In this episode, I talk with someone who founded a job board. We often interact with job boards when we’re applying to different gigs, but have you ever thought about what goes into setting up a freelance job board?

Today’s episode guest is Lesley Pyle of Hire My Mom. Moms wanting to work from home and get more flexibility and Lesley was way ahead of the curve on recognizing the need to promote hiring mothers and parents.

Not everyone’s path to becoming a freelancer looks the same, but many people are rethinking how and where they work. Starting a freelance side hustle is a great opportunity to explore new passions and decide what’s really best for you.

People who want to work from home have a hard time getting started if they don’t have a pipeline for finding clients. In fact, it’s one of the most common hurdles people experience if they don’t have a solid marketing plan.

If you’re a new mom or have children already, Hire My Mom might be the perfect site for you to learn about new opportunities!

In this episode, we discussed:

• Why becoming a mother let Lesley think more about how her work style was going to change, even when her new feelings were totally unexpected.
• Why getting started with freelancing often means thinking small and staying in a day job and how you should think about that in your own home.
• How Lesley went from being one of the early pioneers working from home to starting her own website to help other people get their own freelance careers started.
• How Hire My Mom started and what it’s grown into today
• What to do if you don’t have the experience to get started as a freelancer working from home?
• Do you really need to have a resume or cover letter when you’re looking at job boards? How can you be best prepared to join a site like Hire My Mom?
• Why you should expect to pay something reasonable for a legitimate freelance job board site.

Bio:

Lesley Pyle is the founder of HireMyMom.com, a boutique service connecting Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses with top-notch Virtual Professionals across the country founded in 2007. She began her work-at-home career in 1996 with the launch of her first website: Home-Based Working Moms. She has a Master's degree in Public Relations from the University of Stirling, Scotland while on a full academic scholarship and as an Ambassador of Goodwill for Rotary International. She also has a BA in Journalism / Public Relations from Texas State University. Pyle has been featured in numerous publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. In her spare time, she loves traveling, decorating, football and spending time with family and friends. She and her husband live in Texas and have four children ages 12-24.

Connect with Lesley:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HireMyMom

Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hiremymom-com/

LinkedIn: https://www.pinterest.com/hiremymomcom/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hiremymom

In this episode, you’ll hear from two expert web developers and agency owners Jason Martin and Patrick Falvey. You’ll learn about how they made the decision to partner up and why a partnership and agency is the right choice for you so you can decide if this is the right fit for you.

You’ll hear advice on how they knew it was going to be a fit because they had worked together and how that helped them decide that being partners set them both up for success in running a freelance agency.

Running an agency is very different from working as a solopreneur, but you definitely have the opportunity to benefit from the “two heads are better than one” mentality. How do you choose a partner? How do you set things up from the beginning? How do you know what personality traits you should look for when you want to team up?

In this episode, we discussed:

• Knowing complementary skills and how teaming up as freelancers can make things work
• The power of setting vision individually and with your partner
• How do you find a freelance business partner if you don’t want to just work alone?
• Why you should have experience working together before deciding on a business partnership and why it’s like a marriage
• Why enterprise clients can be the right fit and why Jason and Patrick made that choice and why you should ensure that you consider maintenance contracts.
• Why you need to set big goals and how manifestation works in a freelance business or freelance agency.
• How Jason & Patrick initially scaled the wrong way and what they learned from that experience.
• Whether you should decide on having in-house talent versus leveraging freelancers or fully remote teams.

About Jason + Patrick:

Jason Martin is a Managing Partner of DjangoForce, a customer software development agency that helps businesses increase efficiency through the use of modern technology. After spending two decades working in marketing and UI design with multimillion dollar brands and start-ups, Jason knows what truly drives conversions and business efficiency. Jason's business accomplishments have landed coverage in Forbes, Tim Ferriss, and GeekWire. In addition to running a software development company, Jason is a travel and Jiu Jitsu enthusiast who lives in Boise, ID with his wife and 3 daughters.

Patrick Falvey is a Managing Partner of DjangoForce, a custom software development agency that helps businesses increase efficiency through the use of modern technology. In his spare time he loves to learn about anything technical, like updating his knowledge of new development frameworks, executive education through MIT, or even building an 8-bit CPU from scratch. Patrick lives full time in Boise, ID with his wife, Vina and enjoys mountain biking and skiing when he's not behind a screen.

Connect with Jason and Patrick:

Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondfmartin/

Patrick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickmichaelfalvey/

Did you know that you don't have to scale your freelance business up to a full-time job? Plenty of Freelancers have a goal of scaling their business to be able to replace their day job income, but others are perfectly happy with what they do from 9 to 5. If that's you, you'll love this episode with experienced freelancer and nurse Janine Kelbach, who purposefully keeps her freelance writing biz as a part-time venture simply because she loves her job.

Deciding You Need More than Your Day Job

If you're like most people, having a day job doesn't fulfill all of your creative or even entrepreneurial desires. This is what makes freelancing so unique as a business model, since you can scale it up or down as much as you want. Taking on the number of clients that is right for you is a very personal decision.

Keeping your freelance side hustle, however, also give you peace of mind that if something were to happen to your job, or if you want to accomplish different financial goals more quickly, that you have alternative options.

Balancing Your Schedule

No matter what your day job is, there's a good chance that it takes a great chunk of your time. In this episode, we discuss how to successfully freelance side hustle when you have a day job that consumes a lot of your mental and physical energy.

You can actually use the fact that you have a day job as a way to more quickly accomplish things, since you have a compressed window of time in which you must accomplish all aspects of your feelings business, including marketing, client work, and the administrative aspects of running a freelance company. Having a day job while also freelancing on the side requires you to be much more focused and diligent about the kind of projects that you take on.

Imposter Syndrome is Real

Most people start their freelance side hustle while they're currently in at a job, but this means that plenty of new Freelancers feel like they're not qualified enough to charge high prices or to even pitch themselves to potential clients. In this episode, we talked about imposter syndrome and how to overcome it when you're new to your freelance side hustle. Janine and I also discussed how to evaluate your current skillset to find the freelance side hustle types that are best suited to you.

Are you stuck on which kind of freelance side hustle you want to start? I have good news for you: I put the top 24 most profitable freelance side hustles into a PDF guide you can use to branch out of your existing freelance offering or decide which direction you want to go. Check that out here.

Get in Touch with Janine

Janine’s podcast : www.thesavvyscribepodcast.com

Her linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/writernjanine/

Her instagram: @savvyscribes

It's time for your weekly dose of inspiration and strategy from the Advanced Freelancing podcast. Before I kick off today's episode, if you love this show and listen every week, please hop on over to iTunes and consider leaving the show a review. It helps other people interested in similar content be able to find this show and benefit from all of the great tips that you have already heard.

Today's guest wants you to consider one question.

What if you could determine who in your audience is your best client in 180 seconds? Juliet Clark is a dynamic and sought after speaker and podcaster, who has spent the last 20 years helping authors, coaches, speakers, and small businesses all over the world build expert platforms.

She created a platform building tool that assesses audience obstacles, generates leads, and qualifies leads for businesses. And she says her simple technology can be used from the stage, on social media, and at workshops to create conversations that build long term relationships. She's also the host of the Promote, Profit, and Publish podcast which helps entrepreneurs understand how to use great tools in the coaching and small business spaces. So we're going to be talking all about lead generation, lead qualification, and how to make that process easier for you. This is a hot topic for a lot of freelancers.

Juliet’s story on how she became so knowledgeable about lead qualification and lead gen.

So I'm out of college. I started out in traditional publishing. And I went on to work in advertising on a couple billion dollar accounts Chiat Day. And from there I went to being a stay at home mom and lasted two weeks. It was really hard. That is a hard job.

And so I decided that I could balance my time between there and real estate. And the one thing that I carried through all of those was that you had to prequalify before you worked with people. And you also had to build a really solid Avatar and test and validate that avatar over and over and talk to those people.

So, in 2007, I was going through a divorce and I wrote my first book. It was a mystery novel. I killed my ex husband in it. It was very cathartic. But the “what” came from that experience, besides not having to wear a felony orange jumpsuit, because it was metaphorically killing him in a book was that.

When I went to publish my first book, I found a self publishing model that was horrendous. It did not serve authors at all. So I started my own company and then within that we had entrepreneurs bringing us a book. And they had written the book because their products and services weren't selling. And someone told them that, “You know, the book is the answer. It's why nobody knows you.” And I kind of said, “No, that's not it. Yeah, this is going to be another failed product.”

So we developed, we worked with it, I found a platform that I really loved, and we started developing assessment marketing that was also lead generation. And as we got better and better over time with it, we put components in with it that were also qualification. So that when the people are working with the assessments, they're actually pre qualifying themselves for your business.

I think that is such an important thing to consider that you have lead qualification processes built in when people are coming to you. Both with they are landing on your website, your landing pages, they're finding you some other way, but also when you're doing outreach with them.

Where do you think most people get things wrong with lead qualification?

So my there's a couple of things. My experience when I was in real estate was there was always a couple guys in the office who'd be like, “I have 60 leads.” And they never closed anything. And I had a really great team of people, we were selling about 60 houses a year. And we pre qualified everybody. It was such a huge difference in what we closed every year. So I think that pre pre qualification, we go out and we collect leads, but we don't really find out how interested they are. So that's one of the one of the things.

The other thing is, it's easy for you to explain what you do and develop a product. But if you don't validate it first and know who that audience is, you can't replicate it for lead generation. So you have to be able to not only build that avatar, but also validate it.

How would you recommend that somebody validate it if they're like brand new to starting their business? How do you figure out that this idea you have, this service or product has legs?

So this is the second time I've had to answer this today. One of the things, and I know with freelancers, they work with a lot of coaches, authors, speakers,  and small businesses. And unfortunately, that business model is what I call “Bootstrap to Bankruptcy”. Because there are all these things that you need to be successful and one of them is not validating that product.

So that's actually what we use the assessments for. We tell people that are brand new, like we're your first stop, you have an idea. Let's get you out on a stage or networking or wherever it is. Let's create this based on success principles and let them tell you if it's a valid product and if they would pay me money for it. Because you get a lot of lip service about, “Oh, I really love that.” And then nobody will pay anything for it.

So I'd rather see you spend a couple thousand dollars and validate, then go out and hire that book coach and an online marketing coach and all of those things that are going to cost you anywhere from $10 to $100,000. I'd rather see you validate first.

I see this a lot too with other authors.

So I also do some freelance public relations work for nonfiction business book authors.  And it drives me crazy how many of them come to me and say, “I published my book three months ago, and it's not selling at all.” And I'm like, “Why are we waiting until three months after the book is launched to think about these kinds of things? Did anyone even want to read that book to begin with? And how much opportunity we've lost by you spending a year two years of your life working on this thing?”

And then it's the parts of it like did it ever have legs to begin with? Was it ever validated? And then also, how can we make sure that that follow through comes all the way through the process, right? We can't just stop when you created the product. You have to build in your customer service.  And you have to build in your marketing. All those pieces have to be in place.

I think a lot of people do struggle with lead qualification, too.

Especially when you're doing something like cold outreach.  That's something a lot of freelancers do. They say I want to work with Procter and Gamble, or whatever. So they go do their research. They dig for hours to try to find the CMOS email address, write this custom pitch, and get in there.

Then they forget about that lead qualification process just because it was a big name or a cool company. They still might not be your right client. So can you talk a little bit about, especially on a phone call, because that's usually the next step for a lot of freelancers, what information can you be asking for or listening for on a phone call to determine if a lead is not the right fit? So you've done your base level of investigation about this company or person, you think there's possibility to work together.

How do I make sure about that before we sign a contract?

So a lot of what we do inside of enrollment conversations is really talking to them about what's worked, what isn't working, what have you tried to get it to work, and really diving into that? The reasons for those conversations, even though they seem a little invasive, is you're going to find out a couple things. And they may not actually verbalize those things.You have to get really good at listening.

So to give you an example, when someone comes to us, we ask those kinds of questions. And we might find out that they're blaming it on somebody else they worked with. But when you really get down to it and do some heavy listening and dig, dig, dig, you'll find out that the person you're talking to didn't take action. They didn't follow through. And so you're really listening for those patterns when they're telling you about those experiences. Because they will tell you a lot. You'll find out if you have an action person or a blame person.  You don't want that blame person

at all. That's so true.

I think it's equally important to be listening to hear the right things and logging away those red flags that come up in those early conversations.

Because just like you were talking about, one thing I always tell freelancers is it's a bad sign if you're on the sales call, and they say, “I've hired 15 other freelancers before and no one could do the job right.” There is only one common denominator in those projects. And it was the person who didn't give good directions, didn't pay on time, or whatever it is that the client has done.

So do you have tips for making that lead generation process faster for freelancers or any type of business owner?

So that's actually what we use that assessment for, in depth, is we set the success principles of what we do and then you measure, as the potential client, where you're at in that. So we know not only how much help you need, but also you have an understanding coming into the call about how much help you need. Because sometimes I find that when we're pre qualifying, people don't realize how much help they actually need. They think they're doing better than they actually are. And for anybody, a freelancer, a business, that is a big red flag because their expectations may be much higher of what you're going to do for them than what you actually commit to do for them.

It's definitely important to know where they're at and where they want to go.

I use a loose form of pre qualification for the freelancers that I coach. I layout in the sales page this is the type of person I work with. These are the types of things we work on. And then I require that they do a brief phone call with me just to make sure that we're a fit beforehand.

But I'm imagining that using something like a form where you ask questions could help pre qualify people to see if they're the right fit. But what do you do with the people where you read it  and you say, “Hmm, this isn't the right fit” or you look at their information they've emailed to you? Let's say you got a lead through your website that says, “I want to hire you to do these freelance services.” But you can tell it's not a fit for you and they didn't really pass your pre qualification test. Where do they go from there? How do you respond to that professionally?

Juliet’s response to this sticky situation.

Usually, I try to be a connector.  I will go back and explain to them, “Look, this is not really an area where we work well and I can see you need help here. I know somebody.” And then I give them a name and number and tell them they should contact them and see if they can help them a little bit better. That doesn't mean that you're giving bad leads to someone else. But you genuinely may not be the person to do that work.

And most of the time, when we're referring, we're making a little bit of referral fee off of it as well. So it's not a total loss. But here's the thing about it, when you do something like that, and we just have this conversation in integrity, people come back and they send people to you. Because now they fully understand what you do. And they understand that you just didn't take their money and not deliver for the sake of taking their money. And that's huge when you're doing something like this.

I think one thing that you might never know is the people who land on your lead qualification page who look at it and just in looking at it, realize that you two are not a fit and they don't even fill it out.

So it's also doing a lot of that work for you. But people can self opt out and go, “This is like five questions long and I'm too busy to answer five questions.” If you're too busy to do that, we're never going to get anywhere on the project.   Anything else in that lead generation process can definitely help people realize “This is right for me.  This isn't right for me.”

Now, one thing I see all the time, not so much in the freelance world, but in other businesses is this idea of buying leads. Now is that something that's still relevant? I mean, I would think it's worth the extra time to find your own leads and then pre qualify them. But then every so often, I do see people selling these lead generation services where they'll promise you a list of  X many companies.

Juliet on buying leads.

So here's the deal. Business is all about relationships. And that is one of the things when you and I initially talked that I told you in this click world out there, what we've developed, is for relationship building.  So when you go out and buy a lead, there are three different kinds of traffic out in the world. There is cold traffic, medium traffic, and hot traffic.

Hot traffic is when you have referred somebody to me and you vouched for me. You really need this person.  That medium traffic is somebody who kind of knows you, following you trying to figure out what you're doing, and you're nurturing them. Those cold leads, they didn't ask to become a lead, for the most part. Or if you're in digital, they click and they don't really know you. A lot of times they've just clicked a click. So those people are really, really hard when you buy leads. And a lot of times when you go out and buy those, they're spam. So they're actually ticked off that you're like, “Where did you get my name?”

So now you have no chance of building rapport and relationships. You should always go out and develop your own leads because you're the face of your business. You're the person that they're looking at.  Are you credible? Do you follow through and do what you say you're going to do? If I tell you when you hand me your card that I'm going to call you this afternoon, do I call you this afternoon? There's all of these things that they're evaluating that make it necessary for you to generate and pre qualify your own leads.

It's such a great point, because I think so many people are looking for that magic bullet.

The easy answer of, “Oh, well just give me a list of 10 or 50 companies that I can pitch.” And I always say that your odds of success are going to be so much higher if you make your own list of 10 companies you would like to work with and then do the research to see if on your initial review, they meet your lead qualification. It's just going to be so much more effective.

The other thing I always wonder about those lead gen companies too is let's say they have a list of 50 companies, but 2000 people have bought that list of it, right? So now those people are really pissed off on that lead list because they're like, “Man, everyone under the sun is emailing me and I never asked for this information to come to me.”

And that's such a great point because Juliet has a lot of clients who are trying to get into corporate workshops.

And they think, “Okay, every corporation needs me.” Do you have any idea how many times a day that HR person is hounded for a workshop to come in? So the best thing you can do if you want to get into those places, is go to some place where you can network with those people.

The fact is, if I am going to an event, and I want to meet the speakers or I want to do business with those people who have been vouched for that probably could use my services, I reached out to them on LinkedIn. And I say, “Hey, we're going to the blah blah blah event. I can't wait to see you speak.” And then walk up at the event, introduce yourself, “Hey, I reached out on LinkedIn.” And then talk to them.

But here's the bigger tip.

Sit next to them at the event because inevitably when you're sitting next to people conversation starts. Sit at their table or wherever, because that's where it all begins. That's where you get to make your first impression instead of an email or a solicitation phone call. Get out of the house and go network with those people that you really want to grab their business. And you may find out at those like, “Oh my gosh, that person's horrible. I really don't want to work there.”

That tip about LinkedIn is so important because our email inboxes can get cluttered.

But you can always do follow up on LinkedIn.  You can do initial outreach on LinkedIn. And then if you sit next to that speaker at that networking event, and they post about having spoken, you remind them of who you are by commenting on that on their social media. You say, “Hey, you did a great job. It was great to meet you.” You want to keep staying in their world. And I think that that is really, really important.

So let's talk about the beginner person who's just starting out realizing that they need to have a better process for capturing incoming leads, what would you say would be the first step that they need to take? Where I'm going with this is a lot of freelancers go, “Oh, I can't launch my business yet. Because I don't have my website.”

A website that has no traffic to it is so useless. So just skip it. I always just tell them that they don't need that unless they have this massive following and they have massive traffic already. Then yes, let's optimize your website and make sure there's a place on there for people to hire you. But I would think it's probably not set up your website. I'm wondering if there's something else people can do to sort of be lead friendly.

Juliet explains how people can be lead friendly.

How about a landing page? It costs about $50 to put up the landing page. You add a little about yourself, your services, and let's set an appointment. So you can send people to that landing page.

Also get out and start developing content. Let's say that you and I had a conversation or we were going back and forth on LinkedIn a little and you expressed an area you were having a little bit of trouble and you may not hire me today. But wouldn't it be amazing if I served you by saying, “You know what, Laura? I wrote an article about this topic. Can I share it with you?” Then  leave the link and and just kind of start developing from there. You're showing them your value instead of telling them how valuable you are. 

And how many times do we see people doing the opposite?

It is rampant on Facebook and LinkedIn. “Help! I'm launching a podcast. Does anyone have any good resources?” And inevitably 10 people respond. “Hi, I'm a Podcast Producer here. Here's my services page, go check it out.” And it's like, I don't know who you are, you know what I mean?

If you were the person that left me the link that said, “Hey, here's this great resource I found, or I took this course. I read this book. I listened to this podcast and it was awesome.” And continue to build that relationship. I feel like we're interacting as to humans, rather than you just see me as somebody who can be pitched. And I think that that's really important.

I always laugh how many people seem to think that it's as easy as, you send a pitch or you get on a sales, contract sign, you've got the money, the company is in the person. It still goes back to relationships. We live in a digital world. And digital technology enables us to do all that other stuff faster, but we still have to go back to relationships at the end of the day.

Juliet’s upcoming book.

So this spring, I have a book called coming out it's actually called “Pitch Slapped”, because that's what I feel like when I go and you do that to me. Especially those people who are on LinkedIn, you connect with them and they say, “Hey, I've got this brand new program. Would you like it?” And it's like, “No, I don't even know who you are.”

And half the time they haven't even done the research to see what it is you do.

I've had people pitch me investment banking stuff. I'm like, “Did you even look at my profile? Like, I don't need investment banking. I'm not looking to have venture capital.” My favorite though is that people who are subtly insulting with their pitch where they're like, “I know how hard it is to work out.” You're like, “Oh my gosh, you're calling me out on my fitness or my nutrition.”  Not only have I been “pitch slapped” as Juliet says, but now there's like this undercurrent of like you have flagged me as your ideal lead because you think I need extra help.

Juliet’s pet peeve.

My pet peeve is men who email who tech. You go through Facebook Messenger and they say, “Hey, I have this great new meetup. I help women manage their money.” It's like when your husband tries to teach you how to play golf and tells you everything wrong. And you're not inspired by that. You want to hit him over the head with the club.

It's so crazy that and this all goes back to that same topic of the proper lead qualification.

Does this person want to hear your message? Are you reaching out in the most effective way to do it? Because maybe you do have some incredible supplement that burns fat, but there's a nicer way to go about it, or there's a more appropriate way to make sure that whoever you're targeting is the ideal person to hear that message. I might be willing to hear that at a networking event where they're just talking about their own experience using it.

I actually have a rule that if someone does that to me on LinkedIn, I just remove the connection immediately. If the first message is,  “Hi! I sell XYZ. Here's the link to buy it. I'd love to help you.” I'm like, “Okay, remove connection.” Because there is no connection between us because you didn't take the time to even get to know me or spend that time

Juliet shares a story.

So I love to share this story. Someone did that to me. They wrote me a birthday message and this was like in 2016.  It was really nice message, “Hey, Happy Birthday. You deserve all the best in life. I’d love to help you get healthier in your next year.” And they signed it. So I wrote back, “Thank you.” Then here came the sales pitch.

That would have been okay except 2017, they sent the exact same message. In 2018, I was at an event and the owner of this MLM said, “You know, my people are having a little problem with marketing. Do you think you can come in and talk to us?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, I have this great thing on social media. And guess what? I've got this messenger inside of my presentation that is what your guy keeps sending me every single year.” And he's like, “No way.” I was like, “Yeah, I use you guys as an example, in my presentation.”

You don't want to be the bad example that someone is using to say what not to do, right?

In my mind, it wouldn't take that much more effort for them to send you a personalized message that at least varies it up every year. He could log in a spreadsheet, pitched her in 2017 and didn't go anywhere. So let me not do that. Juliet pointed out that inside messenger, when you get that message, you can see the message above that's identical from the previous year. So vary it up.

That's another good point. Because when you're doing this outreach to prospective clients, you want to vary it up. One of my most hated things with follow up is when a freelancer sends a pitch and then they respond to that message when no one answers and says, “Hey, just following up on this.” Don’t do that.  Give the person a reason to read your message that they might not have seen initially. Always add a little bit of personalization. And that goes back to that human connection.

When you see someone else in your space or in another space who is doing things well and owns their expertise, go look at how they do it.

You want to learn how to make great email newsletters, get go sign up for somebody list that has a 40% open rate and a high close rate. You want to learn about lead generation and pre qualifying go look at how Juliet has set up her own pre qualification on the quiz. So you can always take lessons from other people who are doing things right.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

Connect with Juliet:

• Quiz: leadlogicquiz.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julietdillonclark/
• Podcast: Promote,Profit,Publish http://superbrandpublishing.com/how-to-subscribe-rate-our-podcast-5-stars-on-itunes/
• Facebook Community: https://www.Platformbuilders.com
• Websites: http://www.superbrandpublishing.com
• Call to Action: http://promoteprofitpublishquiz.com

After starting podcasting several years ago, I had no idea where my podcasting journey would take me. And it's still an excellent opportunity to refine and grow my process as I explore podcasting further in 2020. All that being said, you're tuning into the 100th episode of this podcast.

I've gone through some changes since I launched, such as niching down even further to content that will specifically help freelancers. And I took an 18 month break in between ending that sort of first season of my podcast and rebooting in 2019. That being said, if you're a new listener to this show, I wanted to do a recap for this 100th episode of the top 10 episodes that are the most downloaded, the most talked about, the ones that I feel are the best and can be the most helpful for freelancers.

So I'm going to recap these 10 episodes for you to give you a brief introduction about what that episode is about and why it's important. This would not be a good episode to listen to if you are driving, exercising, or not able to easily write things down. If you are able to write things down, you can grab these episode numbers and make note of the ones that you want to go and take a listen to.

10. Episode 91

A relatively recent episode that is all about the freelancers guide to raising your rates. I get questions about people raising their rates all the time. It does not have to be that complicated. It's important to raise your rates on a regular basis. But a lot of freelancers seem to get stumped with this idea of how they should do this.  I get questions like:

• Do I do this across my entire business?
• Do I keep my current clients at the rates they have?
• How do I break this news to current clients that I'm thinking about having a rate increase?
• How often should I do it?
• How much should that increase be?

This is an area where a lot of freelancers tend to overthink. So if you're confused about some of my recommended approaches, check out “Episode 91: The Freelancers Guide to Raising Your Rates”.

9. Episode 10

This is one of my favorite time management and productivity tips, the Pomodoro Technique. I use the Pomodoro Technique every single day. And Episode 10 is called “Pump Up Your Business with the Pomodoro Technique” because it really has the potential to be a game changer and help you lay out your dates more effectively.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of people make is trying to work in really long uninterrupted stretches and thinking, “Well, you know, if I spend six hours on this project, I can knock it out from beginning to end.” What tends to happen for most people is that that's too overwhelming and too long. So thinking about how you can chunk your work into smaller segments, and remain hyper focused during that period, is really what the Pomodoro Technique is all about. In this episode, I gave you some ideas for how to get started. And then some of the different timers and tools that I recommend or have used with the Pomodoro Technique.

Now, there's been a lot of really good research about how many pomodoros, which typically means 25 minute work segments, but can also refer to 50 minute work segments, are optimal in a day? This isn't a situation where you want to take that eight hour work day and say that you're going to have 16 pomodoro in that period with no breaks beyond five minutes in between each one. There's definitely a sweet spot to hit there with several focused work periods per day. But not overloading yourself, because your brain really has a hard time keeping up with that.

8. Episode 17

I would love for you to go back and listen to Episode 17, where I had guest Catherine Morehouse talking about the power of niching down. Now a lot of freelancers and freelance coaches will tell you that you should never niche down.  That is something I do not agree with. Because I think that niching down has the potential for you to start charging as an expert and really be a specialty provider.

If you are just a writer, there are so many writers that you have no way to distinguish yourself. And niching down doesn't have to mean that you claim one particular industry or one type of project and you do that forever. With freelancing you have a tremendous amount of flexibility. But we talk in this episode about how focusing on the clients you like to serve best makes you become the go to person for that service. So go listen to Episode 17 if you're curious about whether or not you might want to niche down in 2020.

7. Episode 23

Switching back over to these time management and productivity tips, This one is called “Stop Changing Lanes in Your Brain”. This is another thing that I coach freelancers about a lot. And it works hand in hand with the Pomodoro techniques that I covered in Episode 10.

Changing lanes in your brain by constantly switching between different types of tasks is not just exhausting, it's really inefficient. And yet, it's the way that 90% of freelancers run their business. Choosing instead to batch your work and to focus on particular tasks during certain blocks of time is much more likely to make you feel successful and not as exhausted at the end of the day. So check out Episode 23 if you want to learn a little bit more about what I mean by changing lanes in your brain and how you can kind of break out of some of those bad habits.

6. Episode 26

Another challenge into that basis, a lot of freelancers, especially those who are scaling, is shiny object syndrome. This is the idea that you see a new project or idea and you run with it all the way before fully evaluating it. And that takes your focus away from some of the activities that you really need to be doing to grow your business.

So Episode 26 with guest Rita Morales is perfect if you're thinking about how to cope with shiny object syndrome. How much is enough? When is an idea just an idea that you should store as a potential future thing to explore? And when is it something you need to take action on right away?

5. Episode 94

I just recently recorded this episode.  It is a must must must listen to episode. This was with guest, Mariam Tsaturyan. And we were talking about freelance contracts. What goes into a contract? What mistakes do freelancers make when putting together contracts? What clauses are Must have, or clauses that you should be aware of when they come to you and a client provided contract?

Mariam is not just an attorney, she is a freelancer herself. And she sells some amazing templates to help you get started so you don't have to pay hundreds of dollars to an attorney.

So that's Episode 94. Any Freelancer in business for themselves has to know how to use contracts. So I strongly recommend that episode.

4. Episode 54

This episode is all about choosing the right clients. I had a guest on the show who was an editor and we talked a lot about what it really means to define who your ideal client is and how to work specifically and mostly with those clients.

If you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time, you know that I am a big advocate of only working with the right clients.  The right client means your ideal clients, the rock stars that you want to build your business around. But so many freelancers get tied into this idea of wanting to work with everyone and making themselves a little too available to those potential clients.

In this episode, you'll hear from both me and my guest Elizabeth, what it means to choose the right clients and what that looks like for us. Because even though it's important that everyone should implement only working with their ideal clients, that's going to look different from one freelancer to another. And it's up to you to determine what your ideal client avatar is.

A lot of freelancers get hung up on, “Well, should I only work with one particular type of client? Should I only work with one type of industry? Is that what it means to say that I have an ideal client?” Sometimes you can go too far with that and you limit yourself as far as what opportunities are coming to you.

So it's important to think about what's that perfect balance that I can implement in my business that is going to be really successful for me to attract the right people and also repel the wrong people. Because you definitely want to make sure that you have a nice balance between those two things.

And I've got a great freebie that goes along really well with that, and it is called “Creating an Ideal Client Avatar”. You can visit https://www.betterbizacademy.com/creating-an-ideal-client-avatar/. There is a PDF there that can help you walk through figuring out who your ideal client is.

3. Episode 71

I believe this episode is a must listen.  It is all about toxic freelance clients. And it's interesting because since I recorded this episode, I've seen so many people own that term of toxic freelance clients and use it in their own way. So it's been really interesting to see how that has kind of spread from what I define a toxic freelance client as working with the wrong person or the wrong team can be really detrimental to your mental and physical health and also the way that you feel about your business every day. So listen in on some examples of what toxic freelance clients can be, and how to figure out if you are currently working with one.

2. Episode 75

Another must listen is the episode that comes in the number two spot on this top 10 list. That's “Episode 75: What to Do When Nothing is Converting with Your Clients”. Nothing drives me crazier than someone who says, “I've been pitching for two years and haven't had any results.” Never wait until the point where it's been six months, a year, or even two years before you ask questions about what you could be doing more effectively and figuring out why nothing is landing.

When I've worked one on one with freelancers in this situation, 9 of 10 times there's something wrong in their process. That's pretty easily fixed. It could be that their pitches are terrible or their work samples don't speak to what they're claiming in their pitch. They're targeting the wrong clients or they're not pitching enough. And so all of those things are really within your control as a freelancer and business owner. So listen in on what I recommend you do, based on where you're at in your business and some of the challenges that you're having if nothing is working.

1.    Episode 80

And number one on the list of Top 10 episodes is “Episode 80: 10 Habits of Successful Six Figure Freelancers”. At the time I'm recording this episode, I am working on the final draft for my second book, which will come out in October 2020, “The Six Figure Freelancer”.

I've done a lot of interviews with other six figure freelancers.  And I've worked with quite a few aspiring and current six figure freelancers in a coaching capacity. I've taken some of the things that they all have in common, or some of the habits they tend to most frequently have or work towards, to be successful.

Even if your goal isn't to have a six figure or multi six figure business, it's very important to think about the mindsets and the habits that other people who run a business at that level have. Because even adopting some of those could help you with your time management, your client selection, or with the way that you attract clients to you. You may be thinking, “I don't have the time or the interest to build a six figure freelance business.” It's still valuable to listen in to those different habits and workflows that six figure freelancers adopt because it can really make a difference in your business, even if you are only a side hustler.

That's my top 10 favorite episodes of this podcast since I launched in 2017.

Remember, if you have an episode idea, you can submit that to info@betterbizacademy.com. For those of you who have been tuning in since the beginning, thanks for hanging around until Episode 100. And I hope the future episodes continue to serve you just as well and help you really scale your freelance business.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

I’m so glad you're tuning in for another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast. Now this episode was inspired by a handful of one on one clients and strategy session clients who come to me because they feel like they're not booking enough business or that their pitches aren't converting. I recently talked about this in my Facebook group because most of the time, when I dig a little bit deeper with these coaching clients, I find out that they're not really sending any pitches at all. So that's why this episode is focused on how much you should really be pitching depending on the phase that you're at in your business.

Now, it's important to remember that even an experienced freelancer is going to have ups and downs.

So you'll need to adjust your pitching expectations based on where you're at in your business. A fully booked freelancer is probably not going to pitch as much as someone who just lost their biggest or only client and now essentially has to build their business from the ground up.

The reason I want to cover this on the podcast is because it comes up in such a similar way. So often I hear somebody say, “I'm not getting enough business. I really wanted to be fully booked. I wanted to replace my day job with freelancing.”  And they sort of lead with that concern

or complaint. And then I dig a little deeper and say, “Okay, well, how many pitches did you send last week?” The answer is almost always something like two, one, or none.

That really confuses me. Because would you go to your personal trainer and complain, or your spouse or your friend and complain by saying, “I'm not really building any muscle.” If the answer to that was, “I go to the gym once a month, or twice a week for 20 minutes, essentially doing the absolute bare minimum.”

The truth is that you always should be pitching as a freelancer.

I think a lot of times people assume that once you're fully booked, you can turn that part of your business off. That is not true. I believe that you should always be pitching. So let's start with this idea of being the new freelancer who's really looking to scale their business up, or the intermediate experienced freelancer who has recently taken a major hit in some way.

A major hit could be that you recognized that you had a collection of toxic clients and that you went ahead and fired a lot of them. It could be that you had one client or a few big clients that let you go. I've had one on one coaching clients cope with that as well. Where they had one huge client then that client’s business folded or something else happened where they had to step away. It could be that you took some time off from freelancing.  So you're not new to the game, but you had to take a couple of months off for personal or professional reasons. And now you're coming back and you really need to ramp your business up.

Again, these are what I would consider more like crisis pitching situations. And you definitely need to turn up the volume on how much pitching you're doing in order for that to be successful. It is not enough to jump back into the game and send one pitch or two pitches per week.

Now, people are often looking for this magic number.

I'm not guaranteeing that what I'm going to tell you is going to be your magic number. But if you're not sending a minimum of 25 pitches a week, I never want to hear that your pitches are not working. If you're sending 25 pitches a week or real close to it, like 22-23, and nothing is converting, then we have a problem with the pitch, your samples, or how you're approaching people.  You might be targeting the wrong clients. 

But when you're only pitching once or twice a week, you do not have enough data to say that this isn't working. That is the absolute bare minimum that a fully booked freelancer should be sending. So if you are going crisis mode or if you are new, promise yourself that you're going to send 25 pitches a week.

Now I include everything in that 25 pitches.

That includes job board pitches, Upwork, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, and sending cold email pitches. That even includes if you do have previous clients, if you're that experienced freelancer, that includes following up with them and reaching out to see if there's more business they can offer you.

For example, I've had a client for three years that all of a sudden they just stopped assigning me projects around the end of December. And right now, we're about one month later when I'm recording this episode. And I didn't know why that was.  But the job I couldn't get them to respond to me in the Upwork work room. So I just closed the job and left them feedback and was like, “Okay, well what do I do now?”

The next step for me was finding the owner of that company who had had a few conversations with in the Upwork work room. And who I knew was the person who was paying the invoices. I found him on LinkedIn. And I connected with him.  I sent him a personalized message about who I was, in case he didn't remember. And we kind of had some back and forth for a couple of days. And it wasn't until he consistently saw me posting on LinkedIn that I think my name kept popping up into his brain.

This is one of the strategies I go over a lot in LinkedIn for freelancers.

It's often the lurkers or the people that you may have a really firm outreach method with, but they don't necessarily respond to that. It's sometimes the fact that they're looking and watching your profile. And they hear from you enough and see you enough that they reach out.

So for me that outreach was considered a pitch for that particular week.

I was re engaging that client and initiating that conversation all over again. And that client immediately after seeing me post different things about my business on LinkedIn, some of which were not even related to freelancing, suddenly reached out and said, “Hey, we really need to bring you on with a retainer.  We really have several projects per month that we need your help with.” So we negotiated that contract very quickly and got things going.

So that's just one example like a pitch does not always have to be from square one, you sit down and you write it. It can be a follow up. And it can be Upwork or can be all of the other things that I've mentioned. It could be following up with someone that you met at a networking meeting in person and you're trying to initiate that process.

I don't know why it's become so common that a lot of freelancers think that we have a lot of benefits in our business.  It is a lot easier to win clients, thanks to things like the internet. And thanks to things like job boards like Upwork. But that doesn't mean it's easy. If it were as easy as spending five seconds a day on your marketing, then everyone would be a freelancer.

The fact that everyone is not a freelancer should be telling you that there is work going on behind the scenes.

And it is not just the work that you do for your clients. As a freelancer, you are a salesperson.   That is your job. Yes, you might create content. As a virtual assistant, you might do admin tasks. You might design logos and other tools. But more importantly, you are a salesperson. And if you are not starting that sales process, initiating conversations, and sending out pitches, you will eventually have a lot of your work dry up.

This is something where a lot of those more experienced freelancers fall into a really bad habit that I will talk about in a moment. So if you're new or if you are in crisis mode, 25 pitches a week no complaining about problems with your pitching or that your business isn't growing, if you're not sending 25 pitches a week. Because if I am working with you one on one or if

you're in a strategy session, if you're in my facebook group, or you respond to one of my emails, and you know you have a legitimate concern, which is “I'm not booking business. My business isn't growing. I don't have enough clients on the books.”

My first question to you is going to be how much you are pitching? And if your answer is an hour a week or two pitches a week or three pitches a week, it is simply not enough. You're not serious about growing your business if you are only doing it a handful of times per week. So there needs to be a little bit of an expectation adjustment there as far as what it really takes to grow your business and to bring in business.

So perhaps you’ve been booked for a while.

So that was part one is for the person who's new, and for the person who's in crisis mode. Now, let's switch gears into the freelancer who's been at this for a while and is close to fully booked or is fully booked. This is a myth that a lot of freelancers assume, “Well, I'm good. I'm fully booked. I'm going to stop marketing.” And this really comes back to bite you if you need to fire a client. If a client's business folds or if a client fires you, that can be devastating if you've done absolutely no marketing for the last one to three months. Because you're essentially starting from zero in that crisis mode as well.

To guard against this, I strongly recommend having a pipeline of warm leads at all times.

This means that you might dial your marketing back, but you're still actively involved in marketing. So even when I'm fully booked, I am still posting articles on LinkedIn. And I'm still following other thought leaders on LinkedIn commenting on their posts and responding to their comments on mine. I'm still checking Upwork. And I'm still checking the daily job boards once a day. I'm not putting hours and hours into that effort. Instead, I might be only putting 30 minutes a day into Upwork. But I never let my marketing just sit there.

Perhaps I've got that process streamlined.

And I've got a virtual assistant posting on LinkedIn for me and I feel like I'm good. I still should be taking forward action steps with my marketing every single week. So maybe I outsource a lot of my marketing tasks to keep it on autopilot. But I might say, “You know what, I don't really have a funnel. I'm not offering a freebie to my clients where they get something after enrolling in my email list. And I'm not using that to nurture my leads and follow up with them.” You may say something like, “My blog sucks. I really need to fix it and pick the 10 blog post topics I'm going to write about next.” Those are also ways that you can still be involved in marketing, when you're close to fully booked or fully booked. Take on some of those bigger projects, so that you can continue to have people who are reaching out to you.

You know best what your turnaround time is on your pitches. For example, maybe you pitch on Upwork jobs. And it's like three to five days later and you've got that contract set up on Upwork. If you're doing cold outreach to somebody on LinkedIn or through emails, it might take a lot longer than three to five days. So pitching today, even on that simmer mode, isn't about the business you get today. It's about getting that person as a warm lead in your pipeline for the future. So the pitches that I send today, on my low power mode, are really about the best business that I'm hoping to book two, three, or four months later.

You can see why that's so important that you continue to send pitches even when you are fully booked or very close to fully booked.

Because what's the worst case scenario that could happen? Someone wants to hire you and you don't have capacity yet? Great. Put them on a waitlist. Tell them it's going to be another couple of weeks before you can bring them on. Fire a low paying client that you hate and replace it with this better person. I've never understood why people will hold back from pitching because they're fully booked.

I still think it's a good idea to have warm leads in the pipeline. You can always tell them no if you can't do the project right now. And you can always tell anyone no if they present a project to you that you're not interested in working on. You can always say no. And that puts you in the primary power position as the decider. Yes, you're reaching out to the client, but you are by no means obligated to work with someone just because you pitch them.

So why wouldn't you open yourself up to as many opportunities as possible? Where you're in the decision maker deciding whether you want to bring this client on or not. And what that looks like.  Perhaps you pitch them and you're pretty close to fully booked right now and you have one client whose contract is wrapping up. Use that as a negotiation and persuasion tactic. When you're talking to this new prospective client mentioned, “Hey, in two weeks, I have an opening on my calendar because I'm wrapping up a project. If you sign in the next 72 hours, I can get you on my calendar for two weeks from now and you can spend the interim two weeks getting me the information I need to do the job and getting me set up.”

So don't stop pitching because you assume that you're going to be fine or because you think that, “Oh, what happens if I get too much business?”

Listen, you can always negotiate around that. You could outsource that to a subcontractor. You could put the person on a waitlist. And you could give them an incentive like they have to sign up sooner and get the first available spot. There's so many options that you can pursue with that.

So it should never be an excuse, because that's what it is. It’s an excuse as to why you're not doing pitching when you're fully booked.

Now, the amount of work that you do on pitching will vary a lot based on where you're at in your business and the seasons as well.

I encourage you to look back at some of the previous episodes about slow seasons in your freelance business that will help you kind of prepare for that. There are lots of people who say, “Oh, every day is an opportunity to do business.” Yeah, sure. But your pool of people is much smaller in the three weeks surrounding Christmas. It's essentially a dead zone in August when nobody is even in the office and a lot of people are cramming in their end of summer vacations.

So can you get business during those times? Sure. But it's not going to be as consistent or as easy as it might be during other periods. So perhaps, let's say it's in the fall. You recognize that December is coming. Perhaps you turn up the heat on your marketing and your pitching now after recognizing that December in January might be a little bit slower months. So maybe you put in a little more marketing effort to try to secure some clients on longer retainers to get you through those months.

Pitching should always be either in the foreground or the background of your business.

It should never disappear entirely. And I have met way too many freelancers who have put it off, have not done it, or who think it's going to be a lot less work than it is. And the truth is, if you are not booked at all, if you have no clients, if you have one client, or if you're new,  you need to be doing 25 pitches a week. The first question I'm going to ask if you are fully booked or pretty close or you're an experienced freelancer and you have a couple clients but you haven't quite filled out your client roster with as many people or as much money as you would like.  Then you can definitely turn down the power of your marketing plan.

But it should still be something that you work on every single week, even if it's in small ways.  Even if that's 30 minutes a week that you take to write a handful of LinkedIn posts with the right hashtags. It could be that you get up every morning before getting started and you connect with five people on LinkedIn or you scan the job boards to see what's new. You do all of your follow ups together. It doesn't have to be a massive project when you are close to fully booked. But you always should be doing something that moves you in a forward direction with your business.

Can you believe we're just a couple of episodes away from hitting 100 on the Advanced Freelancing, and previously known as Better Biz Academy podcast? I'm very excited to chat with today's guest, Rachel Richards. She really has an amazing and inspiring story that I'd love for you to hear.

The reason that I wanted to have Rachel on the show is because she is really a master at passive income and has so much excellent insight she can share with us about how to get started with this. This topic comes up a lot. And that's why I felt like we needed to cover this on the show.

A lot of people get confused by the whole process of setting up your passive income streams. 

Is it really passive? How do you make all of that work for you? Rachel has an amazing background. She graduated in only three years at age 20 without debt. She used to be a financial advisor and published her first book in 2017 over 12,000 copies of it. So she quit her full time job at age 27 in August 2019, and is retired now living off of $10,000 a month in passive income.

So she has five rental properties with 35 units total, royalties from her books, royalties from her print on demand business, and her passive income which ranges between 10 to 12k a month.  She has more than replaced her full time income allowing her to retire early, to speak professionally, travel and pursue her interests. And she talks a lot in her books about passive income, aggressive retirement and “money, honey” about savings buckets investing, and how to get started with passive income and different streams.

Now, my interview with her is great.

There's lots of excellent information. I want to call your attention to one of the comments that she makes towards the end of the interview about how to leverage the fact that you've worked in different positions or even done different freelance gigs to figure out what you do and don't like. This comes up from time to time with some of my one on one coaching clients who have this dream of being a freelancer, and then once they're in the thick of it realize they actually hate it.

One of my one on one coaching clients, for example, it took her doing several freelance writing gigs for her to say, ”I don't want to do this anymore.”  And so we've had to step back and figure out what is the service or consulting that she can offer that's going to light her up because freelance writing isn't it.

This is why it's so powerful that you start your freelance business and dip your toes in the water of side income and passive income prospects starting small because you might not like what you do.  Maybe owning rental units isn't right for you because you hate it.  And maybe publishing books, you love the writing part, but being an author is at least 50% marketing and maybe you don't like that.

So figuring out what suits you from your background as well as knowing your own personality can really help you go in the right direction when it comes to building in different types of freelance services or passive income. If you love this episode, please drop me a line at info@betterbizacademy.com. I'd also love it if you left the show a review on Apple iTunes. Thanks again for tuning in. And we're almost to Episode 100, where I will be recapping my top 10 favorite episodes from the show.

It's time for another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast.

And today we're talking about a topic that comes up all the time with freelancers who have scaled their business to the point where they're relatively successful.  They're fully booked or close to fully booked and it's time to start thinking about expanding.

Another common issue that a lot of freelancers run into is, ”Okay, I'm only making money when I sit at my computer and work for my clients.  Which means if I'm sick, if I take vacation, or if there's some other reason I can't work, no income is coming in.”  And that's why I'm so excited about my guest today, Rachel Richards.  We are going to be talking all about passive income. And she is the queen of passive income.

I'd love to kick off by hearing about one of the things that jumped out from Rachel’s bio. 

And that is that she graduated with no debt. I know that that's so rare. These days, most of us, myself included, we graduate with tons of debt.  And it almost feels like you're going to be paying it off the rest of your life. So I'd love to know how Rachel made that transition and paid and graduated with no debt.

Rachel’s take for graduating without debt.

It's definitely a tough thing to accomplish, especially with the crazy cost of college these days. But I do have a couple tips. So the first thing I did is I started thinking ahead when I was in high school, in terms of what scholarships I could apply for.

So that got me motivated to do really well in high school.  I was academically doing really well. I had a great GPA. I was also getting involved in as many clubs and everything as I could. And that helped me to earn scholarships to pay for school.

So I went to a Centre College which is a private liberal arts school here in Kentucky.  And it costs over $40,000 a year. That's a ton of money. So with the scholarships that I was able to earn, I had a really big academic scholarship and I also had a piano scholarship. That helped me out a lot. But I was able to cover $30,000 out of the $40,000 in scholarships.

Another tip I would say is that I took a lot of AP classes in high school. 

And I actually ended up graduating in only three years. So when I went into Centre, I was going in as a second semester freshman and almost a sophomore. I was able to graduate a year early, which saves me that entire year's worth of tuition.

And then finally, the most important tip I would give is that, when I was in high school looking at this enormous expense, I was starting to feel really discouraged and afraid.

I had this really big fear of going into debt. And I was discouraged because, at the time, I was working at American Eagle and I was making paychecks that were maybe $200 per week. I knew that to make $10,000 a year to cover that gap and be able to pay for my tuition that American Eagle just wasn't going to cut it. No matter how many hours I worked, I wasn't going to be able to afford that $10,000.

So I looked into other jobs and I actually ended up selling Cutco cutlery.  So it's not an MLM let me just say that first because I know there's a lot of MLM hate out there these days, but it's not an MLM.

It's a direct sales company. And the reason I loved it so much is because it was the first time I was in a job where the harder I worked, the more money I made. I knew I could outwork anybody. I could work all day long and make a ton of money. So it really got me motivated and I was able to earn a lot of money from commission.

So I worked hard that first summer before entering college.

And I was able to make $10,000 that summer. So I was basically paying my way through school. Even though my parents were less than thrilled about the idea of me selling sharp objects to their family and friends. That's what I did. And I did it successfully. So those are kind of my three tips. That's the way I was able to pay for school.

There's so much good information there.

And I love the idea of taking as many AP classes as you can. I also know people who in college would take community college classes over the summer to get ahead.  If there's certain things you have to take, like intro to biology or a math class, why take that as part of your traditional education at an expensive college? Why not just make that be something you take for much cheaper at a community college?  Knock it out of the way.  You could even do that the summer before you go to college. I think that's super important. 

We have a fair amount in common there because I went to a private women's college in Virginia.

And our price tag was not as bad as yours, but it was $32,000. And it was the same thing. It was like we had after scholarships, we had a shortfall of like, $2,000 a year and my mom and I were like, “Okay, there's a way we can make this work.”  And when I got one more scholarship to cover that, then I was able to keep my work, study money to buy groceries or little things that I might need throughout the semester.

But I love that idea of kind of speeding up your time in college. 

It's so expensive.  Even if you're getting great rates at an in state school, it's still expensive. And if you can cut that one year off, maybe put in a little bit of extra work, and prepare for it in high school with those AP classes, that’s a great way to save a lot of money and graduate with very little or no debt at all.

So Rachel is like the queen of passive income. Why don't you give us a little bit of a brief introduction? How did you get into generating passive income streams?

Rachel’s take on passive income.

For those listening, just to kind of define what passive income is. And I know this sounds too good to be true, but passive income is money that is earned with little to no ongoing work.

So I'm sure you're familiar with JK Rowling. She is the author who wrote the Harry Potter series 25 years ago. She did all the hard work and the writing back then. And today, she's still making millions of dollars from the Harry Potter series. So that's passive income. It takes time to create, but once it's in place, it takes little to no ongoing work in order to maintain that income. And that's why it's so beautiful.

Why I think that’s helpful.

That's very helpful because I think one of the things that bothers me about the term passive income, is that people are always asking me about it.  And they're like, “What are your passive income streams?” And I have a side business. We sell all my old lesson plans from my teaching days. We have over 250 lesson plans for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers. In a sense, it's passive, because I spendless than an hour a month even looking at it.

But that being said, we do put some work into it.  We pin pins on Pinterest. And so it'll be interesting to hear more about what your passive income streams are, and if they are truly passive.  But I was just curious, how did you get into them? I mean, obviously, he previously worked as a financial advisor and had more of a traditional job. How did you branch out into these passive income streams?

Rachel branches out into her passive income streams.

So a few years ago, as I was learning about this amazing concept of passive income, I had this epiphany that once your passive income exceeds your living expenses, you're retired. And I just mean retired in the sense of being financially independent and not having to go to work anymore.

So that's what my husband and I started working towards. We actually started in 2017. And it only took us about two and a half years to build up enough passive income to retire.

So in 2017, the first thing we did is we had always wanted to invest in real estate.

We always knew that real estate was a really great tool for building long term wealth. And it wasn't even necessarily at the time. I didn't even think I put together the dots of creating the passive income, but it was just something we always wanted to do.

So in January of 2017, we bought our first duplex. We live in Louisville, Kentucky, so it's a low cost of living area and it's a great area to invest in. And the duplex we bought, we got a crazy good deal on. It was $100,000.

So we put we only had to put about $20,000 in for the down payment. And it was immediately generating $500 per month in profit and profitable cash flow. That's after expenses. So that was such a great income stream for us. We immediately took that money, saved, and reinvested it so that we could afford to save up enough money for the next down payment for the next rental property.

Now rental property, I'll hear something people that will say, “Wow, that's so passive and amazing.” And I'll hear some people that say, ”No, rental properties are not passive at all.” I think it's definitely in the passive category and that you're not having to work a 40 hour week to maintain it.

Within a passive income, though, there's a wide spectrum. 

Some things are completely passive. And some things are less passive. I personally think it really depends on whether you have a property manager or not.  So in my book, when I'm talking about how to create passive income, I always say invest in real estate, get rental properties, but make sure you have a property manager.  Otherwise, it's not going to be as passive as you want it to be.

So that's kind of the first income stream we started with. And then later on in 2017, I launched my first best selling book “Money, Honey”. I was generating royalty income off of that as well. So we had these two passive income streams, rental income and royalty income, and we focused on growing those as much as we possibly could for the next few years.

Fast forward to today, we now own over 35 rental units in Louisville, Kentucky. And I just launched my second best selling book. So I think last year, at some point last year, we hit this $10,000 per month mark, where we were making $10,000 a month in passive income.   Which was more than enough to cover our expenses. So that's when we were able to call ourselves retired. And that's when I quit my job.

I love the distinction between different ways you can define passive.

You can decide how passive really is this and the more you can build in the right structure from the beginning, the easier it is. And that was something I did too with my side business of selling lesson plans. I really didn't want to maintain this every month. I don't want to deal with the customer service questions if someone has problems with the download.

So from the beginning, I had all these lessons and I hired a virtual assistant and said, “Hey, are you comfortable with this?  It's going to take you less than five hours a month to deal with all of this, but I don't really want to be part of it.” I just wanted it to be there and be running on the side. And it's really nice to have that because I never have to get involved in any of that administrative stuff. But money's being generated every month.

So I have two questions following up on that.

So the rental property thing is so interesting. I think we hear this a lot from people who are very wealthy and very successful financially. You've got to invest in real estate. So my first question is, how did you get that initial money for that down payment of your first property? Did that come from personal savings? Was that another passive income stream that paid for the down payment?

Rachel shares where her initial investment money came from.

Yeah, so that came from personal savings. And I'll talk a little bit about how I did that. But then we'll also talk about the ways that people can invest in real estate without having a large chunk of money. So don't let that stop you.

I was in a situation where I graduated without debt. My husband also graduated without debt because he was in the military. So he used his benefits to pay for school. And then we both had pretty lucrative careers. I have always been a financially frugal person.  As a former financial advisor, I knew how to manage my money well.

So, we didn't have debt. I was managing my money. Well, we were both making good money and didn't have kids, which is a pretty big expense. So we were just able to save pretty aggressively.

I graduated from college when I was 20. And then I invested in my first rental property when I was 24. So, after four years, or I think it probably took less time, we had more than enough money for the down payment on the first rental property.

The big difference…

I was just curious, it's obviously quite a big difference, going from having one property where you're getting your feet wet, figuring out how this works. And now you have 35 rental properties. How do you keep all of that straight? I'm sure you have a property manager for each one. But how do you monitor all the logistics with those different rental properties?

Rachel gets real on logistics.

Yeah, so we did have property managers for a while. We're between them now, because the last people didn't work out. But just to clarify, we have 35 rental units, not property. So we have five buildings.  Three of them are apartment buildings where it's 11 or 12 units in each building.

But it is a lot to manage. It's a lot of work when you don't have a property manager, especially when you get to like 25-30 units, then it's really it's a lot of work. And you can't really call it passive anymore.  Which is why you really have to start out knowing that you're going to have a property manager in mind.

But in terms of how to keep everything straight. I am a luckily an Excel wizard.  And I love Excel spreadsheets. So I keep everything very organized in terms of the finances, the tenants, the payments, and the maintenance.  We have a pretty good system in place that helps us be a lot more efficient.

Perfect system for a financial whiz.

That's really amazing. And it sounds like it might be the perfect fit for someone who's already a financial whiz or virtual assistant who's really good with spreadsheets and numbers.  It's going to leverage your existing skill set.

Now, I love the fact that you've written books.

A lot of people assume that books are the fast track to passive income. I know when I published my first book, which was done through the traditional publishing process, a lot of people have this vision of what it means to write and sell books.  But it still takes a lot of work to market a book.  And I know that most books that are published never sell more than 250 copies.

Obviously, you are a major exception to that and are seeing continued success with multiple books. What are your recommendations for someone who's thinking about writing a book and really wants to get traction on Amazon or on any of the other platforms where books are sold?

Rachel’s recommendations when writing a book.

I think you made a great point about over the long run you still do have to market your book. So when you're thinking about passive income, you really need to consider how passive do I want it to be? Because there are things you can certainly outsource.  You can hire a social media manager.  You can outsource or whatnot.

And if you choose not to do things like going on the radio or the TV or doing or you know doing podcast interviews, then you can certainly make it a lot more passive. So everyone that's trying to create a passive income stream really just needs to think from the beginning. How passive do I want this to be? And what can I outsource to make it more passive?

Now books specifically…

Yes, the statistics say that most books sell 250 copies. So to have launched a book that's been so successful is still just shocking to me. My first book “Money, Honey” has now sold over 15,000 copies. And my second book, “Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement” has already sold over 3000 copies. And I just launched it a couple months ago.

I think there's a lot to be said for doing market research. I could write a book about cooking and launch it.   There are thousands of other cookbooks or books about cooking out there. So how could mine be different?

And it's the same thing or maybe even more competitive in the financial industry. There's thousands of books about money and finance out there. So why on earth would somebody want to read mine over somebody else's?

If you can't answer that question, then your book won't be successful. You have to be able to articulate what is the unique value that I am bringing.  What's different about my book that nobody else can find in another book?

So for example, in “Money, Honey”, I had this epiphany.

That people my age, female millennials, were coming to me all the time for financial advice.  My family and friends would come to me.  And I loved helping them. And at some point, I began to wonder why they're not taking advantage of some of these websites or books that are out there or trying to learn?

And then what I realized is that a lot of finance books are dry, boring, complex, and intimidating. So then I thought to myself, “Well, how can I make this subject sassy and fun and simple?” So that's what I did with “Money, Honey”. It's sassy and humorous. It's really, really easy to read. It's a quick read. And it has resonated so much with female millennials. So it really hit a nerve with them. It’s really taken off because of that. It’s just spread like wildfire. Basically, through word of mouth. I haven't done any paid advertising.

I know a lot of people have a dream of writing a book.

That's amazing. And I think a lot of people have this dream of writing a book. I believe that a lot of people, most people do, have at least one good book in them that they could write. But we all know many people who say, “Oh, yeah, I want to write a book. I've always wanted to write a book.” And then it never happens.

I know one of the biggest challenges is when you have a full plate.  Obviously, Rachel had other things going on in her life.  She was working on all of these different rental properties and having that happening at the same time as writing a book.

What tips do you have for someone who's busy? I mean, a lot of my audience, they're freelancers who are successful. So they've probably got a close to fully booked or fully booked schedule.  And a lot of people start off with the best of intentions and motivation, but lose that energy. So what recommendations do you have for people who think they might want to write a book and somehow need to find a way to fit that around their existing business and obligations?

Rachel’s recommendations for writing a book.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I totally agree. I think everyone has at least one book in them. So I get really excited when I can help people with this topic. But I would say I have two tips.

The first one is to set aside time at the beginning of every day.  Because if you wait until after work, or after whatever activity you have planned, the further you go along in your day, the less likely you are to actually sit down and set aside those 10 or 20 minutes to start writing.

When I was writing my first book “Money, Honey”, I was employed full time.  And I was investing in real estate. We all have crazy schedules. We're all busy. So it's just about prioritizing that time and making sure you do it first thing in the morning before things start getting in your way.

And then the second tip...

So one day, I sat down and I decided I'm going to track how I spend my time in 15 minute intervals for two days in a row. So literally every 15 minutes, I would write down what did I do the last 15 minutes? And yes, it was kind of tedious to do that and kind of a pain for two days. But man was that eye opening. It's sort of like doing a budget for where your time is going and where you want it to go or not.

And what I realized after two days is that I was saying that I was the busiest person in the world. I couldn't possibly take another appointment. I didn't have any time to do anything. Once I saw how I was spending my time, and this is embarrassing to admit, but I realized I was spending three or four hours per day on social media, or watching TV.

Most times we don't have any perspective. You don't really know where your time is going until you actually sit down and track it. So I think that's an eye opening exercise. Anyone can do that and really easily figure out where am I wasting my time and where can I free up time so I can spend it writing my book or researching book ideas.

It's so powerful to be able to track your time.

That's something I also recommend to business owners who are thinking that they might not need to outsource anything to a virtual assistant or a subcontractor. Because you think that you're being productive and doing all of these things. But when you track your time, you realize how much of your time you're spending on silly things like answering the same questions in an email over and over again or formatting a blog post and WordPress. And that might not be the best use of your time.

I think any of the tedious nature of keeping track of that is more than balanced out by the fact that it really calls your attention to what are you doing with your time. Because you'll find yourself being more mindful.  You’ll say, “Hey, I wasted the last 15 minutes. How did I go down this rabbit hole on Instagram scrolling?”  Now you're going to be more mindful for the future time periods that you're tracking even within that day and it can really help open your eyes.

I also really support our advice of writing first thing in the day.

Being a full time freelance writer for seven years, if I used up all of my writing energy and creativity on things for my clients, there was absolutely no way that I was even typing one word on my books at night. And so it had to be that first priority. The first thing you work on every day.

And I think sometimes people set these big, crazy goals that you can't really accomplish like, “Well, I'm going to add 5000 words to my book this Saturday.” Wouldn't it just be easier if you said you're going to do like 1000 words every morning, Monday through Friday? Don't set these giant, enormous goals that put so much pressure on you and feel like such a letdown if you fail.

If you miss Tuesday morning’s 1,000 word writing session, you still got at least 4000 words towards your book. That's much more effective than putting this pressure on. I'm going to spend the whole day writing Saturday and I'll get 5000 words. And you get zero and that disappointment is crushing because then it's like, “Well, I guess I have to wait to get another week until my next Saturday to write.” So breaking it down into that morning activity is really important.

So we've talked about two different types of passive income streams, books and rental properties. Are there other recommendations for passive income or side income streams that you can recommend for people who have online business savvy and skills?

Rachel’s other passive income recommendations.

Yes, absolutely. And this kind of gets into the meat of my newest book, “Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement”. In that book, I talk about 28 different passive income models. And anyone can do it. Passive income either takes money or time or sometimes both to create. So you really have to start with asking yourself, do I have more time? Or do I have more money that I can put into building this passive income stream?

Royalty income is a really big category of passive income. So that includes what we talked about launching and writing a book. But it could also include launching a course. It could include something called print on demand platforms where you're earning royalties off of products that you sell without having to touch the products, without having any inventory. A print on demand platform.

There's also passive income that would fall into the e-commerce or advertising category. So that could be affiliate marketing, blogs, or offering some type of membership. And again, you have to be careful about the way you set this up. Because when you start a blog, it could either be not passive at all, it could be completely active.

Or if you build it the right way, and outsource the writing and content creation, then it can be passive. That's something that Bobby Hoyts did. He's the founder of the Millennial Money Man, the website and the blog. And he has a really large community and online classes that he offers. I actually interviewed him for my book as well as a ton of other different subject matter experts.

But yeah, there's tons of ideas out there. So I would encourage people to research, get started, and don't hold yourself back because you don't think that you can do it or that you have the right skill set.

Excellent advice. Now how long do you think it takes to really get traction with passive income streams? And does that vary based on the different type of income stream you're pursuing?

Yes, it definitely varies. And, for example, portfolio income is probably the only passive income that's truly 100% passive.  It literally doesn't require any work. And when I say portfolio income, I mean investing it in investments that are earning dividends or producing income for you.

So when you decide you're going to, you have to have a large amount of money to do this. But the good thing is, it doesn't really require any time. You just invest the money and then it's generating income for you. So that's something that has no time requirement in the beginning and it can generate passive income immediately. Of course, you need to have a ton of money to do it. So you kind of have to  pick your battles there.

There are other income streams like writing a book. Of course that's going to take months of researching and outlining, writing the book, and putting together a marketing plan. And then to actually launch it and sustain the success long term requires marketing and having a really great strategy.

So for example, for my first book “Money, Honey”, I started writing it in January of 2017. And I launched it in September of 2017. So it's about nine months. But I was also working full time. And I also quit for four months in the middle of that because I was convinced that my book was awful and it was going to be an embarrassment. So I quit writing for four full months. And if not for that, I really think I could have launched it within four or five months.

In my first book, or in my first month of lunch, I made about $500 or $600. And then I quickly grew that income stream to over $1,000 per month within the first few months. But you have to account for all the time it took to launch the book in the first place.

And then another example would be real estate investing. You do need some money for that. It doesn't have to be a ton of money. Then you're gonna have to spend time just finding the right property and doing the research. And sometimes you'll get lucky and the right property will appear out of thin air and you'll make an offer and everything will happen really fast.

But it's something I always say you have to be really patient with. Because it could take months to find the right property. I think it took us nine months of searching before we found our first duplex and closed on it. So you just have to be patient, you have to put the work in in the beginning so that you can then enjoy the fruits of your labor later.

That's perfect advice.

Because I think a lot of people hear these great stories about somebody like you who's very successful with passive income streams. And of course that started smaller and you were willing to invest the time and wait for the right thing. So it wasn't like you said, “Okay, I'm going to create online courses. I'm going to write books. And I'm going to buy rental property. I'm going to try all the things all at once and it should be successful in 90 days or less.” That's not how it works.

But you started off with a lot of motivation. And then you continued to tweak and improve things as you went. I think that's so important for anyone thinking about passive income. It might be a slow build, but the long term payoff is really something that can be worth it.

So it sounds like you've built a lot of your financial knowledge and your gold around your previous career as a financial advisor. So what strategies or advice did you take with you when you left that career? And which ones did you leave behind?

I was a financial advisor at first very early on in my career. And then the last few years, I was actually a finance analyst. But there were a lot of things that I learned as a financial advisor. And one of the things I actually learned just kind of on a more personal note. The reason I went into financial advising is because I had this awesome sales experience selling Cutco knives. And then I also wanted to help people invest their money. So I thought it was going to be the perfect career for me.

It turns out that when I actually got into that job, I realized it was a lot cold calling and prospecting. And although I could be really good at that, if I forced myself to be, it was just draining and exhausting, and it didn't come naturally to me. So it probably took longer than it should have for me to realize this wasn't the career for me. And I really needed to make a change.

It's hard because when you're a millennial or a recent grad, and you're trying to navigate your way through  the job market, you don't want to have all these short stints on your resume. Because they say that looks bad to an employer. But at the same time, there's time to do that early in your early in your career where it's really not going to hurt you.

So you really have to give yourself the opportunity to work at a few different jobs and see, what do you not like about this job? What do you like about this job?  That way, you can really figure out what you want your long term career to be. So that's kind of my takeaway, just from a career and personal perspective. 

I think that most people can manage their money and invest on their own. Yes, they will have to do some learning and some reading. But I think that we really overcomplicate the subject of investing. We make it way harder and more intimidating than it needs to be. And in reality, investing can be a super simple activity.

I would also say to educate yourself if you do choose to use a financial advisor. I think that's great because it's better to invest with a financial advisor than not to invest at all, but make sure that you're aware of how financial advisors are paid.

Some financial advisors are paid based off commissions. That means that they are not incentivized in the correct way and they're not acting as your fiduciary. But other financial advisors are fee only financial advisors.  So they're being paid a fee of the total percent of assets they have under management. That means that if they grow your money successfully, they will get paid more. So those incentives are lined up the exact way they need to be lined up for them to be their fiduciary. So if you are going to work with a financial advisor, just make sure you understand how they're paid, how they're incentivized, and whether they are truly acting in your best interest.

That is such excellent advice.

I've heard a lot of the same. And I think a lot of people are scared about how you get started with investing knowing that there are a lot of brokers and advisors out there who have the reverse incentive to make a lot of transactions and move things around so that they can collect a fee every time that happens. And as someone who might not be educated on how all that works, it's hard to tell that balance of are these moves really benefiting me? Or is this being done more for the benefit of the advisor?

So you mentioned that everyone should do a little bit of research about getting started with that. And as far as investing, do you have some recommendations of some books or some resources that you love for total beginners?

Yes, I would give my book “Money, Honey”, a five star review.  But I'll give some more resources. But in my book “Money, Honey”, I do talk about how to invest. And I include screenshots and everything. Because one of the questions that would get from my friends was, “Okay, but how do I physically buy the stock? Like what do I do?” So I have screenshots of literally how to set up an investment account, a discount brokerage account, and how to trade and how to buy your first stocks and some advice on how to do that.

Some other really great books. I've read tons of finance books over the years. I love “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. Another really great book is “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” by Ramat Sethi. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. And that's not so much about investing as it is just about practical money hacks and things you can do to just easily save yourself some money.

And for those of you who are interested in getting Rachel's books…

If you have Kindle Unlimited, both of them are available through the Kindle unlimited program, which I really recommend if you don't have Kindle unlimited is well worth the monthly cost that you pay to be able to have up to 10 titles out at a time. I've already added both of her books to my downloads. So no excuses to not at least start with Rachel's books.

So my kind of last wrap up question for you is, how do you balance the fact that passive income can vary from one month to another? How do you balance that when you've got multiple things that can change every month?

That's a great question. And something my husband and I were really careful to do when we were working towards early retirement is, you know, if your living expenses are $5,000 per month, and your passive income is $5,000 per month, yes, you're technically retired.  You've covered your expenses. But that leaves you no room in case you don't make as much income as you thought or in case your expenses are more than you thought. Or if you just want to continually be saving money, which we did.

Then we kind of really re-evaluate it. And we said, “Well, for our living expenses are $5,000 a month, and we want our passive income to be $10,000 a month.” So that's an enormous margin of error or buffer room. Most months, we're able to still save a lot of money. But that means that if our passive income is only $7,000 or $8,000, which is a lot less than what it should be, or what we would think it would be, that means we're still more than offsetting our expenses.

So when you're kind of projecting out and planning out how to achieve this, I would just basically do it based on the worst case scenario. So in your worst month, if your passive income is only x, is it still enough to cover your expenses? And if not, then you need to work on getting your passive income higher or reducing your expenses.

That's perfect advice. So aside from getting your books, which are available on Amazon, where else can people go to learn more about you and all of the great work that you're doing?

Anyone can follow me on social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if you just search Money Honey Rachel. You can follow me. And you can message me there. Both of my books are available on ebook and paperback. And my newest book “Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement is” available on audiobook. And “Money, Honey” audio book is about to come out any day now. So definitely follow me! Don't hesitate to reach out because I love to help people with this stuff.

Well, it's really been a pleasure to get to interview Rachel. I know I've learned a lot and I can't wait to read her books. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

It's rare that I find someone else whose advice on freelancing I really trust. But that's not the case for my guest today. Because it's very easy to take and trust her advice. My guest today is Abbi Perets. She wants moms to know you don’t have to choose between kids and career.

She's the coach and mentor moms turn to when they're looking to break into freelance writing and earn great money from home on their own terms. She combines nearly 20 years of experience freelancing for some of the world's biggest companies with first hand knowledge, having five kids of her own, including one with special needs.

She understands the unique challenges moms face every day and has created programs specifically tailored to meet those challenges and empower moms all over the world to have it all. And importantly, we talk in this episode all about how to send great pitches, some of the mistakes that people make when pitching, and how you can avoid those mistakes.

Welcome back, everyone to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing Podcast.

My guest today is one of the few people that I would trust with giving you freelance advice. The list of people I do not trust is way longer. But I am so excited to have Abbi here on the show because she really knows what she's doing. She gives authentic advice. And she's helped a lot of other freelancers, specifically writers, grow their business.

I often feel like people ask me, “Oh, have you worked with so and so? What do you think about this person's courses?” And I feel like all too often I'm saying run away. It's so nice to have a couple of people that I actually do trust. So if somebody asked me advice, I'm happy to be like, “Oh, yeah, you need to go learn email sequences from this person.” It's so awesome to be able to have you on the show. We have a lot in common. We think the same with a lot about business stuff, but I'd love for you to give us a brief introduction, who you are, and what you do right now.

All About Abbi

She runs Successful Freelance Mom. And she is a mom of five kids, including one with special needs. She has worked as a freelance writer for 20 plus years. And today, she still does freelance writing work. And that's something that's really important to her. She still does the work with clients. So she’s not talking about theory that she learned in that work 20 years ago.

Today, she teaches moms how to get started in freelance writing. And she has a couple of courses that are very general on how to get started in freelance writing. Then some of that are very specific and geared towards doing a specific offering a specific service, email sequences to course creators, and she loves it. She loves every second of it.

Abbi hit on something that's one of my pet peeves too. 

And that is somebody who freelanced once 10 years ago or sold one project on Upwork. It's not that they don't have valuable information to share. But I do question whether that's relevant.  We could like just make this like 30 minutes on what we don't like about other people. But I hate to seem that negative, but it's true. 

Because what happens is, and Abbi probably sees this with a lot of her core students, by the time someone comes to you, they might have already looked at or purchased something from someone else and been disappointed and it they’re jaded.

It crushes me because they're very concerned about working with anyone else again. They have these beliefs or ideas about how things should be or have to be because they heard it from somebody else.  And then it didn't work for them. So there's such a mindset thing, especially when you start about all the confidence that it takes and fake it till you make it and being damaged by one person.

My advice...keep looking.

I guess my advice on that would just be that you purchased a product a software worked with somebody, bought their course, bought their ebook, and didn't love it, so keep looking. That person is not the only authority. I would even say that if you bought something of mine and it didn't resonate with you, go find somebody else who teaches that might be able to help you. I just think it's so important that listeners know that because that's always been one of my big things, too.

I don't feel like I can authentically talk about what it means to freelance today, if I'm not at least doing that. I have several clients, right. It's so cool that Abbi has it set up the same way. And I definitely want to talk about email sequences. But what we're hoping to focus on in this episode is pitching.

I'm sure Abbi has seen it. I've seen it. Our clients have seen it. So many pitches are terrible and awful. The sad thing is you can avoid almost all of this. So I asked Abbi to talk about a top two or three things that she sees people doing over and over again that are just wrong. We’re talking wrong on the level of, “Yeah, don't even send the pitch. If you're doing this, just wait until you've got it refined.”

“Hi. I’m a freelance writer.”

Abbi thinks that a thing that someone teaches on the internet that is wrong, is do not start your pitch with “Hi, I'm Abbi and I'm a freelance writer.”  Because guess what, we know who you are. Because it's 2020, she has email, and it says your name right up there! And you probably say in your subject line something about whatever it is that they're looking for in a writer. You don't need to waste anyone’s time. 

She thinks that a lot of people don't realize how much email some of these editors get in an hour, forget about a day. Literally hundreds of emails. They don't have that eight seconds that you've stolen it from them. And in pure resentment, they're just going to

click “Delete”.

That's it. Exactly. And especially if you're pitching on a platform like Upwork, where the client is soliciting a writer or a graphic designer, it's obvious that if you're replying to the post, you do that thing. So you don't need to recap it.

“I’m really good at it.”

The other one that drives me crazy is when people say, “I'm a good freelance writer. I'm really good at it.”   I would hope so. Because you shouldn't be in business if you're mediocre or bad. People still put it in there. You should only say things like, “I've been doing this for five years.” if there's some specific reason that the five years really matters.  Because it's not enough!

Abbi is right about people having such a limited attention span. And if you put the good stuff about you at the bottom of the email, they’re never gonna get there. They're just going to delete it right away and you lost your chance with that editor or with that potential client. So that's definitely a good one. I totally agree with that.

Track your email.

Then this is a little admin thing surrounding the pitching, but Abbi always tells her students to track the email that they're sending. And she does this. She did this with everything. First of all, if she’s sending an email to her husband, she wants to know that he opened it and read it so that he can't tell her late, “Oh, I know I was supposed to do that.” Yeah, you did. Because you read the email, cookie. So I saw you open it six times at work.

Track everything you sent. Because if you see that people are opening your email and you're never getting response, something about your pitch is not resonating with them. They're not giving you a chance.

On the other hand, if you see that it's being opened multiple times, and especially in different locations, then you can tell a pitch is being forwarded around the office, being discussed, maybe in working meetings, that kind of thing. That's a great time to follow up and say, “Are there any Additional questions I can answer for you?”

So just an admin thing around emails. It gives you a sense of how your pitch is being received. And if it's being opened at all, if it's being open and never read again, or if it's being open multiple times. Track your email.

Getting flagged as spam.

That's so good!  Because there's so much information you can get from that. And you don't want to wait until you've sent 40 or 50 pitches and aren't getting any responses. Because I've even seen freelancers who are sending pitches, and for whatever reason, there's something about their email address that's getting them flagged as spam.

So it's not that the pitch is bad, but seeing that in the tracking that no one is even opening it. That tells you that there's something wrong there. Maybe your email address doesn't seem professional enough, or it's reading like a solicitation and the spam filter is catching it. So there's a chance to fix some stuff there.

Email Tracking Software

I know that HubSpot allows you to track up to 200 notifications. So I think that's every time someone opens an email per month for free. I know about mail track as another tracking tool. What do you recommend that freelancers use for tracking?

Abbi has been using Streak which is a free Google Chrome extension. It works with Gmail. And so Streak has a paid version. You don't need the paid version. The paid version is for really a team of people who are doing multiple project management type tasks. The free version is unlimited in how many emails you can track per month and whatever. And it is robust!

So for Abbi, it works exceptionally well.  She uses it herself. And she recommends it to her students.  She loves it.  And there's nothing like Mailtrack. She thinks it puts those little track my mail check at the bottom of every message. So Streak has nothing like that. It's not infallible, but nothing is and it's really, really good for what you need. I can't think of any use case for a freelance writer where  this wouldn't be a good fit.

That makes a lot of sense because I agree. I installed Mailtrack to try it and it drove me crazy. I felt like it was buggy and it put at the bottom of every email that it was being tracked.  Sometimes you don't necessarily want your prospective clients or current clients knowing that you're tracking your email or their email.

It's nice to have that as a secret tool in your arsenal to be like, “Hey, John Smith opened my email 21 times. This is the perfect time for me to write a custom follow up because obviously, there's something about it that got his attention.” But you don't really want to show all your cards with that. So I love that idea. It's so simple to do. It probably does not add any more than a handful of minutes to your pitching process.

A basic misconception.

I think another misconception that people have and we'll talk about this later is that it's as simple as sending a pitch and a client opens your email, reads it, writes back, and goes, “Sure send me the contract. Let's do thousands of dollars of work together.” A lot of the business is in the follow up.  You're setting yourself up for success with that.

Follow up from day one by tracking it just makes it so much easier for you. I see people have these complicated spreadsheets that show when they contacted people. You don't need all that. Use the free version of Streak, get all the benefits of it, and don't add more stuff on your plate. So that's great.

Abbi would also say, if you're not using Gmail, there's so many great tools built right in. They've even got this new, little nudge feature. If you sent an email a couple of days ago, and you haven't had a reply, it'll pop it back into your inbox and say, “Hey, you didn't get a reply to this. Do you want to do anything with that?” So I wouldn't necessarily take Google's advice every single time and immediately send a follow up three days later, but I do love the snooze feature, for example. So she will often snooze that and say, “Hey, remind me again 10 days from now.” Because that's the point where she does want to follow up and she does want to take a look.

Is your email address unprofessional?

So again, on the admin side, we talked about your email address might be coming off as unprofessional or getting flagged as spam. If it's an AOL.com address, It's definitely getting flagged as spam. If it's a hotmail.com address, it's 100% getting flagged as spam. It is 2020, get your own domain name and get a personal email address.

It's not that expensive. I feel like Google charges $6 a month for that. I know I just put one of my websites on the year long plan with Squarespace. And it was one of the bonuses that came with that. A year of professional email. So at the bare minimum, you should be using something @gmail. com, you can probably get away with that if you don't want to deal with the hassle yet or not ready to invest. But it's such a small and easy thing to do to get that yourname@yourname.com or yourname@yourbusiness.com.

Even if you don't have the full website setup yet, you can still leverage that email address.  It comes across a lot more professional because we've all received those annoying emails. Usually it's from SEO services. At least that's who targets me. And it's so obvious that it's a poorly written pitch. I mean, it starts with Dear Sir every time. Which I'm just like, “No, that's not accurate.” But you don't want to come across like those people. You don't want to be the fly by night, template pitch that has no rationalization to it. So try to stand out! Little things like your email address can make a big difference. They really, really can.

And that's going to bring Abbi to her next point. 

I mentioned these things that feel like templated pitches. So she’s all in favor of templates and systems and processes that save you time. But they shouldn't ever feel like templates and processes and systems that you created to make your life easier and to not really care about your clients.

So she has a couple of  rules for business or rules for life or just things that she lives by core values. Don't lie. Don't send an email you'd be embarrassed to show people in your real life. These are basic things to Abbi, but a lot of people don't bother to follow them. So if you are a person who follows them, you will stand out.

One of the things that she thinks about a lot and that she talks about a lot is that you should genuinely care about your clients and the people who you work with. You should really care about them. And you should think of them in a sense, as your friends. Yes, you want to have a professional relationship with them, but you should think of them as people whose well being you care about, whose time you want to protect. So don't send them crap that you'd be embarrassed to show people in your real life when you're emailing someone. 

Put some effort into it.

Even if it's a pitch, and even if you are using a template, put some effort and thought into it. She uses, for example, a tool called a TextExpander tool. There are different versions of this. The one that she uses is literally a $4.99 one time fee app. And it makes her life so much better because she can say of all of these templated responses that she can call up with just a keystroke or two, but then she always goes in and personalizes them.

So the part that doesn't change is the service that she offers. Every single client who she works with gets the same offer, because that's the service that she offers. So it's an email sequence, it costs this much, and if you want a sales page, it's this much. But what she’s pitching to them, why she’s reaching out to this particular client, that's going to be the part where she’s going to put in that personalization.

Be honest.

And she finds that it's most effective, again, if you're honest. If you actually looked at their website, and there was something about it that spoke to you and made you say, “Wow, I want to work with this person.” Or if you're on Upwork, or a site like that, and you see a posting, what made you apply to that posting? And please don't tell me it's that they're offering a lot of money. That's not a good reason. There should be something beyond that that is pushing you to reach out to this specific client and not that one. So talk about that.

And don't be afraid to let some of that passion come through. She thinks it makes pitching much more enjoyable for you as the person who's writing the pitch. And it certainly makes the person who opens it and reads it feel much more engaged with you if you're starting off by saying, “Wow, I looked at your website and your involvement with this organization, or the way you're approaching this, or the people you're serving…” Whatever it is, talk about the pizza thing that jumped out at you and got you excited.

Absolutely. There's way too much generalization in some pitches. And it always surprises me, especially when I see that in responses to an Upwork gig. Because you're competing against other people there. If you're cold pitching somebody, they might have other freelancers that are cold pitching them, but most likely not at the same time as you sent your message on LinkedIn or your email.

Use personalization.

But when you're on Upwork, it's essential to have some level of personalization and a lot of times people will say, “Well, how do I know what that is? I can't see the client’s name. They didn't include their link or Upwork won’t allow them to do it.” Look for the clues that the client has left you in the job description if they are hiring a virtual assistant and it says, “I'm looking for someone who's super organized and a great communicator.”

That's the personalization you put into the pitch. Not saying, “I'm a great virtual assistant.” Lead with, what it is about your communication.  Is it a feedback comment from a previous client that said you were the best communicator they'd ever interacted with? Is it the fact that your organization spills over into your personal life and your friends are envious of your closet? Share things that speak to that level of personalization even when you don't have a ton of information.

I think it is an important sticking point that comes up a lot with beginners as well. It's easy for more experienced freelancers to pitch. They've got all of this background, past clients, testimonials, and referrals. If I knew, what the heck do I say in my pitch so that it's honest, like you mentioned, but not making promises that aren't true or not giving away necessarily, “Hey, you might be the first client I'm ever going to work with. How do you get a that in a pitch?

Confidence is key.

Abbi is definitely a huge fan of honesty. So she would never say you should claim to have experience that you don't have. But she also doesn’t think that you need to open with, “I've never done this before.” So you want to strike a balance.  One of the sentences that she loves, and she wants to give credit where it's due, her friend Lauren Golden uses this sentence and teaches this sentence, and that's, “I'm confident that I can do this for you. I'm confident that I can do this thing that you need for you.”

Tell them the process.

If you make your pitch about the outcome, that you're going to deliver the results that you're going to give your client, then you're driving that conversation. So it's not going to be about samples, clips, and experience. It's going to be about what you are going to do for them. Sometimes it can be very helpful to talk about the process you're going to follow to get the work done. You might say something like:

“Hey, if we work together, we're going to start off with a kickoff call. That'll be about 45 minutes. Here's what I'm going to ask you on that call. Here's the information, I'm going to need to see from you. After that, it'll be about a 10 day turnaround time for me to do the work. During that time, I'll update you every other day by email, or I'll work in a shared google doc.”

Whatever it is, talk about your process that makes you sound like you know what you're talking about. You have a process, you're laying it out for them, and you're making it really easy for them. Your clients don't necessarily know how this project is going to run. Because just like it might be the first time you're doing it, it might also be the first time they're outsourcing like this.

So if you step up, and you say, “Hey, this is how this will work.” You take a lot of pressure off them. Think about it like this. If you're going to renovate your kitchen and you hire a contractor to come and renovate your kitchen, you’ve probably never renovated the kitchen before. So hopefully you hire a contractor who's perhaps done this once or twice, but every contractor has to start somewhere. So maybe this is that. But if he tells you, “Hey, okay, on Tuesday, we're going to come and we're going to demo. You're not going to have cabinets or counters or whatever. It's going to take two weeks after we measure for the things to be built and made. Two weeks later, you're going to have wood boxes in your kitchen. And then I'm going to come three days after that and do the countertop.” At least you have some sense of what's happening. Even if he's never done this before, and it's his first time and it's your first time, you feel a little bit more confidence in the process.

Abbi thinks it's also okay to say to a client, again she wouldn't open with this, but she thinks it's okay to in your discussion, say, “Hey, I'm still nailing down my process on this, which is why I'm going to slightly discount this project or, which is why I'm doing this for x amount of money, when in the future, I plan to charge this much.” I think that that's an okay thing to say, when you're starting out if you really want the work, you really want this particular client, and you feel like this is your end.

Telling the client the process adds accountability.

I love all of those ideas. And I especially like explaining what the process is going to be like for the client. Because the other thing that's great about that, if you're just starting out, you've kind of set up your own loose accountability there by saying, “”Okay, we're going to start with the kickoff call.” So if I get this project, I need to be organized for that kickoff call. How am I going to block my schedule for that 10 day delivery period to make sure that I meet the deadline and the process that I've already presented to the client? I think clarity helps a lot. And clients want to be thinking about that end process of where you can take them. I love the idea of saying that I'm confident I can do this.

Talk about your experience.

Another one that I recommend is saying, especially if you have past experience, even if not freelance related, “I rely on my blah, blah, blah degree in web design to help my freelance clients.” or “I rely on my five years of experience working as a nonprofit to now serve in a consultant role.” So that's absolutely true. If it's accurate for you because you are relying on that experience. That's the passion and the interest in the background that potentially brought you to the type of freelance work you're doing today.

So I completely agree. Do not lie. Do not say these are the kinds of results I get for my clients if you don't have any results yet. You don't need to say things like that. Of course, when you get to the more experienced freelancer point, you absolutely want to start adding those things into your pitches. Great comments and feedback from clients, amazing results, big name clients you've worked with. But please don't feel as a beginner like you have no chance if those things are missing from your pitch.

Because I think you're just relying on a little bit different approach. But that doesn't mean it's not valid. And you have to think about the fact every freelancer started with no experience. So many people have found a way to break in and they are just a couple of steps ahead of you. That's really important to keep in mind.

So two things...

One is you might be new to freelancing, but you have a lot of other experience. Abbi said she can't tell you how many students she’s had who come to her and say, “I have two doctorates, and I've been the president of Uganda for seven years. Do you think I'm qualified?” She said she’s like, “Yeah, I feel like you can probably handle writing. Yes, I feel like you will be okay.”

So don't discount the 10 years of corporate experience that you have in any writing work or freelance work that you've done.   Anything that you've done in your past that relates to what you're trying to do now, counts.  It matters. It's real experience. Every Freelancer starts somewhere right? Everybody has a first project.

She loves to tell her students it's not only does every freelancer have a first project, every brain surgeon in the entire world has to at some point, picked up a scalpel and sliced into someone's brain for the first time. And she feels like not to belittle what we do by any means. But she feels like brain surgery is just a little more complex than most freelance writing projects.

My goodness, Abbi just gave me a flashback.

In my husband's third or fourth year of medical school, he rotated with a surgeon.  And the guy was more than ready to throw him into gastric surgeries with no experience.   My husband was like, “Yes, I've been trained to do this. I understand the theory of it. I know what that process should be. “ But he's like that first time that he goes, “Okay, you tie this up.  You close this out and you do the sutures.” 

Everybody gets over that hurdle, no matter what your line of business or your passion is.  So keep that in mind.  Continuing to push yourself and get over those hurdles, especially as you expand your business too.   Me and Abbi have both had the first time we coaced somebody, the first course we created, which by the way, mine sucked.   So it’s going to be okay. However, if the first thing you create, the first thing you do, the first pitch you write, is maybe not a home run, that's okay. Because sometimes I think it's about that confidence of sending it out.

Sometimes I hear especially from freelance writers that they're like, ”I'm going to take the next five to six months to write.“ And I'm like, “No, you're good. Like you don't need to spend six months workshopping this.” Sometimes it's just about maybe you don't send that first pitch to your dream client. But getting over that hurdle is so, so important.

Following up.

So let's talk about following up because this is really where your pitch can go from an email that happened to get read to now we're talking about potentially closing a deal. A lot of freelancers often ask me and I give them the answer that they hate, which is it depends if there is a specific formula for following up. I think there are loose guidelines around when and how you follow up.  So I was curious about Abbi’s thoughts on “you've sent the pitch, we tracked it, we see it's being opened, it's possibly being forwarded around” what now? 

Abbi says follow up is so critically important.

She follows Ilise Benun of Marketing Mentor. got it. And she did a podcast episode or an email or something about how somebody was trying to get on her podcast. Abbi had emailed her multiple times. And she said, “I feel like she probably thinks she's bothering me, but I happen to know I'm really busy and every time she emails I'm like, Yes, I meant to go and look up her stuff and I haven't had time yet. If she keeps following up, she's going to get booked in that slot.”

So we write all these stories in our heads about how they must have hated it or they would have replied, but the reality is people are busy. They're spending far less time thinking about you than you think they are. No one cares about you very much. So the act of following up is really important in and of itself.

How and when do you follow up?

So how and when Abbi typically advises to follow up is if after two weeks if you've seen that that email has been opened multiple times, it's a good time to follow up. But how do you follow up? Abbi doesn’t forward the old email. Don't do that. To her, that's weird. She would do a new email with a new subject.  You can even say following up, put a dsah, and then your original subject line. And that's something that she likes to do personally.

And then, “Hey, I wanted to follow up with you. I'm sure you're busy. Here's how I can help you…” Hit the high points. Here's how I can help you be less busy. And here's how I can take some of this load off of you. I want you to think for a second about the one behind the one. There's the thing that business owners say like, “I need social media management, right”. But what they mean is “I need more clients. I need more money.” That's what they actually want. So speak to that want behind what they actually want to get from this relationship. I can help you grow your business, I can help you whatever it is that you're offering to do for them. Hit the high points and make it super easy for them to get back to you.

It's not, “Hey, you can call me at this number.” Nobody wants to pick up the phone anymore. Put a calendar link right in there and make it super easy for them, click here, book a time with me, I will be happy to take care of everything for you and give you all the answers you need. Take this project off your hands, get it done, and get it delivered. You can even say something like, “I'm currently booking work for whatever next week, two months from now…” Whatever it is that you're trying to project in your business that can sometimes push people into that response.

If your email hasn’t even been opened.

Abbi thinks that if you've seen that an email hasn't even been opened and it's been two weeks, then she would definitely send it with a completely different subject line because it wasn't ever opened. So ignore that first subject line.  It either wasn't interesting enough to them or it never made it to the inbox or they have a lot of email and things get lost. Whatever. forget about it. Come up with a new subject line, something that you feel might hook them in and get them to open your email. You can use the same text of the email if you want to, although I would read it over to make sure that there's nothing in there that's getting it filtered into spam. Just give it a once over.

And if you see that something was opened once and then never opened again, it still could be worth a single follow up. In that case, I would kind of make a note to yourself that this is the last chance for this guy because you feel like he's not interested.  And it’s fine that not everybody is going to be interested in you. And that's okay, too.

Make the follow up different than your original email.

I love all of that. And one of the things that I really want to hone in on, which is what you talked about, is this idea of making the follow up be a little bit different than your original email.  Not forwarding the same email and not saying, “Hey, again, here's my website with my samples.”  Remember, these people are busy. If they didn't look at your samples from the first time around, or even if they did, they don't want to see that again. So you're getting into the psychology of it all right? Who is this person?  They're busy, but obviously there's a need and a want here because they opened my email five times. So how can I hit home with that? 

Another place where people get stuck a lot is the multiple follow ups.

And I think that's important to do. Because sometimes you will hear from clients that you haven't heard from in weeks, months, sometimes even years.  And they will appear out of nowhere. Even if you've never worked with them.

There was someone that I wrote a proposal for, that they didn't accept, but they forwarded my name to somebody else who contacted me out of the blue. Because I had kept following up on the proposal that they never signed and went for. So I like to think of it as you're opening all these doors, then leave them open for as long as it makes sense.

Don't do the follow up of like, “Hey, just following up on this.” That's appropriate if they have a proposal or a contract that is pending a signature. Then you can be that directive, like, “Hey, I just want to make sure my invoice gets paid, that you saw this contract and scope before you agree with it.”  But make it more personal. When you're still at the pitch level or you're trying to get them on a call or something like that. I think a lot of people kind of miss that.

Creeper status.

Now, after the first couple outreach efforts, I get a little bit of creeper status going so I will start googling the company and the person I'm emailing. I will look for articles or new studies that came out that were relevant to their business. And I will say something like, “Hey, I came across this article on email marketing, and how the ROI on it is, blah, blah, blah, dollars for every blah, blah, blah dollar you spend. I instantly thought of you because I know I've sent you previous information about email marketing and I really feel like for your audience segment. It could be key.”

If the CEO was recently received an award or was featured in an article, use that as your follow up like, “Hey, I saw this. This is super cool. It's part of why I'm so pumped to potentially work with you.” So make it a little more personal. I think that every client and potential client hates when people say, “Hey, following up.” or  “Hey, checking in on this.” over and over and over again.  Because you're making it all too easy for them to just say, “No, not right now.” There's no incentive for them to take any action based on those kinds of statements. So you want to prompt them. This is what you're missing if you don't work with me, “Hey, I'm really passionate about your company or you or your industry.” Something that's personal that makes them go, “Man, if we are gonna outsource it, it's gonna be to this freelancer because their follow up game is solid.”

Abbi shared that if you want to go an extra step, send a video pitch. 

This is something a lot of people are going to hear this and be like, “I'm not doing that.” But Abbi encourages you to think about it. She has students who have had an enormous amount of success with video pitches. They will literally use Loom, again free Google Chrome extension that’s super easy to use. Even if you've never used it, you can be up and running in 45 seconds, because you're a human with a brain.

You go to their website and you can talk about them and like, “Oh, my gosh, I love this stuff about you.” Or you could take that article and say, “I'm reading this article, and I'm just thinking about you. This line in particular really speaks to me and reminds me of your company, because XYZ.”

Number one, not everybody is sending video pitches. Number two, it is clear that you made this effort specifically for that client. It catches their attention.  And Loom loads things so nicely with this preview right in the email. People are like, “Huh, what's that?” And they click and you don't want to go on for 17 minutes. But if you do like a two- three minute video, that's something that has a real impact. And you get a notification when they've watched it. So another nice tool for “Oh, hey, they watch this.” You know you are going to stand out in their mind.

We're writers, because we're introverts and whatever. Get over it. They're not looking at it to judge your makeup or whatever. They care much more about themselves. So take the time, make this little video pitch because it makes such a difference.

I can't even tell you how many clients I've landed, or at least opened the lines of communication, because I sent a one or two second video.  It's really your chance to show that you're a human too. You're not just a taskmaster who does projects and turns them in. You're a human being. And you have a personality. You care about their business.

I also worked with an online business manager for about two years. And it was from an Upwork pitch. But she went one step beyond to Google my name and made me the two minute video that says, “Hey, I went and looked at your website and as your OBM here, the three things that I would change that I don't think are working as well as they could.” No one else even spent the five minutes today to check out who I was and where I probably needed the most help. And so that led to a two year contract for her.

Make it personal.

So anytime I can do something that's a little bit personal like the video, going that little one step beyond the follow up.  Another one of my favorite follow ups is pitch the person then connect with them on LinkedIn. I did this yesterday.  And I was pitching a speaking gig. I wrote the custom pitch to the conference organizer. Five minutes after sending it, I sent a connection request on LinkedIn.

And said, I like to add a note section connecting I said, “Hi there, I'd love to connect with you because blah, blah, blah.” But then I put at the end, “Also, I just sent you an email on 2029 friends. Looking forward to connecting.” And because people still tend to check their LinkedIn, which might not always be 100% true on email, that's another great way to follow up or keep that conversation going or ground somebody whose email inbox is bogged down to go searching for your name.

Add a note to connection requests.

Abbi loves that I sent a personal message with my LinkedIn request. Because sometimes you can get dozens if not hundreds a day. And when they don't have a personal message, she’s not necessarily going to bother to approve them. Because she doesn’t know who you are. She doesn't know anything about you. And she doesn’t know if you're a good connection for her.  She’s very selective with her LinkedIn connections. Because when she puts out content on LinkedIn, she wants it to be showing to people who actually may engage with that content.

So if it's somebody who has taken the time to write her something personal, she will almost always accept them even if they're outside of that immediate market. She thinks, “Okay, this person made the effort and told me why they wanted to connect with me. Sure.” But if you don't bother to do that, then you are missing out on a chance to connect with people.

I leave my connections for the longest time in purgatory on LinkedIn if I can't figure out who they are and what they do.  This is especially true if you don't send the note. Also, your tagline on LinkedIn is extremely big.  Someone the other day tried to connect with me and their tagline was “Making dreams come true.” And I thought, what does that mean?  And what industry are you in?

Some of the people that I connect with, not just connects with, but gets right back to them immediately, are those who are like, “Hey, I saw your TEDx talk.  I loved Episode 90 of your podcast.” It's like, “Oh, yeah, this person actually knows who I am. They're not just randomly clicking people you might know and adding connections for whatever reason.”

So if we think like that, I guarantee you marketing managers and busy entrepreneurs think like that, too. So it doesn't even have to be related to the service that you pitch. It may be you saw them deliver an amazing keynote and you comment on like, “Hey, you really killed it on that stage. You did an amazing job.” You're much more likely to open that line of conversation and communication. So I think that's so important and underutilized.

Abbi has also had students of her who will sign up for her free email course, they'll like her Facebook page, they'll join her group, and then on LinkedIn, the message will be something like, “I swear, I'm not a stalker.” So you know, it took five seconds to write that. It made her laugh. And she gets it. She knows you want to follow her in these spaces. That's totally cool with her. She is there for it. She’ll even reply to something like that like, “Haha, I don't think you're a stalker. It's awesome. So glad to connect.  Let me know if you're finding everything you need.” And now we have a conversation going so. So there are definitely ways that you can do that and it's such an easy way to stand out from the crowd.

Just give them a nudge.

So to close things out, because I feel like we could talk for hours, say you're in the process of following up, you've suggested the call, and they haven't taken it. Do you have any tips for how to nudge that person into getting them on the phone? Because I feel like that's where so much business is done. How do you nudge that person without being annoying? How could it be most effective at sort of prompting them into that action step of the phone call?

Abbi would definitely start with her calendar link. And if that hasn't been clicked on, if that hasn't resulted in the follow up, then she might, in her next follow up, propose two times. She would say, “Hey, I'd love to get this on the calendar. Would Tuesday at 3:00 or Wednesday at 10:00 be better for you?” Then if one of those works, then she'll send that calendar invite.

There is no foolproof system.

It is a little bit tricky there. She doesn’t have a great foolproof system. And she doesn’t think there is a foolproof system for every situation. For example, her calendar link is linked to a zoom call. Which is a great little setup, but some people may be intimidated by the calendar link in general and by the idea of Zoom. So maybe make it a little bit easier. “Would it be easier for you if I called you at 10am on Wednesday?”

Think about the person.  If you're speaking to someone of a certain age, they may be less comfortable with some of the technology. And if you're speaking to someone who's not in a technology field, they may not be comfortable. Another thing that she ran into was some corporate clients can't access some of those zoom things on a corporate network. So be cognizant of that and say, “How can I do this? How can I make this easier for you?”

I love that and giving them a reason to take the phone call, even if it doesn't end up going further with business. Maybe there's a question they have around content marketing, or maybe you have a couple of recommendations that aren't giving away the farm, but allow you to get some of your insight in there, and really get them to see you as an expert.

So when people are busy, there has to be a reason for the phone call. Your link cannot be a 45 minute thing that you're scheduling. Keep it to 15 to 20 minutes if they're definitely interested. And they've written back saying, “Yeah, we really need someone to help with XYZ service.” You can expand it to 30 minutes. But you want to watch your time too so that you're not giving away too much and it's not leading to business. But definitely give them a reason for that phone call to make sense.

Get them thinking.

Right now we're in q1, a lot of companies have met and decided their budgets for the year. That might be a good opportunity to be like, “Hey, I'd love to hear about your content marketing and traffic goals or email newsletter goals to close out quarter one and kickoff q2 strong.” That gets them thinking about it.

And If you've hit the right employee or that's on their list of things to achieve, there's more of a chance that they're at least willing to talk to you, especially if it makes them look good if you're going to give them a tip or if you're going to propose an easy solution. You may say, “Hey, your email newsletter is not converting, I know because I'm a customer and these were the problems I encountered with it.” They're much more likely to hire you. And you also can make that employee look good when they go to their boss and say, “Hey, I've got some excellent feedback on how we can improve this. And I found the professional who can help us to accomplish that and knock it out and start seeing better numbers.” 

More Abbi later.

I love it. This is not the last Abbi will hear of me because I have so many things to pick her brain about. We're definitely going to try to have her come to a live training in my facebook group specifically about email sequences.  Iit is kind of in the freelance writing world like writing emails for other people.

Abbi’s Facebook Group is amazing. 

Another one of my pet peeves with the online world is Facebook groups where, especially writers, love to pile on each other or critique other people's rates or be negative or write comments like “You'll never achieve your dreams.” Abbi’s Facebook group is not like that.

I also strive for that to not be my Facebook either. But I would if you're a writer, even if you're experienced, I would strongly recommend joining her facebook group because it's a very supportive community and people write actionable tips in response to questions.  They don’t write supervague, like, “Hey, I can offer you a phone call.” You're going to get good answers to your questions.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

Connect with Abbi:

• Website: com
• Instagram: @AbbiPerets
• Facebook: Successful Freelance Writing Moms

Welcome back to another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. This is part two of a

small series, just two episodes about how to deal with burnout. So if you're listening to this episode, and you haven't yet heard the episode that comes immediately before it, now would be a great time to go back and listen to that episode because it is really all about how to recognize burnout and how to prevent burnout before it happens. And of course, the more mindful you can be about the problems related to burnout, the easier will be for you to stop that cycle before it even starts.

The reality is that far too many freelancers and business owners find themselves stuck in that cycle of burnout.

It can be very, very toxic and overwhelming when you're coping with burnout. A lot of us don't even recognize burnout until we're so far into it that it's very difficult to walk back and figure out how to remove some of those stressors from our life.

Burnout will look different from one person to another. So for you, it might primarily manifest in physical terms. But for someone else, it could be more of a mental or emotional challenge. So recognize that if you've witnessed a friend or family member go through burnout, that it might not look the same for you as it does for others. There are three primary reasons why somebody ends up feeling burned out.  Some of them are kind of interconnected or more complicated than just one simple thing.

The first reason you can experience burnout in your freelance business is your potential clients.

Who are you working with? Are you working with the right people? And are they making you feel overwhelmed? Are you working on projects that you don't love? And are you working on a project that you do love, but the client is so overbearing and difficult to deal with that you're waking up with night sweats and you're dreading every single day?

I've worked with a number of different aspiring and currently six figure freelancers who have found themselves working with toxic clients. And if you have not listened to that podcast episode, I strongly recommend going back and listening to the episode all about toxic clients because we go into what it really means to say somebody that is a toxic client. It's called “Toxic Freelance Clients: You Can’t Afford to Keep Them”.  It is Episode 71 of the podcast. And it is very powerful to go back and recognize that you might be working with those clients, if you previously were unaware.

You might have more than one toxic freelance client which really increases your chances of feeling burned out and overwhelmed.

When you're working with people who are very difficult, who are demanding too much, or who want you to kind of be at their beck and call and available to communicate all the time, you can easily get very, very overwhelmed and stressed out. And a lot of times what's great, even though it might not seem like it in the moment, about the situation of being with a freelance client that is not the right fit is that you can fix this aspect of burnout. There are some things that lead you to a state of burnout that are not really so much in your control. But this one about deciding who you do and don't work with.  It definitely falls within your control.

Don't beat yourself up about the fact that you've worked with somebody who isn't the right fit.

Somebody who's overbearing, somebody who expects too much, somebody who puts additional stress on you by paying their invoices three months late, or anything like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be toxic for it to be overwhelming or triggering towards burnout for you. But it can definitely be something that causes you to feel like that's carrying over into aspects of your business and your personal life. So the great news about discovering that clients are the source of your current burnout is that it is within your power to fix that situation.

Now, if you primarily have one anchor client, and that's the client that's causing you to burn out, it's going to take a while to build up the business to the point it feels like you can walk away from that. And I've also seen coaching clients who hold on to that anchor client even when it's not the right fit. And then that client can also decide not to work with you anymore.

When you've got all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, that can also put you into a very difficult situation. Because if you suddenly feel like, “You know what, the straw has broken the camel's back, I cannot work with this client for one more moment.” or their business folds it can put you in a tough situation.

I've had coaching clients who've had their clients literally close down their entire business because it was mismanaged.

Where if the client just decides not to work with you anymore, you don't want to be counting on that one client or those one or two anchor clients for your whole income. So you want to start building in that buffer and working towards having other clients on tap. Now, if you want to learn more about why it is so dangerous to have just one client, you'll want to go back and listen to Episode 76. That's “Don't Put All Your Freelance Eggs in One Basket”.

So now that we've covered the fact that clients can contribute to you feeling burned out and overwhelmed, that's probably going to be the easiest one to detect. Is there anyone on your schedule where you are feeling so bad about opening their emails, you hate having to talk to them on the phone, you really wish you could just fire them and move on? That is going to be the easiest place to find potential burnout and to deal with it from there.

The second set of problems that can contribute toward a higher risk of burnout include outside stressors.

Outside stressors could be anything that's really not so much in your control even if you have taken proactive steps to minimize or to try to completely control that issue. For example, maybe you have somebody in your family or the caretaker for an elderly member in your family. Perhaps you have a child with special needs. Maybe and your partner work different shifts. You work the day shift and he works the night shift and so on. Childcare is always very stressful and you have very little time to work on your business. Those are kind of outside stressors that you can't easily change, or can't be changed at all.

So the two things that you can do to help with these outside stressors are to eliminate problems wherever possible and to build in support.

So if there's something in your day to day process in the structure of your business that

could be changed to help you minimize the chance of burnout, you want to take those proactive steps. First, for example, maybe you do have a situation at home where it's very difficult to have no background noise. Maybe you've already tried to have everyone in the family be quiet or tried to do your sales calls in the closet. And it just hasn't worked right. So maybe you need to adapt your business model to figure out how you can close people in other ways where you’re not relying on having a quiet backgrounds. So that would be eliminating problems.

You could also address that problem by building in support. So perhaps you hire somebody to do childcare. You don't even have to go spend your entire budget on a day rate for somebody.  You can book all of your calls between 2:00 and 4:00 pm because that's when you have childcare. And everyone else in the family can be out of the house. So this same process can apply to many of the different challenges that you face from outside stressors.

Now, obviously, there's a whole set of outside stressors here that will still continue to impact your life even despite your best efforts of eliminating any challenges and building and support. If you're dealing with a health care crisis, for example, you probably have enough on your plate. And you're already focused on attempting to recover or to minimize your symptoms. So it might not be possible to eliminate some of those issues. But you might be able to build in some levels of support.

Recently, we went through the loss of a family member.

One of the things that I had to do was reduce expectations from everyone. So I informed all of my coaching clients that I would be slower at responding. I informed my current freelance clients that I would be X many days behind on delivery and let them know what was going on. So sometimes you can't build in enough support or eliminate enough problems to keep operating as you normally would.

Give yourself that grace and that space to be able to scale back your business and say, “You know what, I'm in a season right now where for whatever reason, I am not able to deal with things as I normally would. I'm not going to get upset about that. I'm not going to try to force it. Instead, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that I have space in my business and in my life to cope with what's most important right now. Because what's most important, might not be me hitting my marketing or my income goals at the moment.”

So lots of times people put additional pressure on themselves because they're feeling like, it's almost like their fault that they're dealing with these outside stressors. And that is rarely if ever true. So don't feel bad that you have to slow down. Don't feel bad if you have to take steps away from your business. I know that it's very hard for anyone who's a high achiever or a perfectionist to hear that advice, and really fit it in.

As you're listening to this episode, we went two weeks without any new podcast episodes being released.

And that was because we were going through things with the loss of a family member, where I just couldn't physically fit it into my schedule to be recording episodes. I didn't have that quiet background space. And then also I just really didn't feel up to it.

So for me, it was about releasing myself from that expectation that I'm going to continue as I normally would, and instead saying, “Okay, where can I trim things out of my schedule because this is not the top priority right now? And I will catch up later. If that means we missed two weeks of the podcast, then we miss two weeks. I've got to practice what I preach here.And my listeners will understand.” 

A lot of people listen to these episodes after the fact and they might not even notice that there was a space between the previous episode and this one. So to recap real quickly two of our most common causes of burnout in a freelance business are having the wrong clients or having a client that kind of overwhelms and takes up all of your time and/or outside stressors.

The final major cause of burnout I see in freelance business owners is taking on too many things and not taking enough care of yourself.

Now you could find yourself in an either or situation, but it's very possible that you experienced both. So as business owners, we're constantly thinking about ways to take our companies to the next level. That can be both a blessing and a curse because you can find yourself putting way too much on your schedule and ending up very stressed out and overwhelmed.

If you're doing that while also not taking care of yourself, that is going to take a physical, emotional, and mental toll as well. I've definitely been guilty of taking on too many things plenty of times. And it seems like it's one of those lessons, I'm just going to have to learn over and over again.  That lesson is building time to take care of yourself and recognize when you're hitting your limits and thresholds for what is right for you.

A fully booked business will look different for every single person.  So don't compare yourself to what it's like for somebody else. Someone else's ideal business might be running 15 or 20 hours per week. Whereas yours is only 5 or 10 because of your current life circumstances or possibly some of those life stressors. Or maybe that's just the perfect sweet spot for your business to sit.

So don't hold yourself up to the standards of anybody else. That can really get you into a difficult situation as well. Remember to keep taking care of yourself and recognize when you have too many things on your plate and how to reduce that. Another podcast episode that might be helpful for you is “Episode 87: Why I'm Not Freelancing Full Time Anymore”. You'll hear a little bit about my decision to really scale back my freelance business and keep it at the point where it's still operating and is very profitable, but doesn't take up a tremendous amount of my time.

There really is a model for everyone when it comes to freelancing.

So recognize when you're in one of those busy seasons. What more can you do to take care of yourself? How can you really support yourself when you are facing down a really big deadline? How can you give yourself space immediately after you’ve finished a massive project? How do you step back and really give yourself that peace of mind and that chance to recover? And if you're in a period where you can't really slow down, how do you support yourself with nutrition, rest, mindset exercises, physical exercise, and even taking vitamins? How do you sort of have that to support yourself?

If you are the type of person who has trouble taking care of yourself or putting too many things on your plate, you will love Episode 84 which is “Creating a Mental Health Plan for Your Freelance Business”. Now, that episode goes into great detail as far as what does it mean to build a mental health plan? How can that really benefit you? What does my mental health plan look like?

So these are just a couple of examples of ways that you can end up feeling really, really burned out in your business.

When you're feeling burned out. You can push yourself so far as to you need to shut down your business for several months. And we always want to avoid that if possible. I wouldn't want anybody else to go through that experience. And we see that with business owners often where they end up facing a tremendous amount of stress. And it's not necessarily that they have a breakdown, but they have to take some space and time away from their business and that can be really overwhelming for them. That personal pressure and stress can really be a lot for them to cope with and to deal with.

So, trying to avoid burnout as much as possible will really help you when you are getting ready to think about up leveling your business.  You need to think about if this is now the right time for me to fold in other things into my business or should I kind of rethink that and table that and make that project go a little bit slower because I'm primarily concerned with taking care of myself?

Now if you do believe that you're suffering from burnout, I strongly recommend reaching out for help for medical professionals, therapists, and other psychological support services. Burnout is a relatively new word in the western medicine dictionary and diagnosis category. So it's something where you want to have the right help to guide you through that process and to recognize burnout for what it is and create a custom plan for you to recover as much as possible.

Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast.

In next week's episode, we'll be recapping some of the Top 10 Best Podcast Episodes that have come out of this show going all the way back to 2017.  Because it will be Episode 100. That's right, we've made it to 100 episodes. So I will be recapping from my perspective, the favorite 10 episodes that I have recorded or put together.

So if you are just starting as a binge listener to this show,or if you've only listened to the recent episodes since the reboot, you might catch some gems in there that can help direct you to some awesome episodes in the past. Thanks again for tuning in.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

Welcome back to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast. As you're listening to this, it is already 2020. It's a great opportunity to reflect back on all the things you've done over the past year as a freelancer or moving towards starting your freelance business.

Freelancing and Avoiding Overwork/Burnout

These are the freelancers who've been working for quite a long time, have a steady client base, and usually tend to be a little bit of those workaholics. So you might be bringing some of those workaholic tendencies over into your freelance business.

Now, this doesn't mean that someone who's relatively new to freelancing won't benefit from thinking about the concept of overwork. In fact, I think that the more you have in the back of your mind the dangers of overwork before you get started as a freelancer, the easier it will be for you to really grow and scale your business happily and successfully.

Everyone can be affected by burnout

This is actually something that's been spreading across traditional employees and the American workforce as well. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics information shows that the average American works approximately 44 hours a week, which is just under nine hours per day. The United States is also one of the most overworked countries in the world. So weekdays average over eight hours and average weekend days average over five and a half hours. That means we're clocking a tremendous amount of time doing work.

Burnout can be really detrimental to your mental and physical health.

All too often, I end up working with freelancers one on one after they’re way too long down that path. They've already been facing some of these major challenges of feeling overworked and burned out. They're stressed out. And they're not eating well. They're dreading working on client work, etc. So those are some of the very early indicators of burnout.

Many of us freelancers are very experienced, but how do we ignore those signs and symptoms and keep working anyways? In this episode, we'll talk a little bit more about burnout/overwork, what it looks like, how you can fight against it, and what to do if you believe that you're already overworking.

One of the things about burnout that I find really interesting is that we all know what it is once we've experienced it, but usually, we're so deep into the situation by the time we've experienced it, that hindsight is 2020.

You're looking back and going, “Oh, I should have known. I was really tired for two or three months. I had 12 clients instead of the eight that I've said my maximum would be.” But burnout has actually become a medical condition. This was one of the biggest news pieces of 2019. It's a formal medical diagnosis specifically in relation to work related stress.

It formally became recognized by the World Health Organization and is under the code for problems associated with employment or unemployment. But recognizing burnout, even though it's been classified as an actual condition, is still a big challenge for a lot of people. We know it when we see it. And we hear other people talk about it. But what it looks like for you might be different than what it looks like for someone else.

So let's talk about some of the general categories under these health guidelines of what burnout can look like and remember that not all of these might apply to your situation.

You might be feeling that one or a couple of them are more influential than others. That doesn't mean that you don't have burnout if you don't have every single symptom here. Burnout is categorized by reduced effectiveness in your professional capacity, an increased feeling of mental distance from your job, or feelings of cynicism and negativity in relation to your job, a general feeling of exhaustion or energy depletion.

Americans are working longer and harder than ever before. And that's been backed up by plenty of different sources, including the American Institute of Stress. Multiple studies have backed up that this work stress is a major source of anxiety, depression, and burnout for American adults.

One common question that freelancers have is, “Well, I operate under stressful conditions quite a bit. I run my own business. I'm the head of every department in my business. How do I know if this is stress or if it is burnout?” There is a difference between stress and burnout. But it's very hard for a lot of people to tell which one you're dealing with. And it requires taking that big step back to look at the overall picture of your work life.  So the feeling that achievement is slipping can go from stress into more of a burnout situation. Particularly if you're in a work environment that is very grinding.

What’s the difference between stress and burnout?

Stress is something that shows up typically around certain situations.   Maybe you have a new supervisor at work and you're getting used to them. You may just have five projects on your plate this month instead of three or four. And that is a short term condition. Burnout, however, is more of that physical and mental feeling of being overwhelmed, exhausted, dreading working on your client projects, and/or feeling like you can never really get ahead.

For me, it has primarily felt like fatigue in the past. It feels like I make very little progress on things when I am in burnout mode. People who are most likely to tend into the burnout phase of things are those people who would consider themselves workaholics or who put in a lot more time and energy into their business than they would otherwise put in.

One of the things that I think is very interesting that I've been doing a lot of research on is this idea that we are essentially connected all the time to our work.

A lot of freelancers end up clocking more than 50 hours per week. At the very beginning of your freelance business, this isn't that big of a problem, right? Because if you're doing this full time and you have 50 or 60 hours a week, it might take that long to build up your marketing base.  But it's been proven time and time again that it's very ineffective to work over 50 hours per week. I prefer working much fewer hours on my freelance business and just sticking with the premium VIP clients who are going to help my revenue match that have a full time business even though my hours do not.

Knowing the Symptoms of Burnout

You may be saying, “Well, I'm overwhelmed. I just need to put in more time. So now I'm going to start working weekends. And I'm going to start working nights. I'm going to wake up at four o'clock in the morning and put in three or four hours before my clients are even awake.” Long hours can really backfire for people, for companies, and for freelancers.

So some research out of Boston University's School of Business found that in the traditional workplace, managers were not able to tell the difference between employees who worked 80 hours a week versus those who just pretended. You managers did, however, penalize employees who were transparent about working less. But no research was found in that study that those employees actually accomplished any less than their counterparts who are clocking many more hours.

Now, we talked about this concept of the eight hour work day in my TEDx talk in the perspective of the Industrial Revolution.

The main reason that the eight hour workday exists was put into place in the industrial revolution to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that employees had to put up with on the factory floor. This was really kind of an idea to make the whole concept of work a little more humane. However, the fact that it's stuck around this long leads to this misconception that this is the only way to do work. And the most effective way to do work is putting in so many hours per week, working nine to five. That is not necessarily the truth, right?

So research that tries to quantify the relationship between productivity and the number of hours worked found that output falls significantly after a 50 hour workweek. But completely falls off a cliff at the 55-hour mark.

So much so that a Stanford University study found that a person who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those additional 15 hours. So all they're doing is not increasing their productivity, right? That's actually dropped off altogether. And they're just pushing themselves further into burnout and creating a new normal, that 55 or 70 hours a week is productive. And it's really not right or that it's necessary, right? It's not really necessary.

So many people who are putting in more than 55 hours a week as employees or as freelancers face a broad range of medical problems.

One of those is adrenal fatigue. If you're not sure what that is, go ahead and look that up. It hasn't really been accepted by traditional Western medicine yet. There's a lot of natural paths and other people in that space talking about adrenal fatigue. It is essentially when you keep your cortisol levels, the stress hormone, so high all the time that your body really becomes depleted of that and is unable to manage and regulate stress.

So in addition to that impact in that feeling of fatigue and that feeling of decreased productivity at work, people who work more than 55 hours a week have a 13% higher risk of coronary heart disease and a 33% higher risk of stroke. So why am I harping so much on this idea of the hours worked per week?  Because there's so much variation in freelance businesses and even in employees and what their working relationship looks like with their company.

The easiest place to start with burnout is to really begin to track your time.

As a self-employed person, it can really sneak up on you. And you can realize that you're doing harm to yourself when you start to really clock your hours. When you work for yourself, your business brain never really turns off. And when you have a lot of client projects on the mind that you have to fit into your schedule, in connection with all of the administrative and brainstorming work you have to do as a business owner, you don't realize how much this work has bled over into every other part of your life. So you're probably not counting those night or weekend hours if you track your time. They probably just happened, right?

Is 50 Hours a Week Too Many?

I often feel like if I put in 35 or 40 hours a week, with everything in my business, not just my freelance part of it, is when I do my best.  You might think, “Well, my business is going to grow a little bit slower than if I put in 50 hours.” But you can see how this research supports that anything beyond 50 hours, is really detrimental to you and your health. And you're not getting any of the productivity gains, either.

Other health impacts of working too much.

So some of the other health impacts of working too much include the feeling of being blue or depressed. It's your neck and your back feel like they're aching because you're spending so much time in front of the computer. 

Your relationships are taking a hit and members of your family are telling you that they never see you. You don't get enough sleep, even though you're totally exhausted. So you might lay down and sleep for five hours, but it's sort of disconnected.

You wake up a bunch and have trouble falling asleep. You're using alcohol to relax. And you're becoming more reliant on these things. Maybe before you enjoyed a glass of wine at the end of the workday. But now you feel like you have to have those two or three glasses of wine just to relax after a stressful day. You also can experience productivity stalls as well. So it's such a misconception that this idea of working more hours increases your productivity because it

actually significantly decreases your productivity.

How to Guard Against Burnout as a Freelancer

That's why I really recommend that's where you start with this concept of burnout. Start tracking your time.

There are many different free tools that allow you to do it. I love toggle, it's spelled TOGGL. It is a free tool where you can categorize and use colors to show different things that you're working on. So I have one for administrative work for my coaching business, one for my dissertation, one for writing books, and then one for my freelance business. So I have time goals or limits that I'm putting in each of those categories to make sure that I stay on track and don't go overboard.

And when you really start tracking your time, you might think that it’s annoying. It may be annoying to sit there and go manually start and stop this timer on your phone or desktop every single time you work. But it makes you a lot more mindful of the time that you are spending at work. You can also get a report at the end of the week that tells you how you spent your time.

So not only does this help you flag when you're putting in too many hours and are heading towards burnout, but it also gives you that heads up of, “Hey, maybe there's some things here that I can pass off to a virtual assistant or another team member.”

Now, I've talked a lot about the physical health impacts of burnout. But there's also a mental health toll too.

So, this less productivity has negative implications for what you do for your clients, but it also has negative implications for how you feel every single day. And that's not something that should be ignored! When you are headed towards or in burnout, you don't do as good of a job as you otherwise would do.

It's a simple fact. I noticed, for example, that when I am heading into a burnout phase, because I am what I call a recovering workaholic and always trying to work against that and be more mindful of it, it manifests for me by starting to make mistakes on my client work. If I have one or more clients tell me, “Hey, there was an error here. This was stated as a fact, but it's not. Or there were three spelling errors in this piece.” I start to miss things. That is my number one clue that I'm working too much.

Another sign is that feeling of dread as soon as I wake up like, “Oh, I've got so many things to do. I'm never going to get them done.” And then also, if you have an ongoing to-do list every single day that has more than 10 items on it consistently, that is very overwhelming. You are pushing yourself towards burnout.

But I strongly recommend starting with this concept of clocking your hours and seeing how your time is spent.

It forces you to be held accountable to where that potential for burnout is and you have a much better chance of starting to recognize the symptoms when you're cognizant of how much time you're spending on different types of projects. Because you can say, “Wow, I had no idea that I worked 55 hours last week.”

And the other thing I love about the timer is I almost feel like I'm racing the clock. So if I'm checking my email and that timer is running, and I've got that tagged as administrative time, I don't waste time as much. I'm trying to keep that administrative time report per week as low as possible. So that really helps me to be a little bit more productive with my time as well as really track what I'm doing.

When there's no sense of tracking there, I know it feels like, “Well, that's one more thing I have to do. I have to remember to turn this tracker on and off. That's kind of annoying. I'm already overwhelmed and possibly in burnout. How does that help?” This is really your lifeline that gives you that first indication that you might already be in burnout.

So in a separate episode of the podcast, I'm going to talk about what to do when you recognize burnout.

When you start to you see those hours, you start to feel some of the symptoms I've talked about in this episode, and how you can create a plan to escape from burnout. Knowing that burnout is a thing and that it is increasingly being recognized by the medical community as a work related condition is the first thing you should know about the entire concept. Because you have to be aware that it's a possibility in your business and be prepared to take necessary steps to guard against it or start to notice when those hours are creeping up, or when those physical conditions of fatigue or frustration or overwhelm are starting to creep back in and become a regular part of your everyday work life.

Now, you might not be able to 100% prevent burnout.

You might already be in those beginning phases of burnout. When you listen to this episode and say, “Wow, I think I really might have a problem here. I'm doing too much work. I've taken on too many of the wrong clients. I'm clocking too many hours. I haven't delegated enough.” You can help prevent it from getting worse. The worst thing you can do is let this go on and on into months and months where this becomes your new normal. And it is much harder to remove yourself from that situation and to recognize that you have opportunities available to help you.

I've known plenty of freelancers who have been in full blown burnout and have been able to back it up and fix it.

But it often takes three or six months because they have to fire clients and they have to redefine their business. They have to put into place a mental health plan. Go take a listen to that podcast episode here on Advanced Freelancing about why you need to create a mental health plan and what goes into that. That's really key for preventing burnout as well. Like having a virtual assistant or having team members who can help you, all of these things are critical to laying that baseline of guarding against burnout as much as you can.

Now, if you've been listening to this episode, and feel like you are in burnout, of course, you'll want to tune into the next part of this two part series about what burnout looks like and how you can address it when it's already happening in your business.

But what I want to say to you today is don't beat yourself up if you're already there. If you're already thinking, “Man, how could I let this happen to me? My relationships are taking a hit. My clients are telling me I'm making mistakes. I'm burned out. How did I end up here again?” A lot of people who are workaholics will consistently find themselves in this cycle of burnout. It is not necessarily your fault. It is a tactic and trait that you're trying to work on. And it's something that I've struggled with a lot in my business. I definitely tend towards burnout. If I don't have systems and structures in place, I feel like I will naturally gravitate back towards that.

So hopefully in this episode, you've been able to hear some of the symptoms of burnout, the fact that it is becoming recognized specifically as a work related condition, and to better understand some of the negative impacts that it might have on your life in terms of your physical and mental health. If you have questions about this podcast or need more information about burnout, please send an email to info@betterbizacademy.com.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the advanced freelancing podcast. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.