Growing your Freelance Portfolio or Agency

Brad Hussey at UXDX Community: Freelancer and Agency Growth. Video: https://youtu.be/AbcX7ecc0PE

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Flying solo and the misconceptions about freelancing

[00:00:06] Awesome. All right, I've got a little presentation here I'm calling Flying Solo, which is all about how to navigate the turbulence of freelancing. Freelancing, as we may or may not know, is working as an independent agent. You're building your own business, a solo professional, but there's a lot of responsibility with that, and so it can be a very turbulent ride. Having had the experience of being a freelancer for more than a decade, and coming out the other side as well, and seeing many different aspects of this industry, I have a few things that I think I can share to help mitigate that so-called turbulence.

[00:00:48] First of all, my name is Brad Hussey. I'm a designer, creator and freelancer from Canada, and my passion is web design. I've been doing this in some form for the better part of maybe 12 years at this point. I built my first website when I was very, very young, and then I went to school for design, interactive design, and I got a full-time studio gig for one year. But I quit after one year to pursue freelancing full-time, and I haven't looked back since. I've been able to create content and to serve clients from all over the world, from building websites to teaching people how to build websites. I've created courses, I've done coaching, I've done so many different things in this industry, so I've seen lots of different sides.

[00:01:39] Like I said, I have a number of things that I would like to share, because I've been lucky enough to be able to make a successful and fulfilling career as a web designer that's completely solo. It's just been me, and so that's what I'd like to share.

[00:01:57] The first thing I'd like to outline here is: what are some common misconceptions about starting a design business as a freelancer, going into this solo? Well, it's really all about stepping up to the plate, and you need to understand that business isn't easy. You might like design, you might like the idea of being free and having the freedom of running your own business, you might like your craft, but that's very, very different from actually running a business and being a business owner, even if it's a company of one.

[00:02:36] If you want to play the game of business, which it is, a game, you need to step up to the plate and you need to swing. You need to take swings, and you're going to miss swings, you're going to strike out, you're going to get hit. My whole point to this is that in order to start succeeding in business, you really need to start generating cash flow quickly. It's not about how you look, it's not about your personal brand, it's not about what it looks like to do business. It's about actually doing business, and business, when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, is clients and cash flow.

[00:03:20] Now, because of this, running a business is not glamorous. It's really not what you see on Instagram, the influencers who share about their business and running a business. It's not what you see on Twitter, what they call the thread boys, who give you the "I've built a successful business, and here's what I would do if I started all over again," and then you read the threads and it's like, that's not business. Business is: you get clients, you serve them, you solve problems, and you make cash. You make money and then you make profit, so that you can reinvest that and keep going and keep going.

[00:03:52] So you need to be unglamorous. You need to be okay with looking stupid, making mistakes. You need to go for no. I like saying go for no, because a lot of the time we think we should be going for the positive thing, we should be going for yes. Here's the thing: you're going to get 99 no's before you get one yes. And all of those no's are like badges of honor.

[00:04:17] I like to say to people who are starting out in business: every time you reach out to a client, or you pitch something, or you make an offer, and you get a no, which is inevitable, put it on a sticky note and put it on your wall. You should have a war chest of no's all across your wall. But then when you get the one yes, the little green sticky note, put that on your wall. That's your treasure, that's your prize for going for all those no's. You need to get those out of the way, you need to strike out that many times. Now, maybe you don't need to strike out 99 times to get one yes, but that one yes is going to change everything.

[00:04:53] So I like to say: go for no, look stupid, it's unglamorous, be courageous, business is not easy. These are some common misconceptions. It's not an easy game, but it is worthwhile if you play this game for longevity, and so I'm going to give you some tips on how to do that.

Clients and cash come first

[00:05:13] The real core essentials for building a design business, any business really, but a design business as a freelancer, are super simple: clients and cash. Those are the two fundamental building blocks. Don't get lost in all the minor details. Newbies tend to overcomplicate this way too much. They think about branding, they think about websites, they think about their design, they think about font choices, they think about font sizes, they think about their personal brand, their social media, their content, SEO. They think about a million things that you can be distracted by, which in and of themselves can be important.

[00:05:56] All these little aspects, branding, SEO, content strategy, are important in their own right. But when they are disordered, and not literally put in the right order, you're never going to achieve success, because you will always be tweaking your logo, tweaking your website, making another version of this, thinking about how does it look, how does it look, is the wording right, is the color right, blah blah blah. You're going to get lost in the weeds, and your business will suffer and will ultimately cease to exist, because you need clients and cash. And you can get clients and cash without your website, without personal branding, without all the strategy and all these messy details.

[00:06:37] Take care of the big problems first, and the small things tend to take care of themselves. I think Tim Ferriss said this once, and I'm going to butcher this, so it's not necessarily a direct quote, but it was something like: when you're tackling something big, trying to learn something, trying to achieve something like growing your freelance design business, what are the main things, the big things, that I can do, that by doing those things, all of these other small things don't matter or take care of themselves?

[00:07:13] That's how I like to see it. The big problems are clients and cash. Without these things, everything falls apart. If you get enough clients and cash, then you could start to either pay other people to help with your website, you could spend some time figuring out your branding, you could spend some money investing in this. But if you are trying to do it in reverse, then it's not going to work. So get some cash and some clients first, and we're going to go into how you do that. I just want you to know that you can skip all that other stuff and take care of the small stuff once you get the bigger things taken care of.

Create an offer, scale it, and adopt a business mindset

[00:07:55] What are some of these strategies that can help a freelancer build this successful business? I think it comes down to your offer, scaling the offer, and then a business mindset. Let's drill down into that for a sec.

[00:08:10] Some strategies for success. You need to create an offer. In order to get clients and then cash, you need an offer, you need to offer something. I think it's a very simple formula. There are three variables that you put together, and there are lots of different ways you can switch those things around. There are three key buckets, let's say, and in those buckets there can be lots of different variations, and then you get to experiment and figure out what works best.

[00:08:42] The formula is: you need to define a target market. That's a type of business, a type of client, a type of industry. It could be very specific, it could be more broad. Then you need to find out what they are suffering with. I use that word very intentionally, suffering, because it's a very intense word. If your client has an itch, if you're trying to scratch an itch, well, if I have an itch on my back, I could probably scratch it myself, or go up against the door jamb and take care of it myself. I don't need you to offer me some expensive solution to scratch an itch. But if I am suffering with something, it's a repetitive issue, it's something I no longer want to suffer with, then I am most likely to be actively seeking help with that, and will be willing to pay in time, energy or money, or all of the above. That's what you need to find for your target market.

[00:09:44] Then what? Well, now that you know your target market and you know what they suffer with, you need to develop some solution to that. What's the offer, what's the solution? Is it some aspect of your web design, is it some aspect of your graphic design, is it some aspect of content marketing and getting in front of the right customers? It's your job to figure this part out. If you know the person and you know what they suffer with, you could probably come up with some sort of solution to that. Map that out.

[00:10:14] Then give it a price. It could be exactly a specific price, it could have a varying price, it could have hourly rates, fixed rates, value rates. There are lots of different ways. Again, I don't want to get in the weeds here on pricing your offer. It's simple: problem, solution, price.

[00:10:31] Okay, now what do you do? You've got yourself a nice, neat and tidy offer. Well, nobody knows about it. So now it's your job to tell them about it. Start making offers, start talking to people, start talking to your target market. You know who they are, what they suffer with, maybe you've interviewed them and talked to them and validated that that's the case. Well, no one's going to buy your thing until you start telling them about your thing and offering it to them. It's literally that simple and that hard.

[00:11:06] Then, once you've validated that, maybe you've made a couple of sales and you've got a couple of clients on board for your specific offer, now you need to think about scaling that. How do you make that actually into a business? Sure, you collected a couple of thousand dollars for a website project, building it in Editor X, where you've got SEO, content, you do branding, you do logos, you do all this stuff, and you've charged whatever price, two to five thousand dollars, I'm just picking a random number here. You need to get more than that, and you need to get that consistently.

[00:11:38] So start documenting, streamlining or automating anything that you do more than twice: outreach, if you're researching clients, if you're asking clients questions, onboarding, off-boarding, lead capture, the way that you fulfill your projects. Document it, create instructions, standard operating procedures. Now, when you have those in place, if you're doing it yourself, you can follow your rule book, your guidebook, and it's just easier to do each time. More importantly, maybe you subcontract somebody for project management: here are the instructions on how I manage projects, how I onboard and off-board clients, to deliver better value and a better customer experience.

[00:12:19] Maybe you can automate. In fact, you can automate things like onboarding, off-boarding, lead capture, lead nurturing, delivering email newsletters, maintaining communication, asking for referrals. There's so much you can automate as a company of one, and this is going to create a massive amount of freedom for you.

[00:12:42] Now, when it comes to the mindset, I tacked this on here: you need to stop acting like an employee, because you're not an employee anymore. You can be an employee of your own business, but you need to be the person working on your business, not in your business. If you're busy in the weeds working on the minutiae, then that's taking you away from working on your business, steering the ship, keeping yourself on track. Think of yourself as more of the visionary guiding the ship, the captain of the ship, so to speak, rather than the person who's pushing pixels, dragging and dropping. Now, you might be doing both, but you have to remind yourself that you're not here just to fulfill a role like an employee. You're here to grow a company, even if it's a company of one and will always remain that way.

Identifying a niche by testing offers with real people

[00:13:35] Now, how can freelancers identify their niche and deliver maximum value to clients? Well, ideas are cheap. Many people have great ideas, but they don't execute. I have some friends who are really good at coming up with good ideas, but those ideas don't see the light of day, because it's easy to come up with an idea. "I've got a great idea for this. What if I offered this, what if I did this? I built an Editor X site in a week and I did this, this, this and this." Excellent, what are you going to do about it? If you don't do anything about it, then it's cheap, it's worth nothing, it's valueless.

[00:14:17] So what you want to do when you come up with this offer is do something about it. Go and test those offers with real people. Talk to people, ask them if this is something that they would buy. Now, better yet, if they do say, "You know what, that sounds helpful, I would buy that," okay: show me the money. Now obviously don't say that. But a potential client saying "yeah, I would buy that" means nothing unless they actually do buy it.

[00:14:51] So you could say, "Well, that's awesome. For my first five clients, I'm offering 50% off the standard price I'm going to be offering once I launch this publicly. Would you like to be one of the first beta customers? You'll get half off, you'll get a lot more feedback and a lot more input on this whole thing, and you get this for a great deal. Does that sound reasonable?" Now, if the potential client says, "Absolutely, let's go, where do I sign up?" Perfect, that's a good sign.

[00:15:24] But maybe the potential client says, "Oh yeah, I don't know, I think it's a good idea and I would buy that, but I'm not going to actually buy that." Well, why not? Find out why not. Maybe there's something wrong with your offer, maybe they were just trying to be nice. You need to get real feedback. So come up with your idea, but actually put it out in the wild and battle test it. Is it a bad idea, is it a good idea, is it an idea that makes you money? Perfect, figure that out.

[00:15:50] Now, determining a niche takes time. Sometimes you might have an idea for a niche, and great, go test it. A lot of the time, niche development is really that: it's a way to develop your niche. You figure it out over time, you workshop it. I like to say it's like throwing spaghetti on the wall. You have a bunch of spaghetti, you throw it on the wall, and whatever sticks, follow that. You can try a bunch of different ideas. Maybe you have an offer, maybe you have a productized service. Maybe you tried offering website design to this market, but they don't pay as well, but this market is way more hot, and they buy much quicker or they pay more. Okay, follow that. Develop the niche over time.

[00:16:37] Find that market, uncover their suffering and present a solution, and there are lots of variables here. If it's a common problem that they suffer with, and it's repetitive, and it's an expensive problem, well, that's something they would be most likely to spend good money to have solved. And if there are more of these folks in the market, try it again. Ask your first client, "Hey, do you know any colleagues or anybody who might benefit from this solution that I was able to do for you?" More often than not, they'll say, "Yeah, actually, I'm going to put you in touch with Tony." And then carry on.

Relationships, reputation and content as an investment

[00:17:16] Now, how can freelancers make the most of their relationships and increase their productivity? Relationships are one of the most important aspects of your entire business. You might think maybe it's your website, or maybe it's your offer, maybe it's how much money you make, or maybe it's X, Y or Z, but the reality is it's your reputation. That is something that is going to serve you or not, and your reputation will precede you.

[00:17:47] So build your network, your relationships. Word of mouth marketing is the best marketing strategy. It's a longer game, but let's say you serve a client, you get one client, and you do a really good job. Overdeliver on what you've offered and do an excellent job, so that your reputation starts to grow. Then ask that client, like I said, "Hey, do you know somebody who would benefit from this as well? Could you put me in touch with them? Awesome, thank you." Now you've got a warm lead. Do the same thing, overdeliver, and then ask that client.

[00:18:26] So now you've got two or three folks, and they're letting people know. But as you start creating that shareworthy work and serving your clients, they'll start talking about you anyway. Maybe they might not talk about you until next week or even next year. I've had clients, five years later, send somebody my way and say, "Hey, when I worked with you five years ago it was amazing, and this person was looking for somebody like you. I hope you're still doing this." Your reputation will snowball. Build that network, build that reputation. It's worth its weight in gold.

[00:19:02] Now, in terms of getting more people to come to your offers: you can't always just be reaching out directly to folks. You can do that to a certain point. You can get your base layer of customers, get some networking and get some referrals happening. Excellent, you should be doing that. But longer term, maybe a step three: how do you get more people in the pipeline? That would be through content.

[00:19:24] You could do that in lots of different ways. You can establish your authority by writing, blogging. You can use your own blog, you can use a different blogging platform, you can be on social media, you can record content over video or podcast, or you can shoot video. There are lots of ways, and you get to pick the one that you like and put in the reps. Create some content, share your insights on the industry, share your insights on how clients can benefit from X, Y or Z. You get to explore that.

[00:19:55] That content is like investing. When you invest, it has compound interest over time. I created content 10 years ago and I still create content, but I'm starting to especially see the benefits of content I created five, six, seven years ago. I'm still getting people from that content, whether it be videos, interviews I've done on other people's podcasts, courses, YouTube tutorials, all for people in my industry, coming to me and saying, "I watched that video that you made and it was amazing, and I want to talk to you about doing some business together." I created that video seven years ago. That's insane, and it's marketing for me.

[00:20:35] Create that. That's an asset. It's like investing in your business longer term. It builds an audience, it establishes authority, it attracts clients. And once you build that list, once you build that audience, that's your distribution channel. If you have an email list of 500, 5,000, 50,000, you're set, because you have people there who like hearing from you, who you've added value to, who you've helped, who are your referral sources and clients. And you say, "Hey, I'm trying out this new offer, and for the first five people I'll do it for this much. Anyone interested, just send me a message or click this." It's your own distribution channel.

Eliminate, delegate, automate, keep

[00:21:18] Now, as you start getting busier, you're going to be wearing many hats. You're going to be doing sales, marketing, fulfillment, all of the operational aspects of your business, all the creative aspects. You're going to be very, very busy, and you can't do all of it alone. Thankfully, we live in the age of the internet and automation, where a lot of that can be really streamlined.

[00:21:44] So I have a simple productivity hack I call EDAK: eliminate, delegate, automate, keep, as in keep it for yourself. Here's how it works. Any task that comes your way, especially if it's something that is repetitive, that happens more than once, you ask: is this something that I need to do at all? If it's a no, eliminate it, get rid of it. If it's not adding any value to your business or your life, or pushing you forward towards your goals, eliminate it. It's not worth it.

[00:22:15] If it's a yes, move to the next step: is this something that I need to do personally? If no, delegate. Find another person to do it for you. Hire a contractor, hire another freelancer, Upwork, Fiverr, someone in your network, someone you know, and say, "Hey, I'll pay you X amount to manage my email inbox," or to do client onboarding, or to answer questions about this thing, whatever it is.

[00:22:44] If it's something that you must do, okay. Well, actually, I twisted this a little bit. For delegate, it's: is this something that a human needs to do? That's what it was. If yes, must it be me? If not, delegate it. Now, automate is the next step. You ask: is this something that a human needs to do? And you say no, it's not. Let's say creating an automation for capturing an email, sending a five-part newsletter and making an offer. Fully automate that. There's no reason why you shouldn't be doing that. It's very straightforward, and there are lots of tools available that allow that to happen. There are lots of things you can automate: calendar booking, booking sales calls, following up with customers, asking for referrals. All this can be automated.

[00:23:40] Now, after all of this, if it can't be delegated and it can't be automated and you have to keep the task, that's yours to do. Maybe it's sales calls, maybe you're the sales calls person. Maybe it's designing the site, fulfilling the service. Maybe it's a specific type of task that has to be you. Then that's your list. So you start dispersing all of your tasks that were once all yours: you got rid of a bunch, you delegated some, you automated some, and you kept the rest for yourself. Much more manageable. Revisit that strategy quarterly as you grow, and your workload will be much more manageable as you grow.

Tools, community and work-life balance

[00:24:17] Now, I want to be aware of my time here, we're rounding up to the end. There are some tools that you might want to consider, so let's jump into that. I don't want to give you specific tools, because again, that's getting into the weeds, and it's against what I'm trying to teach here. It's not about getting into the weeds and specific tools. What you want to do is leverage tech tools to serve you. Use tools to support your system, not the other way around.

[00:24:47] Don't find a cool tool and go, "Oh wow, how can I plug this into my business to make it better?" No, you should have systems first. Maybe you're managing your email, and you've created a nice standard operating procedure of how you do it, and you go, "This is really messy. When I'm managing projects in email it's so messy. Here's how I do it, but I'm losing emails, I'm forgetting this, I'm forgetting that, I'm getting distracted by newsletters." Now you find the tool that best serves that system. Project management: find the right project management tool and apply your system to it. You can do that to automate things, to streamline things, to delegate things. It keeps supporting your system, rather than finding a cool tool, being distracted by the shiny new object, and chasing that.

[00:25:33] Okay, now, in terms of technology and the internet world that we have at our fingertips to serve our business, one of the biggest things is joining a community to help support you on the journey. Whether that's your support group, your peers, partners, collaborators, potential clients, find a community that's exciting for you to contribute to, to get help from, to ask questions, to answer questions, to establish a reputation.

[00:26:03] You don't want to be building and growing your business in a vacuum, because you're going to be attacking yourself constantly: "Oh, I'm not good enough here, oh, I can't do that." But if you are sharing your work, working in public, letting people know, "Hey, I'm trying this offer out," or "I'm doing this," or "I got this client and I don't know how to answer this question," get help from folks who are in the same boat or a similar boat as you. Don't build in a vacuum, because you're going to get feedback, you're going to get help as you go, and you're not going to feel so alone, because freelancing is a very lonely venture.

[00:26:38] And if you need help from somebody, leverage the brains and the minds of other people who have already done it. Mentors, maybe it's courses, maybe you book a coaching call with somebody who's further along. Maybe you're in a community and you see somebody who's been doing this for 20 years, and you go, "You know what, I kind of want to jump on a call with that person." You go to their site and find out they offer calls, or they offer a coaching program. Don't be afraid to do that. It's investing in yourself to launch yourself forward, where you can't quite, let's say, read the label from inside the jar.

[00:27:11] Now, in terms of work and life balance: if you're a solo freelancer, how can we make sure we clock into work and out of work and have respect for our personal lives and our professional lives? Your business, even from home, like I do here, I'm in a room in my house, I have been for a very long time, this is what I've been doing, is a real job. It's not just a cool thing where you get to be on the computer at home or whatever. You need to set boundaries. You need to create respect for yourself and for your schedule amongst your family members, whoever is in the house with you, and you need to build a schedule: here's when I'm working, here's when I'm not working.

[00:27:46] When I close the door, it's done, I shut down. Don't be constantly on your phone checking email, refreshing, or responding to this. I'm guilty of all these things, and as I make these infractions, emailing clients on the road trip or doing this or that, my happiness plummets. Put it in its place and let it be there. Put it away when you're done.

[00:28:08] Create priorities: your health, your wellness, relationships. Draw a line between work and home. Build in time for breaks, vacation, rejuvenation. You're the boss, after all. You didn't get into this business so that you could be a slave to your own business. You want to allow it to create freedom, allow it to give you time and space, allow it to take Fridays off every once in a while, or every week. You get to create that. Build it in and make that a priority.

What the future holds for freelancing

[00:28:37] Now, my brief conclusion here: what does the future hold for freelancing? Well, it's not going anywhere, it really isn't. It's always going to evolve and adapt with the times, with new technology and trends, but the reality is there's always going to be freelancing, and if anything more and more as we move forward into this more gig-based economy, where you get to create your little micro business. You can create a great living as a micro business owner, a company of one, as a freelancer. It's not going anywhere.

[00:29:05] It's a journey, not a destination. Like I said, I've been doing this for about 12 years, and I have longevity in mind. The way that I freelanced eight years ago is very different from the way that I freelance today, which I imagine will be very different from the way that I freelance eight years from now. You get to carve your own path. Take it seriously, set priorities, set some goals, work hard, humble yourself, and pursue what you think matters.

[00:29:34] Now, if you want to continue this sort of conversation and get deeper into these aspects, I know I touched on certain things without giving real specifics. If you want to get into the weeds a little bit more and you need help in specific areas, I invite you to join me in my free community. It's called the Creative Crew Community. It's for professional designers, agency owners, professional web designers, creative studio owners, or maybe that's what you're trying to achieve in your career. That's what you can do in the Crew. You can come join our conversations, live streams, coaching calls. It's all free, and it's a wonderful resource if you want access to it. That's creativecrewcommunity.com. I really appreciate your time. If anybody has any questions, I'm very happy to answer. Thank you so much.