Ask Rezzz

Let me explain the difference here. When a client comes to me asking for a new design for their ecommerce store, that’s a want.It’s now my job as the professional to get to the bottom of why they feel they want a redesign. I do this by using the 5 Whys technique. You’ve no doubt heard me or someone else talk about this conversational method where you continue to ask questions of someone until you actually get down to the root cause of their problem.You will feel a bit awkward at first performing this. But as you continue to do this anytime a request comes across your desk, you’ll get better and better at it. The next step is creating a no-brainer price around the solution to their project.Remember that price is a subjective. It’s an arbitrary number that someone puts on a product or service. From your POV, the price should be higher than that of the client. From their POV, they would want it as low as possible.By unpacking what the real need of the project is in step 1, we can close this gap by putting some r

In episode 50, 57, 60 I touch a bit about pricing your services and what to look for from both a starting point and where you want to get to point. In episode 12, I dive a little deeper into the topic where I was asked “how do I talk to a lead about a one-off project and turn them into a recurring services client?”  But I want to share today the exact process I go through in order to put a value on my service so that the price I present is a no-brainer for a lead to jump on board and become a client.Value pricing is much harder to do, and I think that’s why a lot of you if you are starting out default to hourly. There’s definitely nothing wrong with that either, but at some point you’ll want to stop trading your time for money.It’s a difficult thing to do because of 3 things:you need to understand your clientshave the confidence to ask tough questionspin the value of your services against a dollar amountAll of these things are not easy to come by. Especially #2 — difficult conversations, and that’s what talki

After looking into what "free lance" comes from, what it's true meaning is, I embraced the term and I hope this episode will help you as well.To be a successful freelancer and have a successful freelancing business, you need:To have focus and driven to do the best work possibleHighly communicativeCharge what you are worthKnow who you serveKnow the very big problem that you solve for themHave the discipline to stay on taskFocus on your own business as if it were a client of yoursThese 7 things are absolute musts, non-negiotiable.With these 7 characteristics you will stand head and shoulders above the crowd.Because of them, you can embrace the term “freelance” and know that you aren’t just a hire hand or a mercenary. You do what you do to help grow your client’s businesses. You are passionate about the “thing” you are putting into the world because you know that it can help make difference, not just in your client’s eyes, but their customers’ eyes and ultimately your own.By becoming that partner with your clien

Most of the advice is learn as many different languages as you can. Build up your portfolio. Get out and do local networking. Get on job boards.I’ll did all these things and what it landed me was smack dab in the middle of generalist-ville and back to sitting in a cube full-time. It’s no wonder why so many freelancers are always stuck in the feast or famine cycle with this sort of advice still out there.Here are the 5 things I dive into in this episode:Talk with your existing network and probe for projects to work onStart figuring out a nicheGet yourself organizedCharge what your worthAsk for referrals

When you niche down, you become an expert, unique, and everyone knows exactly what is it that you do. They actually listen to you and respect the experience and expertise you have.You may get less leads into your business, but when you niche down and the leads know exactly what they are getting from you.Because of this, they are more qualified because they already have a problem that they understand you can solve for them. As a generalist, they will look at you as a jack of all trades. People who are generalists often have to compete with other generalists on price.When you are the expert, you can set your own price. Because you can set your own price and can prove with past results you’ve gotten with other clients, the leads will know the results without having to ask you. They respect those results, trust you because of the results you have received for previous clients and will pay for those same results.

My answer to this question isn’t a simple one. But I share with you my experiences as an example in this episode. This is something that needs to be put out there more in this man’s opinion.4 suggestions that have helped me are:1. Find people that you can talk with every day - inside + outside of your family and friends. You need to talk with folks on both sides of your life, the professional and personal.2. Take mental breaks throughout the day. Go for a walk. Play with your kids. Even just sit outside on your front porch. Whatever it is that you can do to give your brain a rest.3. Go on vacation! Can’t stress (no pun intended) this enough. When you get an extended break, your brain does this reshuffle of priorities without you even knowing it. So that when you come back, you are re-energized and re-focused to do some awesome work.4. Take mental health days. Or even half days. You are building a business of your own, why not take advantage of that once in a while and allow yourself to not work. The other mor

If a lead or client say something to the effect of “Well I need Option A, but is there any way to get that price lower or closer to Option B?” Holding true to what the offers are I simply and politely say “no”.A few things may happen from this:They will see that I’ve thought through their project and know the solution that will get them results for their budgetThey’ll see that because I’m not wavering on price, that may I’m a little bit different than the vast majority of freelancers and consultants out there.They may just walk away. Which for me is ok.Not negotiating on price doesn’t mean that I’m not flexible. It just means that when I put a number of a scope of work, that’s a true value number.The final thing I’d like to talk about on this topic is that if you present a proposal, you want to position your price to the value the client would get from the project. You do this by figuring out during the sales process what the project ultimately means to them. Is it a time saver? Is it something to bring in mo

Being a freelancer you need to be putting content out there so that you can start building upon that reputation. As my friend and virtual mentor, Chris Ducker says, "You need to build influence, and by building influence you are seen as trustworthy and get the job done."I have article on my site that potential clients have found through search. They had the question answered in some form or another and then those prospects reached out to me for additional work, or just to do the thing that my article is saying.The other piece of content that has helped is content that I’ve written or talked about on the podcasts about things that I do for my processes.Clients have told me that by hearing how I organize things, how structure projects and my days, and how I just run my business has shown professionalism that most don’t. Those are their words, not mine.I consider the content helpful for positioning and sales, I don’t think that I had any piece of content that’s directly converted someone to become a client of mi

You to get a gauge on what my value in the market was. There’s no way to do that if you aren’t getting paid. Having someone tell me “let’s do this project and then if it goes well, I’ll have more work for you” never showed me that the person valued the work I was doing.There may be certain circumstances where you need to take on spec work. Say for example you are a designer and looking to branch off into an industry that you have never worked in before. If you don’t have a other clients to show work, it may be hard to land a client.Or if you are totally learning a new skill and want to offer services using that skill. Doing spec work will help you learn and get you that real world experience too.Make sure to get sign off from that client for you to be able to use them in your portfolio?As an alternative to spec work, try scaling back work.Let’s assume you are starting anew and that’s why you are looking to work for free. Instead of doing the whole project, why not scale back and do a small, more manageable, l

Today I dive a bit into my personal life that I haven't done before.So have a listen and see if you can relate.The main thing though is you want to make sure that you surround yourself with supportive people. Not necessarily supportive of your choice, but support you. What I mean by that is, to this day, my Mom still doesn’t really understand what I do, but she is proud of the life and happy if I’m happy. My friends may question some of my decisions I choose around doing or not doing something work related, but they know that I always manage to figure out a way.If you surround yourself with doubters or people who will judge you constantly, then they will inevitably start to rub off on you and you’ll start to doubt yourself. These people are detractors.If your family are detractors, then take what they say as concern for your well-being and security and their own fears of the unknown. It doesn’t mean that they don’t support you, it’s just that they may not see down the same path as you. It’s family, remember t

As a part of the GDPR, all customers or users will have the right to request the data held on them, the right to have that data deleted if its original purpose has ceased, and the right to have that data transferred to a different provider.Which means to provide an individual with the right to request, delete, or move their personal data, the individual must be aware that you as a company have the data to begin with. Without their awareness of you using their data, they have no actionable right. So the use of user or customer data through third party providers is likely to become quite complicated.This would fall under the right-to-be-forgotten laws.As you can see from the previous 5 sentences alone, there are lots of room for interpretation and questions to be answered. So best to consult your lawyer.I can’t tell you how to make your business comply with GDPR because there are still so many gray areas (in my opinion) for the EU, that outside of the EU it’s even a darker gray.What I can tell you is that if yo

In episode 36 - How to work from home effectively, I dove into 4   tips and discipline was the very first tip.Then in episode 45 - How does the house run with 2 stay at home, freelancing parents, I shared 3 tactics that help the house to run smoothly while maintaining a high level of quality to our work.Aside from those 7 tips, I want to answer you with something that I didn’t mention in those episodes.That’s self-awareness. Let me explain what I mean in this episode.

Think about your own buying habits. Think of how others buy. Folks are tied to Apple products like it’s the only option out there, right? And to think they started by building computers that really couldn’t compete in the market. Then launched the iPod and took off. A tiny music player that folks could download music to and didn’t need to carry around CDs anymore. Now we’ve got iPhones and MacBooks all over the place right?I was an early adopter of MP3 players and most of them sucked. Until the iPod. It was a very tiny niche (almost to say that it wasn’t even a niche). And it essentially revitalized a company.If the niche is narrow and there are folks really looking to scratch that itch, they will pay for it and you’ll have raving fans for life.

I wrote a more in-depth blog post called the Definitive Guide to Start Freelancing Successfully that dives much deeper into each of the steps I outline here. Most freelancers don’t do the work that it takes to run a successful business, that’s why the term flakey freelancer exists. It’s why you hear freelancers talk about the feast or famine cycle all the time.Following these 6 steps will set the foundation for you, in order to really level up your game to specialization and recurring revenue.You’ll see patterns and gaps in the market that you can fill. You’ll become that goto person that people talk about when it comes to the service you offer. And bottom line, you’ll stay out of the famine and live in the feast.

If you are starting out in your freelance business, you probably don’t have a daily budget to run ads. Focusing on answering your clients questions, and being able to convert those visitors into leads on your site would be the better use of your resources.SEO isn’t an overnight thing though. It takes time, it takes optimizations, for Google to start pulling you up in the ranks.On the other hand, if you want to run an event, unless you have a large following, paid ads would make sense to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible.I talk about folks doing creative things with Facebook Ads which you may want to take a page from if you are looking to attract a certain type of person or company.But if you’re looking to keep that pipeline of leads full, looking to establish yourself long term, then your best bet is to concentrate on SEO, answer your client’s questions in the public forum of your blog to attract those leads who are asking Google those same questions. 

The number one thing would be to learn the language of your clients.If you can understand what they mean when they are saying certain things to you, then can echo back to them, you instantly create that connection with them and build trust.Number 2 is don’t wait for them to ask for an update.Be out in front of them. You know you are doing the work, they know you are doing the work. But they don’t know where you are in the process. So shoot them off a simple email, maybe once or twice a week to let them know what’s going on.Number 3, make memorable moments. Celebrate the wins.Both you and your client work hard. Way too much we wallow in the bad things that happen and often don’t celebrate the wins that happen over the course of a project.

Your business is important. Not just for you, but for your clients. If you don’t make your business important and set that time aside, you won’t be around very long for your clients, right?Here are 3 tips:1. Wake up one hour early/or work one hour later if that’s more your speed and only work on your business tasks. This will not take away from your client work at all. In fact, you’ll be adding one more hour to your work day, but solely meant for working on the business, not in the business.2. Plan your week in advance and set aside time in every single day to work on the business. If that means juggling around client work to make that happen, then do it.3. Set aside one entire day for business tasks. This is usually hard for most people, especially if you are asking the question of the day here. But by doing so, you know that you are doing what you need to continue with the business moving forward. If you don’t need a full day, make it a half day. Even tell your clients that during that specific day you aren

I hate to break the news, but there isn’t a hack here.This takes time, effort, consistency, and most of all, doing good work.If you were to take several names of those “freelancer profiles” that you respect, what do they look like?Have they been in the game for a long time?Do they market themselves effectively?Do they work with some of the best names?How do their clients talk about them?and maybe the most important aspect of their profile is…What sort of focused solution are they providing? The reason this is important to pay attention to is that I guarantee you that every single person you respect, has invested a great deal of time to hone their craft. They aren’t jumping over to the newest shiny object in web development every 3-6 months.They get great at one thing and evolve with that. They become the goto person for that particular technology.That’s not to say that they didn’t start by being a general web developer. Most have in fact. But they quickly realized that they were great at one thing, or enjoyed

This question is inspired by 2 people, one is Scott, a Feast member, who sent me an email yesterday that said “I don’t know how you find the time to do all you do.” Then another person who I’ve known for some time through Twitter, Amber Turner. Go check out her site and amberturner.com. She posted a great article talking about her life transition in both her freelancing and personal life.In this article she talked about and I’m paraphrasing a bit here, on how the content around freelancing talks about things that other freelancers have done in the past, but are out of touch because they no longer do freelancing. Or content that’s focused on the business end of freelancing. This content even talks about how freelancing can give you the life you want, yet doesn’t talk about the life part of it, or the journey as they walk through it.You aren’t alone Amber. I’ve noticed both of these types of content a lot lately too. Freelancing has been around for a while now and I feel that if you are a few steps removed from

I hate to answer a question with a question, but are you focused on local businesses? If so and the size of your market can't support your business then focusing on a specific industry may be too restrictive.For more on exploring your market and the industry head on over to read, listen and explore the Step By Step Guide to Specialization On the flipside, if you can have a handful of outstanding, recurring, residual clients in a specific industry that support your business, you can charge a premium for those services.