The Freelancer's Bible

To Do

Preferred Skills

Other Skills

• ::Academic Editing::
• Show Notes Writing
• Blog article writing
• Ebook Writing and Creation
• Simple Wordpress Website Setup and Design
• Sign Language Interpretation
• ::Academic Research and Writing::
• Teaching English
• Transcribing

Top-rated skills

Specialize

Learn multiple specialties

(annual salary + annual expenses + annual profit) ÷ annual billable work hours = your basic hourly rate

180,000 + 132,000 + 36000 = 348,000

348,000 ÷ 1,004 = 346

Chapter 3 - Your Freelance Portfolio

4 Levels

Level 1 - The Blue Chips

Level 2 - Growth Investments

Level 3 - One-Shots and Long Shots

Level 4 - New Ventures and Growth

3 Goals

Goal 1 - Have enough clients of the right kind: not too few and not more than you can handle, who pay well and/or can advance your career in some way.

Goal 2 - Bring in enough steady income to reduce cash flow highs and lows.

Goal 3 - Meet your total income goals.

optimal clients + steady cash flow + meeting your income goals = balanced freelance portfolio

Remember the mantra of the balanced Freelance Portfolio: a client mix that delivers maximum value for your time and effort.

The Life-Quality Quiz

1. Somewhat disagree 2
2. Somewhat agree 3
3. Strongly agree 4
4. Strongly agree 4
5. Somewhat disagree 2
6. Strongly agree 4
7. Somewhat disagree 2
8. Strongly agree 4
9. Somewhat agree 3
10. Somewhat agree 3
11. Somewhat agree 3
12. Somewhat agree 3
13. Somewhat disagree 2
14. Somewhat disagree 2
15. Somewhat agree 3
16. Somewhat disagree 2
17. Strongly agree 4
18. Somewhat agree 3
19. Strongly agree 4
20. Somewhat agree 3

1-4 (Personal Life): 13 (keep going!)

5-8 (Your Body and Mind): 12 (uneven satisfaction)

9-12 (Your Work Life): 12 (uneven satisfaction)

13-16 (Financial Life): 9 (uneven satisfaction)

17-20 (Living in the World): 14 (keep going!)

Chapter 17 - Your Safety Nets

1. Study health insurance
2. Create a bank account for the four: Expenses, Taxes, Emergencies, and Retirement
3. Research how you can best save for retirement.

Introduction

Map

Keeping connected is key for your success.

If freelancers don’t stand up together to be counted, they may not be counted at all.

Kinds Of Freelancers

1. Independent Contractor (aka freelancer, consultant, sole proprietor): You obtain clients on your own and provide them with a product or service.

2. Temp Employee (via a temp agency): You work for a temp agency that assigns you to work at a client’s site.

• Temp Employee (direct hire): You work in a temporary position at a company but are not assigned through an agency.
• On-call or Per-diem Employee: You’re called to work on an as-needed basis, usually to fill in for an absent employee or to help handle a heavy workload.
• Part-time Employee: You work as a permanent employee for less than third-five hours per week.
• Leased Employee: You work as a permanent employee for a client but are paid by another company handling payroll and benefits

3. Contract Employee: You work for a company that serves other firms under a contract. You work for one client at a time, usually on-site.

4. Day Laborer: You gather with other workers in your industry and wait for an employer to pick up to work that day.

Most Common Problems Of Freelancers

• Freelancers lack the safety net enjoyed by other workers.
• No protections safeguard freelancers from unsaying clients.
• Freelancers need to buy their own retirement.
• Freelancers don’t have enough work (79%).
• Freelancers have trouble getting paid (44%).
• Health insurance is a challenge (83%)

Don’t Compare Yourself To Regular Workers

When you start freelancing, the roller-coaster ride of freelance cash flow can be scary and stressful. It’s important to realize that freelancing is its own animal, entirely different from regular paid work, with its own mindset and methods.

“You can’t keep comparing your work and income to people who have salaries. If you do, you’ll never feel good about yourself.”

Cash flow fluctuations is part of the job

Everything takes longer than you think (landing gig, doing gig, and getting paid)

How to deal with cash flow fluctuations?

• Network
• Start prospecting for new gigs much earlier as others wind down
• Keep close track of your expenditures against income

The Four Opportunities

1. Security
2. Sustainability
3. Leverage
4. Community

The Freelance Life

On a typical freelance workday, you move back and forth on the spectrum outlined below.

1. Getting Started
2. Getting Work
3. Growing Your Business
4. Managing Your Business
5. Your Business and Your Community

Some days it might feel like you’re scrambling to keep up. But on the good days, it’s invigorating, liberating, and fun. And you wouldn’t trade your freelance life for anything.

Chapter 1: Seven Start-Up Steps

Map

There are no perfect freelancers. But there are smart ones.

Step 1: Know why you’re freelancing

Benefits of knowing your goals

• Being clear about what you want from freelancing will help you embrace it.
• If you need courage to take the leap, knowing your objectives can help.
• Your goals will be your baseline for all the major freelance career decisions (what kinds of projects your pursue, your rates, your work pace, and your marketing strategy)

Do your dreams and reality match?

“Look at your industry realities squarely against your dream lifestyle.”

Freelancing’s inherent flexibility may offer unprecedented freedom to live your life on your own terms:

• Pursue multiple work interests
• Travel
• Relocate anywhere

With research and planning, you may find an exciting new life is within reach.

Step 2: Figure out your key strengths

• The greater your skills, the higher you can set your prices.
• Take midlevel gig while you save for that workshop, class, or certification.
• Talk to some successful freelancers about what kind of training or retooling they recommend.

What to do when you’re just new?

• Set your rates lower at first to get clients and experience.
• Consider working part time to stabilise your income while you grow.
• Use your income to promote yourself and buy equipment.

Your Key Skill List

Make a two-sided list. One one side are the skills you love to use and could happily exercise daily. On the other side are skills you don’t enjoy as much, but they’re in your bag of tricks. Include all your skills, from all the parts of your life, that you can legitimately offer for a fee.

Your Key Skills List will help you see different ways to market yourself and find the project mix likely to be most satisfying.

Sometimes the best-paying skills aren’t ones you like the most. In lean times, you might tap your “Other Skills” column more. But ideally you shouldn’t “live” there for too long.

Your Top-Rated Skills

Be irresistibly valuable.

Your top skills create your reputation - which drive your marketing message, your negotiating leverage, and your pricing.

Clients learn fast who’s excellent and who’s phoning it in.

Know Your Metrics

Ask clients (or coworkers, if you’re transitioning from a staff job) if there are sales figures, financials, or other measurable results from your work that you can use in self-marketing.

Can You Specialize?

• Specialization heightens reputation.
• Look for a very specific product or service you know customers want.
• If training or certifications would help, budget for them.
• The best specialties are where your skills and passions intersect.
• You can—and should—have multiple specialties. It’ll tide you over through dry time and make you a rainmaker year-round.

Skill-Enhancing Personal Traits

• Communicating well
• Being able to lead and follow
• Problem-solve
• Being curious
• Keeping your cool

They improve with experience and are often what clients remember best about you. They’re the basis of your reputation and are what will ultimately distinguish you from other, equally talented workers.

Build these traits by spending time with people who embody them. Read up on qualities of leadership, teamwork, and social and emotional intelligence. Consider taking some personality assessment tests to help identify your particular strengths.

Step 3: Figure Out Your Customer’s Needs

The 3 Essentials Of Getting Clients

1. Empathy in the analysis of clients needs.
2. Skills match clients needs.
3. Skills are distilled into a pitch of utter simplicity.

Go back and match your skills, your metrics, and your specialty ideas to what your market needs—not what you think they should need, but what they actually need.

What’s important to your clients and in what order?

For hits look at:

• Feedback on your work
• What others say when recommending or complimenting you
• Why prospects decline your services
• How people in your field describe others they see as excellent or inferior

Elevator Speech

Come up with one succinct sentence that says what you do.

Step 4: Know What You’ll Charge (More Or Less)

Your goal isn’t just to pay your bills, but to be paid what you’re worth.

Know your skills and your value.

Look at the norms in your profession.

Sharing info with other freelancers about pricing and deal making helps you get paid what you’re worth and helps all freelancers be paid what they deserve.

Common Fee Structures

1. Hourly
2. Unit or Quantity-Based (Per word, per foot, per dozen)
3. Project Fee
4. Pricing Packages
5. Minimum Amount
6. Day Rate
7. Percentage of Profits

Undercharging hurts you and other freelancers in your profession by dragging down what your skills are worth in the marketplace and conditioning buyers to expect lower prices. Help hold the line in what the market will bear: Price yourself right! It’s not only a matter of calculating what you’re worth, but accepting it.

Other Things To Consider When Pricing

1. Billable time
2. Purchases connected with the project
3. Overhead - life and business bills
4. Profit - reflects your value (experience, specialty, USP)
5. Market considerations

Having a specialty can help stabilize your income against market changes because it’s perceived as having higher value. Value-adds such as degrees, certifications, training, and awards help, too.

Factors That Affect Your Profit

• Industry norms
• Level of excellence and expertise
• Desired annual income
• Percentage of annual earning time the project will likely take

Calculate Your Rate

• Run your numbers
• Talk to your peers
• Trust your gut
• Learn from experience

(Annual Salary + Annual Expenses + Annual Profit) / Annual Billable Work Hours = Your Basic Hourly Rate

Annual Salary: How much would you like to make?

Annual Expenses: Your rate must cover your business overhead. Remember to include taxes and health insurance. What about living expenses?

Annual Profit: Not salary. Salary is business expense paid to you as boss. Charge over and above your expenses (10-20%).

Annual Billable Work Hours: Allow for vacation, sick time, and weekends off. Does not include administrative or non-billable work.

Basic Hourly Rate: Adjust based on:

• Your experience
• Project deadline
• Client high-maintenance
• Career advancement

If you’re new to your field, right out of school, need someone to take a chance on you, or are trying to break into a higher level of client, you’d likely be in the low-to-middle range, increasing with experience.

To make more money you must either:

1. Increase your project volume
2. Raise your value (skills, experience)

How To Charge Higher Rates To Existing Clients

If the client’s a steady income source, it may not be worth jeopardizing your relationship for an incremental rate increase. Instead, prospect for new clients and quote higher for them. Maybe you’ll find a new steady. Then you can negotiate with the lower-paying client from a more secure place financially.

Five Fee-Setting Strategies

1. Track your time.
2. Avoid feast or famine pricing and know your rock bottom. Find the zone that reflects your value, but leaves room to negotiate. This means doing market research and getting a sense of job scope and, if possible, budget from the client before you crunch the numbers. Going too low or too high causes stress and costs time. Know your lowest number—the one you won’t go below, no matter how great the gig is.
3. Do your homework. Learn the benchmarks for rates in your industry.
4. Educate the client about what you’re worth.
5. Don’t fear fluctuation.

Reasons To Raise Fees

• Do you see hours of meetings and revisions in your future?
• Think of the cost to you of serving that client - the time you won’t have for other projects
• If it’s your busy season or you’re cramming this gig onto a full plate, that can be another reason to raise prices.

Reasons To Give A Discount

• Boost career?
• Add visibility?
• Do you believe in the project and want to help it happen?
• Do you need work?

2 Essentials

• A community of freelancers to help you gauge whether you’re undershooting on pricing.
• Advocate for government policies that support greater economic security for freelancers.

Step 5: Work out your budget and do any necessary paperwork

Make a list of month by month expenses.

Exclude unanticipated one-time expenses.

Find the number you need to earn each month.

Freelance work doesn’t bring in the same amount each month so you have to save.

Each check that comes in from a client, you’ll want to apportion into these buckets:

1. Emergencies
2. Retirement
3. Estimated Taxes
4. Expenses

Your Business Budget

List any necessary start-up costs and identify them according to:

• One Time Costs
• Ongoing Costs
• Fixed Costs
• Variable Costs

Get Set For Taxes

1. Show you mean business. Keep a business diary of all your appointments, client sessions, and project deadlines; have business cards, promotional materials, website, or other items showing you’re going after business.
2. Start right with record keeping and accounting. From the get-go, keep careful records and receipts of every business-related expense. You’ll need them as documentation if you itemize business-related tax deductions.
3. Separate your business and personal accounts.

Official Paperworks

1. Business structure
2. Business permits, licenses, and registrations
3. Sales tax and seller’s permit

Step 6: Gather Your Brain Trust

Find the trusted inner circle who can help you as you launch and grow, offering advice and ideas, referring prospects, problem-solving, and cheering you on. It could be fellow freelancers, company buddies, relatives. They should be people you feel you can be totally honest with. Your Brain Trust has your back and you’ve got theirs.

Step 7: Make Your Game Plan For Going Public

It’s okay to put some friendly distance between certain people and what you are doing.

Surround yourself with people who are practical and positive about freelancing.

How To Tell People

1. Tell everyone. Everything is a marketing opportunity.
2. Don’t be pushy.
3. Make it professional. Start strong. Have your one-line or short pitch polished.
4. Share what’s great about it, what’s challenging about it, and how you’re going about it.

Business Cards

Business cards are meant to explain and remind others about:

• Who you are
• What you do
• Your unique value
• How to contact you

Consider privacy and what contact info to include. For writers, an email address is enough.

Other Options

• Use links. Website and one or two other social media or professional links is enough.
• Use the same profile picture.
• Use both digital and physical cards.

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WORKSHEET

1. List your freelance goals

• I want to have the freedom and authority over my career direction and my day-to-day life.
• I want to have enough time to pursue my other creative projects.
• I want to prioritize my health and spirituality.
• I want to make just enough money and achieve financial freedom in a mindful and soulful way that doesn’t compromise my health, spirituality, and freedom.

2. Accomplish your Key Skill List

Preferred Skills

Other Skills

Writing

Editing academic research papers

Teaching life

Teaching English

3. Identify your Top-Rated Skills

• Writing
• Research

4. Identify metrics that you can use to promote yourself

• Praises from teachers
• Professional work
• Kindness and customer rapport

5. Identify specializations you can pursue

Current specializations

• Web content writing
• Show notes
• Qualitative research
• Academic research editing

Planned specializations

• Business storytelling
• Web development for people/organizations with a purpose
• Copywriting

6. Identify skill-enhancing personal traits you can nurture

Customer care

7. Figure out your customer’s needs

8. Come up with an elevator speech

9. Identify the fee structures you will use

• Unit or Quantity-Based (Per word, per foot, per dozen)
• Project Fee
• Pricing Packages

10. Calculate your basic hourly rate

(Annual Salary + Annual Expenses + Annual Profit) / Annual Billable Work Hours = Your Basic Hourly Rate

11. Look for a free time tracking software for freelancers

12. Research about the writing industry - the skills needed, the rates, etc.
13. Identify your monthly budget
14. Research how to use banks for personal and business purposes
15. Watch the BIR for freelancers video
16. Arrange website and social media accounts to promote yourself

Chapter 3: Your Freelance Portfolio

Map

Freelancers can’t count on paychecks, promotions, or job titles as benchmarks for their value. They have to create their value in the marketplace every day.

Negative

Positive

Freelancing is volatile and risky.

Freelancing is flexible and opportunity-rich.

“How can I keep the ups and downs from happening?”

“How can I ride the waves?”

The Freelance Portfolio

• Spreads your earning potential in multiple venues with different levels of risk and return
• Goal: diversify your holdings to achieve maximum income while protecting you from the market’s volatility
• Helps you balance the risk and rewards of freelancing
• Helps you weigh how much time and energy to invest in projects
• Change the mix depending on the market and income needs
• Let you decide how work fits your plans, not the other way around

4 Levels

1. The Blue Chips
2. Growth Investments
3. One-Shots and Long Shots
4. New Ventures and Growth

Balance these levels to achieve these 3 goals:

1. Have enough clients of the right kind: not too few and not more than you can handle, who pay well and/or can advance your career in some way.
2. Bring in enough steady income to reduce cash flow highs and lows.
3. Meet your total income goals.

Full work, money little

Goal 1

Decent income but payments far apart

Goals 1 and 2

Great clients, money lousy

Goals 1, 2, and 3

Portfolio Planning

Finding a client mix that delivers maximum value for your time and effort.

Equation

Optimal clients + Steady cash flow + Meeting your income goals = Balanced freelance portfolio

Benefits of a Balanced Freelance Portfolio

1. No more living project-to-project. You can fill the gap immediately after a project is suspended.
2. No more “pipeline perspective.”
3. Awareness that you need to network and market.
4. Your portfolio lets you see holes and change your goals

Level 1: Blue Chips

• Core of your freelance portfolio
• Major clients (large or small) that you maintain and monitor carefully as sources of regular income

Benefits

• Income anchors
• Rich relationships
• Referrals

Challenges

• Systems and shifts
• Great project, awful people
• Great people, awful project
• Can disappear overnight

When overwhelmed with work from a Blue Chip, subcontract to people you trust.

How to balance Blue Chips?

• Have more than one
• Keep level 2 (Growth Investments) prospects simmering
• Remember to stay within the boundaries of the project scope

Level 2: Growth Investments

• Growing edge of your business
• Blue Chip incubator
• The more you nurture Level 2, the more it can stabilize your career
• You can get them from client referrals, other freelancers, and your own prospecting (networking)

Benefits

• You decide what prospects to pursue and how you want to be viewed.
• You can be viewed as nice and smart by submitting proposals

Challenges

• Juggling → ask for help from others
• Networking

How to balance Growth Investments?

• Price yourself high enough to weed out low-paying, time-sucking gigs, but not so high that good prospects assume they can’t afford you. Itemize pricing on some components of your work.
• Persist - network, be friendly, and likeable
• Be selective.

Level 3: One-Shots and Long Shots

• Opportunistic gigs that fill time or income gaps

2 Categories

1. Passive intermediaries (“listers”) - list available jobs and leaves the rest of the process up to you and the client (Craigslist, Monster, Freelancers Union, Media-Bistro, and professional job board listings)
2. Active intermediaries - actively manage the freelancer/work provider relationship (temp and staffing agencies, on-deman workforce websites, Elance, oDesk, and Guru)

Check them to:

• Stay current
• Grab a good gig
• Mobilize fast for cash

But you shouldn’t spend a lot of time in these competitive spaces.

Benefits

• Opportunities at a glance
• No cold class or networking
• Easy application
• Supplemental income, seasoning, and selection
• Useful if you’re new to your industry, new to networking, or want to control your workload
• No chasing payments
• You might find some Blue Chips

Challenges

• Not networking but auditioning
• Intrusive. Employers exercise power over freelancer without the usual benefits
• You’ll spend time applying for positions with less chance of getting them
• Prices are pushed down when the labor supply exceeds demand.

How to balance One-Shots and Long Shots?

• See Level 3s for what they are: ways to get short-term gigs, work experience, or quick_incremental_supplemental income—not as your primary income source.
• Limit trolling time.
• Ask your Brain Trust and other freelancers if they’ve gotten work this way.
• Look for the three Ps: price, projects, and people. Look for the three Ps: price, projects, and people. Focus on higher-paying, higher-quality projects that will boost your skills or credits, and for clients you feel you’ll work well with. Their positive testimonials will boost your earning potential.
• Focus on specific kinds of projects (specialty).
• Be clear on payment procedures, oversight, and dispute policies.
• Make sure the project description, directions, and deliverable are well defined.
• Bring your best game. Take the tests and ace them. Tailor your pitches to the projects. Get great testimonials.

Level 4: New Ventures and Growth

• Building services, products, and alliances that will bring income in the long-term future.
• Ventures you’re creating on your own or with others.
• Seminar, speaking gigs, teaching classes, writing a book, collaborating to offer expanded services.
• Test drive for free
• Freemiums to build profile
• Ultimate aim: to position you for a profitable future.
• Need to be phased and planned so they stay on your radar but don’t take over and cut into the time you need to make a living.

How to cultivate level 4?

• Set yearly goals and then make a monthly or weekly breakdown of small, achievable steps to get there.
• Take small steps which motivate and correct you in your course. Shuffle steps if necessary.
• Put each step in your calendar.
• Treat level 4 projects as you’d treat a client project: break it down, identify trouble spots, set up a schedule, project-manage it.

Dry Time

Dry time happens when you lose a Blue Chip and get caught with your network down.

4 Benefits of Dry Time

1. Dry time pushes you to do “the ask.” Ask for work. Let people know your skills are available.
2. Dry time reminds you that work can come from anywhere.
3. Dry time reminds you to tend your portfolio.
4. Prolonged dry time may point to market changes.

When dry time is caused by the market

• Add new skills
• Seek clients in broader range of businesses
• Make alliance to expand your offerings
• Temp or do virtual assistant work while you retool
• Talk to your Brain Trust: “Is it the market? Is it me?”
• Give back to those who help with insights, advice, or leads

13 Tactics for Dry Time Damage Control

1. Keep a routine.
2. Connect.
3. Tackle administrative stuff.
4. Ask for testimonials from satisfied clients.
5. Clean up your act online.
6. Evaluate your business model.
7. Add skills.
8. Consider bartering.
9. Do pro bono or volunteer work.
10. Make dry time “you time.” Planned dry time keeps it from being so dry.
11. Work Level 4.
12. Revisit your Key Skills List. Use them all. Add some more.
13. Take low-paying gigs.

When to Work For Free

• When you can afford it
• When you have the time
• When you are looking to build connections
• When you want to develop experience
• When you just want to

Chapter 4: Getting Clients

Map

Make genuine connections.

Networking and prospecting narrow the field to a small number of people you’ll ultimately work with.

Think long-term and relax into it.

Successful freelancers have the ability to influence people

6 Influential Fundamentals

1. Reciprocity

• Giving an effort-driven gift that is unexpected sincerely.
• Give referrals to others.
• Share information.
• Sales: free trial, sample, consult, discount, early-bird specials, actions that keep customers coming back
• Negotiation: giving some to seal the deal

2. Consistency
3. Social Validation

• Provide references for a prospect to check
• Display testimonials about your work
• Build your number of social media connections
• Let people know you’re setting up more seminars because the current one is sold out
• Post news about getting a professional award
• Tell prospects about other clients you’ve worked with or projects you’ve done

4. Liking

• Start with friends and family
• Network with fellow high school and college alums, or members of a professional organization
• Look for common connection
• Be genuine and interested
• In groups, step up, volunteer, and be helpful

5. Authority

• Resume, website, bio, portfolio, client list, professional titles, memberships, certifications, special training, and awards
• Mention your experience to prospects

6. Scarcity

• Limited edition
• Only X slots left!
• Sale ends tomorrow!
• These contract terms are available until X date.
• Class size is limited - enrol early!
• The first 50 people to sign up get a twenty-percent discount.

Networking Best Practices

Use a different word for networking

• Reaching out
• Connecting
• Talking
• Sharing
• Contacting
• Meeting

The best networking is networking you’ll stick with doing. Your style should mesh with your personality and habits, with gentle stretches in new directions.

Your Network

1. Inner Circle - parents, siblings, immediate relatives, closest friends, close family friends
2. Second Circle - good friends, their families, school connections, people you’ve worked with
3. Third Circle - people you meet through your activities, sports, alumnae organization, or spiritual community
4. Fourth Circle- contacts you make through people in all of these circles

Steps

1. Start with your inner circle.
2. Get feedback.
3. Use feedback to set goals and possible markets.
4. Go to the next circle.
5. Zero in on the people and professions to focus on.

Change your mindset to “What can I give?”

Unwritten Rules for Love Banking

1. People don’t appreciate those who expect a “get” for every “give.”
2. When someone gives you something, don’t ask for more.

The 3 Step Follow-Up

1. When you get home, jot down some key words on their cards about what you talked about, including personal details.
2. Add them to your contacts list and include the notes.
3. A couple of days later, call or email one or two of your new contacts and suggest getting together. Get into this habit and see how it accelerates your networking. Send emails to the others (create a form email that you personalize) saying it was nice to meet them and talk about such-and-such.

Creative (Not Creepy) Contact

1. Send something.
2. Congratulate them on something (a deal, a promotion, a new job, a new product).
3. Ask them something (appeal to their expertise).
4. Sign off through a suggestion of getting together or an invitation.

Respect their Time

1. Be sensitive to their time.
2. If they’re busy ask if there’s a better time for you to call.
3. Start with some small talk to revive your connection then get to your point with a clear transition (assume they’re multitasking).
4. Let them talk.
5. Keep your asks modest.
6. Just call because you’d like to get to know them better

Thank people for leads even if they didn’t work out.

Prospecting combines strategy, Love Banking, and throwing yourself in the path of opportunity.

The 3 Goals Of Prospecting

1. To start a conversation with the right people.

• Only contact prequalified prospects (people with hiring responsibility in healthy professions or businesses that could conceivable, at some point, use your services.

2. To make connection.

• Treat it like an informational interview.
• Ask about their business, their needs, and their view of the industry.
• Ask about their opinions about your goals
• Good resources to read or consult
• Other people you could talk to

3. To be top of mind when they need someone like you.

• Stay in touch without being creepy.
• Tune into their interests
• Send info you think they might like
• Congratulating them on successes
• Sharing ideas for how you might be able to work together

Truths

1. You’re not spamming people who couldn’t care less about your work, you’re talking to people you know you can help—now or in the future.
2. You’re not selling you; you’re connecting with them.
3. Nobody needs anybody—until they need somebody. You want to be top of mind when that happens.
4. Rejection helps you prospect efficiently. It lets you focus on prospects who say “not right now,” “maybe,” “not yet,” or “let’s talk.”
5. More people want to know about you that you might think!
6. If you carefully qualify your candidates, you’ll be narrowing the field into a few prospects who are more willing to bite.
7. The goal isn’t to get a gig but to start a conversation, build network, and start building your Love Bank account.

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WORKBOOK

1. Look for a good free CMS

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