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I was speaking at a conference of developers and freelancers and presented with this question of meeting face-to-face or everything is virtual.

Being in New York, obviously there are many opportunities to be able to meet people, leads, and potential partners.

When starting out, I did meet lots of leads at coffee shops, their offices, and other places. I’d either get in my car, or hop the train and head on to the location early for the meeting.

NY has traffic and lots of it and the subways have been known to be late from time to time as well, so I always went extra early because I’d rather show up early than be late.

Once there, I’d grab a cup of coffee or drink or whatever for myself and my guest. I especially did this with leads at the first meeting, but would carry that through when they became clients as well.

They would arrive, we’d talk and get to know each other and I would then go ahead and ask whatever questions I needed. Or we would talk about the project tasks and statuses of things. Whatever the purpose of the meeting was.

I’d then hop back into the mode of transportation back home and be on my way with the rest of the day.

Travel time loses profitability

For a one hour meeting, this often times would result in 4 hours of time spent. Between the prep time, travel time, and waiting time, profits literally would fly right out the window.

As I started to notice that an hour spent talking resulted in a half day of actual time, I analyzed that against those meetings that were virtual.

I took into account if they were leads vs clients. And ultimately tracked the time spent and the likelihood of closing the deal.

What I found was that leads that wanted to meet in a coffee shop often would be tire kickers that didn’t result in becoming a client. They were looking to bounce their idea off of me.

Leads that invited me to their office, well they resulted in becoming a client about 65% of the time.

Virtual meetings

Those that I would hold as virtual calls, whether that’s through video or phone, were somewhere in between.

But the virtual conversations I would have took 25% of the time than meeting face-to-face.

I started to key in on the points where I could ask the right questions up front to filter out tire kickers better.

I started to only meet those that had a place in mind to meet me rather than me deciding on a place.

And finally, I would hold kick-off calls when we decided to work together face-to-face.

See the value of the face-to-face can’t be measured to be honest, but it adds to a much higher trust factor that you’ll never get virtually.

Over the course of my career, I honestly haven’t had many local clients, so I when possible, I try and meet face-to-face somehow.

Over time I’ve guarded my time with purpose. I’m only a single person without a sales team. So getting out there and pressing palms as they say, in a sales capacity needs to produce intended results.

For me, it’s unacceptable and hinders the growth of the business to spend a half day to only talk with someone who is looking to get free advice for one hour when they have no intention on paying what I charge.

Lawyers, doctors, and other professionals guard their time, and so I took a page out of their books to do just that.

Most of my meetings now are virtual because I have leads and clients all over the world. That’s not to say though that I don’t meet up with people, I just try and do so as the relationship progresses.

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We’ve all got them right? Even when we are working on client stuff, there are things that we are passionate about, mess around with, even do as a hobby with no real upside to them other than it just makes us happy.

And so I was I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a full-time job and loves it. He asked me, “how do you make time for your side projects?”

I simply replied, “By doing exactly what you said, make time.”

Now we can’t make time and I want to tip my cap to my friend [Curtis](https://curtismchale.ca) for always hitting me on my head with that notion. But he’s right.

How to prioritize your time

What we do though is prioritize time and make room in our every day for the important things.

Time is the only thing we never get back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. What you do with your time is what you are saying is important to you.

Sure there are times where there are sacrifices to be made and that’s obviously just a way of life. But you can adjust and still cover what you want and need.

Case in point, yesterday at 4 PM I walked out of my office just to grab a drink of water and heard TJ by the front door saying “Daddy, Daddy” as he normally does when he hears me emerge from my office.

I had planned on finishing the day by drafting up a few emails. Which would’ve taken me about 30 more minutes.

My wife said that they were going to go for a walk around the block and asked if I wanted to come.

My answer was simple and quick. “Sure.”

See right there in those few seconds, the priority of the next 30-45 minutes of my day was evaluated and set. Because I do what I do to have the time freedom and flexibility in my schedule to spend time with my family, it was an easy thing to say “yes” to.

Now, what happened to those emails? Well, I woke up a little bit earlier today and wrote them.

So today’s episode is a short one, but I want to leave you with this.

Think about all the things you’ve got going on. All the ideas, projects, and goals you have. Next time you are faced with a choice to make based on the time that you have at the given moment, think about what option aligns with your goals.

Then push the other option aside and if it’s still important enough, create space in your day tomorrow to check it off the list.

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As a part of the GDPR, all customers or users will have the right to request the data held on them, the right to have that data deleted if its original purpose has ceased, and the right to have that data transferred to a different provider.

Which means to provide an individual with the right to request, delete, or move their personal data, the individual must be aware that you as a company have the data to begin with. Without their awareness of you using their data, they have no actionable right. So the use of user or customer data through third party providers is likely to become quite complicated.

This would fall under the right-to-be-forgotten laws.

As you can see from the previous 5 sentences alone, there are lots of room for interpretation and questions to be answered. So best to consult your lawyer.

I can’t tell you how to make your business comply with GDPR because there are still so many gray areas (in my opinion) for the EU, that outside of the EU it’s even a darker gray.

What I can tell you is that if you are “doing right” by your email subscribers you are well on your way to being compliant.

What’s “doing right” mean?

It means that:

• you are doing double opt-in
• you are allowing folks to unsubscribe from every email
• if you are sharing email addresses via JV webinars, online summits, partnerships, etc with other businesses, you are sending transitional emails to those subscribers letting them know what you are doing with their email address and giving them an option to opt-out
• you share who else has their data and make sure that you understand (even sign, in some cases) what they are doing with the data. This includes 3rd parties such as Google, Facebook, etc.
• you aren’t selling your email list

In short, you are doing good business with good intentions.

You may also want to update your privacy policy on your website after the conversation with your lawyer.

Further resources:
12 Steps to take now
GDPR Requirements in Plain English

Action Items

1. Update your Privacy Policy
2. Add a checkbox to any lead magnet form and have the subscriber acknowledge what you intend on doing with their information after the lead magnet delivery
3. Find out what else you can do from your own email marketing service

In Drip and ConvertKit, you can segment your list to find those that are within the EU, add in GDPR specific settings into forms, and take actions to comply with the GDPR in other ways.

Here are some other platforms and how they are handling GDPR:
MailChimp
ActiveCampaign
HubSpot
AWeber
Constant Contact

I'm continuing here today with the eleventh and final lesson in the "Finding clients" series.

This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis.

Group coaching for leads. WHAT?!? 🤔

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You've heard about group coaching before in the context for your business.

I met Lauren Pawell, founder of BixaMedia, a marketing strategy firm, a couple of years ago.

In fact, she was the very first guest on Live In The Feast Season 1 Episode 3.

She inspired this idea of bringing your leads together in one space so that you can then vet the good fit en masse.

Let me explain how this works.

You get a lead as you normally would, but instead of getting on a one-on-one call with them, you get them to an educational webinar.

Get them to sign up and as a group, you run through some educational material for them, provide ridiculous value in a way that allows all the leads to walk away with something beneficial to them.

They also know and understand the type of work that you do, who you help, and if you may be a good fit for them.

Then towards the end of that webinar, you present them with an application for them to be able to work with you.

Lauren shared some of her KPIs that she aims for with registration, attendance, and applications.

The part of this I like the most is that you are spending one hour of time with say 5-10, maybe 20 people and weed out those that aren't a good fit. Rather than one hour with each individual to weed them out.

As a result, you are only spending time on those that raise their hand to want to work with you. But those that don't still walk away with value from you, something that's helpful to them in that moment to move them forward.

Lauren said that of those who fill out the application, she'll close 80% of them.

That's such an amazing use of time.

In fact, she sent me an email just last week that as of January 2nd, she's booked solid for 2019.

The only work that they are taking on is Strategy Sessions.

Since I heard about this idea, I've looked for ways in which I can leverage this in my own business. Because as I said, it's such effective use of time and provides the same amount of value as you would if you continued the sales process as you do today.

A good place to start with this is with past clients. You already know who they are and that you'll want to work with them again.

Remember in lesson 7 we talked about those up level skills? Take the skills that you've learned since working with them and package up something to sell.

Send an email with some registration link and get them all on a call. Practice your delivery and then pitch with that application.

It's as simple as that.

I'm continuing here today with the fourth lesson in the "How to Find Clients" series.

This is the no-nonsense series of lessons that work in today's market to find clients you want to be working with on a consistent basis.

Today's lesson will help you position yourself and share insight into what problems you are solving.

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You are smart and I know that you are constantly learning and evolving your skills and business whether it's on a project you are working on, or in passing as you read articles online when sitting on the couch.

When you come across something new that you've learned, don't hold it back like it's the One Ring. Share that knowledge either in a tweet, Facebook share, or a blog post or video for YouTube even.

When you share your knowledge online, there will be someone who will search for it who doesn't know.

My friend Val Geisler shares teardowns of Saas business' onboarding emails on her blog.

She stated in her 2018 review "I honed my voice and writing skills and got to build a nice little portfolio of spec work while I worked on moving more firmly into this specialization." And she was able to break the 6-figure mark too.

I can also attribute a few clients to one specific article on my site where I break down a number of well-known brands and how they should improve their checkout process. But in there I share how it could be improved as well.

This gives potential clients a sneak peek into what you can do and how you do it.

But it also gives the web the ability to have a piece of content to serve questions like "how do I improve my checkout process?" or "how do I improve my email onboarding sequence?"

By sharing what you know instead of holding it back will position you and your expertise in the world.

Instead of spending a tremendous amount of time figuring out an algorithm on how you can get your profile to outrank other freelancers on a platform, spend that time pushing out a piece of content that gives a sneak peek into your brain.