004 : FEAST, FAMINE, FRIENDS

1. FEAST & FAMINE

Hey Freelance Friend,

We all know how it feels. Sometimes you are super busy with client work, sometimes you are struggling to find clients.

• Less Clients = More Marketing Time = More Clients = Less Marketing Time = Less Clients = More Marketing Time = More Clients….

So, let’s get right into it. I hope you have your cuppa ready.

Flattening the curve requires a mindset shift.

It also requires clear, actionable and repeatable points.

The mindset shift is understanding that, as a Freelancer, you are no longer just a ‘Graphic Designer’, but a Freelance Graphic Designer.

The Freelance part always comes first, no matter your title.

You need to structure each and every day with a part of it dedicated to working ON your business and the rest for working IN your business.

Below are a few examples of what constitutes working ON vs IN your business:

The real test of this mindset shift comes when you have a LOT of client work and have a decision to make. Take time out of your day to work on “all that extra stuff” or keep working on client projects.

That is not “extra stuff”, it is the most important stuff.

Neglecting that aspect when you are busy will land you right back in a period of famine.

You need to think of it as the most important possible project and client you could ever have, you NEED to work on that project.

All other projects come second. Because that super important project / client is YOU.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

“That’s all well and good but what happens when my 4 hours of client work are full, do I then just reduce the ON part? Do I just turn away clients?”

No.

The following are steps you can take to ease the pressure on your IN time when you do inevitably get busy with client work.

These items are also useful for anyone who may feel they are “full” and are turning clients away:

Schedule Ahead

Schedule future projects for the following months. As much as is reasonable and / or until you start to get pushback on the delay.

Generally if you are well sought after, they will be willing to wait a month or two.

This gives you some much needed peace of mind that work is in the diary.

Always get a deposit

Going to miss out on a project due to lack of availability? The next points are for you.

Outsource

Find, train and make partnerships with people who can relieve the pressure.

You can:

- Outsource full projects and take a %.

- Delegate parts of your workflow which are repeatable and easily trainable to a VA / individual for an hourly rate.

- Concentrate on the creative / strategic part and delegate the implementation part.

You can (and probably should) outsource some of the ON parts to experts in their field and use those reclaimed hours for client work.

Effectively exchanging the time you’d usually spend for money in order for this to be done.

The key here is those ON tasks still need to get done.

For example, you could:

- Pay a VA / Social Media Marketer / Ghostwriter 5 hours per week, reclaiming 1 hour per day for client work.

An often overlooked aspect of outsourcing to a professional is money saved via time efficiencies.

If a professional can do something in 1 hour which usually takes you 2, you will free up an extra 2 hours in your schedule to work on client projects and receive your hourly fee.

For example, if your hourly rate is £40.

Billable hours in your schedule go up by £80 per day (2 reclaimed hours)

You pay out £40 to get the same non-billable work done. (1 professional hour)

Another way to think of it is that you doing those ON parts yourself means you are effectively paying expert fees (your own hourly rate which is based on your expertise in your own field) to a novice (you - due your actual expertise in other areas such as advertising or strategy)

Want to extend that benefit even further…

Raise Your Prices

You are booked out.

You have too many leads.

It’s time to raise your prices. (You should be raising your prices periodically anyway)

There is no better signal or opportunity to test a price increase than when you have too many leads.

Choose 2 or 3 of them and pitch your new price range. You will be surprised how many just say “yeah, great, lets do it”

Congratulations, you just found your new level and gave yourself a pay rise.

Pro Tip: Nurture the hell out of these clients, their network is most likely filled with others who have similar budgets who are willing to pay your new rate once your client starts recommending you to everyone

The worst case scenario is that you raise your prices wayyyy too much and not a single client signs with you. Then you burned a few leads which you might not have gotten anyway, and you bring your prices back down.

Upside is massive, downside is next to nothing.

Raising your prices during a period of famine, though, is extremely difficult, because you need that next client and you can’t afford to be messing around and testing out a price increase.

Action Item: Periodically pick a lead which you are not overly enthusiastic about landing, and pitch them at a % more than you usually would.

Productise and Automate

Whats the number 1 thing people are coming to you for?

Productising that service is a process of refining and promoting a particular service while absolutely nailing the setup and organisation.

So a client can see the service, sign up and you can concentrate fully on delivering the most vital and creative parts.

Therefore alleviating pressures on your IN time.

You should have it set up in a way that they can pay, give you any info needed and off you go.

Delivering over and over again whilst reducing the time needed to complete the project.

The onboarding process that’s usually a 2 hour call?

Make it a really great intro video and questionnaire

Automation?

The set-up of your client area, shared drive, tasks in your project management software, the welcome email, scheduling your first creative call etc etc

You can automate all of that to happen for you without doing a thing once a trigger sets off this process (such as the client paying your deposit or signing your contract)

What if I’m stuck in a period of Famine?

You may have noticed I have talked about how to flatten the curve and how to ensure you take advantage of a feast period and not get back to a famine.

The regular ON time in your daily schedule should lead to you having a steady stream of clients.

Some clients but not enough? Up the ON time.

But what if you are at the stage where you aren’t getting any clients?

Your strategy is simple. Dial up that ON part of your schedule to 100% and reduce it bit by bit as and when client work comes in.

During this time, iron out your processes and make note of what works and what doesn’t, and note them down as repeatable action items.

Conclusion

Once you have all of the above in place you should find yourself in a place where:

- You regularly have enough work

- You have a steady stream of leads

- You are growing

- You have a healthy balance and boundaries respected for both your clients businesses and your own business

- You have people and processes in place to take care of excess client work

You may even find that if you stepped away, your business could feasibly run without you should you want to, you know, go on holiday or something.

2. Freelancer Feature

Each week I will be featuring one of you lovely subscribers. This week it’s the one and only:

PEARLING LIM

Pearling is everyone’s favourite creator. She is someone I always noticed brought enthusiasm and great advice to her LinkedIn posts. I tracked her down and got her to agree to a call with me just to chat and get to know each other and she was exactly how her posts portrayed. An absolute legend.

She is a Copywriter and Storytelling Strategist who builds story-driven emotional branding for founders, brands and executives.

She was kind enough to drop by and give us some great advice:

Want to connect with Pearling?

Next Week

005: AUDACITY, DREAMS, TIME

Honestly could not be more excited about next weeks issue!

This next one has the potential to change your life, for real though.

Fighting the urge to just post it all on LinkedIn before next week…

With you next Thursday at 11:00am (UK TIME)

POLL TIME: I’m thinking about trialling the AUDIO feature on Beehiiv and giving people the option at the start to read the newsletter, or LISTEN to the newsletter instead (kind of like a mini podcast)

I’m not sure anyone would like to listen to my voice every week, but hey, lets put it to a vote:

Last weeks poll about claiming your taxes!