Treasa: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast. Our special guest host this week is Jessica Walrack. That's a name you might know if you follow freelance writing topics on LinkedIn. Jessica is the founder of All Things Freelance Writing. Now, that's literally the name of her community All Things Freelance Writing. She's created a community that helps freelance writers build their ideal businesses, and she offers a blog, a weekly jobs newsletter and other resources that you're probably going to want to get a hold of.

Treasa: 0:30

We're going to answer questions together for the first four days of this week and then on Friday, we're going to take a deeper look at the topic of niching down. So, if that's something you've wondered about, maybe you're thinking of niching down and you haven't yet, or maybe you've niched down and you feel like you've made your pawn just a little too small. Make sure you join us for that Friday episode. Trust me, you do not want to miss it. Today we're going to talk about a question I've been seeing more often lately how do you turn one-off clients into repeat or retainer work so that they keep coming back? Are you ready? I am.

Treasa: 1:08

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 asked 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-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses, jessica. What is the question for day one?

Jessica: 2:01

Okay, so we have Leigh from Chicago and she says that she's having a problem that most people probably won't see as a problem. She's had pretty good success landing clients. She keeps a full schedule and is meeting her income goals, but can't seem to keep clients long term. So she wants to build a steady stream of repeat and retainer work so she can have a more steady schedule with less marketing and prospecting. She's wondering how can she build longer term relationships with clients.

Treasa: 2:32

It almost seems like she has two different things going on here. One I would never recommend less marketing and prospecting, and maybe not prospecting, at least the marketing. You need to keep that going at all times. You need to keep that inbound client list happening and they won't come if they don't know that you exist. So you really can't ever stop. On that you can fall back a little bit. I recommend always that people market for at least one day of the week, that's just. I have mine set up, so on Fridays I have four hours that I do business stuff and it's almost always marketing.

Treasa: 3:05

I think that's a separate issue and I don't want to go too deep into that. But building the long-term relationships with clients, I think that all hinges on value. What value are you offering them and how are you approaching them? So when you're doing that initial discovery call with the client, is it for one blog post or is it for the potential of a long-term relationship? And you can set that boundary. You can say I only work with clients on an ongoing basis because and then you give them the benefits to them so, because it helps me understand their business more fully, I can help them meet their business and content objectives, blah, blah, blah. So you can really do that and it's all in how you position yourself and then how you offer value to them. And I think that's huge, because I've worked with writers from the other end of the spectrum that they're like are you working with freelance writers? I'd love to write a blog for you, and then they never come back and I don't have time, if I'm the content manager, to chase them down to see if they want to write another article.

Treasa: 4:06

I think if you're running a business, you have to be proactive and you have to tell your clients hey, here's the article. Let me know if there are any edits. I'm ready to start on the next one whenever you're ready to send it, and you can be as positive and optimistic as you want. Or you can say I'd love to write more articles for you. Do you have another thing that needs done right now? Or did you know I also do case studies and white papers. So if you offer them continued value, then I think that will build those longer term relationships. If you're doing one and done projects and you're not offering anything else, then you're not going to get a longer term relationship. How do you handle this, jessica, because I know you're big on inbound clients. You don't do.

Jessica: 4:46

Yeah, first, I would agree with you that the marketing should stay consistent. You need to figure out some sort of schedule that you can do on a sustainable, long-term basis, and we'll talk a little bit about that more on day five, about how that can shift over time to not being so demanding. I used to have this problem too, because I was doing like branding, brand voice guidelines and getting startups set up initially in their content marketing strategy and getting their websites set up. So I do the homepage, a service page, and once those are done, that's it. I think switching into offering a service that they need on an ongoing basis is hugely important. So, like now, I offer only blogs and articles to companies that need more than I can even provide on a monthly basis, so that, or maybe if they need an email newsletter every week or twice a month or something social media posts are another one they're going to need those on an ongoing basis.

Jessica: 5:52

So, even if that's not the only thing you offer, I think building in a base of things that do require repeating is hugely helpful. And then, like you said, I would agree that sometimes you need to follow up. You need to take the lead on ensuring that they know you're going to offer it on an ongoing basis. It's like hey, I need a blog post. Sure, we can do this as like a paid test and then see where it goes from there and you can explain to them. I have my regular clients who make orders every month. If you wanted to get on in that kind of program, you can let me know each month how many you need up to this amount or something, just kind of prime them for that ongoing experience.

Treasa: 6:34

Yeah, that's brilliant, and I hadn't even thought about the fact that there are people who specialize in things that are just one and done. There is no way to do a repeat work. So if you are doing a one and done project website design or something like that I mean you need to find an add on or something that can generate that longer term relationship, because they can't really do a new website every week, or right, and companies might not want to do more than a couple of case studies a year or more than a couple of white papers. So you need to diversify a little bit if you do want that long termterm relationship. That's really great. All right, come back tomorrow and we are going to talk more about finding your limits. How much client work can you actually do before you crack?