How Long Does It Take to Succeed?

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Freelance To Founder, where we help you start freelancing, grow your agency, and live the work life you've always wanted. You can send in your questions at FreelanceToFounder.com/ask. I'm Preston, I started freelancing in college from there, I've built, grown, or sold a few businesses myself, and together with my guest co-hosts, I'm ready to help you do the same. If you're ready to grow your service-based business into something bigger, if you're ready to become a founder, this show is for you. We're here answering your questions every single weekday, and today I am joined for the final time, small tier by my friend Meredith Cooley, she's the founder of Page and Purpose, where she does copywriting for educational companies. She's also a mentor for teachers who want to be freelancers and copywriters. You can sign up for her newsletter and connect with her using the links in our show notes, but Meredith, welcome back for one last time. Thanks, Preston, this has been so fun. Absolutely, and I'm sure the listeners have benefited from your expertise and your experience. I think you're at such a cool stage in your business. We're going to jump right into today's question. So, today's question comes from Kwame Mensa, and Kwame asks, "How long does it usually take before someone feels like they're earning consistent income through freelancing?" And that's all he sent in. So I'm going to maybe read between the lines a little bit here, and either Kwame has not started freelancing and is going, "If I started now, how long before I could quit my job?" Or, "I've started and it sure feels slow. I thought it would be going faster than this." So maybe we tackle either of those approaches, Meredith, what comes to mind when Kwame asks, "How long does it take usually before someone feels like they're earning consistent income through freelancing?" Yeah. I mean, I think that's a question so many people are probably thinking about as they're starting this work, and I think, you know, even just the term freelancing, people tend to associate it with this idea of like, "Faster family," right, of, "I'm either in this period of making a lot of consistent money or I'm in this period of making no money," and having to navigate that. And I think that, you know, one of the things, I really have a lot to say about this actually, so I need to kind of think about how I want to organize it, but I think that the first bit of advice or the first thing I have to say about this would be once you have your first client or your first few clients, I think it's really important that you get testimonials from them, you know, get somebody to give you some feedback on what's working and what you need to improve upon and get some social proof, some things that you can put out there to say, "Hey, I've done this work, this person was really happy with it," because what happens is that as a freelancer, as you are taking on more and more clients, you can then begin to raise your prices, and that is one of the things that I think can be kind of like the Wild West in the world of freelancing is this idea of pricing, and how do I price myself and, you know, there's no real concrete blueprint, you know, people are doing things really differently from charging hourly to charging by project to getting themselves onto retainers, and I think that in the beginning, up leveling yourself quickly and then raising your prices quickly can really contribute to feeling like you're earning more, more consistently. So that would be the first thing that I would say. The second thing that I would say is that it's really easy to get a few clients and then find that you have no time for your own marketing and your own outreach, and that is a huge limitation when it comes to consistent work. So I think ensuring that you put aside, you know, and this kind of goes back to the questions we answered about time blocking, ensuring that you intentionally leave time in your day for your own marketing, whether that's posting on LinkedIn, whether that's, you know, out cold outreach or email prospecting, but making sure that you are connecting with people and building a network of relationships and then making sure that you are nurturing those relationships is really important to the amount of consistent work that you have. And then I would say, you know, once you are in a place where you have done some work start to finish for a few clients, you have some testimonials, you have the beginnings of a portfolio. My personal advice and what has worked really well for me in my business is pitching retainers with your clients. And by that, I mean sort of a subscription-based agreement or contract where you are either, you know, working a specific number of hours monthly or weekly for a set amount of money or you are, you have a specific number of deliverables, whether it's, you know, a few blog posts a month or you're doing emails or you're doing newsletters, and that I'm obviously speaking from a copywriting perspective, but whatever your service is, you know, I think just about anything can be worked into this idea of a subscription or a retainer. And then you really start to get a better idea of what you're earning specifically every month. And it starts to feel more consistent and it starts to feel much more stable. I think you've, you've said it perfectly in fact, as I was kind of brainstorming my answer to this, I wrote down almost exactly what you've said, which is, I really honed in on that word consistent, consistent income for Kwame. And you can't have consistent income without what you've talked about and this is what I wrote down, consistent marketing, consistent sales processes, consistent deliverable processes. So, you know, how, what happens from the time you close a deal with a client and tell you deliver it, what's the time frame? It needs to be consistent. You need to know exactly how long it'll take and it should be close to the same for every project. And then I wrote consistent packages, which is similar to what you talked about with the recurring revenue. If you want predictable and consistent revenue, you have to, you have to build your business in a way where you know, we hear from so many freelancers that are like, well, my number one way of getting business is word of mouth. Well, that's not consistent, right? It might be good and it might work, but it certainly is not consistent. You could get five referrals one month and no referrals next month. And so, you know, I think inherent in this question is like, I can't quit my job or I can't move to the next level of my business until I can even out this up and down in consistency in my business. And so, and that to me is the solution is you, you have to build a consistent business in order to make consistent income. Yep. Yes, I completely agree. And you know, I think the combination of the consistent marketing and really continuing to show up even when you have a field roster of clients helps to ensure that that's not going to go away. And you know, it's interesting. You talked about word of mouth. I have spoken to so many people over the past few years who built their business on referrals and on word of mouth and then really struggled when that went away and when that dried up. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I kind of feel fortunate, I guess that, you know, I really started from scratch and didn't have a network that I could build a referral system on, you know, so I really did build my business on outreach, on cold outreach. And you know, I say cold, but like, you know, cold, but personal, you know, researching people and reaching out to them in a way that showed I was excited about their company, that showed I was really interested in the work that they're doing. And that has been really successful for me. And I think that people are a little scared of that. But when you get used to doing it, it really can make such a difference in the way that your business starts out and in the stability of the client work that you're doing. Yeah. And I've said this so many times on the show, but I have to keep repeating it because I think it makes so much sense in my mind. You have feast famine revenue in your business when you have feast famine marketing and sales processes. So like what you're saying is when you have a lot of client work, you're in a famine cycle of marketing and sales because you're choosing to do all the client work and not stay consistent with your marketing and sales. So naturally, whatever the cycle is, whether that's a month, every two months, whatever, naturally at some point, that famine time of marketing for you is going to result in a famine time of revenue and new clients. And so you have to keep that as consistent as possible. That can be hard, especially, you know, it was funny, I think last episode, you said all the things that aren't fun like marketing and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm a marketer by trade. I love marketing. I would do that all day if I could, right? So that's the fun stuff for me. But I know for a lot of people, it's not doing the sales and the marketing, putting yourself out there and sending a cold email, making a cold call, those things can be awkward a little bit for people. I think after this quick break, I'd love to hear how you overcame kind of that just hesitancy that maybe a lot of people have to do just consistent, cold outreach and build a business that way. Back and then I'd love to hear that answer. Great. Are you constantly chasing late payments, wrestling with clunky spreadsheets and trying to figure out which invoices have been paid? Well, there's a way to simplify all of your finances this year. And that's called FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the accounting and invoicing software that makes the hard parts of running your business easy, whether you're a freelancer or a small business with employees or contractors, FreshBooks gives you all the tools you need to manage your finances in one place. 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You're here with Preston and Meredith, who are answering Kwame's question. He said, "How long does it usually take before someone feels like they're earning consistent income through freelancing?" We've talked about the importance of consistency in your marketing. Meredith, you said how important it was and has been in your business for you to consistently reach out to new clients through cold contacting, cold email, cold calls, and again, not impersonal, but just without having a prior connection there. How did you overcome that fear? Because I think so many freelancers are like, "Well, I can't just call up a business out of the blue and pitch my services. They're just going to hang up on me or they're just going to delete my email." How did you overcome that and what results have you seen by pushing through that? Yeah. It's funny. I think so many people that are coming from my background and really a lot of creatives in general tend to be more introverted or feel like it's hard for them to do that, to reach out to people they don't know, and that did feel hard for me at the beginning. I think that two things, one is that the fear and the awkwardness of reaching out to people I didn't know to essentially say, "This is who I am and this is what I do and I'd love to help you." That fear became less than my desire to make this business work for me and I think that's an important thing to say because as we started out with this work is hard. It's not easy to build a business and you have to be willing to do things that are make you uncomfortable. It's funny, I have a sticky note on my wall that was from a coach I worked with at some point and it says, "growth comes from being willing to sometimes do things that are boring, that make me feel incompetent and that make me feel uncomfortable." I really think that keeping all of that in mind and being able to say to yourself, "This is really hard and it doesn't feel good, it feels uncomfortable." I know it's going to push me in this direction that I really want to go so I'm going to try it and then just doing the reps and I think the more and more you do something or the less uncomfortable it begins to feel. Just reminding yourself that sometimes it is a numbers game with this, that you are going to get a lot of nose. You are going to get a lot of people that don't respond but you don't actually need that many yeses to be successful. The second thing is just beginning to shift your mindset from like, "Ooh, I don't want to reach out to them, I'm bothering them, I have this expertise and I know I can help this person and therefore it makes sense for me to reach out to them and to say, "Hey, I know you, I'm wondering if you need this thing done, this is my expertise, I would really love to help you." Kind of reframing it as, "I have this gift and this service and I should be sharing it with the world and I should be offering people that I know I can help this service." Yeah, and I think over time as you help people, as you serve people, as they become your clients and you start to see the results of your work, then you feel more confident reaching out and saying, "That comes back to what you said earlier in the episode where maybe this was a different episode. You've done a few of these but you talked about like building a portfolio and really having tangible proof when you reach out to someone that you can do the work that you're claiming you can do. That can build your confidence as well." And so there's a few like confidence builders I think in there but really for me it's been the same thing. I've built most of my businesses based on cold outreach and for me it was really getting those reps in and now I'll send an email to anyone or I'll call anyone, I don't care and I'm okay knowing that, yeah, 95% of the time I probably am going to get a no but that 5% is going to help me build my business and so I'm happy to put in the reps to make that happen. And what's cool too, I'm a bit of a marketing nerd and so I love adjusting like, "Okay, what did I say wrong in that email that turned them off to the idea or what did I leave out, what did I say too much of, was it timing, was it how I presented myself, was it the length of the email, was it like all of these variables?" So I love kind of that over time you do put in the reps and you start to realize this is what works and this is what doesn't works and then what doesn't work and then what's cool is over time you have to put in fewer attempts to get that number of clients that you need to move your business forward. Yeah, that's absolutely true, absolutely right. And so I want to make sure I say because I know part of the question was how long, how much time does it take and I think that's a hard, I think that really does depend on what you're willing to do and how you're willing to put yourself out there and how consistent you are. I think for me, within a year of my first client, I knew that I was replacing at least a portion of my income. So I felt like, "Okay, actually, I'm sorry, that's not right, within a year of my first client, I knew that I was going to be able to leave my full-time job." And I'm sure that that's not the case for everyone but I do think that with that combination of consistency and being willing to put yourself out there and then very intentionally doing things like raising your prices and looking for opportunities where you can have some sort of subscription or retainer contract, you know, I think kind of that combination of things can be really powerful to moving you towards that goal of having a very consistent income. Yeah, Kwame, we wish you the best of luck with this. I think what I hope will happen is a year from now you'll look back and you'll go, "Okay, that wasn't so bad. That didn't take quite as long as I thought." But if you haven't started, get started. And if you have started, I would say just be consistent, that consistency matters. And we wish you the very best of luck as you start freelancing or grow that business. You can do it, we believe in you. So thanks for writing in your question, Kwame, and thank you for helping me answer that question, Meredith. One last time will you let people know where they can connect with you, please? Yeah, absolutely. The best place is to find me are on LinkedIn where I talk a lot about how teachers can take their first steps towards being paid copywriters as well in my newsletter kind of the same thing. I really talk a lot about my own experience and then I offer exact strategies and steps people who are interested in doing the same, and then also my website page and purpose.com. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here these last few episodes. To you listeners, you can send in your questions at freelance2founder.com/ask. And you can also find all past episodes there, not just the ones I've done with Meredith, but also a bunch of previous episodes to help you start, grow, or scale your freelance business or agency. Have been pressed and leave, you've been listening to freelance2founder and we will see you next time. Bye. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante and Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.