Double Your Freelancing Podcast

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode92In this episode, Zach talks to Bo-Peter Laanen from https://blaanen.com/Bo-Peter is a marketing coach and founder of Growth Marketing Hub.He helps course creators grow their businesses by leveraging AI for content production, marketing, and SEO strategies.On today’s episode, Bo-Peter talks about how to utilize AI for automation and optimizing your workflow.You’ll learn how to leverage AI to grow your freelance or agency business, increase lead flow, and build a personal brand.This was recorded for our private community as an expert interview and if you want to check out the community for yourself, it includes 1-on-1 coaching with myself, weekly check-ins, plus when we have calls like this one, members can join live to ask questions directly with the guest.More details and links on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode92

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode91In this episode, Zach talks to Kim Swagemakers from Kimpact, about her experience going from employee to freelancer to a productized agency owner. On this episode Kim shares her insights about immersing yourself in client pain points to inform your trajectory, choosing a niche based on past products, finding good productized service ideas, building automated lead flows, and much more.This was recorded for our private community as an expert interview and if you want to check out the community for yourself, it includes 1-on-1 coaching with myself, weekly check-ins, plus when we have calls like this one, members can join live to ask questions directly with the guest.More details and links on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode91  

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode90In this episode, Zach talks to Jesse Hanley from Bento - the email marketing tool.In today’s episode, you’ll find out how Jesse went from solo freelancer to scaling a 25-person agency, then selling it all and starting a SaaS email marketing product.Jesse talks about the challenges of scaling an agency including client lead flow, having a lean team, and the benefits of a simple business model.We dive deep into how being genuinely helpful online can lead to big customers, and whether you should chase scaling your business or focus on doing your best work every day.More details and links on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode90

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode89In this episode, Zach talks to Joana Galvão from Gif Design Studios.Joana Galvão is the co-founder of award-winning design agency Gif Design Studios and a leading business coach for ambitious creatives who want to take the shortcut.Based in Porto, Portugal, her agency specializes in brand identities and conversion-obsessed design and serves industry leaders in 17 countries on five continents.Her coaching program, Ambitious Creatives Booked Solid, helps freelancers get booked solid with dream projects, to 6-figures and beyond, without burnout.Joana speaks internationally on entrepreneurship and the power of design and creativity and her work has been featured in the Guardian UK, Brand Brilliance, and Digital Arts magazine.Join the DYF Accelerator community at: dyf.link/community Check out the Start The Right Type of Business beta course within DYF University, which is at dyf.link/university

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode88She goes deep into her cold outreach philosophy and approach that can help even new freelancers start booking clients today.She also shares her email template she used to cold outreach to a design agency that ended up driving multiple five figures of business to her!More details and links on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode88

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode87They’ve worked with big names like Pat Flynn and featured on Forbes, SPI, and more.One of the cool things about their business is how systematized it is — they pay all their contractors fixed rates for projects, and have their process so dialed in that Prerna’s effective hourly rate (EHR) for copywriting is about $1,000/hr.Tons of great insights in this episode — enjoy!More details and links on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode87

Links & resources can be found on the show notes page: https://dyf.link/episode86 If you haven’t heard of Nicolas Cole, he’s a ghostwriter-turned-agency-owner-turned-product-course-creator-biz-owner.He is the co-founder of Ship 30 for 30, the largest cohort-based writing course on the Internet; Typeshare, the leading platform for Digital Writing tools & templates; and Premium Ghostwriting Academy, an 8-week training program teaching writers how to enter the world of ghostwriting & land high-ticket clients.Cole is also the author of 10 books, including the best-seller, The Art & Business of Online Writing. His writing has accumulated hundreds of millions of views, and has been republished in TIME, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, Inc Magazine, and many more. In 2017, he built the first ghostwriting agency writing on behalf of 300+ Silicon Valley founders, investors, and CEOs of publicly traded companies, Grammy-winning musicians, Olympic athletes, and NYT best-selling authors & speakers-a

If you somehow don’t know who Brennan Dunn is, he’s the dude who started this whole DYF thing.

I talk about why I've been M.I.A., and share how focusing on expected results helped me win over a new client.

When you shop for anything, check with the business owners and ask, “How’s business going?” They will be happy to share their thoughts. Roadmapping involves interviewing and understanding a client to identify their needs and craft a solution for them. Take care of and protect your clients to develop successful and reliable results. My guest today is Lionel Martin, a software and DevOps engineer who helps technology startups improve how they build using the Cloud. As a freelancer, he experienced the income and project roller coaster, which was very stressful. Lately, he has been doing high-value consulting. Lionel shares tips he has implemented that may benefit your company. Tactics he uses that are game changers to make a good impression on clients and get them to pay him more include being more descriptive rather than prescriptive and not having a portfolio. Today’s topics include: Organizing your business and personal life: Schedule, time, and bandwidth Making mindset changes by setting up hands-on consult

Learn how to take awesome conversations and translate them into increased scope of works to grow your business with heightened capabilities around marketing. Think about the impact, not just the deliverable. Paint a complete picture of marketing. My guest today is Ian Servin of Animus Studios, which is a production company that makes videos. Animus has a higher-level, holistic approach of using videos to provide a solution to clients. It focuses on content creation and plans that involve sharing that content and measuring results. Today’s topics include: Be willing to pay more to reach your end goals with videos for your business Disconnect between sales and production regarding goals and purpose of videos; make the product on the backend aligned with the expectation on the frontend Add intentionality, process, and formalization to deliver in a package that feels like a real product and offering Animus reaches out to new customers or customers contact them with a video need; Animus guides new customers

Advisors lead by developing a trusted relationship with prospects. This takes out a lot of traditional pitching for business and transitions to paid connections. You become more of a consultant than just a hired gun. Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein are partners at Growthengines.io, which has grown from being brand new to generating $1 million in revenue in less than a year through retainer work. How has it gone from nothing to where it is at now in such a short period? What impact does that have on the way that it sells? Today’s topics include: Agony and pain that comes before success and figuring out a model Insights: Moving from 1-OP projects to ongoing retainers, and going to higher-end retainers To go up market practically and mindset-wise what needs to change is the 80/20 rule: 20% of clients were driving 80% of the revenue; building an agency that targets the 20% Structuring things differently to attract and convert the bigger fish; generating valuable content and marketing, and focusing offering on t

When your business is small, you need to carve out a niche and engage clients. Know what you can do for them, and put into words what you can deliver. You need to determine whether you want to work with others or not. How do you roadmap your business? My guest today is Matty McLain, who works for small companies and startups to help them tighten their sales process and get clients. What keeps business owners up at night and bothers them? Matty looks inside the businesses and determines how to make them better. Today’s topics include: Craft proposals based on what clients say and address their pain points Purpose of roadmapping to understand and overcome objections Hesitations that clients will hire you; frustrations over wasted research and time Create email list following that generates leads and be active in the community Pitch roadmapping via a call; create roadmapping summary of sales and marketing plan Funnel: Lead comes in; consultation; qualify client for roadmapping; pitch roadmapping; deliverable re

My guest today is Gabi Logan, who offers one-on-one coaching and has a recurring revenue knowledge base/database business, retreat center offering events, and weekly webinar. She also does high-end consulting engagement for travel destinations and serves as a certified executive coach. On today’s episode, we discuss hurdles she has experienced with roadmapping in her consulting business to get more clients and increase revenue. Today’s topics include: Client Perspective: Addressing problems in time; clarifying what they need to work on Branding Project: The big picture, what’s hot now, and where people really want to go Consultation/Coaching Structure: Start with phone calls to determine client’s needs Send a form/survey in advance; give a list of recommendations based on responses What have you tried in the past? What worked and what didn’t? Final Question: Is there anything else you would like to tell me? Know mistakes client’s made in the past to avoid proposing the same option Use call as an interview -

My guest today is Dustin Robertson, chief marketing officer (CMO) of Drip. Dustin has been with Drip for just over a year and came from a business to consumer background. He started Backcountry.com, where he was educated on digital marketing while growing that business. After learning eCommerce and digital marketing, he wanted to venture into online travel and develop data marketing tools. Fortunately, he met people from Drip and discovered the company had a platform that could handle database marketing at scale for eCommerce marketers. On today’s episode, we discuss marketing automation now and in the future. Automation done right is transformative - both for businesses and their customers. Today’s topics include: Describing the possibilities of automation Being interested in marketing automation - email is center of the universe Educating clients on cart abandonment and another issues or services Moving toward various ways to communicate for engagement and purchases Shifting to an eCommerce business model

Jason Resnick is a consultant who also educates other consultants on systemization and building sustainability via his program, Feast at Rezzz.com. His mission is to help other freelancers and agencies create recurring revenue using automation. Jason has developed his skills working in both the independent and corporate worlds, and has learned the ins and outs of what customers want and why they buy. More recently, Jason has leveraged personalization for his clients and himself which is essential for creating trust and building longer term relationships with clients. He sat down with Brennan to discuss what tricks he’s learned about building sustainability into his funnel. What questions you’ll need to answer in order to personalize How to demonstrate potential upside value How to communicate with customers about their needs How to increase lead quality and quantity Jason Resnick has automated his business to be fully sustainable, bringing in recurring revenue for more than 8 years. His business grew o

In this episode of DYF Podcast, Brennan talks to Joel Hooks whose site, Egghead.io, provides “video tutorials for badass web developers.” The site thrives by giving out tons of free content and supporting it with backend automation that brings in viewers. This strategy can work across business types (whether you offer a product or a service) with the big difference being scale. To find out how, and to hear tips for targeting, dealing with challenging customers, and scaling up, listen in to this week’s episode. Finding the right product and the right audience. Correct (and less correct) responses to critics. The difference between Free Content and Community Resources. How to generate more time. Today Joel Hooks runs Egghead.io, a website that provides video tutorials on every tool and aspect of web development. Today, the Netflix-style subscription service has grown to have 20 employees and over 100 instructors, but things weren’t always so promising. Joel talked to Brennan about how Egghead came to be,

Greg Hickman facilitates automation for all types of clients, but on this episode of DYF Podcast he talks with Brennan about how automation works for consultants. Not only has Greg automated his own consulting business, but he also uses Active Campaign and InfusionSoft to set up campaigns for other consultants including some big influencers. In this episode Greg tells Brennan how his business started --almost accidentally-- and grew to serve an impressive list of heavy hitting clients in just a couple years. Key Takeaways: When you should start automating What you should automate first How to break down the value of a lead How to use paid ads to increase leads Greg Hickman started his agency, System.ly, as an experiment. At the time Greg was co-hosting a podcast called Zero to Scale with his friend Justin McGill. When the Podcast’s success reached a plateau Justin challenged Greg to try monetizing his automation skills by offering funnel-building services. System.ly was born and soon became the force

Whenever Jennifer Nelson sees a new innovation for online business, she immediately learns it and apply it to her own work. This passion for finding the best way of doing things is how she became a certified Drip automation expert and a successful independent consultant and coach. Listen to this episode of DYF Podcast to see what strategies and innovations you can borrow from Jennifer and how to implement them into your daily practices. She’ll also discuss communication with different types of clients, managing multiple funnels, and how she gets her conference audiences to pay attention even after her presentation is over. Key Takeaways: How to talk automation to business owners How to become an automation expert How to win customers with a softer sell How to maximize your funnel with a variety of lead magnets As a Drip certified automation expert, Jennifer Nelson has fully automated her own business and now works with others to introduce automation to their routines. Her goal is to enable her clients to

What parts of your funnel should be automated? How can you create urgency without building extensive “limited time offer” workflows into your automation? Is it possible to give even better service with less person to person contact? In this first episode of DYF Podcast Season 2 on Automation, Franz Sauerstein addresses all of the various steps in his sales funnel and how he helps others automate thiers. He shares tricks of the trade like getting clients to self-qualify before he even becomes involved. He and Brennan also discuss the next step in optimizing automation: Personalization. Go in depth with Franz as he walks us through his process from beginning to end. Key Takeaways: How to create urgency with self-assessments How to follow up with cooled leads How to provide a better user experience through automation The best way to segment leads following sales calls Franz Sauerstein is a two-time DYFConf EU participant and was a Student Success Coach for the now retired, Double Your Freelancing Academy.