Lesson 2 of 4:
“The Boring Secret of a Sustainable, Predictable, and Consistent 7-Figure Freelance Business…”
From : John Pagulayan
San Pedro, Laguna
(Did you miss Lesson #1 of 4? If you did, click this link now)
Hey, what’s up?
On Lesson #1 we talked about how having experience, portfolio, and credentials have very little to do with your ability to get high-paying clients and what does.
In this lesson however, we continue our adventure by showing you the PROCESS behind the curtain that enables me and other successful freelancers to do so.
The same process my students have been using to generate this kind of result…
That’s 7-figures a month by doing the same boring stuff I’m gonna show you inside this lesson.
You ready?
Cool.
Let me introduce to you the CCPP process.
CCPP is a simple 4-part process of creating consistency, sustainability, and predictability to your freelance business.
Here’s a quick glimpse of what it looks like in a nutshell…
CONNECT > CALL > PROPOSAL > PAID
Looks awfully simple right?
Now while there are nuances to each step of the process (we’ll talk about it in later lessons), let me explain how it works in a nutshell…
Say you’re a Social Media Manager and your goal is P100k a month with a usual rate of $500 per client per month (which is the average) for social media work.
Now, imagine that out of 100 people you reach out to, you can get at least 10 people to hop on a call with you…
And out of the 10 people you hop on calls with, 4 end up being clients.
Using the CCPP approach, it’d look like…
CONNECT (100) → CALLS (10) → PROPOSALS (10) → PAID (4)
Which means that in order to make P100k/month, all you need to do is reach out to 100 people a month.
Now that may sound like a lot but if you really think about it — that’s only a little over 3 people a day.
Get 10 out of the 100 on a call (2.5 calls each week).
Onboard 4 clients out of the 10 calls you had (1 client a week).
And you’d easily meet your target monthly income.
What’s more…
If you charge $1,000 instead of $500 then you only need to talk to 50 people and connect with a little less than 2 prospects a day.
If you charge $2,000 then you only need to talk to 25 people a month to reach 6 figures — that’s one measly connection each day!
So if you remain COMMITTED to reaching out to the required amount of people each day, there’s no way your income would be uncertain.
And that’s what you want in a business.
PREDICTABILITY.
Having that in my business was huge.
It freed my mind from the stress and the uncertainty of freelancing.
How could it be uncertain when you’re the one who decide whether you want to connect or not?
How would you be stressed when your only goal to make 6 or 7-figures, is to connect with 1-3 people a day — a goal you have complete control of?
Like what Avram Noam Chomsky, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, once said…
Doesn’t it feel good knowing that the power to change your life and business is in YOUR hands and not on anyone else’s?
Now, I do understand that it does feel a bit awkward if this is your first time getting exposed to these concepts — let alone applying them in your freelance business.
But let’s make things a little bit weirder. Shall we?
Let me introduce a slightly deconstructed view of the CCPP method…
(I haven’t included all the strategies for each step so as not to make it confusing)
The image above could easily be a one-paged freelancing course.
For now, forget about the ‘terms’ and ‘strategies’ you see on each step.
What is important is the fact that this is a very dynamic process and its application is only limited to your imagination.
What I want you to notice are these three parts of the process that are critical…
LEAD FLOW
SALES
RETAIN
To help you with this process, you want to ask yourself these three questions…
How many leads per week are you getting?
What percentage of leads do you convert into clients?
What percentage of clients do you convert into repeat clients?
There’s a whole lot more nuance to this step but that’s where you’d like to start.
You need to track these numbers for your business.
Track them for at least a month until you have enough data to make an informed decision.
Because one thing is for sure…
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
And doing this gives you an objective view on the things your freelance business lacks.
For example…
Low on leads?
Focus on learning more about generating leads.
I don’t care if you’re a general VA or a graphic designer or a professional dog poop picker…
Because in any kind of business, freelancing or not…
If you’re not getting leads, you might as well be out of business.
Learn strategic lead generation tactics like cold emailing, going to events, referral marketing, inbound and outbound marketing, etc…
If you’re low on leads, now is not the time to learn how to ‘sell’ your service.
Put your entire focus on generating leads until you get decent at it.
A good freelancer should be getting at least 10 leads like clockwork each month.
Because frankly, who’re you gonna sell to if you got no leads coming in for your business?
In fact, getting LEADS is so important that Upwork charges you 20% in case you turn one into a client.
Only difference is, instead of letting freelancing sites do it for you, you’ll be the one doing the lead generation for yourself so you get to keep the 20%. 😉
But say you don’t have a ‘lead’ problem.
Are you getting leads but not clients?
Then focus on learning your customer’s behavior and their buying psychology.
You’re gonna have to learn and understand why clients acquire your service and why other prospects don’t.
Learn how to position your service in a way that helps your clients acquire a specific result.
Heck, buy courses on ‘sales’ or ‘selling’ if you have to.
A good benchmark is to close at least 2 out of every 10 leads you talk to.
Anything lower than 2 means you have to do a better job crafting a better offer and selling it.
And anything higher than 7 may mean you probably to have charge more.
Stop wasting your time learning some super duper awesome in-demand skill thinking that adding another expertise will solve your problem of not having any clients.
IT WON’T.
I know this very well because…
I did.
I thought writing emails wasn’t good enough so I tried adding more skills to my repertoire…
Only to find out that it’s NOT the reason why I wasn’t getting any clients.
It’s simply was because I suck at ‘sales’.
And lastly…
Do you get repeat clients?
This is arguably THE most underrated component of your freelancing business.
Most freelancers think only in terms of new clients.
They tend to forget that it’s actually about a 100 times easier to make someone buy from you AGAIN compared to getting a new client.
If this is where you’re stuck…
Then you need to focus on learning your client’s business model better so you can identify and spot opportunities to promote additional projects to your clients.
Focus on finding leaks and bottlenecks in their business.
And once you do, just let them know you can help them with it.
That’s it.
2 times out of 5, they’ll contract you to do it for them.
Your goal is to have at least 20% of your clients do business with you again.
In fact, here’s something you can do RIGHT NOW…
STEP 1: Get the work done.
STEP 2: Once done, send them a short report of what you did.
STEP 3: Include at least one opportunity, leak, bottleneck, you think you can help them with.
STEP 4: If they agree with your report, let them know you can help them implement your suggestions. For a fee of course. 😉
I guarantee that if you send this to at least 5 of your previous, or current clients, you’d get one of them asking you to do it for them.
Now, I know that tracking and measuring your performance isn’t sexy compared learning a new skill.
And I get it.
It’s all about numbers and a little bit of math.
It’s economics.
It’s BORING.
But the freelancer who understands its importance gets to thrive just for the fact that you know which part of your process you should be improving.
In fact, if you do this right, this is what happens…
And she did all that just by having one ‘supposedly’ low paying skill (according to most freelancers) which is transcribing podcasts.
Awesome, right?
Now listen…
In Lesson #1 of this workshop we’ve already busted some freelancing myths and discovered a shortcut to getting paid your desired rates without being the best at what you do.
That to have a thriving freelance business, you don’t need to be a business graduate, a marketing wizard, or a great salesman.
In this lesson, we talked about the the not-so-secret process for having a sustainable, predictable, and consistent freelance business.
Which, if you were anything like me when I was starting out, should remove the guesswork on what you should be ‘improving’ first in your business.
Kinda like a quick business diagnosis.
And if you read this far, you’re probably thinking…
“All this is good and well, but how do I exactly get the prospects or clients that will go through that process?”
I get you.
Which is why on the third installment of our FREE workshop, we’ll talk about it in great detail.
For now, I just want you to have a strong foundation of what’s needed and an overview of the entire process so you have an idea of the full picture.
So if you have any questions about the CCPP PROCESS, leave a comment below or ask me inside the group to let me know.
And if you can think of someone else in your life who would benefit from this lesson…
I would love for you to just click on the ‘LIKE’ button and ‘SHARE’ this with them.
Rooting for you,
John “I like predictable” Pagulayan