How to Start Earning Money as a Web Developer cont

0. Intro

This course is going to be short because I value your time, but it will give you all the tools you need to start making money as a web developer.

Each video will be divided into three parts. I’ll start by telling you what we’re doing. Then, I’ll explain why it’s important. Last, I’ll tell you how to do it.

Before we get to that, I want to explain more generally what we’re doing here in the course as a whole and why. If you’re already on-board and just want to get straight into it, feel free to skip to the next video.

Why?

• People spend time and money learning web development because they believe the only barrier keeping them from an incredible job at Facebook or Google is their lack of technical skills. (slide) They hear about how many (advance) unfilled developer positions there are and convince themselves their transition to a new career will be automatic (advance) once they can write HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• (advance) They build their web development skills and break down that barrier, (advance) and they get very upset when they learn this wasn’t the only barrier. (advance)
• (advance) The problem is, it’s the mid-level and senior positions that are plentiful (advance) and go unfilled. (advance) Entry-level gigs are few and far between. (advance) Tons of competition. (Harry Potter clip: https://youtu.be/2Q0WPBoTOWc?t=197) (advance 2x) Machines filter through resumes, and most of your applications will never grace a human retina. (fade to white in FCPX after this slide since the dissolve doesn’t work for all elements)
• (slide) Those that are seen by a human will be torn to shreds because you have no practical experience.
• (cam) People spend ridiculous amounts of time sending application after application, rarely hearing anything back, and losing the gig for lack of experience when they do.
• (lottery video) Each one of these job postings is a mini lottery where 1,000 people or more buy a ticket in and one person comes out a winner. They have better odds than most lotteries, but the odds are still not great. (cam) The lottery analogy doesn’t work perfectly since the outcome isn’t random, but you can’t get around the fact that many people go in and one comes out.
• Talk through these threads on-camera
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/dlzx51/how_many_applications_did_you_submit_before/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/jfg4q3/well_it_has_happened_for_me/
• The time people are not devoting to filling applications, writing cover letters, polishing their LinkedIn profiles, or talking to dead-end recruiters is spent working on toy applications that are not increasing their chances of getting a job or doing yet another tutorial so they can add a new technology to their resume under “Skills.”
• It’s no wonder a lot of these people give up. There are very few people who can endure all this and come out the other side. I wouldn’t have been able to, which is why I’m really glad I stumbled into an alternative way of making my transition.

What?

• When I was searching for my first job, I tried the same things everyone else tried. I started submitting applications.
• When I realized no one wanted to hire me because I had no experience, I decided to try to pick up a freelance gig. It was the best decision I ever made.
• Show the artifacts of that first gig
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/forhire/comments/1lpv3d/hiring_convert_some_mockups_into_htmlcss_templates/
  • https://www.reddit.com/message/messages/13drgm
• This gave me a way to get real practical experience while also getting paid.
• Months later, one of the companies I applied to circled back around to me and made me an offer. It was a good offer – 50% more than I had been making in my previous career. The problem was, I really liked the freedom I had in freelancing. I liked setting my own rates and hours. I liked working on different projects and getting to learn new things every day.
• Then the realization hit me. I had applied to this place because I was looking for a career. In the months since that application went off, I had built my own career. I didn’t need their career any more. I turned them down.
• Since then, I’ve taken some full-time positions where companies I was already working with as a freelancer made me great offers, but I’ve always been able to do that on my own terms. If I want to go to work for someone, I do, and if I don’t, I keep working for myself.
• I’m going to teach you to get freelance work and to keep getting it so you can build your own career without having to run through someone else’s web developer gauntlet. It starts with making a list of the kinds of people you might work for. We’ll do that in the next video.

1. Build a list of potential niches

Title: Brainstorm Viable Niches

What?

• First thing to do is build a list of potential niches. A niche in this context is just the type of client you pursue.

Why?

why-niche.key

• (Pre-slide) Businesses invest money in solving problems.
• (Pre-slide) If you market yourself as a “web developer,” you’re selling a service, not a solution.
• (slide 1) Most new people get to this point and say, “I’ve got it! My niche will be small businesses!” If you’re trying to market to a range of businesses that broad, it’s harder to find a solution for them because (advance) the specific businesses are pretty different.
• (advance) Their problems are all different too.
• Before they can buy from you, the business has to connect your service to a problem they’re having.
• (advance 2x) If you’re selling “web development,” a lot of businesses won’t buy it.
• (advance) They don’t understand what that is or what problems it could solve for them. They don’t trust that you understand their business (because you’re not speaking to their specific problems). They’re pursuing inferior solutions to the problems they have, but those are solutions they understand.
• You’re putting too much burden on your potential clients to imagine what you can do for them.
• You think by opening yourself up to serve everyone, you’re getting access to more clients, but really you’ve just made your service difficult to say yes to (advance) for all of them.
• On-camera: Take this toilet paper. Imagine you had never seen this stuff before and had no clue what it was used for. Now, to market it, they’re coming to you and saying, “Hey, we’ve got this roll of white absorbent paper. You probably have a use for this, right?” There’s a good chance you’d say, “Umm, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” They don’t do that, though. They call it toilet paper. They tell you exactly what to use it for. Could you use it for a non-toilet-related activity? Absolutely, but by telling you what problem you have that this roll of paper is useful for, they make it easier for you to buy it.
• You don’t want to force your prospects to use their imaginations. You want to tell them exactly what you’re going to do for them. You want to sell a solution so that the only decisions they have to make are whether they have the problem and can afford to hire you.
• (advance) Let’s think about a different approach.
• (advance) Instead of thinking of yourself as a web developer, think of yourself as a (advance) problem solver. You’ll use web development to solve the problem, but that’s not really all that important to your clients as long as you solve it.
• To be a problem solver, you’re going to have to get more specific.
• (advance) Drill down to a more narrow niche. In this case, you choose yoga studios.
• Instead of marketing yourself like this: Hey, I’m a web developer. Y’all need any web development done around here?” you’re going to tell them (advance) you help yoga studios reach their customers more effectively.
• Now, you’ve got their attention. (advance) This speaks directly to their problem and shows that you understand the specific challenges they are dealing with. You’ve built instant trust by showing that understanding.
• (advance x2) What if you didn’t want to focus on yoga studios. Maybe you want to focus on restaurants instead. (advance)
• (advance) You might in your marketing say that you build restaurant web sites with easy-to-maintain menus and a great online ordering experience.
• (advance) That’s going to get the restaurants’ attention a whole lot better than some of the common approaches I’ve heard: telling them you’re a web developer and asking if they have any work for you, asking if they “need a web site,” or telling them their current web site is ugly and they should hire you to build a new one.
• (advance) By seeing yourself as a (advance) problem solver and selling a solution to a (advance) well-defined client, you’ll have a much easier time finding clients and building a business doing what you love on your terms and with the stability you need to buy a house, travel, take care of a family… whatever it is that gets you excited about your future.
• Now that you’re on board, let’s build a list of niches.

How?

• Think of the people in your life you have close relationships with:
  • friends
  • significant other
  • parents
  • children
  • co-workers
  • add your self
• What industries do they work in?
• May already have an “in” with these industries. They might be able to sit down to talk with you or might be able to set you up with someone in their industry to talk to. Might even be able to make introductions to help get you started.
• Knife classified thing story. Ad was vague; dangled the carrot of $10/hour. Got in the room and found out we were going to be hitting up people we knew to buy knives. How sustainable? How many people and how often are the people I know going to buy knives?
• Not what we’re doing here.
• Talk to people to discover problems. We’re going to come back with real solutions to those problems. Not knives.
• People have told me in the past they have no friends and family. Setting aside this course, if you don’t have any friends, I encourage you to make some. They’re nice to have around. If that’s actually the case though, make a list of industries you’ve worked in before, that you find interesting, or where you have acquaintances.
• Here’s where we make sure the niches are viable. Some criteria for your list:
  • No hobbies. Need to make money on what they do.
  • Some lines of work have loads of people at the bottom making no money and a few at the top making buttloads. If your cousin is The Rock and you decide to focus on working for actors, can you successfully work for other actors (besides your cousin, The Rock) and filter out the 99.9% who are making nothing so that you can work with only the 0.1% who are making bank?
  • Should be able to find people somewhere. We’ll explore further in the third part of the course. If you pick a niche and can’t find them in part three, you can always come back and make a new pick here.
  • If you already have some understanding or familiarity with the industry, this is a bonus. Warp whistle in Mario. Can work against you because you can be blinding and limited by solutions or workarounds you’re already aware of. Double-edged sword.
  • Doesn’t have to be your passion. I like solving problems with software. I’ve done that for sports gambling even though I have little passion for either sports or gambling. I’ve done that for a summer camp even though I never went to summer camp. Interest alignment is great but not necessary.
• A list is great, but you really need to get it down to one. We’ll do that next.

2. Select your niche

Title: Select Your Niche

What?

• You have your list. Now, we need to narrow that down to a single niche. It sounds scary, but it doesn’t need to be. I’ll walk you through each step.

Why?

• We talked about why you shouldn’t pick a very broad niche. For the same reason, you shouldn’t select more than one. They all have different problems, and they all are easier to sell when the thing you’re selling is just for them!
• You may think, that’s fine. I want to sell different solutions to serve multiple industries at the same time. That’s also a bad idea.
• (slide 1) This brain represents (advance) your attention. (advance)
• (advance) If you try to focus your attention on (advance) multiple industries at the same time, you’re going to be (advance) less effective in each of them.
• (advance 2x) If you pick just one, (advance) you can focus all your effort and attention on it.
• This doesn’t mean this will be your final niche or your only niche. All we’re doing is picking the first one to focus on. We need to focus on one at a time because starting a business is hard. Starting multiple businesses concurrently is way harder.
• If you end up selling a solution that would work for multiple types of clients, you’ll have all the time in the world to branch out once you get that first customer segment dialed in. If you want to start offering a different service to a different type of client, you’ll have plenty of time for that too… after you have the first niche going strong.
• If you pick the wrong one, you can always change it any time you want.

How?

If there’s one that’s a clear winner – there’s tons of money flowing freely in it, you already have contacts, you understand the problems, you’re excited about it – stop this video, and just go for it.

It’s usually not that easy. If you’re having trouble deciding, here are a few strategies to get you to the next step.

Have you ever made a list of “pros” and “cons” to help you make a decision? It may feel a little silly, but it can help you organize your thoughts. I’d recommend going a little more complex and build a matrix for this one. You can rate each of your options for estimated profit potential, existing contacts, addressability (Can you find them online?), and enthusiasm. Pick the industry with the strongest showing. I’d recommend giving less weight to enthusiasm since it can inhibit you from making good decisions, but maybe you can find an industry that ticks every box.

Pick the industry you’re already working in. If you’ve worked in this industry for any period of time, you probably have an intimate understanding of the problems in the space. This gives you a big head start when you’re trying to offer solutions.

Pick the industry where you have the closest contacts. Having this kind of access could be a huge leg up.

If all other things are equal and you’re paralyzed, flip a coin, roll a die, generate a random number, do whatever you need to do to get to the next step. This doesn’t need to be perfect since it’s so easy to change. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

3. Find where the good clients hang out (even during COVID-19!)

Title: Find Your People

What?

The first steps we took will make this step a lot easier. Imagine if you wanted to find where “small business owners” hang out? It’s way too broad! Instead you’re going to go find where people in your niche hang out. And not just where they hang out, but where they hang out to talk about business.

We’re going to talk about ways to do that in person, which I believe is the most effective way, and I’ll share some other strategies to use if you can’t get in front of people, maybe because you live somewhere remote or maybe because you’re currently dealing with a global pandemic. Whatever your reasons, you’ll have ways to start becoming known as an expert among your ideal clients even when face-to-face isn’t practical.

Why?

Three very important reasons to find your people:

1. To discover problems. This leads you to the solutions you’re going to be selling.
2. To start earning trust. Without it, you can’t sell anything.
3. Sell your solution. I don’t have to tell you why this is important.

Let’s look at how and where to find them.

How?

Start online to start finding your people.

Good

It’s harder to build trust when you’re “meeting” people exclusively online, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore this avenue. These are also great if you can’t get in front of people for any reason.

• Join subreddits around your niche. Look at the number of members and notice the frequency of posts to see if the subreddit is active. Mine the sidebar of the subreddits to find other related subreddits.

  • Example of related subreddit mentioned in sticky post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/

  • Example of related sub via cross-post:

    

• Search for “{yourNiche} forum”

• Join LinkedIn Groups around your niche. Search for your niche and limit to groups (More > Groups)

• Join Facebook groups around your niche. Search for your niche on Facebook and limit the search to groups.

Better

• Look for more general in-person events. Lead trading groups like BNI are not going to be great because the meetings are very focused. You want something a bit more flexible like a generic networking event. Find these by checking your local Chamber of Commerce’s calendar, Meetup, or Eventbrite.

Best

• Look for events centered around your niche on Meetup or Eventbrite
• Search “conferences for {yourNiche}” for conferences to attend. Here’s an example of a page I found when searching for a lawyer niche. Two of the three events listed here are focused on legal tech. At the beginning, these would be a great way to start familiarizing yourself with the problem space. Later, these might be places where you could sell your services. You might also want to add the nearest large city to your search query unless you’d be willing to travel to an event.

This will get you to your people, but what are you going to do once you get there? Let’s figure it out in our next topics.

4. Learn how to find an irresistible offer for your ideal clients and market it to them

Title: Find an Offer

What?

Some people think you find your ideal clients so you can then continually try to sell to them until they finally buy from you. You’re going to go a different route. You’re going to learn from them what you could actually sell them and how to talk to them about it.

Why?

Like I said back in lesson one, no one wants to buy “web development.” Well, some people do but not very many, and they definitely don’t want to pay much for it. They want to solve problems instead. You’re going to discover the problems you can solve for them with your web development skills.

While you’re discovering those problems, you’ll learn how people in your niche talk about them. You can start using the same language your ideal clients are using when you tell about your solution. They will feel like you understand them… and this isn’t some kind of cheap trick. You actually do understand them because you’ve been talking to them. Here’s how you do it.

How?

In-Person

You talk to them. It’s pretty simple. But, at the same time, you can mess it up.

Maybe instead of “talk,” I should say “you listen to them.” You really want them to do most of the talking while you’re mostly listening. Sure, tell them what you do and why you’re there, but your job is really to make it easy for them to talk to you.

And when they ask why you’re there, it’s not because you want each person in the room to sign a big fat contract with you. It’s because you’re curious about the industry. (If this isn’t true that you’re at least curious, you’ve probably picked the wrong niche.)

Ask them questions to start probing. You should have done some research on the industry coming into this, but you certainly don’t know everything. Get them to fill in the gaps for you. Most people are flattered when you ask about what they do.

You may get hints of some problems in these descriptions too. You can probe further into those.

“I get interrupted about 10 times a day with people calling to reschedule appointments. For those who keep their appointments, we spend about an hour a day calling them to remind them of their appointment times.”

“Oh, wow. That sounds like a pain.”

“It is. That’s all my assistant does.”

What have we learned from this conversation? We learned about a problem – re-scheduling and reminding people of appointments is a pain and it’s time-consuming – and we have an idea of the magnitude of the problem. We know they employ an assistant just to deal with this problem. If that problem went away, they might not need an assistant or else the assistant could move on to tackle more interesting problems.

Is that something we as a web developer could fix? Maybe. You would want to capture this problem somewhere. If other people have the same problem, maybe it’s worth trying to solve. When you talk to other people, notice if they also mention it. If it’s a problem for most of them, it might be a viable solution to offer. If not many of them have the problem, maybe you can solve it for this one person and move on to discover other problems… or just leave it alone and move on.

Also take note about how people talk about a problem. Is it just a nuisance or is it a really big deal? Ask about how they’re dealing with it. Is their workaround expensive (like having to hire an employee), or is it a cheap workaround that takes a few extra seconds? Spoiler: You can’t build a business as a freelancer on saving businesses a couple of seconds.

You never know what questions you might ask that could bear fruit. If you have hypotheses based on what you already know about the industry, you can carefully ask leading questions about those. Maybe you’ve heard that realtors have trouble taking time off because they have to be available to show homes to their buyers or that

“I heard companies in your field have to do X. Have you ever had to do that?”

You might get “Yes! Oh my gosh, you don’t even know. It is murder! goes off for 10 minutes telling you all about it

or you might get “We have to occasionally, but it’s really not so bad.” Solving the problem that triggered the first response could be a business. The second one, probably not.

Online

Demo video?

Find threads where people are asking questions. Make note of the problem. Look at the solutions in the replies. Make note of those too. Try sorting different ways to find the good stuff.

Problem you can’t fix:

Problems you might be able to help with:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/itba9b/how_to_get_my_new_associate_going/

Cataloging problems

Log your problem in whatever medium you prefer. I like digital notes, so I use Notion for this.

The key problem information you want to capture:

• Description
• tally the number of instances
• estimated value
• current solutions and workarounds
• your solution ideas

Do this whether you’re learning about problems in person or online. Online might be quicker for this process but in-person is richer because you can have a real-time dialog and you can read between the lines to pick up on the things people aren’t saying with their words but are with their body language or inflection.

Effective Conversations

Keep talking to people. As you do, check the problems you’ve already cataloged (to see if they are common or if only one business has them) and your solution ideas. Not like this:

“Hey, do you have X problem? What do you think of Y solution?”

This will almost always be answered with “Yes, and I love it!” because people want to please you! Unfortunately, that’s not what you want right now. You want the truth. If you ask this question, you’ll eventually get the truth… but not until it comes time to collect payment or get a contract signed. If you go build your new web site, focusing on this specific solution you’ve decided you’re going to provide because this one person said they loved the idea, you’re now going to have to start back at square one if it turns out that even they aren’t buying.

To get it, you need to be a little more indirect. Ask more open-ended questions, and don’t even get into your solution. I recommend an excellent book called, “The Mom Test” that teaches you a great method for doing this. Check that out when you can. In the meantime, here are the basics:

• “So, you’re a ___. What does that actually look like day-to-day?” Very open-ended. Can start to reveal problems.
• “What’s the hardest thing about {industry} right now?” More directly asking about what the problems are, but not leading them into an existing hypothesis about a problem.

Once you get to a problem

• “Why is that important?” if it isn’t obvious
• “What do you do when that happens?”
• “How are you dealing with it right now?”

With your problem catalog, you now have some ideas about what you could offer, and hopefully your continued conversations have shown that the problems are real and your solutions could work. Even though you may be convinced you can solve these problems, you still have to convince your prospects. That all comes down to trust. Let me teach you how to build it.

5. Build trust with prospects

Title: Build Trust

What?

Time to learn how to build trust.

Why?

If your prospects don’t trust you, it doesn’t matter how great your solution is. They won’t buy it. If you want to make money, this is the 2nd most important piece behind solving a big meaty problem for them.

How?

You may think building trust is just a matter of showing prospects your work, but, if they’re not tech savvy, that might not mean much to them. As much as they need to want your solution, they also have to trust you. It’s less about the technology and more about traditional ways to gauge how trustworthy someone is.

The first step is just showing up. If you find a group of your prospects, whether that’s online or in-person, just keep showing up. Be visible. They want people they work with to be consistent and dependable. You can’t convince someone you’re those things with just words. Do it by being those things now, before they work with you.

Next, be interested in them. This does double-duty by allowing you to fill out your problem inventory and build trust at the same time. People love to talk about themselves. Be the person who encourages them to do that. They love people who are interested in hearing their stories. Be that person for them.

The most important way to gain trust, though, is to help them for free. You’re not offering your services for free, but you can offer a little of your expertise. Take small opportunities to help people when you have expertise they could benefit from. Someone mentions a problem you’ve solved before or asks you for advice. Don’t hand them a contract. Give them the help they need for free.

Here’s an example. Someone is having trouble with their WordPress hosting, and you happen to know of a good alternative to their current host. Share info like that – info you can convey in a few sentences – freely. Don’t migrate their site for free, but give them the broad strokes of how for free. (“They have a migration assistant, so, once you sign up for your account, you’ll just log in, start the migration, enter your credentials, and press start. They will copy the files and data over. Then, you just need to update your DNS records on your domain to point to the new host.“)

For most of the people you’re going to talk to, one they’re going to be excited that you’re sharing this for free. Two, their heads are spinning. You lost them at “migration.” If they decide to hire someone to help, it’s probably going to be you… assuming they trust you enough.

That’s an approach that works for in-person interaction or online forums, but you can also give away your knowledge in a less direct way. Think about these questions people are asking you. There are probably other people in the same industry across the country, across the world with no one to ask those questions to. They are going to Google and searching for the answers. If you blog to share your expertise, you might get to answer those questions for thousands of strangers without ever meeting them. Some of them will think of you as an expert, and they may want to hire you when they have a bigger problem that a blog post can’t solve.

Remember, this is a blog not for your peers (other developers) but for your customers. Yes, it’s awesome that you just found a cool extension for VS Code and you learned how to deploy a serverless API on AWS, but your clients don’t care. They only care about those things where they overlap with their businesses. Instead of writing the post “How to deploy serverless APIs to AWS,” write “How to reduce your mobile app’s AWS bill by 30%” (if in fact that would be the effect of a serverless API for your ideal client) or something similarly interesting to your clients.

If writing doesn’t appeal to you, this doesn’t have to take the form of a blog. You could start a YouTube channel or a podcast. You just need a way to show people that you can help them. When they’re asking a question, you want to have a piece of content they can find that will give them the answer.

6. Grow a list of now or future prospects

Title: Grow Your List

What?

You’re going to start making a list of people who could become clients now or in the future. You’ll learn to build a system around keeping in touch with them.

Why?

Some of these people might be ready for your help right now but need a little coaxing. Others might need a little time before they’re ready for you. The chances that you happen to meet them at the exact time they need you are pretty slim.

(slide) This represents wherever you’re finding your people. It could be in-person at an event or online somewhere.

(slide) Wherever it is, you show up.

(slide) You make the rounds, getting in front of everyone. In-person, that’s going to be very literally what you’ll do. Online, you’re going to be popping into different threads to give people feedback or offer advice where you can… or maybe just to say hi.

(slide) Once you’re done, you leave. If you look at this as a “one-and-done,” (slide) those people will very quickly forget who you were. If you instead…

(slide) (advance 2 more times during this) keep in touch with them – and that could mean continuing to attend whatever group you’ve found, showing up in the same online communities consistently, or even just reaching out individually to the people you’ve met on an individual basis – (slide) they will begin to think of you as an expert, a reliable person, and just a good person to know.

They’ll think of you first when they have a problem they know you can solve.

We’ve already talked about going back to wherever our people are, and that solves some of this problem, but there’s no guaranteeing the people you meet who could become clients will be there the next time. That’s why you want to make a list of people you can help now or in the future so that you can keep in touch with them individually.

How?

Uphabit, Revere, or another purpose-built app. These have nice features and make it very easy, but they cost money.

Notion or Airtable. I would probably use Notion since I already use it pretty heavily to keep track of notes, but I think Airtable is easier to get started since they have a template.

Demo video of personal CRM on Airtable

Add base > Start with template

Personal CRM template > Use

See the description the first time. Tells you how to use. Skip for now. I’m going to show you how to modify and use. Can get back to it with the information icon next to the base name at the top.

Airtable will be free until you hit 1,200 records in your base. That’s going to get you a long way. You won’t have access to the applications in the sidebar either (on the right), so you might as well close those.

Next: simplify that template as much as possible.

We don’t care about various classes of contacts. We’re going to use this just for potential clients. Delete the “Tag” field and the “By Tag” view (ellipsis menu next to view name).

Delete “Service area,” “Connection,” and “Outreach” columns.

Convert “Name” to function field that combines the first and last name {First Name} & " " & {Last Name} or else you have to double enter first and last names. This will mess with our sample data because it looks like they haven’t entered first and last names for every record that had a name. It’s fine because we’re going to delete all the sample data. If you don’t want to do it this way, You can just delete the first and last name fields and use only the “Name” field. That would probably work just as well.

Delete “Service Professionals” and “Places I’d like to work” views. Not relevant for our use.

We care about cities and companies, but we don’t need them as separate records. That just eats into our free limitation faster with no real benefit. Delete both tables. What you will lose: the ability to easily answer, “which contacts work for X company?” Can still use filtering, but it’s slightly more difficult. If this is something you desperately need, don’t delete these tables.

Now, we’re ready to start using it.

The first time you touch base with someone, add them to the table and email them, saying something to the effect of “nice meeting you.” This will serve as your first “catchup,” so add the date to that column for their record. In 45 days, they will pass into “overdue” letting you know they’re ready for a follow-up.

Add a column left of “Last Catchup”: a formula field called “Next Catchup Due.” DATEADD({Last Catchup}, 45, 'days') This will create a due date columnfor your next catchup. You can sort by this column to get a list of your contacts in the order you need to follow-up with them.

Switch to your Catchup Calendar. This calendar isn’t very useful because it shows the date you last followed up. Instead, change the field to the new “Next Catchup Due” field. This will give you a calendar of dates you need to follow-up.

If you want, you can subscribe to this calendar in your personal calendar so that you’ll get these reminders on your personal calendar. Click on the “Share view” button, click “Sync.” Follow the instructions.

Update a Last Catchup to demonstrate how the calendar updates.

Delete all the records. You are ready to start using this.

Reach out via phone or email if you can. Use direct communication (not a broadcast like a Twitter mention). When you reach out, think about how you’re doing it. Look for news or something that might be useful to them to share. Ask for an update about a project or initiative you talked about last time. (Keep detailed notes to make this easier.) If they were about to start on a project you could have helped with and didn’t hire you, check in to see how it’s going.

When you first meet people, you are sowing the seed. When you add them to your list and follow-up regularly, you are nurturing your garden. Eventually, one or more of these prospects is going to be ripe to pick off as a client. The more of these you have, the more likely one is going to be coming ripe at any given time. That’s why you want to keep planting seeds, even if you have other plants ready for harvest.

Stability

This is great, but how do you parlay all this into a stable income. You can’t predict when people are going to need you. You can’t just snap your fingers and make one of the people on your list become a client because you need to make rent.

If you find you’re not earning the income you need, you have a few options.

1. You can increase the number of people on your list. You have a network of N people you are in contact with in your niche. In a given month, you’ll be able to turn some fraction of those people into clients. It’s probably going to be a fairly small fraction. Maybe 1/50 or 1/100. One way to increase the number of clients coming out of this equation is to increase the total number of people you know. Find new events to attend. Find new online communities to participate in. Ask the people you already know for introductions. Whatever you can do to increase the input. Increase your luck surface area.
2. You can change the solutions you’re offering. The first strategy increases the number of people coming in, but finding a more compelling solution to offer can increase the multiplier. A more compelling offer converts at a higher rate. This could improve your rate to 1/40 which equals more clients. Changing your solution to one that is more valuable to your clients can also give you room to charge more which leads right into the third option.
3. You can increase your rates. I wrote a book on pricing for freelance web development that can help you do this. This works well if there’s a lot of demand for your solutions but you just aren’t making enough money. If you have more work than you can do, increasing your rates should cause some of your clients to drop off (They can’t afford you any more.), but you’ll earn more from the clients that stick around. If you double your price and lose half your clients, that’s great! That means you’re working half the time and making the same money. Ideally if your income is too low, you’ll lose clients at a lower rate than your price increase so that your income goes up. Even if that doesn’t happen at first, this will give you some time to find higher value clients that can pay your new rate.
4. You can switch up your niche. If you find your niche isn’t able to afford to pay what you need to make, it may be time to consider moving on and selecting one of your other options. If you think this is your problem, you have to be careful of succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. This is what allows people to get in over their heads with those Nigerian prince scams. “But, he said if I don’t send the other $2,000,I^{\prime }lllosethe$5,000 I already sent!” Thing is, that $5,000isalreadygoneandthe$2,000 won’t bring it back. If you’ve already spent a bunch of time working on this niche only to discover it’s not viable for you, do not focus on the time you’ve spent. That time is gone, but you got something for it: you learned this niche won’t work for you. Your job now is to consider why this one didn’t work and find one that will.
5. You can take one of your existing solutions to a different niche. If you built a self-service scheduling software for barbers, that would probably also work for personal trainers. You could try repeating the process for that niche. If you discover your hunch is correct and that they do need self-service scheduling for their clients, you can now keep doing what you’ve been doing but for a new niche. You might even find it’s worth more to the new niche which will allow you to earn more by doing the same thing.

That’s the final piece of the puzzle! Watch the final video to see how to use this system going forward.

What Now?

Now, you have all the same tools I used to go from making $30,000 a year with a crummy job in East Tennessee to working from home making six figures living in my dream city of Seattle, Washington. This is a good time to reflect on what you’re going to use this to achieve in your life.

It’s also a good time for a reminder that I’m not extraordinary. We’re all unique and have different sets of advantages and disadvantages, but I can just about guarantee I’m not any smarter than you, and I’m not a better developer than you. Maybe I’m a more experienced developer than you are right now, but I’m not a better one. You can do this. Here’s what you ‘re going to do.

At this point, you’ll start at step 3 (finding your people), and just keep repeating all those steps going forward. You need to:

• Keep tracking problems and looking for opportunities to provide a solution
• Keep showing up where your ideal clients are, getting back in front of the people you already know and meeting new people
• Keep building trust
• Keep your relationships warm by following up
• Offer your services when you can solve someone’s problem

You may even find that, on occasion, you need to revisit your niche or you want to add a new niche that you can serve alongside your current one. In those cases, you can roll all the way back to step 1 and repeat the entire process again.

Once you’re happy with the niche or niches you’re serving, repeating those steps to nurture them will ensure your pipeline and your bank account are always full!

Thank you so much for taking my course. It means the world to me that you would entrust me to help you take such a huge step in your life. Revisit this course if you find yourself lost or if you just need a refresher on one of the steps. I hope the course has been helpful, and I hope the new life you build with it brings you a ton of joy and opportunity.

Bonuses

Airtable Templates

https://airtable.com/shr3oMqSCTG7zmJ2v

https://airtable.com/shrlpfnPvfl37Zs9p

https://airtable.com/shr7Rtpqm2eGJEUBP

Notion Templates

https://www.notion.so/raddevon/035a3978c02445b598de1f4dd4f38176?v=ea25cfc6663f4db6a008a84767ec253c