AndyTalks with @The-J about Creating Freelancing J.O.B.s by Accident

[Andy Black]

AndyTalks with @The-J about Creating Freelancing J.O.B.s by Accident

I'm an AdWords freelancer (with a small team).

@The-J is a Facebook/Funnels freelancer.

Recently @The-J complained in a thread that he's build a f**king job for himself.
I figured we should have a chat as I've partly done the same but am tunnelling my way out.

> Click here to access the recording <


What were your takeaways?

What will you do differently going forward?​

(For other recordings click HERE.)​

 

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[Ika]

Thank you for recording the talk @Andy Black and @The-J . It was helpful to hear you "open up" about both your strength and weaknesses - thank you for being so honest.
There were some nuggets in there, which I can't list - but I want to try and answer the original question (as a summary for those who can't listen to the whole talk).

How to go from a freelance job to owning a business:
As soon as you find a vertical that works for your service, specialise in that vertical and position yourself as an expert: "Lead Gen for Plumbers using AdWords/Facebook Ads".
First, live off inbound leads for your own business - referrals. Oftentimes the business owners know each other - through conventions, the same colleges or just the same interest.
At one point, you get really confident in the vertical. Because there are similarities between each jobs, you can start creating systems.
Then you can start outbound lead gen for your own business - use a Landingpage, direct traffic and voila - find someone looking for a plumber. Call the plumbers in that area to give that lead to. (If you are going to do that, listen to the talk - there were some helpfull tips).

And in the end, you can create a platform where plumbers can put their information on. You own the asset, you own the campaigns.

Then you can take this system into another vertical. There's a difference between the agency (learning a vertical with new clients) and the platform (using the knowledge to scale for a cheaper price). If you are really skilled in your service, do the first clients in a new vertical by your own. As soon as you get a good grasp and know what works and what doesn't, you can delegate the work to your team. Oftentimes, you can get better and faster knowledge about a vertical, because you have more experience and can communicate directly with the client.

Also there is the possibility to create a course and sell it - but neither of you want to do that right now, because it is a completly different kind of business.

How is this information relevant to me?
I'm at the very start - I have 2 clients, so there is no need to overcomplicate it. I first have to create a job before I can turn it into a business.
While writing this answer, I came up with this scale for those who are not confident or skilled enough to get similar jobs in the same vertical:

Look for anyone willing to hand you jobs to gain first experiences -> Look for people with similar businesses (Either everyone is doing ECommerce, everyone is selling a service or everyone is a local B&M business ...) -> Look for people with similar sales processes (b2b or b2c, what traffic sources, what marketing strategies ...) -> Look for people in the same vertical

To find a fitting vertical, a fitting sales process and a fitting business type, you have to take on different clients to see what's working and what is not.


I would really enjoy a follow-up talk as soon as you both think you made progress.
If I understood anything wrong, please correct me!

~ Ika

 

[Andy Black]

Thank you for recording the talk @Andy Black and @The-J . It was helpful to hear you "open up" about both your strength and weaknesses - thank you for being so honest.
There were some nuggets in there, which I can't list - but I want to try and answer the original question (as a summary for those who can't listen to the whole talk).

How to go from a freelance job to owning a business:
As soon as you find a vertical that works for your service, specialise in that vertical and position yourself as an expert: "Lead Gen for Plumbers using AdWords/Facebook Ads".
First, live off inbound leads for your own business - referrals. Oftentimes the business owners know each other - through conventions, the same colleges or just the same interest.
At one point, you get really confident in the vertical. Because there are similarities between each jobs, you can start creating systems.
Then you can start outbound lead gen for your own business - use a Landingpage, direct traffic and voila - find someone looking for a plumber. Call the plumbers in that area to give that lead to. (If you are going to do that, listen to the talk - there were some helpfull tips).

And in the end, you can create a platform where plumbers can put their information on. You own the asset, you own the campaigns.

Then you can take this system into another vertical. There's a difference between the agency (learning a vertical with new clients) and the platform (using the knowledge to scale for a cheaper price). If you are really skilled in your service, do the first clients in a new vertical by your own. As soon as you get a good grasp and know what works and what doesn't, you can delegate the work to your team. Oftentimes, you can get better and faster knowledge about a vertical, because you have more experience and can communicate directly with the client.

Also there is the possibility to create a course and sell it - but neither of you want to do that right now, because it is a completly different kind of business.

How is this information relevant to me?
I'm at the very start - I have 2 clients, so there is no need to overcomplicate it. I first have to create a job before I can turn it into a business.
While writing this answer, I came up with this scale for those who are not confident or skilled enough to get similar jobs in the same vertical:

Look for anyone willing to hand you jobs to gain first experiences -> Look for people with similar businesses (Either everyone is doing ECommerce, everyone is selling a service or everyone is a local B&M business ...) -> Look for people with similar sales processes (b2b or b2c, what traffic sources, what marketing strategies ...) -> Look for people in the same vertical

To find a fitting vertical, a fitting sales process and a fitting business type, you have to take on different clients to see what's working and what is not.


I would really enjoy a follow-up talk as soon as you both think you made progress.
If I understood anything wrong, please correct me!

~ Ika

Nice summary! Thanks @lka

Rep+

 

[Ika]

Thank you @Andy Black for the rep sent!

I will try to come back in a month or so and write how it worked to implement all those things.

~Ika

 

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[Nicoknowsbest]

Awesome talk guys, @The-J and @Andy Black, thank you for sharing.

You brought up some great points - two especially stuck with me:

Being a jack of all trades
is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It's a trap I have fallen into quite a few times until know, especially before really going for "growing what I already know". The problem is that some people tend to fall into learning additional, technical things, while others simply outsource those and focus on their commercial skills, hence really working on their business and building it. If I didn't have somebody tell me very specifically a couple of times to NOT learn another technical skill, I would have been lost between half-baked knowledge. Only because I can do it or learn it, doesn't mean I should. The-J specifically mentions the struggle he is facing with the hours in one day. No matter how much I can do, I can never work more than a limited amount of hours per day. To escape that, it's essential to shift my mindset away from being a professional, no matter if employed or self-employed, paid per hour to being a business owner who creates assets. Which assets have I created and how can I sell them over and over again?

Outbound lead generation
I am touching the topic of content creation every now and then and had an interesting conversation with somebody this morning. I try to live by the rule of "Do 50% of your time and talk about it the other 50% of your time". Recently, that hasn't really worked out and I was wondering how to tackle this (side note: I have so much work from inbound connections, that I don't have time to really talk about what I am doing). I received the advice of simply documenting what I am already doing, learning and going through every day. It shouldn't require extra effort to create contents, I am just "recycling" what I am *already* doing day in, day out. Now, combined with the skill of buying media, you can quickly establish yourself as an expert if you get people in front of your documented journey. E.g.: write a blog post explaining how you solved a specific issue and how others can benefit from this too, spend a few bucks on AdWords and see where it takes you.

The crucial challenge for all freelancers/service providers is to find a winning formula that once set up, can be sold over and over again.

 

[Ika]

Nearly 3 month have passed, and I'm curious if there are any updates?

What worked and what did not work when trying to transform your job into a business?

Gesendet von meinem XT1032 mit Tapatalk

 

[The-J]

Nearly 3 month have passed, and I'm curious if there are any updates?

What worked and what did not work when trying to transform your job into a business?

Gesendet von meinem XT1032 mit Tapatalk

I still work a biz-job. Here's some reasons why:

• At the time of this recording, so much of my time was spent dealing with low-value clients that I couldn't outsource. I don't work with any of those people anymore. I make the same amount (a tad more) as I did, but now with more time to expand my horizons. I still work with some low-value clients, though, just not nearly as many.
• My brand IS me. If you meet me at a Board of Trade event in the town I live in, you're meeting the business. If you find me on a freelancer site, you're meeting the business. If you see one of my FB ads, you're meeting the business. My personal phone number is the number of my business. This is NOT an easy thing to break out of and to be honest I haven't figured it out yet.
• I'm not unhappy enough doing it. My bills get paid, my debt is going down, and I don't clock in for anyone. It's too easy to keep living this way. I like a lot of aspects of my job. Today I found out that a company I had been working with for only 6 months increased their online revenue by 500%. i like being able to fire my 'bosses'. These kinds of things make it rewarding in a way. But I'm the dog sitting on the nail. It doesn't hurt bad enough.

So, what 'worked'?

Focusing on referrals. I now have the freedom to open more time and money-extensive methods of getting clients because I ask for referrals.

Getting rid of as many low value clients as possible. Sometimes I take on additional low value clients to open up channels. Every person is an opportunity but not all opportunities are worth taking.

What didn't work?

Some aspects of outsourcing. I tried my hand at outsourcing. I still do a little bit of it for design work and such. However, the way I was outsourcing only increased my time to completion and decreased my margins. Plus... I wasn't doing much selling.

Outsourcing is only really recommended if you KNOW for a FACT that you can do higher value activities with the time you save, or if you can get someone to do it better to the point where you increase the value of what you're doing. If you're not doing it, you're just being lazy. I was being lazy and I paid for it.

Again, I still outsource design work. I'm shit at design, can't Photoshop, have no patience for looking for pictures, etc.

 

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[Andy Black]

Nearly 3 month have passed, and I'm curious if there are any updates?

What worked and what did not work when trying to transform your job into a business?

Gesendet von meinem XT1032 mit Tapatalk

Hmmm... interesting. I can't remember where I precisely was 3 months ago.

Now-a-days I talk more in terms of "we" than "I" when I talk to clients and prospects. The team I'm in is working well together and we're getting quicker and slicker because of repetition.

We're moving slowly through the stages from being an agency type of business with Bespoke clients to one with Cookie-Cutter clients, and moving towards offering off the shelf priced packages (a sign of a Productised Service).

It's a journey and doesn't happen overnight. It seems to me that you can't skip steps. That you have to go through the first phase of being the face of the business. That you have to engage the market hand-to-hand and solve lots of different problems before you find patterns and can develop repeatable processes.

Repeatable processes can be outsourced and automated, but I don't think I can outsource the creation of my core repeatable processes. Two things I don't think we can outsource are passion and insight.

I think people who've done this before can move through the phases quicker, but can't skip them.

Might be worth listening to the second call I had with @Nicoknowsbest.


If anything my revenue is probably lower than before, but it feels like a step backwards to allow us to move forward faster.

We have less of the bigger and more Bespoke clients and more of the smaller and more Cookie-Cutter clients. My revenue is still 75% from the Bespoke side though.


I'm getting a lot of inbound leads and work, which helps but is slowing down my attempts at outbound client acquisition in vertical sales I want to focus on (a good problem to have surely, but a problem still).


I've created a course that helped people, and this could be scaled but it's not the core market I want to serve at the moment (I want to serve the DFY market rather than the DIY market).

I keep getting requests for 1-2-1 coaching but I push people to the course instead.

I'm saying no a lot more as I start getting more momentum and focus.

I'm spending more time doing and thinking about sales and client acquisition now than 3 months ago.

I currently have no plans to hire an AdWords freelancer or outsource what I do at the coal-face. Instead I'm perusing verticals and business models that can be more passive. I can see me outsourcing to or training up juniors to keep plates spinning while I'm the man who works out how to get each plate spinning in the first place.

 

[The-J]

It's a journey and doesn't happen overnight. It seems to me that you can't skip steps. That you have to go through the first phase of being the face of the business. That you have to engage the market hand-to-hand and solve lots of different problems before you find patterns and can develop repeatable processes.

Repeatable processes can be outsourced and automated, but I don't think I can outsource the creation of my core repeatable processes. Two things I don't think we can outsource are passion and insight.

I think people who've done this before can move through the phases quicker, but can't skip them.

It really seems to be the case. You gotta experience processes before you can analyze them. You gotta analyze them before you fine tune them. You gotta fine tune them before you can scale them.

I tried to institute things in my business that had no business being there. I focused on delivery processes before focusing on sales processes. Maybe there's situations where it's better to focus on delivery before sales but I'm not sure of any.

Sometimes businesses get traction and just snowball. Mine got initial traction and stayed steady (along with some dips). Probably takes critical mass, but all I know is that more effort is required on my part to really focus on repeatable sales processes. Sell more.

I relied pretty much entirely on people contacting me, rather than reaching out. I 'tried' some things, 'dipped my toes', never really gave it my all. That there is the problem.

tl;dr i tried to put the cart before the horse due to my own selfish desire to remove myself from a business that couldn't operate without me

 

[Andy Black]

It really seems to be the case. You gotta experience processes before you can analyze them. You gotta analyze them before you fine tune them. You gotta fine tune them before you can scale them.

I tried to institute things in my business that had no business being there. I focused on delivery processes before focusing on sales processes. Maybe there's situations where it's better to focus on delivery before sales but I'm not sure of any.

Sometimes businesses get traction and just snowball. Mine got initial traction and stayed steady (along with some dips). Probably takes critical mass, but all I know is that more effort is required on my part to really focus on repeatable sales processes. Sell more.

I relied pretty much entirely on people contacting me, rather than reaching out. I 'tried' some things, 'dipped my toes', never really gave it my all. That there is the problem.

tl;dr i tried to put the cart before the horse due to my own selfish desire to remove myself from a business that couldn't operate without me

Very self-aware of you @The-J, and I think you've hinted at the solution. Just help people, keep helping people, and what you need to do to help more people at scale will show itself.

It's like we walk a path that isn't clear more than a few steps in front of us. The fog only clears as we move along it.

I think I talked about processes in one of my AndyTalks videos. I was a process improvement guy when I was in IT. The process lifecycle I had was to take processes through this series of stages:

1) Ad-hoc (never done it before).

2) Defined (oh, I've done that before a few times. This seems to be a process I need to get my head round. *adds to list of processes to improve*)

3) Documented (wrote up the steps. For what I did I'd have copious notes of what to do and why, plus screenshots showing the exact steps how. Think of my The AdWords Jumpstart PDF.)

4) Repeatable (your document is rarely repeatable by anyone else the first time you create it. Consider your document repeatable when you can give it to someone who's never seen it but has enough technical skills to follow it. Can they get the same results as you now?)

4) Automated (this isn't always possible, but sometimes tools can be created to help or perform the whole process).

5) Optimised (again, the process might not be one that can be automated, but the final stage is optimising it so it takes less time and other resources).


The most important step is step 0) Does it even need to be done?

I've mentioned this filtering process before:
1) Dump it
2) Delegate it
3) Defer it
4) Do it

 

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