if you want to be a $100K freelancer, read these books.

0:00 if you want to make six figures as a freelancer this year here early 11 books that you should read but because it would take even the fastest of readers 30 plus hours to read them all I'm going to do you a solid and break down the biggest takeaways from these books so you can skip the reading and just get straight to implementing these and making money with them this week now I picked these books specifically because after working with hundreds of Freelancers I know that the four biggest reasons why Freelancers are not making $100,000 a year are these four reasons the first problem is nobody wants to buy what you're selling so I picked a few books here that will help you fix this by making your off so irresistible and it make it super easy to land clients the second one is you don't know how to find clients we've got a great book to talk about here the third one is you're standing in your own way so here are some books that will help you figure yourself out so you can actually get to making money and the fourth problem is you might just not be very good at selling yourself so we have some books

0:45 here that will help convince people to give you money let's dive straight into fixing problem one which is nobody wants to buy what you're selling all right so the first book on the docket is so good they can't ignore you by Cal newer such a good book the first lesson is a quote straight from the book you get paid for being good at what you do and if you're not good at what you do and you can't get better you don't get paid and if I look down it's cuz I'm looking at the slides that I made what you do is your product as a freelancer so if your product or your service is not good it doesn't matter how good your marketing is it doesn't matter how good your sales are it doesn't matter how many people you talk to nobody's going to want to buy your product so what Cal talks a lot about in this book is he says instead of being me Centric so asking what can the world offer me what's in it for me what should I offer instead becoming entric so asking what can I offer the world what can I do for this person how can I serve and actually K even mentions that

1:32 asking what's my passion is only going to lead you down a path of frustration and how it doesn't really matter what your passion is in the beginning passion comes from honing your craft and mastering something so it's better to start out with asking what does the market want what do clients potentially want versus focusing too much on what do I like and what should I start out with and this is super aligned with what I think as well when it comes to freelancing is I always think you have to make sure that your service is validated before you go and build a whole website and packages and pricing all around this service right before you've even tested it like no big company like apple or Nike would just roll out a product without doing some testing and making sure people actually want to buy it and are going to spend money on it so as much as possible before you roll out a new service make sure you've asked a few people make sure you've asked your target audience like is this something you would actually pay money for is this going to help you

2:17 solve a problem a third lesson that I love that Cal talks about in this book is the concept of career Capital career capital is essentially this currency that can be exchanged for career perks and more control over your career so control over your career in the sense that it can give you more autonomy it can help you make more money because you'll have more leverage to then charge higher rates career capital is what makes you precious indispensable and super hard to replace AKA it gives you hella security here the question is how much carer Capital do you currently have how can you get more and I just have to share this example when I first started as a freelancer in 2016 I had absolutely no career capital I had no relevant work experience I had no clue what I was doing but I began building my career Capital by slowly depositing into my little career Capital piggy bank every time I watched a video over like a tool that I didn't know every time I read a book that was relevant to something I

3:04 could think about pursuing every time I worked with a client that taught me a lot or bu bought me a course of some kind I just kept depositing the little coins into my little career Capital piggy bank so this is a little graph of the things that I did as I was building my career capital I watched a lot of YouTube videos I Googled a lot I bought and read books on management I did tons of research on systems and workflows for small businesses I invested in trainings I invested in masterminds bought courses in the beginning I could only invest with my time that's totally normal I didn't have the money to invest but as I started making money then I started reinvesting that money into my business and into me and building that career capsu the fourth thing Cal Newport talks about is making a career plan so I call this a freelance ladder essentially it's just a step by-step of what you see your career going out at in corporate they essentially make that plan for you the

3:50 hierarchy for you right like a corporate ladder might look like oh no you start as an intern then you become a junior consultant you become a consultant you become a senior consultant you become a director maybe there senior director I don't know and then the partner so they lay that all out for you so you have that vision of like okay if I do this for x amount of years I'm going to get here if I do this then this and so on and so forth but as Freelancers we don't really have that so I really invite you to make one for yourself one that you could look at the vision for your freelance career and be like I'm really excited about this trajectory that I've built for myself so for example for me my freelance ladder was I started as a Content assistant I did that for about 3ish months then I moved on to project assistant where I started managing more than just content for my clients and then I moved into project management so that was about 6 months and then after that I essentially just promoted myself to the role of digital business manager

4:36 fractional coo and that was the role I stuck with and was my dream role essentially and the questions here to ask yourself is what do I have to learn to get to the next step like what's the learning plan what are my missing skills that I need to fill in the gaps to become for example a digital business manager and more fun what salary perks what salary increases and benefits am I going to give myself at every step because in corporate they have that right like oh when you become a junior consultant your salary is going to go up to this and you're going to have like extra paid vacation days or something like that so you want to build those fun things in for yourself as a freelancer as well it's like when I promote myself to digital business manager I'm going to increase my salary by 10% and I'm going to give myself the perk that I can take an extra 3 days off a month because I'm making more money now so I don't have to work as many days all right the next book is $100 million offers by Alex her

5:22 mosy and iconic book so the first big lesson here that Alex talks about is what could you offer the market offer your target client that would make them say all that seriously yes I'm in and I think this is a really good exercise to think about now maybe we don't want to go all the way to all that seriously yes I'm in but it's a good exercise to get you start thinking about like what else could I offer that would make it essentially a no-brainer for a Target client to want to work with me like what am I noticing are the potential things that are holding them back is it that it's too big of a package is it that it's too risky is it that it's not solving enough of a problem for them what could I add what could I take away what could I make simpler easier faster cheaper so that they're like this is a like this deal it's insane it's so good Alex talks about how the hierarchy of importance is first you need to make

6:08 sure that whatever you're offering is within a starving crowd starving Market the market needs to really really really want whatever it is your offering the second priority is the strength of your offer so how good your offer actually is and the third thing is persuasion skills to persuade people that they need your thing specifically and it's really important to go in that hierarchy because you could have a starving crowd you could have a bad off offer and no persuasion skills but if it's a starving crowd people will still buy and in the book Alex says essentially the reason people buy anything is to get a deal the moment the value that they think that they're going to get dips below what they're paying that's when they stop buying so essentially the perceived value of your offer always has to be higher than the price for example for me when I was a conent assistant I was offering a lot of small things but the perceived value of those small things since they were solving small problems

6:53 was not very high so the only price I could charge was extremely low but as I started solving bigger problems as a digital business manager you know I was helping clients actually get their ideas done I was Project planning I was managing their chaotic teams I was helping them create systems and workflows those are humongous problems that clients that want to scale to six figures and seven figures have as I was solving those problems the pain of those problems higher the pain of those problems higher as I was solving those bigger and bigger problems the perceived value of what I was doing was so much higher than my price could go up accordingly a second lesson that I really like from this book is not to take things to personally which is a really good lesson because I take everything super personally Alex says most people never try anything others fail once then they give up stop personalizing everything it's not about

7:39 you if your offer doesn't work it doesn't mean you suck it just means your offer sucks you only suck if you stop trying so try again this is kind of a little bit hustle bro for me but I know as Freelancers it can be quite hard because when somebody says no to your offer it might feel like oh but they're saying no to me they're saying no to my skills they're saying no to my experience but as much as you can detach you from freelancer you freelancer you is a business okay just see it as a third person entity it's nothing about you your worth is endless it's Priceless you're Priceless your worth is inherent to you this is something else this you can work on this you can optimize this you can fix this you can get better at so when someone says no to this this has nothing to do with it the third lesson is what he calls the hormos law which is the longer you delay the ass the bigger ass you can make the longer the runway the bigger the plane that can take off

8:25 and I know it's so annoying to play the long game I know we all want results right away we want to see that what we're doing is working right away but honestly the long game in my experience that's when you make the big bucks and just some examples one of my favorite clients of all time took a year of nurturing before she paid me any money and she was one of my favorite clients and I worked with her for years after that but it took a year of me nurturing her and building that relationship with her consistently before she ever paid me any money another client took me 3 months of nurturing pretty consistently pretty much showing up up delivering free value before he ever paid me any money and he's one of my favorite people to work with now next book Lynch fin so good from Seth Goden here the only way to get what you're worth is to stand out to exert emotional labor to be seen as

9:11 indispensable and to produce interactions that organizations and people deeply care about so the first lesson that Seth talks a lot about in his book is to give generously I completely agree with this he says the more you give away the more people will give you credit for knowing what you're talking about the more the market will demand from you the more you will get and that's also my personal philosophy what I give should always be greater than what I take I think most of the time when people go into communities when they start networking when they build relationships when they're trying to land clients a lot of times what they're thinking about is what's in it for me we're all very we're all pretty like egocentric people right think about the relationships in your life are any of the good relationships in your life built on somebody else being like what am I going to get what are you going to give me or when are you going to pay me money think instead what can I give them like how can I just help them for free before money has even exchanged hands

9:57 how can I help them for free that was always my Approach when it came to talking to clients and I can honestly say that that has generated so much Roi in the long run for me so oh the second lesson that I love that he talks about in this book is the concept of the lizard brain right the lizard brain that we all have in our brain is the resistance the resistance in the back of our voice that's telling us like wo whoa whoa who slow down like be careful compromise the lizard Bane is always trying to protect us from danger right protecting us from going out of our comfort zone especially when it's about venturing out of the cave being eaten by a lion so being eaten by a lion to the lizard brain is essentially today being rejected a failure of embarrassing ourselves of somebody saying no to our face right and trust me I get it I have

10:42 been terrified of rejection terrified of failure terrified of trying all of those things it is very scary to go outside of your comfort zone but as much as possible that's where all the good stuff is we're not going to say oh we're going to like go and like try to pitch somebody that's like a celebrity or something like that train your lizard brain by taking those small steps and breaking it down into small steps for yourself so maybe instead of pitching a celebrity maybe we pitch our local bakery first or maybe we'll pitch somebody who has I don't know 5,000 followers on Instagram next book is the Blue Ocean strategy if you've watched any of my videos then chances are you've heard me talk about the concept of blue ocean versus red ocean it's an extremely relevant visual in my opinion to the world of freelancing and in this book they say competing in overcrowded Industries is no way to sustain high

11:28 performance I completely agree so the first lesson here is the freelancer red versus blue ocean so instead of competing in that saturated horrible red ocean where everyone is fighting over the worst clients in the world and because it's so competitive everyone has to compete on price points and then you have like everyone's charging less and less and less money and all of that stuff instead try to as much as possible swim strategically Into the Blue Ocean and the easiest way to swim over there is to work on solving bigger and bigger problems and developing more IND dispensable skills so really useful skills that again solve those big problems so I hope you're seeing a common theme Here we want to get to know who our Target person is and what those big problems are because that is how you create an offer that's so good that people will pay you whatever Banana's

12:13 money to fix it and I also talk about this transition in more detail in my free series I'll link it below it's called how I turned my love of planning into a sixf figure freelance career you can watch that if you want even more detail on how exactly I did this step by step all right now on to the second problem the second problem of you don't know how to find CL science so here we're going to look at the book $100 million leads Alex Hero's new book I love it I'm still in the process of it so I haven't finished the whole book yet but here are a few lessons that I already pulled out so he says here having lots of leads makes it hard to be poor you're not getting as many leads as you want because you're not advertising enough and I need all Freelancers on the entire planet to hear me say this you are not getting out there enough you are not talking to enough people and I know it's very hard to get out there and talk to people because like we talked about the lizard brain doesn't really want you to go out there because it's really scary to get rejected and it's really

12:59 scary to fail even though in my opinion failing is only if you stop trying so if you just keep getting out there you will win so in it he talks about something which I talk about a lot as well freelancer conversion rates so this is what Alex says are average conversion rates to expect in small business so warm reach outs AKA reach outs the people who know you already who have some trust with you should get a 20% response rate so if you reach out to 100 people 20 people should ideally reply 20% of those people should take you up on a free offer So 20% of 20 people is four people and 25% of those people should then convert to a paid offer so 25% of four people is one people one people one person so basically if you reach out to 100 people one person should convert into a paid offer in my experience for freelancing at least that

13:44 is a bit low this example that he gives but I do think it's a good illustration of how much you have to actually get out there Alex says here I love this quit with enough volume you will get a customer and the more you do it the better your numbers will get it just takes effort when you're first starting out you you don't know you don't know how to talk to clients you don't know how to convince them to give you money you don't know how to present yourself properly and so you have to get the repetition out there so that you can get that practice so that your conversion rate goes up over time so for example it took me 20 tries to get land my first client then it took me another 20 tries to land my second client so I had about a 4 to 5% conversion rate when I first started I no longer have a four to five% I no longer have anything no longer have any brain cells I no longer have a 5% conversion rate my conversion

14:29 rate is way higher now because I started with the 5% conversion rate and I just kept going the third thing that Alex josi talks about is giving until they ask and this is similar to what Seth Goden talks about right like be generous he says people are always waiting for you to ask them for money and when you don't they trust you more they share your stuff more if you give enough people start asking you and all I have to say here is I agree this works I also tried this approach out with Landing clients too where I have just given them free value and I didn't even talk about my services I might mention it like breadcrumbs I was just giving them free value and really just showing up consistently being like hey like have you ever tried this or hey like I noticed you're having this problem this tool might help you fix that and those clients would then eventually reach back out to me and be like hey DEA like you've helped me so much with getting started with my project management stuff

15:16 what do you do like you're a project manager right like can you tell me more about what you do we want to give until until the ask strategically we want to position ourselves as an authority figure and I almost feel like it's sort of an abundance mindset kind of thing coming in where if you don't tell people about your pricing about your services whatever it's almost like you're too cool you're not like desperate for it and then the client's like oh my gosh they must be really in demand I better figure out what they offer so that they don't book up before I get in with them right now the fourth lesson that I loved from this book is cold Outreach is all about personalization personalization is what will get your foot in the door to get the sale we never just want to send a copy pasta template to every single person off of a list that does not work

16:01 in my experience whatsoever so as much as possible make sure you always find a few pieces of personal information about the person and mention them when you do cold outreaches compliment them on it tell them how it helps you people love to hear that I have an entire cold pitching series here on YouTube I'll link it below where I go into tons of detail about exactly how to do this how to find people who to pitch how to pitch what to write all that good stuff all right now the next problem figuring yourself out if you're standing in your our own way so the first book is the dip by Seth Goden so what is the dip the dip is this it's essentially after the excitement of starting something new starting freelancing starting a new business starting a new passion project whatever when the excitement starts to go down and you realize oh shoot like this is actually work now I actually

16:47 have to do this work and I have to do it for a while before I see the results and he says almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by this dip and I absolutely love this it's so encouraging to think about and essentially what he says is the dip is that long bit between starting and becoming really good at something and that long part that long effort part that long SLO is actually the shortcut because that is the fastest way to get to where you want to go but what ends up happening is when people get to that long slog they think this is too hard I'm going to quit and I'm going to go try and find something else that's even like an even better shortcut but there is no better shortcut doing the work is the shortcut it's the fastest way to where you want to go instead of trying a million other things trying to get rich quig and do a bunch of like

17:32 start a bunch of new things versus just getting through this dip part the hard part the dip is the audition right the dip is actually what makes the result rewarding if there were no dip everyone would just Glide right through everyone would make it to the results and then the reward would be less meaningful the dip is the natural filter that separates the people who are willing to put in the effort from those seeking the shortcuts who are willing to just like give it all up the second they get into the hard stuff example we made YouTube videos for eight months before making a single dollar from AdSense I spent four to 6 months making my course dbm boot camp before I ever made a single dollar and now that course has made me over $700,000 and the second lesson I want to pull out here is to be stubborn so Seth says successful people don't just write

18:18 out the dip they don't just buckle down and survive it no they lean into it they push harder changing the rules as they go and the lesson that I'm taking out of that is just to be super stubborn right like focus on your what can you do every single day that is within your control don't focus on the outputs don't focus on the numbers you cannot control don't focus on the revenue goals those in my opinion are like products of a good system of the inputs so what is actually within your control what's within your control is how many times you reach out to clients how many times you talk to clients how do you make your offer better watching videos like this that make you improve taking notes implementing those notes making sure that your pricing is matching the perceived value making sure that you're getting out there at least 100 times to talk to people to make sure your conversion rates are going up all of those things are within your control and I promise the outputs will come as long

19:04 as you do the right input one of my all-time favorite books is the mountain is You by Brian whis and Brian says there's nothing holding you back more in life than yourself agreed completely 100% I think most things in life are attainable with us if we manage to figure our own stuff out and work through whatever drama is happening in our brain step by step this book is all about self-sabotage now before you go and roll your eyes and say I don't self-sabotage that's what I thought before I read the book but self-sabotage is extremely subtle so basically I'll just say if you are not where you want to be if you are not doing the work you know you need to be doing to get to where you want to go there's some sort of self-sabotage at play and there's this great quote in the book I'm going to do a dramatic reading when you arrive at this Breaking Point the foot of the mountain the heat of the fire the night that finally wakes you you are at the

19:51 Crux of the breakdown and if you're willing to do the work you will find that it is the entry way to the Breakthrough you have spent your en entire life waiting for okay that is how it felt when I started freelancing I have to be honest and I genuinely believe everyone is on their own journey and when you reach that breaking point in your journey where you're looking at your life like I'm not happy with this I need to change something that is when you will do the work required to get to where you've always dreamed of going and for me that breaking point was when I was starting my corporate journey and day in day out I felt like my soul was being drained out of my body I was working super late nights and I was just thinking to myself what am I doing this is what I'm going to do for the next 40 to 50 years I'm going to wear clothes that are uncomfortable to wear work on projects I don't care about go to a

20:38 place that I don't want to be at spend the majority of my waking day at this place doing this for what like for what reason what is that Breaking Point the foot of the mountain for you and use that as fuel to start scaling the mountain essentially and one huge lesson that Brianna talks about in this book is how much we value Comfort over happiness like we inherently don't actually want to be happy we just want to be really comfortable as people and self-sabotage is what happens when we believe we aren't capable of handling our needs and we often do this to keep ourselves safe right like human beings are Guided by Comfort we stay close to what is familiar we reject what isn't familiar even if it's objectively better for us so what does self-sabotage look like so lots of things that Brianna lists so

21:23 resistance if you feel any sort of resistance towards like oh I really want this thing but I shouldn't like there's this really big tension inside of your body that's keeping you from move forward movement that's what self-sabotage looks like hitting your upper limit feeling like oh this is as happy as I can be I cannot be any happier because that would be too scary for me self-sabotage uprooting constantly so uprooting in a business context every time you start you try something new like you try a new passive income Source it doesn't work for the first time you just give it all up and then you try the next thing and you try the next thing you try the next thing perfectionism huge problem for me a attachment to what you don't really want judging others if you're judging people constantly all the time that is a form of self-sabotage at play here Pride so letting your ego take the Reigns guilt of succeeding fear of failing I know a

22:10 lot of you out there probably struggle with this just like me downplaying being too busy unhealthy habits worrying about irrational fears and least likely circumstances all of these are what self-sabotage looks like and Brianna talks about how self sabotage always fulfills a purpose it's not evil there's always a reason why we are doing so right like for example I'm not filming Tik Tok videos because it's very scary for me to put my content and ideas and face and personal out there for the world to judge and for people to look at so not filming is keeping my ego safe another example you might not be reaching out to freelance clients because it's very scary if they say no to you so not reaching out or making up all this other stuff that you think you need like a website logo branding colors all this stuff instead of just reaching out to potential clients and talking to

22:55 them and figuring out what it is that they need and their problem is a way to protect yourself it's keeping your ego safe from being rejected from potential failure which again like if you reframe failure failure can just be if you stop trying so if you don't stop trying you can't fail that's how I see YouTube I'm like I'm not going to stop making videos so what is failure I don't know we'll see and all of that really leads the lesson of if you really want to change your life let yourself be consumed with rage rage get angry determined allow yourself to develop tunnel vision with one thing and one thing only at the end that you will not go on as you are and I think this is so powerful for those of us that actually do want to make huge change in our life is to find that source of energy from somewhere and anger at your

23:41 current circumstances in my experience has been a very good fuel a really good energy source if you want to make big change all right now the final blocker you're not good at selling yourself let's talk about some books that will help convince people to give you cash money the first book is called start with no by Jim camp and he says when you Embrace no you're in the most powerful position you'll ever experience in a negotiation he talks about this no system the no system is you don't avoid objections you are excited you embrace them when you truly understand no the word loses its power so my questions for you are do you understand what no from the perspective of a client means if a client says no to you what does that mean for example saying like really appreciate your honesty can you tell me

24:27 more about what's causing hesitation or any specific concerns you might be having right embrace the note invite the objections because when you hear the objections that's when you can fix them you can't fix something if you are just avoiding the know and not trying to hear what potential issues they might be concerned about and the second thing that I loved from this book is he talks about transparency as the only way and to really avoid pressure tactics and be honest upfront so that it's a two-way on a street right so he talks about how manipulative techniques while often effective in the short term term actually ruin your relationships they destroy trust and you should never do them your goal is essentially to get people to talk to you super openly about what's going on so that you understand what those problems are and if you're actually the right fit to fix them that's something else I talk a lot about with Freelancers is a lot of times

25:13 Freelancers are so focused on convincing the other person like no no no like I can do it I can do it it's like can you do it like make sure you can do it make sure you are the right person for the job because if you're not the right person for the job it's just going to be a headache for both of you later on and it might ruin your reputation the third lesson here is to shut the H up silence is golden in negotiations it is the most powerful communication tool you have it might feel very uncomfortable on a discovery call if a client is silent and you might try to fill that silent with more words just be quiet right let the client think and listen see what's going on and whenever possible always make sure that you ask questions about things before you start blubbering on about this is my pricing these are my rates ask them what their budget is and then just be quiet see what what they say ask

25:58 them what they want see what they say ask what their objections are see what they say and the fourth lesson one of my favorites as well being willing to walk away is one of the biggest things that you can have in your back pocket when it comes to negotiations I know you might be thinking Dam but I can't walk away I have to say yes to every single client and that is why I am always interviewing an appli I do not wait until I'm desperate for a client to look for a client when you always have options that's when you have the ability to walk away that's when you have the ability to say no that's when the ability to negotiate comes into play cuz you're like I could sign you but I don't need to I have a full roster so we'll see if they can bring something to the table that's so interesting that I'll swap in someone for my client roster that's the position you want to get in and another thing that honestly changed everything for me was when I started hiring four

26:45 clients when I became their business managers and I was hiring four clients I realized how hard it is to find good talent it is so hard when you are on the freelancer side because you think oh my gosh everyone's applying there are hundreds of applicants everyone is as good as me and we're all going to fight tooth and nail for this client most Talent is not that good most applications are not very good so that's just a little reframe for you when you are applying have the confidence to know that you're probably if you're watching this video by the way if you've taken the initiative to click on this video and actually watch it because you want to be a better freelancer you're already above average next books Never split the difference he says negotiation is not an act of battle it's a process of discovery the goal is to uncover as much information as possible so he recommends using calibrated questions so those are openend questions that start with what or how to invite them to think so for

27:32 example what do you think the core issue has been what happens if you do nothing what does this look like if we work together how have you been doing this in the past to get them to talk so you have a better understanding of what's going on and he says persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are it's about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea so don't beat them with logic or Brute Force ask them questions that open a path to your goals inviting them to get to that solution themselves is better than telling them the solution because then it's it makes a stronger impression in their brain next one your mirror so repeating the last few words that the other person says encourages them to expand on what they were saying providing more information and allowing them to empathize with you so for example if during a client meeting a

28:17 client says oh I'm really worried about the project timeline you can respond with project timeline this invites them to then share more details helping you understand what exactly the concern is getting to the root of the problem and then negotiating maybe a more realistic deadline next one he also says negotiate with the no in mind right in a negotiation no is the start of the deal not the end of it this is like going back this is all like tying together so if a client says like oh this is a little bit out of my budget to you you might be interpreting that as a no but instead if you embrace the no you could try to find a win-win instead for example it seems that you might be looking for a more budget friendly option what if we explore some ways to add value without within your budget constraints what if we explore some ways that things we could take out of my package to make it fit your budget

29:03 better with that work and the next lesson is to validate their big emotions labeling he says is one of the great secrets of negotiation it's a way of asserting control over a situation by not trying to control I love this and again like validating acknowledging someone's concerns their emotion that's what creates trust so when somebody's concerned about something instead of being like Oh you you shouldn't be concerned oh don't worry about that that is invalidating their experience we want to validate oh that makes sense yeah I can see how you would come from that perspective I can see that that would be concerning because you've never tried this before right when you label someone's fears he says you validate them that's when real trust begins so for example you could be like sounds to me like you're feeling a bit hesitant because of the budget totally understandable I'd love to hear more about what you're feeling hesitant on all right the next book is influence the

29:50 psychology of persuasion to help us persuade people to give you money and in it they say those who don't know how to get people to say yes soon follow away those who do stay and flourish and that's why it's so important as a freelancer to know how to get people to say yes a principle that he talks about here is reciprocity right we want to give people back something when they have given something to us this is tying back again to the generosity that we've talked about and I experience this all the time a lot of people slide into my DMs asking me to give them free stuff asking me to review things for free asking me for free coaching asking me to do it really quickly actually somebody dm'd me yesterday and was like please make sure you get back to me quickly with this question that I have about this free video that you made about this free template that you gave us some people have a big tendency to just want to take and take and take you have to

30:36 give free value upfront sometimes next one scarcity as a principle we love it the idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision-making so examples of how you can do this as a freelancer if you only have a few spots per month say that and communicate with interested clients you could also offer like X limited time discounts for booking within a certain time that's that beautiful combination of urgency and scarcity so that you can make some like good psychological I don't know where that was going psychological magic to making money so use these principles for good don't use them for evil another one where are your five star reviews people want to see social proof share your client testimonials loud and proud share certifications or courses you've completed write case studies on client

31:23 successes and post them absolutely everywhere do free or discounted projects if necessary to find these I did a $10 project as my first project ever on upwork to get my first five star testimonial it's just paying your dues you have to prove to clients that you are good at what you are doing and they don't know that unless they can see a client testimonial or some sort of proof of some kind and ask for tiny commitments in this book he talks about how people prefer to be consistent with their past behaviors so if you ask clients for a 15-minute free call where you give them some value ASAP they're much more likely to continue continue to spend time with you and potentially money in the future because that would be consistent with them giving you already a bit of their time earlier on right once they've made that small commitment they're much more likely to follow through with larger related

32:09 commitments to those so get your foot in the door and finally never lose a customer again there's this great great quote in it in the first 100 days of the customer life cycle customers decide if they're going to stay with you longterm or if they're going to leave if you get one good client who pays you 2K and that client pays you 2K for for the next 3 years that one client could be worth $70,000 over 3 years so as much as possible don't just always be focused on how can I find new clients where can I find more clients how can I sign more Discovery calls think about your favorite clients and how to keep them for longer and not lose them the customer journey is the total sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand so create a comprehensive onboarding process for new clients give them that clear expectation clear communication guide them through every

32:56 step especially in those first I would say first few weeks and the next lesson is to fix problems before their problems the companies that consistently deliver memorable customer experiences are the ones that actively engage in looking for potential problems and addressing them before they arise so send regular project updates share progress Milestones so important ask for feedback you do not know what's wrong unless you ask don't just assume everything is great and the client is super happy unless they specifically tell you in those words all right so that fixes that problem now another one of my favorite books is the atomic habits and actually this book is so good that I made an entire video of the top moneymaking lessons from Atomic habits for Freelancers I'm going to link it right here so you can go watch that next and

33:42 it will help you make even more money as a freelancer so yeah as always thank you so much for watching and I hope to catch you in the next one okay bye yay