The Secret to Consistent Clients | The Lead Generation Series

[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 podcast, first of all, welcome. So glad to have you here. This podcast is for you. If you are a creative freelancer, you offer freelance services and you want to make more from your creative skills without selling your soul.

[00:00:14] Brian: That sounds like you. You're in the right spot for my returning listeners. So glad to have you back. Horrible week for me. I'm just going to. Be straight up with you if you want to know why let's talk about that for a second. Then we'll get into what we're going to talk about on the show today.

[00:00:25] Brian: Cause Y'all don't care about what my problems I'm encountering here, it's been affecting my business in a very negative way. And I would love any insight from any people out there who can help me on this, please to help me get past this horrible week on Friday, it's Tuesday right now on Friday, my Facebook account was hacked again.

[00:00:41] Brian: And before you judge me, let me just back up and say, this happened earlier in the year. And I talked about in a previous episode, what happened, we found that one of my backup emails that was associated with my main account was compromised because there's an old account I never use anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:00:55] Brian: So when that happened, I took my security very seriously with my Facebook account because [00:01:00] my whole business is tied to that with my business profile and our ad accounts and everything are under my personal profile. So what I did to prevent this from ever happening again was I created a unique.

[00:01:12] Brian: Email address that I only use to log into Facebook. I create 25 digit randomized password for that email address. I have two factor authentication turned on for that email address. And the only thing that email address is used for is to log into my personal Facebook page, right? So that's, that email address is as secure as humanly possible.

[00:01:30] Brian: Was not breached, by the way. Also, for my Facebook account, Randomized 25 digit password generated by one password. I used two factor authentication for my Facebook account. And... despite all of that, someone still accessed my account on Friday, and I genuinely have no idea how they got into the account in the first place, how they bypassed my two factor authentication on my Facebook account, and changed my password, took my email address, my phone number off the account, switched it all over their own stuff, and, Set up their own two factor authentication on the account.

[00:01:58] Brian: So even when I get the password reset and [00:02:00] go through all that BS, I still can't log in because they set up their own two factor authentication on my own account. it's been like five days since that happened and it's been a whirlwind of me trying to get back into the account, submitting my passport and my ID to Meta or Facebook to get back in and No luck.

[00:02:15] Brian: if any experts are out there to say, Hey, Brian, this is probably what happened to your account and how it got hacked, please be my guest. Send me an email. Shoot me a reply in any email you ever get from me. And I would love to hear your input on how that happened. The two theories are this one is something called session hijacking.

[00:02:28] Brian: I was at a coffee shop working on the public wifi the day before this happened. something I've never heard of until I was researching what this could be. So that's one option of what it could be. I don't understand session hijacking other than they can essentially.

[00:02:39] Brian: Through Wi Fi access, and act like they're you on their browser. I don't know. I think they have to physically be in the coffee shop with me. So I don't think that happened. The second theory is some bizarre theory about how there's a security hole and meta and somebody there understands it and knows it and is exploiting it and selling kits to hackers to exploit this.

[00:02:57] Brian: That's like tinfoil hat theory, [00:03:00] but I'm not the only one that's been affected by this. I've been obviously doing a bunch of research and there are tons of people Almost all of them are specifically people like me who advertise on meta platforms our accounts are being targeted So if you run ads through meta that's Instagram or Facebook or whatsapp or whatever other properties they own You could be at risk and I don't know what else to tell you because I literally have better security set up on my Facebook account than I do my bank account.

[00:03:22] Brian: And the reason I can say that is because yes, I have two factor authentication turned on. Yes, I have crazy passwords that are unique to that specific site on everything. However, with my bank account, I don't even think I have a unique email address that I use just to log into my bank account. So that's like one extra step of security that I took for Meta and they still got past it.

[00:03:39] Brian: So I genuinely don't understand, But the problem with Meta is even if I'm spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on ads, or I was, my account's shut off now, Even though that's the case, I still can't talk a human being and meta. So, I'll keep you updated on what happens there, but that's been a horrible week for me because it's a huge part of my businesses.

[00:03:54] Brian: So, after all of that, let's talk about the topic of the show today, because whether or not you have access to your medical, [00:04:00] you're locked out, or you're just a freelancer who's like, Brian, get on with the show. I don't care about your stupid problems. Which is probably the majority of people. It's okay. doesn't matter. lead generation is something you have to figure out and learn to master if you want to take client acquisition into your own hands. So I wanted to create an entire series on just the topic of lead generation for freelancers because pretty much every freelancer I've ever talked to, They're literally just waiting around for clients to find them. They're waiting for referrals. They're in that what I call word of mouth death trap.

[00:04:25] Brian: That is when you are waiting for people to magically appear in your inbox, asking to hire you. And you do that long enough and you go through the feast or famine cycles where you have too many clients and then no clients and then too many clients and then no clients. And eventually you hit this really long spurt.

[00:04:39] Brian: Where you have a really bad down year or a really long, series of months with very few to no clients. And you don't know what to do. So you generally have to give up and go back to a day job. That's the word of mouth death trap. And the people who perpetuate this lie of word of mouth is the only or best way to get clients as a freelancer.

[00:04:54] Brian: Those people are the ones who are. Doing really well with word of mouth and those people generally have never had to figure [00:05:00] out how to actually do lead generation or have Any sort of lead generation practices put into their freelance businesses, but that doesn't mean that that's the better way That just means they've never had to figure it out So those people unqualified on telling you how to get clients for your business and even without that a lot of those people that are saying 15 years with just word of mouth clients many of them, if you were to seriously question them they're still taking on the bill paying work they don't want to do.

[00:05:23] Brian: So it's just the clients that come to them that they have to take on because they, know they need to pay their bills and it's not necessarily the clients that they want to work with that fill them up emotionally and creatively.

[00:05:31] Brian: so whether or not you're getting referrals right now, which you should, if you're good at what you do, you should get referrals. But whether or not you're getting referrals, if your calendar is not 100 percent booked solid with their ideal clients, then something has to change and waiting around for clients to magically appear or listening to those people that say word of mouth is the only way to get clients.

[00:05:49] Brian: Those people are not helping your cause. And so maybe step back. And think there's got to be a better way.

[00:05:54] Brian: And there is the better way is something called lead generation. And this episode is spurred on by a book that just recently came out [00:06:00] a month ago called 100 million leads. It's booked by Alex Ramosi. If you haven't picked that up, if you haven't bought that yet, go buy it. the link to it will be in our show notes at six figure creative dot com slash two seven seven.

[00:06:10] Brian: And if you're not a reader, if you don't want to like read the book, there's the audio book as well. But I would actually say, stay away from the audio book and just go straight to, he has a free course on lead generation on his site. there'll be a link to that separate from this series of episodes I'm going to do.

[00:06:24] Brian: You should still go through his course, but come back to this episode or this series as well. Consume it between episodes because this is gonna be a weekly series because I'm going to be breaking it down when it comes to freelancing specifically Alex Ramosi in his book and in his businesses. He has a lot of fingers and a lot of pies, right?

[00:06:40] Brian: bunch of portfolio businesses that he works with. So he's not always bringing things in words and terms and examples that would make sense for freelancers. besides that, I'm not teaching things exactly like he does because I'm different and I disagree with a few things that he teaches when it comes to lead generation, especially for freelancers specifically.

[00:06:56] Brian: And I'm going to just bring my own spin on this.

[00:06:58] Brian: But when it comes to understanding lead [00:07:00] generation, if you do this stuff and you generate more leads, all the things being equal, you will make more money. And I think Alex says in his book. All things being equal, if you double your leads, you double your income. And while that's not necessarily always true, we'll talk about this in the series at some point, but the quality of leads really matters a lot.

[00:07:16] Brian: It's still relatively true because when you start understanding how to generate leads,

[00:07:20] Brian: those leads will turn into more inquiries, which there's a difference between an inquiry and a lead. We'll talk about the differences in this episode. And those inquiries will turn into more clients

[00:07:28] Brian: and not just more clients, it's more clients consistently because the entire point of lead generation and understanding how to consistently generate leads at a high volume every single month is that you can start bringing consistency to your income instead of these big feast or famine cycles. the clients that I work with and the people I help with lead generation in their businesses.

[00:07:44] Brian: This is when things start to click for them when they start generating their first leads and they see how this all comes together and they start to get confidence in how their business is run because they have a source of leads that are coming in every single month and those trickle down to become inquiries and then clients.

[00:07:59] Brian: So if [00:08:00] you're at least open to the idea of generating leads for your business and thinking through some of these concepts of lead generation, then this series is going to be absolutely for you because I want to break down every element that I can when it comes to lead generation for a freelance business.

[00:08:12] Brian: So let's take a step back and let's talk about what are the basic definitions here. And this is straight out of Alex Ramos's book and course, his free course that he has on this, which by the way, When we're sending you to a course, it's a free course. You don't even have to put a name and email in.

[00:08:23] Brian: You literally can just go straight from, our show notes page at 6figurecreative. com slash 277. Go to that page you'll have the direct link to start 100 million dollar leads course. And you can go through that. Or the link to the, Amazon if you prefer the book. I love both. I've actually gone through both.

[00:08:37] Brian: I'm still going through the book, but the course I've gone through from start to finish and picked up a lot of great things from that. But the basic definitions are this, a lead is someone that we can contact.

[00:08:45] Brian: And so when you think through a lead from that frame of reference, then a lead can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. that's why the whole concept of a lead can be confusing because a lead could be. Someone's business card. They gave you a lead could be a follower on Facebook or Instagram [00:09:00] or TikTok that you can actually reach out and DM a lead could be an email address or a phone number.

[00:09:05] Brian: A lead could be somebody that purchased something from you, a small product from you. Again, we'll talk about free versus paid lead generation. Later on because it doesn't have to be free by the way, that's the big thing I think freelancers don't understand, but that's what a lead is.

[00:09:16] Brian: It's just someone you can contact. So now the definition of a lead magnet, that's a huge part of lead generation is like, what's the thing we're exchanging, giving away or selling at a low price to get the contact information so that we can actually contact the lead. A lead magnet by definition is a complete solution to a narrow problem given away at a significant discount.

[00:09:35] Brian: Or free to attract ideal customers. Now, anytime I hear the word discount, my red flag goes up because I don't do it myself. And I don't recommend you build a business around discounts. There is something to this. We'll talk about it later on, especially when we get into paid lead magnets,

[00:09:50] Brian: And when you look at the goal of a lead magnet. The main goal of this is to get more clients than you otherwise would without one.

[00:09:55] Brian: And when you look at the biggest reason most freelancers fail to ever advertise their [00:10:00] business, whether it's paid ads or social media, content marketing any other method, they fail to promote themselves as a freelancer is because they don't want to appear as desperate. That is the number one objection to any sort of promotion for any freelancers.

[00:10:11] Brian: They don't want to come across as desperate, even if they are, you might be completely and utterly desperate, but you still will not advertise that you have openings or that you have, slots available or that you are looking for clients because you don't want to come across as desperate. And that is the beauty of a lead magnet.

[00:10:25] Brian: It is something that you can always promote and never look desperate because you are offering something of value to people. And by doing so,

[00:10:33] Brian: you're able to get more clients than you otherwise would without the lead magnet. So that's like the big thing that I think most freelancers don't really think about when it comes to creating a lead magnet is that something they can promote all the time without ever coming across as desperate.

[00:10:45] Brian: As a matter of fact, You come across as somebody who has created a helpful resource or something that is going to be of genuine value to me if I'm looking to you as somebody that I want to hire.

[00:10:53] Brian: so that's a huge benefit there. But there's a second way of looking at a lead magnet, and this is the way that Alex Hermosia looks at it, is [00:11:00] all things being equal, if you're promoting your core service versus promoting a lead magnet. In most cases, you will earn more money promoting the lead magnet instead of your core service.

[00:11:10] Brian: And he breaks down a lot of things behind that. I'm not going to get super into the math and reasoning behind paid ads when it comes to lead magnets and metrics behind it. But if you go through his course or his book, he explains it really well. a lead and a lead magnet. Hopefully we're on the same page here. A lead is somebody we can contact in a lead magnet is a complete solution to a narrow problem given away at a discount or free. to attract ideal customers.

[00:11:31] Brian: So let's talk about the first big part of this, the lead magnet. missing piece. Most freelancers don't have right now. They don't really understand. They see, lead magnets I've given away, or they see people who sell courses, or they see people in software, or they see people in even other service professionals like.

[00:11:44] Brian: Hairdressers or massage therapists or whatever doing some sort of lead generation, but they can't seem to conceptualize how this works for them or how this would work for their own business. So hopefully this is going to be a helpful part for you. We're going to break down the lead magnet and then we'll talk later on about how do we actually promote it?

[00:11:58] Brian: How do we build? How do we [00:12:00] get people to sign up or buy the thing that we have just created or the thing we're offering our lead magnet. so the first step and arguably the most important step of creating a lead magnet for yourself as a freelancer is.

[00:12:11] Brian: finding a narrow and meaningful problem you want to fully solve. And I want to emphasize a few different words in that sentence as I break this down. Again, a narrow and meaningful problem. That means it needs to be something narrow and small and a meaningful problem. Meaning it is valuable and means a lot to the person.

[00:12:28] Brian: so that doesn't mean find a broad problem. That is not that meaningful, right? So those are two very important parts. And then it's a problem you want to fully solve. It's not like here's seven tips on how to do a thing. That's not fully solving a problem. again, this is Alex Ramos's definition. I have seen partial solutions work. I have had lead magnets in my past that are not full solutions. They are like what I would consider not great. They can still work. If you can't come up with a amazing full solution to a narrow meaningful problem, it's not the end of the world.

[00:12:59] Brian: We'll talk [00:13:00] about progress over perfection later on.

[00:13:01] Brian: But I've got a couple, hopefully helpful, brainstorming exercises when it comes to finding that one narrow and meaningful problem that you want to fully solve.

[00:13:09] Brian: Now, here's a couple of things before I even get into these brainstorming exercises that are going to be challenging for you. If you are a, what I consider a butt in seat freelancer, meaning you are just a butt in the seat, there's very little differentiation between you and the person next to you.

[00:13:20] Brian: This exercise of finding a narrow and meaningful problem that you can fully solve as a lead magnet. So if you hear this episode and you're really struggling, I'm going to recommend two episodes for you to go back and listen through the first one is episode 259. It's called how to stop being a copycat freelancer.

[00:13:37] Brian: It's our back to basic series. And then another one from that same series on episode 256 called choosing the right services to sell as a freelancer. Again, our back to basic series,

[00:13:46] Brian: the freelancers I've seen that do the best at this are generally the ones who offer what we call a transformational outcome.

[00:13:51] Brian: You are not a small cog in a massive machine or a small piece of overall large puzzle or huge puzzle. you're generally a larger piece of the puzzle.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Brian: in the easiest example I can give you is just something from my background in music production. In the music production world, there's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of pieces of the overall puzzle. There's the songwriting phase, there's the tracking, editing, mixing, mastering. production elements, playing of the instruments.

[00:14:15] Brian: session musicians, there's a ton of pieces to this, right? And if you are just a mastering engineer, like to pick on them a lot, you are like a tiny piece of the overall puzzle. And if you are a full service music producer and you see everything from soup to nuts, You are. offering a full transformational outcome.

[00:14:30] Brian: Almost the entire piece of the puzzles are within your grasp, right? So that's what I'm talking about when I'm saying a button seat, small position, that's very little differentiation, like a master engineer versus a full service music producer who is, has their hands in all the little pieces.

[00:14:43] Brian: You're going to have way more opportunities for creating amazing lead magnets for yourself. If you offer a. I'm more transformational outcome in the services that you offer instead of a tiny button seat position. So brainstorming exercise one, I'm gonna give you two. The second one's my personal favorite, but brainstorming exercise one is what I call removing the hurdles.

[00:14:59] Brian: Think [00:15:00] through last client you worked with or the last five clients you worked with or the best client you've ever worked with, whatever that specific individual is in your head. And try to think through or list out, it's easier if you list these things out, What are the things they need to already have, build, create, finish, or do before they're ready to work with you? Just think about that for a second. what are all the hurdles in the way that's holding them back from needing your service in the first place?

[00:15:21] Brian: Going back to that music production example. If I'm a music producer, what do I need? What's the hurdle that's holding someone back from ever needing my service? this is the easiest one. I, why I love this example. It is a, song or at least a song idea. So if I'm a music producer, I will not get a client unless that client has a song or songs or an EP or an album of music that they're happy with, that they want to then pay me to produce.

[00:15:43] Brian: Every niche has some variation of this, whether you're a music producer or you're a photographer, graphic designer, branding specialist, you're a copywriter. if you offer a full transformational service to take someone from point A to point B.

[00:15:57] Brian: Or point A to point Z. It's probably a better way of looking at it. [00:16:00] There's something that's keeping them from getting to point A or being ready for you. They are problems. They are challenges. They are roadblocks. These are all potential opportunities of finding problems to help them solve.

[00:16:09] Brian: If it's not obvious, you're going to use this exercise use this to find the problem you're going to solve in some sort of lead magnet, you have to have a really deep understanding.

[00:16:18] Brian: Of the entire process that you offer and the preceding steps, get them to the point where they're ready for you. You have to understand all of this. This takes a deep knowledge base and you have to have a willingness to create some sort of solution for those preceding steps, those roadblocks to help them get past those roadblocks.

[00:16:32] Brian: So if you're a music producer, but you have no interest or ability or desire to help a client with songwriting or to finish songs, then this is probably not for you, but as a music producer, you can see how this is a wonderful opportunity to find a narrow and meaningful problem.

[00:16:47] Brian: You want to fully solve that narrow and meaningful problem is. I am a songwriter or I'm a band or a musician. And I have a song that I'm not happy with.

[00:16:55] Brian: And there are a lot of ways to solve this. I'm not going to get into the actual way we saw this right now. We're actually not even thinking [00:17:00] about how we're going to solve this yet. All we're trying to do is identify the problem that we can potentially solve in some sort of lead magnet later, find problems.

[00:17:07] Brian: That's all we're doing right now.

[00:17:08] Brian: Another example, I just wrote down just brainstorming from thinking about my clients is if you're a brand photographer, meaning you do brand shoots for. Entrepreneurs or influencers or anything in that vein, and you do like lifestyle photos to make them look better, right? To make them look good on social media, to have great branding photos on their websites or landing pages. If your clients are business owners, and if you're thinking through what are the roadblocks that prevent them from ever hiring you in the first place, one that I could just think of off the top of my head is.

[00:17:35] Brian: That client will probably need a website to show off the photos that you're going to show them. So they have a problem, which is they don't have a website. And again, there's ways to solve that later on. We're not going to talk about solutions yet, but that's just one problem. Another one is they don't have a good wardrobe, but they don't know what to wear in the photo shoot.

[00:17:48] Brian: They don't know what locations to go to. Again, these are all problems that you can potentially solve. we're going quantity over quality here when it comes to problems. We're listing out every single potential problem, stupid or not, that could be something [00:18:00] holding them back from ever hiring you in the first place.

[00:18:02] Brian: and this is really important. We're not focused on solutions yet,

[00:18:04] Brian: so that's brainstorming exercise one. When we're trying to identify problems, it's called removing the hurdles. You're trying to list out anything that is holding them back from needing your service. These are the things that they need to have, that they don't have, that they need to build, that they haven't built, that they need to create, that they haven't created, that they need to finish, that they haven't finished, or they need to do, that they haven't done.

[00:18:22] Brian: And until these things are done, they're not ready to hire you.

[00:18:24] Brian: just focus on problems that you can potentially solve. Even if you can't solve them, there's still potential workarounds to solve them later. But just write them all down. The next is brainstorming exercise two. there's actually two others that I'm not going to share here, but these are my two favorites.

[00:18:35] Brian: This is called creating a three tier outcome map. And this is where I'm going to actually screen share here.

[00:18:39] Brian: If you're watching on YouTube, congratulations, you get to see something.

[00:18:42] Brian: if you are listening, I'll try my best to describe this, but might want to go to our show notes page at six figure creative. com. That's the number six figure creative. com slash two seven seven. And the YouTube video will be embedded there.

[00:18:52] Brian: So when we talk about a three tier outcome map here's the three tiers I'm showing on the screen right now. Tier one is the ultimate outcome. What [00:19:00] is the thing that they're hiring you for? If they're going from A to Z, what is Z? What's the end goal? And I put next to it in parentheses, there's one, there's only one ultimate outcome that someone is hiring you for, especially in a transformational outcome.

[00:19:12] Brian: tier two the three tier outcome map is the core pieces. These are the three five core pieces of the puzzle that when put together will lead to the ultimate outcome that your client is hiring you for. And then tier three, and this is the most important tier for this, When it comes to creating a lead magnet, the individual parts.

[00:19:30] Brian: These are the three to 10 individual parts that lead to the core pieces that bring you to the ultimate outcome. And I'm going to show you the one that I have for six figure creative. This is literally mine. I don't have examples ready from other people or even the permission to show theirs, but you can try your best to say, how does this.

[00:19:46] Brian: Work for me versus this can't work for me because this is a coaching thing, but this is six figure creative This is our outcome map People hire us or want to work with us or listen to this podcast to help them earn a six figure income from their creative skills that's the ultimate outcome.

[00:19:59] Brian: There's only one of those [00:20:00] if you see on this screenshot here beneath that There are five core pieces that lead to that outcome And the first one is a lead generation strategy that brings in consistent leads at a high volume. We're talking about that right now. Actually, core piece number two is a lead nurture strategy that keeps your business top of mind until the lead is ready to hire you.

[00:20:16] Brian: It's things we've talked about in the podcast before, but that's the second big piece of the overall outcome. The third piece is a sales system that consistently converts leads to clients. The fourth big piece is a fulfillment process that minimizes your time spent delivering while maximizing client happiness and results.

[00:20:31] Brian: Those two things really matter. You can't spend. Your entire life, making one client happy, obviously, but you also can't spend one second working with a client because they won't be happy and they won't get the results. So we've got to find what's the perfect balance between time spent on a client and ultimate results and happiness that client gets from you, right?

[00:20:46] Brian: And number five, the big piece is a business model that maximizes the lifetime value of every client because that allows you to earn more with the same amount of clients or fewer clients because each client is worth more to you. Because for obvious reasons, if every [00:21:00] client pays you a dollar. Not a very good business.

[00:21:01] Brian: If every client paid you 100, 000, it's a pretty good business. You're probably going to land somewhere between the two. But those are the five core pieces that lead to the ultimate outcome. And then below those five core pieces, each of those core pieces have three to ten individual parts. And I'll just zoom in on the one here because we're talking about lead gen right now.

[00:21:19] Brian: There are 7, 8 individual parts. There's more than this, but this is just all that I have on my map right now. There's 8 individual parts

[00:21:27] Brian: that lead to, the core result or the core piece of a lead generation strategy that brings in consistent leads at high volume. So I'll quickly list those off, but There's a point to all of this that I'm going bring you to. So for lead gen strategy, there's creating a lead magnet.

[00:21:39] Brian: We're talking about that right now. Super meta. I know that's what confuses a lot of people. There's another one is creating a conversion video, creating a referral network, creating content marketing strategy, warm outreach, cold outreach, paid advertising, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, creating lead generation funnels, and there's more than just that.

[00:21:53] Brian: But those are eight example pieces. Of

[00:21:55] Brian: what makes up the individual parts of a core piece that leads to the ultimate outcome. [00:22:00] That's the three tiers.

[00:22:00] Brian: Now, why did I show you all that? Because your business is the exact same thing. You offer an ultimate result to your client that the thing that they're hiring you for. That's why we talk about being focused on outcomes, not services. So there's an ultimate outcome they're hiring you for. There are three to five things, big pieces that you have to build or do to get your client to that ultimate end result.

[00:22:21] Brian: And within those three to five core pieces, there are individual parts, right? Those individual parts all represent some sort of problem or some sort of solution that you can offer your clients.

[00:22:31] Brian: And those pieces are narrow enough and they should be meaningful enough depending on the types of client you're working with and what they care about. They should be narrow enough. And meaningful enough and you should be able to fully solve those problems or fully reach those outcomes. So if you're struggling with coming up with ideas or problems or pieces that you could create. A lead magnet around that is a wonderful exercise. if it's hard to follow again, I don't know how that translates to just audio listeners right now, but if that's hard to follow, just go to our YouTube channel or go to our show notes page at six [00:23:00] figure creative.

[00:23:00] Brian: com slash two seven seven. And you can see the visual that I just showed. So you have a visual representation of what I was just explaining to you because it's really important,

[00:23:07] Brian: but I just want you to just play, be in the mode of not being critical, but being able to. Brainstorm without judging yourself because when you're doing this exercise, the only person that could stifle your ideas is you. And if you're hard on yourself or judging yourself because that's a stupid idea or that client wouldn't want that.

[00:23:22] Brian: If you start thinking about why things wouldn't work instead of what could work, you're going to crush yourself. So be open, be nice to yourself. Just put yourself in a very creative space where anything is okay. We can be as critical as you want later on, but just anything's okay. Just play right now.

[00:23:35] Brian: But let's talk about what the best ideas are. I have a few things that I want to list out for you that are going as you're brainstorming or narrowing things down from your brainstorm list. The first thing is this. solving a problem that creates your own clients. again. Going back to the songwriting example, if I'm a music producer and I help my client, a musician create a song from scratch, that song did not exist before I helped them.

[00:23:55] Brian: I have literally from thin air created my own client. It is a wonderful thing to [00:24:00] do. And if this is part of your strategy, whether you're charging for it or you're doing it for free, this is a wonderful way to create your own clients.

[00:24:07] Brian: The next best practice for this is solving a problem that reveals a bigger problem. So this can be something like a diagnosis or creating a plan or doing some sort of workshop for your clients. if you actually go back to episode 206 with Ryan quarrel, the episodes called stuck with lobe.

[00:24:21] Brian: Dollar projects. Here's how to level up to 50, 000 projects with Ryan Corl. Again, episode 206 You can just go to six figure creative comm slash two zero six That's the easiest way for any episode to find the number is just go to our site comm slash the episode number you want to Find his lead magnet is just a 2, 000 Workshop and it's a refundable 2, 000 where if they're not happy with it, he'll refund it.

[00:24:42] Brian: And that workshop, they create a full plan for what a brand video could be for a business owner. So think lawyers or people that were brand and image really matters. And he creates a full essentially storyboard or whatever. I don't fully understand cause I'm not a videographer, but it creates a whole plan in this workshop with the clients.

[00:24:59] Brian: It's like [00:25:00] an intensive. For six hour thing he charges two grand for it and he has from what he said on the podcast I'm like a hundred percent success rate if a client pays him for that workshop. They will pay him for a fifty to a hundred thousand dollar brand video

[00:25:11] Brian: so doing some sort of workshop or plan or diagnosis can be a really good way To solve the problem in that example, the problem was they have no idea what the video could be, so he helps them solve that specific problem

[00:25:22] Brian: probably a better example of what I was talking about where you solve a problem that reveals a bigger problem.

[00:25:27] Brian: I'll use an example from a client we just got who's a copywriter, and if you're a copywriter offering some sort of critique or, feedback or Audit is a bad word, but you understand an audit of someone's website and their copy on the website reveals a bigger problem.

[00:25:40] Brian: That problem could be that all of your messaging is completely screwed up and you're not speaking to your ideal clients correctly. So now that problem has revealed a bigger problem that she can charge to actually implement a solution to.

[00:25:52] Brian: The example Alex Simozy actually uses in his course and in his book is someone who as a service They speed up websites, right? And so what [00:26:00] that person will do is a lead magnet is Do a website speed audit with a walk them through their entire site, the pages that are loading quickly and slowly why they're loading slowly and the effect that that slow loading speed will have on their overall conversions.

[00:26:12] Brian: And that reveals the bigger problem that they're missing out on tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars because of slow loading pages. So they can then sell the solution to that bigger problem that was just revealed. I really like that as an example, but hopefully these kinds of multiple perspectives give you some sort of aha moment in creating your own lean magnet.

[00:26:28] Brian: And the third kind of best practice around creating a lead magnet and solving problems is if all else fails, give them a free sample. this really works well. If you are a button seat service provider, and especially if you offer a recurring service is offer a full glimpse of what it's like to work together for a very limited amount of time or a very limited project.

[00:26:46] Brian: Again, I make fun of master engineers all the time, but the tried and true lead magnet that most master engineers will do is offering a free test master. It's a small amount of time on their end to do it. And. If they're good at what they do and they they're [00:27:00] selecting quality leads to do this for, they will generally have a high enough conversion rate of people that are happy with the test project to hire them for the full project.

[00:27:08] Brian: So whether you're recurring, meaning you're a monthly retainer or you're reoccurring, meaning you do multiple projects sporadically throughout the year, this sort of thing can work, but it's only if the unit economics can work for this. In service based professional businesses like yours, where you're offering services for free, it could be a death trap.

[00:27:23] Brian: If you're spending too much time giving free stuff away, and those aren't turning into big enough projects. a good rule of thumb for this. If you want some hard numbers or some percentages to guide yourself off of generally speaking, whatever the size of the project, let's just say it's 10, 000.

[00:27:35] Brian: You don't want to spend more than 10 percent of your time delivering on free services. Meaning if it takes me 1, 000 worth of hours to offer services that turn into 10, 000 projects. That's an okay exchange means 10 percent of your time, you're going to be doing lead generation activities and fulfilling on test services so that you can make spend 90 percent of your time on money making activities.

[00:27:56] Brian: That's a decent exchange. Obviously, better the ratio, instead of 10 to [00:28:00] 120 to one or 30 to one is obviously a better thing, but that's just something to shoot for if you're offering test services. So Again, every business is different, but that's a decent guideline for you to look at. So let's talk about some mistakes to avoid, then we'll wrap this episode up, and then we'll talk about what's coming next in the series.

[00:28:12] Brian: Some mistakes to avoid. When you're creating a lead magnet and we're trying to solve a problem, many, many freelancers, the first time they start mapping this stuff out, is they try to boil the ocean. Think about how much energy it takes to boil the ocean. There's nothing on earth other than the sun. And even as far as a ways it is, I don't think it could happen.

[00:28:27] Brian: There's not anything powerful enough to boil the ocean. Someone on the internet will probably correct me. flaming the comments on YouTube if you have the answer to this, but I don't think that's possible. But to boil a small pot of water takes a relatively small amount of energy. Any stovetop can boil water.

[00:28:40] Brian: so the point I'm trying to make is keep the problem you're trying to solve narrow. The second issue is people trying to solve an irrelevant problem.

[00:28:47] Brian: the more meaningful the problem is to your ideal client, the easier it's going to be for this entire thing to work. So we need to keep the problem you're solving meaningful. Not irrelevant. The third mistake is stop obsessing over perfection. This will not be [00:29:00] the only lead magnet you ever create the first time ever doing this stuff just value progress over perfection get feedback from friends hire me as a coach if you don't have any confidence in doing this and you want some actual feedback from somebody who's done this a million times.

[00:29:12] Brian: But whatever you do, do not obsess over this for forever because you will eventually miss out on tons and tons of progress you could have made if you would have just put it out there and gotten some feedback. Iterated, learn from your mistakes and try again. There is no perfect solution to this. There is only a good enough solution.

[00:29:27] Brian: Take the pressure off. I remember my therapist years ago saying to me, Brian, there is no, the one when it comes to dating, there is only a, the one, which I really like to think about. If you put all the pressure on, there's only one person for you out there to marry on earth.

[00:29:40] Brian: And if you don't marry that one person, you have failed. That's a lot of pressure to put on any relationship. it's merely just saying which one is a, the one for you. And we're talking about this and lead magnets. Now what's the lead magnet for you right now? Not your forever lead magnet, just the one for now.

[00:29:54] Brian: Now we're going to separate marriage from lead magnets, pass that analogy because you only want one marriage. [00:30:00] You want many lead magnets. That's where the separation occurs. I'll leave us there. Your homework is you just find the one problem worth solving. The narrow, meaningful problem that is worth solving, preferably one where the natural next step is for someone to hire you.

[00:30:12] Brian: And then future episodes in the series, we'll talk about how to actually solve the problem, the delivery methods, pricing free versus paid. Distribution methods. How do we actually get people to get our lead magnet and then consume it so that they become actual leads against someone we can contact, that's future episodes.

[00:30:26] Brian: Hopefully this is helpful for you. Give me your feedback in an email or on YouTube comments or just anywhere. I don't care how you give me feedback. Just respond to something from me until next time.

[00:30:34] Brian: Thank you so much for listening to the six figure creative podcast.