A256 - Where do you find freelance clients?

Today is going to be all about a process that I put into my business years ago that I reap the benefits from over and over again. That's onboarding for new clients.

If you want to get my own Onboarding Email Sequence which is 8 emails with the delays I put in between. Along with instructions on how to use them too, head to rezzz.com/a263 and pick them up.

What is onboarding

Onboarding is a term that's thrown around quite often and it has a few different meanings. In the context of this show I'm referring to when a client becomes a client, how are you bringing them into your world.

What sort of process to you have that helps that client understand what this engagement is going to look like.

When you open up any box, there's a quick start guide right?

Even for things that are commonplace like a TV, headphones, or even a mug that I got from my wife as a gift.

That's what an onboarding sequence is for you and your business.

I've heard it as a "Welcome Package." Whatever you want to call it, I want to share with you the 4 essential parts of it that you must include. Then share with you 2 other bonus tips that will help your marketing and sales.

Go ahead and grab mine, the link is in the show notes or by heading to rezzz.com/a263.

How to use your service

That's the first part, you want to explain all the ways that a customer can utilize your services. This means how they will communicate with you.

Set the boundaries right here. If you want them to use a ticketing system, email, text messaging. This is how you tell them to do so.

Also share with them what they can expect when they do communicate with you. Will you give them a response in 24 hours? Will there be an automated response? What can they expect during off-hours?

Define that process right from the start so that there's no confusion along the way.

What to expect

This maybe should've been the first since it's most important. If the client knows what to expect from you, then there's no way of misinterpreting anything.

This can also be setting the tone. If you want the client to be open to your suggestions, then share that in a nice way. Be humble, but firm too.

If you need the client to accomplish something by a certain date, share that with them.

Don't assume anything. Even by spelling something out that they may know levels that field

When to expect

Share with them when they can expect certain things from you. If you send out weekly emails, then tell them when they can expect them. If you have a timeline of tasks, give them ample time to get the things you need but share with them a date when you need it.

Open the line of communication

Having something that immediately goes out to a new client in this way, allows you to open that line up. They feel comfortable because they know how to talk with you. You feel comfortable knowing that you have set the tone and boundaries.

There is none of this awkwardness like it's the 7th grade winter dance and you are wondering who is going to start the conversation.

Bonus Tips

This is your opportunity as the professional to position yourself here. By doing this you are driving the conversation and because of that, you then can ask questions along the way.

Want to know how someone found you? Ask in the very first email.

Want to know why they hired you? Ask while it's still fresh in their minds.

These are opportunities that you can take advantage of get amazing information that you can then turn into your sales copy and conversations with leads.

As we embark on the second year of Ask Rezzz, the format will change up slightly.

The reason for this is so that you can take action. I'm all about that action taking as you know. Having a show each and every single day without a doubt can be overwhelming. You may already have a backlog of shows that you want to listen to. Maybe there's a bunch that you don't have any interest in hearing as well.

With that, the new format will be this.

Every Friday, you'll be a fly on the wall for a one-on-one coaching session with someone. I will have a conversation with someone who's applied to be on the show. They have a specific problem or situation that they want to get some help on.

The objective is for you to hear what they are going through and maybe it'll help you too if you are in a similar situation. As the saying goes "a rising tide raises all boats."

The big benefit of this is you, the audience. You as a Feaster can help and support them through offering encouragement, advice, and accountability. You may even want to work with them if you have such a need.

If you want to be on the show, it's easy, just apply here.

Every Tuesday there will be an actionable show. It will either be what you are familiar with already from the previous 261 episodes where I answer a question. Or I'm going to be introducing a resource or strategy that you can walk away from the show and put right in your business.

For example, how to use Advanced Search on Twitter to find local clients to work with.

Another example could be that I bring on a lawyer to the show to talk about contracts.

Doesn't mean that you may not see the podcast show up in your podcatcher on other days, but this is what I'm committing to you today and what you can expect from the show.

I want to make Ask Rezzz as actionable and valuable to you as possible. If you have any ideas for the show, let me know through Twitter or email.

The Ask Rezzz show is dedicated to being the most accessible and most valuable podcast for freelancers out there.

You can come on and get one-on-one coaching from me along with the support of the audience. Also get resources, strategies, and expert answers to your questions.

Chris Bintliff from Not Really Rocket Science, is someone who I met through Twitter, but someone I consider a friend. Chris appeared on Live In The Feast and we geeked out about marketing and creating delight for clients.

Not only that, but if you want to know anything about home automation, he's the guy to talk with.

During a conversation one day, Chris mentioned that if there was ever an opportunity in which I myself could be interviewed, rather than me doing the interviewing, he wanted it.

There's no better day than on this very special, milestone episode of Ask Rezzz.

I'll be honest, I really had no idea what Chris was going to ask me. He could've asked me anything at all. The only constraint was to stay within a certain time, the rest was up to him.

Chris rose above and beyond to the task and asked me 3 amazing questions that I know you'll enjoy.

Are you a Freelancer? Do you identify with the Unemployable?

What advice can you offer to someone to embrace where they are in their freelance career so that they can take that next step?

Where do you see yourself in 2, 3, or 5 years?

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I was introduced to Chris Martin through a friend of mine Joe Workman.

How do I know Chris?

I've heard a few of his shows before in the past and when Joe mentioned that I should reach out to Chris to be on his podcast, Getting Work to Work, for me it was a no brainer.

Chris was a great interviewer, genuinely curious, asking things that to be honest, I hadn't been asked about before.

One topic that we talked about most was personalization and delight. I talk about personalization a lot, it is what I do for clients, right?

In this episode, though, I talked about personalization in regards to leads and client interaction, not doing the wor

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“Solve Problems by using communication and data.”

In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details.

In the episode, I shared a variety of things including:

• How I manage to stay ahead of communication with leads and clients
• How I create the unexpected delight
• The one thing that I realized I was doing wrong in my marketing

Last year I was talking with a coaching client of mine and shared some of the simple things that I do specifically to delight clients.

He sent me this email "I finished a large project with a client and sent a small gift to them based on something you said in the conversation we had a couple week ago. The response I got was insane! I received a message from them thanking me for the gift card. They then followed it up with 'no one ever does that for me, so I really really appreciated it.'"

That small gift was a $10 Starbucks card.

What is one small way you can delight your leads and clients?

Definitely go checkout Getting Work to Work Episode 227.

If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well.

I’d like to thank Chris for being a part of it and including me along amazing folks like Liston Witherill, Tim Kelley, and Ilise Benun

Janelle Allen of zencourses.co is an Instructional Designer who specialized in custom online course that improve student results invited me to her podcast.

I thought that I'd share an answer to a question that she asked me on the show.

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She asks all her guests this question.

As someone who's watched many zombie movies from a very young age all the way to today with The Walking Dead, this was a welcomed and fun question.

Since I've actually thought about this over the years I had my answer at the ready.

My winter coat, a broom, and my skis.

A broom because you can carve the handle into a point and use it to defend yourself with some level of distance.

That's the obvious item in this list.

Like Janelle, you may be scratching your head a bit at the winter coat and skis.

It's simple, first of all, there's never been a movie, tv show, or anything zombie related where it's taking place in the snow.

So I'm going north when the zombie apocalypse hits.

If you are thinking, "Jason, but you are basing your logic off of movies." Of course, I am, this whole scenario is predicated on a hypothetical movie scenario.

But I'm open to the conversation, so let's look at it this way.

Zombies aren't exactly fleet of foot. They often get caught up on branches, stuck in mud, and even caught up on fences.

It stands to reason that in waist deep snow, they wouldn't fare too well either.

Additionally, snowy regions tend to be less populated which reduces the number of potential zombies.

If I can find a mountainous area, then there could be a natural way in which to protect myself and family as well.

I pose this question to you. If your family is good, and you have 6 minutes to grab 3 items in the zombie apocalypse, what would you grab? Shoot me a tweet and let me know.

If you are wondering how all this relates to your business, it doesn't. I just though that I would have some fun today in answering an oddball question so that you can maybe get a glimpse into other parts of my head.

If you absolutely need it to relate to business, the one thing I can say is to put yourself in a position where the odds swing in your favor.

Inside of the Sustainable Freelancer someone asked a question that I've never answered directly in the previous 257 episodes of the show.

This is a great question for a lot of people thinking about how to use social media for their business.

Simply put, I don't like saying this, but it applies. The answer is, it depends.

I'm going to put aside the paid ads on the platform because that's a different game altogether and really just stick to answering the question in the context of organic engagement.

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Organic Engagement

You have to remember that it's a social network, the key word here is "social".

So that lends itself to the awareness stage, or visibility as this person puts it.

That doesn't mean you can't use it for sales, but from my experience, sales needs to be at a deeper level on the platform, say in DMs, Lives, IGTV and that sort of thing.

I say "it depends" also because I think the product/service you are selling has to make sense to where the person is on Instagram.

If you are trying to sell full web builds, or branding, I think that's going to be tough to sell on any social platform, even Instagram.

Not saying that it can't be done, because I've done it. Which I'll explain in just a minute.

What I am saying is that the buyer who's scrolling through their feed or viewing stories of people they follow aren't in the buying mode. They could be standing in line waiting to buy milk, or in the back of an Uber.

They are in consumption mode and most likely in some sort of passive state of mind.

Now if you are selling a product, such as t-shirts, jewelry, that certainly works because of the visual elements there.

If you have a lower tier service or product, say that or a similar price as a t-shirt, then that too may work for you too.

Since you are most likely selling services, this could be something like a mini-course or an ebook.

"Selling on social media"

Back to how I sold a higher priced item on social media.

As you know, my social platform of choice is Twitter. I've built up a following over there, from what Twitter tells me, for the past 12 years.

Twitter in my opinion is even harder to sell on than Instagram. Especially higher priced items. Simply because it's a text-based platform. Sure there are images you can attached, but it's text-first and the percentages of selling something for a few hundred dollars or higher with a one or two sentences is pretty low.

My following is not huge but it's an engaged, which means that I've built up trust.

Of those that follow me, many of which I've had conversations with. I personally greet anyone new that follows me. I'm highly engaged there.

Over the 12 years on Twitter, I never once pitched through a tweet "hey everyone, I have this thing to sell, it costs $750, DM me to get it" - just never happened.

Until January 2019, where one of the more popular vendors I work with on a consistent basis changed their pricing, who they were marketing to, and to be honest, changed the direction of the company overall from a good portion of people who had been their customers in the past.

Honestly, it's the free will of any business to do something like that. However, the way in which you do it is a delicate balance with your existing customers. Obviously this pricing change made lots of people upset.

When people get upset, they complain. When people complain, they take it to the social networks.

Twitter was all ablaze with people frustrated, upset, confused, and angry.

In fact, I just wanted to help and so I tweeted this first. Then 4 hours later, I tweeted the pitch (with a typo in there too).

Seeing as I had a service that could help people move from this platform to another, I threw that into a tweet and pushed send.

Because of the trust that I built on the platform, the relationships I have formed, I had many conversations, 10 turned into sales opportunities and 4 actually took me up on the offer.

It can be done, but obviously due to the opportunity that presented itself with the market, on top of the engaged following that I have, the sales were able to happen.

Whether Instagram is your platform of choice or something else, put yourself into the mindset of the buyer and what they could be thinking about when on these platforms.

Are they on line buying milk? Or are they actively in buying mode because of a market change?

In A256 - Where do you find freelance clients? we talked about the watering holes, those places where your clients come together to talk business.

Today's episode goes a little deeper into that topic to talk about the context and intent of your client at these watering holes.

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The human behavior part of this equation is what I'm fascinated most with.

I'm not the first, nor the last person who will talk about context when it comes to marketing.

In fact, it's the very first personalization that was done in advertising and marketing.

It's why restaurants put their side dishes next to entrees on their menus. You are going to order a potato and veggies with that steak and they know that. So they aren't going to put sides on the last page, they'll put it directly after that filet mignon that you plan on ordering.

Ad platforms these days put context on steroids. We have more information at our disposal about someone than ever before.

We can target a specific employee at a global company in a certain town that has a hobby of white water kayaking.

But what do you do with that information? Often you will jump all over that by pushing an ad out to come to sign up for your service or book a consult or something of that nature.

While that's all fine to do, they may be looking at the photos of their niece's dance recital.

That's not the most opportune time to pitch your abilities to build them a new website.

To make this even more concrete, in the case yesterday where we spoke about the medical industry, you wouldn't walk up to 10 doctors sitting around a table ordering a steak and pitch them even though that's where they all are at the moment, right?

If the content is king, then context is queen.

As in the last episode, getting into the head of your client and then understanding the context and the intent of them in a specific setting can increase the likelihood of success of your strategy.

In the context of my former employer, they bought booths at events that specifically spoke to marketing, technology, and business growth in the industry.

At events that were smaller or not specific to the mindset where the doctors and organizations would be thinking about their website or marketing, my former employer would be there anyway, but in a different way. The sales team would be there to build relationships, set meetings up with clients and leads and of course network, but there wasn't a big push for sales.

Ariel, The Urbanist, on a podcast, shared some insights in his strategy on this. His objective was to land gigs with big travel brands and online publications. Instead of creating ads pitching what he did. Instead, he created content as he normally would, then targeted those key individuals of the companies he wanted to work with so that he was sure that his content would be seen by them.

Then when those individuals were looking for content that he does, he would be front of mind.

He admitted that he couldn't directly connect a job to a specific ad this way, but he did admit that he got work from some of the brands and companies he targeted.

In your case, if you are looking to inject some personality into your brand, how about creating a piece of content that's centered around you and your family, or your mission as a business to help a charity, or why you are in business for yourself, and then put that piece of content as an ad in front of your ideal clients while they are looking at those recital photos.

It may not get that click, but if you do it consistently, when that person who is extremely family oriented, is looking to redo their website, best be sure that they'll remember that they saw "something about some designer who was playing with their kids talking about websites" and go look for you. Not Wix or GoDaddy.

Where you find your clients out in the world is a big question.

I held an open door session inside the Sustainable Freelancer FB Group last Friday where I put the webcam on and anyone could pop in to talk about anything they want.

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Resulting from that was a conversation around location of potential clients. Not necessarily any strategy about getting them, but more of where to look for places, online, offline, etc, where they may be.

Amy Hoy calls these watering holes in the context of her Sales Safari exercise in they course 30x500.

A watering hole is where all the animals in an ecosystem come together because they need water to survive.

The idea fits perfectly because you want to find places where you clients come together to talk about business with other people in a similar market.

These are events, meetups, conferences, online forums, trade shows, and the list goes on.

You are a developer or designer and live online, so it's safe to assume that you know your way around the web.

Because of that, you may want to find your clients on the web. You try Facebook Groups, Twitter, Instagram, and even online forum sites. While you may find them here, maybe it's not THE watering holes best suited for your clients.

When I was working for an agency that focused on the medical industry, the sales team would regularly attend trade shows and conferences and buy booth space at these events.

Sure they ran Google Ads and such, but a great portion of sales and revenue for the business came from these events. There were months of the year where the sales team would attend 10-15 events in one month, all over the country.

The thing is that doctors and the medical industry doesn't spend the entire day on the computer and the web. They still don't.

What they do is attend conferences and events to learn about new technology and studies, to meet up with colleagues and build relationships, and play golf (let's be honest).

The sales team knew this, the business knew this, which is why they were so invested in putting effort into going to these watering holes and finding their clients.

Understanding the behavior of your client will help you figure out where to find them.

Pay close attention to your existing clients. Just because you found them in one spot, doesn't mean that's where they all are.

Follow them, talk with them. Ask them about their weekend and what they did. If they tell you that they can't make a meeting because they are going to a conference, ask them what conference.

Where you find your clients isn't about you. It's about them.

Be curious, ask questions, pay attention. Get into the head of your clients and they'll lead you to more.

I'm continuing here today with the eleventh and final lesson in the "Finding clients" series.

This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis.

Group coaching for leads. WHAT?!? 🤔

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You've heard about group coaching before in the context for your business.

I met Lauren Pawell, founder of BixaMedia, a marketing strategy firm, a couple of years ago.

In fact, she was the very first guest on Live In The Feast Season 1 Episode 3.

She inspired this idea of bringing your leads together in one space so that you can then vet the good fit en masse.

Let me explain how this works.

You get a lead as you normally would, but instead of getting on a one-on-one call with them, you get them to an educational webinar.

Get them to sign up and as a group, you run through some educational material for them, provide ridiculous value in a way that allows all the leads to walk away with something beneficial to them.

They also know and understand the type of work that you do, who you help, and if you may be a good fit for them.

Then towards the end of that webinar, you present them with an application for them to be able to work with you.

Lauren shared some of her KPIs that she aims for with registration, attendance, and applications.

The part of this I like the most is that you are spending one hour of time with say 5-10, maybe 20 people and weed out those that aren't a good fit. Rather than one hour with each individual to weed them out.

As a result, you are only spending time on those that raise their hand to want to work with you. But those that don't still walk away with value from you, something that's helpful to them in that moment to move them forward.

Lauren said that of those who fill out the application, she'll close 80% of them.

That's such an amazing use of time.

In fact, she sent me an email just last week that as of January 2nd, she's booked solid for 2019.

The only work that they are taking on is Strategy Sessions.

Since I heard about this idea, I've looked for ways in which I can leverage this in my own business. Because as I said, it's such effective use of time and provides the same amount of value as you would if you continued the sales process as you do today.

A good place to start with this is with past clients. You already know who they are and that you'll want to work with them again.

Remember in lesson 7 we talked about those up level skills? Take the skills that you've learned since working with them and package up something to sell.

Send an email with some registration link and get them all on a call. Practice your delivery and then pitch with that application.

It's as simple as that.

I'm continuing here today with the tenth lesson in the "Finding clients" series.

This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis.

Who are you surrounding yourself with? Who do you hang with?

And I'm not talking about your family and friends either. That you are on your own (although support matters so choose wisely).

What I mean is the group of business colleagues and friends you can trust. That you can bounce ideas off around with. That you can be frank and give them the real you.

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There are different communities and groups you can join obviously.

I'm going to share something very important with you in a minute here on why all this matters.

Masterminds

High level masterminds can be both paid and free. Maybe, like myself, you have been a part of one or both kinds already.

What I've found from them is that you really have to connect with them like no other group. At first, find a common aspect that you can appreciate in the others. Find a common element within the group that makes the group stronger than the individuals combined. This could be something like a goal each of you have. It could be that each of you work online or have a store. It could be location too.

That element will spark the idea to join but also be able to carry you through. Because once that initial euphoria and emotion and excitement dies down after a few meetings, you'll need that something to carry you through.

Paid Memberships & Closed Groups

These are very similar. From my experience though the closed groups are usually those that are ran by someone in business who you've become close with and then start up.

Whereas paid memberships and communities, like Feast for example, are built on the specificity of the transformation of those who join.

These are often built on the back of courses, but the community is often where bonds are formed and relationships are built because you want to accomplish similar things in your business.

In those relationships too is gold. I have friends that have grown out of those communities that I paid to be in.

I've received lots of work from inside those communities directly or indirectly through referrals.

When you joined a mastermind or closed community, you know that the people in there are willing to invest into their growth. Whether that's time and/or money.

They are also amazing avenues for warm leads too because they are running a business, understand what you do, and then can refer you work when the opportunity arises.

Here's the biggest, most important reason why who you hang with is important though. Accountability.

You don't want to disappoint someone who you respect.

When you tell that someone you will do something, you'll want to rise up no matter what and do it.

If you don't respect someone, then you won't care whether you disappoint someone or not.

Who you hang with is vital to your business growth, finding clients, because it's your reputation and reputation matters in business now more than ever.