Communicating effectively as a freelancer

Key Takeaways

hey everyone what's up if you're like me you're probably looking for that hack to solve all your communication problem communication with your clients communication with the Freelancers that you work with or other vendors because communication can make or break the profitability of your freelance business or business in general you know communication is the difference between smooth project that runs on time everything ticks and works great and bad communication can turn a project into endless iterations Communications miscommunications taking meetings over and over again getting on the phone going back and forth in Trello or whatever project management you're working with ending up with total waste of time nonprofit uh you know project with no profits and so this is really really important to solve now if you're looking for the hack I know everybody's looking for that magic pill and last week I did a video about how I use Trello to try to make my process more efficient but you know I've been thinking about this and this morning I had kind of an experience where I got at work from a freelancer that I worked with and when I saw it I was like he did not understand what I told him and you know my first reaction was to blame him for not understanding but then I was thinking about how could I communicate better next time to make sure that this never happens again and I think that eventually there's no hack or magic pill it's not the tool it doesn't really matter if you know we get on the phone or if I write an email or if you know I write a comment on Trello it's what you say in that communication how do they make sure that you are so clear that there are no gaps in the understanding and everything is just right and to do that is not very easy you know I've been trying to learn to communicate better by reading books by reading psychology copywriting and and in general how to understand people and get them to understand you be more empathetic to them ask questions describe more clearly what you're trying to accomplish and there's no easy way it's just constant learning and trying to improve over and over again what I did find that when I describe the criteria of how I will check the work and validate the work that makes communication that that much easier because I'm giving them the checklist that I will be running now defining that checklist of how you're going to measure the work that they're doing um is not always easy to do and by the way this also goes to working with your clients so when when you're working with your clients you can communicate to them what you need from them what's going to happen and you know how you are going to even measure the work that you are doing for them so for giving them setting the expectations from them um you know about how you you define good work to make sure that you and they are aligned as to what is good work and so defining this checklist of criteria of how you measure your work or the work of the people that you work with sometimes it takes work and it takes a lot of thinking because you know the most easy thing to do is just write them what you need or do this or do that without really explaining and giving context but when you try take the time to give context then the communication goes that much clearer now it is a fine fine line to walk because today for example I was like ah should I try to explain and give the whole context or should I just do it do it myself and it'll be easier and this is where I think most Freelancers fall and fall into the Trap of it will be faster for me to do it myself and I know that I for years fell into this trap but now I'm trying to you know think longterm and know that building up the communication and the context so that the communication will be more effective is kind of a long-term strategy to build that kind of uh communication and understanding with the people I work with so in the long term I will become much more uh effective now Communication in general is much easier when you are in face to face or sitting next to the person because there's a lot of things that just pass you know with the body language and how you talk and a lot of the intuition that does not work when you're doing emails or Trello or something like that and so when you are working with remote which is how I communicate at least 80% of the time if not 90% of the time then you have to be much more clear and more thoughtful about giving context and explaining what you need and and what you're expecting to get so don't look for that magic pill because honestly it doesn't exist uh just take the time to think really about your principles about the criteria what you need and how to get things done in the long term this will be an investment worth while hope you're having an awesome day I'll catch you tomorrow [Music]