Double Your Freelancing Podcast

Today I have an awesome interview with a long time student of mine, Eric White. When Eric started he was a typical commoditized freelancer, but he made the transition to high-value business consulting. He has a background in developing business software. He enjoyed working with people and was the guy who spoke with clients to find out what they wanted in their software products. Eric’s current con...

Today I am talking with Bryce Bladon. He is the curator of “clients from hell”. Today we talk about everything from qualifying new clients to setting expectations. He runs a website whose sole purpose is to showcase crazy clients. We both feel that sometimes we can do things a bit differently to help avoid having clients from hell. So the theme of this show is to have fewer clients from hell. Bryc...

Today I am interviewing Jane Portman. Jane is from Russia, and she used to work with me on Planscope which I just sold. She is an amazing designer who is very focused on the design and the copy. I recently redesigned Double Your Freelancing. Which is appropriate for today, because Jane’s expertise is building really great user experiences. Jane is an amazing UI designer and business consultant. Ja...

Today we are speaking with Alex Mathers. Alex is an illustrator who specializes in vector illustrations, maps, diagrams and landscapes. He is also a blogger and writer. He runs the Red Lemon Blog which helps creative entrepreneurs market and promote their businesses. He has worked for clients like Google, Sony and the BBC. He is also a speaker and does one on one coaching for select clients. He li...

Karl Sakas is the president of Sakas & Company which is a consulting company that specializes in helping digital marketing agencies grow. I had an opportunity to chat with Karl today, and I found myself nodding my head the entire time. The meat and potatoes of the interview focused on helping businesses grow in a holistic way not just focusing on the technical aspect of what the business offer...

Today I am talking with Jesse Strauss. Jesse is a New York-based lawyer who owns a firm specializing in debt collection for freelancers. When it comes to things like small claims court and debt collection, freelancers are usually on their own. Jesse discovered that there were a lot of freelancers with payment disputes while he was working on wage and hour cases. He started looking for a new soluti...

Today I’m talking with a good friend of mine, Keith Perhac. Keith is the founder of the digital marketing consulting agency DelfiNet and the online course software Summit Evergreen. He has managed to build a thriving consultancy agency while working remotely in Japan. Working remotely, can be an issue for many freelancers, but Keith says he is there when his clients wake up and there again when th...

Today’s show features service scalability strategist, Mandi Ellefson. Mandi helps entrepreneurs develop a system to free up time and remove themselves from their business. In today’s interview we discuss scaling your business and things to consider before going down that route. Mandi has discovered that scaling is a common issue for freelancers, and she is passionate about helping them. While rese...

Today we’re joined by Bart Mroz: consultant, co-founder of Sumo Heavy, and long-time friend. Bart is an expert at experimenting new things in his business and using the discoveries to increasingly improve it and their strategy. Not only have they done this with billing models, but with trial periods, sales processes, and basically everything else. What he’s discovered is that experimentation is th...

Today’s guest is Liston Witherill. Today we got the opportunity to talk about getting into the heads of your clients. It’s important to understand your client’s mindset, the worldview of the people you work for and their values, problems and needs. It’s what separates you and allows you to position yourself as an expert consultant and reliably solve the problems of your clients. Liston’s company i...

Today’s guest is Naveen Dittakavi. We had a great conversation about how his business has evolved and how important it is to overcome the belief that just because you’ve read something you’re making an improvement. In actuality, you have to act on what you’ve learned to make a difference. Naveen started his software business company in 2003 out of his dorm room at Georgia Tech and today he teaches...

Taking the time to understand yourself, and manipulating your strengths to get your message out can sometimes be all it takes to push yourself over the edge, and into full-blown success. Today we’re focusing on how to have an authentic brand and establish your brand identity, so you can do just that.   Our guest today is Jeffrey Shaw. He’s a business coach, and he excels in, and focuses on how com...

Today we’re having a crazy interview, but in the best way. We’ll be talking to Julia Kelly, she’s a caricature artist, and the first one we’ve had on the show. She also has a degree in Accounting, so she loves the numbers side of things. We go through how she and her team charge hundreds of dollars an hour for caricature art, and all the ins and outs of her work and business strategy. She’s applie...

Today I have part two of my interview with the amazing Sean D’Souza. We needed to go deeper into the 7 bag framework that Sean’s developed that covers the 7 objectives that need to happen prior to a successful sale. In this interview, we dove deeper into all of this. I really wanted to get his perspectives on how to use the principles that were so foundational for my own businesses and tailor them...

Today is the first episode of  a two-part edition with Sean D’Souza.  Sean’s book,  The Brain Audit , had a big impact on me as well as countless others.  The Brain Audit is designed to give somebody the tools to understand what goes on in the brain of a customer and how to respond accordingly.  It includes the Seven Red Bags which is a sequential process to move the customer through various stage...

The Double Your Freelancing Conference that took place last month In Norfolk brought a lot of great people together to share information and ideas.  In this episode, 5 of the speakers from the conference join me to discuss what value they got from the conference and their overall impressions. The Panel: Mojca Mars - owner of Super Spicy Media, social media consultant Brian Casel - owner of Audienc...

My good friend Paul Jarvis is my guest on this episode of the Business of Freelancing Podcast. Paul began as a web designer and applied what he learned in his work to writing for creative freelancers looking to better run their businesses. Today we discuss building products, especially for those freelancers who may not have a huge audience and a solid idea for a product. Paul has authored numerous...

More and more freelancers have taken to becoming nomads who live and work a location- independent lifestyle.  My guest, Paul Kortman, is a nomad who travels with his wife and four children and runs a digital marketing consulting business from various locations. On this episode Paul offers some thoughts on this lifestyle and how to make your business work in a non-traditional setting.  Paul believe...

Welcome to the Business of Freelancing Podcast.  Today I am talking to Nick Disabato, a good friend who is the founder of  Draft Revise . As well as the author of  Cadence & Slang , a guide to interaction design. Draft Revise is a service that helps companies optimize their content. Nick and I are going to discuss the company he’s built, how he’s done it, and what advice he has for those wanti...

Our guest will be one of the speakers at our Norfolk, VA for the Business of Freelancing Conference this September. Kai Davis is an expert in building up an audience from scratch; building up your authority and targeting the clients you want to work with. If you’re looking to build an audience on your own you will love this episode. In this episode, Kai explains the answer to the most important qu...

Welcome to the latest episode on Business of Freelancing. One of my favorite things to do on my show is bring in niche experts, the kind of experts who are amazing at building a freelancing business and who can teach you how to get better clients. On today’s episode, I uncover what clients are thinking when they start hiring freelancers. I find out why some hire the way they hire and why they turn...

Welcome to Episode 31 of The Business of Freelancing Podcast. Today I’m very excited to bring on my good friend Mojca Mars. Mojca will be a speaker at the Double Your Freelancing Conference in September, and I will be working with her personally in the near future as well. Mojca had a quick start to her current consulting agency, Super Spicy Media , by getting those initial first customers via Twi...

Today’s guest on the Business of Freelancing Podcast is Trajan King. I wanted to talk with Trajan because he has a consulting business built with a focus on having processes and procedures in place. As Trajan tells us, think about processes and standard operating procedures only if you want to be efficient and make money, if that’s not important to you, then don’t worry about having processes. Tra...

This is the Business of Freelancing Podcast, Episode 29. Today we’ll discuss a number of thoughts related to hiring subcontractors. My guest is coach, advisor, project manager and author Marcus Blankenship. If you’ve ever found yourself in the position of needing to hire and manage others, then this podcast will definitely resonate. I’m very close to launching my new daily question and answer podc...

Welcome to the Business of Freelancing Podcast. My guest today is Double Your Freelancing student Matt Olpinski . I’m very excited to announce that in addition to this show I’m going to soon begin producing a daily question and answer podcast, called Freelance Answers. This will be a great way to share the questions that a lot of you have and show the variety of topics that come up in my discussio...