The 6 Ways To RUIN Your Freelance Services | The Freelance F*ckups Series

[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 podcast, first of all, hi. Hey. Hello, welcome. This is a show for creative freelancers who are good at what they do, really important part there, and they're trying to earn more from their creative skills without selling their souls.

[00:00:16] Brian: If that sounds like you, you are in the right spot For my returning listeners and viewers on YouTube. Welcome back. Glad to have you back. It is a new week. It is the 4th of July week is the time that I record this, and I feel like this is the week I'm finally able to get ahead on the podcast.

[00:00:28] Brian: I've got a loaf, two loaves of sourdough bread downstairs, bulk fermenting. Right now, I've been getting back into sourdough. I'm stoked for that. I'll put some of my Instagram stories if I get a decent loaf. Last week was awful, flat, dense, gross loaves that we ate like a slice of and threw away. Here's the key to an amazing sourdough starter.

[00:00:45] Brian: this is the thing that was messing with me last week. Really underactive starter, using rye flour in your starter 50% rye flour, 50% white flour. That's sucker overnight. Boom. Doubled in size. So for the, if you don't know anything about sourdough, you're not [00:01:00] following along right now, my apologies.

[00:01:01] Brian: But I'm stoked to see how the response is today because had an incredibly active sourdough starter overnight. And we'll see how it goes today. Fingers crossed. The topic today is not sourdough. The topic of this podcast is not sourdough, and this is not a sourdough show, Although if I wanted to have more YouTube subscribers, I probably could just do only sourdough content, cuz a lot of those people have like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of subs on YouTube. But that's not my show here.

[00:01:22] Brian: we're gonna continue our series on freelance Fuckups. Again, this is a wonderful series for our editor cuz he gets to do a lot of bleeps, which is fun.

[00:01:29] Brian: Fuckups fuckups, Sorry, Leland. We're gonna cover something today that all of us have to get right, and that is fulfillment on what we offer as freelancers.

[00:01:39] Brian: If you think about this, like this is something you absolutely must not get wrong because you are literally getting paid to fulfill on something. if you mess this up in any way, shape or form, you are setting yourself up for a really, really frustrating freelance journey. So this episode I wanna cover six freelance fuckups that are ruining your fulfillment experience as a freelancer, thus leading to you dropping the ball, [00:02:00] which means clients are less likely to refer you or ever come back to you and probably create more pain in the ass clients and pain in the ass projects and more headache overall Because if you're guilty of any of these six fuckups, especially the first one, you're in for a world of hurt. So let's dive into this. freelance. up number one. And this is my favorite on the list because this is the thing that has cascading effects If you mess up this one thing or if you're, if you fall into this one trap, I need you to stop.

[00:02:23] Brian: And that is you're trying to be a master of too many things.

[00:02:27] Brian: I see this in every conceivable niche, every single service, every single industry. In the freelance world, the greater freelance world, I see it from photographers, for example, where you're trying to do head shots, you're trying to do corporate events, you're trying to do lifestyle photography.

[00:02:40] Brian: You're trying to work with influencers. you're trying to do photo editing as a service. I see this in the audio industry for sure. You're trying to do mixing. You're trying to do mastering. You're trying to do guitar amping, drum resampling. You're trying to do full service, music production, songwriting.

[00:02:51] Brian: And you're trying to do it in every genre possible. I see this in videography, just like photographers, you're trying to do music videos, you're trying to do, the sky's the limit. Every [00:03:00] service has people that fall into this trap, and there's usually two mindsets the least of this up.

[00:03:04] Brian: mindset number one, if I offer more services, I will make more money because I made, I. $3,000 last year in doing music videos and I made $5,000 last year doing events, and I made $15,000 last year in doing

[00:03:17] Brian: content for educators or influencers or course creators or something like, and, and if I just offer more services, I can get up to six figures. That is backwards thinking, and we'll talk about that in a second. But the other mindset, the least of this is,

[00:03:28] Brian: the creative's dilemma of, oh, I love to do all these things, so I'm just gonna do all these things. That's a selfish approach. Actually, both of these, are kind of selfish, but here's the reality of this. By offering all these things and you're trying to be all things to all people, again, I'll, I've said it a million times, this show, I will continue to say it another million times.

[00:03:44] Brian: If you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. Not only that, it results in tons of wasted time, effort, and energy. again cascades everywhere in your business. This is why this is so important, why this is number one on the list today, on the Freelance Up series, because when you're trying to explain all the things that you do, and [00:04:00] it would take you half an hour to fully explain to somebody what it is that you do, it's probably because of this.

[00:04:04] Brian: Trying to map out your client journey of how you fulfill on your services. If you're doing 10 different things, that's a up.

[00:04:11] Brian: Trying to switch from thing to thing to thing throughout your day and your week. When you're offering so many different things, that's a up. And it all stems from trying to be all things to all people.

[00:04:20] Brian: and it cascades to a lot of the other fuckups on this list today.

[00:04:24] Brian: Which leads me to number two on the list, and that is every single project that you do is a custom project,

[00:04:29] Brian: meaning you have tons of variables that you have to figure out what every one of your clients to determine what the pricing is going to be, to determine what the pace is gonna be and what the timeline's gonna be. If you can't describe your average project to me or someone else, which is something I ask all the time, what is your average project value?

[00:04:44] Brian: What does it look like? What kind of client it is? What are you doing with them on average? If you can't answer that very quickly, that's not a good thing.

[00:04:50] Brian: this is where the creative is sabotaging the entrepreneur. You have to find a way to unify yourselves when you're trying to balance the creative side of your, life and the entrepreneurial side of your life. Some of you, [00:05:00] you naturally know if I limit what I'm offering to people, I know that I can be better than everyone else at these one or few things. know that I can systemize and create processes around these few things better than everyone else. And I know that I can be more efficient than everyone else because I'm only offering a few key things, versus the creative minded person who's less entrepreneurial and they're like, I love to do all these things.

[00:05:21] Brian: I'm going to do all these things.

[00:05:23] Brian: And now I'm broke and I can't do these things at all because now I have to get a day job, and now I'm working four hours a week, so I can't offer these things anymore. All these things I love to do because I failed as an entrepreneur to pare it down to a manageable level.

[00:05:35] Brian: This sort of approach where every single project is its own unique snowflake, is especially bad if you're trying to shove a productized service pricing and packaging where you're doing package pricing and getting away from the day rates and the hourly rates when you're trying to move away from that.

[00:05:50] Brian: But you're still doing really unique, really custom projects. Those two things do not go hand in hand because with custom projects, and especially when you're doing something for the first time, [00:06:00] there's so many unknowns, there's so much risk. And if you do flat rate pricing on high risk projects with a lot of unknown variables, you are taking on all the risk for that.

[00:06:08] Brian: So when things take 10 times longer, you're earning 10 times less per hour. So if you are going to just insist. Brian, I hate you. I hate your advice. No matter what you say or do, I'm going to offer all these million things. Then just stick to a day rate or an hourly rate, because flat rate pricing and packaging is going to probably be the death of you.

[00:06:27] Brian: So if you're following this trap, my advice to you is tear everything down to just one outcome that you're delivering.

[00:06:33] Brian: Yes, it might be a bunch of services that are all added up to get you that outcome. That's relatively normal, but what people fail to think about is what outcome am I leading people towards? If you can just focus on what's the outcome I can provide to be the best at my price point, you'll have a much easier time as a freelancer.

[00:06:49] Brian: This leads us to mistake or up number three, and that is you have a half-assed. Or no onboarding process. So lemme just back up and clarify what I mean here. Onboarding process is just when you get a new client, [00:07:00] what are the next steps? Once they've paid you and you started the project, which you should always take money up front if you can.

[00:07:05] Brian: in most industries you can do this unless you're working with larger corporations, they have like net 60, net 90 terms. But if you get paid up front or whenever you start the project, How do you get all the information you need before the project, planning the project, and then getting the client started?

[00:07:17] Brian: That's the onboarding process. Many freelancers, you have absolutely no process or you just wing it every time, the reason people tend to mess this up is because it goes back to mistake number one. They're trying to do too many things, and when you have so many variables involved with the project and so many services with so many different types of clients, There's no really one good way to onboard for all those things.

[00:07:36] Brian: So you have to end up winging in every single time, and that's where you have these inefficiencies, where the creative has sabotaged the entrepreneur. This is a constant battle. We have to find a way to agree with each other. We can't let the entrepreneur take over because then our creativity starts to die.

[00:07:48] Brian: We can't let the creative lead the path because the creative just wants to do what the creative wants to do. It's very selfish. So when we put two things together, we focus on one outcome. That we're providing, and then we figure out what are the milestones in the checkpoints and what all, [00:08:00] what are all the things that we need to do to get off on the right foot If you do this right, projects run smoother.

[00:08:04] Brian: Clients are happier, there are less drop balls. The project starts off with a really good tone because the client feels like they're being taken care of versus just jerked around for information all over the place.

[00:08:14] Brian: If this is an area you struggle with, by the way, just go get our onboarding guide for free at six figure creative.com/onboarding. That is my ultimate onboarding process. The five steps to onboarding every new client the right way.

[00:08:25] Brian: This pairs really well with this step. If that's something that you struggle with, that guide is not gonna be that helpful for you if you're still trying to be all things to all people. It's a recipe for disaster. And just one really quick objection, overcome, which is me just.

[00:08:37] Brian: Overcoming your objection right now if you're still screaming at me, and I dunno why you'd even listen to this podcast if you're still screaming at me, but I'm gonna try it anyways. If you are objecting to offering a lot of things to a lot of people because you've seen someone else doing that successfully, I see this all the time in the audio industry.

[00:08:51] Brian: Uh, Everyone points to some producer A or producer B music producers who are huge and they offer lots of services to lots of genres. They're [00:09:00] failing to understand that those people have been in the industry for decades. And they have built their skillset to where they can actually support what's required to be great at a lot of things for a lot of people, and they've also in many cases, if you trace their journey, they have done what we call niche stacking, and that is where you are dominating a niche.

[00:09:18] Brian: You're great at it. You're the go-to person, all right, what can I do next? What's my next challenge? And you go to the next niche and you dominate that niche and you become the go-to person in that niche. What's my next challenge? Now, I have two niches that I'm dominating and two different offerings that I'm doing.

[00:09:31] Brian: Again, that sort of stuff can stack up over time, but if you are still struggling to make your first a hundred grand You can scale to multiple six figures a year with one offer to one type of client.

[00:09:40] Brian: This has been proven again and again and again, not just in freelancing, but in all offerings, it can be done. Don't think that you are so unique that your one outcome that you're providing clients and your one type of client isn't enough to get you to your goals. If anything, we're just trying to reign in that creative who's trying to do too much because you're selfish.

[00:09:59] Brian: The creative is [00:10:00] very selfish. I hope you understand that. And when I say selfish, it's nothing against you, by the way. It's nothing specific against you. It is just that the creative wants to do what the creative wants to do. We are creatively curious. There's all these things we want to explore. That is creativity.

[00:10:13] Brian: It's just variety, different things that we can go do. these things that fill us up, but don't think that that's not selfish because it is. As the entrepreneur, there is a business model attached to this that has to serve other people. That's why so many artists struggle is because the true creative only thinks about themselves and their art.

[00:10:30] Brian: The true entrepreneur only thinks about the business model and the numbers and sins. The creative entrepreneur can really marry those two things together and have something wonderful if you marry the two things. So that's my soapbox for this. We're gonna move on to number four on this Freelance ups today. We got six to get through all, all together. Number four is you are horrible at communicating with your clients. This is another almost trope in our industry as creatives, the bar is so low when it comes to communication. You don't have to do that much for your clients to think, oh, he's actually really good at communicating.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Brian: but because of mistake number one or up number one, where you're trying to do too many things for too many people. And there's so many moving parts in your business because you're trying to juggle so many different projects at so many different phases with so many different steps that you have no way to really organize that and communicate to different clients at different phases in different places Of where you are on the project and what's expected of them, and when you can get things done and then you actually can't deliver on what you say to them. Again, this is all comes back to that first in this list, which is why it's so high on the list today. But poor communication may not be the cause of all that.

[00:11:31] Brian: It can be the, you just don't have the right tools in place. So there's two tools that you want to think about using. Maybe three depending on who you are. But if poor communication is, a sin that you are committing right now. The first thing is consider getting a customer relationship management system.

[00:11:44] Brian: C r M. We talk about it all the time on this podcast. There's a bunch that are out there. I'll talk about these more in the future, but one that I recommend people at least go check out to get a gist of what a C RM is and how it can be used. The one that I use for a long time, then I moved away from, then moved back to then move away from like They all do roughly the same thing. It's [00:12:00] one called pipe drive. If you just go to Pipedrive studio, that's my affiliate link. The only reason I promote that right now is because if you sign up on that, you get a 30 day trial versus like a seven or 14 day trial. The plan that I recommend is like the $24 a month plan, whatever that one is.

[00:12:13] Brian: That one is amazing because it keeps all client communications in one place. The problem with the inbox, especially as you scale, I'm talking to my my big earners. Now, if you're beyond six figures, doesn't matter how systemized you are, doesn't matter how productized you are, you still have a lot of moving parts in your business because as you grow, things get complex.

[00:12:29] Brian: You have new problems to overcome, new challenges, new pains, and part of that can be clients communicating to you from different platforms. you might have one inbox for your email that has. Things that you've signed up for? Software notifications, mailing list that you're a part of.

[00:12:42] Brian: New inquiries. old clients coming back from a friend, emailing, I mean, whatever. Everyone's inbox is kind of a mess these days, which is why a CRM is so powerful for getting all your communications for clients in one place. Pipedrive I like because the only thing that shows up in my inbox are conversations and leads that I've synced with Pipedrive [00:13:00] so that.

[00:13:00] Brian: The only thing in there is my client communications. So if it's in my inbox, it is involved with a client or a potential client, and it keeps things very streamlined. If you are overwhelmed the thought of a crm, the next best thing is to get a dedicated communication platform like Slack, or the one that I prefer is called Twist.

[00:13:16] Brian: It's similar to Slack, but it's more thread based. That can be really good if you want to have your clients in kind of a threaded conversation where you can have a dedicated space to have conversations with just your clients. Everyone's different. This can vary from industry to industry, and certain types of clients do not wanna be pulled into your dedicated conversation space.

[00:13:32] Brian: So this is not a blanket suggestion to everyone, but email tends to be the preferred communication platform for a lot of. Especially if you work with business owners, b2b, some b2c. But if all else fails, the thing that can really save projects and help with the communication is a good project management system.

[00:13:47] Brian: I use click up. Not everyone should use it. It's very complex. You can just use Trello or something simple. But the cool thing about click up is not only can you organize your projects and create templates and all that fun stuff, you can actually communicate through there as well. You can send emails from [00:14:00] specific projects or specific tasks, and that way the conversation's happening inside of that specific task, or that specific project or that specific thread.

[00:14:06] Brian: So it can be set up as a pseudo customer relationship management system that is very much for customers or clients and not for leads and opportunities, but either way, there's a lot of different ways that you can improve your communication with your clients. Setting expectations is one of those, poor communication leads to poor expectations, which leads to unhappy clients, which leads to no referrals, which means to clients that don't come back to you.

[00:14:27] Brian: So if this is something you're struggling with, fix it. A sap, up number five Now on the list.

[00:14:32] Brian: Is the B word boundaries. You have no boundaries with your clients. Or you might have boundaries, but you're not sticking to them. We have a whole episode on boundaries. If you wanna go back and listen to that episode.

[00:14:43] Brian: It's episode 226 and the title is Six. Client Boundaries to Keep You Healthy, happy, stress-Free, and Profitable. So if you have no boundaries, just go listen to that episode. The whole point of boundaries is to keep you healthy, happy, stress-free, and profitable.

[00:14:57] Brian: There's a few reasons you might have fallen into the trap of [00:15:00] either not having boundaries or not sticking to your boundaries.

[00:15:02] Brian: The first is you're approaching your clients from a fear base that they're superior to you or better than you, and you let them walk all over you. This thing come from a number of issues. I'm not gonna try to, to dissect every one of these potential things, but some of it comes from our childhood. Some of it comes from fear of letting other people down.

[00:15:17] Brian: A lot of people have that, especially creatives, and that's okay. Like it's actually a good thing to not wanna let people down. It's not a good thing. Whenever we let that dictate how we set boundaries and how we put those boundaries in place. But another reason we don't put boundaries in place in general is coming from a fear place where we don't have enough leads in clients in the beginning, or we don't have enough leads in our clients at all.

[00:15:36] Brian: And that leads to a place where we're desperate for clients. And when we do get clients, we are letting them walk all over us because we're so scared to lose them. that's more of a client acquisition problem, which is beyond the scope of this conversation. We have a whole client acquisition series.

[00:15:48] Brian: If you wanna talk about client acquisition. You haven't gone back to episode 225 where we talk about how to build a client acquisition machine. Go start there. By the way, you can get to any episode of our show by just going to six figure [00:16:00] creative.com/the episode number, so 2 25 for that episode, or 2 26 for The Boundaries episode.

[00:16:04] Brian: But I think most freelancers know we should have boundaries. You probably have those boundaries somewhere if you've at least thought them out and put them into place. The issue is you haven't educated your clients. You haven't set those expectations upfront of what the boundaries are and are not. again, there's that whole episode will help you with this, but there's a few things you can do.

[00:16:21] Brian: First is, Preventative measures. For example, not giving your clients your cell phone number is a potential way to solve a boundary issue. So if clients are texting or calling you at all hours of the night, or crossing those boundaries, you can do a preventative boundary where you just don't Give them your personal cell phone number. there's plenty of two-way texting platforms. most CRMs have this at this point where they can call or they can text and it goes through the crm, but it won't reach your phone. And that's fine because most conversations don't have to be answered every second of every day.

[00:16:51] Brian: It's okay to have a bit of a buffer between when someone sends something in and when you respond, so you don't have to have it on your phone and be on your phone all day every day. It's an unhealthy place to be. You can [00:17:00] have a delay where you check your CRM twice a day or a few times a day and just monitor it and get back to people that have gotten back to you.

[00:17:06] Brian: But that's an example of a preventative boundary where you've removed something. We've actually not given our number out to people, and that's really good for people who struggle to stick with boundaries, where you can't just give somebody your number and say, don't text me past 5:00 PM Don't text me on the weekend A lot of people just don't work that way. I don't have a problem with that, but I also would just never give out my phone number to, to a client.

[00:17:24] Brian: The second area of improvement here for people is just reeducating their clients on the boundaries, and that can be where you've set expectations up front. This is the boundary, or this is how we communicate, or this is when I get back to people, or this is when I respond, or these are my work hours or whatever.

[00:17:38] Brian: And when somebody comes outside of that, you can say, Hey just a reminder, I don't operate between these hours. Or just a reminder, this is how I communicate. It has to go through email, because that goes into our crm, which is where all communications should happen. If you're a client of mine, this is where we communicate, or we use Twist, or we use Slack.

[00:17:54] Brian: Again, this is just reeducating clients because not all clients pay attention to everything you've ever said to them. So sometimes we have to [00:18:00] reeducate people.

[00:18:00] Brian: But if you actually look back to up number one again, trying to offer too many things to too many people. The boundary issue can come from you just have too many potential variables, When you have so many custom projects at different phases and different services, you could offer to different types of people.

[00:18:14] Brian: You have no averages, you have no systems in place. Boundaries are always gonna be an issue in that sort of scenario because I don't care who you are, you are not sophisticated enough of an entrepreneur. To be able to properly fulfill on those things, properly set expectations, properly put systems and processes into place to have those boundaries much less stick to those boundaries.

[00:18:32] Brian: So if you are trying to do all these things for all these people, again, mistake number one, then you are naturally going to have boundary issues as a byproduct.

[00:18:40] Brian: because one of the most surefire ways that I can tell if you're an unsophisticated entrepreneur or freelancer is that you're trying to offer a million things to a million different people.

[00:18:49] Brian: If I see a list of services on your website, all these different services that you could offer people, you are probably not making very much money as a freelancer. The few projects you are getting, you're being walked all over and you probably have a [00:19:00] big struggle with boundaries. So if I haven't beaten that horse to death, I'm gonna keep beating it to death.

[00:19:05] Brian: Try to be everything to everyone. You're gonna be nothing to no one. Now let's get to the last up of today's episode. And just a reminder to pull us back into what we're talking about is things we're messing up as freelancers around the fulfillment of our services. Again, this is what we're paid to do. So if we mess this up, we are not serving our clients well and so up. Number six is we're not getting our clients the outcome that they paid for. We're not getting them their win. Every single person who hires you, they want something out of it to you. It's like, oh, they want their video edited.

[00:19:32] Brian: Great. I'll edit the video. To you. It could be, oh, they want their song produced. Great. I'll produce their song to you. It could be they want headshots created, awesome. I'll create their headshot, we'll do a headshot, shoot, whatever. What you don't understand is that's not what they're paying for. They don't want that.

[00:19:45] Brian: Nobody's like, oh God, I really wanna get this song mastered. Great. I really want this music video. Done. Great. That's not what they're paying for. They're not paying for a music video. They're paying for what the music video gets them. They're paying for what the headshots get them. They're paying for what the video edit gets them or the [00:20:00] Insert your thing there, do a five wise exercise. It's actually a really good thing to do. what are they hiring you for? Headshots. Why do they want headshots? because they right now, on their website, on their main homepage, they have outdated, grainy, low resolution photos, and they want something. Higher value to, again, build trust. Why do they wanna build trust? Because somebody who's trustworthy online will typically. Get more sales or more sell more crap, trying to do this on the fly and stuff, but you get what I'm saying. There's always some sort of end product. If I'm an artist or a musician, why do I want my song produced? Because I'm trying to gain more fans and more followers. Why do I want more fans or followers? Because I wanna be able to tour or get signed.

[00:20:35] Brian: Why do I wanna get signed? Because that is a signal to me that I've made it as a musician, and I can say to all the people beneath me who doubted me, who said that skipping college was stupid. And put that chip on my shoulder. I can say that they were wrong. There's always the ego element, or I just wanna be making music for the rest of my life and this song represents the next step towards that path.

[00:20:56] Brian: For me. See how much different that is than I just want a song. I just want a [00:21:00] music video. I just want head shots. Thinking about the outcome that they want is always the better way. And when you fail as a freelancer to help them get their win, you are failing your client. So if you haven't thought past the transaction and past the final delivery to what goes beyond that, you're letting them down.

[00:21:15] Brian: And in many freelancer cases, they can actually do things that influence past that point. and you never think about it, you never educate yourself. You never learn what needs to be learned. You never get their relationships together that you could use to help them get their actual outcome. if you're not getting your clients an outcome, the desired end result that they have.

[00:21:32] Brian: And you have up. So just to recap, all six of these poor Leland having to edit out the F-bomb every single time because we are a somewhat family friendly podcast. Not really, but if you have kids in the car, you don't want these words, get in their little tiny ears, up. Number one, trying to be a master of too many things. So you're trying to be all things to all people and say, you're nothing for no one up. Number two, every single project that you have is a custom project, meaning tons of variables, tons of switching [00:22:00] costs,

[00:22:00] Brian: and a lot of complexity. up. Number three is you have a half-assed or no asked onboarding process. Which means your projects are off on the wrong foot at the start. Drop balls. Clients are confused, they are not clear on what they should expect, when they should expect it, what you need from them, what they should need from you. Number four is poor communication, which is part of the onboarding process.

[00:22:20] Brian: But onboarding is more than just communication. Just go get that guide at six figure creative.com/onboarding if, you wanna see more about that. But number four is poor communication. Where you have not set expectations, you have not responded quickly to clients. I don't mean instantly, but I mean quickly, less than 24 hours, business hours, not this weekend.

[00:22:36] Brian: Number five is you have no boundaries, or if you have boundaries, you're not sticking to them, leading to clients, walking all over you, leading to heartache and headache. And then up. Number six is not getting your clients the win that they came to you for or the outcome that they paid for. Again, you were just a step towards what they're after and the more of that end goal that you can help them towards, the more you were gonna be successful as a freelancer.

[00:22:58] Brian: So that is it for this episode. You've got [00:23:00] more to come in this freelance up series. If you wanna gimme your thoughts on what you think about this series, just email me podcast six figure creative.com. Would love to hear from you. That's podcast at the number six figure creative.com. Email will be listed in the show notes@sixfigurecreative.com slash 2 6 4.

[00:23:15] Brian: That is it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to the six Figure Creative Podcast.