MBA1906 How To Scale Your Freelance Business With Zero Cost

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Business advice in ten minutes or less every single day with our daily ten minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn how to scale your freelance business with zero costs. Many entrepreneurs start on the entrepreneur path as a freelancer. They charge for their services whether they're a designer or a developer. Maybe you're a photographer or an artist, a copywriter, a caterer. You put in the work, you get paid and that's your business. But many of us in these businesses want to scale the business. You don't want to continue to only rely on yourself to do the work. Because. Because if you're not working, you're not getting paid. And essentially this is more like you're self employed than running an actual business that is independent of your time. So how can a freelancer scale their business and break free from trading time for money? Well that's what today's lesson is all about. Some simple steps on how to do that and to do it without any upfront costs. How do I know? Well, I did it several times with many of my freelance businesses, my service based businesses along the way in my journey as an entrepreneur for two decades. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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So you have a freelance business, you supply a service. You're doing it yourself. How do you scale and how do you do it without any upfront cost or out of pocket costs? Well, I'll tell you how I did it. The first thing I had to do is I needed to realize that the business I had now as a freelancer is going to change. It's not going to be the same kind of business as I have now. It's going to change. When I start outsourcing and start scaling my products and my services. This means everything's not going to be 100% to my liking. I have to accept that. And in fact, it's not even going to be close to 100%. It's going to be closer to 80%. When you scale, you empower other people to do things in your business, it may not be exactly the way you want it because they're not you. Pretty obvious, right? But we have to accept the fact that things are going to be a little bit different and they're not going to be exactly the way we always do it. But 80% will be up to your standards. And you just got to accept this because that's the cost of scaling. This is the cost of unshackling you from tying your revenue to your time. Once we've accepted that, we're going to start small. And I'll give you an example at a business consulting firm and one of my products was to create your website and your blog. Part of that product was some add ons like creating a logo or creating a branding kit. These are smaller types of services that are included in my services. I used to do all this myself. Okay. When I started to scale, that's the first thing I started to hire for or outsource for. I started to Take a portion of my time, not all of my time. A portion of my time that was dedicated to branding kits and logos and said, I'm going to scale that part of my business and get other people to do that. I went to sites like Upwork.com and Freelancer.com and I actually put a job post. I put up this job post saying exactly what I wanted them to do. One project, one logo or one branding kit. Not, hey, I want you to work for me and I'm going to give you all this work, and this is how much work you're going to get. I pretended basically that this was my project when it was really my clients. Why? Because I just need to find out who can do the work at 80% my level, 80% of what I expect. And I'll be honest with you, this took me a few times. It took me about five times to find the right person where I paid somebody, they did the work, I delivered it to the client, the client was happy, but it wasn't exactly the way I wanted it. And I did it over and over until I found, yep, this is the person I can rely on that's going to make my life a little easier. And I can swallow and feel proud of that work every single time. So how do I do this? How do I bankroll this? Well, when I sell the actual logo and branding kit to my customer, I split the actual costs into two payments. So they pay 50% upfront and 50% upon delivery. So that branding kit, I was selling it for $500 at the time. I'm aging myself here. I know, but it was $500. So they paid me 250 in advance. Once I had the 250, I then put up that job post, and that's when I paid the freelancer. Now, obviously, I'm not paying them the same amount. The whole point of scaling is that I'm getting other people to do the work for less money and I pocket the difference. I think the first time I did it, we agreed on a branding kit and a logo for 200. So I made on that first deal $300, same deal, 50% up front, 50% after. So I'm not losing any money. I got the money from the client, I then pay the freelancer, they deliver the work, I deliver to the client. There may be some reviews. I go ahead and review it with the freelancer, and then upon delivery, I pay the freelancer with the money I get paid from the client for the second payment. So as you can see, it's a lot of work in the beginning because you're going back and forth through the middle person. You're doing all the revisions through the freelancer. But once you nail the person you're going to work with and you've done a few projects together, you can ask them, hey, you could see that I have a lot of projects. We're going to do maybe five or six a month. That was my case. Would you like to kind of join my team under the same agreement and I'll give you all my project work, not just my logo work, but maybe even my business card work? You know, the product I had called business cards and flyers, I used to create those. I will hand it over to you as well. And we worked out a deal. So they were like, yep, I'm stoked. That sounds great. And now that they're part of my team, I gave them an email under my company domain through Google Domains. As you know, I use them, I love them. And then they do all the back and forth with the client. I literally just hand them over. I say, hey, client, thanks for signing up for the service. I'm now going to hand you over to this designer. This is the person that's going to work on your project. And they're happy, they have a point of contact, and I never need to go back and forth. And when it's delivered, it's delivered, it's done. I get paid by the customer. And of course, the freelancer that's working with me gets paid through me. Now, a lot of people say, well, why would the freelancer do this? Wouldn't they think, this is not fair. You are paying them less than what you actually are charging. Yes, my freelancers knew how much I was charging. It was on my website. But guess what? Anywhere they work, they know that this is how it's going to be. They know the exchange is steady work for the pay they're getting. That's why they're working with me. They understand the deal. They also understand that this is a business and they want to be a part of business that has clients. You know, it's hard to get clients, and I'm just giving them clients on a silver platter. So I'm actually doing all the heavy lifting for them. So they're happy with this arrangement. So it's very transparent and it works. And what happens is that once you nail this, you start to realize, hey, where else can I scale in my business? What other new products or services can I offer? And get freelancers to work with me and Then they can deliver the service instead of me. This is fantastic for especially things that you can't do like development. Maybe you're not a coder and can develop and you can get an engineer to work for you and create websites for you. Maybe you're in the catering business and you cater parties but you don't know how to do sushi so you get a sushi chef that could be part of your team or at least freelance as a part of your team. And you can offer a sushi party or sushi platter as menu items. This is how you scale and it just takes time. But you have to take that first leap. That first step I talked about with testing out some freelancers. This is a game changing move in your business. It helped me expand and grow and free up my time but also just make more money so I can then parlay that money into other investments in other business ventures. And the things that you see I do today like the podcast, like my software company Webinar Ninja. This all came from me scaling my freelance business.

Want to buy a car your way? Of course you do. That's why CarMax offers an experience designed just for you. Want to start online, then visit the lot, then go back online? Sure. Want to talk to a real person or chat online? Either works. Want to take your time and compare all the makes and models? No problem. Then make up some time by filling out the paperwork at home and schedule express pickup or home delivery done. When it comes to how you buy, CarMax puts you in the driver's seat. Want to drive CarMax delivery restrictions apply. See CarMax.com for details.

To wrap up today's lesson, scaling your freelance business doesn't have to cost a normal leg. It's actually going to cost you a little time, a little attention and a bit of operating procedures that you have to document so that you have a plan so you have a system to run your business with a team. This worked for me brilliantly. It's very easy to kind of get the hang of. It's even easier now because we live in a more gig economy than we ever had in the past. People are so open to this. There's so much talent out there. It's a global economy. English is more prevalent around the world. It's so much easier to find great talent than it used to work. When I did this, what it was 10, 15 years ago. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to all our archived lessons. Over 1900 business lessons in total. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite things about scaling a freelance business is being able to do things I couldn't do myself. This is such an empowering feeling. It's like I can only stick to this lane. I'm gonna stick to this type of work because this is what I can do. Well, I don't have to do that. I'm an entrepreneur. I can find green talent and offer their skills, their abilities, their product creating abilities to my customers and pocket the profits leveraging other people's time, not mine. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care of.

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