Success has a lot to do with your sense of being Find out how to train yourself to make money and stay in tune with your mind, body and soul
I never had a dream of working for someone else. I had always wanted to be more, be better and achieve more than my parents and their parents did. I got top grades in school and my parents were always super proud of me. Having a granddad who had been a very successful CEO most of his career, I needed to aim high and my parents were thrilled that I wanted to go that high. The better an education I took and the better a job I landed the more secure I would be in the future and that's basically what all parents wish for their kids.
So imagine their disappointment when I one day said to them: "Mom, dad... I'm not continuing to study after high school. I've been working with this online marketing thingy for the last 5 years in my spare time and I want to do that while traveling the world."
At first, they thought it was a joke, but I wasn't kidding and soon after I got my first success. I landed an online marketing job as head of the Danish market for a travel agency located in Spain! I was thrilled but I think they were more happy about the fact that I actually got a job straight after college instead of having to move back home to them.
So along with my girlfriend, we moved to Spain and after just 5 months we were back in Denmark. This time, our former beautiful apartment had been switched out with a basement in my granddad's house.
The job in Spain had been a good experience but doing the time we were abroad I almost lost my father and my grandmother got diagnosed with cancer and that just became too much for me to handle at that time which made me handle in a resignation.
Now I was back home in Denmark - I had no income, my girlfriend and I lived in a small basement for free and I had no intentions of getting a job. My dream still lived. I still wanted to work on my own terms while traveling the world - The thing is that doing your own thing is scary as hell in the beginning.
When you're employed you at least know that you'll have a steady income. I had to make enough money to support, not only myself but also my girlfriend who weren't able to work due to a depression. I was literally scared to shit but I had said A and now I needed to say B as well. I just had to make it work somehow or feel like the biggest failure ever in the history of our family.
To push me even further my granddad told me that we could only be living in the basement for 4 months as he had rented it out as a part of his Bed and Breakfast business.
So - Four months to build an income big enough to live in Denmark and hopefully be able to travel the world at some point in the nearest future.
I knew what I had to do - Get hold of some clients! Clients equaled money and that was what I needed.
So I did what most entrepreneurs does...
1) I created a website and spend more than two weeks trying to make the design look as I wanted it to.
2) Bought a logo for my company along with some business cards.
3) I started blogging on my new website.
4) I created a profile on most social media platforms and started sharing/posting some content here.
5) I started doing some link building to make my new website rank for online marketing related search terms.
As you hopefully have figured out, this is NOT the way to go if you need clients ASAP. It might be good in the long term, but it would take months before I would be able to rank on "SEO consultant" and related words. Also, I didn't have any money to promote myself so I had no reach through my social media profiles or Google.
What I was really doing was procrastinating. I knew of more efficient ways of getting clients ASAP but I was afraid.
I've never seen myself as being a good salesman and I was terrified of being questioned in regards to my skills as well as being rejected.
What I should have done was:
1) Seek out the clients I wanted to help and get in touch with them either through the phone or in person.
2) Have hosted a few workshops for the local businesses in the area.
I would have been able to do both of these things and I didn't. Too afraid of failing in landing a contract.
Luckily that didn't stop me completely.
Here's how I got my first three paying clients.
I did contact all the local newspapers and told them that I, a 21-year-old guy, had just started an online marketing agency. In Denmark, that's a story that the local newspapers would love to publish.
Next, I went online and found a list of all local businesses in my area. 136 to be precise. Next, I went on to analyze each of these websites to see if I would be able to help some of them grow and I only passed on four websites as they were bigger car manufacturers with a national website - Not my audience at that time.
As I was afraid to cold-call these businesses and as emailing prospects are illegal in Denmark without their accept beforehand, I chose to go unconventional ways - I wrote letters!
The thing about the online world is, that we all receive hundreds of emails a day, read a ton of news and a lot of us gets a few calls from people trying to sell us things - especially online marketing services. It's hard to get people's attention online but one thing caught my attention one morning - I would always read all the letters I received whether that being from the bank or from some sort of club.
Letters are personal and important, so I wrote 132 letters. In each letter, I focused on the problems the businesses had online, what I could potentially help them gain in terms of revenue and how much it would cost them.
Then I borrowed my mother's car and drove around to all these businesses, putter a letter in their mailbox.
Although I didn't get a lot of response, I did get four phone calls and one of the phone calls ended up being a client I have now worked with for more than 2,5 years!
The next client calls a few days later after I had notified the local journalists about my research on how the local businesses were doing online. They wrote a full page about me and my research and that made another entrepreneur get in contact with me to see if I could somehow help him. That was client number two!
The new contracts didn't bring in enough money so I started thinking about who else I could potentially help and gain something back from.
Then I read about a driving teacher quitting his job at another driving school to go his own ways. This driving teacher was the father of one of my brother friends. He knew who I was and I knew who he was. The only question was how I should get in contact with him.
When he registered his business he had put a checkmark in a box making it illegal to cold call him. I properly wouldn't have done it anyway at that time, but I found another way. I went on facebook and became friends with his son. This wasn't strange as we had gone to the same school and as he was friends with my brother.
Next up, I wrote a blog post on my company blog as a kind of case-study and a follow up to the newspaper article showing how driving schools in my town was missing out big time and how they could quickly reach a couple of hundred more students each month as no competitors were doing anything to rank on Google.
I shared that article on my facebook page the same evening when his son logged onto facebook. I knew that if he son saw that article he would share it with his father and hopefully that would get his father to call me up.
It didn't take more than a few hours before I got a text message and we sat up an appointment a few days later. In less than 6 months I helped him own Google in our town and he grew his business to middle-six figures and hired two more employees in the same time frame!
With these three clients, I had generated enough income for my girlfriend and me to move into an apartment of our own on the same day a we had to leave my granddad's basement.
Since then I haven't done anything to promote my business but working with those three clients has since given me several new clients as they have all recommended me to all their network and slowly but steadily I started to build up such a strong business that I chose to cancel the apartment contract and follow my dreams of traveling the world which is what I have done ever since.
Today I still work with one of the first clients and I have a few requests coming in each month. I do have a website but I have never used it or updated it from the time I created it. It hasn't been a priority for me as I keep getting referred more customers than I want to take on.
For the last year where I have been traveling, I am working an average of 50 hours/month and I am making enough money to support my wife and I while traveling.
The question then is: What have I learned over the last two and half years?
Here's my five tips for you
1) You don't need a website, a logo, paid advertisement, a blog or a social media profile before being able to get clients. When you're starting out you need to get clients as soon as possible. That might mean lowering your demands and taking on customers that you wouldn't take on a few years later, but when you start up it's all about getting clients, doing awesome work and establish a good relationship with the people you help.
Only focus on what's important for your business. If you need to establish yourself as an expert a blog and social media might be a goo strategy to consider down the line, but you don't have to do everything! Do what's necessary to grow.
2) I want you to realize that generating big results for your clients are what matters the most. If you're good at what you do, you can make a lot of money and gain a lot of customers just by creating awesome results for your clients.
3) I tend to relax whenever things are going my way and I hate having to face uncomfortable things like selling myself to new clients. Being comfortable is your biggest enemy as a full-time freelancer. If you really want to succeed you need to put yourself out there and face your fears.
Are you scared that you won't be able to make a big enough income to support yourself if you quit your day-job? Well, what if you quit your job? Don't you think you would push yourself harder than ever to make it work out for you and your family? As long as you really want it, you will find that drive inside of yourself and you will make it work.
Having a little saving is a good idea but don't use it as an excuse for not just putting yourself out there and try to land some clients. Your savings account will never get big enough for your to feel it's safe.
(Btw: I'm not saying anyone should just quit their jobs to become freelancers. There are things to consider but there's just too much overthinking it in general.)
4) Freelancing can give you a lot of flexibility which is fantastic. But you can quickly start to come into a sleeping-long into the day, working odd hours.
Daily routines, no matter how boring they may sound, is the key to making things happen and keeping your sanity. With no regular routines, you can quickly start to feel stressed and overwhelmed - Feeling like your working and thinking about work all the time. Create a schedule for yourself and remember to take time off for family, enjoyment and yourself!
5) Remember to take an offline holiday! As a freelance, you can quickly arrange your days so you have days off to relax. But don't forget to take real vacations. Leave your work for a week. Don't even bring your phone. Go, drive or fly somewhere where you can be 100% offline and just enjoy your days. It's something that you will quickly forget as you will feel like the freedom you have is enough.
That's it for this time. If you have any questions I would be more than happy to answer. I hope at least one of you will gain something from reading this.
(BTW: I am currently doing some research in regards to an article series I'm about to write about people doing freelancing on the side of a day job. More explicit I'm focusing on the difficulties of going from being a freelancer on the side to being it full-time and I need more data points before being able to finish. If you match the profile: (working a day job, freelancing on the side, wanting to do it full-time) I would love to do a quick 5-15 minute skype interview with you. Please contact me if you're interested in participating.)
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