Why You’re Stuck On The Feast Or Famine Roller Coaster (And How To Get Off)

333. inputs and outputs

===

[00:00:00]

Brian: Happy October. Fall is in full swing. I am now in hoodie weather. ~It's, ~I'm so happy for this. Yesterday in Nashville was what I call Happy First Breath Day. It's like the first day of the year that we were able to see our breath when I came outside in the morning to go to the gym. Or actually it was after coming to the gym where you,~ you, ~the sun was actually out.

Brian: My wife~ My wife has like completely redecorated red. ~has like completely redecorated her house, so we have all fall to court everywhere.~ to court ~And my wife ~ca ~came from a family who redecorate four times a year for like all four seasons. They redecorate the house completely different.

Brian: And if you follow me on social, on, ~ on social, on, ~on Instagram for a while, you've seen my yearly. Christmas tour update of their like insanely elaborate Christmas decor stuff. We're not going to get to that level, but yeah, October's here. I'm in a hoodie. If I'm in a hoodie, I'm happy. Happy Brian is hoodie Brian.

Brian: ~Today. I want to talk about ~today. I want to talk about how to stop these wild swings in monthly income that most freelancers experience at some point. ~would ~This would be bit of a tough love episode, especially for you freelancers who are really successful. And follow this kind of client acquisition model that 95 percent of people that I talk to follow.

Brian: ~You're probably this, if you're successful freelancer, unless you've been listening the show for a while, ~unless you've been listening the show for a while, especially if you're new, you probably follow this model of getting clients. [00:01:00] Here's how it goes. You work with clients. Those clients refer more clients to you. You work with those clients. These clients refer more clients to you and you repeat that and at best you become highly successful in a business You have zero control over that's at best.

Brian: That's the word of mouth deathtrap. I've had episodes on this I've had YouTube videos on this but it's something that I've seen so many people fall into because I've had so many conversations with people who are up to 100, 000 a year 200, 000 a year 250, 000 a year some people that I've talked to in micro agencies at like three to four hundred thousand a year They've grown there Many of them through this word of mouth snowball that I've talked about before.

Brian: It's a wonderful thing to have word of mouth on your side There's nothing wrong with that The problem and the danger is relying only on that and then you have these ups and downs this feast or famine that can happen Inevitably and what happens when you're really successful and you've gotten there through word of mouth And you see one of my ads where I talk about feast or famine and you're the guy who's like, I've been busy for 20 years.

Brian: My counter has been book solid for 20 years, just some word of mouth. And then you have that one to two months, that three month span, that [00:02:00] famine mode where it stops working. And you've built this lifestyle up over the last 20 years, what we call lifestyle creep, where your income keeps going up. So my lifestyle income keeps going up.

Brian: Now I have to have more expenses. I have a bigger house. I have better cars. I have more shit than I'm paying for. And that starts to go up as well. And when you get into this word of mouth, death trap, inevitably the bottom drops out somewhere and you end up. Eating your words, you end up seeking out people like me to help you because now you don't know what to do because you had zero control over it.

Brian: Waiting around for clients is not an acquisition model. It is not a way to build a sustainable business that's going to be there for the long term.

Brian: And at best you can build it up to a certain point, ~but at worst you can, ~but at worst you end up hitting a plateau where you can't get past it or you start shrinking in your income or

Brian: you hit one of those famine periods in this feast your famine rollercoaster that freelancers generally ride on. This horrible roller coaster, we don't want to be honest, the world's worst roller coaster. You hit one of those famine periods, those dips in your income for too long. The famine period lasts so long that your business basically dies.

Brian: you're forced to go off and get a job or do something [00:03:00] else other than freelancing because it didn't work for you. Or you have to massively downsize your life, sell your house, sell your cars, buy old beat up cars, start renting a home that's smaller. Like all these things that are I don't want anyone to have to do all because you fell into this word of mouth death trap.

Brian: ~Let me try this again. And the reason I hate the word of ~and the reason this word of mouth death trap is something that I'm so passionate about is because it's something that you have zero control over.

Brian: I'm an Enneagram eight. If you know the Enneagram eight,~ Enneagram eight, ~Enneagram eights are challengers, and they also crave control over things. ~I'm like~ I wouldn't call myself a control freak, but I really do want to control those parts of my life and my business that really matter. So like, maybe a healthy control freak.

Brian: I do want control over those really important parts. I do not want to leave things to chance or leave things to someone else's hands that I can't trust. If it's a crucial part of my life, ~I want to, if ~I want to at least know how the things work so that if it's in someone else's hands, I know whether or not they're doing it correctly.

Brian: So when you're relying on referrals or word of mouth clients, ~There's no, ~there's nothing you can go do to 3x the number of referrals you're getting overnight. So think about that. You could influence people by asking for more referrals.

Brian: You could do [00:04:00] that and maybe you'll get a short bump in referrals, but then it'll quickly die off and you likely will see a big dip in the next weeks or months. from referrals you would have otherwise gotten. You essentially just clear out your pipeline of referrals. And all of this still depends on you having a good client base in the first place.

Brian: So what about all the other people out there that either don't have a large client base or they're brand new and they're just getting into this? That's the topic of today. this episode is going to be All mapped around people that are already doing well, but they've hit a plateau or they're hitting these feast or famine months, or maybe your lifestyle creep is catching up with your income and you don't want that big dip in income to happen because you've fallen into this word of mouth ~dress ~death trap.

Brian: So I want to talk in this episode about a really boring topic on the surface that when we dig into it, you'll start to understand what I'm talking about here. It's inputs and outputs. Clear inputs and clear outputs ~and I said it before but waiting around for referrals ~and I said it before but waiting around for referrals is not an action you can take it is literally passive

Brian: so in order to keep this from happening we have to create a client acquisition channel where you control the inputs you have such control over the input that you could literally 2x or 3x [00:05:00] or 5x or 10x the inputs and Overnight or within a relatively small amount of time, ~ inputs ~in order to start affecting the outputs in a positive direction.

Brian: Now, in most cases, if you 2x or 3x or 5x the number of inputs, you're not going to 2x or 3x or 5x the number of your income, ~but it's still, ~but it's still going to affect it in a positive direction. ~So the benefit, so the reason, but ~the power of this is that you actually control this. If you can control the inputs, you can control the outputs.

Brian: If you can 5x the inputs, you might 2x or 3x the outputs, your income, in other words. ~And I want to break down in this episode, what are the main inputs you want to, ~break down in this episode, what are the actual things that you can control? What are those inputs that you can actually go off and do, things that you can put into your hands and control, in order to give you effective outputs, aka income, aka clients?

Brian: On the other side so that you have full control over this and you're not just waiting around for referrals again Referrals are an inevitability if you're good at what you do, you should get referrals. That's wonderful Nothing wrong with that But I still want to always be doing things that I control on the front end with his inputs that I'm talking about So that I have clients that I've generated versus just waiting around for clients because even if you are pretty booked up or [00:06:00] even booked Solid nothing is lost from gaining more clients From doing these things, because now you can start to cherry pick even more.

Brian: So unless you were just absolutely swamped. and you're in no need of clients, I really don't know why you'd listen to the show. Cause you talk about client acquisition a lot, but unless you're that type of person, this episode is absolutely for you.

Brian: If you're brand new here or relatively new here, this podcast is called six figure creative. Hi, I'm Brian. The host here. Thank you so much for listening. This podcast is for you, or if you are a creative freelancer, you offer freelance services, and you want to make more money from your creative skills without selling your soul.

Brian: If that sounds like you, this is the right place for you. ~I cannot think of a less, ~I cannot think of a better way to make more money than to put things into your control. That is not selling your soul in any way, shape, or form. When you put your business in your hands and your control versus in the hands of others.

Brian: Waiting around, hoping, praying. We call it hope marketing.

Brian: And it is a terrible thing. Hope marketing is. So I've got six inputs that you can control yourself. In order to get clients. And I've got a bonus thing as well to talk about after this, a little seven thing. And I've put this in order of least favorite to favorite. So we're gonna talk [00:07:00] about the clear inputs you can control, but are my least favorite, and we're going to work our way up to my favorite ones.

Brian: So number six will be my favorite one. And then the bonus is, I guess, ultimately my favorite, but we'll talk about that when we get there. So input number one, and this is a good one just to can really help you understand it if you're still lost at what I'm talking about here. For some reason, number one here is just cold outreach.

Brian: Okay. And let me explain this because this is like the clearest way to explain this with cold outreach. There's two inputs. Inputs is number of email sent. Outputs is number of clients gained. Two very clear things. So when you're doing cold outreach,

Brian: the key metric you need to understand is how many emails or how many DMS do I need to send out or cold calls? If you're doing cold calling, which I don't know if anyone who's doing that, but how many of these things do I need to do? These actions are I need to take in order to gain one client? Is it? 10 emails that are really hyper personalized.

Brian: Is it a hundred emails that are kind of pseudo personalized? Is it a thousand emails that are just absolute spam in order to get one client? What is that number? And I hope you're on the side where you're a lot more personalized somewhere in the 10 to a hundred range to get a client.

Brian: But most people, when they do cold outreach, they don't think this way. [00:08:00] They think I've heard cold outreach work. So I'm just going to randomly send an amount of emails out. I'm going to send maybe a hundred, which is like. A decent amount to start and then I might get some replies back and then I won't follow up with any of those and then it just pedals out and I say it didn't work for me that's Truthfully, what most freelancers do when they attempt to cold outreach.

Brian: Now, I'm not a fan of cold outreach. I don't have that as client acquisition method for any of the clients that I work with, but it is a method that has been proven to work. It absolutely works. It is soul sucking mind numbing work.

Brian: It can be very tedious, but it's easy to do,

Brian: especially if you're in a market where there's not a whole lot of client base that you can go after. for example, the clients that we work with, we say that your niche needs to have at least 20, if it's B2B at least. 20, 000, ideal clients in that niche. And if it's less than that, you might need to do something like cold outreach, where you can be hyper targeted and just go create a list of your ideal clients and then start reaching out one to one.

Brian: But if you boil this approach down to clear inputs, how many emails do I need to send out and clear outputs, how many leads and then clients does that generate? You're able to take your client acquisition into your hands. If it [00:09:00] takes 50 emails to gain one client and I need four clients a month, how many emails do I need to send?

Brian: 200 emails, And if you work 20 days a month, that means I need to send out 10 per day. And what if I need to double my income or double my clientele? I probably need to at least double the amount of emails I'm sending out up to 400. So 20 a day, that is a really clear, easy to understand example of clear inputs and outputs.

Brian: You control the input. You can go out and I say, if we need a two X or three X or five X your number of clients or leads that you're generating, what can we do? We just send two X, three X or five X or 10 X. The number of emails we're sending every day. You turn it into a process with the follow that process have good tracking in place so that we know all the metrics that I'm asking you here if you don't understand the metrics involved in these things, anything that I talk about today, if you don't understand the metrics of the numbers behind it, It'll be very difficult for you to, A, keep it up long term for success, ~and B, know, and B, know how many, ~and B, know how much effort it's going to be to land clients, to know if it's even worth the time, effort, energy involved.

Brian: Because if it takes a hundred emails to land one client worth a hundred dollars, it's not very worth it. But if it takes 100 emails to land a client worth 10, [00:10:00] 000, I'd say in a lot of cases that's worth it.

Brian: So that's input, output, controllable method. Number one is cold outreach. Again, my least favorite on this list, ~but it is one that you, ~but it is one that's absolutely clear to understand.

Brian: Number two is in person networking. is not my favorite one for a few reasons, but it is obviously viable. It can be valuable as well.

Brian: And the way most freelancers do this is if they're networking, they're either just going to random parties or they are going to random networking events and they're doing it willy nilly. I'll go to some here and then I won't. it's not a system. It's not a process to follow. It is just, I am now networking.

Brian: I'm either networking or I'm not. There's no metrics I track, there's no quality with this. It is just throw spaghetti, hope I get some clients from this. But if you turn this into a controllable method, ~it can work. I've seen this work for many people. Let's try this again. It can work. I've seen this work for clients that I've talked to.~

Brian: ~Let me try this one more time. It can work. I've seen this work with clients that ~it can work. I've seen this work with freelancers that I've talked to.

Brian: And to boil this down to clear inputs and outputs, the inputs is the number of events or gatherings that you've attended ~and the outputs~

Brian: ~and the metrics that we need to track. ~And the metrics we need to track for this are what are the number of leads generated per event. So if you're at a networking event or you hang out at a party or gathering or whatever of your [00:11:00] peers or whatever kind of like event you're going to,

Brian: ~do you actually walk, ~you actually walk away with any potential leads? And the lead is just someone who could be interested in working with you. They may be a good fit, Start the conversation. And then of those leads, how many of those leads turn into clients? If you understand those two key metrics and you understand how many from each event you go to, you start to generate, you can start to make it a routine every week.

Brian: I attend one event. So there was guy who's talking to, he goes to BNI event. So that's business, networking, international, something like that. Every week he's a web designer in the B2B space. And so he goes to that every event, every week, he generates a certain number of leads. Those leads are nurtured over a long time and he can turn a number of those into clients.

Brian: So if you can boil it down to that level, you can start to. Turn it into a repeatable system. ~One event gets me three leads. One of those leads turns into one event gets me three leads. Every event, ~one event gets me three leads. It takes six leads to get one client. So I need to get two events every week in order to get one client a week.

Brian: So maybe I need to go join some other association, or maybe I need to find some other sort of meet up to attend, or maybe I need to X, Y, and Z. Again, the reason I don't love this method is because it can Really be capped by how connected [00:12:00] you are. And if there's anything that I've learned over the years is when you're trying to help a lot of people at scale, you've got to find things that work for a lot of people at scale and networking is so limited on your geography.

Brian: It's so limited on. Your personality as well, because I know a lot of people who are great at what they do, but they're not the most magnetic personalities for being honest. So this one has some pitfalls with it, but it still can be if you're the right person in the right network in the right city, you're surrounded by the right types of clients that you're going to these events with the people that are your ideal clients are at these events.

Brian: You can turn it into a clear inputs output scenario where every three events, I gained a client every two events, I gained a client, and you have some amount of control over that much more than just waiting around for referrals.

Brian: So that's number two. My second least favorite in person networking

Brian: number three. Controllable method here for client acquisition is content creation. short form, long form. It's whatever your preference is. It doesn't really matter.

Brian: and just as a general guide, short form can be better for discovery. Long form can be better for trust and credibility. This podcast is an example of long form. This episode will probably be 30, 40 minutes. Past [00:13:00] episodes can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Some are on the short some are on the long side, but that's definitely long form media, Instagram reels, TikTok, all those things are generally short form media, but they have more potential reach for discovery, depending on the content you talk about. And again, similarly, how magnetic your personality is, or at least how will you explain things, but this can be again, boiled down to simple inputs and outputs.

Brian: And the inputs can be the number of pieces of content created. Because that's the only real input that you control in content creation. you don't control the number of followers you gain.

Brian: You don't control the number of impressions the algorithm gives you. You only control the amount of content that you can create. So if your input is content created, then the output, we need to track two key metrics with this.

Brian: One of the two, really. The first of the two metrics is content pieces per client. It may be that you're posting daily on Instagram if you post every day, then on average, once a week, someone will inquire about your services, especially if you sprinkle in call to action. You're really strategic with this.

Brian: You're not just posting funny content with no call to action, no funnel or anything on the backend. A lot of this is predicated on you understand. Basic marketing [00:14:00] principles and funnels and calls to action. If you don't go back and listen to any of our past backlog, the client acquisition series, the lead generation series, the sales series, all of those will be in our show notes at six figure creative.

Brian: com slash three, three, three, which by the way, happy three, three, three episode. You only get one of these per hundred episodes. So last one we had of this was episode two, two, two. And before that was one, one, one. But anyways, go to six figure creative.

Brian: com slash three, three, three. And the show notes on that page will link you to all three of those series, at least the first episodes in those series to make it easy for my team.

Brian: Anyways, going back to this two metrics you can track here for outputs, content pieces per client. So if I know I need to do a daily piece of content short form or a weekly piece of content along form in order to get a client. That can be one method of tracking this, or the other method of tracking this is impressions or followers subscribers per client.

Brian: Meaning, ~if I am, ~if I'm putting out content, I've got to put out as much content as necessary to reach the number of impressions or subscribers or followers in order to gain a client. Again, ~I'm going to get, ~I'm not going to get super deep into this because ~that's, ~you can get off some really nerdy land when you get into social media world.

Brian: But the [00:15:00] number of impressions is basically just how many people saw your content in a given day, week, month, year.

Brian: Now, along with this, you have to be making sure the content you're creating is stuff that your IDO clients want~ IDO ~to see or want to consume or want to listen to if it's a podcast or watch if it's YouTube ~or, ~not scroll past or skip if it's social media instead of content that you care about, that's just going to attract more people like you who are not your IDO client.~ IDO ~And that's why this is third on the list. It's kind of in the middle. I don't love it. I don't hate it. It is necessary in many cases. ~And it really fits in well to a full client acquisition. ~And it really fits in well to a full holistic client acquisition system, especially if you are a good educator or a good communicator

Brian: or can at least get there, ~There's, ~if you watch my very first YouTube video, which unfortunately will be embedded on our show notes page at six figure creative. com slash three, three, three,~ slash three, three, three, ~it is the cringiest damn video of all time. I used to be a drummer in that YouTube video from like 2009. I'm showing something called the Hilltoe technique,~ Hilltoe ~which is how you basically do double stroke rolls with your feet.

Brian: You can do really fast double base stuff. interesting video, but, on that video, you can see young Brian from 13 years ago or 14 or 15 [00:16:00] years ago who didn't know how to communicate, who said, um, like a hundred times in the video who literally said, I'm a terrible teacher in the video. You can see how far you can come if you put the time, effort, energy into honing this craft.

Brian: and a lot of consistency, but that's content creation. It is something that you do control inputs there's a better way to fit this into your holistic system and not make it your main thing. So we'll talk about this later, ~but~ but yeah, that's the number three content creation.

Brian: We're gonna move on to number four, which is one of my favorites.

Brian: Very controllable tried and true has been around for decades now and has gone through some changes here and there But it's out. It's lasted longer than social media

Brian: and that is email marketing

Brian: and if you do email marketing This is another one of those almost crystal clear inputs and outputs scenarios There's only two kind of things you need to track one is how many emails do you send to your list?

Brian: Is it a daily email? Is it a weekly email? Is it a bi weekly email? Is it a monthly email? And then key metric for output is how many opens per client. So in an email list, when you send an email out, any sort of email marketing software you use will tell you your [00:17:00] open rate or number of opens on your email.

Brian: So if you have an email list of a thousand people and you have a 35 percent open rate, that means 350 people open that email. So in this world, we just need to know how many opens does it take To generate an inquiry and then a client ~so you can do the the jab So you can do the jab right hook approach where you do a weekly email every four emails is ~so you can do the jab right hook approach where it's Every I think four emails is kind of a pitch or an ask for anyone who is interested in your services or hiring you there's different ways to ask this It doesn't have to be cringy or tacky, but the jab, jab, jab is just content, right?

Brian: It's just education or it's just trust building or it's just interesting or entertaining or educational content or ~education, edu, ~edutainment as they call it. ~There's a, again, there's, we're not getting into strategy for these specific things here. ~Again, we're not getting into specifics of the tactics of this stuff here.

Brian: We're just talking about the overarching strategy of clear inputs and outputs. But we know that if we have an email list of a thousand ~we send four emails a week to a four thousand total Subscribers ~we send four emails a week to those thousand people and you're getting about let's call it for easy math ~for ~300 opens Per email that means you get 1200 impressions per week And let's just say you get one client on average a week, ~then that, ~for every 1200 opens on the email list, I gained one client or one inquiry, whatever you want to track here.

Brian: And so if we need to up the ante and I want to get more clients, I can [00:18:00] either increase the frequency I'm sending emails and there's a upper limit to that. ~And ~And there's a big drop off. The more you send emails past a certain point, you're going to get less of a response on the backend unless you've got really good content.

Brian: That's one approach, or we can increase our subscriber list. ~Okay. ~And now the question is, how do we make our subscriber list, our email list larger? And that leads me to number five here, which is one of my favorite things,

Brian: and that is paid ads. I talked about this back in episode three 30,

Brian: where we talked about what's working now

Brian: in client acquisition. ~Many of our clients are doing paid ads to good. Trash man,~

Brian: ~Trash pickup, picking up the trash outside where they're loud ass truck.~

Brian: ~They're done.~

Brian: ~Many of our clients are doing paid ads. Many of them are having great success with this.~

Brian: Many of the people we work with are doing paid advertising right now in their freelance businesses. Many of them are having great success

Brian: and paid ads boils down to just two very clear inputs and outputs. Input number one, how many dollars in? ~Input ~output number one, how many dollars out? And in service based business, the goal is for a one to five ratio, meaning if you put a dollar in, you get five bucks out anything less than that. And we got to work on efficiency of the overall funnel and the overall system.

Brian: And without getting into like the painful details in this, there is like tons of micrometrics. And then there's only a few macro metrics to track and paid [00:19:00] ads. Macro metrics are the big metrics that you actually care about. And that is, ~tack. ~tack. They call it in the software world, CAC customer acquisition costs.

Brian: We call it client acquisition cost or a better one is cost per acquisition. What's it cost to acquire a client That's one of the big macro metrics,

Brian: but there's like a ton of little micrometrics, things that don't. really matter if the macro metrics are good, but if the macro metrics are not good, the micro metrics really matter. We start to troubleshoot these individually, there's everything from, CPM. So cost per milli cost per click cost per lead cost per book call cost per qualified lead cost per completed call hook percentage, average view rate, et cetera.

Brian: There's like so many of these little micro metrics and every one of these tells a little story of Oh, this part is bad. We need to fix this one thing to start to optimize it so it actually starts to work so that now that more of the 1 that we put in come out to more of the 5 that we want on the back end or better, And I know this because in my own business last month, we put a dollar in, we got 10 out.

Brian: If you listen to episode 330, which is just a few episodes ago, you know why I like this method so much. It doesn't require you to get on a content treadmill. It doesn't [00:20:00] require you to consistently. Email people with cold outreach.

Brian: It doesn't require you to do tons of in person networking, especially for those of you who are geographically limited,

Brian: it does take money. And one of the number one questions we get from people is how much do I need to spend on ads? And my answer for those people is always the same, as much as you possibly can, as much as humanly possible at a certain point. Your roster will be full or your calendar will be book solid and you can't possibly spend more money on ads.

Brian: So that's the upper limit. Or, at a certain point, you're not the basic benchmarks or metrics, at least the clients that we work with, that we give them. So if you're not hitting those benchmarks, you can't spend more. So you can't possibly spend more because you would be losing money. So we have to keep the ad spend small until we optimize things and fix things so that you can then start to increase your ad spend, but it's always spent as much as humanly possible because you're making more than you put in.

Brian: So if you put a dollar into a box and you open the box back up and it gives you 5 out, how many dollars do you put in that box? The answer is as many as humanly possible, right?

Brian: But that's number five paid ads. There's still one more. That's more of my favorite because it's [00:21:00] so simple that everyone can do it. And it's something that very few people actually do. And number six for clear inputs and outputs is followup routines. Basic followup routines. This is something that you do control.

Brian: This is something that no matter where your business is at, no matter what you do, no matter income level, unless you're at zero right now, you can do this. Simple followup routines. And the input is this, how many followups did I send this past month? And the output or the metric we follow for the output is how many followups does it take to get a client?

Brian: Whether you use a CRM or use a basic spreadsheet, you can track these sorts of metrics. And you can put a routine into place to know that every morning for the first hour of the morning or the first 30 minutes in the morning, I'm going to do my basic follow ups at the end of every day. I'm gonna do my basic follow ups and I'm going to slowly gain dozens or hundreds of follow up emails or texts or phone calls sent every single month.

Brian: This is one of the most powerful ways to get clients because there's. a treasure trove of money sitting in your CRM or sitting in your inbox right now. If people that inquired or didn't buy, it might've been weeks ago, months ago, years ago, [00:22:00] sometimes people that even hired you weeks ago, months ago, years ago, the need your services again, but you haven't heard from them in forever.

Brian: They haven't heard from you. You're not top of mind for them and you haven't reached out to them. These are things that if you have a followup routine in place and you were forced to send a hundred, 200 followups every month. You will find these people to follow up with, but because you don't have this as part of a routine, any sort of routine in your life, and you haven't taken control of this, easy input of just sending 100 follow ups a month, follow up with every past lead, follow up until one of the four requirements we're talking about in this podcast here, Matt.

Brian: ~You follow up until they say yes, you follow up until they say no, you follow up until they die, or they go out of business, or you follow up until either you die or you go out of business. I like that you die, it just sounds more memorable here. So ~you follow up until they say yes, no, they die, you die. And if you follow that rule, then every lead keeps continuously getting followed up with.

Brian: it'll blow you away. How many people will pay you thousands of dollars a year and a half, ~a year ~Two years after they originally inquired about hiring you because life got in the way, they were going through a divorce, their business was getting out of bankruptcy, they just got busy, ~X, ~insert excuse, X, Y, and Z, hurricanes, floods, crazy things happening in the world, politics, mental health breakdowns, [00:23:00] COVID hit.

Brian: Any excuse doesn't matter. things delay people's goals and ambitions that they had for themselves or for their businesses. And they reached out to you for a thing that they wanted. And the fact that you haven't been religiously following up with them until they said yes, no, or they died, or you died.

Brian: ~If you didn't, ~if you haven't been doing that, you were leaving money on the table. And this is one of the easiest ways that we help clients get money. It's just making them do this.

Brian: What we charge our clients for our coaching is easy to pay for. By just this, especially if you're already an established freelancer. But that's number six, just basic follow up routines, clear inputs. How many follow up emails did I send? Clear outputs. How many follow ups does it take to land a client?

Brian: And can I increase this number? Now there's an upper limit there. And obviously if you're not getting a lot of leads, you're not gonna have a bunch of follow ups to do. there's a bunch of other things that come into play here, but that's where we get into this bonus area, this bonus input output, and that's where we start stacking multiple things together.

Brian: ~And I'm going to. Give you a breakdown of like one of the best ways you can stack all of these things together. And that's by doing four of these, stacking four of these things. ~If you want to like 5x your business, Just stack these four things together and start counting the cash as cringy as that sounds It's first paid ads to [00:24:00] generate leads and clients on the front end go back to episode 330 what's working in client acquisition now?

Brian: I talked about what's called like a direct offer funnel and that's essentially offering your your services to people who are in direct need of it right now and you can get a Profitable funnel on the front end 2 to 1 3 to 1 sometimes even 5 to 1 return on ad spend Meaning you put a dollar in you get 2 out or 3 out or 5 out and that's just on the front end But then you create content to nurture all those leads in your pipeline.

Brian: So everyone who, just gave you their email address, but didn't fill out your pre call questionnaire form, ~they put in the, ~or they fill out the long form, the inquiry form on your site, but they didn't book a call with you. These people can still be nurtured long term with the content you create, builds trust, gets them to know like, and trust you~ keeps them top of, ~also keeps you top of mind maybe they started the form.

Brian: They're like, ah, I don't need it yet. But they start getting your emails or seeing your content and realize, finally going to book a call and talk to them, right?~ but the content helped them keep top of mind, help them keep you top of mind. them keep top of mind, help them ~And then we stack number three here.

Brian: That is the email list, I kind of skipped ahead there, but the email list, as you're doing paid ads with a direct offer funnel, you're building an email list. Even with our own, everything I'm talking about here, I do myself ~ we, everything I'm talking about here, I do myself like these. just I'm not just teaching other people to do this. I literally do this myself and ~we generate like 60 to [00:25:00] 70 new email leads per day right now called this marketing leads over 2000 a month right now. So with the email list, we promote the content we're creating. ~You literally, you, ~what's funny is like, I say this a lot of time, if it works on you, it can work for you. So many of the people listening to this podcast right now probably found me through an ad, maybe even a direct offer ad.

Brian: You're watching this piece of content or listening to this piece of content from me right now, long form media. So nurturing you right now, keeping me top of mind. ~You got, ~you may have gotten to this podcast through an email we sent you. You can do the exact same thing yourself.

Brian: You don't have to do the same scale. I have a team. You can do a micro version of this. You don't have to do a long form podcast. You can just do short form media. You can push them to your social accounts through email, but the email list is one of the most powerful things to promote the content you're creating or just send them stuff they'll care about.

Brian: It doesn't have to be things that you've even created. It's just. Here's a compilation of shit that I think is interesting that you would care about. I've seen that work really well. Again, this just builds trust, gets them to know I can trust you, and keeps you top of mind. That's the key. And then with all these leads you're generating, we stack on number four, and that's creating the follow up routine.

Brian: The follow up routine is key to all this. Because all the sales leads you've generated, the people who have inquired [00:26:00] for your services, are actually interested in hiring you. Are you religiously following up with them? Until they say yes, or until they say no. Or until they die or until you die, you stack all those together.

Brian: You have a very powerful, full client acquisition system where there are clear inputs. with those four things specifically, there are clear inputs, the things you do every day or week or month. And then there's clear outputs and metrics we track in order to know, how is it going? What needs to be fixed?

Brian: What needs to be more efficient? And when you hear all of this, And understand all of this, you start to understand how much more powerful this can be than just waiting around for referrals or being that like neckbeard freelancer commenting on, this podcast on YouTube or on an ad somewhere and saying, I've kept my business busy for 20 years, just from word of mouth.

Brian: You don't need to advertise that person. They're taking time bomb. They're resistant to change. They're resistant to new ideas.

Brian: They're the people who were bombing factories in the industrial revolution because they didn't want progress to happen. They wanted to prevent the inevitable.

Brian: I think the [00:27:00] definition of that is a Luddite. Don't be a Luddite. What a weird word. Luddite.

Brian: And you don't have to do all these things, by the way. But anything that you ~again, ~clearly control the inputs on things that you can go off and I say.~ I ~Two to three times the number of things you're doing in order to get more money that you can clearly ~go ~Correlate those ~two things ~two things together You will have a better business

Brian: and if you want our help with that if you want some like~ like ~Guidance some support a plan put ~a bit ~together specifically for you. Then I'll make you the same offer. We've made thousands of people and that is we will create your entire client acquisition roadmap for you ~and ~and 12 14 16 days depends on You~ You ~A few things.

Brian: And if you don't absolutely love it, then you pay us nothing. And if you do absolutely love it, then we'll coach you through implementing every single element of that and coaching you through the specifics, the little tactics, the little ticky tacky things. What do you say here? What do you do here? What do we do if this metric doesn't work?

Brian: How do we track this specific metric? What do we need to know? What metrics matter here?

Brian: How often do I follow up? What do I say when I follow up? All these little things that you probably have questions about right now are the things that we help people with specifically. Many of these things are spread throughout the other [00:28:00] 332 episodes of this podcast. So if you want to go cherry pick and search around this advice buffet, we have be my guest, or you can just not spend the next 12 months figuring that out and just work with us to get it done quickly.

Brian: That sounds interesting. Just go to six figure creative. com slash coaching to learn more about how we can help you or just keep listening to the show. It's up to you.

Brian: Either way. That's all I got for you this week. See you next week on the six figure creative podcast,