INTRO Hello, I am Ignace

[Ignace]

Hello awesome people,

Great to be here and glad I found this great forum. I also really like reading "The Millionaire Fastlane", it's funny how MJ DeMarco thoughts are similar to my own. I have been fed slowlane crap all my life, good education, save money, bla bla.. My dad did all that, saved every penny, made A LOT of money, he's well off, but he's not rich. I knew from a very young age that if I stayed the course I would end up in the same position.

I started off in a 9-to-5 junior-level, got lucky by being able to solve a big problem they had and got a 45% promotion in return and a Senior title, just one year after joining the company! Unfortunately the next 3 years my income didn't move much and I was laid off! My own fault, I was bored and hated the work and hated the fact I never would make much money no matter how many promotions I would get or how far I would climb the corporate ladder.

My family encouraged me to go find a new job but instead I started my own business freelancing. Because I immediately found a great head hunter my income suddenly increased 3-fold. I was happy for a few years I made about the same amount of money my dad did at the end of his career. But I wanted more, so I started taking on more freelance clients which I would do during weekends and after office hours. Now I worked 14 hours per day, 7 days per week. Making between 1000-1400 per day. The money was good but I suffered, my family, and the clients weren't very happy because they all demanded I worked a few days on-site with them which wasn't possible because I would need to be at another client on-site.

I cancelled the extra contracts and kept working for the client I liked most and decided to take a new direction.

So currently I am looking for a partner, someone who knows how to sell, and knows his way around internet marketing. I know about everything there is to know about software development and reducing development costs, just need someone who can do the selling and help me with marketing.

I know my way around inbound/outbound marketing, I am just too honest and go in too much detail when it comes to selling.

So that's about everything about me. Any questions?

 

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[ZF Lee]

Welcome!

The money was good but I suffered, my family, and the clients weren't very happy because they all demanded I worked a few days on-site with them which wasn't possible because I would need to be at another client on-site.

I cancelled the extra contracts and kept working for the client I liked most and decided to take a new direction.

Yeah...it happened to me as well.
Clients were also draining me of time to go prospect for other interesting jobs as well.

I've decided to try to pick clients with less restrictive terms, or provide some kind of documents and protocols that would ease my clients the trouble of needing me on-site.

I guess its one benefit a freelancer has, over a regular employee.
You can walk away if it isn't right for both parties.

So currently I am looking for a partner, someone who knows how to sell, and knows his way around internet marketing. I know about everything there is to know about software development and reducing development costs, just need someone who can do the selling and help me with marketing.

I know my way around inbound/outbound marketing, I am just too honest and go in too much detail when it comes to selling.

@Andy Black?

 

[Ignace]

Hi @ZF Lee

Thanks for the rep. So, what did you do?

I am already reading the posts made by @Andy Black, they are helping a lot.

 

[Andy Black]

@Ignace ... check out the Inbound Braindump in my signature.

 

[ZF Lee]

Thanks for the rep. So, what did you do?

I'm mostly working on Upwork BTW.

I know for some freelancers, on-site might mean going onto actual face-to-face meetings in officers and places. In my university, they bring in freelance invigilators to oversee final exams.

For me, its simply a zoom call, a regular Whatsapp exchange or Google drive edit session.

Here's some things I will be doing, and am doing now as we speak:

If a client needs 'on-site' work for me, and the pay + experience is something beyond my regular rates or expectations, and I feel NO other job at the moment can match up to it, I'll take it.

However, to test the waters, I will ask them to try me for a few weeks, and if all goes well, we continue.

I would also start with a minimum contract duration of a few months or weeks, so that it serves as a milestone where we can reach together, and afterwards, see if we'd be happy to continue working together after.

Unfortunately, of course, this doesn't work all the time, depending on the job at hand, or sudden scenerios.

So, I must make sure that even if I take on such clients, I must have a small 'backup' reserve of part-time clients who don't demand as much oversight, and have less tacky tasks. This keeps the cashflow coming, even if the on-site clients don't work out, or they have job or payments issues.

Otherwise, if I am in no mood to take up the on-site clients, I'll just have to go by the virtue of finding mid-dollar clients who want medium levels of contact. There's not really a fixed science for that...just pick the best client you like working with, as you have said.

EDIT: Someone here mentioned that you could use Excel to calculate the best amount of time to earn the most of your freelance efforts, but I haven't tried it yet.

It's not for those green to math and business analytics, but since I'm doing some uni courses on that, I might try some optimization stuff for spreadsheets.

 

[Ignace]

Hi @Andy Black I am already reading that one including the other ones in your signature. I will be looking out for the new google ads videos though.

Also not really sure google ads is the place to go though for mostly B2B with it's long sales cycles? I was thinking doing some LinkedIn marketing and get some leads that way.

But as I said in my OP I don't know how to sell, for example I found a few business owners who have a terrible website, their SEO is crap, you barely can find them on Google using their most important keywords. But if you look further, they designed the website themselves using an online createyourfreewebsite service.

How do you convince those to spend money on you? I know what you are going to say, I read it in your other post run ads on their behalf. When they get leads, you call them up and ask them if they enjoy the leads you send. But their website is crap, for example "request a quote" goes to a `mailto` link bad. So develop the website too under a different domain?

 

[Andy Black]

Hi @Andy Black I am already reading that one including the other ones in your signature. I will be looking out for the new google ads videos though.

Also not really sure google ads is the place to go though for mostly B2B with it's long sales cycles? I was thinking doing some LinkedIn marketing and get some leads that way.

But as I said in my OP I don't know how to sell, for example I found a few business owners who have a terrible website, their SEO is crap, you barely can find them on Google using their most important keywords. But if you look further, they designed the website themselves using an online createyourfreewebsite service.

How do you convince those to spend money on you? I know what you are going to say, I read it in your other post run ads on their behalf. When they get leads, you call them up and ask them if they enjoy the leads you send. But their website is crap, for example "request a quote" goes to a `mailto` link bad. So develop the website too under a different domain?

I don’t really do the strategy of sending leads and then calling them up. I’m too busy fielding inbound referrals.


In your case, don’t try to convince people to spend money. Try to help the people who already want to spend money and are looking for someone to give it to.