014: BAD, ADVICE, ISSUE

Hey Freelance Friend,

Welcome to episode 14 of FreelancerOS, the bad advice issue.

There is a lot of great advice out there for Freelancers, which ideally you’ve found right here over the last 14 weeks.

But there is also a lot of bad advice, that we need to be mindful of.

This issue seeks to showcase and dispel some of the common bits of advice thrown around by our favourite gurus and regurgitated around our LinkedIn newsfeeds.

Let’s dive right in:

1. BAD ADVICE

Sign Up To Fiverr & Upwork

Generally the first bit of advice people receive when they start out Freelancing.

I’ve never gotten a single project from these platforms, although I do know people who have been successful there.

It’s not that you can’t achieve success there, you can, otherwise the platforms wouldn’t exist.

It’s more that its not a terribly great place to be.

It is generally a race to the bottom on price. You will probably always be undercut by someone from a country with a lower cost of living.

It may well have its place, but I’d say cap it at 10% of your overall marketing endeavours.

Better put time and effort into developing your personal brand on LinkedIn or sales & marketing strategy than relying on these marketplaces.

Work For Free

A tornado of impostor syndrome, lack of ‘experience’, no case studies or portfolio to show and some bad advice will get you working for free.

Don’t have a portfolio? Create example projects.

These examples show exactly what you can do. The only difference?

You didn’t get paid by a client.

So if you don’t get paid either way, why not just work for free for a client then?

Because when you do your own example project, you are not constrained by client demands, you can showcase your absolute best work in the way you want to (so it should probably also be more fun…)

Worried about not having reviews?

Reviews are a ‘nice to have’ not a ‘must have’.

I’ve literally never had a client ask to see a written review. Although they do help.

So, now you’ve got your portfolio pieces sorted, you are over not having written reviews, it's just time to get over that impostor syndrome (pro tip: you never will…)

You are good at what you do, you are doing this as a Freelancer, so you must be.

You just need to let your potential clients know.

How you do that may look a little different to a seasoned Freelancer, but it is definitely possible.

Pro Tip: Imagine a friend or your enemy asks you “so do you think you could actually do that project for that client?”. Record your answer, pick out the gold, present that to your potential client.

Literally the only time it’s possibly acceptable to work for free is during an internship, but usually real internships offer you substantial on the job training and development opportunities.

(not like those Social Media ‘internships’ where you just do social media management for a company who doesn’t want to pay you)

Niche Down

Niching isn’t for everyone.

Especially when you are just starting out.

But I already hear your thoughts…

”I’ve seen a lot of people have success once they niched down”

That’s true but it’s also due to a phenomenon called “survivorship bias”

Survivorship bias is when we take into account data due to the fact that it…well…survived.

You won’t really hear about many peoples stories about niching down and not being successful because they didn’t survive (from a business sense) to tell their success (or lack of success) story.

The bad advice in niching down comes when it’s packaged as a shortcut to success.

Niching generally happens most successfully when there is a highly compelling reason to do so like:

• You have great expertise in another area, so being an expert in that area makes sense

• You niche down organically, for example if you start to get a lot of fashion related projects and make a lot of contacts in that industry, you could niche down and grow your marketing there

Build It, And They Will Come

Sounds good, right?

Well, not really.

Too many people spend too much time building things and then being disappointed when nobody comes.

Imagine organising a huge outdoor BBQ party for everyone, then standing there alone because you:

- Didn’t send any invites (Marketing)
- Didn’t check the weather (Industry Analysis)
- Didn’t know everyone was at someone else’s party (Competitor Analysis)

A much better strategy would be to see if your market needs what you are offering, offer a taster of this product / service and THEN build it.

Make a waiting list.

Tease the service online.

Sell early bird access to the product / service.

Undercut Your Competitors

Beliefs about money are embedded into our psyche during our childhood.

A lot of us have limiting beliefs when it comes to money.

Maybe your family always looked for the best deals or the cheapest version of something.

That is a habit which may have been engrained into you during your developmental years.

What is wild is that there are people who do the opposite, and they are a large part of the population.

These people are also often decision makers at companies.

They default to looking for the most expensive or something in the top percentile, but certainly not the cheapest.

Cheapest to a lot of people is a signal for poor quality, and who wants that when it comes to making a business decision?

If you are one of 5 potential Freelancers, and you are 5/5 on price, you will often be overlooked.

Imagine a pair of shoes you know are £200.

You probably already think they are good quality, made from good materials, will last you etc etc.

Now imagine you see a link on google to those shoes but they are £35.

Maybe you will think that’s deal of the century…at first.

But you will also feel that something is off.

Maybe it’s a fake website.

There has to be something wrong with them…they are probably only available in size 15.

Maybe they are damaged or second hand.

This is not what you want your potential clients to feel when they are looking over your proposal.

Pro Tip: If you have enough work or even just come across a client / project you are not enthusiastic about…quote them double your normal rate. You will be surprised how often they just say yes.

Always Trust Your Gut

Your gut isn’t a thing that thinks.

Trusting your gut is to follow your initial thought / feeling on something.

But we are terribly complicated creatures and often our core thoughts or feelings are driven by things in our psychology that are not helpful to us.

Sometimes your gut feeling even blocks you from doing things which you know would be good for you, or you want to do, only to come back later down the line and wish you did it.

We are designed for preservation and efficiency, not putting ourselves out there and doing great things.

Your gut feeling probably 100 times out of 100 will tell you to absolutely not go up to that nice girl / guy you want to talk to out of fear of rejection.

It would probably also tell you to not go and ask for a promotion or a raise from your boss.

But this guy feeling often keeps us stuck.

Remedy for this? Ask your best friend what you should do.

Don’t have a bestie? Imagine you are talking to your best friend, what advice would you give them?

You Only Fail Once You Give Up, Keep Going

“Never Give Up”

No, sometimes you really should give up.

There is no shame in failing, in fact, those who embrace failure and accept it as a normal part of business / life often end up more successful than those who don’t.

But there are limits…

Fail Fast & Fail Often

You can’t just speed run failure.

This advice often rears its ugly head because of statistics like “successful business people often have 6-7 failed businesses before the one that lasts”

If you are too ready for failure, maybe you will call it a day on the thing you may be successful with, should you just stick with it a bit longer.

Sounds contrarian to the last point, right?

Well that’s because with most of the advice here in today’s newsletter, things aren’t black and white, the answer often lays in the middle and with moderation and time.

Next Week

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