Brief Summary
Mike Scully shares his blueprint for starting a freelance business, detailing how he made over $10,000 per month in his first three months and $100,000 in nine months. He emphasizes leveraging existing skills, building a personal brand, creating content, engaging with potential clients, and effectively closing deals through sales calls.
- Identify and sell your existing skills as a service.
- Build a personal brand to attract clients.
- Engage with potential clients through content and direct messages.
- Offer free work initially to gain testimonials.
- Master sales calls by asking the right questions and confidently stating your price.
Mike Scully shares his journey from a struggling telecommunications engineer to a successful freelancer earning three times more while working fewer hours. He highlights that his academic and professional background was initially marked by failures and disappointments. However, by embracing freelancing, he transformed his life and believes anyone can achieve similar success by recognizing their skills and offering them as services to entrepreneurs.
To start freelancing, recognize and leverage your existing skills, even those you might not consider valuable. These skills can be as simple as creating Excel sheets or offering consulting services. Freelancing is a legitimate business opportunity, not just a one-time gig. Identify what you enjoy doing daily, such as talking to people, typing, or helping others, and find a service in demand that aligns with your interests. For example, Mike enjoys designing and identified landing pages as a high-demand service he could learn.
A personal brand is more than just a logo or color scheme; it's your story and daily life. Instead of being just another freelancer on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork, create content showcasing your personality and expertise on platforms like X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Business owners are more likely to trust and hire someone they feel they know. Mike emphasizes that people buy from people, and showcasing your authentic self can lead to numerous opportunities and referrals.
Post content daily, send 10-20 direct messages (DMs) daily, and demonstrate your competence and skills to attract clients. A key tip for sending DMs is to offer your services for free in exchange for a testimonial. Uploading these testimonials as content or placing them on your landing page builds trust and attracts more business. Don't be afraid to do free work at the beginning of your freelancing journey to build credibility and a portfolio.
When potential clients reach out, conduct sales calls to close deals and get paid. Ask questions to understand their goals, struggles, and current strategies, such as whether they are running ads or have organic traffic. After they finish explaining their needs and ask about your price, state your price confidently and remain silent. The silence puts the ball in their court, and they will likely agree. Send the invoice immediately via Stripe while still on the call.
Avoid being afraid of sales calls and pushing too hard for payment in DMs. Mike shares examples of people he has helped achieve significant monthly income through freelancing, such as someone earning $15,000 a month with a strong Twitter following and a 17-year-old earning $3,500 in 30 days. He reiterates that by following the points in the video, anyone can start doing outreach and growing a personal brand to get clients.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “If I Were to Start Freelancing In 2025, This is What I'd Do [0 to $100K FULL GUIDE]”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 in my first 3 months of starting my freelance business I made over $10,000 per month and after 9 months I had made a total of $100,000 quitting my job to go full-time as a freelancer was the best decision I made in my life it allowed me to take back my freedom work 4 hours a day and earn three times more than my 9 to5 job as a telecommunications engineer I'm making this video so you can too start freelancing this is the exact blueprint I wish I had when I first started freelancing and I'm giving it all away today for free hi I'm Mike Scully and I'm a kid from a small City in Ireland where dreams often just remain that my academic report just a series of disappointments fail fail fail my 9 to5 job difficult working hard every single day climbing telephone poles but luckily
0:46 my story started to go a different way and that wasn't because of my underpaying 95 job or my failed scorec card and it wasn't luck either but it was true freelancing this allowed me to just transform my my life and it shows me that if I can do it anybody else can too picture this you're on top of a hill you're looking over at another Mountain but in between there's a steep valley and that Valley filled with your 9 to-5 job your fears your insecurities and everything else that comes with that making the leap from that small hill to that Peak is such a big step and there's so much to go through but it is possible your start needs to be realizing that you can use skills that you don't even realize that you have as a service to
1:33 sell to other entrepreneurs it can be as simple as an Excel sheet it can be as simple as Consulting for someone that's in a difficult situation you have a skill set you just need to realize what you do on a day-to-day basis and sell that from there you'll realize that freelancing isn't just a onetime gig it's an actual business think about what you enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis do you enjoy talking to people do you enjoy typing do you enjoy helping others for me I actually like designing stuff creating stuff so I looked at that and I saw what was in demand with the market that would allow me to be creative and it turned out to be landing pages so that was exactly how I found a service that was in demand and that I could learn again landing pages you don't need to know code you don't need to have that much past experience I learned it in
2:19 literally like a month but to make money you need something else and that's a personal brand a personal brand isn't just a logo or a color scheme it's a story it's about you it's about your daily life I wasn't just Mike Scully Who Sold landing pages I was Mike Scully that owned this landing page agency called casually convert and it sounded so much better and it was a real personal brand attached to a company a lot of people look at Fiverr and upwork and they hope to sell themselves on that and send proposals all day and all night but in reality if you just make content be yourself and put that out there on platforms like X Instagram Tik Tok Facebook and YouTube YouTube don't be afraid to Showcase everything you're doing and business owners will come to you and trust you more because of that
3:06 remember people buy from people I've had numerous business owners come on and call at me and say wow you're actually a person I'm surprised I didn't think you'd be a normal guy from those days on I started just putting much more content out there that was my personal life you get flooded in with a sea of opportunities and people wanting to connect with you business deals come then from referrals I've been on Twitter now with the last 13 months and I posted every single day I've sent DMS every single day I'm making friendships to then get me referrals or maybe that person I just befriended will actually need my service as well that is possible and maybe I'll need his down the road too so it's a win-win for everyone if you're posting content every single day DM 10 to 20 people every single day and you're showing competence and showing
3:52 your skill set you will sign a client very very soon but from the beginning my top tip for sending DMS is actually reach out to business owners and tell them you'll do something for free in exchange for a testimonial once you do this and they give you that testimonial and you upload it as content or put it on your own landing page that gives you so much more opportunity for people to trust you and you grow and grow and bring in more business again so don't be afraid to do some free work in the beginning of your journey when someone reaches out to you you actually do have to get on some sales calls to close the deal and get paid now this is such a nerve-wracking thing but I tried to follow a script which was crap to be quite honest but it worked the main things here when you do take sales calls is you want to ask them what do they hope to achieve what are they currently
4:37 struggling with are they running ads or do they have organic traffic asking these questions alone will show that you know what you're talking about and then they'll ramble on and talk for ages once they finish talking and they actually come on to say okay how much will you charge me for this service you state your price and you be quiet you don't say a thing I don't care if you're staring at each other awkwardly and by the way those times will come but once you stay quiet the ball is in their court and they will answer nine times out of 10 they'll actually say yes but if you follow up and you're like oh it's this price because this that you've lost once they say okay cool you just say okay cool can you type your email into the chat and I'll send you the invoice right now get stripe on your phone send the invoice while you're on the call my main mistakes that you can learn from to
5:22 be honest are that I was afraid to do sales calls I pushed people too hard in the DMS to pay there so if I was on a call I would have closed so many more deals I've literally help numerous people achieve 10 15K a month like o for example here's now on 13 plus th000 followers on Twitter and earning 15,000 a month Joseph at 17 years old earned 3 and 1/2k in a 30day period so that's exactly how I would grow my business from 0 to 100,000 if I had to start again and there's no doubt you can take the points from this video and actually start doing Outreach and growing a personal brand to get clients for yourself but again there's still still a lot of nuances to this whole process like what content to create what DMS to send how to handle clients how to hand over projects how to onboard clients I
6:09 know what it's like to get started it is super tough there's no question about that you can do this too and if you want to learn more just click the description and click the link that's in there I'll teach you exactly how to get to that point and if you want to learn more about how I built my freelancing business to six figures in the past 9 months click the video up here and if you found this video interesting or useful like And subscribe and I'll see you in the next one
