Freelance Transformation: Find Higher-paying Projects, Work Less, And Get Rid Of The Stress

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 cha

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

Getting started in freelancing might be a deliberate step or it might happen serendipitously. But how can you make sure that your freelancing business is successful? Eric Covino, founder of Creative Signals, shares his story about building an agency from freelancing. He started freelancing after he volunteered to make a website for his sensei. Over 8 years, he grew this side interest into an agency, through chance, deliberately seeking out knowledge, learning from mistakes, and actively deciding what he wants his business and his personal life to look like. Eric shares how he got started with freelancing, how freelancing became his full-time job, his decision to build an agency, and how he’s done it in a financially sustainable and stable way. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode110

Alma Abreu, from 360 Agile Pro, is a project management pro and specializes in showing small business owners, start-up founders, and entrepreneurs how to manage a virtual team and how to do project management for service based businesses. She also owns a content marketing business where she applies all of the best project management strategies, allowing her to take a step back from the day to day business management. Alma shares her story of stumbling onto her perfect niche, trying to do it all herself, getting overwhelmed, and then hiring freelancer writers and editors to complete the content work. Alma went beyond just removing herself from writing content to creating processes to manage her virtual team and training a virtual assistant to do the project management, allowing her to pursue the lifestyle she wants. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode109

Zvi Band built a successful software consultancy directly from building and maintaining relationships with people. By networking and maintaining relationships, he was able to build software for agencies, startups, venture capital firms, and even fortune 500 companies like Ford. Zvi Band is also the cofounder of Contactually, an amazing piece of software that makes it easy to track and maintain the relationships in your network. Zvi shares how to connect with people, and how to maintain and manage relationships in a way that leads to clients. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode108

One of the hardest things about owning an agency, or being a solo operator, is that a lot of us get into it without necessarily being an expert on how to run this type of service business. We tend to have nothing to benchmark ourselves against, because we don’t really know how other agencies are doing, and if we’re on the right track. Drew McLellan is the head of the Agency Management Institute, an organization devoted specifically to bringing agency owners together to help them build better agencies. Through research, AMI has figured out the formula to a successful agency: What are the key financial benchmarks? What is the role of the agency owner? https://freelancetransformation.com/episode107

In FT episode 101, Chris Evans, from Traffic and Funnels, laid out a strategy for using paid traffic to get clients for high-ticket services (a service that is at least $10,000). Chris's business partner, Taylor Welch, shares how to convert the prospects coming from the paid traffic funnels and other sales funnels into paying clients. Taylor shares the three steps to his sales process, how to attract the right prospects who can benefit from your services, how to prompt prospects into recognizing that they have a problem that you can solve, how to close a sale through honesty and recognizing whether a prospect is a good fit, and how to set expectations so you have happy clients. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode106

Laura Belgray, of talkingshrimp.com, is a freelance creative copywriter who helps people with all the words they use in their businesses. She started out writing promos for TV networks and won numerous awards for her work. While she continues freelancing for the big networks, she also offer copywriting for small business and has collaborated with Maria Forleo to create a copywriting course called The Copy Cure. Laura shares the strategies she used to get started as a copywriter, why good copy matters when you are trying to get your audience to know, like, and trust you, how good copy can help your business, and how to write good copy yourself. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode105

Being a digital nomad isn't about sitting on a beach with your laptop. It's about choosing to live a certain lifestyle as you start and grow your own business. And it can be really hard if you are plagued with toxic mindsets. Joel Bergeron, co-founder of The Future is Creative and Freelance Business Success Summit, shares how he got started as a digital nomad, the lifestyle of the digital nomad, the critical mistake he made with his first business, and the key mindset shifts about freelancing that he had to make in oder to find success. Joel shares what you have to do as a freelancer to have a business that you enjoy. http://freelancetransformation.com/episode104

Gini Dietrich, founder of Arment Dietrich and Spin Sucks, quit her job one day and decided to go out on her own to start a PR agency that does PR for its clients the way she knows it should be done. Right away, she had her first client, and a few months later, her first employee. Then, over the next two years, she had her first fortune-500 client, then her first 14 employees, and her first $2 million in revenue. Ten years later, she has a 30-person agency that mostly runs itself so she can focus on doing the things she really likes to do, such as teaching, writing, and figuring out where the industry is going. There is a lot to learn from Gini’s journey, from how she used her connections and sticking to her values to get her first clients, how her content marketing took off, how to hire the best people for her team, and how she had to change herself to become a better leader. But, as Gini says, it all comes down to going out and just doing it, rather than getting caught up on what people say you should do. ht

Past FT guests, such as Philip Morgan, Jane Portman, and Jonathan Stark, have written and self-published books as a very effective way to establish their authority in their field and as a means to attract their ideal clients. Chandler Bolt is the founder of Self Publishing School and teaches students how to write and self-publish their first book. Chandler shares why a book is a feasible endeavor with a lot of benefits, his process for writing a book, how to get a book published, and critical tips on how to get listed and found on Amazon. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode102

When you start out as a freelancer, your journey consists of figuring out who your ideal clients are, how to reach them, and building a service around one of their burning problems. Now what? It's time to build a funnel. Chris Evans is the cofounder of Traffic and Funnels with his business partner, Taylor Welch. Their agency specializes in building out funnels for consultants and service providers. So we’re not talking about selling ebooks here, we’re talking about using these strategies to sell $10,000+ services. Chris shares with us the process of building out an effective sales funnel for selling higher priced services and how to use paid traffic to attract your target market to your funnel. https://freelancetransformation.com/episode101