How To Set Yourself Apart From The Other 500,000,000 Freelancers In The World | Part 2

[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the Six Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, so glad to have you here. Welcome. I'm too hand waving if you're watching on YouTube. I don't know why. This podcast is for you if you are a freelancer. You offer creative services and you want to make more money from those creative skills without selling yourself.

[00:00:14] Brian: That sounds like you you're in the right spot for returning listeners. This is a continuation of the series we started last week. Now you don't really have to go back and listen to that episode if you're new or you missed last week. This episode will stand alone value all in itself. But I want to kind of back up a little bit and set the stage for what we're going to talk about today.

[00:00:29] Brian: Because this is something that every single person listening to this show Should absolutely be thinking about it should be top of mind for you right now. this should be a burning pain for you right now. And I'm going to back up and say the sign behind me says, It takes more than passion, pointing at it back behind me.

[00:00:42] Brian: It's this custom little neon sign I made. I spent like a thousand dollars on it, I think. Maybe six or eight hundred, maybe a thousand, I don't remember. I spent a lot of money on it because I had like one of those epiphany moments where I was just on a walk. And I was thinking through, people that listen to this show, I'm thinking through, what is like the universal message that I want to send to anyone that listens [00:01:00] to this show?

[00:01:00] Brian: And that, phrase just came into my mind because so many of us came into this profession freelancing by accident. We were passionate about something and we started realizing we can monetize it in some way. And then we started getting a few clients and then it became maybe more than just a hobby.

[00:01:15] Brian: It became an actual side gig or side hustle and then it became maybe even a full time thing for some people and then became a legitimate business and maybe you have freelancers to work under you, becoming more of an agency. the path can go so many different directions, But it all starts with passion. We are passionate about something,

[00:01:28] Brian: but it doesn't end there. So the second we decide to become a professional freelancer, aka we are accepting money for our services, now we have so many other things that we need to think about.

[00:01:37] Brian: and one of those very important things, probably one of the most important things that you should be thinking about right now, a thing that should be top of mind, burning pain for you right now, if you don't have an answer for this is, Answering this question, we call it the cornerstone question.

[00:01:49] Brian: You've heard me talk about this on the show. If you're a long time listener to this podcast, but it's having a great answer for the cornerstone question of why should someone hire you instead of all the other options that they have? it doesn't matter what you do. If [00:02:00] you are offering creative services, freelance services, for money, then most of the time, 99.

[00:02:05] Brian: 99 percent of the time, there are other options out there besides you. So if you're a music producer, there are other music producers. If you're a graphic designer, there are other graphic designers. If you're a videographer, there are other videographers. If you're a copywriter, there's other copywriters.

[00:02:16] Brian: If you're an illustrator, there's other illustrators. If you're a photographer, there's other photographers out there. So why should they hire you instead of all the other people that are out there? I'll pause and let you think about that for just like five seconds. Now, do you have a good answer for that?

[00:02:29] Brian: Chances are, if you're like most people that I've ever talked to about this, they do not have a great answer for this. You'll have some level things. I have the great customer experience or, we have a great portfolio or our quality is better than everyone else. And those might be true,

[00:02:42] Brian: but if you can't point to specific things, specific differentiators, very tangible things, many of them, very measurable things. If you can't point to those immediately and say, that's what separates me. Then I guarantee your clients, or actually the people that are not your clients, your leads, your potential clients, prospects, [00:03:00] all those other people out there you want to hire you, they don't have an answer for that either. for why they should hire you over all their other options.

[00:03:06] Brian: And so you lose the gig. They go with someone else for various reasons, pricing, whatever.

[00:03:11] Brian: your leads, those people you want to hire you. They will always know less about you than you do. So if you do not know this about yourself, what your differentiators are, guaranteed that they don't know them either.

[00:03:21] Brian: And even if you do know them, It doesn't mean that they know them either because you may not be communicating those differentiators to them. So this episode, we'll talk through a bunch of differentiators,

[00:03:28] Brian: help you find an answer for that cornerstone question, a way to actually be different.

[00:03:32] Brian: And then maybe not this episode, but maybe a future episode, we'll talk about how we actually communicate that to our clients so that they do know, because it's one thing for you to know, completely different thing for them to know, but it starts with you knowing first what those differentiators are so that you can have a true reason for them to hire you. over their other options. And that's what we all want. starts with passion, we got really passionate about this, but we have to have a reason for them to hire us above and beyond shoulder shrugging, uh, you know, we have, best customer experience, So for this [00:04:00] episode, I got a few rules, don't have a name for this, I could probably come up with a name, but our differentiation rules. We got three of them to follow right now for this episode. Rule number one is. Lowering price will never be your differentiator. I want no one listening to this podcast, no one watching this on YouTube.

[00:04:12] Brian: I want none of you to use price as a differentiator. We're not coming down on a price to get a client. We're not advertising discounts, coupon codes, any of that crap to get clients. That is a poor person's game to getting clients.

[00:04:24] Brian: We don't want that. We don't do that. We're not talking about that. We're not teaching that. don't advocate for that. You won't do that either because you listen to the show and you're smarter than the other people. Rule number two, differentiators need to be apparent before they hire you. So you saying you have a better client experience, you're more likable, people like you more.

[00:04:40] Brian: You just really gel well with your clients. That's all things they find out after they hire you. In most cases, not all cases, but in most cases. So the differentiators I'm talking about in this episode and the differentiators you really need to focus your time, effort, and energy on are those that are apparent before they ever exchange their money to you.

[00:04:55] Brian: if they don't find out till after they hand you the money, that's not what we're going to work on today. That's not what you're going to focus on when it [00:05:00] comes to answering your cornerstone question. Rule number three is just choose one at a time to focus on. I'm going to cover a lot of different shaders in this episode.

[00:05:06] Brian: I've got four different categories to cover. And so this might be a bit of an info dump. and maybe I even have to split this into multiple episodes, or maybe we have to do some follow up episodes on this, because this is a series, by the way. But the rule is choose one and focus on it for now.

[00:05:17] Brian: We can stack them over time, but not all of these are created equal. Some of these will take days to implement. Some of these will take years to implement. Some of them will, Keep you booked solid for life, And some will only give you a slight edge. So it's up to you to decide, depending on your niche, depending on what you gravitate towards.

[00:05:31] Brian: I don't even use all these, by the way. All these differentiators I'm talking about, I don't use them currently. I had never have in some of these. But it doesn't mean they're any less valuable just because I don't use them doesn't mean they are not a valid valuable differentiator I do have a lot of these and I have used a lot of these But everyone gravitates naturally to certain areas and you really only need a couple real differentiators to stand out from competition or your and even if you are the type of person that Says there are no competitors.

[00:05:54] Brian: There are only collaborators. Sure. That sounds good. Like on a bumper sticker or something But realistically, if [00:06:00] you don't get hired, someone else does. And if someone else gets hired, you won't. So you do have competitors. Doesn't mean you can't be friends with them. Doesn't mean you can't exchange leads or refer clients to each other occasionally.

[00:06:10] Brian: But you still have competitors. Again, not to be rude with each other, but just saying, truly, you do have competition. At a certain point, we have to be different from the people around us if we want to get the clients.

[00:06:20] Brian: So let's talk about the four categories. I'm going to dive into these and we'll get as far as we can in this episode. I'll probably get through all of them, but we'll see. The first grouping of differentiators is brute force differentiators. That is just pure effort and energy and sometimes money.

[00:06:32] Brian: To differentiate hard but possible. The second category is credibility, trust, that whole kind of umbrella of differentiators. The third is specialization. Talk more about that. That's a huge one. That's one of my favorites. The fourth is Goldilocks pricing and things around pricing. Again, lower rates are not the differentiator, but pricing does come into this, especially if you're working with broke clients, which is what my background is in music production, working with broke clients that worked at Taco Bell. So let's start at category number one, brute force differentiators.

[00:06:59] Brian: And [00:07:00] I'll start with the hardest here, the most common, the one that you probably answered. If you had an answer to the cornerstone question at the beginning of the episode where I paused for a few seconds to let you answer to yourself what your differentiator is, it is just be better than the competition, be better than the other people.

[00:07:13] Brian: Portfolio quality, your skills as a freelancer, your talent as a designer, music producer, whatever you do, you're just the best, or at least the best in your immediate area or in your career. circle of competitors. This is the most common differentiator people try to strive towards, and it is by far the most difficult to achieve.

[00:07:32] Brian: Someone will always be better than you. And many times those people who are naturally more talented to you and naturally better than you, who work less hard to get further ahead of you in the creative space, as far as talent side of things, those people are also rarely the most sophisticated business owner.

[00:07:46] Brian: so what you'll find is a lot of times those people will do things that make It really hard for you to compete. They won't charge what they should charge And so you see that this person who's better than you charges lower rates And so now you're knocking down your rates, even though you shouldn't or they won't have boundaries with their clients. So [00:08:00] they'll let the clients walk all over them. So you feel like you should do the same. If that person's better than me and they do that, I need to now do that. Or what's even worse. Oh, this is the whole point of this podcast.

[00:08:08] Brian: the six figure creative exists for this reason. The worst thing is when you look to those people who are better than you and you use them as a model for how you should run your business and that model is utterly and completely flawed. other than being the best at their talent. Nothing else about them should be emulated.

[00:08:23] Brian: So the whole point of this podcast is throw talent away as a differentiator for now. Assume that you are good enough with your current creative skills. And let's work on all those other skills. We call it the full stack freelancer. We have a whole series on this. If you want to check out that series, it's episode

[00:08:38] Brian: 235. And 236. the first episode of that series. It's called why you don't need to be a better creative in 2023 full stack freelancer part one.

[00:08:46] Brian: So while this is a huge differentiator, if you can truly achieve it, be the best. This is not the one we're going to focus on.

[00:08:51] Brian: Does it mean you don't improve your skillset? Does it mean you don't get better at your skillset? But it does mean that there's likely a laundry list of other things that you need to focus your [00:09:00] time, effort, energy, and attention on that will get you much better returns because the better you get, that law of diminishing returns creeps up.

[00:09:06] Brian: I work harder to get 1 percent better. That 1 percent better takes me 10 times longer next time to achieve. So the next 1 percent better takes 10 times longer, I get 1 percent better and now all your time is spent just getting that 1 percent bump that your clients cannot perceive. Listen to that series if this sounds like something that you struggle with.

[00:09:23] Brian: but that's brute force method number one for differentiation is just be the best, or at least be better than your competitors.

[00:09:29] Brian: brute force differentiator Number two is have better or more expensive gear slash facilities This is one of my favorites coming from the music production background where I?

[00:09:37] Brian: The big thing to do would be get a massive loan or get investors. This is like the old school recording studio days on music row in Nashville and some of the other studios around here. You get millions of dollars together through some way and you buy a bunch of gear. have a big expensive buildout and you have an overhead and bills to match, but that is a true differentiator.

[00:09:55] Brian: Have bigger, better facilities, have the best. similar to the skill side of things, [00:10:00] but it's way more brute force, so it's just money. Just put money towards it. have the best gear, have the best room facilities. Again, this is very common in the recording studio world. It's also pretty common in the video, videography world. Photography can kind of be like that, but this is more in like gear centric niches. So this isn't everyone, but I don't know if a designer that I'm looking at their gear list thinking, oh, that designer is the one because of their gear, because of their, cool vibe in their office, that stuff's cool to have, obviously, but it's not what I'm talking about here.

[00:10:27] Brian: So this is really for my, gear lust people out there. This is a way to differentiate the problem. Again, Every single time you spend a dime or a dollar or a hundred thousand dollars on gear it increases your overhead meaning you have loans that you have to pay now now you have to make more to keep the same and that was the reality when I was coming up as a upstart home studio where I had less than twenty thousand dollars worth of gear and I was Competing against people with multi million dollar studios And I was beating them out.

[00:10:55] Brian: And the reason being is when I had lower overhead, I could charge a much lower rate. I [00:11:00] wasn't pricing based on low rates. It was just realistically. I charged a rate that was fair and highly profitable for me, but because they had such high overhead and bills associated with their studios, they had to charge way more.

[00:11:11] Brian: If they charge what I charged, they would make no money.

[00:11:14] Brian: On the flip side, you might say, what if I buy everything with cash? I bootstrap it. I don't get loans. I don't get investors. I don't have to charge as much because I am reinvesting into my own business. That's the same problem. Whenever you are bootstrapping you, that means you're taking your profit and just reinvesting it back in the business, which means you take home less money.

[00:11:30] Brian: And if you're like most people, you have bills to pay, you have mouth to feed, you have life to live. And so now you are depriving yourself of that in order to reinvest into a business. And beyond that, there's also opportunity costs. So all that money you're reinvesting into your business could be earning money elsewhere.

[00:11:46] Brian: So if you have a hundred thousand dollars invested in your business, or a million dollars invested in your business, what could that get out in the market? Seven to 10 percent returns when you factor that in to what you could be earning passively.

[00:11:56] Brian: doesn't add up. Not for many people. now there may be some examples out [00:12:00] there that makes sense, but I'd prefer this not to be your differentiator as better gears and facility. There's a threshold in every industry and every niche where this amount of quality Is the expectation and every 1 percent beyond that, just like your skill set, every 1 percent beyond that is perceived by less and less people as an improvement.

[00:12:17] Brian: So you need to look at your client's expectations. What is the expectation of quality? What is the expectation of the end result? Not how we got there, the end result. And buy gear and facilities and have your build out for things according to that.

[00:12:29] Brian: Brute force differentiator number three. It's to simply be faster. faster or more efficient. Put these one in the same. And this is one where we're starting to get into the realm of what I call reality. This one is highly valuable for those of you who are in very competitive, bloody red niches where there's tons of competitors that are out there.

[00:12:45] Brian: Or in niches where people are just very

[00:12:48] Brian: money conscious. AKA broke. And I was working with a client on this exact issue. when we looked at his packaging and we did the math on like how long it takes to fulfill on this. we kind of reverse engineers based on what he wants to earn.

[00:12:59] Brian: We take the [00:13:00] client value completely out of the equation for this specific exercise. We're just saying, what do you want to deliver to the client? What do you want to earn? How many hours does it take to fulfill? And what does that mean you have to charge in order to get there? Wonderful exercise. The problem is when that number is way above the value of what you're giving your client, meaning it's way out of their budget or it's way outside of what other people are charging.

[00:13:19] Brian: unrealistic.

[00:13:20] Brian: and once I dove into it with a client, we realized a couple of things. The first is he was offering things that he shouldn't be offering,

[00:13:27] Brian: and that was driving up the price. Thing number two is he was taking longer than other people were taking, which was driving up the price. And when you're offering things that you shouldn't be offering and you are taking longer than you should be taking, you were passing that inefficiency off to your client and the client then does not want to pay that because other people are doing it for cheaper.

[00:13:46] Brian: This is where. Pricing differentiation makes sense. And it's not that we're lowering our rates in order to stand out. We're not just, Oh, charge less and take the hit personally. No, this is a very calculated approach. We are looking at how can we become more [00:14:00] efficient in our delivery so that we are more competitive in our pricing.

[00:14:03] Brian: I'll talk about Goldilocks pricing a later section, but this is a really important point. We call it the Easy Eights. We have a whole episode on this.

[00:14:09] Brian: back on episode 216, How to Spend Less Time Doing the Stuff You Hate, the Easy Eights Framework. This isn't just stuff you hate less. It's just being more efficient overall. The Easy Eights is a few different things. It is, eliminate, automate, delegate.

[00:14:22] Brian: Delegate, mitigate. It's those four things. And so when we looked at his entire delivery, every single line item that he did with his clients, what he was trying to offer people, and we put it through that framework, we found things that we could eliminate from the entire thing, which drove down costs without hurting his hourly pay.

[00:14:38] Brian: We found things that we can automate to reduce the amount of time for delivery, which means we could lower the rates and pass those savings on to his clients without hurting his rates. We found things that we could delegate to somebody for much lower fee than he's charging clients, meaning he can either pass that on to his clients, or he can reduce it.

[00:14:53] Brian: Profit, the difference between what he's paying the contractor and what he's charging the client, either one. As long as he has margin, he can do one or the other. But in this [00:15:00] case, because he was still above what the market would say is valid for his offer and his niche, we can again, pass those savings off to the client to become more competitive.

[00:15:09] Brian: And then we found things that we could mitigate. that just means less than the impact of spend less time doing something? And there were a few areas where we just found that he was taking way too much time doing certain tasks or doing certain things where something as simple as a tomato timer or pomodoro technique where you have a certain set amount of time to do tasks sped him up drastically it's i forget the name of the law but the law is something like however much time you give You will fill that whole amount of time. So if you have a day to do a thing, you will take that entire day to do it. you make yourself do it in an hour, if you give yourself one hour to do it, you will find a way to get it done in an hour.

[00:15:38] Brian: There are obvious limits to that. But when you just have, when you just give yourself as much time to do something without any real structure or limitations in place, you will take way longer than you would if you just put some real limitations on that. So that is an example of just being faster, being more efficient using the Easy 8s framework.

[00:15:53] Brian: 8 is A T E S, if you didn't get that. Automate, delegate, mitigate, eliminate. But using that be able to drive down price a bit to be [00:16:00] more competitive without hurting your, pay. And beyond that, using this exact same framework can help with a lot of things. It can help with speeding up responses to clients.

[00:16:07] Brian: It can help with, getting through revisions faster, it can help with the overall delivery process being faster. All these things are differentiators, but the biggest differentiator is on delivery because that's going to affect pricing and rates that you have to charge and every single thing that you do above and beyond what is the norm for your industry.

[00:16:23] Brian: So, um, It's an additional dollar or 50 or 100 or 1000 that you have to charge on your package or your pricing that the clients may or may not be willing to pay. Do not make your clients pay for your inefficiency. That's the bottom line here. that's differentiator number three and brute force differentiators is be faster, be more efficient.

[00:16:39] Brian: Brute force differentiator number four is have a bigger network. This is a real differentiator. When you think about how most freelancers get clients, It is word of mouth referrals and repeat clients.

[00:16:50] Brian: How do we get word of mouth referrals? first having a big client list because your clients will refer others to you. But the other side of things, which is the brute force side, is just having a bigger network. Some of the most successful freelancers I [00:17:00] know are just naturally outgoing people.

[00:17:02] Brian: They've developed a wide network, a big network.

[00:17:04] Brian: So they hang out with more friends. They do more social events. They are seen by others and they see others. They attend like community events. I know a lot of freelancers, especially in the B2B space where they're going out to like events happening in the entrepreneurial space.

[00:17:17] Brian: make sense as a freelancer, who's a business owner, trying to work with other business owners, go hang out at those community events or three, build a full referral network, a referral network. If you need a refresher is the people. that are serving the same client that offer different services than you.

[00:17:31] Brian: for example, in my, in space, in the music production space, I might be a mixing engineer, but I'm not mastering music. So I might have a mastering engineer as part of my referral circle. And we will refer clients back and forth to each other. We might have a videographer who does music videos for people in my niche.

[00:17:44] Brian: Which my background is in metal production. So we'd find videographers who match that visual style that heavy metal bands or deathcore bands would want. So that would be part of the referral circle. entertainment lawyer would A booking agent. Band manager. All these people serve the same types of clients. especially if you are hyper [00:18:00] niched,

[00:18:00] Brian: but this is what we call increasing your surface area. The bigger our surface area, the more at bats we have as a freelancer, the more name is thrown around out there different people. The mistake many freelancers make is we stay in our hole. our very close circle, our family, and then we spend time in a cave doing creative tasks.

[00:18:16] Brian: We don't grow our network. We don't expand our surface area, our reach as a freelancer. so it makes sense when the feast seasons are very short and the famine seasons are very long. So that's brute force differentiator number four, is actually building out a larger network.

[00:18:29] Brian: It takes time, it takes energy, it's hard to do, it is brute force, but it is a true differentiator.

[00:18:34] Brian: because in many cases, someone looking for a referral or someone who gets a referral, You might be the only person they're talking to or looking at So just by the sheer fact that you were referred that is the differentiator there's no competition

[00:18:45] Brian: and brute force method number five. My final brute force method here is Longevity

[00:18:49] Brian: another way of saying that is just staying top of mind for longer This is one of my favorites for you My entire career, one of my favorites, I have followed up with potential clients for somewhere around [00:19:00] 18 months and followed up for 18 months consistently with somebody. It wasn't like I'm just emailing them endlessly for 18 months straight, begging them to work with me.

[00:19:08] Brian: It's just like a very structured with reminders CRM reaching out. Catching up, seeing what's new, seeing if they have any updates, setting a reminder, reach out in a month or two, and repeat for 18 months until I got the gig. And the way this is a differentiator is that although they may have had four or five or ten options for people they're going to hire at the very beginning of that process, I can guarantee you, I was the only person left talking to them after 18 months.

[00:19:34] Brian: No one else is still following up. No one else has shown even remote interest. I was the only one. That is a true difference here. It takes time, it takes systems, it takes process. You gotta have a CRM, you gotta have reminders, all these things. You gotta know what to say. You gotta know how to say it.

[00:19:45] Brian: You gotta have the right attitude, the right tonality. You gotta not come across as needy. But the longer you can stay top of mind, the more clients you will get, guaranteed, 100% there are a few hundred percent in life, but that is one of them. The longer you can stay top of mind, the more longevity you have as a freelancer.

[00:19:59] Brian: And I guess [00:20:00] longevity goes more than just top of mind when you think about it, because freelancers who have been around a long time naturally have a larger client pool. They naturally have more repeat clients, more referrals from their client pool. So longevity goes both ways. But in this instance, I'm really just talking about when it comes to brute force, staying top of mind.

[00:20:15] Brian: for a long time.

[00:20:16] Brian: Now, if you want more on this, if this is something you're interested in, it's one of the ones you're going to focus on right now, the follow up side of things, go check out 287. It's called the follow up process that helped me double my freelance business. Came out back in December 19th, not too long ago. End of last year.

[00:20:30] Brian: In that episode, I talked about how half of my income came from follow ups, where if I didn't follow up, I just lost half my income. literally I essentially double my income by following up and then the other interesting stat from that episode is about 20 percent of my income came from follow up four or greater so if I stopped at follow up number three, I was missing out on 20 percent of my income.

[00:20:50] Brian: So that's the difference between 100, 000 a year and 120, 000 a year. I will keep following up for that extra 20 gram. This is one of those, like it feels like a lot of work, but it's not.

[00:20:58] Brian: You just need a [00:21:00] CRM. Most CRMs are like, 100 a month or less, some are as low as 25, 30 a month, at least the good ones are.

[00:21:06] Brian: you do the math there, depending on what your income level is, if you're already earning 50, a year, and you say, I'm going to spend an extra 500, 600 a year on a CRM, because that's, what's going to help you stay top of mind, set reminders and do manual follow ups. You're not automating follow up like this.

[00:21:21] Brian: one to one reach out.

[00:21:22] Brian: It might take you an hour, a month of extra time. So 12 hours a year. In 600 bucks a year to make an extra 20, 30, 000 a year, that's a pretty good trade off to me. Or for some of you who are doing no follow up to make an extra 50, 60, 000 a year with 12 hours a year at about 600 bucks a year.

[00:21:36] Brian: That's a good trade off.

[00:21:37] Brian: So those are the five brute force differentiators from this list. Just to kind of recap those, it's be better than the competition. your portfolio quality. possible, but hard. But chances are someone will always be better than you. Number two is have better or more expensive gear slash facilities.

[00:21:52] Brian: This is for my, my recording studio people out there. This is for my, just my gear hoarders, gear, hoarders, videographers that are out there. [00:22:00] Some camera people like, photographers. This is very expensive to do and can lead to opportunity cost. of being able to invest that in better asset classes or opportunity costs where you have now accumulated a bunch of debt and now you have a higher overhead and feast or famine it's real tough when you have a lot of overhead.

[00:22:17] Brian: The third differentiator brute force differentiator was just be faster, more efficient than your competitors. This was a little easier, a little more manageable, All these are difficult, by the way, brute forces. through sheer will and determination. Number four is just have a bigger network so you have more at bats, more opportunities, more surface area as a freelancer.

[00:22:32] Brian: And number five is staying top of mind for longer. Longevity. Be the only person still talking to somebody after 18 months, when they first initially reached out. I think I'm going to wrap this episode up there. We're getting kind of lengthy here and I've just got so much more to cover. we've got three more to talk through.

[00:22:44] Brian: I'll try to knock out all of them next week's episode but we'll see how far we get. But this is a big topic and I want to make sure we do this justice. I don't want to breeze through stuff. I want to sit and talk about it because it's my show and I get to do whatever I want. If you hate me, let me know. now one thing before you go, if you are working in a [00:23:00] vacuum you're that person that's singing in a dark cave Okay, vacuum, the vacuum of space and trying to make decisions like this and determine what is the one thing I should be working on? what is my differentiator?

[00:23:08] Brian: We're more than happy to help you with all this stuff. But here's the thing. Differentiation really only matters when you have opportunities, usually after you've gained someone's awareness. They not heard of you. They know you exist.

[00:23:18] Brian: And now they're going to look at what are the differentiators for this person for this specific freelancer? And what I found time and time again is most freelancers number one struggle is awareness that they even exist So if they don't even know you exist, you can be the best on earth. You can have all the differentiation Categories ticked off and you have a wonderful answer to your cornerstone question of why should someone hire you instead of everyone else?

[00:23:38] Brian: But if no one knows you exist doesn't matter So if you want our help differentiating and you want our help building awareness and building what we call a client acquisition machine or a real Actual sustainable client acquisition system for your business

[00:23:50] Brian: consider working with us we'll put together a full roadmap or a full marketing plan for you We will literally pitch it to you.

[00:23:55] Brian: And only if you approve it, we will work together one on one to coach you through implementing every single [00:24:00] element in that roadmap.

[00:24:00] Brian: If you reject it, we part ways. You got no skin in the game,

[00:24:03] Brian: But I encourage you to at least see what we would do with you. Go to SixFigureCreative. com slash coaching. Fill out the short application there. If it's a good fit, we'll chat.

[00:24:10] Brian: And the whole goal of this is to build a sustainable client acquisition system for your business. And then all along the way, spot those opportunities for differentiation and implement those. Again, the link is SixFigureCreative. com slash coaching. If you want to apply for that, I'll see you all next week, where we'll continue our differentiation series.