Why Freelancers Need to Stop Believing These Paid Ad Myths ASAP

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[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the six Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, welcome. Thank you. You're in the right place right now. If you are a creative freelancer and you're trying to earn more from your creative skills without selling your soul, if you're a turning listener, thank you for coming back again and again.

[00:00:14] Brian: It really means a lot to me and I hope that today I can solve the issue that my audio editors brought up last week, which was the close of issue. Sorry about that. For some reason my mic was in a different position as usual, and we had a horrible Plosive field episode. So for all my audio engineer listeners, my apologies.

[00:00:30] Brian: And for those who don't know what a opposive is, pa pa plosive, that's what a plosive is. It sounds awful, especially when you have a good microphone and you have good editors that boost the lows and make me sound really sexy. , never gonna do that again. I'm sorry. I promise if you're new, I don't do this all the time.

[00:00:43] Brian: In today's episode, I'm gonna change your mind about paid ads. Freelancers unanimously don't believe that paid ads are for them. well, every industry on earth does paid advertising in some way, shape, or form.

[00:00:54] Brian: But freelancers, the special snowflakes, the creatives that we are. We don't need to do paid ads. It's not for us. [00:01:00] And if that is your mindset, first of all, I understand it. It is a mindset that I had for years. In some of these myths that I'm gonna talk about today are things that I perpetuated over the years.

[00:01:09] Brian: If that's your mindset and that's your approach, and you've never done anything more than dabble with paid ads, then you are missing out on one of the fastest ways to have more leads in clients than you could possibly know what to do with.

[00:01:20] Brian: And the only thing I ask you if you're, Fully opposed to paid ads as a freelancer, or you just don't see the benefit of it or you've tried it. The only thing I ask is just to keep an open mind during this episode. Be open to the ideas and the things that I bring to you and the myths that I tried to bust in today's episode the cool thing about paid ads is you are the one that's in control of it.

[00:01:38] Brian: It's not like referrals where you have to wait for somebody to refer someone to you. It's not like, cold outreach or. Getting into a gatekeeper industry where there's like somebody that holds the keys to all the projects and you have to win that person over it's not like a social media where you have to deal with like, finicky algorithms to hope that the content god's put your stuff up in front of everybody and that you're dancing your little, shaking your little butt on TikTok or [00:02:00] whatever you do, they don't, I don't know. I don't use TikTok , but I'm just saying this is bypassing all of that and it puts the. Control back into your hands. And there are very few things where I think you have full control, I've mentioned this on past episodes before, but I've spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars profitably on paid ads.

[00:02:17] Brian: I've helped others run profitable paid ads, and we're gonna talk about some of this stuff today, but these are the numbers. Based on my past, you could put your ad in front of a million eyeballs this week that could get you around 5,000 leads this week, a couple hundred sales calls this week, and more clients than you could probably manage in a year's.

[00:02:35] Brian: This week. Now logistically, you don't have any capability of servicing that many sales calls and managing that many leads, but that's what I talk about when this is an opportunity for you to have more leads than you could possibly know what to do with. That's a position that no freelancer that I know is in right now.

[00:02:49] Brian: Even the ones who are in pretty high demand, that are booked solid, there's still a lot of like bill paying work they're taking on, and we're gonna address some of these things today that I wanna talk about. But I know people that are really against [00:03:00] paid ads, And I'm not saying pay adss is the best way for everybody. It's definitely not for everybody, but it is the fastest way and something that most people ignore. so if that's starting to tickle your fancy a little bit, what the appetite, let's talk about the myths that freelancers need to stop believing a ssap P.

[00:03:16] Brian: myth number one. All the successful freelancers I know never advertise . I'm gonna use whiny voices for this. this is kind of part objection, part myth. I say, this is a myth because I know a lot of freelancers that use paid ads and they use it profitably and they use it well.

[00:03:31] Brian: So already it's a myth. It's busted. I know people that do it. You might even know people that do it, but just because you don't know people that, use paid ads doesn't mean, that's a reasonable myth that holds you back from doing paid ads.

[00:03:41] Brian: Here's the secret. I hate to throw our entire industry under the bus in most cases, especially with paid ads, most freelancers have no idea what they. Definitely with paid ads. And then in a lot of other areas, especially around marketing in general, Most of our listeners are awesome at what they do, but they struggle to get clients. And it's because they just don't know what they're doing from the marketing front. And so when you look to the entire industry and [00:04:00] say, this isn't the norm in this industry, the the designer world, they never run ads in the photography world.

[00:04:04] Brian: No, you don't run ads. Music producers. Oh, you can't run ads for music production.

[00:04:07] Brian: When you look around and the most common method that people in the freelancing world get clients is through word of mouth and referrals. that's based off something called the survivorship bias. And I've covered this on an episode, episode 180 2, the word of mouth, death trap and how to avoid it.

[00:04:22] Brian: So if you want more details on like what this means and how deep this goes, go listen to that episode. But in general, survivorship bias just looks at the people that have survived to this point where they are book solid with their ideal clients. The people you might look up to in your industry, every creative field has some big names and big, people that they look up to, and those people made it to where they are generally because of word of mouth and.

[00:04:43] Brian: word of mouth and referrals is the path of least resistance for getting clients. It is the easiest way to get clients if the flow is high enough to keep you booked solid with your ideal clients. The problem is, in most cases, especially when you're starting out.

[00:04:56] Brian: Referrals are few and far between. So when you are a brand new [00:05:00] freelancer or somebody who's earlier in their career, or somebody who's moonlighting on the side and you got a day. You generally don't have enough, client pull and a big enough network to keep yourself booked solid. Just some referrals.

[00:05:08] Brian: I call that the word of mouth, death trap. The people who survived that and made it to the level that you look up to them, the successful people, you know, those people survived the death trap. this is where survivorship bias comes in, cuz all the people that survived the death trap, you looked to them and you saw, oh my gosh, this person, they just did word of mouth, they're just referrals.

[00:05:24] Brian: And they got to the level that that they're at right now. But they ignore the millions of dead bodies left along the way of the freelancers who bought into the word of mouth death trap, lie, and never made it to the level that these people you look up to. That's survivorship bias. You're only looking to the survivors as the example of what to follow. And you're ignoring the cautionary tales left in the wake of people who just waited around for clients to find you.

[00:05:44] Brian: And if you were to hear from those millions of. In the creative freelance industry who just couldn't make this work because they couldn't get the, the momentum going. The word of mouth snowball built up long, big enough. If you talked to those people and heard from them, they would probably tell you, ah, I just [00:06:00] couldn't make it work.

[00:06:00] Brian: Word of mouth wasn't enough to keep me busy. Word of mouth wasn't enough for me to lose my day job. Word of mouth led to a drought in the feaster famine lifecycle of a freelancer to where I just couldn't weather. I had to go get a job. that's where I'm at now. Am I happy? Who knows? Maybe they're, maybe they.

[00:06:13] Brian: They definitely didn't make it work. that's why we can't look to the rest of the industry as an example, because a lot of 'em don't know what they're talking about or doing. And b, survivorship bias paints the data set

[00:06:24] Brian: So that is myth number one. all the successful freelancers I know, never advertise. Myth number two, no particular order, by the way. but myth number two, this is a big one when it comes to paid advertising. If you're good at what you do, you shouldn't need to advertise.

[00:06:39] Brian: I like to laugh at this one. All right. This is a lie, and here's. In almost all cases, the best freelancer is never the one who gets the gig. The one who gets the gig is the one who's good enough and top of mind.

[00:06:50] Brian: That's basically it. So just being good enough at what you do, just being great at what you do, just being excellent at what you do isn't enough to stay booked solid. Now, again, paid ads are not the end all, be all [00:07:00] as a means to marketing yourself. It is just one tool in the tool belt. But this is a huge myth. The holds people back from running paid ads as a freelancer because they think if I run paid ads as a freelancer, I am now admitting that I am not good enough, that I am not good at my.

[00:07:14] Brian: And I'm telling you, that is not the case. There are so many amazing, talented, incredible freelancers, people that are in my inbox, because I have a whole like automated inertia sequence that asks people like, why'd you download my client acquisition toolkit? What did you need help with? What were you trying to get specifically?

[00:07:29] Brian: And they'll reply to that. I get tons of replies every single week from people that reply to that automated email, which if you didn't know it's automated, I'm sorry, but I promise I read every single response and respond to the vast majority of them unless there's somebody trolling me when I read those email.

[00:07:41] Brian: it's people with the same exact struggles that many of you have. They're not able stay booked solid. They're struggling to find clients. they're in a big famine mode right now, et cetera, et cetera. And when I go look at their websites or their portfolios to see what they're doing, to see if they're actually good at what they do, cause I always care about that stuff.

[00:07:54] Brian: you need to be good at what you do before you even worry about paid ads or marketing in general. But these people are incredible at what they [00:08:00] do. I have people that are like God tier status videographers, who put out incredible content, have an amazing portfolio, and they've even worked with some big names and they still can't stay book solid.

[00:08:10] Brian: So I know it's not the skillset, and I know the need for paid ads is not a lack of skill. So this is 100% a dead wrong myth that if you're good at what you do, you shouldn't need to advertise. the goal is to never have to advertise if you don't need to.

[00:08:24] Brian: But paid advertising general, especially like meta ads which is mostly Instagram now and YouTube ads and Google, paper click ads, whatever. These sorts of things are, wonderful tools for the tool belt of a freelancer trying to get clients.

[00:08:35] Brian: So that you can start to build that word of mouth snowball of all your happy clients that are now referring people to And here's my mindset on paid advertising in general, or any sort of marketing in general. if someone else wins the gig, instead of me and that person who won the gig, got the client is worse than me. It's the worst option for that client, then I have not done my job as a freelancer. I have failed them because they spent money on an inferior option.

[00:08:58] Brian: a lot of times it can be a [00:09:00] similar amount of money. It's not always the best person charging the most. Sometimes somebody's just a, better salesperson. They have better marketing materials. They have, a better website. They have funnel set up, they have a sales process. They have all the things that we talk about on this podcast.

[00:09:12] Brian: And they can charge a lot more than you the person who's really good at what you do, but you don't understand all these things that we talked about on the show. Go back to our episode where we talked about the full stack freelancer. You don't have all the full stack skills that a freelancer needs to survive. And so that client is paying more or the same that you would've charged except it's a worse outcome for them because you didn't do the job of being the person who got hired. You didn't do, what you had to do to get in front of that person, Because they didn't know you existed.

[00:09:38] Brian: And this used to put this in terms that everyone else can understand here. If you're a wedding photographer and your competitor gets the gig and your competitor's not as good, they're not as responsive. They don't get the shots at the day of the wedding. They take forever to get the files back to the client after the wedding.

[00:09:51] Brian: It's generally a pain in the ass for the client to deal with this other wedding photographer. And they charge the same as you, then you have failed that client [00:10:00] because they could have hired you for the same price. They could have had a better experience, but you weren't the one who was even considered for the gig because you weren't known.

[00:10:08] Brian: That's what I'm talking about here. That's the mindset you need to have around marketing and paid advertising when it comes to making sure the client is served best. Now, if you're not the better option, then this can go the opposite way. But I'm not gonna get down that today because I'm busting myths to help break down the walls of paid ads.

[00:10:24] Brian: So that's myth number two. If you're good at what you do, you shouldn't need to advertise. I hope I have sufficiently busted that myth.

[00:10:30] Brian: I hope you like that. I had my editor Gussy that one up for you. . This is what I do keep people from getting bored and also from myself, from getting bored. paid ads are so fun. Myth number three. Here we go. This is the third myth, . Sorry, I lost everybody. Paid ads will make me look d.

[00:10:49] Brian: How's that feel? ? Is this a reason you don't do paid ads? You don't wanna look desperate. This is a very common myth especially in the freelance community, especially with like creative arts, because we've all seen [00:11:00] either really cringey ads or that one freelancer in your industry who's always posting like 50% off this week.

[00:11:06] Brian: That looks desperate. I'm not gonna lie. That looks d. But lemme try my best to debunk this myth. First of all, you probably are desperate. That's thing number one to realize if you're not booked solid, a hundred percent full, your counter is a hundred percent full of your ideal clients. Meaning even one bill paying client that you don't really wanna work with, but you're doing it cuz you gotta pay the bills is in there.

[00:11:24] Brian: Then you probably are desperate. And the fewer clients you have, the more desperate you truly are. So if you are desperate, just admit that. , it's okay to be desperate. We don't have to look desperate though. That's the big thing. And even if you are booked solid and you do have good cash flow and good money, if you're not working with your ideal clients and just cherry picking the ones you wanna work with and that's not keeping you booked solid, then there's still room for improvement.

[00:11:45] Brian: you can do paid ads without looking desperate. And it's something called Go Giver Marketing. never have my clients run ads offering their services. Come on down to doors and more to get your doors. none of that crap, like doors and more. That's good. We don't do [00:12:00] that. That's not how we run paid ads. That's not go giver marketing.

[00:12:02] Brian: many of you listening right now might have come through some of my ad funnels. My ads are all about you, the person that I'm talking to, the problems you have that I can solve, and the potential solution to that problem, and then a lead magnet to help solve that problem.

[00:12:15] Brian: in a nutshell, that's the. giving things away. Actually, if we go back to episode

[00:12:19] Brian: 153, way back then, that was like the third episode of this podcast cuz we rebranded episode one 50. Why sales doesn't have to be a dirty word for creatives with Bob Berg, author of the Go. That is the person who invented the term the Go-giver . So go back and listen to that episode. We've had him on the show.

[00:12:36] Brian: But being a go-giver means you are giving, you're not taking. And when we have that approach on our advertising efforts or any marketing efforts in general, not alone do we not look desperate. We also look like we are giving, because we are, we're adding value. I have had comments and replies in emails of people.

[00:12:54] Brian: I've never actually seen an ad of someone helping , something like that. To the effect of that. It was definitely not someone [00:13:00] saying, you look so desperate, you idiot. Nothing like that. You can do paid advertising without looking desperate, and it's not that hard to do.

[00:13:06] Brian: Just give something of value away. It works so much better And the benefit besides building email list, besides getting leads in clients, besides all that fun stuff, the other benefit is you start building goodwill, you start looking more credible. You start getting people thanking you for helping them.

[00:13:20] Brian: That's a benefit that most people don't understand about paid ads when you do in the right way. So myth number three. Paid ads make me look desperate. No, they don't. Hopefully, Properly debunked this myth. This should just been called MythBusters or something, although that's probably like trademarked now to get sued. I don't wanna fight Discovery Channel or whoever the hell owns that IP anymore. All right, so that's myth number three. Now we're onto myth number four about paid ads for freelancers, and that is the myth that paint ads don't work for freelancers. That's my less winey voice. I dunno how common this is.

[00:13:49] Brian: I hear this one a. I've tried it before and it just don't work. , that's the kind of response I've seen from many people. Like, They dabbled with it. They tried it out once. They boosted a post on Facebook or Instagram, oh, that doesn't work. You probably did it wrong. , [00:14:00] pay Adss. Absolutely work. They work in almost all industries, unless that you literally. Legally advertised on these platforms. Some platforms have bans against like MLMs bans against bell bonds, bans against, obviously illegal substances, bans against some legal substances that are controlled like alcohol or tobacco.

[00:14:17] Brian: I don't think you freelancers fall into any of those categories, so you can promote on any of these, platforms, and they do work.

[00:14:25] Brian: And this kind of goes back to the Go-Giver marketing thing that I talked about before. You can run ads to build an email list. You can run ads to get dms from people. where the call to action is to DM you for something. You can, run ads to retarget traffic.

[00:14:37] Brian: So like all the people that have been to your website, all the people that have engaged with you on social media, all the people that are on your email list, you can show ads to just those people and those are the ads. You can go for the sale part of the strategy is to cold traffic people who don't know you, you're just giving value.

[00:14:51] Brian: You're just a go giver on the warm traffic. The people that know, like, and trust you already, you can be a little more direct. Yes, you can serve them content. Yes, you can give them more [00:15:00] giveaways and free value and stuff, but at some point you do need to make the ask. It's kinda like, and this is just an example from my perspective, it's kinda like when you're dating somebody that you really, really like At some point you need to have that talk about whether you wanna be more serious or not. If you wanna be exclusive or not, right? Like If you never have that conversation, things can get awkward really fast. cuz you don't have proper expectations. And at some point maybe a proposal needs to happen to take the next step to get married.

[00:15:20] Brian: That's not all circles in all people, but whatever. You get what I'm saying here. At some point it is good to be more direct to make the ask, So on retargeting ads, those people who already know, I can trust you, you can make the. Whether they ask us, Hey, if you need this service, click here to book a call.

[00:15:33] Brian: Simple as that doesn't have to be anything crazy. maybe wanna say a little more than that, but that's the general approach.

[00:15:37] Brian: So you're running ads to build an email list. You're retargeting those people that are already no likely and trust you. The email list you're building, you're nurturing those with automated emails. It's not that hard to build. It's like seven to 10 emails that go out automatically over a 10 to 12 day period.

[00:15:49] Brian: You can send them semi-regular content, whether it's an email newsletter, whether it's a piece of content you created for YouTube or a blog article or whatever. It doesn't really matter what the thing is. The point is you're staying top of mind. You're building trust and [00:16:00] credibility over a long period of time.

[00:16:01] Brian: I can almost guarantee if you have tried to paid ads, you did not do all of those things.

[00:16:05] Brian: With the exception of like regular content, almost all these things can be just set up and for the most part, forgotten about. It's a one-time setup, long-term benefit, and you likely did none of that. You probably boosted a post, you probably ran an ad just to your homepage of your website, which is the dumbest thing you could possibly do, and then wondered why it didn't work.

[00:16:22] Brian: So when you say paid ads don't work for freelancers, what you're really saying is paid ads didn't work for you in that one very specific use case where you half-assed it. That's basically what you're saying. So I'm hoping that I've debunked this myth. Myth number four, that paid ads don't work for freelancers because besides the fact that I know freelancers that are making it work, If it didn't work for you, I get why that is, and you probably understand why that is now because there's more to it than just running an ad to your homepage and expecting that to all of a sudden work magically.

[00:16:48] Brian: So that's myth number four. Myth number five to debunk

[00:16:51] Brian: is it's tow expansive. I can't afford paid ads. This brings me to a little uh, concept. I want to teach our audience here.

[00:16:59] Brian: I'm gonna [00:17:00] talk about the concept of something called client financed acquisition. And if you're watching on YouTube, you get to add a little bonus of me actually showing slides from, one little part of my coaching program, where I walk through this sort of stuff.

[00:17:09] Brian: A client's finance acquisition is a term that I learned from Alex or Mosey. This is not something I invented. I don't think it's anything he invented, but it really. Explain something really well that I had never articulated, but it's something I've been using since before I even found Alex.

[00:17:21] Brian: And that is the benefit of using your clients to fuel all of your paid ads profitably from essentially day one. And the way this works, there's a visual with this, if you wanna go to YouTube to watch this part of the uh, episode. But with any credit card, there is a statement period, and there's kind of like a grace period where you can pay your card off and the statement period is usually around 30 days.

[00:17:40] Brian: And then the grace period is usually days 30 through 60 and you wanna have it paid off by the due date and the due dates usually, 30 days after the statement closed date. If you're looking at the visual, it's easier to understand this Client's finance acquisition works like this On days one through 30, you spend a certain amount of money, let's just use a thousand dollars for this example. On days 30 through 60, your [00:18:00] funnel and sales process and earn nurture sequence and all the things that I help people with, turns that into $5,000 and then by day 60,

[00:18:07] Brian: you pay your thousand dollars credit card bill off, and if you paid that by day 60, you pay absolutely no interest. And to this day, I have spent. All my ad spend on credit cards, I have never spent a single dime on interest payments. And I have gotten hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of flyer miles, which I've then used to buy flights around the world those who've been with for a long time.

[00:18:29] Brian: Like my wife and I booked a one-way trip to Bali in September of last. And that was all paid through miles. And then on the way home, we booked, business class, our first class tickets home for the entire 30 something hour flight. We had lay down seats in business class, which was amazing.

[00:18:42] Brian: Had amazing food all through credit card points that I acquired through paid ads like this. And then you just go and do it again this next month. the next month or the next statement period. You could spend $2,000 and then in days 30 through 60, you turn that into 10 grand and then you pay off your $2,000 payment and you do that again, and so on and so forth until you've hit the limit of what you can [00:19:00] reasonably handle.

[00:19:00] Brian: As a freelancer, everyone's different. Every industry is different, but when you look at. A five to one return on ad spend is what that is, meaning when you spend a dollar, you earn $5 back. That's the minimum I would recommend, shooting for if you're a freelancer because you have your direct hours associated with it.

[00:19:16] Brian: If you're doing something like selling courses or selling digital products or selling something that you have higher profit margins and no time spent. Generally you can, advertise at a much lower return on ad spend than that.

[00:19:27] Brian: Again, I'm getting into the weeds here. I'm gonna stop it here. But you understand the concept of clients finance acquisition. If you have a really well-oiled client acquisition machine and you're able to turn these leads into clients at a really good rate, you can get a five to one return on ad spend.

[00:19:40] Brian: However, you don't just get that because in most cases, if you can turn a thousand dollars into $5,000 in a 60 day period on paid, All of the leads you paid for, for that period, for that thousand dollars will generally turn into another two to $5,000 over the next, year or so. So you are actually getting about a 10 to one return on ad spend in the long run.

[00:19:59] Brian: The last time [00:20:00] I, did a deep dive analysis of this. I found that within a year or two of a paid ads campaign, I would see more than double back earned from leads that I spent and monetized, during a period. So let's just say for example, I spent 20 grand on ads Q1 of last year. and that brought $60,000 of clients to me.

[00:20:19] Brian: Over the next year or two, I'll probably get 60 to 80 to a hundred thousand dollars worth of clients from that same exact lead pool. This is going over your. It's okay. We'll talk about that in the next myth. But what clients finance acquisition is.

[00:20:31] Brian: It's really powerful. If you do it well, if you do it right, you don't ever have to spend a dime of your own money on ads. If you do it wrong, you can put yourself in massive credit card debt. you don't wanna do this the wrong way. Believe me.

[00:20:41] Brian: To say that it's too expensive is basically just saying, I don't like money. I don't wanna spend a dollar to get $5 back. I don't wanna spend a thousand dollars to get $5,000 back. I don't wanna spend two grand to get 10 grand back. It doesn't make sense to say that it's too expensive. In most cases, you can't afford not to.

[00:20:56] Brian: So that myth, in my opinion, sufficiently busted. If I had a sound [00:21:00] from Myth bust alert, I would play it now. So that's the fifth myth. That's a fun one. Fifth myth. It's too expensive. And now we're onto the final myth here. I'm gonna talk about today, number six. And that is paint ads are just too confusing.

[00:21:11] Brian: there's some validity to this because it is a complex subject. As I record this today I'm, finishing up a brand new, massive paid ads playbook for my coaching clients. it's something I've built from the ground up for them. There's a lot that goes into this, so I, definitely understand that this is something that's like intimidating, but in most cases it's not as complex as the craft that you learned. To learn how to produce music, which is a lot of my audience That is an incredibly complicated thing from learning your do to learning hardware, to software, to understanding compression and, making mixed decisions and understanding songwriting and working with clients and, interpersonal dynamics and like overcoming conflicts, like all these sorts of things of actually doing your craft incredibly complex.

[00:21:49] Brian: The same with photography, same with videography, graphic. You had to learn tons of programs. You had to learn tons of skills. You had to learn, how to harness your creativity into creating something that is valuable to your clients. Like [00:22:00] that to me, is more complicated and more complex than learning paid ads.

[00:22:03] Brian: Learning paid ads is essentially following step by step. There are plenty of courses for it. There's plenty of programs that can help you with it. There's a podcast that I highly recommend you listen to. It's called Perpetual Traffic. I learned a lot from that, especially early on. It may be over the heads of most people at this point, but if you start with literary episode one you, you might be able to make it through if you binged it all.

[00:22:19] Brian: It's a lot,

[00:22:20] Brian: but it's worth the effort. Again, this is one of the skills that are worth learning that have a long-term impact on your life and your business. I learned paid advertising years and years ago When I was advertising things that I don't even offer anymore, you never know what that skill will turn into and how you'll utilize that skill in the future.

[00:22:37] Brian: You may learn the skill and find that you just love doing that and you wanna actually do paid advertising for other companies. you can create your own paid ads agency, wonderful. You just learn a really valuable skill that people will pay a lot of money for. maybe you learn paid ads and you like freelancing, but you have something else on the side. Maybe you have an e-commerce business, maybe you have a digital products Who knows? You start using it in that area, and all of a sudden now you're able to scale your income to even higher levels because you're not tied to [00:23:00] your time directly on a product.

[00:23:01] Brian: That may be the way it goes for you, but you at least have those opportunities and those options to use the skillset in other areas. Maybe they're helping your spouse or your friends in their businesses. Again, this is a skillset worth learning about, worth diving into. But I will say, if you are gonna dive into this, don't just dabble again, have a good plan to go into approach you're going to take and have a clear path to how you're gonna make this work in your business. If you are interested in learning more about this, if you are interested in how you can use this as as a freelancer to get leads and clients, preferably more than you know what to do with, which is a good place to be.

[00:23:34] Brian: I highly encourage you to go ahead and apply for my coaching program. Clients By Design is the name of it, it is a, complete six month coaching program that helps people build what I call a client acquisition machine. Paid ads is just one portion of it. There's a whole lot you need to do before you're even ready for paid ads.

[00:23:48] Brian: That's another mistake that people make, is they start running paid ads before their business is even ready to make that. Because the more efficient your client acquisition machine, the more profitable your a would be. If you have a bad client acquisition machine, meaning your,[00:24:00] lead nurture, your fulfillment, your sales, all these other elements of your business, your websites, your funnels are not created well, you don't understand the process behind all this.

[00:24:08] Brian: You will flounder. So if you want personal, You need accountability, If you want a follow, a step by step process for how to do this, then I encourage you apply for the spring cohort. It's coming up soon. We'll be enrolling some more people in the coaching program and you can go ahead and get your application in.

[00:24:23] Brian: And if I approve it, I'll put you on the waiting list for that new enrollment period. We already have people on the waiting list now, but I encourage you get on it sooner than later because I am at capacity right now for this coaching program. I'm only accept. Applications that I really think that you're ready for it, you're good at what you do, you're in a good place, and that I would want to actually work with you

[00:24:39] Brian: So don't have to ask your application if this is interesting. I would encourage you to go to, six figure creative.com/clients. Go there. It'll take you to the page that you can overview the entire coaching program, how it works, at least of, as of right now. It might change later this year and then apply and that'll take a look at it and let you know if you're approved or not, Either way, when there's a prevailing belief and a bunch of myths surrounding something like paid [00:25:00] ads in your industry, it's best to question why those exist. It's best to not just fall into the trap of following the herd of what everyone else does instead, and this is why we even launched this podcast all the other industries around us how they're doing.

[00:25:12] Brian: take from those industries and apply it to your own business. That's why I look to the SaaS, the software as a service industry so much because they have figured out so many best practices that directly apply to freelancers like us because they're selling software as a service. You're just selling skills as a service, creativity as a service.

[00:25:29] Brian: Very similar business models. They're just delivering it with software where you're delivering it with your personal hours. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn from these other industries. So paid ads is one of those areas that works really well in SaaS. It works really well in freelance if you know how to use.

[00:25:42] Brian: It works really well in courses and coaching. It works really well in e-commerce. anywhere that has a well honed machine running behind it. So again, if you are interested in learning more about the spring enrollment period for clients by design, just go to six figure creative.com/client.

[00:25:57] Brian: Watch the video there and fill out the [00:26:00] application if you are interested. It is not for everyone by the way. If you are brand new to this podcast, you don't know anything about me, anything about how I teach, my mindset behind things, my beliefs, if you don't even know that you would wanna work with me, then don't apply.

[00:26:11] Brian: Go binge through the episodes of the backlog of the podcast. Pick the episodes that you wanna learn more from. And if you like my vibe, if you like what we talk about, if you like, My approach and my methodology to things, then go back and apply for the coaching program. But until you know more about me, there's a very high touch program.

[00:26:26] Brian: I don't want you in there, . I want you to already trust me before you go in there. I don't need somebody who's like, I don't know who you are, but I need help with these ads. That is not what I'm looking for here, . I need people who are ready, willing to make the leap And we can start from a foundation of. A shared vision for what we're building together. And there's not this weird, like, I don't know if I can trust you, in there. 241 episodes to this podcast out Now get to know me, . All right. That's it for this episode. See you all next week. I think we'll be back with more interviews after a couple of episodes of the solo stuff.

[00:26:52] Brian: I'm enjoying these solo episodes more and more. Hopefully you are too. But uh, yeah, thanks for watching. We're listening.