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Get Clients Now – by C.J. Hayden

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Get Clients Now is one of my consistent go-back-and-read-this-again books. This

I recently read an amazing book that helped me reach a 40% increase in my revenue. Get Clients Now (by C.J. Hayden) has helped me identify a rhythm of marketing and promoting my services. This basic guided outline takes you through the different types of effective marketing strategies.

In episode 7, I break down the different strategies that I’ve used. You can listen to that episode by clicking this link here:

From MOST Effective to LEAST Effective Marketing Strategies:

1. Direct Contact & Follow Up
   1. This involves making a person-to-person connection with a prospective client through email, phone call, in person, fax, text message, etc. This tactic can include cold calling, warm calling, and lunch/coffee with potential clients. I touch on a few steps that I’ve done personally to land some of my first clients as well as some of my most lucrative clients.
2. Networking & Referral Building
   1. Meeting people face to face at networking events is just a drop in the bucket for this strategy. Building a list of contacts that you can tap into for referrals, clients, resources, ideas, or information should be the goal of networking.
3. Public Speaking
   1. Positioning yourself as a expert to your potential clients can start from public speaking. Public speaking will help you become more memorable and noticeable than if you were in the crowd.
4. Writing & Publicity
   1. Writing about your expertise can also be a powerful marketing strategy by gaining visibility and credibility among your peers and potential clients. Start small through social media, blogs, or your own website. Reach out to other blogs as guest writers can quickly lead you to more and more opportunities to show that you’re an expert.
5. Promotional Events
   1. Creating an event such as a trade show, fundraiser, or a conference can put you in direct contact with potential clients and bring the audience to YOU. This also holds true with participating in an existing event by owning/renting a booth. Cost is very real on both end at with this strategy: participating in an event or creating an event can be a very expensive cost per head experience.
6. Advertising
   1. There are generally two different types of advertising: organic and paid.Organic advertising is essentially word of mouth and low/no-cost advertising. Advertising by talking about and promoting your goods and products on social media or withing your mailing list is an example of organic advertising. This is the lowest cost engagement and can have some of the highest returns. Referrals are very powerful and builds trust.Paid advertising can help fill your pipeline with paying customers, but they don’t necessarily build trust in your product. Treat advertising as a way to increase your visibility and awareness to potential customers. The trust and eventual sale will come with them interacting with you directly.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business – by Charles Duhigg

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The Power of Habit is an interesting book that helps you understand why people do certain habits. Good and bad and how to help break or change that habit. This book looks at huge corporations and individuals and breaks down how habits are everywhere. From Starbucks to Target to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, habits are everywhere and can move mountains.

The Cue, Routine, Reward cycle is the basic concept behind the ‘Habit Loop’. Its what can be measured behind a habit. This can be in business or in life and we may not even be paying attention to it. By breaking down our habits, we can take control over our good or bad habits.

The Habit Loop have measurable stages in our habits. There is the Cue: the trigger for our habit. The Routine: what do we do during our habit. And the Reward: Why do we do our habit. This then restarts the Habit Loop and we’re back to it again.

Bringing this concept into our freelancing operation, we can create a Habit Loop to find and win customers and contracts.

Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products – by Nir Eyal

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Excerpt from the book: 

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?

Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Customers and clients have a trigger that we can tap into that rely on existing habits that they have. We go on autopilot when we take action on behaviors that we are accustomed to. Building upon the habits that we may already have in our day-to-day, we can understand and alter them to our benifits. The same goes to when dealing with customers spending and purchasing habits.

Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.

Book Yourself Solid – by Micheal Port

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Booked Yourself Solid has a basic premise: promote yourself. This book highlights strategic ways to get customers to notice you and your services. A lot of times, we are focusing on promoting our clients work and ignoring our own business. 

Book Yourself Solid is a handbook for self-promotion that translates into results.

• Build a solid foundation for a stellar public image
• Enhance your reputation for trust and credibility
• Perfect your pitch and pricing to attract higher-caliber clients
• Adopt the six core strategies that will keep you booked solid

The strategies in this book helps us focus on building the foundation of our reputation, how our clients view us, and the type of work we’ll attract. Starting small and eventually building a promotion can help you effectively land the types of jobs you’re looking for in a consistent way.

Whats Next?

I’m finding more and more that I’m moving towards using Audible for books. I tend to also stock up on other podcasts and listen on the go. Here are a few books that are in my queue, but haven’t listened or read yet.

• The Millionaire Next Door – Thomas J. Stanley
  • This book identifies common traits that a lot of successful and wealthy that keep showing up again and again. Its on my to-read list for sure.
• The Total Money Makeover – Dave Ramsey
  • One of the classic books that MOST people have heard about. Its a powerful guide and program to help get you out of debt. The ‘snowball effect’ has helped me, as well as tons of others out there, reduce debt and build a financial platform.

The post FHS 34 What Am I Reading appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

You’ve probably heard that joke “How do you eat an elephant” and thought that it was kinda clever. Well, there is a good piece of wisdom to the punch line: “One bite at a time”. Big tasks get MUCH easier when you break them down. And, yes, ‘big’ can be relative to whatever you’re doing, but the statement still stands. Breaking up your task into manageable quick-wins helps you keep that momentum and feel/see progress!

In Short; Getting Sh*t Done!

Eating the Elephant boils down to “Getting Big Sh*t Done”. We all have things that we need to do for our freelancing business and they all range in size and complexity. Most people just have a giant check list of things that they need to do and try to get that box checked. Without realizing the effort that is needed to get that box checked, we can sometimes focus on one task…and one task only.

This approach leaves everything else by the wayside, slows down your progress of getting things done, and doesn’t help you prioritize what you actually need to be focusing on. Are you getting caught up on the HOW and not the WHAT of your business?

Need help getting past that Analysis Paralysis we often have when figuring out our business? Get past the HOW and focus on the WHAT! Check out FHS 21: Figuring Out the WHAT

Your To-Do list may also be a place where ideas go to die. Throwing things on your To-Do list that doesn’t need to be there is pretty common.

Don’t use your To-Do list as a dumping ground for tasks or ideas.

You’ll easily get overwhelmed and discouraged from actually getting sh*t done. But how do we actually get sh*t done? Well…you need to learn how to chew that elephant!

How to Chew

This is where that “one bite at a time” answer comes into play. Any task that you need to do can be done. You just have to attack it with a strategy.

Taking a look at what you ACTUALLY do every day, you’ll realize that you’re only getting on average 3 things done per day. I challenge you to focus on widdling down your to-do list to only 3 things. Try it for a single day and you’ll see that you’re much more hyper focused and effective!

• Break it apart – Take you big task and separate it into small sub-tasks that have actions you can do.
• Set time limits for your work – Don’t think you have to do everything TODAY! Pace yourself and set limits on how long you’ll work on the task each day until its done. Work in 25-minute shifts and take a break after.
• Take breaks – You are not a machine. Take frequent 5-minute breaks after your 25-minute cycle so you wont burn out.
• Focus! – Don’t distract yourself by doing all of the sub-tasks at once. Focus on one task during that 25-minute cycle and one task only! Focus on that elephant!

Choose 3 tasks to do today that you can do within 8 hours. You’ll be hyper focused and proud of your progress.

When you break down your goals into smaller manageable and bite size pieces, you’ll see the fruits of your labor much more quickly than trying to take it all at once. Set a time-box (about 25 minutes) for how long you’ll work on that one piece and keep at it until you’ve made significant progress.

You’ll look back and have that sense of accomplishment and fulfillment pushing you further!

Marathon vs Sprint

Your elephant can be broken down into smaller chunks. Don’t rush through things just to get it done. Take your time by focusing on once piece at a time that will eventually finish the overall goals. You’re going to need some sort of Time Management system in place to keep you on track. One method that I use the Pomodoro method by Francesco Cirillo.

The Pomodoro Method is a simple and effective way to manage your time to help you focus on the tasks at hand

Basic Pomodoro Cycle

1. Choose a task from your list
2. Set a time for 25 minutes
3. Work on task until the timer goes off
4. When timer goes off, put a check mark on your piece of paper
5. Take a 5 minute break
6. Every 4 pomodoros, take a longer break (about 20 minutes)
7. Repeat

While going through the cycle, you’ll get a better idea on how to break that elephant into smaller and more realistic and manageable tasks. You’ll get better at taking off 25-minute chunks of your task.

It doesn’t matter how large of a elephant you have. You’ll still be able to break it apart into manageable tasks. You may even have to break THAT task even one more time. The point is to keep going until you’re able break the task apart into smaller and smaller pieces. Don’t think you have to finish large nearly-impossible tasks in one sitting.

Pace yourself when eating the elephant and you’ll make it through.

Eating the Elephant

Dont think you have to take on that mountain of a goal. Breaking things up into smaller and more manageable chunks are going to put you on that path of completion. Eating the elephant is a process that combines time management, task management, and focus.

Take a task that you need to accomplish that will go towards your elephant. Work on in for 25 minutes. Take a break, and repeat. You’d be surprised to see how much progress you’ll get done with a simple 25-minute focused session.

One tool that I use to keep track of my tasks is Trello (www.trello.com) and its 100% free. Its an online and virtual whiteboard where you can organize and share your thoughts or tasks. I’ve created myself a “To-Do” board where I have a ‘Need To’, ‘Doing’, and ‘Done’ board with dates and check boxes. It keeps my thoughts and to-do’s organized and related to each other.

The post FHS 30 Eating the Elephant appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.