What’s keeping Filipino freelancers from reaching their fullest potential?
This week’s podcast guest and I agree that the mindset is the biggest culprit.
Our podcast guest for this week is John Pagulayan, email copywriter and consultant of top online marketers (the likes of John Turner and Ryan Levesque, the best-selling author of Ask).
Freelancers are technically self-employed individuals or solopreneurs, yet, a majority are still stuck with the employer-employee mentality.If you want to get more clients, further develop your skills, and earn more as a freelancer, then you should start evaluating your career perspective: do you see yourself as your client’s employee or as his partner in improving his business?
If you think this rather unusual change of perspective will not work for you and instead drive your clients away, here’s something to inspire you: John makes a 7-figure income as a freelancer.
In this episode, he takes us through his early beginnings as a freelancer and how he grew his previous client list from 1 to 73. Listen as he shares his insights as to why specialization and treating your career as a business are keys to gaining clients’ respect and trust. I personally learned a lot from John on this episode and I’m sure you will too.
Watch the interview:
Key Highlights
- How John’s freelancing career started
- The story of his one blog reader turned into his first client
- Email marketing and his leap of faith
- How he got to work with big industry names
- Tips for learning copywriting
- Why freelancers should practice giving instead of the ‘What’s in it for me?’ mindset
- How a change in mindset can be your differentiation factor against competitors
- Why getting a mentor was the best thing he did for his copywriting career growth
- Things that John realized during his mentorship program
- The benefits of choosing a specialization instead of being a jack-of-all-trades
- How to move from desperately getting all available projects to choosing only the right projects with good clients
- Difference of big brand advertising and direct response copywriting for small brands
- John’s current system of conducting business
- Tips on discussing pricing and proposals with your clients
- How referrals help maintain his steady stream of income
- Best times to ask clients for referrals
- John’s most important advice for freelancers
Sample Client Referral System
John was generous to share with us his tried-and-tested referral system. It is composed of 4 stages:
- Directing prospective clients to a landing page
- Creating a lead magnet in the form of a free e-book or webinar
- Offering free analysis or sample services (For John, he offers a free review of email sequences)
- Giving prospective clients a free call to discuss the analysis (with the promise of not selling them anything during the call)
The system works because the more the client sees that you are willing to give your time and expertise, the more that he realizes how much value you can bring to his business. When you get to this point of establishing your value, you don’t even need to pitch to your client. They will be the first to recognize that they need your services.
Quotes
On keeping the balance between earning and selling yourself short:
“You’ve got to build a solid principle . . . eto ako anything outside that, kahit may client ako or wala, hindi ko sya gagawin.”– John
On how to avoid problematic clients:
“If you charge a premium, you weed out the difficult clients.” – Marv
Advice to freelancers:
“One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to remove yourself from the employee-boss mindset… Just doing that will allow you to come from the place of help rather than from just taking a job.” – John
Links and Resources
- Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff
- AWeber
- ScheduleOnce
- John’s website
- John’s email: [email protected]
- Watch the interview by subscribing to our YouTube channel at www.freelanceblend.com/tv
Are You Ready to Become a Freelancer?
If you are really serious about becoming a freelancer, you should first start with the tools of the trade.
I will make your life easier by handing you more than 30 of the latest and greatest applications, software and websites that I, and even some of the most amazing freelancers, use on a day-to-day basis to become a more productive freedom entrepreneur.
