    • Phone call, proposal phase, and then contract.
  • Person 4’s Answer:
    • Inbound and the Q&A.
  • Person’s 5 Answer:
    • Most of the leads are inbound (from conferences or blogs or Stack Overflow).
    • Asking a lot of questions.
    • Start the conversation over e-mail.
• For folks who have successfully disconnected time for money, what was that experience like for you, why did you do it, what were the challenges? Talk about the things you do and you’re not getting paid for your time.
  • Person 1’s Answer:
    • Training budgets.
    • I made the disconnect the minute I stopped doing developmental work.
    • How much do you really charge?
  • Person 2’s Answer:
    • Sponsorship episodes.
    • Selling advertising it’s usually per unit.
    • If you don’t think you’re getting a good value then it might not be a good match.
    • Podcast sponsorships.
  • Person 3’s Answer:
    • In the beginning – it’s more an art than a science.

Links:

• FreshBooks
• LinkedIn
• Stack Overflow
• Trello
• Crowdcast
• Schedule Once
• Pipedrive
• Slack
• Calendly

Sponsors:

• Linode

Panel:

• Jeremy Green
• Jonathan Stark
• Reuven Lerner

Special Guest: Sherry Walling, Ph.D. In this episode of the Freelancer’s Show, the panel discusses: “Beyond Burnout - How to Work Hard and Enjoy Life.” Dr. Sherry Walling is a licensed clinical psychologist with extensive experience treating stress-related problems in high achieving people. She is an academic and professional powerhouse with master’s degrees in psychology and theology, formal training as a yoga teaching, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. For more biographical information, please checkout: https://zenfounder.com/about/. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• How to Prioritize Your Life
  • Great start – you found something that you love to do as far as work!
  • Have a variety of things going on in your life.
  • Have backup strategies in play.
  • “Make it big plan” is a low frequency event.
• Are there areas where freelancers chronically under invest in?
  • Sleep
  • Diet
  • Exercise
    • It’s easy to neglect your body.
  • Time with friends
    • Connecting you with human beings.
    • Connections with online friends are great, but real-life friendships are better for mental health because we connect better with three-dimensional people.
• If you make the investments into yourself (sleeping, eating well, exercising) this will better your business.
  • This notion of should or shouldn’t do X, Y, Z.
  • Paul Jarris’ newsletter: Defining What Enough Is For You?
  • Budgeting together as a family.
    • Gives you a clear sense of what “enough” is for you and your family.
  • Examples:
    • Elon Musk
      • Works 24/7 and is CEO of many companies.
      • Admired by many, but lifestyle seems toxic to some.
      • Wisdom is knowing your own personal limits.
    • Silicon Valley, CA
    • Patrick Collison
      • Humble person
      • Dr. Walling was very impressed on how aware he is as a person.
      • He recognizes that the right events were in-place and he put in the work, too.

• • Burnout – different stages and things we can do to address burnout
    • Burnout is a syndrome where people feel detached from their work. They feel like their input does not equal their output.
    • It’s subjective.
    • It’s caused by too much work, feeling out-of-control in your work, a mismatch of daily tasks versus what needs to be done, not enough support, and working with clients who are emotionally draining, etc.
    • Scientifically we can view a brain that is burned-out.
    • Other health problems can arise due to stress.
    • We know how to prevent it and how people can recover.
    • It could take a few weeks in order to regain a healthy lifestyle to recover from burnout.
    • Road to recovery
    • 30% of adults experience burnout in some point in their life.
    • Dr. Christina Maslach
      • Her research is focused on burnout.
    • Time is finite and life is finite.
      • You will choose things that are more gratifying for you and your life.
    • Sometimes we forget the “love” piece.
      • I choose to do the activities that really bring me joy.
      • This will help with the longevity of your business.
      • Not things that you feel like you “should.”
      • Listen to the emotional quality to your work to help prevent potential burnout.
    • Hobbies
      • If you have some hobbies like yoga, fishing, painting, baking, knitting etc. it can definitely help prevent burnout.
      • Hobbies are good for a sense of accomplishment.
        • Mastery and it feeds your soul.

• • Protecting Personal Relationships
    • Rhythms and structures in our relationships.
      • Regularity of date night once a week (for example) helps establishing this routine.
      • The same is true for friendships.
    • Find a good mentor.
      • Grow together and it’s great for psychological support.
    • Fitness goals
      • If you don’t use it, you will loose it.
      • This gets more important the older you get.

Links:

• Dr. Sherry Waling
• KEEPING YOUR S**T TOGETHER

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks
• Linode
• Cachefly

Picks: Jonathan Stark

• valuepricingbootcamp.com
• Your Productized Consulting Guide
• howtobulilduourfirstproductizedservice.com
• James Clear: Building Habits – mailing list

Jeremy Green Philip Morgan – Positioning Manual Rueven Lerner

• The New Yorker – Japan’s Rent A Family Industry

Dr. Sherry Walling

• Book: KEEPING YOUR S**T TOGETHER

Panel:

• Jonathan Stark
• Jeremy Green

In this episode of the Freelancer’s Show, the panelist discuss “Charging Differently.” Jonathan describes this as charging different clients differently for different reasons. Jeremy explains the separate reasons you would charge individual clients different rates, because of interacts, implications of the jobs, and the project requirements. The discussion covers why you would consider different hourly rates, weekly rates, monthly rates, and value-based pricing. This is a great episode to learn about the strategy behind optimizing revenue while charging different rates in your freelancing business. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Hourly Fee, Weekly rates, Monthly rates, and Value-based pricing
• Implications of the job
• Interacting differently from client to client
• Expertise
• Shifting your mindset
• Delivering outcome for their business
• Increasing leads
• Relationships and considering outcomes
• Strategically positioning yourself within your niche
• The “Generalist”
• Trying to value price large projects and small projects
• Weekly project discussion
• Updating the client ASAP
• Perceived effort
• Tips for moving from hourly to value base - offers
• How to find that type of prospect
• Productized consulting 
• And much more!     

Picks Jonathan Stark

• valuepricingbootcamp.com
• Your Productized Consulting Guide
• howtobulilduourfirstproductizedservice.com
•  

Jeremy Green

• American Utopia Tour