Everything I know about Freelancing 1

50% of your time should be spent growing your business.

Bill by day or week, not hour. Except retainers.

Specialize in projects where you can charge more.

Take your finely-calculated estimate and 3x it, both in time and money.

You should get really comfortable with “no”; Both saying “no” to bad fits, and hearing “no” from clients who can’t afford you.

• Min 60 pounds per hour, 20 hours per week (480 per day)

Talk about budget early in the conversation. (But only after you’ve discovered the pain point and established credability.)

Always bill, even for small fixes.

Collect payment (50% – 100%) before starting work, particularly for new clients you’re not comfortable with. You can make exceptions for large or repeat clients whom you’re confident will pay.

Expect late payments. Don’t hesitate to politely nag, they probably just forgot.

Your clients won’t realize they’ll need maintenance on their project unless you tell them. Include maintenance as part of every proposal, lest the client spends their whole budget on building the first version.

An incomplete list of red flags:

• If a potential client tells you how something should be implemented, they don’t want you to think too much and don’t value your expertise.

• If a client previously posted their projects to Fiverr or UpWork, it’s a signal they don’t value expertise.

• If a client won’t listen to your advice because something is not your speciality, they probably see you as an implementer, not a partner. You probably sold yourself short and/or the client doesn’t value you like they should.

• If a client tells you how long a project should take you to finish, they think they know an awful lot about your field.

• If a potential client can’t explain why they chose you to talk to (i.e. for your expertise, because of an article they read, because of a referral, etc), they’re probably shopping around and you’re bidding against other contractors. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but you’ll have minimal leverage.

• If a client starts asking for detailed breakdowns of your time spent when they haven’t asked in the past, you’re probably being viewed as too expensive and should brace for an end or change to the relationship.

Your first interactions with anyone will set the tone for the rest of the relationship. If you crush the first emails, phone calls, or meetings, your reputation will be solidified for the long-term.

Identify your “champion” within larger organizations – someone who will advocate for you. They are worth a lot – do them favors and you’ll find your invoices will get paid faster, more work will come your way, and you’ll have staying power within the organization. Often this person is the one who benefits most from your work or someone who felt the most pain before you came along.

Never never never never burn bridges.

If you specialize, specialize in a type of customer rather than a technology.

Referrals are #1 source of leads for basically every freelancer, followed by writing & job boards. Build rapport with clients, and you’ll fill up your schedule.

When you’re starting out, I’d recommend picking a skill that is in widespread demand, but might be slightly boring or even lower-pay. This can help you establish a baseline of work while you’re figuring out what you want to specialize in.

You need to keep a mental model of your ideal client in mind. If you don’t think about your ideal client regularly, you’ll find yourself drifting into whatever project comes along. Having a particular customer in mind helps focus your marketing & sales efforts, and allows you to say “not a fit” more often. A helpful way to determine what exactly you’re specializing in is to fill in the blanks: “I’m __, an expert in __ helping ___ __. Unlike my competition, I __.”

Don’t work on promises. Get projects down on paper with clear terms, and have your clients sign.

Most clients don’t care about code quality, period. Write quality code anyways, time permitting.

You should absolutely own the work. When in doubt, go above and beyond. You’ll regret the times when you do the minimum.

Break large projects up into 4-6 week chunks. This protects you in case of overruns, allows you to slowly build trust with the client, and allows easy pivots in case the project needs to change.

Resist the temptation to overbook.

The value you provide will be > 50% communication, < 50% technical.

If a client gives you a design to implement, make your implementation pixel-perfect.

Buy a tool if it saves you 30 minutes. Purchases under $50 should be instant. Spending $ on books should also be a no-brainer. For $20, if a book gives you an idea to get 1 more client, it’s paid for itself 100x (thanks Mark Cuban). Get a good mic & webcam if you’re remote.

Build at least 2 months savings, probably more, because you’re going to have a dry spell from time-to-time. Live on last month’s income to help mitigate any slowdowns.

A lot of people debate what you should call yourself: Freelancer, Con$ultant, or Contractor. You should probably stick with “Consultant”, but what matters more is that you position yourself as a high-value professional. The easiest way to do that is to raise your rates.

Don’t call yourself a programmer.

Double Your Freelancing Rate 2

Strive to understand the pain that the customer is feeling.

Always qualify the value that you bring to the table.

In doing so we show that:

1. “You’ve done your homework. You’ve spent the time to understand and calculate exactly what this project means to their business.

2. You can anchor this upside against your costs. We’ll use basic psychology to communicate “spend $1 and get $2 back” when putting together our proposals.”

“All freelancers need to learn more about business. Not just how to run their freelance business, but also how larger businesses work: How they value projects, how they calculate ROI, when they make investments, etc. The better you are at communicating with a business in their language, the more they will trust you, and the more work you’ll get.”

“My approach to determining the scope (what will get done) and the prioritization (when each part will get done) is guided by the question: “Will doing this get us closer to the solution?” If a particular requirement didn’t get us any closer, and the cost of that requirement wasn’t outweighed by its ultimate ROI, it was shelved or reformulated to achieve those two ends.”

“Planning a roadmap should never be done in isolation. It shouldn’t be something you do away from your client, and it shouldn’t be something your client does without you. It’s a collaborative effort to figure out: “How can we get to the goal as quickly, cheaply, and reliably as possible?”

A solution is the inverse of a problem.

There are many paths, or roadmaps, that connect a problem with a solution.

Roadmaps get to a solution with varying degrees of sophistication and completeness.

A roadmap should be planned by both the driver (you) and the navigator (the client.)

How we justify our rates: “The reason we are hired is to satisfy our clients. This doesn’t mean just having a good relationship with them; it means helping make their business better off tomorrow than it was yesterday. Value-based pricing is all about quantifying the surplus of success that we create for our customers.”

“Remember, a client is somebody we bring under our wings. We protect their company, and become their ally and partner. A customer, by definition, is somebody who purchases commodity goods. Ask yourself: Do you want to have customers, or do you want to have clients?”

“Become an irreplaceable, irreducible ally to your clients, and they’ll reward you with more income because you’ll reward them with better results”

“Reducing your risk is essential to becoming a high value consultant.” “You’re a skilled developer, designer, marketer, or whatever, and you can provide a lot of value to your clients by applying your craft to their problems. But if your prospective clients aren’t confident in your ability to pull off their project, it’s likely you’ll be too risky to hire.”

“People buy from you for one of two reasons: they’re either convinced (either by you or by others, e.g. a referral) that hiring you is the best option; or alternatively, you’ve shown them that you’re the best.”

“Building your own Step Ladder of Trust”

“If you can sell your client on a low risk product that shows them that you’re both trustworthy and capable of producing value, the likelihood that you’ll win the full engagement skyrockets.”

“Here’s the structure we used to host our Roadmapping Sessions: Why do you want to create this project? (We’ve probably already discussed this, but repetition is key.) Who is the target audience (or buyer)? What is their profit model? What defines success? What defines failure? What risks, internal (e.g., untested business model) and external (e.g., risky 3rd party APIs), are there that could keep this project from being successful? What are the high level roles that will interact with this product? What actions do they take? How can those actions be divided into granular user stories? How do they plan on recouping the cost of this project? How can that timeline be shortened? Re-assess risks: Now that we know a lot more “about the details of the project, can we retire any of the perceived risks we pointed out earlier?”

“After the meeting, we’d type up a report that summarized the major takeaways of the meeting, and weigh in with additional insights and observations. And this is when we’d propose our project, which ends up becoming the proposal we talk about in the next chapter.”

“The first reason to package is that it gives your clients options. No one likes being forced to “take it or leave it”. Even though almost all of us would be willing to do a little less work for a little less money when our proposed budget isn’t realistic, this isn’t always obvious to our clients. By presenting options, we’re giving our clients choice.”

“As consultants, it’s our job to get the client to the solution as quickly and cheaply as possible. So by estimating collaboratively, I can use my expertise in developing software and my past experience in working on similar projects to help setup both what we’ll do and when we’ll do it in a way that makes the most sense for the client and their needs.”

“The second reason for packaging is that it allows you to anchor the cost of one option against another.”

“By switching up what we’re offering, and by assigning different prices to these packages, we can ” “steer our clients toward the package that makes the most sense for both of us.”

“1x, 2.2x and 5x”

“Negotiate Scope, Not Price”

“Don’t Discount, Instead Add Freebies”

Action Plan

Vision 30 hours a week with 70 ponds per hour

Schedule Full time to OpenCraft(~35 hours)

Strategy Transition from Opencraft to Cosultant

Steps

1. Choose your ideal client
2. Choose your Niche
3. Build a website and blog
4. Have a schedule for blog posts
5. Have a road map for products
6. Build a funnel for clients