Double Your Freelancing Podcast

Welcome to the latest episode of the Business of Freelancing Podcast. My guest is Jeff Steinmann, author of the book How to Quit Working which can be found, along with other services he offers, on his website howtoquitworking.com . First, a reminder to sign up for ticket information for my event, The Business of Freelancing Conference . The show will be September 16-18 in Norfolk, VA. Sign up now...

Welcome to another episode of the Business of Freelancing Podcast. First I'd like to recognize a few recent 5-star reviews for the show. Much thanks goes to: sporkitover, rickwolf, justin_mw, jeff at ecoommercewarriors, ourumov7, kellyIriye for their reviews in iTunes. Keep those reviews coming. It's a great way for me to know that the show is resonating with you and bringing you the resources tha...

Welcome to another episode of the Business of Freelancing Podcast. This week I am joined by my good friend Jonathan Stark. Jonathan is a mobile strategy consultant, having worked with flagship brands such as CVS, Staples, Time, and Nokia. Today Jonathan also focuses on helping other freelancers get the most out of their businesses by promoting the same value based approach to their agencies that I...

This week on the Business of Freelancing Podcast I am very pleased to welcome Ed Gandia to the show. Ed is the “go-to” guy when it comes to high end freelance writing. In a time where commoditized writing is far too frequent, Ed has mastered finding a niche for yourself and selecting only those clients who will receive immense value from your services. International Freelancers Academy is a podcas...

Today I talk with my good friend Kurt Elster on how he has 8x his Revenue by Niching Down into a specialized market. Kurt has turned from a generalized web developer into a Shopify specialist, and in the process he has catapulted his business to a whole new level. To begin with, Kurt lays out a framework he follows that is necessary to specialize. He believes you need 3 things to specialize in a m...

Today I sit down for a chat with Philip Morgan of Philip Morgan Consulting and My Content Sherpa to talk about positioning yourself appropriately as a freelancer in a market, and his new book, "The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms". Philip is an expert on helping freelancers position themselves in a niche that is a good fit for their skills, goals, and ambitions. In this show we ta...

TRANSCRIPT AND NOTES AVAILABLE HERE: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/productizedservices/ Have you ever wanted to get away from strictly selling your time for money? Is your long term plan to either escape consulting altogether (through something like bootstrapping your own products) or to remove yourself as a part of your "product"? Sooner or later, almost all of us get to this point....

TRANSCRIPT AND NOTES AVAILABLE HERE: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/100kprojects/ This week I sat down with Scott Yewell to talk about how he recently closed his first six-figure project. Scott’s a partner at Blackfin Media, who for the last 14 years has been building small ($1-10k) website projects. A few months ago, Scott joined my Consultancy Masterclass and made a lot of changes. He walked a...

http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/followup/ We all know how important communication is during the sales process, but for a lot of freelancers knowing how and when to followup is often a mystery. After you first meet someone, when should you first contact them? How long should you wait before you followup with someone you've sent an invoice to? When and how should you pester clients over past-due in...

http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/funding/ A lot of freelancers — hell, just about every freelancer I've talked to — want to eventually create and sell their own products. But this is easier said than done. Usually something stands in the way: the immediacy of consulting revenue, lack of an idea, or the fear that they'll build something and it'll never sell. In this episode, I chatted with Mike Tab...

http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/referrals/ I recently sat down (literally!) with my friend Steli Efti, the founder of Close.io. For about an hour we talked about how freelancers and consultants can create more referrals for their business. Steli is a master of sales — you won’t want to miss this episode! Mentioned this episode: Steli on Twitter Close.io The B2B Referral Sales System DoubleYourFre...

In this episode, I sat down with Matt Inglot of Tilted Pixel . He started the company over 8 years ago, and went from being a solo freelancer to opening up a brick & mortar office in Toronto. After building up a successful team and building out an office, he decided to go 100% remote. We discussed the pros and cons of having an office, along with why he ultimately decided to shutter his locati...

This week I’m joined by Dennis Field, who — like me — has struggled with burnout. Who am I kidding though? This affects ALL of us. Late nights, weekends, and being “on call” for your clients can cause you to regret ever starting your own freelancing business. Dennis’ website How to Fight Burnout as a Designer

This week I sat down with Jan Jones of Oozou, an agency based out of Bangkok, Thailand, and Jonathan Tarud of Koombea, another agency, this one in Colombia. We discussed what it’s like to run an agency when your clients are half a world away from you. Whether you’re in San Francisco, Topeka, or Saigon, you’re going to love this episode. Double Your Freelancing Rate Oozou Koombea

This is the Freelancing Minute for Friday, February 14th (Valentine’s day!) 2014. When you’re creating a proposal, it’s important to contextualize our offer (what we’re building or doing) with the  problem and the  solution . In this short clip, I seek to define the differences between the problem, the offer, and the solution. Subscribe to the Business of Freelancing Podcast with Brennan Dunn

This week I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist and counselor and the wife of Rob Walling, who we talked with in Episode 12 . Sherry gave a fantastic talk at MicroConf last year on ways that entrepreneurs can manage their own anxiety, and I wanted to bring her on to discuss how you can make sure that your life as a freelance consultants doesn’t end...

This week my special guest was Rob Walling . He’s known for the following… Drip HitTail Startups for the Rest of Us Start Small, Stay Small Software by Rob MicroConf Micropreneur Academy DotNetInvoice Apprentice Lineman Jobs And I thought I did a lot! We chatted about how you can move — either partially or fully — from freelancing to making money from products.

In this episode, I talked with Marcus Blankenship of CREO Agency . If you don’t live in a tech hotbed like SF or NYC and you worry that your location will hinder your ability to recruit clients, you won’t want to miss this episode. I also mentioned my upcoming Skillshare course on value pricing proposals. Here’s the link.

Today I talked with Nick Hance of Reenhanced about ways of setting yourself apart from your competition. If you’ve ever wondered how you, as say a Ruby developer, are any different than me (a Ruby developer) or thousands of other Ruby developers, you’ll want to listen to this discussion. I also opened the show by talking about my upcoming bootcamp with Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on how to create r...

I’ve recently been to quite a few “product” conferences ( LessConf , MicroConf and soon BaconBizConf ), and what I keep finding is that a LOT of freelancers are in attendance. It’s no secret that most freelancers want to one day build and sell a product or two of their own, but  how? How do you figure out what to build and ultimately sell it to the right people? In this episode, I cover four ways...

This is the first episode of 2013 for The Business of Freelancing Podcast, and inside I cover everything you need to know about dealing with those pesky clients who want to know “How much is it gonna cost me?” We explore how to qualify new leads, offer an initial consult, and how to make it known that we’re consultants —  not just guns for hire. Here’s the letter that John wrote me that prompted t...

Hosted by  Brennan Dunn ,  Eric Davis , and special guest  Obie Fernandez Show Notes 00:23  - Obie Fernandez Introduction Author of  The Rails Way  and  The Rails 3 Way Hashrocket Prominent figure in the Ruby/Agile communities Professional software developer since 1995 Started a user group in Atlanta for Extreme Programming ThoughtWorks 04:11  - Importance of building a reputation and personal bra...

Hosted by  Brennan Dunn  and  Eric Davis . Show Notes 00:50  - Sales Pipeline Moving people through a series of steps to get them to be a paying customer Acquisition to qualification to scoping to clients 04:11  - Content marketing to project delivery 08:02  - Tracking leads Highrise Fat Free CRM PipelineDeals Pipedrive Whiteboard Spreadsheet 12:29  - Networking Referrals Are they a good fit? Do t...

Hosted by  Brennan Dunn  and  Eric Davis . Show Notes 00:10  - Content Marketing Making information available for personal gain/recognition Duct Tape Marketing: John Jantsch Getting to know you 03:51  - Getting content in front of people Blogging Screencasting Publishing eBooks/PDFs Podcasting 05:24  - Promoting and building an audience Write with the intention of appealing to a specific audience...

Hosted by  Brennan Dunn  and  Eric Davis  with guest  Nathan Barry . Show Notes 00:19 – Nathan Barry ( twitter   blog ) Freelance Designer OneVoice App Commit App The App Design Handbook 01:14 – Show topic goals Building a passive income stream outside a freelancing business Balancing client work while developing products How product offerings affected his freelancing business Building products wh...