Weekly 🔥 #7: Gaining the clients you want
Welcome to another edition of our new newsletter! You’ll receive the best practical startup advice straight to your inbox every week.
In this week’s edition, we discuss:
- What it takes to make $100K from freelance work (hint: it’s no get-rich-quick scheme)
- Building MVPs to avoid creating stuff that doesn’t sell
- Recovering from failure to gain massive clients
- Using empathy as a competitive advantage
How to make $100K from freelancing
Carter Kilmann has been freelancing for nearly 3 years, and last month, he crossed $100,000 of freelancing income. Kudos! Naturally, there are things he wished he knew during the early trials and tribulations of self-employment — things you can implement to hit your money targets earlier, including:
- Don’t expect steady income growth — at least in the beginning. Leave room in your personal budget to account for income fluctuations.
- Frame your services in a problem-solution context. This will get you comfortable charging higher rates.
- Raise your rates periodically. Any skill improves with experience. That makes you more valuable as time passes.
- Always consider the long-term impact of your time investments — and don’t overextend yourself.
How to go from Failure to 300+ Massive Customers w/ Vasu Prathipati
Vasu Prathipati is the founder of MaestroQA, a company that aims to revolutionize customer service. He didn’t have an easy journey and struggled to find a job before becoming an entrepreneur. The first four years of the business didn’t move the needle, but they made a grand pivot that changed everything.
- The greatest product ideas don’t live inside your head, they live inside your customers’ heads.
- Index heavily on actual customer conversations rather than aggregated numbers
- A startup is like a boulder rolling downhill, you’ve got to put in the guard rails to help it not go off track.
- Don’t solve a problem unless potential clients are already spending time trying to find a solution.
- 👉 Learn all about Vasu’s incredible story here
How to stop creating stuff that doesn’t sell
Most course creators struggle to sell their online courses. Matt Giaro has been in those trenches many times in his 10 years in entrepreneurship. Now, instead of creating something that’s not going to sell, Matt builds a minimum viable course. And you can do it, in a few simple steps;
- Find the traffic source you enjoy (writing, videos, etc) and track engagement and feedback.
- Piggyback on content that’s working, and create a landing page that offers a simple product in exchange for an email address.
- Reach out to these signups to get further real market feedback.
- Implement your data and create a product that’s proven to have demand. Now make that sale!
How to Quickly Develop the Soft Skill Most Critical for Solopreneurs
Megan Morreale is the Director of Online Marketing at internet giant Taboola. For her, the most important soft skill for her progress was empathy, and laid down her best advice for you to improve your own.
- Give away a couple of ideas for free to build trust with potential clients.
- Pay attention to online signals — if you see employee churn at a company, it might mean they are in need of help.
- Repeat what people say back to them in different words to show you’re listening and buy yourself time to think of a great response.
- Pitch less but choose your targets wisely.
Have you been forwarded this email? Sign up here.
Interested in becoming a writer for Crypto Handbook? Submit your story here. (Or read our Call for Submissions.)
