Free Freelancing Training: How To Get Copywriting Clients As The World Slows Down

Key Takeaways

super happy to see you guys duel what's up Abdul that's one of my coffee posse members awesome I wish I could say hi to all of you personally um okay so here we are you guys I'm super excited to give you a little kind of timeline II logistics kind of situation with what we got going on here we're expecting to go for about an hour but this is live and unscripted and you know we might go a little bit over that's why I said in my email to allow a little bit extra time ninety minutes we will after our sort of basic training we will be opening up the floor to questions and questions you can pop into the Q&A box it's at the bottom of your screen or you can raise your hand and we will unmute you so anybody who has questions and actually wants to be on audio we would love to hear from you it's I think always so great at least for me when when when I'm reminded of like what a global community we are and being able to hear voices is always like Jay has a great voice too but I love to hear everybody else's on the microphone yeah I super get about your phone you can tell like I'm not the one with the podcast which we'll talk about actually in a second so you guys see Jay sitting here obviously a lot of you are used to my face cuz you're probably here because of my YouTube channel so thank you thank you thank you so much for being here and hello to everyone else who just joined or our number popped up a little bit there in the last couple of minutes thank you so much for being here I'm really excited I get to introduce sort of my co-host for the evening you might recognize his name from a video that I actually did I guess it was a few months ago where I never showed up to the top content creators that you should follow in 2020 for Matt inspiration and Jay was one of the content creators that I came across and had never met him before we had never talked before I just gave him a shout-out in my video and of course because he's such a gracious and amazing guy reached out and said thank you so much I'm like yeah thank you you're legit one of the most authentic and genuine content creators and coaches that I follow I love all of your emails I read them religiously I forward them to friends I think you give so much value for free and you know everyone who is listening knows that that's what I'm all about you know I love to leave a value with my youtube channel and I got no time for any BS in this whole world of marketing and so when I meet someone with like-minded view on this whole world I like to introduce them to my people so that they ensure their wisdom with you and help you on your journey whether it be copywriting or any other type of freelancing I know a lot of you on here are either copywriters or aspiring copywriters but Jay is the real deal he is the creator of freelancing school which provides training and support to help people make a living with freelancing so he has courses coaching and an online community and he gives creatives the tools they need to drive his business owners he's been featured on lynda.com TEDx South by Southwest LinkedIn and more he's also the founder of the unreal collective which hosts a 12-week online accelerator for creative business owners and he's the author an author for LinkedIn learning which covers freelancing entrepreneurship and product management so what's up Jay hello thank you that was thorough that was a good job of research on your part so thank you [Laughter] because you are launching a podcast tomorrow right yes it's been a long time coming it's called creative elements would love to share a link to that later on but that's not what we're here today so I won't waste your time right now but I'm busy so make sure your shout out on my ID tomorrow because I know you've put so much love into it and you interview people like Seth Godin and yep yeah morrow tomorrow we have Seth Godin next week we have James clear talked about an amazing person to kick off the podcast way it's like no big deal but I will make sure just to everyone listening I will share a link in my IG tomorrow since tomorrow like the inaugural inaugural that's a really hard word to say an all-girls podcast episode called creative elements and so yeah I think Michael what's that I'm so proud about look at all my my copy posi launchpad students representing up in the house okay so pretend I want to share a little bit about how this training came to be and I think it's just a testament to the type of person that J is so I sent out an email last week I think it was to my video sharing 5 copywriting courses that you can study from home right now and I you know I made reference to like the craziness that's going on in the world right now and I think as as leaders and content creators in the industry we really sort of need to leave the charge on the type of conversations and what's being said and what's happening right now especially for the people who look up to us and want to know kind of okay like how do i navigate this and um you know I was mentioning this actually to my students earlier this week is like how grateful are we that we can connect online every single you know twice a week over zoom and and be able to support one another and connect and grow and learn and that you know not everyone has that privilege right now but the fact that all of you guys are on here on this webinar right now is so cool because one it shows me the type of people that you are where you're committed to learning and growing and doing something different which is like mad props but we're all affected by this craziness like so differently right so some of us already work from home and so well you know it's definitely a destructive disruption it doesn't feel as different as say you know the health care workers who were out there or the city workers or you know the people who are running and doing work so that we can stay at home and be safe so I want to just give mad props to all of you actually Greg who's listening right now he's a health care worker and honestly there are so many people in his position who are just busting their asses for us and so big shout out to all of them first of all and we're all affected by this so differently I mean some of us have kids I mean I don't but some of us kids who are out of school and now looks on you're finding yourself at home like oh my gosh I have to work now at home and manage children like oh my gosh some of us have lost jobs some of us have you know are just completely you know in disarray not knowing how to handle sort of what's going on and it's all pretty crazy and Jay reached out to me and was like Alex how can we help people right now like how can we do a training or do something where we can just share anything we can to to help the freelancers and the copywriters and and those of us who are in sort of the client business client getting client business to get ahead because the whole world right now is basically coming to a screeching halt and that's actually a huge opportunity for a lot of us and I know it keeps so easy to like numb out and binge watch Netflix and I definitely watch all of RuPaul's all-stars on Netflix in the past couple of weeks and that's fine you know but it's so easy to them out and you know the fact that you guys are here on this webinar means that you're willing to do something productive to hopefully get ahead and we're gonna do all we can to sort of offer our guidance and and help out so you know I'm gonna be monitoring the chat throughout this webinar I'm also gonna be looking at questions during the Q&A if anything super relevant in the moment I will jump in and ask your question for you too Jay in the Q&A box but like I said will also open the line up for questions at the end so that you can actually get on and join us to ask a question but essentially over the next you know hour you're gonna learn Jays 9 tips for finding clients right now what you can do from home to really not only sort of you know get ahead from a business perspective but also just deal with all the craziness and insanity that's happening right now and why freelancing actually puts you at a huge advantage I think right now during these uncertain times I know you know when when you're a freelancer or entrepreneur it feels so uncertain but when you can build a business despite uncertainty because uncertainty becomes the constant you actually kind of make yourself you know what's the word you're sort of proofing your self against you know what's happening in the outer world because your get you're given the tools and you're learning the tools to be able to have solid foundation so when you know excuse my language when [ __ ] hits the fan because you know it does and it has it has yeah you feel prepared to make that happen so yeah so I said it I said it before I'm a you know copywriter and a copywriting expert I'm not a freelancing expert I can definitely do my best to share with you guys my strategy skills practices on how I've got clients over the years but that's really why I wanted to bring Jay to to you guys to share you know he works with freelancers in so many different areas and he has a lot of amazing wisdom that he can share so yeah I think that's that's good Jam I think we're ready for you to kick off your slides and we'll go from there all right okay well can you see my screen Alex just give me a thumbs up if you can I can Thea awesome guys well like Alex said kudos to you for taking the time to making the time for this training and for showing up and being interested and continue to push forward and is difficult time my name is Jay like Alex said and she gave me such a great intro that I barely even need to touch on any of this but suffice to say that I work with a lot of artists and creatives people who have taken the leap either full time or part time into freelancing and it's usually because they want control they won't control of their life they won't control of their time and if you don't go into it really intentionally and thoughtfully and prepared for building a business you can very quickly find yourself feeling overworked and underpaid and a lot of times personal projects that you were excited to work on that's why you went freelance in the first place those things fall by the wayside and so I work with a lot of my clients to help them find balance and accomplish the professional goals that they have but also reserve some time for their personal projects so you know this is a tough time for everyone let me just start by saying that this is tough for everyone and I just want you to know and to feel that you are not alone and whatever it is that you're feeling throughout all of this whatever you're feeling is valid it's a scary time it's a stressful time some days it's really hard to get out of bed and do things you're not alone in feeling that way but you know I'm here to tell you that just because it feels like the world around you may have slowed down and client work has slowed down that doesn't mean that you have to slow down if you don't want to it doesn't mean that you need to sit here and let the world happen to you you can be proactive and you can start to make some of your own breaks and make some your own luck so I'm here to say you know we've got some lemons right now everyone's been given a pile of lemons but we can make some lemonade so everybody ready to dive in and and see what yeah lemonade known to men love it awesome awesome so before I even get into these nine strategies I'm talking to Alex before we got on here I wanted to set some some base level context and make sure we're starting from the same place if you haven't gotten a ton of clients before maybe you're looking for your first client I wanted to explain how I think about sales funnel and sales process and what that means for you at this stage even if you have clients already and you've worked with some folks this is gonna be a really helpful exercise and framework for you to be thinking about how to talk about your own work how to talk about yourself and go out and get some more clients so this is a basic visualization right everyone that you meet before they can ever buy from you and that's the bottom of the funnel before they can ever buy from you they have to know you exist it just makes common sense if they don't know you exist there's no way that they're gonna become a client so the first stage is awareness once they're aware of you at some point they're going to get interested in working with you then some time they're gonna make a decision and finally take action say yes Alex here's my checkbook I'm going to work with you this is going to happen it would be awesome if we could skip these first two steps yeah and went straight to people making a decision whether or not they want to work with us and that's what referrals do for you when someone has when you get an inbound lead for somebody when you have someone coming to you and asking for help because someone else has referred them to you they have already become aware of you they're already interested enough that they've asked for a rep for a referral or for an introduction and that's why referrals are so powerful because they have trust built in to totally totally you skip the hardest part of the funnel where the most people fall out and you go right to the part of the process where it's most likely they're gonna work with you anyway yeah I actually have a quick question too for everyone listening like how many of you and I've heard this a lot from from a few people is there like I've tried sending out emails to two people and like I don't hear anything back and I think I again I haven't read your emails but I think a lot of people try to skip to the decision in action like they're taking cold leads and they're basically going hey here's what I can do by now or you know get back to me and hire me and you know I think there's there's really something that needs to be said for the top of the funnel and and what you're actively doing to create that people don't go all the way through your sales funnel and say yes I'm gonna hire you upon a first impression but a first impression is necessary for them ever to decide to hire you so if you're if you're on LinkedIn and you're sending an automated message to your first connection to say hey this is what I do will you hire me you're gonna have a very low close rate because that's just a very strong start so think about you know at the top of this funnel you're starting and building relationships and then eventually you're gonna have the opportunity to work with somebody but again the shortcut here is if you have someone referred directly to you and so I want to talk a little bit about how to do that because life is easy when you have high quality inbound leads it's really easy when people are coming to you for your health and it's really important to remember someone else recommending your work is much more powerful than you recommending your work of course you're gonna say I do really great work but there's always gonna be a little bit of a question in the clients mind of are they just saying that because it's them and they have to when a third party someone that should be fairly unbiased says you got to work with Jay you've got to work with Alex that's really powerful and it gets you a lot of the way down that sales well social proof totally so the more people that you have out there who are referring people to you the better off you're gonna be the more advocates you have your business the easier your life will be and so I want to talk a little bit about what an advocate is and it's it's pretty obvious it's pretty intuitive if you already receive word-of-mouth referrals that word is coming from the mouth of your advocates people who are willingly saying nice things about you it's your friends it's your family it's your co-workers it's collaborators people who already know you and are already saying nice things and being willing to go out put their neck on the line and say you should work with this person these advocates can be a total total game changer for you if you value them appropriately if you give them the right tools and then if you utilize them curricula correctly so the framework that I want to introduce here is something I call eyes and ears which is kind of intuitive on the surface already so it's both an acronym and a philosophy eyes stands for establish your elevator speech and ears means empower advocates to refer sales all right I'm gonna break each of those down a little bit here real quick before you even get into these nine these nine steps for getting more clients so this yeah this is an extended bonus let's start with the eyes your elevator speech or elevator pitch P didn't work so well I went with speech because IP doesn't quite work as well as your elevator speech is a short description of what you do in one breath the goal should be this is how you tell someone who you help and how you help them it needs to be memorable and the shorter and more specific it is the better I'm gonna get into that a little bit here but if you are just getting started you don't have any clients or if you have got some clients but it's still feels like it's more difficult than it should be a really great place to start is by looking at you or elevator speech and figuring out how do I describe what I do to people especially your advocates and a really great way to do that is the framework I help X do why I help this type of person solve this type of problem some examples here would be I help me personally I help creatives make money freelancing maybe you help beat abuse ask companies write letter emails maybe you take photos for destination weddings maybe you handle post-production for podcasters yeah this is so similar to I mean when I speak in copywriting terms about determining just your unique selling proposition as a copywriter you know I've said this in a couple of emails guys like when you reach out to people and say hi I'm a copywriter and I can write copy for you what you're actually doing is creating a massive task in the mind of your future potential client to try to figure out what they need you to help them with and it's sort of like oh great you know what I don't know you I don't know what I need right now it's all very confusing so being establishing your elevator speech and making it like you're doing here super specific where you're calling out the audience and the specific problem and or benefit I mean it's it's like applying the rules of copywriting to your own marketing materials when you are trying to clients totally we we remember very specific terms when we're being an advocate for somebody else and the unfortunate reality is people are gonna put you in a box and so the best thing you can do is create your own box to give to them to say if you're going to think of me in any way this is how I want you to do it I helped b2b SAS companies write better emails I helped creatives make fun make money freelancing it's the more specific you can be the better because our memories are really terrible and you need to keep it short and so just a little bit more on specialization I know you're gonna resist it you're not gonna want to do it you're not gonna want to say I helped this specific type of person do a specific type of thing you're gonna think I can do all of the things how do I choose one or two of the things but the reality is you have limited capacity you won't do everything for anyone for everyone and if you try you're gonna end up doing nothing for and I always say that too when you're writing copy I think when I work with clients who especially in more broad field like personal development or something and I say okay what does your product help people do specifically who and what does it do what helps everyone just be happier and better and it's like what that's not memorable that's not unique and so when it's same same goes for you and your skill set is you know when you try to appeal to everyone you end up feeling - no one totally you're gonna end up chasing more people and spending more time making less money than you've ever made before and the thing is it doesn't preclude you from doing other things even if you say I helped b2b SAS companies write better emails if someone comes up to you and says can you help me with my testimonial page you can still say yes it's okay this is about the toolbox the elevator speech that you're allowing your advocates to go and run with for you so pick whatever work you want to do maybe it's your kind of your bread and butter maybe it's the aspirational work but you know be specific with what you want people referring people to you for I always talk about that to my videos where I say pick your niche everyone's like oh I don't know what I want my needs to be it's more it's more for your clients benefit than it is for your benefit like you could decide you want to write coffee in a specific niche and then you decide that you take that knee is fine then change it you know but if you're not clear from the beginning people don't know how you can specifically help them so yeah I love all this totally so you know saying I write emails for b2b says company is much more specialized than on a copywriter being specialized makes it a lot easier to be the go-to number-one person for some type of customer and being the go-to number-one person means you can charge higher rates and it makes you a lot more referral mm-hmm so let's dive into the second part of eyes and ears empower advocates to refer sales these the advocates I was talking about there's this quote from the book code of trust by Robin shriek that I like a lot Robin Drake was in the FBI and he was you know part of his job is building relationships with either people out in the field that he needs to gain the trust of but he said a tenant of evolutionary psychology is that people are hardwired to enjoy offering assistance not only as a mechanism to receive assistance themselves but also to satisfy the innate drive for altruism basically what are you saying here is you know everyday people around you are out there talking to other people you're advocates are out in the world talking to other people every day and often in those conversations that they have with other people that person they're talking to will talk about a problem they're facing or a pain point they're having because we're all kind of self-involved and so when we talk about things we talk about what we're struggling with and when that happens your advocate is going to try and solve that problem for them they're going to figure out okay this person is in pain or this person's having a problem how do I solve that for them and often they solve that by recommending someone that they know can help solve that problem so you want to be the first person they think of when they're solving somebody's problem and the best way to do that is being specialized being specific because you're gonna be the first person in mind you're gonna be that go-to referral mm-hmm I'm gonna keep using this example because I think it's yeah one of my clients does this and she gets a ton of referrals because of this when someone says you know I need someone to help me write better emails if someone's pitch said I help this type of company write better emails they're gonna remember that phrase same if they say hey I run a b2b SAS company I need to help with this they're gonna thank you I know that helps b2b SAS companies yeah specialize words are easy to remember and easy for advocate to make a connection and the first person who comes to mind is going to get that referral if someone says I need a copywriter I'm gonna think of ten people off the top of my head I'm going to make my own second leap to say which is the person that I should help plug in here and if you haven't given me the elevator speech or the box that you want me to use for you I'm gonna make some assumptions and I might make some wrong assumptions that's so so important like I can't tell you the number of times I have my mastermind members or clients or partners or friends say hey Alex do you know because you know normally I my agency so I can't take any on any more clients and they say do you know anybody who writes coffee or who can write copy for me and then the first question I always ask is sure what kind of copywriter joonie the biggest assumption is that all copywriters are created equal and I think that's also part of the reason why when people they always at least in my world no one can find a copywriter which seems crazy for all of you guys who want to be copywriters it just goes to show that there's so much room for specialty and you know it's part of the reason why I asked my my pocket posse Launchpad students to pick a niche because when I then have clients and students come our sorry clients and partners come ask me hey Gino a copywriter in in this area and this area and this area in this area I can say absolutely yes I do and so it's just so so powerful and and and you're not stuck to that specialty forever you can change if you really decide that you no longer want to do that yep 100 percent so remember you already have advocates people that can go out there and refer you is your clients your friends your family people who admire your work they will become productive advocates if you give them these tools if you give them this elevator speech by using that same specific elevator speech around them you begin to use repetition to your advantage and just lodges in their brain and they can refer some people to you hmm and that's what the eros is all about once you've established that memorize it use the same phrase every time I help creatives to make money freelancing I say that all the time because then people start to remember it they start to refer people to me because of it over time it sticks in their minds and at any given time if you have more and more advocates just think about this as a numbers game the more people that you pull into your world who are going to be positive advocates source of referrals for you at any given time they might be out in the world solving somebody's problem for them and that problem-solve might be you mm-hmm yeah and I know we talked about this before the call but you know if you're kind of thinking who are my advocates and I know you're going to talk about this but um you know even if imagine if you just posted on your Facebook page hi I'm a copywriter who or I write I help sorry try to use your formula I hope these sort of companies write this sort of coffee is there anybody that could use my services right now you would be so surprised how many people might not immediately go yes I know someone but maybe in a week or in two weeks or in three weeks or where did I see that oh yeah plus how often do people ask you you know hey how can I help you and it's really easy then because have you done the work to say do you know any Bab SAS companies you know you don't have to say do you know any of these type of people who need this type of help you can start by saying do you know any of these type of people and then you can have a conversation with them that gets them up to the awareness stage of your sales funnel and you're starting to build a relationship so you know having this framework in place helps you better spend your time and even take advantage of a lot of the very generous and kind asks that people make all the time you know when someone says what do you do we get so afraid of that but it's an invitation to actually you know build a referral mechanism if you approach it that way and it's so simple everyone can come up with I help link do blank you know it's so simple and it doesn't how many times do you guys go to networking events that was like yes hi and what do you do especially when you're in that weird middle place between leaving a nine-to-five job or wanting to leave a nine-to-five job and starting your business and you're like well I'm at this networking MX I really want to start my business but technically I don't do that yet what how do I say this how do I answer this question so if you're an aspiring copywriter and you go to a networking event someone says what do you do you can say oh I'm a copywriter I help these types of businesses write these kind of this type of type of coffee or these type of emails or this type of you know upsell page or you know these types of product descriptions or whatever it might be and actually this is a good Segway Suze is asking so what are your thoughts on using referral networks like BNI or I take the lead not sure if they're shifting from virtual meetings now or not though I have next to no familiarity with either of those I mean at the end of the day if it's working for you awesome if you're putting a ton of time into it and it's not working for you not great I find that the best referrals come from people who aren't who don't feel like just obligated to do it it gets it kind of starts relationships on a weird footing but to be honest I don't know either of those networks very well I try to operate as one-to-one human-to-human as I possibly can because to me I've just seen a greater return on that because I'm just very bullish on personal relationships I think yeah I and I and I've never heard of I take the lead but I get the concept of BNI and I think you know if you're already established in one then why not but there's also so many local meetups and things you go to meetup.com and find local entrepreneurship meetups and different networking events that really allow you to kind of get in front of other business owners who will always need coffee and breathe asking God what if you're so green and you don't know what you do or who you can help I mean I'll answer from my perspective I think you know you can really take a second to think about who you want to help and what you want to do and to be honest I think that's all that's a lot how we all are when we're just getting started and as long as we're really honest about where we're at so when you are going and reaching out to a client you can say you know I'm just getting started but I'm super passionate about this and I'm starting a freelance copywriting business where I help blank DubLi you know I think for me it's always like being super just real and honest with where you're at because then that appeals to people's need to want to help and support you as well as we're talking about yeah that's a really great strategy for getting started and I would also say be aspirational you know to what you're just saying Alex because what people don't tell you in the beginning is that bad clients attract other bad clients and good clients attract other good clients so the more aspirational you can be in the beginning and say this the type of work I want to do these are type of clients I want to work with it may take you six twelve months to get that first client that really fits exactly what you're trying to do but that person is then going to become a referral source for other people like them and it just kind of builds upon itself so the the more upfront you can say you know what no this is what I want to do this is who I want to help even if it seems like a reach at the time you'd be surprised you know don't undervalue your skills they're gonna be people in that in a position to hire you that just don't have the skill set that you do and they'll take a chance on you yeah and one more question I know because it's just related yusuf says Alex in your videos you talk about the first how the first client sets the foundation so what if you choose a niche that you end up not liking will not affect your future work similar to what Jay was just saying you know it does set the foundation because once you have one client that had you have a good relationship with then you know you can build your but your your business based on referrals but it's not that you can't completely change it and I know that this is a real concern because a lot of my students also Express this they go what if I want to write and tack and then all of a sudden I realize like no I want to write for this and that's totally fine you know specializing just gives you an extra little move when you are looking for very specific clients but if you are are reaching out and you have a portfolio from a year and a half ago with unrelated coffee no one's gonna like call your you know [ __ ] they're just okay used to do that so I would say don't stress about it like your most important thing is just to get started totally it's it's not a prison sentence and it's not a license you know you can always change it and you control your portfolio so if you want to stop showing off some type of work you can do that totally alright so we've gotten to the beginning now of these nine steps so you guys ready to get on all right awesome so let's start by reaching out to your advocates these people we just talked about there's a lot of talk right now about social distancing and physical distancing is really important right now so you're gonna flatten the curve here in the US and all across the world and not spread this virus but we don't need social distance in my opinion we need social connection while maintaining physical distance so there are a lot of people right now who are feeling very lonely and disconnected and have a lot of time on their hands that I didn't before it's a really great time to reconnect with friends family coworkers and other advocates reach out to them have a conversation over the phone schedule a video call you know this is a really good time to fill with building relationships with some of these people that you already think of as advocates for you and when you talk to them be empathetic you know talk to them about their situation see if there's any way that you can help them ask them how they're doing you know it's not it's not all about business here it's about strengthening the relationship that you built in the first place that made them your advocate at some point they'll probably ask you how you're doing and you should be upfront with them you should be honest let them know how the situation has impacted you what types of things would make it easier on you you know maybe it is finding a client who is a Bab SAS company maybe it is finding someone who needs help rewriting some other emails maybe you just need to your emotional support and that's okay to ask for yeah do your part do your part to help others and others will likely do what they can to help you you know back to Robin Drake says but only if they know how they can help so don't just say everything's great and make it all rainbows and sunshine you know be honest ask for help and do it with humility these people are your advocates and you know another acronym that I like to think of that's not in this deck anywhere else is ABCs people are going to be an advocate for you before they're a client even if they very quickly become an advocate or very quickly become a client we're going to advocate to themselves that they should hire you so before anything else you need to build a relationship to a point where someone is willing to be an advocate for you even if it is to themselves or their boss I love that advocate before client yeah that's so so powerful and I think too like the other thing to say to this is when you get really clear on what it is that you offer and guys you can refine it over time because I know now you're kind of thinking oh is what I'm saying specific enough like start with something and then and then you can always like you know Whittle it down and you'll you'll know by the response but steep or you can go the other way and start super specific and then and then once you start working with particular types of clients maybe you pivot or change where you're going but think about how hard it is to think about how hard it is to just like when you're in a Facebook group for example they're like no self-promotion and they don't want people to go hey here's what I do like and it's because it seems it seems pitchy and you're you know just trying to get business but with when you're talking to your advocates and someone's genuine like genuinely asking you how you're doing and you can share that then you're putting that seed out there in a lot of different ways so you don't have to only rely on you know I think everyone's thinking oh I got to go get clients in a Facebook group I gotta go back up work or I gotta that's where I'm do it I mean the people who are your advocates will be the ones who refer York a few years ago when I was just getting started I totally misunderstood how cash flow worked and it got to the end of the year and I realized oh crap I don't even have like the money to get through the end of this year and I'm not spinning up another cohort of the accelerator until January so the first thing I did was reach out to people who are close to me I asked them how I could help them and over and over I was like you know I sure do I was excited about first I said this is really exciting work on these things it's going really well but I totally mishandled my cash flow and so cash is a little dry right now I'm looking to help somebody with their email copy or with some websites and it only took a few of those meetings with my advocates for someone to be like oh I need that you know here's can I hire you for the next three months it was it was exactly what I needed and it just came from being open and honest and and talking to people who already cared about me and were invested in my success mm-hmm all right number to reach out to former in existing clients if you have them or even people who are warm leads potential clients with all the bad news you're seeing you might assume that business is coming to a standstill and everyone is just guarding their money putting it into a ball so that no one can touch it and that's not totally the case just this past week I had one of my best weeks in months because I said oh the storms coming I guess it's a good time for me to try to rein in some of these worn leads that I've been you know keeping in touch with for the past couple months this is the time to try and strike and get get some work in the boat a lot of these businesses have very real needs and those needs may be even more difficult to fill right now that things are remote so if you offer services virtually you may be at a big advantage right now it's worth reaching out to and checking in with your existing former and potential clients to see if they can use a hint yeah actually that just gave me a really good idea like because my thing in my own life my boyfriend has a brick and mortar woodworking business where he builds furniture and wood products and he's been talking for months about building his Shopify store and hasn't done it because he's been busy like everybody right now he's forced to stay at home and I'm like hey babe good time to start your Shopify store guess you wrote go get to help Detroit is coffee but imagine you can reach out to some of the local businesses in your area who you know are probably struggling to get online right now and you can help them with with putting and building it online Shopify store I mean it's literally plug-and-play anyone who's ever used Shopify it's like easier than using Facebook I swear but there's just so much opportunity it's just knowing where you can come in and actually help it's not opportunistic if you're genuinely helping this business that would otherwise not make sales bring their sales online with us that's huge totally and I was thinking along the lines of you know they're still moving forward with their initiatives externally but a lot of them might be focusing in-house they might be saying things are slow it's time for us to redo our website it's time for us to get you know some attention on that you know support center for for our products so it's worth reaching out and seeing like hey what are you guys doing are you focusing internally can I help with these things to underscore the example of this being a good time for people virtually this is a tweet I saw that hit the nail on the head she basically said you know if your company is creative and they usually you photographers or filmmakers to go on site to shoot but you can't go on site right now you could hire an illustrator or an animator you know there are people who have a way of doing things that is disrupted right now and they're looking for solutions here's here's a template email that I have for you guys and you know we'll send this deck out after after the webinar here so that you can you can have this but basically reach out to this person say hi person how are you holding up you know start with empathy start with asking them how they're doing if you've done work with them in the past you know say I was thinking about you and the work we did together at this time may be his last may may be his last September let them know that you were grateful for the opportunity to work with them and that you would like to support them now if their opportunity is there and if they need it let them know that you know you're looking ahead for your own business and you're trying to be mindful of your own time say I wanted to reach out to you sooner than later you know make it make it seem like you're busy people like to work with busy people but say I wanted to touch with you sooner rather than later I've had a good year and I'm looking at my calendar into April and May are you available to catch up over the phone and talk about your plans you don't even need to make a big pitch here just you know as if they're you're one of your advocates say I want to get on the phone and talk you know can you catch up over the phone and talk about it do you have time they probably have time and if you start that phone call asking them a lot of questions about what's going on in their world you might hear them express a problem that you know you can solve so if you get them on the phone and you get them talking about their problems if you hear something that you can fix for them you know you can offer that Dean of the call and say hey you mentioned that you're getting a lot of customer service emails right now asking what's going on you don't have the capacity to answer all of them do you want me to answer some emails for you you know like you may have to be a little bit flexible but you know it's it's a good time to try new things it's a good time to learn new skill sets we'll talk about here shortly yeah absolutely oh wait I was gonna do that but I know it's coming so I'll wait third third tip here is to make specific offers when you're having conversations with people it's good to have a very specific offer that you can proactively make for them making an offer means coming to the table with a defined outcome or a scope of a project price of the project and so on the more specific you can be about this thing that you basically make it feel plug-and-play if they just say yes the the better off that you're gonna be you don't want your client using their imagination Alex and I have talked if you just say hey I'm a copywriter do you need any of that they have to think like well I don't know what does that refer to what what could I do with them if you go in and you say something like instead of do you have any copyright he needs you say I'm gonna work with five clients this month to write some case studies of their former customers are you interested in that that's much more specific that's something people can wrap their head around and they can just say yes or no if they just say get started you've done all the imagination work for them yeah or hey business you know I know it's tough time right now if you're interested in bringing your store online and selling your products online I'll set up your Shopify store and write your you know homepage copy plus by email so you can send out to your mailing list for this much money oh you don't have a mailing list also if your MailChimp account for you to you know like real copywriters but we all know how to use online tools y'all made it on zoom' so it's thinking outside the box you know when offering a package like that how many business owners would be like oh oh my god that's what I need exactly right now you know totally Alex you at that great example of the person who reached out to you about videos oh yes thank you yeah so I am looking for an additional video editor and I honestly I was stressed out by the whole thought of having to go on up work or try to find somebody and this guy sent me an email who was just like hey by the way I have a video editing package I'll edit four videos a month up to 20 minutes long 48 hour turnaround time and limited revisions for only 450 bucks a month I can't remember if that was Eve that Christ but it was like oh my gosh thank you for being so specific he overcome my immediate objections because I immediately I'm like okay how many revisions does that include or what's the timeline or how many videos does that include a month and he just laid it all out on the table and I had never met or heard the guy before but he just got really clear on what his offer was and reached out to people who he thought might need it I'm sure he gets more nose than yeses but I might consider hiring him just because and think about how much shorter that makes the sales cycle you know you're going to naturally get knows a lot all the time anyway but a quick know is better than a prolonged now so if you're if you're they're saying this is exactly what I can do for you even if you say no it's like okay on to the next person but more times and not people might say yes if they say yes that project is getting started a week two week three weeks faster than it would if you had to go back and forth talking about well how many revisions what is the price what are we doing when you come and have basically a productized service to offer it's it's a pretty cut-and-dry yes or no and you can get things started pretty quickly so I want to dive in a little bit more about why the psychology of that works - and the first reason is scarcity people are attracted to things that are rarer or harder to attain you know it's the reason why we have museums with paintings by Van Gogh that are priceless and you can also go by a print for it for like $5 you know we don't care about the print we care about the scarce version of the thing we care about something that is hard to attain so if you're building yourself up to be someone that only works with five clients a month and people start to notice that you do great work and you're in demand they're gonna want to be that person that has the ability to hire you so if you make yourself seem scarce if you make your office or offers seem scarce that's really good for you and the second lever at play there in an offer is urgency people tend to leave off making decisions until they're forced to make a decision and the thing that forces decisions better than anything else is a deadline so if you give someone a deadline for when they need to accept that offer they're gonna give you a yes or a No but you're at least gonna know when it's coming and more times than not you know if something is scarce if it's well defined and it's an opportunity sitting right in front of me all I have to do is yes I'm more likely to say yes yeah I think that's so huge because world inherent procrastinators by Nature right I've given this example to my students before but it's like if you're like hey look at this lipstick I'll sell it to you for $100 now or you can just find $400 later everyone's gonna be later nobody wants to lose the money now let me think about it yeah exactly or you get yeah you get the well I reached out I have a lot of irons in the fire but I haven't heard back from anybody yet you have to give them a reason why they need to get back to you right away you know and keep it short and sweet emails that I get where I have to scroll more than once I'm sorry guys I just don't answer um because I you know nobody has time to read read novels I mean I do obviously if I know the person in there before they're already but any emails I get from just random people um and I do try to read all my emails but if they're too long or too you know convoluted I just won't respond but if someone gets back to me presents it on the table give me a yes or no by this date I probably would say no most the time but at least you know then and every now and then you send out you know you said 10 or 20 emails you're gonna get it yes eventually a standard line in my follow-ups to two people who seem like a warm lead and might be a client at this point when I follow up to them I just basically say hey I wanted to follow up on this conversation we had last month two months ago I'm lining up my March or my April and I wanted to make sure that if you want to move on this project I could budget time for it can we get on a call and talk about it when you say you know I want a budget time for that that gives the implicit statement of I'm busy and I don't need you but I want to make time for you if you're ready to move you know it's it's almost generous but it's pretty not urgency and that scarcity oh I love that okay so number four this is an attack when you see links guys we're gonna give you the slide so you'll be able to go actually click on the link so if you're like wait how do I click will give you I'll be sending out an email with links to the replay recording and any of the resources and slides and things below just so you know next next couple steps here aren't necessarily getting a new client