Over the past few years, I’ve ran into a lot of small
obstacles.
·
“Fun”
clients
·
Taking
on too much work and hitting burnout
·
Charging
low rates and hating my life
·
Not
knowing how to get business…
And everything else I try to help new freelancers avoid, but
I still remember the one thing that prevented me from taking the leap…
Figuring out what skill I should use.
I was in a brand new industry and had no experience to go
off of, then on top of that, I really didn’t know anything about online
business…
So little things like SEO were a big deal to me, let alone
fancy terms like sales funnels…
And needless to say, this confusion is what kept me on the
sidelines until the day I was fired from my job and forced to figure things
out.
I started off as a bookkeeper, because that’s really all I
knew how to do…
Then after being in the industry for 6 months and making a
quick pivot to a completely different field, I realized I was looking at this
process the wrong way…
And that’s why today, I wanted to show you the unconventional
process I teach people how to find their lucrative skill.
Step #1 — Write down things you enjoy
As I mentioned a second ago, when I first started off as an
online freelancer, I decided to be a bookkeeper.
I did this because I had my Master’s in Accounting and knew
this was one skill I could use right away, so I quickly setup a profile on
Upwork and began looking for jobs.
Within a week, I’d landed a few interviews and had phone
calls with clients…
But I didn’t land any of them, guess why?
No, experience wasn’t the problem…
Neither was pricing, as I had one of the lowest bids out
there (t’was desperate)…
And I honestly didn’t know why for the longest time, until
one day I finally followed up and just blatantly asked why he didn’t pick me.
His response?
“I don’t know, you didn’t seem interested”…
And that’s when I realized he was right, I didn’t want a
bookkeeping job and it was obvious.
Now that was good to hear/understand, but at the same time,
I really didn’t know what else to do so I jumped back on Upwork and continued
my search.
Funny enough, a few hours later, I came across a job posting
that I actually enjoyed doing…
Book-to-tax reconciliation.
I know, sounds boring as hell, but it was exactly what I’d done
for the last 5 years and knew I’d be able to complete the job in little time,
so I (excitedly) threw in a proposal…
And a cool 3 hours later, I had the job.
Excited was an understatement, and I actually stayed up all
night completing this project for them…
Then after delivering the final product 12 hours later, they
were so impressed they asked me to stay on and become the CFO of their new
company (I later learned I did this for a private equity firm).
AMAZING!!!
Here I’d just gone from struggling freelancer to full-time
CFO overnight, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity…
But then as we were going through the initial projections, I
started to notice a very disturbing pattern with these guys.
Here I was excited to talk about growth and new opportunities,
when they wanted me to run profit projections and see how many employees we’d
have to fire so they could generate salaries of $150K/year (yes, seriously).
Needless to say, I quickly lost all motivation for this job…
And ended up saying something stupid to them after a while
(which I really don’t regret), ending my amazing opportunity of being a
full-time CFO.
Okay, so here’s where I’m going with
this…
Most people spend all their time worrying about what they
“should” do, when in all reality, you need to focus on what you want to do….
Because trust me, coming from somebody who’s been in the
industry for a bit and worked with a lot of different freelancers — I
promise you’ll struggle if you don’t enjoy what you do.
So how do you do this?
Oddly enough, by starting with a topic you’re interested in,
not a skill.
I’ll talk about skills here next, but as my book-to-tax
reconciliation story shows, you have to enjoy the topic you’re working with
above anything else.
Action steps:
Simply write down 10 things you have interest in, and don’t
worry about them from a business standpoint either.
To give you an example of this, my 10 interests would be:
·
Tax
·
Commercial
Financing
·
Cannabis
(kidding, or are my?)
·
Cubs
baseball
·
Chiefs
football
·
Digital
Marketing
·
Rocky
Mountains
·
Ketogenic
diet
·
Fasting
·
Psychology
·
Neuro-linguistic
programming
As you can see, most of these don’t really look like a
“business” interest…
But that’s the point, they don’t have to be.
Anyhoo, once you have these 10 down, let’s move onto:
Step #2 — Using your interest to help
people get what they want
Alright, now that we’ve created your top 10 interests…
It’s time to start thinking about your target market.
And don’t worry, I know this sounds like a complicated
process that’s reserved for MBAs (lol) and experienced professionals…
But here’s the thing, it’s only as complicated as you make
it.
What do I mean?
Well, now that you have your 10 interests in front of you,
all you need to do is go through and write down the first company that comes to
your mind with each interest.
To give you an example of this, mine would be:
·
Tax — CPA
Firm
·
Commercial
Financing — Startups looking for
funding
·
Cannabis — dispensary
right up the street
·
Cubs
baseball — dropshipping store
selling gear
·
Chiefs — same
as Cubs
·
Digital
Marketing — agencies
·
Rocky
Mountains — tour guides
·
Ketogenic
diet — people selling info
products
·
Fasting — same
as keto
·
Psychology — oddly
enough, I’d say copywriters looking to sell their services
·
NLP — people
looking to sell their course
That’s it! That’s all you need to do in order to find your
potential target market.
And don’t worry about being right or wrong either, I get
emails all the time asking how I’m able to think of companies for my target
market, and truthfully — it’s an intuitive process that
gets honed in with experience.
In other words, there’s so much opportunity out there that
you really can’t mess this up…
And on top of that, you can switch niches/target markets
whenever, so it’s not a decision you have to be stuck with either.
Anyway, now that you have 10 target markets in front of you — go
through and think
about what each of these business owners want most.
With that said, I also know it’s helpful to have a little
clarity on this…
So here it is, EVERY business owner wants:
·
More
sales
·
More
time
·
Less
stress (which is usually created by the first two)…
And that’s why I always say, when in doubt; think about
different ways you could help them get more sales.
This really isn’t hard to do with all the freelance skills
out there today, such as:
·
Facebook
Advertising
·
Social
Media Manager
·
Telemarketing
·
Explainer
video creator
·
Content
Marketer…
Step #3 — But here’s the crazy part
Nearly any skill can help them reach their goal, you just
have to show it the right way.
Say what?
Well, we all have perceptions that define our opinions on
certain things, but that’s the problem — opinions create tunnel vision
and it’s hard to see things any other way…
Unless someone shows us differently.
A good example of this happened a couple months ago when
somebody reached out to me, asking if she could be my bookkeeper.
I thanked her for reaching out and liked her initiative, but
at the same time, I really didn’t see the need for hiring a bookkeeper as I was
able to handle it and didn’t want more expenses.
The next morning I woke up with an email from her, thanking
me for my response and understanding my concern…
But then she used my own advice against me and started to
mention all the benefits I was overlooking.
Among many things, she mentioned how she’d be able to save
me 5 hours a month, and seeing how I charge $97/hr — that’s
$500 extra I could make every month …
And since I was only going to be paying her $200, then I’m
essentially throwing away $300.
Now this made sense, but the crazy part was how I knew what
she was doing and STILL couldn’t say no to her after that
Mainly because she was right, and I couldn’t find a good
reason not to move forward with her proposal.
Alright, so here’s where I’m going with this…
Everybody worries about the wrong part of the process,
because a skill is something anybody can learn.
Trust me, I didn’t have a CLUE what copywriting was 3 years
ago and within 12 months of learning this skill, I’ve had to turn down clients
on a weekly basis….
Meaning the hard part is just finding a topic you enjoy
working in and understanding how to show the client what you can do for them.
After that, things get pretty easy…
And if you really need help discovering what skill you
should use,
Last but not least…
I can sit here and tell you how to make money all day long,
but until you actually take action and apply this information — then
it’s worthless.
This is literally everything you need in order to find your
profitable skill, so I hope you take the first step forward today…
But if you’d like something that helps you setup the
business side of things,
Over the past few
years, I’ve ran into a lot of small obstacles.
·
“Fun”
clients
·
Taking
on too much work and hitting burnout
·
Charging
low rates and hating my life
·
Not
knowing how to get business…
And everything else I try to help new freelancers avoid, but
I still remember the one thing that prevented me from taking the leap…
Figuring out what skill I should use.
I was in a brand new industry and had no experience to go
off of, then on top of that, I really didn’t know anything about online
business…
So little things like SEO were a big deal to me, let alone
fancy terms like sales funnels…
And needless to say, this confusion is what kept me on the
sidelines until the day I was fired from my job and forced to figure things
out.
I started off as a bookkeeper, because that’s really all I
knew how to do…
Then after being in the industry for 6 months and making a
quick pivot to a completely different field, I realized I was looking at this
process the wrong way…
And that’s why today, I wanted to show you the
unconventional process I teach people how to find their lucrative skill.
Step #1 — Write down things you enjoy
As I mentioned a second ago, when I first started off as an
online freelancer, I decided to be a bookkeeper.
I did this because I had my Master’s in Accounting and knew
this was one skill I could use right away, so I quickly setup a profile on
Upwork and began looking for jobs.
Within a week, I’d landed a few interviews and had phone
calls with clients…
But I didn’t land any of them, guess why?
No, experience wasn’t the problem…
Neither was pricing, as I had one of the lowest bids out
there (t’was desperate)…
And I honestly didn’t know why for the longest time, until
one day I finally followed up and just blatantly asked why he didn’t pick me.
His response?
“I don’t know, you didn’t seem interested”…
And that’s when I realized he was right, I didn’t want a
bookkeeping job and it was obvious.
Now that was good to hear/understand, but at the same time,
I really didn’t know what else to do so I jumped back on Upwork and continued
my search.
Funny enough, a few hours later, I came across a job posting
that I actually enjoyed doing…
Book-to-tax reconciliation.
I know, sounds boring as hell, but it was exactly what I’d
done for the last 5 years and knew I’d be able to complete the job in little
time, so I (excitedly) threw in a proposal…
And a cool 3 hours later, I had the job.
Excited was an understatement, and I actually stayed up all
night completing this project for them…
Then after delivering the final product 12 hours later, they
were so impressed they asked me to stay on and become the CFO of their new
company (I later learned I did this for a private equity firm).
AMAZING!!!
Here I’d just gone from struggling freelancer to full-time
CFO overnight, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity…
But then as we were going through the initial projections, I
started to notice a very disturbing pattern with these guys.
Here I was excited to talk about growth and new
opportunities, when they wanted me to run profit projections and see how many
employees we’d have to fire so they could generate salaries of $150K/year (yes,
seriously).
Needless to say, I quickly lost all motivation for this job…
And ended up saying something stupid to them after a while
(which I really don’t regret), ending my amazing opportunity of being a
full-time CFO.
Okay, so here’s where I’m going with
this…
Most people spend all their time worrying about what they
“should” do, when in all reality, you need to focus on what you want to do….
Because trust me, coming from somebody who’s been in the
industry for a bit and worked with a lot of different freelancers — I
promise you’ll struggle if you don’t enjoy what you do.
So how do you do this?
Oddly enough, by starting with a topic you’re interested in,
not a skill.
I’ll talk about skills here next, but as my book-to-tax
reconciliation story shows, you have to enjoy the topic you’re working with
above anything else.
Action steps:
Simply write down 10 things you have interest in, and don’t
worry about them from a business standpoint either.
To give you an example of this, my 10 interests would be:
·
Tax
·
Commercial
Financing
·
Cannabis
(kidding, or are my?)
·
Cubs
baseball
·
Chiefs
football
·
Digital
Marketing
·
Rocky
Mountains
·
Ketogenic
diet
·
Fasting
·
Psychology
·
Neuro-linguistic
programming
As you can see, most of these don’t really look like a
“business” interest…
But that’s the point, they don’t have to be.
Anyhow, once you have these 10 down, let’s move onto:
Step #2 — Using your interest to help
people get what they want
Alright, now that we’ve created your top 10 interests…
It’s time to start thinking about your target market.
And don’t worry, I know this sounds like a complicated
process that’s reserved for MBAs (lol) and experienced professionals…
But here’s the thing, it’s only as complicated as you make
it.
What do I mean?
Well, now that you have your 10 interests in front of you,
all you need to do is go through and write down the first company that comes to
your mind with each interest.
To give you an example of this, mine would be:
·
Tax — CPA
Firm
·
Commercial
Financing — Startups looking for
funding
·
Cannabis — dispensary
right up the street
·
Cubs
baseball — dropshipping store
selling gear
·
Chiefs — same
as Cubs
·
Digital
Marketing — agencies
·
Rocky
Mountains — tour guides
·
Ketogenic
diet — people selling info
products
·
Fasting — same
as keto
·
Psychology — oddly
enough, I’d say copywriters looking to sell their services
·
NLP — people
looking to sell their course
That’s it! That’s all you need to do in order to find your
potential target market.
And don’t worry about being right or wrong either, I get
emails all the time asking how I’m able to think of companies for my target
market, and truthfully — it’s an intuitive process that
gets honed in with experience.
In other words, there’s so much opportunity out there that
you really can’t mess this up…
And on top of that, you can switch niches/target markets
whenever, so it’s not a decision you have to be stuck with either.
Anyway, now that you have 10 target markets in front of you — go
through and think
about what each of these business owners want most.
With that said, I also know it’s helpful to have a little
clarity on this…
So here it is, EVERY business owner wants:
·
More
sales
·
More
time
·
Less
stress (which is usually created by the first two)…
And that’s why I always say, when in doubt, think about
different ways you could help them get more sales.
This really isn’t hard to do with all the freelance skills
out there today, such as:
·
Facebook
Advertising
·
Social
Media Manager
·
Telemarketing
·
Explainer
video creator
·
Content
Marketer…
Step #3 — But here’s the crazy part
Nearly any skill can help them reach their goal, you just
have to show it the right way.
Say what?
Well, we all have perceptions that define our opinions on
certain things, but that’s the problem — opinions create tunnel vision
and it’s hard to see things any other way…
Unless someone shows us differently.
A good example of this happened a couple months ago when
somebody reached out to me, asking if she could be my bookkeeper.
I thanked her for reaching out and liked her initiative, but
at the same time, I really didn’t see the need for hiring a bookkeeper as I was
able to handle it and didn’t want more expenses.
The next morning I woke up with an email from her, thanking
me for my response and understanding my concern…
But then she used my own advice against me and started to
mention all the benefits I was overlooking.
Among many things, she mentioned how she’d be able to save me
5 hours a month, and seeing how I charge $97/hr — that’s $500 extra I could make
every month …
And since I was only going to be paying her $200, then I’m
essentially throwing away $300.
Now this made sense, but the crazy part was how I knew what
she was doing and STILL couldn’t say no to her after that…
Mainly because she was right, and I couldn’t find a good
reason not to move forward with her proposal.
Alright, so here’s where I’m going with this…
Everybody worries about the wrong part of the process, because
a skill is something anybody can learn.
Trust me, I didn’t have a CLUE what copywriting was 3 years
ago and within 12 months of learning this skill, I’ve had to turn down clients
on a weekly basis….
Meaning the hard part is just finding a topic you enjoy
working in and understanding how to show the client what you can do for them.
After that, things get pretty easy…
And if you really need help discovering what skill you
should use,
Last but not least…
I can sit here and tell you how to make money all day long,
but until you actually take action and apply this information — then
it’s worthless.
This is literally everything you need in order to find your
profitable skill, so I hope you take the first step forward today…
But if you’d like something that helps you setup the
business side of things,
