5 Harmful Mistakes Freelancers Keep Making | Avi Arya

Once you get a client, you're all very excited. Awesome. Great. So what do you do? You don't set career boundaries. You say, let the client come very wrong. A, you lose respect. B, from a consultant, you become a secretary. Because as soon as you say I can do everything, he'll one day ask you, why don't you do one thing? Why don't you get run to the cafeteria and get me shy? Now sometimes it's difficult to set the boundaries. You see, the client is going to leave. But let me tell you one thing. If a client stays and you've not set the boundaries, it's going to be the biggest headache for you. You cannot say yes to everything. You need to say yes to things that drive you, that give you passion and the skill that you have so that you are good at it. Hey guys, welcome to my channel. In this video I'm going to talk about five major harmful business ending mistakes that freelancers make that I want to make sure that you are never making in your life. Watch this video till the very end. Five harmful mistakes. Number one, not knowing who they are, not knowing who they hire. This mistake is so big, people do not understand what skill they want, even the market. And therefore they say yes to everything. And that is the beginning of the end. You cannot say yes to everything. You need to say yes to things that drive you, that give you passion and the skill that you have so that you are good at it. If you say yes to everything and then try to figure it out, I promise you the client will not give you that much time and you will lose the client. So don't make this fatal mistake. Number two, not having the right environment. You know what? Work from home is okay once in a while when you're tired and you're working at night or whatever. But work from home may not be the right business model going future. I don't think it can become a norm. I know a lot of people who work from home, but then they dress up, they suit up, they have a bath, they get ready. I see a lot of freelancers. If they have a 10 o' clock meeting, they will get up from their bed at 9:55 and be there for that meeting. Trust you me, my dear friends, every client of yours sees through that and you're not going to go very far. You need to be ready before every meeting. You need to have to have an environment. You know why gyms were made? Because there are people in the gym who are motivating you. Everybody's exercising, there's A weight room, there's an exercise room, there's a calisthenics room, there's a spa, there's a sauna, there's a steam room. It's a system that allows somebody to walk in there and walk out with a good body. Do you know why people go to schools and colleges and universities? Because there's an environment. There's a library, there's computer room, there are teachers, there's. So there. You cannot underestimate the power of an environment. So the environment is key. And it's difficult to make that environment at home. So get up in the morning, go to a webug space, hire a space out there, go to a coffee shop if you don't have the money. Work with people over there, but create an environment, have systems to be able to be successful. Your environment is key. Don't make that mistake. Third, to be able to have the right systems in terms of the time on time off. Now to time on time off, I always say I see a lot of people who are starting their agency from coffee shops. Great. From WeWork type of places. Great. From their own offices. Absolutely wonderful. But the thing is, when you're starting and stopping, especially when you're a small team, I would want you to have sprints. Say, for example, you have a morning meeting and you say, this is the agenda we want to achieve in the next three hours. Everybody's clear about that. Okay, go in your own direction. We meet again at 12 o'. Clock. 12 o'. Clock, we see what was achieved. Somebody needed some challenge, some help from somebody. Okay, another sprint. Sprint could be an hour. Skin could be three hours, it could be the whole day. But I believe in networking, especially when you're a small team, reach out to people with different durations. Many a time what happens is anybody is able to barge into anybody's workspace at any time. So therefore, you feel you're working, you feel you're available for other people. But what did you achieve or what did those people achieve? I think there should be set time on and time off period during the day where you're able to help each other, collaborate and then go back in your own cubicles, get your work done, collaborate, come back. I think that is very important. In the absence of that, I see a lot of people wasting a lot of time in the first few months of the first year of your agency. It's crucial for you, especially at that time, not to do this. Next point. Once you get a client. Once you get a client, you're all very excited awesome. Great. So what do you do? You don't set clear boundaries. You say, let the client come. Very wrong. A, you lose respect. B, from a consultant, you become a secretary. Because as soon as you say I can do everything, he'll one day ask you, why don't you do one thing? Why don't you get run to the cafeteria and get me chai? You say, what? Excuse me. Hey, you didn't get me chai. I'm upset about that. I promise you it can get as ridiculous as that because you have never set the boundaries. You need to set boundaries and tell people, clients, what you're comfortable doing, what you're not comfortable doing, which is your skill area, which is not where you can help them and where you can help somebody else help them where they don't need to hire somebody else. Yesterday I was talking to a client and they said, thank you for quoting me on the website. All the four softwares that go into the website, I want you to have those softwares available to me. I said, I can coordinate with those third party companies, but you have to pay them directly. That is not what we do. They said, why is it that you don't offer a complete package? I said, I do offer a package, but in this case those four softwares are separate. So I had to say no to them. Most of the time the freelancer says, okay, sir, I will figure it out. And there goes your revenue. Because all those four people are all those four people that you signed up and said yes for. Their monthly costs are going to go from your revenue and also you will not be able to deliver the way they are able to deliver now. You're responsible for every single mistake that happens. So you're signing up for every mistake in the book. If you're not setting boundaries next, when it comes to boundaries, what are the timings of your work? What is your turnaround time? The other day a client called me and said, avi, I'm very unhappy with your services. I said, why? Two and a half years you've been working with us, what happened? He said, your team is not able to give stuff back in time. I looked at the turnaround time. I said, within, if you sent me a few things after 2 o'. Clock. And so next day, after 2 o', clock, we're sending it back to you. He said, no, it doesn't matter when I send it. You need to send this back to me. I said, that sounds good. I can make it work. I will never say no. I'll send you an idea Guess what? With your existing team, I want to hire another intern. So somebody will be charging about 4, $500, only 20,000 rupees. And that person will be able to help you create smaller content, smaller pieces of graphics, faster so that you don't have to wait. The person said, why should you charge me extra? You already have. You've given me whatever I want. And then I explained the agency model to him. Dear sir, we put a team of five people together. A content writer, a designer, somebody who understands project management, somebody who understands social media and revenue management. Put a team together. One team cannot work for just one client. For me to make a successful, profitable agency, my one team needs to work with multiple clients. And that's what happens. And therefore everybody is not being able to create content for you hour on the hour. But if you do want that, I can increase the budget, hire somebody else and make the same service available to you. To which the client said, I wish you told me this before. And that's when I had a very serious conversation with my sales team to be able to ask them, why did we not tell them that everything extra is going to be extra? And that's the, that's setting the boundaries. Now sometimes it's difficult to set the boundaries. You feel a client is going to leave. But let me tell you one thing, if a client stays and you've not set the boundaries, it's going to be the biggest headache for you. Money is not coming on time. And finally, when the client leaves, many a times the last two, three months worth of money doesn't come in because he said you never delivered to me what you promised because we over promise and we under deliver. So don't make that mistake. So ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this video and all these tips that I'm giving you on the mistakes that freelancers make. One, one more tip that I wanted to give you. The last one, the most important one that I want to give you over here is freelancers work with friends that they know instead of looking for champions that they don't know. It's great to work with friends if your friend is skilled in heart and mind, if he has a mind to be able to deliver something that you can't. It's a complimentary skill. Great if he has the heart to be able to keep on uplifting you when you go down. Both of you should have complementary heart and mind skills. If not, it's a great idea to go out there and look at people, look at other agency founders and be able to Build the right founding team. Do not make that mistake of working with friends alone. Friends is great, but not the friends with which your heart and mind are not complemented. If that is not happening, your agency is going down faster than a sinking ship. You don't want that to happen. Don't be the Titanic in your business because working hard is just one part of it. All of these aspects have to come in for you to be able to build a successful going from freelancer to becoming a successful agency founder. I hope this video helps all of you people watch this video again. And if you want these five points at the end of every video I create a nice checklist format so that you can go to the description, download the checklist format, print it out in color format and put it on your softboard. Very soon after watching all my videos, you'll have a lot of checklists and then you and your team know exactly what module to follow to take your agency from where it is to where it needs to be. Thank you very much for following this channel. Hey by the way, did you subscribe? You must subscribe. Lots of new videos coming up and don't forget to watch the next video. Bye for now. Hi guys, Avi here. Thank you very much for watching this episode. It's so much fun bringing all of this to you. But honestly it is difficult editing, post production, getting people together. But when you watch till the very end it feels great. So thank you very much. Now I'm going to give you something, an opportunity to connect with me and my ecosystem. I have an email called workwithavyariamail.com now what are the possibilities of working with me? Number one, if you are somebody who's liking this content that I'm putting out and saying, you know what Avi, I want to get into your coaching, I want to get into your ecosystem. I want to understand how this works. I have a school called the Internet Moguls Business School where we have two programs for entrepreneurs. Send me an email at work with Avyaria Subject Internet Moguls Business School and then tell me about your business. What are the challenges that are happening? And accordingly one of our sales consultants will call you, they tell you about your business and finally they connect you with me and we'll see if you're the right fit to work together. Number two, if you want me to consult with you, just consulting one on one, understanding your business, giving you a three month, five month roadmap. So work with Avarya Subject Consulting and then give me all the details about your business Next, if you want my agency to help you, you could be a product or a service, a coach or trainer, whatever you want us to help us set up your get known, get leads, get sales and set up a proper system for you. Then same thing, work with Aviarya and in the subject you will write agency help and in the end tell me exactly what you want me to do for you and what are the challenges that you're facing. And if you want to work with me in my team as a freelancer, as part time, full time, you know, get into the team, work remotely from anywhere in the world, again work with Avyaria and say I want to join your team and then tell me about yourself. Ideally for all these things, when you put in a subject, follow it with a nice micro video so I know more about you because I check every email myself and I'd love to get back to you and connect you with the right people in the right company. So eventually when we talk we have all these things figured out. Finally, if you want to interview me for your podcast or your YouTube channel, email me at podcast with aviariamail.com so there you go. Two ways to connect with us. Work with Aviaria and you've got the multiple options and you've got podcast with Aviaria and we can podcast together. So thank you very much for watching the videos. Don't forget to watch all these videos. Send me an email. Would love to hear from you. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. My name is ABHI Arya signing off for now. Look forward to seeing you in the next video. There's a link over here which has got all my emails for you to get in touch with me as well. Click on the link and get in there. See you. Look forward to hearing that email from you. Bye for now.