Brian: [00:00:00] Are you a freelancer or are you just role playing as a big, dumb, stupid idiot? That's the question we're gonna explore in this series that I'm doing for the next maybe two or three episodes. I don't know how many this is gonna be.

Brian: But I've seen behind the scenes of high hundreds, low thousands of freelance businesses, I've seen everything from the multimillion dollar agency to the, freelancer starting from scratch at $0. And I've

Brian: seen it every single level. All the things you do, they make you look like a big, dumb, stupid idiot.

Brian: So this is gonna be something like the Jeff Foxworthy. You might be a redneck series for those who even know what the hell that is, of me talking through a bunch of things that says, you might be a big, dumb, stupid idiot if you do this in your freelance business.

Brian: and I'm not clean from any of these. All the ones that I have listed out for this series, I have fallen for like most of them. So many of them start with me, and I see it in patterns amongst a bunch of different freelancers that we've worked with, and that we have seen who want to work with us.

Brian: So this episode will be the first in the series. It's eight signs. You are selling like a big, dumb, stupid idiot.

Brian: And my goal is for you to just hear these things that are kind of interesting, and you probably don't want to be doing any of these things, so that if you are doing these things, you can [00:01:00] see what you should be doing instead of this. So before I get into this, hi. I'm Brian Hood. This is the six Figure Creative Podcast. I talk fast, so listen fast. I apologize for this. But we are a podcast for creative freelancers who wanna make more money from their creative skills without selling their souls.

Brian: If that sounds like you, you're in the right spot. Take a lot of influence from a lot of different industries within the freelance niche, out of the freelance niche. I learned what's working, what's not working, and I try to distill it down to what makes sense for freelancers so that you can take it away, implement it in your business, and make more money.

Brian: So that being said, let's talk about the eight signs that you're selling, like a big, dumb, stupid idiot.

Brian: Number one,I'm only gonna do this for this first one. You might be a big, dumb, stupid idiot if you're selling like you're asking for a favor. I see freelancers all the time. They have phrases like I'd love to help out if you need something or just keep me in mind, lemme know if there's anything I can do, or, sorry to bug you again, or No worries if not.

Brian: These are all phrases that freelancers use all the time. I use them myself. These are low status, they're needy, implies you're waiting around and worst of all, it asks them to do the work. They have to decide. If they want what you have to offer, they probably don't even know what you fully offer. They don't fully understand it.

Brian: they have to decide when they're gonna need your help, how they might [00:02:00] actually use you, and these sorts of phrases. They don't instill confidence in the people you're talking to. And there's nothing concrete that comes out of it.

Brian: There's no pitch. There's no problem solving, there's no call to action. there's no clear offer for how you can help them. That's just like passively asking for the work.

Brian: And if you do it, you might be a big, dumb, stupid idiot. So let's stop that. let's stop hoping they'll pick you instead of hope. Just make it easy to say yes

Brian: in order to do that. The easiest thing is just use confident, low pressure, closing language. The reason we do this in the first place is we don't wanna be high pressure, especially when we're talking to new people that we're not, we don't have a great relationship with yet Many times when this passive language comes up, someone has expressed that they might need your services or they might need your help, or they might have a problem that you know you can solve. and so you throw these little easy lines out because they're, no pressure, right?

Brian: You can use something with more confidence, with higher intent, that's low pressure. So things like this, would you like help with this or, here's how I typically help with this. When we walk you through what that would look like for you, either one of those does the exact same thing.

Brian: It pushes towards a discovery call. Notice how, here's how I typically help with this. You've identified a problem that they have. You're explaining how you could typically help with that. Would you like me to walk through what that looks like for [00:03:00] you?

Brian: So much better that is than just keep me in mind. I'd love to help out. If you ever need something, lemme know if there's anything I can do. See how much worse that is.

Brian: One is you hoping you'll get a discovery call. The other is pushing to discovery call. It's leading to a discovery call.

Brian: So that's mistake number one, selling like you're asking for a favor, number two.

Brian: You set up a discovery call, congratulations. These are the things that freelancers love to get, because generally you love to get these because it usually is the thing that precedes the client. And if you're not doing discovery calls at all, I should probably put that in there.

Brian: That's another sign that you're selling, like a big, dumb, stupid idiot. Count that as number nine.

Brian: If you're not doing discovery calls, it's usually because you're either doing something that's so button seat that there's no discovery process needed because it's easy to understand something like video editing.

Brian: I'm gonna edit your video. You're unedited video, I'll make it edited. Probably not gonna do a discovery call for that. But if you're doing a transformational service, you should be doing a discovery call. And if you're not, you're missing out. You're gonna have lower conversions, you'll close way more people if you have a discovery call process, but I digress. Let's talk about mistake number two is getting on discovery calls with absolutely no agenda. You have no questions, you have no idea what happens next.

Brian: You're just gonna wing it. This is very common. I didn't realize how [00:04:00] common this was until we started onboarding, dozens of clients a month. Reading through their onboarding questionnaires, asking 'em what their sales process is, is one of our,many questions we ask when we're onboarding clients.

Brian: It's also something we ask in the discovery call process of our own,

Brian: and half,a little over half of people don't have any sort of discovery call process whatsoever. They're just winging it on every single call. Let's talk about why this is stupid. Not only is the call aimless, it can be long-winded and go forever or it can be too short because you didn't ask any questions.

Brian: it can easily let the client take over the call and they start asking questions that are relevant to the project itself. And because there's no clear process, there is gonna be no clear result.

Brian: And I think the reason people fall into this is because you just wing it when you start. Most people do. I did. Everyone basically does when they just start out, they're just winging it. And you have this false confidence that you're good at sales, so you're just winging it because you're only talking to really hot, really warm referrals.

Brian: Friends. Friends of friends, family, friends of family. referrals from some of your best clients. People that are likely gonna say yes, no matter how bad you are on the call, where you can be long-winded, you can be pretty aimless, you can come unprepared, you [00:05:00] can have no process on the call.

Brian: The client can take over the call and you still close it. and so because of the Dunning Kruger effect, you have this unconscious incompetence. You don't understand how bad you are. And once you start talking to complete strangers, people who don't know you, they don't like you, they don't trust you yet, and you're just getting, this is basically the first step in a long,hopefully long lasting relationship.

Brian: This doesn't work. You find it breaks down quickly. So instead just follow a discovery call process. So what's smart business owners do? There's many frameworks out there. I've had episodes on this. An easy one to follow is the Closer Framework by Alex, her Mosey. It's easy, it's effective, it works for freelancers, but when you have a framework, By the way, it doesn't have to be scripted. It's just I wanna talk about these things and I have specific questions about this sort of thing. Problems. Let's ask about problems. Let's dig into goals. what goals do you have? I'm gonna have these questions for this specific client. It's just literally, it's just a list of questions.

Brian: It's just a questions based framework. When you have a good questions based framework, you can constantly iterate it, you can revise it, and it'll start to work on all calls. Because the first time you deploy a new framework, a questions based framework, like closer formula,

Brian: certain things will sound weird. You'll be like, that was [00:06:00] so weird. I've never asked that again. Or that could have been asked in a better way, or I should have asked this and I didn't. And after every call, you're making revisions to the process. You're iterating on it.

Brian: Over time, you'll start to understand how most people answer or respond to certain questions, and you can change the phrasing to get a different response, but when you do it well, things go smoothly. The calls end up being roughly the same length. You start to anticipate what the questions might be before they come up, or what the objections could be that could hold up the sale, and you can have those conversations beforebefore you even talk money.

Brian: Pros have a discovery call process that's well thought out. Big, dumb, stupid idiots do not. They just aimlessly float through calls.

Brian: Let's talk about big, dumb, stupid idiot. Mistake number three is thinking that sales is just explaining things really thoroughly. You probably heard the phrase confused minds don't buy. Or if you confuse, you lose. I think Donald Miller kind of coined that phrase, and so you think, oh, if they're confused, it's 'cause they don't understand every little detail about all the stuff I could do for them, or how I, my entire process from A to Z and all the little intricate details.

Brian: so you're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna create a sales process. Brian says, I need discovery call [00:07:00] process. maybe even follow the closer formula, closer framework or formula, whatever he calls it, by Alex and Mosey.

Brian: And you have a good questions based framework and you ask all these great questions and then it gets to the pitch and you're gonna explain how your service works.

Brian: And so it turns into a TED talk. It's just a 20 minute monologue about all the things you do for your clients, how long it takes every single little step, all the minutia your client doesn't care about.

Brian: Explaining is not sales,

Brian: just getting on a call and explaining is kind of stupid. if I'm being completely honest with you. But it's because for the most part, when we grew up in school, schooltrained us to explain, not to sell.

Brian: You learned how to show your work, explain your process, break things down step by step.

Brian: But when you take this approach to a sales call, a discovery call, it breaks down

Brian: because it gives clients things they don't care about. the only thing it does is bring up objections from the client In my background, music production. Oh, you're using Pro Tools. I want this to be in logic, even though they have no idea what that means.

Brian: you use this software. I want that software. When you start volunteering information that ultimately doesn't matter. To the quality of the product that you're giving your client, it starts to [00:08:00] bring up more opportunities for objections from the client.

Brian: Instead, just understand what the client really wants,like really, really wants, What did they actually want? They don't need to know every damn little detail.

Brian: they don't need to know your entire process.

Brian: They just need to know these things that you understand their problem. Or their desires Depends on the kind of visits you run some freelancers solve problems, some work people towards a desire that they have, either way it?

Brian: Do you understand it? Do you understand them? Everyone feels like a special snowflake. Do you understand their unique special snowflake ness? second thing is that you can actually solve their problems or give them what they want. And the third thing is that it'll be worth the money. They need to believe all three of those things and anything in your sales process that does not aid one of those three things is pointless.

Brian: Stuff that can be cut out.

Brian: Your discovery process should just help you understand their problem or their desires. Help them understand that it will be worth the money before you even talk numbers, because they understand how valuable the, and thing that they're getting is, or how costly the problem that you're solving is.

Brian: And your pitch should be about how you can actually solve the problem or give 'em what they want.

Brian: But thinking that sales is just explaining things really, really thoroughly is for big, [00:09:00] dumb, stupid idiots.

Brian: Alright, here's the next big dumb stupid mistake, it's simple not knowing the difference between when someone's interested in what you offer and when someone has intent behind.

Brian: What you offer, and lemme explain what that So interest is just that sounds cool. Or they like the idea they're curious about it. They might even say nice things like this looks awesome, or, I've been thinking about doing something like this. Like these are all interest-based phrases, but they haven't actually committed to anything.

Brian: They're just browsing or window shopping. But intent is, I want this and I'm ready to move forward in some way, shape, or form. So things like how much would this cost? It's an intent based question, or what would the next steps look like or scheduling like, could we get started next month? Or what does your schedule look like for this?

Brian: The reason I'm mentioning this is because when people don't understand the difference between these two things, you end up either accepting interest as actual desire or intent and thus wasting time on people who are not ready yet. And so you spend time trying to move people forward who are not ready yet, they'll always tell you it's, oh, it's too expensive.

Brian: And then you'll start to hear that over and over again from people that are not, they're not gonna move forward [00:10:00] anyways, so their input on pricing is irrelevant because they weren't ready to move forward in the first place. And so you've wasted time, you're getting feedback from people that you shouldn't be getting feedback from.

Brian: and when there's actual intent behind something, you can spend time trying to get them on a discovery call to try to close them. So when you mess this up, you miss out. You waste time.

Brian: So if they show interest, there's specific questions you can ask to kind of suss out the intent. First one can be something like, when are you hoping to get this done? you see how this question can take somebody from, they're just interested, they're just filling things out and you say, Hey, cool. So you said you've been, looking to get this done some point, like when would you wanna get this done? Oh, I don't know. You know, maybe next fall, I don't know yet.

Brian: Cool. You just weeded that person out. You can follow up with them. You can have other conversations with them, but you know, they're not ready yet.

Brian: But if someone is truly interested, they ask pricing. For example, you say, Hey, when are you hoping to get this done? you're getting more information. You're gonna get closer to getting on a discovery call, having an actual conversation about this closing the deal.

Brian: Another good question for sussing out intent versus interest is what makes you wanna do this? Now you're starting to kind of almost do a mini discovery. This is a lot of times done through chat, through email, through in-person interactions. You're at a [00:11:00] party, you're at a social event, you're at a coffee shop, Just having go-to questions to ask in these instances to figure out how serious are they? Because you only have so much, bandwidth in your life because you're doing projects, you're following up on deals, you're doing discovery calls, you're actually doing the work for your clients that you currently have.

Brian: So you can't really waste time on people who are not ready right now.

Brian: So sometimes you can just be straightforward and say. Just outta curiosity, are you actively looking into this or are you just exploring Now? Obviously tone matters there. My tone for that was kind of weird, but in context you can usually come up with a way of saying something like that in a non weird, awkward way.

Brian: So just outta curiosity, are you looking for something like this right now or are you just exploring or just trying to figure out like pricing? if they show interest, they're just interested, you can move along.

Brian: But if they show intent, you go for the discovery call. And unless you go to the discovery call, you follow up until, and that brings me to number six. Big dumb, stupid mistake number six.

Brian: And that's not following up.

Brian: If you've ever not followed up with someone because you quote, don't wanna bother them, then you're broke and you're a big, dumb, stupid idiot.

Brian: here's the weird thing about follow ups. Generally, if you're following up with the right people you, you had a great discovery call. they have intent behind it and they just [00:12:00] have to get finances together. They need to talk over with a spouse or a business partner or, some other decision maker that they're involved with.

Brian: They want to do this thing. They had a 30, 45 minute, hour long, sometimes longer conversation with you in a discovery call to talk through the project with them. They're generally excited about it,

Brian: but life gets in the way. I have literally seen everything from cancer to divorce to moving to, health issues with family members just finances, saving money. Things that hold back projects from moving forward. But notice how none of those things necessarily change their desire for the thing that you offer.

Brian: It just deprioritizes it. Someone needs to get through a divorce before they, bother dropping $10,000 for whatever you want. Have the offer changing jobs. that can kill a deal in some B2B instances.

Brian: But my rule is this, follow up until they say yes, until they say no, or until one of you dies.

Brian: That's it. Yes. No death. If you can follow that simple rule, and this is not for like every lead you've ever gotten in your life. It just means when you had a great conversation with someone, someone with high intent, [00:13:00] what I call like a hot lead. You should be following up with them until yes, no, or death.

Brian: And we have an episode somewhere in the podcast, I think, where I talked about the Fibonacci follow up sequence long story short, you're spacing out your follow ups further and further apart, kinda like a Fibonacci sequence to where ultimately at the end of the day, you're following up once every month or two.

Brian: Even if someone's ghosted you, you never know what's going on in their life. And I've never in my, freelance life over a decade, never have I ever had someone mad at me for following up with 'em. That quote aggressively but I, multiple times I've had people thank me for following up with 'em because they wanted, the thing that I'm following up about, they just had a bunch of stuff to figure out.

Brian: So my background, music production is just filled with this sort of stuff. think about this, you've got a band. just for more context, I produced mixed master heavy metal music for over a decade, and that decade, you have, five band dudes.

Brian: Trying to scrape together thousands of dollars from their minimum wage jobs to come record at my studio. Not all of 'em. Some have labels, some have good jobs, but the average is like minimum wage people. They're in their early twenties, late teens, trying to scrape together money to come to the studio, [00:14:00] and they're great at what they do as a band, but they're bad at the management of things, bad at money.

Brian: They lose band members all the time. The drummer's, girlfriend cheated on him from the vocalist, so now the vocalist is kicked outta the band. They have to find a new vocalist.

Brian: All these things have to come together. They have to get new vocalists, they have to write the new lyrics, and those things can derail for months or years sometimes, and by the time they're actually ready for the service that I offer, anyone else that we're talking to stopped following up months ago.

Brian: I'm the only one still following up, so I still get the gig. But big, dumb, stupid idiots say, I don't wanna bother them. I'm not gonna follow up after, 1, 2, 3, maybe three times, but half my income came from follow up number six or higher. So if you wanna make more money, follow up more. Number seven, big, dumb, stupid idiot.

Brian: Mistake number seven

Brian: not trying to collect a deposit on the call.

Brian: She had this great discovery call. The person's a good fit. really good connection, right? They need your service. you can give them what they want, they believe in you, whatever. maybe you are even smart enough to talk about money on the call. You, gave them a price on the call.

Brian: I.If you didn't, maybe you're hiding behind a proposal. And to be honest, sending proposals is [00:15:00] almost always stupid. It's like the coward's way of avoiding talking money on a call. I know there can be use cases where proposals are useful, but it's probably not your use case.

Brian: So just try talking numbers on a call. Even if you have to calculate some things, you can say it's gonna be about this much. Does that sound like it's within your budget? It doesn't have to be fully accurate if you truly are custom,

Brian: but go a step further and actually try to take a deposit. The $10,000 project. Take a thousand dollars, no less than 5%, and you can go as high as you want. But the reason I have so many of our clients doing this, and the reason we do this ourselves, and the reasonI'm telling you this right now is because until you ask for money on the call, you will not get the real objection.

Brian: Even if you talk money on the call, it'll be $10,000. Okay, cool. Awesome. Sweet. Let me know if you wanna move forward the same stuff that you've been saying for years on calls. 'cause you're too afraid to ask for money. And maybe even, maybe even you have a backbone. You got the backbone, you're saying.

Brian: Are you ready to move forward? Well, you know, I just gotta think about it. Okay. Cool, cool, cool. Let me know. That's the way most freelance sales calls end. And until you actually start asking for a deposit, do you wanna put a deposit down so we can lock in your dates? Until you start [00:16:00] asking for that, you're not gonna get to the true objection that they had.

Brian: Until you get to the true objection that's holding them back from moving forward, you will not close the client and you will never really get the true objection until you ask for money on the call.

Brian: and a lot of times, by the way, they just had this gut feeling, something's off, something didn't get answered. Some objection's there, they don't even know how to phrase it yet, and you have to start digging into that. But they won't even start to voice that until you start pushing and prodding.

Brian: And many people, if they have that gut feeling or something's holding them back, they'll say all the nice things they need to do to get you off the phone Cool, thanks. I'll let you know whatever nice thing they gotta say to get off the phone or zoom call or in person or whatever it is.

Brian: But when you start actually asking for a deposit to collect deposit on the call,

Brian: you can start to uncover and dig into and prod what that real objection is. Because if you break through what the real objection is and you're able to handle it, they'll pay a deposit. If you don't, then they will likely move on, and sometimes they'll bring up a perfectly valid reason why you're not a good fit for them, and you just have to accept that, that this is not a good fit.

Brian: But the reason I'm so adamant about this is because until you understand the true objection, you can never fix it in your business. If your prices are truly too high and everyone's saying no to you truly [00:17:00] because your pricing is too high.

Brian: You've gotta find ways to cut down costs. It either is you have to work faster or you have to cut out things that your clients are paying for that they don't care about, or you just have to earn less on a project and take the hit. But some cases you truly are too expensive.

Brian: in other cases, They don't think you're the right fit for them. There's something about your style, there's something about your vibe. the trust is just not there.

Brian: And in some cases, their uncertainty is just they have unanswered questions that they didn't even know how to ask. And we start digging into it and diving into and figure out what is holding you back? What do you need to think about? What's on your mind? What are you unsure about? If this were a perfect fit, what it look like?

Brian: You can start to zero in on what the true objection holding them back is. But when you send a proposal or you just say, let me know when you're ready to move forward, and they just drift off into the sunset and they ghost you, you never learn anything therefore, you can't improve anything.

Brian: Nothing is more frustrating than losing a client and not understanding why, and that's why I would much rather just ask for a deposit. you don't have to be pushy about it. It's just like, cool, let's lock in the deposit if you're ready to move forward. Or if you're not ready to move forward, we can lock into deposit.

Brian: And that way if you change your mind later, we can still refund it. But that way, the [00:18:00] dates are set in stone and we don't have to worry about that part. And you can go over way over the weekend, think about it, talk about it with whoever you need to talk about it, and we can have another call on Monday.

Brian: that brings me to the last one here,

Brian: and that is you're avoiding. Objections. Avoiding sales in general, avoiding hard conversations, avoiding lot of stuff that I've talked about today. You're avoiding stuff because they feel like personal attacks. The rejection feels personal, so the objections feel personal.

Brian: This is the real reason why people don't wanna talk about money on discovery calls. They don't wanna ask for money. They don't wanna ask for a deposit. They won't even mention pricing. They went high behind the proposal. It's because that when they object to it or they reject you, it's a reflection on you.

Brian: And in an indirect way, it kind of is where if you have a poor process, a poor approach to sales, you have some sort of flaw in your business that is a result of you. It is a reflection of you, those are all fixable things, but it's not personal. That's the difference. It's not personal. It's not you at your core.

Brian: It is you, the external thing you've built around you in your freelance business because there is a separation between you and your freelance business. Yes, they're married together. Yes. There is no true separation between you and [00:19:00] your freelance business, but there is a shell around you, and that is all the systems, processes, and things you do as a freelancer to run your business.

Brian: And that's the thing that they're judging, not you as a person. All humans that you, talk to yourself included, and myself, we're all on our own journey. Everyone has their own trauma, they have their own drama. They're all have stuff that they're dealing with. And so even if someone on a sales call said, Brian, you're a piece of shit and I hope your business fails.

Brian: Even if someone said that, that is a reflection of them and how they see the world and how, what they're dealing with, to have that sort of, vibe and negativity. That's a reflection of them, not me. I wouldn't even take that personal.

Brian: Now, 99.99% discovery calls you do will not be that rough,

Brian: but it's still, it's just people trying to make. They feel like is the best decision for them based on the information that they have. And many times the reason you're losing sales is because you do not have a good process in place to give them all the information they need to make the right decision.

Brian: So instead of avoiding objections, avoiding rejection, instead expect rejection, expect objections, plan for them. This should be part of your discovery call process.

Brian: You can have phrases and things actually [00:20:00] scripted out, wherever it needs to be in the call, practice it, things liketotally fair. Totally fair. I understand. So can I ask you what sort of price range you're expecting or something like if they're delaying it, they need to think about it or, let me get back to you.

Brian: Cool. no problem at all. Sounds like this is not urgent to you yet. So just outta curiosity what's, the hold up here? there's phrases like that you can get anywhere, and there's plenty of content about objections and handling rejection on YouTube.

Brian: Alex Ramoz is probably the best free content there is for this sort of stuff. But if you're gonna kind of plan for things, especially in the objection world, plan for these three objections and have questions around it, just be ready for it. Objections for this is too much money. Objections for, I need to think about this, or objections around I need to talk to decision maker.

Brian: Could be spouse, could be business partner, could be whatever. But when you do that, you'll now start to have questions of your own. When someone says something, you have a question straight back to them You should be coming from a place of curiosity. When you approach rejection from a place of curiosity, you can start to get to what I call the source of truth. What is the truth behind this rejection or this objection? And if you can find that truth, what the center of all this fluff is [00:21:00] for that specific individual that you're talking to, you can have a fair decision being made if you can come to the truthful decision at the end.

Brian: You've uncovered all the smoke screens they're throwing at you and all the uncertainty they might have. You have to unwrap all the layers with good questioning. At that point, you can make a good decision together whether it's a good fit and if it's a good fit they'll more than likely move forward if you've done your job right,

Brian: but those are the eight or so signs that you're selling like a big, dumb, stupid idiot. And if you're making any of those mistakes, you're doing any of those things,

Brian: stop. It's real lazy. Just stop. Just stop doing it Easier said than done, but I know that not all of these things are gonna vibe with everyone. Everyone has their own kind of like viewpoint on sales, but most freelancers are not good at sales. And if you think you are good at sales, I would ask you, go look up the Dunning Kruger effect.

Brian: Where are you on that curve when you start something that you don't know anything about? you think you're good at something, but you have no idea how bad you truly are. And when you start learning something you, fall into this trough of sorrow, and that is where you start understanding how bad you are at something.

Brian: they call it conscious incompetence. [00:22:00] This is where you know how bad you are and how far you have to go, and there's just a slow learning curve getting to where you are. Competent, but it takes some work. conscious competence. You have to think through all the things.

Brian: You have to follow the sales process. Nothing's natural, it feels forced, but eventually you'll reach unconscious competence where you don't even have to think about it. It's just second nature. Most people don't become a natural because they are truly natural.

Brian: they've put in the work to go through that whole Dunning crew curve So they get to this point where they are truly amazing at something. And anyone who's played an instrument, you understand, people don't have any idea how hard it is to play an instrument, especially something like piano, until they sit down and start trying to do it,and then they realize how far they have to go and they give up before they ever get good at it.

Brian: That's the journey most people go on, on musical instruments.

Brian: my encouragement to you is if you want to sell your freelance services, maybe get good at sales. So that's all it got for you this week.hopefully you found this helpful. Thanks so much for listening to the six Figure Creative Podcast. Peace.

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