Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

And welcome everybody to command the fees you deserve, and I want to start by telling you a little bit about me because, uh, I'm going to try to teach you everything I've learned in twenty eight years of being a self employed, creative professional and teaching creative professionals how to build and grow their businesses, the businesses that they need to thrive now. I was fired from my second job out of college, and I was kind of angry and impetuous, and I decided I was never working for anyone again, and I came up with this idea. I had a degree in spanish, and I came up with this idea to be a professional organizer because all of my friends were creative and they were a little bit disorganized, so literally in nineteen eighty eight, we're talking about piles of papers everywhere, and I would sit with them at their desk and go through the piles of papers. And what was kind of amazing and consistent is that at the bottom of everybody's pile, there was something that had to do with mark...

eting and self promotion that they were not doing, and it happened so consistently that I thought the real problem here is not the clutter, but the marketing and self promotion and somehow creative people I noticed very early on had trouble talking about their work and so little by little I helped them, and over the years, twenty eight years worth it is evolved into marketing mentor, which is a consulting practice, and I also teach and write as jae ko said, and I'm going to try to talk to you today about everything I've learned and share it with you so that you can learn and survive and thrive yourself, so we're gonna start with some big ideas. The first idea is that by twenty fifty half of the u s work force will be self employed. This is, according to the freelancers union and many other entities, but basically this is the trend it's been happening for a long time, and if you have a job right now, one of the things this means is that there is no such thing as job security. If you're sitting at your desk right now at your job, you might have, in the back of your mind a little voice that says, I don't know how long this is going to last, and really what I think that means is that we each have to be taking responsibility for ourselves and our careers. No one's going to do it for us. And I think this is the good news because this is really the best time to be self input. It really is there's a lot less stigma there's the technology makes it very easy, but it really is not for the faint of heart it's not easy. I'm not going to pretend to tell you that it is easy, it takes effort, it takes work, it takes time, it takes process. But if you follow the steps, then you khun definitely do it. And in this course you're going to learn what it takes to thrive as a self employed, creative, professional, that's, what I'm going to teach you. So I want to start by giving you an overview of what we're going to be covering now. In this course on session one, we're going to be talking about you and your marketing in session to we're going to focus on your clients and your prospects and session three, we're going to be talking about your pricing and your proposals. So before we get into some more details about what we're going to be covering so the workbook let me just say, this is the workbook that I put together it's called command the fees you deserve, and it comes with any time access. You don't need it to do the lessons or the exercise which we're going to do after each lesson. In fact, all you need is a piece of paper, but it is their familiar, very helpful. All the material is in the workbook now, before we continue let's talk a little bit with our in studio audience about this question, commanding the fees you deserve, what are the main challenges, and as you answer the question, please introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what you do. So, um, justin barker, and I'm actually content producer here, creative, live. Before I was at creative live, I had a freelance production business. I was a producer. I created videos for, uh, start ups. I came here and I've learned so much working in creative live and sitting through. I got hundreds of classes at this point and so I've decided to return to my freelance work on dis little scary it's a little scary to leave a job that you really love to go out into the world of freelancing and scary just you know, just unknown is a is a little scary and it's and it's funny because I was able to always charge a good amount of money as a freelance producer you know, thousand dollars a day was was really a great number for me and now I am with all the knowledge that I have I'm still learning I'm trying to figure out like how tio I don't work with less clients and charge more money that that is my goal because I have a bunch of side projects that building a business that is going to take a few years writing a book these things esso I basically need teo focus my energy and figure out how to charge more money and work with it work with the right clients so that's my goal I think that's a really and we're going to get two goals shortly but I think that's a really important point on I think a lot of people have this same challenge because you could do a lot of work for a lot of people and charge a little bit of money and run yourself ragged basically or you can be very choosy and proactive and that's going to be the kind of through line for this course and really go after the big fish, if you will, who you can charge more too, so that you have the time to do the things that you want to do. So I think that's really great, beautiful. Thank you, justin, her raina, talk to us. I'm raina admire my company's wannabe design and I work on branding and design for mostly small start of food come ponies, mostly in the bay area, and I've been on my own since two thousand two and I would say it's going steadily pretty well a little better every year I'm enjoying what I do um, but I have a similar conundrum where I I have a lot of clients and a lot of work, but none of it is super profitable, it slowly getting more profitable, but I'm still working with a lot of people who have very minute budgets. My personal issue with that is that I enjoy working with a lot of these small companies that don't have money on dh to a certain degree, it's a given, you know, quality of life is important to me, tio and enjoyment, but at the same time I don't want to run myself totally under the ground while not really increasing my income yes, definitely. Okay, that's perfect. Then I think the point about, uh, finding the clients again, who can pay you what you need to earn. I'm sure there are bigger clients out there that you will enjoy working with, right, and often it's just a question of going after them and looking for them. And I'm going to be talking a lot about that over these next three sessions. Excellent. All right, zine. Oh, yeah, my name is in, and I run a it's offer agency called chulak media, and we basically help startups create unique brand identities to strategy, design and software development. Ah, the biggest challenge for me for the past five years that I've been running, the agency is trying to create some sort of predictability in the business, so that there's a consistent flow of income coming in every month without me having to worry. Um and yeah, that's, why I'm here, and I'm trying to figure out a system that I can create for that purpose, and in session three, we will be talking a lot about different pricing strategies and different ways to create regular income. So because I do think it's important for all of us, to have some kind of predictability, that's, one of the main complaints about being self employed is that it's up and down and feaster famine, but I really believe it does not have to be that way. It just takes effort and clarity to get there, but it's definitely possible, and I'm gonna teach you all how to do it. Are you ready? What great audience joining m is joining us from romania and louise is joining from costa rica and they're just wanted to clarify at least is everything you're going to be teaching gonna be applicable to overseas. I believe it is these air, very general universal concepts that have more to do with what you need to do for yourself and how you need to present yourself. And I think they could be easily translated into other people's cultures and places. Absolutely. First, I want to talk about the big picture of what we're going to do over the course of these three sessions. By the end of these three sessions, you will have clarity on what you need, and this is a very important concept that I'm going to go into a lot of detail about shortly. You'll have clarity on what you're worth and I put it in quotation marks because that's a very tricky concept and word to use and I will be talking a lot about that and actually I have a guest coming also in session three who wrote an article for daily worth about the idea of what you're worth and why that really doesn't matter. Her name is terry tress pco also you have clarity on what you are offering exactly and to whom each of you said it in your introduction and we'll be talking a lot about your elevator pitch also later on in this session, but you will have you first have to have clarity on what you're offering and to whom before you can introduce yourself properly. You will have clarity on how to find a viable market how to price your services of course, and I think underneath it all it's about how to have more control over your life, right there's so little in life we have control over when it comes to other people, but I find people don't take control over the thing they actually do have control over which is our own life so that's when I'm gonna be talking about you will know by the end of this how to write a winning proposal you will know how to deal with problem clients, especially drama queens any drama queens in the audience I would be very curious j k o if people in the chat room will tell us if they see themselves as a drama queen all right, you will know how to decline projects with grace so many creative professionals don't know how to say no right? I'm gonna teach you how to say no politely and you will also know how to negotiate from a position of strength and that is very important on a session three we're going to be talking to katie lane about negotiating, speaking of which I have four guests who are going to join me for this course at the end of this session will be talking to jill anderson of jill in design dot com who is a web designer a client of mine you will also meet ed gandhi, a of the international freelancers academy he'll be joining me in session to to talk about warm email prospecting, which is amazing technique to actually get people to respond to your email messages that's one of the big challenges we have you will meet as I mentioned terry try spey ceo of terry tress pco dot com and she also has a web show called soul oprah nure on the what whatever it takes network so you can check that out and finally, as I mentioned, you will meet katie lane of work made for hire dot net she specializes in negotiating for freelancers you will leave this course with, among other things, a list of possible target markets because when I talk to people about who they should be marketing too, sometimes they go blank and they can't think of who they want to work with they say things like I could work with anyone not true we're gonna focus that in in fact I brought from new jersey the newjersey biz book of lip tests which has all sorts of business industries so we'll be working a little bit with that uh you will also have the client red flag cheat sheet which will teach you howto watch for the red flags you need to avoid you will have an example of emily's proposal template emily is a client of mine and she has shared her template for a proposal you will have a simple marketing plan and you will have the confidence to do all of this seamlessly it will take time it's not easy it doesn't happen overnight but it is very possible. All right? My goal for this course is to show you as I said how to take control over your business this year and ultimately live a simpler, more peaceful life who doesn't want that? Let me read you actually a quotation I got a message this morning from a client of mine, she wrote I had been working with her on helping her increase her prices she wrote, I just sent the invoices to my guerrilla client with the new price is oh, my gosh, she wrote. What a relief to finally charge what I'm worth and I think that's so crucial the idea of it's a relief to finally charge what you're worth right again, we're gonna talk a little bit about that word worth, but that's what we're aiming for. So in this course there are forty two lessons. Each one has an exercise, it's all in this little workbook. You can do it all at once, but it's better actually, it sinks in better if you do it a little bit at a time at your own pace. So my suggestion is one or two lessons at the most per week. Okay, we're going to go through it all over the course of these three sessions, so j k o, before we head into segment one, anything happening in the tack room, fascinating to see how many people joined us from all over the world today we've got rieger online in latvia, so what? Welcome to you. We got lots of people in germany.