Why Your “Dream Clients” Aren’t Hiring You (And How to Fix It)

375. Are you good enough for your dream client?

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[00:00:00]

Brian: Think about your dream client right now. The type of project it would be, how fun it might be, the budget they might have. All that juicy, juicy budget, the clout you could get by working with this dream client, the long term potential, what could it do for your portfolio or for your entire career?

Brian: You've probably thought about this before. You probably dreamed about it. You probably fantasized about it,

Brian: But have you ever stopped to ask yourself, are you actually attractive to that sort of dream client?

Brian: Most freelancers never think about that, and it's the reason they struggle to ever land those dream clients. So today I'm gonna show you the four big things that make you the perfect fit for your dream client so you can marry each other.

Brian: What spurred this episode was, I came across a document that I made years and years ago called, uh, my Future Wife. was an Evernote file I made, and in this document, I just brain dumped a bullet point list of all the things that I wanted, my future wife, my dream wife, right? And I made that back in like 2011, I think is when I made that list. but after sitting with it for a while, I realized I wasn't the type of guy who was gonna be attractive to that type of woman.

Brian: So I spent the next four or five years developing myself in many different [00:01:00] ways so that I would be attractive when I met eventually, who is now my wife, that perfect fit person for me, the dream wife in other words,

Brian: many freelancers.

Brian: I'd say most freelancers never take that same objective look at themselves to see if they're even attractive to the types of clients that they wanna work with, the dream clients, the ones they want to marry.

Brian: If you're new here. Hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is the six Figure Creative podcast. It's a podcast made for creative freelancers who are selling their skills and wanna make more money without selling their souls.

Brian: If that's you, you're in the right spot. this is a podcast where I bring my diverse skillset, my longstanding background as an entrepreneur. I haven't had a day job since 2008, I think is the last time I had a day job, the last time I was employed by somebody. And we also have a team of 11 amazing entrepreneurs and marketers and people who understand digital marketing, client acquisition sales.

Brian: All these sorts of things, who can all bring their skillset to this, show as well. So lots of cool perspectives to bring to you so that you can say, Hey, that will work well in my business. Or maybe that won't work well in my business, but maybe I can adapt it a small way to make that actually work in my business.

Brian: That's what this podcast is for. So let's dive into the four things you need [00:02:00] to be the perfect fit for your dream client. Again, going back to that stupid list I made in 2011 when I was like perpetually single, literally been single for probably like. Six years at the time when I made that list.

Brian: and again, it was this, funny realization that I was not the type of person that was gonna be attractive to this. I just see this so many times with the clients we work with. They have these lofty aspirations ofthis is who I wanna work with, this is who I'm targeting.

Brian: These big businesses, if you're in B2B or these big, bigartists, if you're in a music production space And you realize you're not the type of freelancer who's gonna be attractive to that sort of client.

Brian: And it's for these reasons that I'm about to discover in this episode. So number one, I'm gonna cover something I call the sauce,S-O-F-T-S, the softest.

Brian: And I wanna talk about two specific things when it comes to the sauces, as a freelancer, likability. ' cause this is a huge one. I'm gonna define what that means, but likability is something that cannot be overestimated when it comes to success for a freelancer.

Brian: I've seen, freelancers who have the entire package, they're amazing what they do, but they're just not likable people and they struggle because of it. Because generally as a freelancer, when you're working close with [00:03:00] clients, they wanna work with somebody. They actually like. And there's the, phrase in marketing, people wanna work with people they know, like, and trust well, like is a big part of that.

Brian: And likability is a bunch of little things that all add up to one thing. I'll talk about that in a second. And the second area I wanna talk about when it comes to the sauce is mental stability. This is something that, again, if you are mentally unstable as a freelancer. It's going to show up in how you work with your clients, how you work with your projects, how you work with other peopleany people you collaborate with in projects.

Brian: And that's going to greatly affect how people perceive you. So we're gonna talk about both of these things. When it comes to the softs,

Brian: if you're wondering what I mean by the soft, I'm just talking about like soft skills and I may not be like getting the perfect definition of what soft skills are, but like soft skills are just personal at attributes thatenable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

Brian: I think that's what this category would be, the sauce. Let's talk about likability. How likable are you as a human being?

Brian: When I think of somebody who's likable, one of the people that stand out in my mind more than anyone else I've probably ever met is a guy named Billy Decker. He's a, uh, he's a music producer, more like a mixing engineer [00:04:00] here in Nashville, Tennessee, and anyone who knows Billy Decker likes Billy Decker.

Brian: I've never met someone who doesn't like Billy Decker. We've actually had him on the podcast

Brian: years and years and years ago. Lemme look this up. This, oh my God. Episode 13, it was called How Social Skills Help Billy Decker Dominate the Nashville Mixing Scene. That was back in 2018. Wow. Good Lord. I've been doing this show a long time. Anyways.

Brian: if you've ever met or talked to Billy Decker, he just embodies this likability factor, and I'm gonna try to,put out all the little pieces of it and what it amounts to so that you can try to be more likable person. I don't know how teachable this is. I don't know how much of this comes naturally.

Brian: Some people are more likable than others. I think some of it will come down to mental stability. Some people have a lot of mental issues that make them unlikable because those mental issues cause them to do things that are unlikable. So these kind of two things are tied together. But I'm starting here because as a freelancer, these things are the foundation of how successful you're gonna be.

Brian: Obviously, this goes without saying your skills as a freelancer, the creative skills you have. Are so damn important. [00:05:00] But they are like the starting point because you can be the best in the world, but if you don't get these four things right, including these softs, you're going to struggle immensely.

Brian: So let's, break down likability into things that are tangible things you can actually talk about. What does that mean? So the first thing is like warmth and communication, warmth. Not just saying things like a robot, but like a genuine tone, a relaxed body language. Something thatthey can sense that you're happy to talk to them. Not like an over formal. This is one thing I see in B2B all the time as a freelancer. I'm a B2B freelancer. I'm talking to big businesses. I have to talk like a professional, like a robot. there's nothing could be further from the truth than that.

Brian: Businesses, no matter how big they are, I've known peopleup to hundreds of millions of dollars business size, and they're all, in most cases. Not talking like robots. All the ones I've known and talked to, they talk like everyone else. They have warm interactions with people. they have genuineness behind them.

Brian: And so even in B2B space, you can talk to people with warmth. there's a time and place to be more formal and not more formal, but generally speaking. When you're communicating with [00:06:00] someone, be warm. That's the first part of likability. If you, again, if youever talk to, or if you just listen to the episode with Billy Decker, you can kind of sense how that is.

Brian: Number two is active listening. So many people do this really annoying thing where they're not listening, they're just waiting to respond. pretty much anyone here, unless you're that person, you know what that feels like. If you don't know what that feels like, then you're probably that person that you're just waiting to respond all the time and you're just trying to talk over people and finishing sentences so that you can finally say something.

Brian: But active listening is you're actually listening to what they're saying. You're processing what they said. You're reflecting it back so that people feel valued, they feel heard, they feel understood. This is actually a skill you can learn wherewhen someone says something to you, Especially when they're trying to communicate something complex to you, you can repeat back what they said. So something like, so from what I'm understanding, you're saying X, Y, and Z, right? Before I even try to respond to this. Right. Things like that just make people feel heard and valued. Now again, when we're just having like casual conversations, active listening means you're nodding your head, you're agreeing.

Brian: Yeah. That's awesome. That's fun. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Versus just sitting there like a robot [00:07:00] with a dead behind the eyes. Look, that's the second part of likability. Third is empathy. People like people who understand them, who can empathize with 'em, and empathy is just showing that you get their situation, you get their frustrations, you understand their goals, you're not judging them.

Brian: This makes people feel comfortable. This makes people feel like they can trust you.

Brian: And I guess the opposite of empathy would be like judgy and I don't know anyone who's likable, who's also judgy unless they hide it. Well, I guess you can be likable and be judgy if you hide it well, but that's, kind of going against the point here.

Brian: It's not empathetic. And the last thing here, and this is probably my most important part here when it comes to likability, is two things I'm gonna kind of bundle together is humor and self-awareness.

Brian: One of our core values at this company that I built, six figure Creative, where we have a team of 11 all around the world now and we've had to like. Put core values together is like, how do we wanna show up and operate as a team? One of our core values is fun, making sure we're actually doing things we enjoy and doing it in a way that we can enjoy it.

Brian: And humor is a big part of that Having jokes, playfulness, being able to laugh at yourself. All these sorts of things keep interactions human amongst each other. And it's the same with your clients. Obviously [00:08:00] you need to mirror how they're showing up, but in most cases, humor should be a part of how you interact and how you show up with people.

Brian: But at the end of the day, self-awareness has to be tied with humor because humor on the wrong setting can be horribly off-putting

Brian: A lack of self-awareness in general will do wonders to destroy your reputation, to make people not like you, not wanna be around you because you're not self-aware. I know a few people in my life who are not self-aware, and I usually try to avoid them. can't think of anyone that I regularly interact with that I want to be around, that I like, who is not also self-aware.

Brian: And that one is the one skill. I do not know if it can be taught at all. I don't know if self-awareness can be taught. Let's actually ask the internet here.

Brian: According to the internet, self-awareness can be taught through mindfulness and meditation. Reflective journaling, seeking feedback, self-reflection, observing others, and making age appropriate decisions. I don't know if I buy that. somebody can change my mind, but self-awareness is one of those that I, I've never seen someone go from unselfaware to self-aware.

Brian: I just [00:09:00] haven't seen it done. But I'd like to think it can be taught. I just, Ugh, I don't know. This is where we get into the argument of like. Can people change? And I would have to say yes. I've always believed that people can change 'cause I've changed so much in my life.

Brian: But self-awareness is that one sticking point. So I'll have to think on this. I dunno if I have the answer to this specific thing, but let's move on. We've got likability. That's the first thing. And just to recap, warmth and communication, active listening, empathy.

Brian: Then humor and self-awareness. Like those are the kind of the traits that kind of tie into likability. There's, there's more than that, but those are like the ones worth mentioning. And number two is mental stability. Again, we're talking about the soft, the things that are like really change how you interact and how you show up to other people, to your clients.

Brian: this is whether or not you're talking about a client, a dream client, or a dream wife. Like this is stuff that like you have to think aboutfor yourself just to show up better to other humans so that more people want to be around you. That includes friends, that includes family, even though family has to be, or basically forced to be around you, but includes family.

Brian: You want your family to wanna be around you, your friends, to wanna be around you. You want more friends and you want a good spouse or partner of some sort, and you obviously want good dream clients. So [00:10:00] mental stability is a huge part of this. And whenever you break down mental stability into parts that make sense as a freelancer.

Brian: It means that you are showing up with consistency and mood and tone. if your clients come to you and one day you're like,manic, another day you're like depressive. Another day you're like, happy. Another day you're sad. Another day you're,if you just show up in different mental states every single time you talk to a client, it's not gonna go well for you.

Brian: And I have great empathy. For people who have mental issues that they're working through, but at the same time, you have to realize that your mental issues will show up in your freelance business and will affect those things. So it is in your best interest to do whatever you can through therapy, through medication if necessary.

Brian: Through any other means necessary to get your mental state under control so that you're able to properly work as a freelancer and be attractive to your dream clients. The next is emotional regulation. It's similar to, I guess, consistency and mood, but emotional regulation is like whenever something bad happens, how do you react to it?

Brian: I see this in our own clients where something bad [00:11:00] happens, there's multiple ways you can react. One is fear, one is anger. Another one is sometimes curiosity. That's probably the better way reacting to something bad that happens to you. a better way of reacting would be problem solving,

Brian: but we all have emotional reaction to things and there's nothing wrong with that, but through motion regulation, the question is how quickly do you get back to baseline, to your normal state, and do you lash out to other people? This is an area that I, I've actively had to work on throughout the years is like when something bad happens.

Brian: Especially in like with clients in projects or in now my business with employees and teams and clients. How do I react? do I send that, TSE response versus waiting for myself to regulate before I send that response. Or better yet, typing out is more cathartic this way.

Brian: This is the wonderful use of Chad GBT by the way, typing out my really Tse mean response that I want to say to the client or team member or something else, and asking chat GBT to soften it up, make it nicer, and then that I don't have to do the mental work of doing that. It'll do it for me. good use of that.

Brian: Another part of being mentally stable is avoiding oversharing. If you have [00:12:00] personal chaos going on. been way too close to this in my life, in my days, with people around me where. If they're going through some personal chaos in life, but they're oversharing every step of the way, and it's okay to be human, we all go through crisis in life.

Brian: But dumping your personal crisis onto a professional setting or professional conversation, it's just gonna push people away. It's gonna make people not wanna be around you. It's offputting. This goes back to the self-awareness thing. If you don't have the self-awareness to not do these things, it can do a lot of damage to yourself and to your business.

Brian: In no way reflects how good or bad you are at your skill. So this is why I'm starting here. 'cause this is very important for this stuff to all come into place so that you can be a successful freelancer.

Brian: And I kind of mentioned this when it comes to mental stability is when you have something negative happened to you, something bad happens to you, is your response spiraling or is your response problem solving when shit gets really hard? respond with how can we solve this problem or how we can we solve this crisis?

Brian: Or how can we mitigate this pain? Or how can we,keep this from happening ever again in the future? Instead of responding with fear, responding with anger, responding with emotional [00:13:00] outbursts. this goes with obviously clients, but partner, spouse, team, friends, family.

Brian: Because I said it again, how you show up in your personal life, how you show up as a human. The problems you have as a,human being will show up in your business because you were a freelancer. And there is very little difference, I wouldn't say serial difference, but there's very little difference between you and your freelance business because you were one and the same.

Brian: So that's the first thing I want to talk about, the first of the big four here, and that is the soft skills, the things you have to have in place, and that is likability and mental stability.

Brian: All right. Now we get to the more tangible stuff. This comes to number two. We're getting out of the soft, fluffy things. So for all of you who are like a hate, soft, fluffy thing, We're out of it now. You're welcome. We're getting to, the first kind of liketangible thing, which is number two here, an appealing portfolio and or proof.

Brian: I'll,explain what that means. But many freelancers, you want that dream client and that dream client has the pick of the litter when it comes to who's gonna work with, And the way they're gonna decide who they work with is based off risk.

Brian: And so, for example, we have a,client in the web design space, she's looking for clients who are in the multimillion dollar [00:14:00] range doing Shopify e-commerce, for web design. That's what she's looking for. And those clients. Really, really care about conversion metrics, numbers. They obviously care about beauty and the way things look because that'sthe space they're in is beauty brands, but they're also hardcore conversion rate optimization nerds.

Brian: When that's the case and they have millions of dollars in their war chest, and they can spend however much they need to make their business better, not just more beautiful, but better convert, betterincrease the brand reputation, thebrand recognition, all those things that, again,design can be part of

Brian: the riskiest thing that that person can dois hire a freelancer with no proof that they can do what they need 'em to do. And so if you don't have proof, your number one objective as a freelancer is to get that proof by any means necessary. You work for free. You pay someone to do the project if you have to in order to get that first proof.

Brian: I'm not advocating you do that, but I'm just saying whatever you gotta do in order to get that one perfect case study that you can roll out to other people, things that show before and after results that shared numbers and metrics, if that's relevant to you.

Brian: And the goal is [00:15:00] having evidence, tangible evidence that they can look at or feel or analyze that shows that you can solve the exact type of problem that they want solved. Not just general skills. We don't want just general skills. Bad would be, I'm a web designer and I make really pretty websites.

Brian: That's like bad general skills, and your portfolio of just beautiful websites is not gonna cut it if you're going after this type of client. And exact problem versus general problem. The exact problem would be I redesigned this Shopify store for this skincare brand and I improve mobile navigation, and it ended up improving checkout conversions by 22% in the first month.

Brian: Like that's a very good case study where it's like there's a tangible increase. Here's the metrics to prove it. Here's maybe a video testimonial from the CMO. Here is the before and after of the website or the redesign. It's a full on case study that shows the proof. Do you think that that person. That case study is gonna be more appealing to those brands in the skincare space doing three, five, $10 million a year compared to the general skills freelancer, who I make, I make really pretty websites.

Brian: I use [00:16:00] Webflow to do all these wonderful animations that slow down the site and make things stutter because it's pretty. Which one do you think is more appealing?

Brian: this works in any niche. I'm just using web design for this example, but in music production, it's the same exact thing. The biggest, best artists have the pick of the litter. When it comes to producers. They're gonna work with the mixing users. They're gonna work with, they're the pick of the litter. So they're gonna go with someone that they know will deliver exactly what they want.

Brian: And if you don't have the portfolio to show that you can deliver exactly what they want and the reputation it match, which we'll talk about that later,you're gonna struggle.

Brian: And last I wanna talk about in this list of likeproof case studies portfolio is you want a clear track record in that specific industry with specifically similar clients. And this is something I've seen universal in every niche, every industry, that everyone feels like a snowflake. We have a client who does They fly out and do likecool lifestyle video for breweries in wineries, and they have done wineries before, but they want to move into breweries because they like that niche better. They resonate more withthat avatar. That's more of them that they can do it with.

Brian: But when talking with breweries. They wanna see [00:17:00] case studies for breweries. They wanna see the work they've done with breweries, not wineries, even though it's about the same damn thing.

Brian: It's content that puts butts in seats. That's basically it. But breweries wanna see exactly thing that they're gonna be delivered for other breweries. Just like in music production, the drop tune death core band wants to hear a portfolio with other drop tune death core bands. Not a fast thrash metal band, which if you don't know what the sub genres are.

Brian: there's a big difference with those two.

Brian: It's also the reason why, if you've ever seen our ads. We target very specific avatars in our ads. We target music producers, web designers, brand designers. We target people separately because when we just target general freelancers, our conversion rates tank, because everyone wants to see case studies and testimonials and things about their specific avatar.

Brian: So we have to customize a journey for every little avatar, and we have to have examples for every little niche, even though there is very little to no difference in client acquisition between a music producer and a web designer. A graphic designer and a branding designer, and a photographer, and a videographer and [00:18:00] a copywriter think you are selling a skill or a creative skill to a person or a business who wants that thing, a problem solved with your creative skill.

Brian: That's literally it.

Brian: And we could take our skillset to lawyers if we had to. But we don't, because we don't have a clear track record in the law industry and we don't have case studies with the law industry, and I have no interest in working with lawyers and helping them get more clients.

Brian: So that's number two is an appealing portfolio and or proof. Now I say, and or preferably you have a great portfolio and proof,

Brian: For example, we work with, clients who, it might be more data or numbers than it is just looks like I mentioned earlier. So portfolio and or proof. If you can't show it, then tell it or prove it. Number three on this list is a reputation that precedes you.

Brian: I,told you earlier, I'd talk about reputation. This is the big one. It's something I've seen destroy freelancers the first place I ever saw this happen, a reputation that preceded someone in a negative way was in the music production space.

Brian: 'cause that's my background music producer for every decade here in Nashville. And many times I would get [00:19:00] clients because another producer or another mixing engineer screwed that client. Every single time that happened, it tarnished the reputation of that producer or that mixing engineer and made it harder for them to get clients in the future.

Brian: And then I take clients on, I overdeliver, I make them happy. It's easier for me to get clients in the future. So every single freelancer out there has a reputation of some sort. It might be a tiny reputation 'cause no one really knows you. work could be a huge reputation 'cause everyone knows you. but the question is, is it good or is it bad reputation?

Brian: This is something I learned from Alex Mosey, especially in the paid ads world over time, CPMs, the cost to show ads to people on all platforms it's almost always up Every year.

Brian: It gets more and more expensive every year. So the question is, what percentage does it increase every year? Let's just call it 10, 20%. Every year gets 10 to 20% more expensive to show ads on platforms like Meta or YouTube or TikTok.

Brian: then the question is, what is the cost to acquire a client or a customer go up every year if it goes up the exact same. you've got basically a neutral reputation But if it goes up faster than ad costs are going, then you actually have a negative reputation.

Brian: Your reputation's working against [00:20:00] you.

Brian: and when I look at our own metrics, our cost to advertise has gone up over 50% this year, compared to last year, 50% higher this year.But our cost to acquire a client has only gone up about 20%, it's because we've done a lot to protect the reputation to make sure we're actually keeping people happy.

Brian: And in a world where. You're working with other humans, you can't always do that, but you can try your damnedest to overdeliver. You can try your damnest to fix things when the client misses something up, you can try to overdeliver even when it's not your fault. Now, I'm not saying to reward bad behavior 'cause we don't, we definitely don't do that.

Brian: But the question is, is your reputation hurting you or helping you? Which one is it? If you're honest with yourself, many freelancers, your reputation is hurting you.

Brian: So that's just like your rep. But there's also other things that associate your reputation that are not just how people talk about you behind your back. There's also public testimonials. Public reviews. How are people talking for you essentially? So whenever somebody is wants to say something about you.

Brian: Are they saying good things or are they saying bad things? Are your testimonials generic? They made our website look better. Cool. Generic, [00:21:00] or is it like a gushing, glowing testimonial?

Brian: Generally speaking, when it comes to how you handle testimonials versus reviews is you use testimonials. If it's from no names, it's 'cause you have power by association or if you can use really good specific numbers or results based 'cause it's kind of more like a social proof thing.

Brian: And then you use reviews when it's from no names. You get power in volume. So you get power with association, you get power in proof or you get power in volume. And so if you're doing a lot of like. One line reviews from people, or you do a high volume business, you wanna get reviews on like a public platform like Trustpilot or Google in most cases if you have a Google listing.

Brian: But one thing above all else will affect your reputation, and that is, are you willing to make short-term sacrifices to protect your long-term reputation? So many say yes, but when it comes to it they're going to make the short-term gain for the long-term pain. The long term reputation hit and I learned this lesson back in 2011 when I did this.

Brian: It was one of my largest projects. It was five weeks long. It was five figure project. It was a lot of money for me at the time, and I lost all the files. [00:22:00] The files got wiped from my hard drive. At the end of the project when we were wrapping things up, And the question is, how would most freelancers handle that?

Brian: The way I handled it was I gave him two options. I called him up. As soon as I realized that my heart was still in my stomach. When I called him, he thought I was joking. At first, the client did, I had to say that willing to do two things.

Brian: One is I can just refund you all of your money, or number two is I will do the entire project again for free, plus two extra deliverables to try to make up for it. And that sucked. They took option B. I had to work for five more weeks for free, plus a little extra on top of that to overdeliver because of something that I messed up.

Brian: And there are multiple freelancers that I know that would've just tuck tail and run. They would've just literally ran away from that problem.

Brian: And that I was, honestly, that was like rock bottom for my freelance career. I'm not gonna pretend like it was fun to do, or it was easy. It was awful. And this is, we are like, what, 14 years later? And I still can feel this pain in my gut just thinking about it. But that was a short term pain. It was like five weeks short term in the grand scheme of life for longer [00:23:00] term gain.

Brian: I learned to be resilient. I learned to own my mistakes. I help my reputation. At least as much as I could. They probably still were like, this guy lost our entire project. He redid it for free. That's nice of him, but he lost it, which is not very professional.

Brian: So that's number three on this list says, do you have a reputation that helps or hurt? Remember again, we're trying to be more attractive to our dream clients. and when your dream client is considering you, if you even get so lucky as to be considered for the project for the dream client, how's your reputation?

Brian: Is it helping or is it hurting? And number four here, and this is the last one, is do you make them feel like they're actually in good hands and they can trust you.

Brian: This part here is obviously further down the buyer's journey, even to some parts of when you're actually starting the project, like onboarding and things like that. But many times freelancers drop the ball in many ways, and it can be small ways, it can be big ways, but it can all add up to them realizing they made a mistake.

Brian: It could be on the discovery call, it could be in the, just the communication before discovery call,

Brian: How do you actually quantify this? I try to break it down to a few different sections here. 'cause that's just how my brain works, is the [00:24:00] first one is clear communication. Without just disappearing. this is something I've experienced twice recently.

Brian: The first one was just try to find a fucking lawn care provider. To cut my lawn here has been a quite a process. We hired somebody, they cut our lawn. We agreed on every couple weeks 'cause that's all our law needed. And then

Brian: out of nowhere they just send a text that says we're moving all of our clients to weekly. Just like forcing all the clients to go weekly, which I didn't necessarily want at the time, and it put a poor taste in my mouth because it was different than what we had communicated beforehand with the terms of what we wanted.

Brian: Went and found another provider, another lawn care person,

Brian: this person had great reviews, great reputation, and did a great job the first few times.

Brian: But then he just stopped showing up and we reached out to him. He said he had a family emergency. I was empathetic. Our grass is still growing, so someone's gotta cut the lawn. So eventually trying to say, Hey, what can we expect timeline wise for this to get resolved? So I know if I need to get someone else hired before this gets outta hand.

Brian: No communication. One day he just randomly shows up, does a horrible job cutting our yard, it was already overgrown. He [00:25:00] apologizes for the weight

Brian: and about that time is we're leaving for our trip. We just got back from our trip from Europe in the last,few weeks we were in Europeand he just ghosts us. No communications, not responding to things. I don't know if he's cutting our lawn or not. 'cause we're outta the country and we get home and our grass is like up to my knees.

Brian: Do you think I'm happy with this? No. Do you think we're ever gonna work with this person again? No. Do you think I left that person a bad review? Yes.

Brian: I don't know what he's going through. I have empathy for that. But at the same time, if something is happening in your life as a freelancer, communicating those things so that someone can still be taken care of is above and beyond anything else you're dealing with. Again, he could have just said, I'm so sorry. I cannot do your lawn right now. Too much is going on. My life X, Y, and Z is happening, or I'm still dealing with my family emergency. Keep it vague, whatever. But communication is very important, and that could have at least saved his reputation. I wouldn't have left him a bad review if he would've just communicated anything to us, but just a ghost and not do anything for three weeks.

Brian: Okay, I'm, I'm venting at this point. That's the first case of this. So in ended up, we hired somebody again, the next person. We hired someone who's amazing at communicating, someone who was proactively communicating, someone who was responding quickly, [00:26:00] someone who showed up, knocked on the door, talked to us, shook her hand, told us what they thought.

Brian: We hired them. They were the most expensive by far of anyone we talked to.

Brian: Because they actually have communicated well. They did a great job cutting that mess up. And the same thing kind of happened when we were hiring a video editor. We were looking for a video editor. 'cause we're doing a lot of new,content and a lot of, stuff internally for, our products and looking for video editor.

Brian: So many people we talk to and look to hire, we're so bad at communicating and just. Clearly stating things that they weren't even considering. Even if their portfolio was great, if their proof is great, I didn't wanna work with somebody who I cannot communicate with.

Brian: Because again, I cannot trust that person. I cannot feel like I can trust that person to do what they're saying they're gonna do, or to even interpret what I'm saying. If they can't communicate with me, if they can't respond quickly enough, if they can't respond with clarity, they don't have to decipher what they're trying to say to me, and they actually respond in a way that makes me feel like they actually read and understood what I sent to them.

Brian: So the first part of making people feel like they're in good hands and they can trust you is clear communication. Without ghosting, it's not that hard. It's not that hard. The second part is confidence. Without arrogance, clients want certainty when they're [00:27:00] hiring you. hiring you is a risk to them, and the more proof you have, the better your reputation.

Brian: The better your communication, the better everything is. The more mentally stable you are, the more likable you are, and better hands they feel, the more certain they are that you can deliver what you say you can deliver. And confidence is a huge part of certainty. in just about every space.

Brian: You want a confident freelancer who's like, I've done this a billion times, you're in good hands. Certainty is very attractive. And again, we're talking about are you attractive to your dream clients? Dream clients want freelancers who are certain, and with certainty comes confidence.

Brian: And confidence is attractive. Arrogance is not, but confidence is and confidence will show up in how you talk to your clients. Confidence will show up in how you advertise or market. Any content you create, any communication you do whatsoever. Confidence will either show or not show,

Brian: but confidence will make them feel like they can trust you. And that's again, that's the fourth thing, is they need to feel like they can trust you, that they're in good hands.

Brian: and another thing that'll make them feel like they're in good hands, that they can trust you, is solving problems they didn't even know they had.

Brian: There's a quote or something I've heard that I've just kind of always, believed, [00:28:00] and that is when you can articulate someone's pain or problem better than they can, then you win. Because when you can explain that pain or describe that pain to them better than they can describe to themselves, they assume you have a solution to that pain.

Brian: Or a solution to that problem. And when I think about problems, I think of like macro problems and I think micro problems, a macro problem. I'm gonna use the example that you can understand because you're listening to this show. So I know you likely have this problem or a similar problem or you've experienced it before, a macro problem is,related to client acquisition, is feast or famine.

Brian: That's like a common issue. That's a macro problem. It's a big problem. Many freelancers deal with actively, every freelancer has dealt with at some point in their life. Myself included, I had a month. In my freelance career where I had a 20,000 a month followed by $1,250 a month, that's a massive dip, right?

Brian: cool. That's the macro. The micro though, is all the little nuanced things that when described, people understand that you know their pain.

Brian: So when it comes to, again, macro versus micro. Macro is the feast or famine. Micro is you feel like you're in this constant uphill battle between trying to deliver on projects or overdeliver on [00:29:00] projects because everyone says you have to overdeliver right while also making sure next month you still can make ends meet.

Brian: And then you have this feeling of hopelessness because you're at the mercy of other people to pay your bills, because that's how the freelance economy is set up, is other people are essentially paying you so that you can pay your bills. You're in the mercy of them, and so you have no idea how to keep those famine periods from coming because it's up to them to say yes to you.

Brian: So you keep shifting between these feelings of euphoria when things are working really, really well and panic when things slow down that panic will turn into self-doubt about whether even cut out for this. denial that you're even good enough to make this work

Brian: and then start crushing your self-confidence and that self-confidence again can cause you to spiral. Because now, because of your lack of confidence, because of your desperation, you're pushing clients away because you're,trying to get clients so bad. It's like when you're dating and you're so desperate to date, you're pushing people away because you're so clingy.

Brian: That's how you show up to your clients. And so it's this downward spiral. a terrible feeling. That's micro. that's what I mean if like, I understand the pain of client acquisition because I have helped so many people with this at this point. We've worked with [00:30:00] hundreds of freelancers to help 'em with client acquisition problems,

Brian: and it all is done in the exact same way. Every single person we work with, they have to apply to work with us. We vet the application. We reject more than half of the applicants that apply Because you have to be good enough first before we can help you. If you're not good enough, we will not help you.

Brian: If your business model is too different from what we know we can help with, we won't accept it. From there, we create an entire client acquisition strategy for the person,

Brian: the details. All of the things that we either think are missing, that need to be added, are broken, that need to be fixed, are wasted time and effort. They need to just be stopped altogether. We pitch it to the person, we pitch it to you. If that's you. For approval, revisions or rejection. If you approve it, we work together.

Brian: If you reject it, we part ways you're literally out no risk at that point. And from there, we just coach month to month, no contracts until your client acquisition system has been built out with a dedicated coach access to a whole team of coaches with different backgrounds and different perspectives who can solve just about every issue we've ever seen.

Brian: Outta the hundreds of clients we've worked with, there have only been a small handful of situations that have come up that somebody on the team didn't have an answer for. So if you are in this [00:31:00] pain, this feast or famine pain, and you want some help, at least an outside perspective, at least consider applying.

Brian: Let's go to six figure creative.com/coaching. Fill out the short application there, and that's all you have to think about, at least right now. So that's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for checking out the podcast. If you're new, there's a hundred, there's 200, no shit, 374 other episodes to browse through.

Brian: So I suggest just scrolling through the app, seeing what,calls out to you. See what you like, see what you don't like. There's tons here. I focus more on the tactical. There's plenty of podcasts that talk creativity very well, very effectively.

Brian: plenty of people who talk about the more fluffy stuff. That's not really me. I talk about the tactical and practical. So there's plenty of episodes in here that solve specific problems or talkspecific things that you might be struggling with right now. So I really,this is a very bingeable podcast if you're into that sort of thing.

Brian: life update. Just got back from our trip to Europe. It's one of our favorite trips. We didIceland, Copenhagen, and then a few different cities, three or four different cities in Switzerland, and it was gorgeous. And about halfway through the trip. I asked, Chad, BT, I was like, what are the most expensive cities, to travel in as a tourist?

Brian: [00:32:00] it gave me the top five and the top three were Iceland, Copenhagen, Switzerland, where the top three most expensive cities to travel in. So this was like the amount of time we spent there. It was one of our more, more expensive trips that we've done. And just to give us some perspective, if you live in Switzerland, you probably already know this stuff, but likewe were in like Vermont, which is a very like,high-end ski town.

Brian: It's where you can see the Matterhorn. Gorgeous, it was on my bucket list. Gotta see the Matterhorn, which is amazing. maybe my team will put the picture from our hotel room on the, uh, show notes page. If you go to six figure creative.com/ 3 7 5, Beautiful, gorgeous, amazing. But. Because of the, place you're at how far you are from everything. a hamburger at a restaurant would be like 35, $40 and not come with fries.Couldn't believe it. Not come with fries. Insane.

Brian: But it was still an amazing trip. It was like probably one of my wife and i's favorite trips we've done just because some of those beautiful places to be. So that's all I got again, thanks for checking out the podcast. We'll be back next week. Maybe with a guest. I think we might have a guest on the show.

Brian: We'll see. See you next week. Peace.