How To Set Yourself Apart From The Other 500,000,000 Freelancers In The World | Part 3

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Want to know the 3 golden rules for winning more clients than your competition?
 
First off, forget about competing on price. It’s a dead-end street. Instead, focus on adding value in unique ways that don’t undercut your worth. It’s about quality, not the lowest bid.
 
Second, make sure your stand-out factors are visible from the get-go. Qualities like a “great client experience” or a “cool vibe” are awesome, but they only shine through after you’re hired.
 
You need something that grabs attention before that stage, something that makes potential clients think, “Yes, THIS is the right person for us,” before they even talk to you.
 
Third, K.I.S.S. (keep it stupid simple). Focus on one differentiator at a time.
 
In a sea of sameness, one well-defined trait can be your ticket to standing out. It’s not about being a jack-of-all-trades but a master of one.
 
Last week, we talked about the ways you can differentiate by brute force, which can be tough and pricey.
 
This week, let’s get into something more accessible yet equally powerful: building trust and credibility, especially through social proof. It’s about showing, not just telling, that you’re the real deal.
 
Social proof, like glowing testimonials or endorsements, can be a game-changer. It’s about having others vouch for you, and showing potential clients that you’ve delivered 🤩amazing🤩 work before.
 
This kind of proof doesn’t need to break the bank but does require effort and intentionality to gather and showcase.
 
In this episode you’ll discover:
  • Using social proof for differentiation
  • The impact of reviews on your business.
  • Asking for feedback and reviews
  • How to get case studies for social proof
  • Content creation to generate quote requests

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[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the Six Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time listening to the show, you picked a bad episode because we're in the middle of a series right now. So go back to episode like 300 For my returning listeners, so glad to have you back even though this podcast is week to week to week, comes out every week, rain or shine. We're pretty consistent with that 300 plus episodes in I've taken some time off because I was on a week long, I don't know what else to call it, a week long nerd cruise.

[00:00:23] Brian: I'm going to pull up an article of what New York times says here. It says uh, Joko Cruz. If you don't look it up, J O C O Cruz is often referred to as. Nerd summer camp at sea and it's essentially exactly that. It's like 2000 plus nerds on a giant cruise ship.

[00:00:38] Brian: They charted the entire cruise ship for this like nerd cruise. And there's everything from like cosplay to like board games. They have literally over 2000 pounds of board games on board that you can just check out at any time and play. all sorts of events and live music and maybe, James, if, somebody on my team can embed this on our show notes page at sixfigurecreative. com slash 302 for this episode so [00:01:00] 302, we'll embed my wife. She did a couple of videos on TikTok. Because she was brought on as like an influencer for the cruise because she does nerd cozy content on TikTok so that she's kind of a perfect fit. and I just kind of tagged along for this cruise and I had a whole lot of fun on it. It's, I highly recommend it for any of my nerds out there. But she did a whole like two part series and those videos racked up few million views, I think, on TikTok on what this thing is. so if they can't upload it or embed it on that page for whatever, just search Meg's Tea Room on TikTok, you can find my wife's thing on there, just look, back to like mid March, because that's when we're recording this episode, for those videos on there.

[00:01:31] Brian: So just got home from that, I'm Tanner now and other updates since that happened. I, I won. The Orange Theory Fitness Transformation Challenge. So I came in first place on that, which is awesome. Unexpected. It was the day after we got home from that cruise. And had gotten home at 4 a. m.

[00:01:46] Brian: Sunday morning because, God bless my soul, I had to fly Spirit Airlines on the way home because it's spring break and there was just like no flight options for non stop flights. And that's awesome. All I wanted to do was a non stop flight. So we had like booked 11 30 p. m. flight on the way home the day we got back from the cruise.

[00:01:59] Brian: And [00:02:00] obviously it's Spirit, so they're going to let you down somehow. And there was a two and a half hour delay on an already late as hell flight because they didn't have enough pilots. So they had to fly a pilot in from somewhere. To fly our plane, which had been sitting there the entire time. we landed at 3. 30, we got home at 4. And after showering and everything, because you don't want to, not shower getting home from a, a long day of travel like that. I had to wake up early to go weigh in for the last final weigh in that I could for Orange Theory Fitness like, transformation challenge.

[00:02:25] Brian: Not a sponsor, by the way. Just a member. And, uh, I came in first. so I won like money. I won like this cool swag bag, backpack full of cool swag. and the coolest thing about that was. I lost three pounds the last week while I was on that cruise. I don't know if any of you've ever been on a cruise before, but you don't lose three pounds on a cruise.

[00:02:43] Brian: I somehow lost three pounds on a cruise I did eat healthy and I didn't overindulge anything, but I did eat healthy. pound some pie. I ate so much pie on pie day, which is March 14 obviously is pie day. And being the nerd cruise that it is, they had a whole selection of different pies to try on pie day.

[00:02:58] Brian: 14 pounds. is what [00:03:00] I lost in the eight weeks of that transformation challenge. So 14 pounds down in eight weeks, which is pretty solid. And then I would just for fun, I look back on like where I was at my fattest in this podcast. if you're interested, go back to episode two 90.

[00:03:09] Brian: That was where I think it was at my peak weight. I recorded that right around new year's day. And that's when I had uh, decided to not be fat Brian anymore. So if you want to see fat Brian, go to two 90 and you can see the fat Brian face, now I'm less fat Brian. I'm actually only four pounds away from my wedding weight, so that's kind of my goal right now. So those updates since the last I saw you, but you've seen me every week, so this doesn't feel like much time away. But I'm trying to get back in it today. Coming back from vacation where you're just like completely checked out doing nothing. To me, it's always hard trying to get back into the group of things.

[00:03:36] Brian: Yesterday morning, I sat for like three hours just trying to figure out what the hell to call this series because I hadn't written a title for this episode yet. don't know if this episode is going to be good.

[00:03:43] Brian: I'm brain dead still. But I'm going to try to continue the series that we started last, you started last week. I started weeks ago on differentiation. Essentially, as these 500 million freelancers come online in the coming years and all the competition starts to rise, I'm What are we going to do to stand out, to differentiate, to Not get lost in the crowd of [00:04:00] all the other freelancers that are coming to compete with us.

[00:04:02] Brian: And just a reminder, we have three rules we're following during this differentiation process. How do we stand out? The three rules are we never lower price to be a differentiator never just drop our rates haphazardly. There can be ways to reduce rates without hurting our profit or our income, but that's a side note we'll talk about later.

[00:04:18] Brian: The second rule is we need to focus on differentiators that are apparent before people hire us, not things that are apparent after they hire us. Customer service you have or how cool you are to work together or the vibe you create or the atmosphere you create or the level of service you offer.

[00:04:30] Brian: All those things are things that people figure out after they hire you. So those aren't relevant to now. So that's not what we're focusing on. That's one of our rules is it has to be things that are apparent before they hire you. And the third rule is we're focusing on one differentiator at a time.

[00:04:42] Brian: No, like trying to do all things at the same time. We just focus on one, get it in place, get it established as true differentiator, and then see, do we need more? Sometimes one differentiator is all we need to stand out from the crowd. A lot of times, pretty same, same out there. It's kind of copycats out there with freelancers.

[00:04:58] Brian: And I can attest to that with like hiring freelancers [00:05:00] before myself with my businesses. A lot of freelancers are more or less the same. So when all things seem equal, that one differentiator can be the make or break, deciding factor on whether or not you get hired versus the other people out there.

[00:05:12] Brian: So those are the three rules last week we talked about the brute force differentiators those things that are the hardest in my opinion or The most expensive in my opinion not in my opinion literally the most expensive way to differentiate and this week We're getting to the ones that I think are way more viable for most freelancers the things that we should be focusing on and that Is differentiators around more credibility or more trust?

[00:05:30] Brian: these differentiators, they don't necessarily take a lot of money, but they might take a little bit of time they might take some intentional effort, but it doesn't make them any less powerful than the brute force differentiators we talked about last week.

[00:05:40] Brian: So let's talk about something called social proof. This is, to me, one of the most common forms of differentiation that we Pay attention to, but it's one of the least common differentiators that freelancers use. So the best example I can mention is when you look at restaurants. If you're looking on Google or Yelp, if people still use Yelp, I don't know.

[00:05:56] Brian: I use Google for most of my restaurant searches or hotels. I use booking. [00:06:00] com. And one of the things I look at, one of the biggest things I look at is reviews. What is the star rating? Like 7 star rating is a great one for a restaurant. What is a booking. com rating? That's good. 9. 5. And then the total sheer number of reviews on those sites.

[00:06:16] Brian: Tell me that those are high quality. Those can be trusted. Those are good. Other people have vetted them for me. So what I'm choosing between restaurant a and restaurant B, both are Thai restaurants. I love Thai food, but one has three reviews. It could have five stars. I don't really care, but it has three reviews.

[00:06:32] Brian: And one has a thousand reviews, I'm going to pick the one with a thousand reviews with a good score. But there's more than just reviews in this and we're going to talk about reviews here. but really what I'm trying to put the focus on is something called social proof.

[00:06:41] Brian: That is other people vetting it for you so you don't have to make the hard brain power decision of whether this is going to be good or not. The same can be done for you. your potential clients can decide that you are the right fit for them because other people just want to follow a herd.

[00:06:55] Brian: We don't want to have to figure out all these things the hard way. Like, Can you imagine back in the day before [00:07:00] there were guides and before there were reviews Just going into a town you've never been to before and trying to choose a hotel or choose a restaurant and how hit or miss that could be that's essentially what it's like today hiring freelancers.

[00:07:10] Brian: Now reviews aren't the only way of aggregating social proof, but it's one of the most effective and it really only works if you work with a lot of clients or you have a lot of reviews. And when I say a lot, it can vary from niche to niche to niche, but generally you want to have at least 20 reviews on a platform and it needs to be a platform that is a trusted neutral third party.

[00:07:27] Brian: An example is Google Maps. If you have a Google Maps or Google My Business listing, you can aggregate reviews on that. Another one could be something like Facebook, although I would probably stay away from that because depending on your niche That's probably not a hyper relevant place aggregate reviews.

[00:07:40] Brian: Another one. I've seen is Trustpilot. Although I don't know much about it I've just seen some people display the rating on Trustpilot

[00:07:47] Brian: and Yelp could be another one But again, Google Maps Google listings are probably the number one place that you would aggregate reviews because it's a trusted neutral third party Anyone can leave a review on there. And so the reviews that are on there can generally be trusted by the population.

[00:07:59] Brian: so once [00:08:00] you have 50 or more reviews on there, that starts to add up and it shows a sign of social proof. It shows that you are credible. Now what happens if you don't have a lot of clients or you work with a really relatively small number of clients? And so it's hard to get that number of views on a Google listing.

[00:08:13] Brian: That's when we get to the, these other forms of social proof. One is testimonials. And we've all seen testimonials. But I have to tell you, most freelancers do not do testimonials correctly. We mess this up all the time.

[00:08:25] Brian: Testimonials have kind of two forms. One is an endorsement, which is what most freelancers do. It's an endorsement. It is anonymous person A. John Doe says, One, two, three photography was a great experience. That's an endorsement. Testimonial type B is kind of a mini case study. That's where someone says in a little blurb, a result that you got.

[00:08:44] Brian: Those tend to be okay, but most freelancers never use those. Instead, they're using testimonials like endorsements. The problem with endorsements is endorsements don't really work for company if they're no names. No name endorsements are worthless. So if you're going to gather testimonials and you're going to use an endorsement type format where someone's just [00:09:00] saying something nice about you, it has to be someone known in your industry.

[00:09:03] Brian: It has to be a famous face or name. It doesn't have to be world famous. It doesn't have to be a mainstream AAA name, but it has to be someone known in your niche. So, With my background in heavy metal music production, there are bands that I've worked with that are really well known in the niche.

[00:09:16] Brian: They're bands bands. They're bands that other bands are fans of, right? So, If I use a testimonial, aka, a endorsement from one of these bands where they say something highly of me, Then by that endorsement, they're essentially vouching for me so that anyone that sees that band's name and they're familiar with that band can say, Oh, he worked with them and they spoke highly of them. I now trust Brian Moore,

[00:09:35] Brian: this doesn't make sense in every niche, some niches where you're just working with what I call like mom and pops or normal people. An example would be like if you're like a family photographer and just working with families. Unless it's an influential family in the community, it's probably not going to work well to have endorsement style testimonials.

[00:09:50] Brian: And that leads us now to case study testimonials or just case studies in general.

[00:09:54] Brian: That is where you work with your clients, you get them the result or the outcome that they wanted, and then you create their case studies or they [00:10:00] share their case studies with you. Now this obviously works better or best in a quantitative type result. Thank you. so if you help your client get more streams on Spotify for like a music production example, or views on YouTube or social media, or you got them more downloads or more sales or a more, a higher ROI, something where there's a metric or percentage attached to it.

[00:10:19] Brian: That can be great for a case study type testimonial or just a great case study in general.

[00:10:23] Brian: We work with Brian since the very beginning and he helped us get signed and now we're touring the world. That's kind of a case study esque testimonial. It's one that stands alone above and beyond the name associated with it. It's not just a blanket endorsement.

[00:10:35] Brian: So when you help your clients get a result, you essentially have two choices. You can just do a mini testimonial, like mini case study, where they're talking about the result in the testimony.

[00:10:43] Brian: So like a short paragraph or something that's a couple sentences about a result that they got. Or they can go through a full on case study. You can do an interview or you can do a written article that talks through generally the challenges they experienced before working with you, what you did together and the result that you achieved.

[00:10:59] Brian: Now, here's the negative [00:11:00] part of this. This doesn't work in all niches. For example, we hired. A photographer, my wife and I, for our fifth year anniversary, and one of the things that she and I have started to do, I guess, is in every home that we live in, this is our second home that we've lived in together since we've gotten married we want to chronicle our house, us existing in our home together, and we did that at the last place when I lived downtown in Nashville.

[00:11:20] Brian: Now we live out in West Nashville. We're not going to be here for that much longer this might be our last full year of marriage in this household and is a fifth year anyway. So we wanted to get a photographer who specialize in couples and she did a phenomenal job capturing us in our home and the photos came out amazing.

[00:11:33] Brian: The problem is it's not necessarily case study material. There's no quantitative percentage based numbers. on how happy we are. we can't be a case study for her. So in this case, what can be done?

[00:11:44] Brian: I'm not famous enough to be considered an endorsement type person for her photography company, because the types of people she works with don't know who I am. So I'm not a celebrity in any way, shape or form. So the best thing she could do is just ask for a review, which she hasn't done yet. if you listen to this podcast photographer who I want to name Then reach out to me [00:12:00] and ask for a review and we'll give you one and when you reach out for a view There's two ways to go about it You can just straight up ask for the review make it easy and give a link that just goes directly to leave the review.

[00:12:09] Brian: Or, the best thing you can do, in my opinion, is just ask for feedback. Hey Brian, it was a pleasure working with you and your wife on your five year anniversary. Congratulations. I'd love to know, you have any feedback for me? How was your experience overall? What did you think? How did you feel? Whatever.

[00:12:21] Brian: And we would just give a glowing testimony of, it was great. She was a great personality. It was a wonderful experience. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would have gushed, right? Because that was truly how we felt. It was a great experience for us. And then she could respond. This is what she should do. Thank you so much.

[00:12:34] Brian: I'm so glad you enjoy the experience. Would you mind just copying and pasting that response into a Google review? That would be super helpful for me as a photographer. Here's the direct link. If you can't, no problem. And we would just copy and paste our gushing review to her. And it saves us the problem of trying to come up with blank page syndrome.

[00:12:51] Brian: We're trying to figure out what do we say about her? We might edit a couple of things that make more sense in a review style setting, but overall it's a much easier way to get reviews. so to [00:13:00] summarize this specific social proof conundrum here, where we have several different things, we have reviews, we have testimonials and we have case studies.

[00:13:07] Brian: When do you use each as a freelancer? And how do these play into differentiation overall As the whole freelance community grows to over 500 million people you have the advantage of getting a headstart on gathering reviews for your business. So the more reviews you have, the more social proof you have, the more legitimate you appear, right? And that would be the first thing I'm doing.

[00:13:25] Brian: If I'm working with relatively no name clients, you're not working with no names or at least not super hyper niche names, where it's like a big name in the niche, and I'm not getting my clients a specific measurable quantitative result. If you're not doing either of those things, just go for reviews.

[00:13:40] Brian: If you're in a niche where you work with bigger known names, then focus on getting testimonials so for my B2B freelancers out there. You're working with big businesses or businesses in a known niche where businesses know each other, then just get the testimonials from them. It can just be essentially endorsements.

[00:13:54] Brian: could be that you worked with Google, you worked with Apple, you worked with Facebook or Meta, you worked with Instagram [00:14:00] doing some project for them. If they even offer testimonials or someone in the department offers some testimonials here, you use it on your site.

[00:14:06] Brian: If it's legally allowed, I don't actually know. The legalities of that, but that's what I would do is try to get testimonials from these names if I worked in a specific niche, like I'm a freelancer who works with manufacturing companies, which we have a client of ours who does that I'm going to get testimonials AKA endorsements for the different manufacturers that I work with, and then I'm going to try to find those manufacturers that are known in the industry or have some credibility.

[00:14:26] Brian: Or known in a specific niche like you manufacture electronics. I'm going to go to other electronic manufacturers and you start to build a name in that niche for the endorsements, a. k. a testimonials that I'm gathering.

[00:14:35] Brian: And then third, if you're helping your client get a result, a measurable result, you're going to go for case studies or Case study style testimonials where it's like measurable result mentioned in the testimonial or a blend of the two

[00:14:46] Brian: Those are the three main types of social proof that I've seen the freelance community Dominate one of the three generally not all of the three you might have some great case studies or you have some great Testimonials that are like no names in your industry or you have a lot of [00:15:00] reviews Usually one of the three of your dominant form of social proof an alternative method you can use to build social proof as a freelancer is building your social media presence,

[00:15:08] Brian: especially in certain niches. So, For example, in photography, I'm going back to photography here. We work with that photographer. We found her on social media. We found her Instagram page and obviously a photographer. That's a place that you want to be is Instagram. I would imagine because that's where we found.

[00:15:22] Brian: Actually, I'm a wedding photographer as well.

[00:15:23] Brian: But anything where what you do is very visual. I've seen a lot of designers on Instagram or social media. I've seen a lot of videographers on platforms like Instagram doing reels or TikTok or YouTube even. Which is less social media and more just content based. So with social media, not only are you, is it a place to be found, which is obvious, it's also a way to stand out and differentiate, which is again, the whole point of this series is a way to differentiate ourselves from the other freelancers that are out there. Okay. Answering the cornerstone question of why should someone hire you over everyone else that's out there?

[00:15:51] Brian: Social media can be a great place to build a following. That shows you're credible that you are not just a fly by night freelancer who's going to run away with my money or run away with my photos and not give me [00:16:00] anything for my money.

[00:16:00] Brian: It builds trust and it builds a relationship. There's a way to get to know somebody through social media. It's not as good as one on one in person, but it is better than nothing. So all things being equal, if I find one freelancer on social media participating actively showing their personality and another one who just has a static website or social presence that's not really active, I'm probably going to pick the one that's really active.

[00:16:22] Brian: So that's social proof where we are getting reviews of lots of clients. We are getting testimonials AKA endorsements. We are getting case studies from clients that we've gotten results with and or all these things. We're building a social media presence. Because someone with a lot of followers, that's social proof.

[00:16:38] Brian: It says, so many people follow this person, therefore, they are likely more legitimate.

[00:16:42] Brian: For example, a six figure creative had like 200 followers on Instagram, 100 followers on Facebook. If even people look at that, 100 followers on TikTok, and people were starting to research the company or the podcast, it probably wouldn't look very good. It'd probably say, this is not a serious company. Now we have a long way to go on all the platforms, but that's just an example [00:17:00] of how a social media following and presence can lead to more social proof and show that you are legitimate. But there's another method that's above and beyond just social proof, and that's the credibility side of things. What can we do to show that we're more credible?

[00:17:12] Brian: Because social proof and credibility, they go hand in hand, but they're slightly different. Credibility is

[00:17:16] Brian: signs that say, This person can be trusted. This person is an authority in the space, and there's kind of two main ways to do this. One I have way more experience with than the other, so I'll talk about the one I don't have experience with, and that is getting awards or accolades for your work. I've seen this in. Some of the videography niches and some of the photography or design niches where you can apply for certain awards and become an award winning designer or in the music industry we have the grammy award so you can be grammy nominated or a grammy award winning producer or audio engineer or mastering engineer These things can and do set you apart from the other people that are out there, but largely that is out of your control a lot of times that's luck lot of times it's just a long arduous slog through a lot of BS to get there.

[00:17:54] Brian: I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm just saying can be difficult. I guess all of these are difficult, but they're worthwhile. The one I have more experience with is [00:18:00] creating content. be short form content, long form content, but content is another way of building credibility and trust with people.

[00:18:04] Brian: And you can do different types of content depending on who you are and what your niche is and what you want to do and what you're drawn towards. But the big thing about content is it helps build trust. In many cases, at least demonstrate expertise. We had a guest on the podcast, Made by James, is what he goes by.

[00:18:18] Brian: I think that's his Instagram name, but it's James Martin. He's a logo designer. He was on episode 204, the episode title is How to Generate a Thousand Inquiries per Year. As a logo designer, we put that episode out June 14th, 2022. So if you want to go back and check that out it can be worthwhile.

[00:18:33] Brian: And he does an approach with content that is all based around demonstrating expertise. He just shows his process. He makes logos. People are interested in watching his process. He makes a lot of content on there.

[00:18:43] Brian: and if you're watching on YouTube right now, I've got it pulled up right now. Made by James. If you look at his Instagram, he's got 600, 000 followers now. He's still very active years later on here. He's built quite the following on here. His videos get lots of views. Just his most recent stuff, 4.

[00:18:58] Brian: 3 million [00:19:00] Instagram real views. And he's just doing things like showing the rule of three. I don't know what this is because I'm not a designer, but he's showing his expertise in something and it's interesting,

[00:19:07] Brian: but he shows his personality off. He shows his work off on his page.

[00:19:11] Brian: And I would venture to guess that he's, still gets at least a thousand inquiries a year from his content, if not way more.

[00:19:18] Brian: So he's demonstrating expertise. He's showing off his personality. So you get to know him.

[00:19:22] Brian: it can be a way to build reciprocity depending on your niche reciprocity is basically just I've taught you something so now you kind of owe me or you feel indebted to me like if you've been listening this podcast for 300 episodes like some of you and you've learned a lot from me and you've implemented a lot for me you might feel like there's reciprocity like if Brian ever sell something I might buy it or I might Send him something nice.

[00:19:41] Brian: Like I've had fans of the podcast, send me coffee and LaCroix. I talk about different obsessions at different times. That's a sign of reciprocity. Not every niche, not every type of content is going to do that, but that is a benefit of doing content.

[00:19:53] Brian: the third benefit of creating content, whether it's short form or long form, and I think Made by James is a great example of this, is staying top of [00:20:00] mind. It's just a one to many form of longevity. I talked about this last week where following up, staying top of mind for months and months, if not years has me a lot of clients.

[00:20:09] Brian: It was like 20 percent of my income every year was follow up for or greater. That's a form of longevity, being the person that's still showing interest, still reaching out to them, still showing that you care about the client. Months and months later, when everyone else is kind of falling off and stop talking to them, just being the only one still talking to them, you'll get the gig.

[00:20:24] Brian: Well, In this case, Made by James is the one staying top of mind in a one to many method for hundreds of thousands of people at a time with his reels that he's putting out. Multiple times per week. And has been since At least since we've had him on the podcast.

[00:20:37] Brian: so if I'm a business looking for a logo designer, and I come across a designer with a similar style to Made by James or James Martin, and I come across James Martin, and I'm doing my due diligence as a business to see which person I want to hire, I'm probably going to hire Made by James.

[00:20:50] Brian: All other things being equal, I'm going to hire James Martin and his company to do my logo just because the amount of content, the amount of goodwill he's put on the world, the consistency of showing up over a long period of time, [00:21:00] I'm

[00:21:00] Brian: And that doesn't necessarily mean that James Martin is the best logo creator. think he would probably agree that he's probably not the best logo creator in the world, but he might be one of the most popular logo creators in the world just by the sheer amount of content he's created, the following he's developed.

[00:21:12] Brian: And that is a huge, massive differentiator for someone like him.

[00:21:16] Brian: So those are the credibility and trust differentiators. again, we talked about brute force last week, credibility and trust this week.

[00:21:21] Brian: Next week, we're going to talk about specialization and possibly Goldilocks pricing kind of like my final two things,

[00:21:27] Brian: but we got lots more to talk about because differentiation is not something to be taken lightly as more and more freelancers come online. More and more logo designers come out, more and more photographers, videographers, music producers, master engineers, mixing engineers. As more and more of you

[00:21:42] Brian: come online and start offering services, whether you're on a marketplace site like Fiverr or Freelancer, or you are taking client acquisition into your own hands, like I recommend, no matter what, there's going to be more competition. And if you ignore this, if you ignore differentiators that are out there, you will be left in the dust because more and more people like James [00:22:00] Martin who are willing to put out more content or people who are willing to aggregate tons and tons of reviews and put in work consistently over time.

[00:22:07] Brian: Those are the people that will win. Whereas the designers listening to the show right now, I'm going to pick on you today because James Martin was my featured example today. But if my other logo designers that are out there who are afraid of putting out content, who just don't, I don't want to put out videos.

[00:22:19] Brian: I want to put content. I just want to design. People don't really care what you want. Unfortunately, your clients care about what they want. And James Martin is putting content that is out there that is proving that he can provide what the client wants. He's out there showing up week after week after week, staying top of mind.

[00:22:35] Brian: And proving that he has the longevity it takes to succeed. And I can promise you, over the years, as more and more freelancers come into the market, differentiation is going to be the only way to survive and thrive.

[00:22:46] Brian: And taking this stuff lightly and just saying, I just want to design. I just want to mix music. I just want to create videos. I just want to take photos. I don't want to do any of this other stuff. You're going to be left in the dust, unfortunately. So that is all I got for you this week.

[00:22:59] Brian: Until [00:23:00] next week. Thank you so much for listening to or watching the Six Figure Creative Podcast.

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