Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome to the Boss Responses Podcast. Starting this podcast was a dream come true for me. I've always wanted to help freelancers and small business owners create businesses they love by learning how to manage their client relationships. When you manage your client relationships well, that puts you on even footing and creates partnerships instead of hiring situations. Another one of my dreams was that one day, this week's guest host would be on the podcast with me.

Treasa Edmond: 0:30

Ed Gandia' s wisdom has helped me up- level my business and he's changed my life without ever even knowing, long before I ever met him. Ed selflessly gives amazing advice and guidance on his podcast, on his blog, and through the resources he shares with the freelance community. He is a business building coach who helps established freelance writers and copywriters earn more in less time doing work they love for better clients. His High Income Business Writing podcast is one of the top freelancing and writing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and his insights and advice have been featured in Forbes, Fast Country, CNN Radio, and many other publications. He also has some great free resources he offers. I'll make sure those are linked in the show notes every day this week.

Treasa Edmond: 1:21

I know you're as excited as I am to hear this week's content, so let's go ahead and jump into our first question with Ed. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question. I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-host embraced their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses, ed. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Let's go ahead and just jump into the question for day one.

Ed Gandia: 2:24

So, yes, here is a really good question. I've been freelancing on the side for about a year now and with a recent layoff I'm taking it full time. It's my first time being my own boss and I'm a bit stressed about all the things I might be doing wrong. What are some of the mistakes you see freelancers make when they first start out, and how can I avoid them? Thank you.

Treasa Edmond: 2:48

This is a really good question and I actually made a little bit of a list for this one, because it's really easy to miss some of the major things. I think the first mistake I see people making, especially people who are coming into freelancing with significant corporate experience is undervaluing their services. They think they have to start at the bottom of the rung again, and that's just not true and I'll let you speak a little bit more on that, because you're just the master at valuing your expertise. But I think it's really important to know that. Also, setting clear boundaries with your clients.

Treasa Edmond: 3:23

I see a lot of people coming into running their own business with an employee mindset, and that's something that I've talked about a lot and I'll keep talking about it, because it's vital that you step up as the boss of your business, and part of that is making sure that your clients understand that they're clients and that you are running a business and providing a service, and that doesn't mean being mean or nasty or even cutting remarks.

Treasa Edmond: 3:49

It's just setting boundaries so that you can do what you do best while they do what they do best. And then I think the third thing that I would really like to focus on is neglecting your marketing, because a lot of people will get started and they get those first few clients and they get pretty busy and then they stop marketing and then something happens with a client and they get all panicked and they start marketing again, but they only do it until they get a client. And I think continuous marketing should be a part of our business plan and I think every freelancer needs a business plan from day one. That should be something you do, it should be something that you set aside time for every week, and it needs to be just a continuous process. What are your thoughts on this, winnid?

Ed Gandia: 4:36

All great points. There are so many things that it could just kind of come across as overwhelming. Right, I think you and I could spend a lot of time on this. But just to kind of compliment some of the things that you shared. One of them is casting to wide and net, just playing it safe. Oh, I can write anything for anybody. I'm exaggerating, but that's kind of the approach that a lot of new people take, and when you can write anything for anybody, you don't really stand out. What clients really want is someone who gets them, gets their business, gets their industry, gets the topics they need to write about and understands the audience they're writing to or they need to communicate with. So really presenting yourself is the ideal choice in that regard is huge. And not saying, well, I'm going to cast a wider net, that's a huge mistake. You dilute your value, dilute your strengths and your differentiators. To kind of echo some of what you said, I think underestimating the amount of outreach you have to do is a really common mistake.

Ed Gandia: 5:48

I think a lot of people come into that with a lot of fear, but I also see a lot of people come into it with a lot of confidence in terms of what it's going to take from a marketing standpoint to land clients, especially if you land a client or two pretty quickly and then it just it creates a false expectation. Overwhelmingly. I find that people underestimate how much marketing they're going to have to do. So you need to be prepared for that One that I, in fact, I just saw this the other day from someone I was talking to and they had started recently and this I see this all the time is putting too much stock in any single opportunity. So it's like, oh, you know I'm, I got this person, I know it's my ex-boss, for instance, and this is really going to kickstart my business.

Ed Gandia: 6:35

So they stop marketing, they stop paying attention to all these important foundational elements that they need to put in place, because they got everything. All their hopes and dreams are riding on this opportunity and, of course, the bigger the opportunity, the more complex and easier it is for something to go wrong and suddenly, three months go by and it dies. In fact, their, their contact gets laid off out of the blue. This is really about diversification, about just doing the reps, not counting on any single opportunity, and I like to tell new people look, you're buying lottery tickets. Buy as many lottery tickets as you can say yes to everything. I know that might contradict some of what we've been saying, but you don't know which opportunity is really going to pop, so buy a bunch of lottery tickets. We'll talk more about this, but as your business evolves, you say no much more often, but at first say yes.

Treasa Edmond: 7:32

Yeah, I've made that mistake, putting all of my eggs in one basket multiple times. It takes a couple of times for me to learn something, apparently. But I've learned and now my rule of thumb is one client cannot equate to any more than 50% of my income for that given month. If I do more than that, then I know I'm going to be in trouble if I lose that client and that's a big thing with me. Now, one thing that hasn't come up that I just thought of. Well, one thing that you mentioned was casting that wide net. This is something I personally really struggle with because I'm a net person. I am, but I do ghost writing and I love writing books about all kinds of topics, and that to me, is exciting. But I understand the value of niching down. Could you talk a little bit more about when someone comes in with an area of expertise, how should they approach that? They're a simple process for deciding which niche they should be looking at.

Ed Gandia: 8:28

Well, first of all, let me address a common misconception. I don't think I don't like to use the word niche because niche is too broad. Nech could be a combination of different factors. I think the people confuse target market with niche, so I want to specifically talk about target market. Target market doesn't need to be an industry, so that's a very common misconception. Target market could be described with other attributes.

Ed Gandia: 8:58

I work let's use your example so I ghost write books for executives and business leaders. I didn't name an industry there, I just made that up. I'm not saying this is you, but the point is that you can slice and dice it many different ways. You still need to identify the audience. When you talk about them. They need to say that's me, and there are many different ways to do that.

Ed Gandia: 9:22

Granted, an industry is the most common. But to go back to your question, one of the best things you could do is do a personal and professional inventory when do I have background, experience, network, skills, understanding, passions, and then it's the process of elimination from there. But start with what you know and whom you know, and that's going to be your best bet, and don't think that you have to really go with an industry. Also, don't feel like you have to go super narrow. I see a lot of people making the opposite mistake and they say I want to write about not just sustainability but green energy, and not just that, but solar panel manufacturers I don't know just to name one example and how many of them are there. I don't know that industry but that's probably a little too narrow, especially if you don't have a ton of experience in that one area.

Treasa Edmond: 10:22

Yeah, and I think one mistake I constantly see people make is I'm a freelancer now, so I don't have to build all of these relationships like I did when I was an employee, and I think that's completely basacwards, because the people I see who are most successful they focus on those relationships because in my experience, those relationships have led to referrals. They've led me to my best clients every single time. They also are the most important part of my marketing building relationships and networking as part of my marketing and it really, really helps.

Ed Gandia: 10:58

Amen.

Treasa Edmond: 10:59

Yeah, now, one thing we didn't talk about and let's just touch on this really quickly because I know we're almost out of time for today Contracts. How do you feel about contracts, ed? Because I'm a big fan of it. Helps set boundaries. There are a million ways to do this, but I'm a huge fan of them.

Ed Gandia: 11:17

I'm gonna pick just one thing to say about that, because I think we can really unpack it in maybe a different episode. You need a document that everyone can point to in the case of a misunderstanding, dispute or guess what. Oh, that's my best friend, I'm so. I don't need a contract. Your best friend suddenly gets laid off and the new replacement doesn't know what your agreement was. You have nothing to point to. You cannot imagine the possible Situations that could come up and you need to just pretend. If worse came to worse, what can we point to in a friendly manner To see okay, what did we agree on? And that just prevents all kinds of misunderstandings. It's not about lawsuits, it's not about going to court. It's really about Preventing really bad things from happening.

Treasa Edmond: 12:13

Yeah, it really is, and it also helps both of you understand exactly what your deliverables are. Scope creep is the thing especially for I Can't say especially for new freelancers. Scope creep is a thing it always will be for everybody, everybody and having all of that lined out, yeah, some kind of document.

Treasa Edmond: 12:30

So if it's a statement of work, if it's an email that clearly outlines everything, if it's a full contract and I highly recommend full contracts for High-value work then Make sure that's done. So those are a few of the things that we recommend that you keep close to yourself as you start your business. If you take the time to set down and do some type of business plan, even if it's very informal, you're going to find, I think, that a lot of these just fall in there. Naturally, don't go into it like it's a side project anymore. You're starting a business, freelancing as a business. Make sure you take that seriously and make sure you set it up. Set yourself up for success, not for failure. Any last words on this one, ed.

Ed Gandia: 13:17

No, I would say, just get out there. The real learning happens once you get out in the market and start trying things.

Treasa Edmond: 13:24

Absolutely. Thank you for joining us for day one with Ed Gandia, and we will be back tomorrow for day two.