Advanced Freelancing

Have you ever considered using Thumbtack to find clients? I confess until I interviewed Bianca Scott I didn’t realize what an awesome opportunity the platform could be for freelancers!

This episode is a goldmine for tips and tricks that apply to any platform, but you will certainly learn the ins and outs of using Thumbtack to find clients and scale your business. Bianca shares how she got reviews before she landed paying clients, how to leverage social media to become a trusted service provider, and when to leave your 9-5 to work your side hustle full-time.

Here are some things we covered in this episode:

• How to get clients on Thumbtack
• Why you should do pro-bono work
• How to use your family and friends to gain honest reviews
• Utilizing multiple platforms for the same client review
• When to leave your 9-5 to work your side hustle full-time
• Learn secrets to scale your business
• How to use social media to grow your business
• Contracts and payments through Thumbtack

About Bianca:

Bianca Scott is the CEO of BusyB Writing, LLC. After receiving her undergraduate degree at Huntingdon College and her graduate degree at the University of South Alabama, she used her communication studies major to land a job at a small architecture firm in Atlanta, Georgia. Although she spent four years as a marketing specialist, her passion has always been writing. In 2016, she received a tip on how she could monetize her hobby by helping others who lack professional and creative writing skills, and the rest is history. Since beginning her business, she has been rated as a Top Pro by Thumbtack and helped over 150 people with their writing and book publishing projects.

Bianca’s Links:

Link to start business checklist (e-book): busybwriting.com/shopbusyb/metaa-z

Link to start business checklist (hardback): amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Z-Ultimate-Checklist-Entrepreneurs/dp/170163774X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=metamorphosis+a-z&qid=1585940314&sr=8-2

In this episode, my guest freelancer Jordan Fox teaches you how to pitch, network with, and have ongoing relationships with high profile clients. You’ll learn how to stand out from the crowd and get through to the connections that will put you in front of celebrities. Jordan shares what you can expect when pitching and working with high profile clients after the fact. You’ll get a strategy for building a foundation, staying the course, and execution and delivery around what you are offering the client.

Jordan shares how to offer a full service company by working with other freelancers that compliment your skill sets. He gives you the steps to build a network with experts in different lanes, team up and partner with them, and build out a world class team. By bringing in referral fees and saving your clients time searching for other talent it becomes a win-win for you and your clients.

Hear why Jordan feels that remote only work and freelancing is the future, and how diversifying your revenue streams is vital to success.

Here are some things we covered in this episode:

• How to stand out from the crowd to and attract celebrity clients
• How to create a strategy to get through to high profile clients
• Steps to get through the gatekeeper to put you in front of celebrity clients
• Tips after landing the gig
• Confidentiality around working with celebrity clients
• Building out your freelance team to offer additional services
• Creating long term relationships with freelance partners
• Standards for freelancer partners
• How remote only work and freelance work is the future
• The importance of having multiple streams of income
• How to have a side hustle

Bio:

Jordan Fox, founder and president of MMP Digital, received his Bachelors of Science in Accounting from Syracuse University before getting his Masters in Accounting from Yeshiva University in Manhattan.

He started his career at SocialCode, then the largest social media advertising company in the world. From 2015-2016, the company ran over $300 million in advertising. Jordan led strategy and ad buying across the social media landscape for more than 20 Fortune 500 brands, including Verizon Wireless and Coca-Cola.

He then joined VaynerMedia as a Senior Account Strategist, enjoying a front seat to the brand-building dynamics of serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Jordan ran digital marketing programs for Chase and L'Occitane across social media, influencer marketing, paid media, e-commerce, OTT and VR/AR/AI.

Most recently, Jordan was Director of Digital Strategy for 15-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys. He led global strategy and partnerships across all of Alicia's digital channels, ultimately helping her reach over 80+ million followers across social media. Jordan built smarter work streams while managing her in-house production team, digital agency and record label. While working alongside Alicia, her president, music manager, publicist and philanthropy advisor, Jordan created key moments for Alicia helping her grow her brand and digital footprint.

Now, Jordan is focused on bringing MMP to a wide audience, joining his know-how with that of other seasoned digital professionals.

Connect with Jordan:

Website: www.mmpdig.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mmpdig

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/mmp-digital

Instagram: www.instagram.com/mmpdig

One of these questions I see coming up all the time for people who are just thinking about making the leap into working from home is whether working remotely and freelancing are the same thing. It can get really confusing because plenty of freelancers do work remotely. But that's not necessarily the same as someone who's working on an hourly, part time, or salaried, full time basis as a remote worker.

In this episode, I was so happy to be able to invite my guest Maryellen Stockton to chat about what it means to work remotely, successfully. We talked about a lot of things including how to be successful with a remote job interviews and tips that can help you be successful and effective with potential clients and employers in this digital world we live in today.

About Maryellen Stockton

Maryellen Stockton is the co-founder and CEO of Work Well Wherever. She is a People Operations Consultant who has worked for 15 years encouraging individuals to achieve positive work/life experiences and helping companies create inspired work cultures. Six years ago, she began working remotely for a virtual staffing firm and quickly became an expert in company culture, employee engagement, and building teams outside the traditional office.

She lives in Atlanta with her husband Matt and her two kids, George and Winnie. The things that make her happy usually include coffee, people she loves, and mountains. And to that, I say I feel the same!

I hope you will find this episode helpful for learning more about why remote work has become so popular.

We're living in an amazing time as freelancers or as remote employees where companies are finally opening up to the idea that they can have very effective, efficient, and great teams with excellent communication in locations all over the country or even the world. So use that to your advantage. Make sure you file away the tips in this episode and avoid some of the pitfalls we discuss that are costing people remote work opportunities.

I was thrilled to be able to chat with Maryellen because I think she has such a unique background with remote work. She is also, in a sense, like a consultant herself running her own business. So she has this really unique blend of both of those backgrounds.

I'd love to kick things off by talking a little bit about the difference between remote work and freelancing.

Sometimes we're talking about the same things. But increasingly, these words are getting their own definition. So I really wanted to hear her perspective on what that difference is.

Maryellen’s thoughts on on freelance work is that you are usually not working full time for one employer. You are usually working full time maybe for multiple employers or maybe you're working part time for multiple companies or on multiple projects. And you are not necessarily like a part of a team.

With remote work, and especially with the growth of this full time, remote work, the difference is that you're usually devoted to one company or organization. And it is a company that is either distributed where they have offices all over or they have teams that are. Everyone works from home or maybe it's a combination of both.

Maryellen shared that you are seeing increasingly more and more companies hiring freelancers to do certain projects and also they have remote teams. That actually worked for the organization. And that's increasingly more common.

I totally agree with that. I think that the confusion for a lot of people is because most freelancers today are working remotely. Now, that's not true for everyone. There are definitely some freelancers who still go into the office and things like that. But most of them are working remotely.

So when someone is thinking about getting started working from home, it's actually quite different working for one company, or maybe two companies that you're working remotely for part time versus running a freelance business where you may have multiple clients at the same time. And there's not always that expectation that it's ongoing. Like if you take a full time, or part time remote work job, unless the person has told you that this is temporary, there's that expectation that it's like a traditional form of employment. It's expected to go on unless there's a reason for either party to decide to end the relationship. Whereas, freelance work is so much more flexible. It might literally be that someone needs you to do something this week and then never again. I still have some of my clients from years ago. So it's all over the board.

One of the things that's cool about the time period that we live in is that remote work is becoming more and more accepted by companies of all sizes. Employees are wanting it. So it’s a great time to be either a remote worker, an aspiring remote employee or a freelance. Because this whole idea of working with people who are not in your office is so much more accepted.<...

TL:DR: You need legal contract templates and disclaimers. Mariam did the work for you. Check out her store here.

So you know you need a contract with most of your freelance clients. But you get tripped up when the client provides you with their contract. I know you may be concerned about having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars working with a business attorney to create a template you can use now and in the future.

Here’s the good news. Just listen to this episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast with my amazing guest. She has a background as a freelancer and as a practicing attorney. And she has templates that are available for you to download and easily customize to your freelance business.

But even if you're not yet ready to purchase the template, you're going to learn a lot from her about what to look for in contracts, what things can be negotiated, and what terms and contracts should never be taken out. No matter what, today's guest is Mariam Tsaturyan, a licensed and practicing attorney in the United States. She also blogs full time. And she realized that there was a real need for legal guidance for bloggers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs.

Why Do Freelancers Even Need Contracts?

Mariam loves helping out others to avoid mistakes, especially when it comes to legal matters because many people ignore just how important it is until it's too late. And she's created several products to help freelancers and entrepreneurs stay legally compliant. You can find information about her store in the show notes for this episode, which will be at betterbizacademy.com/podcast.

Mariam goes into a great amount of detail into common mistakes that freelancers make with contracts, ones that you can't afford to make, and some of the other legally required materials you need to have if you're using a website. So that's important. It's often overlooked. But you can bundle a lot of those templates in together to get website disclaimers and other relevant policies in addition to contract templates you can use again and again that are perfect for your freelance business.

I hope you love this episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast. This is probably one of the most requested topics. And something that I get the most questions about with the freelancers that I work with one on one. It's also a sticking point for new freelancers who are just getting started and are either being provided contracts by their clients or get stuck on this whole idea of ”I don't have a contract I'm not making money yet should I pay an attorney to create one when I don't have any revenue.”

So my guest today is Miriam and I am so excited to talk to her because she's got expertise in the freelance world and with contracts. We're going to talk a little bit about what you should know about contracts and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls.

How did Mariam’s shop come about?

By profession, Mariam is an attorney. So she was just a regular practicing attorney initially. And then some family issues came up. She has a son. And she had to make a decision to stay home and raise him. And they didn't have anybody helping them at that time. So that is how the whole idea of starting the blog and starting the shop was created. She actually started as a freelancer.

So what kind of freelance work were you doing when you first got started? Was it legal or something?

She started off as a freelance writer and was doing legal freelance writing for other attorneys. That was her way of making money initially as a way to contribute to the family finances since She was home now and she wasn't working anymore.

This is so cool! Because that's 99% of what I write for my clients and I very rarely come across anyone who has done legal writing for other attorneys. It is not an over-saturated niche, which is kind of good when you're doing it. But it's definitely not something that everybody wants to do.

But she obviously has the perfect background to be speaking about contracts. She’s worn that hat as a freelancer and she’s an attorney. So this is something that just trips a lot of people up this whole idea of presenting contracts to a client or what to look for when a client gives you a contract that they want you to sign.

Why do you think most people get confused over contracts with freelance work?

Mariam says that this is true for any profession, not necessarily freelance writers. But for some reason when they hear the word contract, whether it's the person hiring you or it's the actual freelance writer, they get booked.

She thinks they don't understand that the contract is there to protect both sides. When they hear contract, they think it's going to be favoring on...