Welcome to another episode of Silence is Golden where we share invaluable tips for your WordPress business.
Tired of those difficult clients? The good news is that you don't have to work with them! Today’s main topic is all about auditioning your prospects to win better clients and increase your profit. We’ll also be talking about how the six-figure freelancer is on the rise. That’s right- new data is revealing that there are more and more freelancers making more than $100k per year. We will also be talking about the fact that people are weirded out by self-driving cars and more.
Make sure you don’t miss the surprise studio entrance from the Agency Mavericks team at the 1.20-minute mark. They embarrass Troy by singing and dancing around him for his birthday and it's gold!
Watch the Video
Stuff That Happened
At the 4.40 minute mark, we talk about stuff that happened during the past week.
Gutenberg Block Library
The Gutenberg Block Library has been released where you can search an index of individual blocks that you can add into Gutenberg.
Have you tried Gutenberg yet? We’ve heard quite a few stories about people giving Gutenberg a try and it breaking their site. Troy tells us that he isn’t a believer and won't be using it any time soon.
Longreads Merch Store with WooCommerce + Printful
In June the Longreads Merch Store was launched with WooCommerce + Printful. Simon was interested as to why they went with WooCommerce. He has quite a few WooCommerce sites but says that the Shopify experience is amazing.
Waymo Self-Driving Car Issues
Waymo (which is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc – Google’s parent company) are having issues because the self-driving cars are slow and cautious, making motorists frustrated!
Simon loves this tweet:
This story about Waymo’s problems is excellent and makes it sound like living amongst robots as they learn to drive is really annoying.
Pretty amazing that we’ve come to this point really!
Skype Ditches Attempt to Be Trendy
Skype has decided that all of the changes they made over the last six months were horrible and have rolled it back to get rid of the squiggles and the stories. Troy thinks that perhaps that realised that four-year-olds aren’t their target audience!
As a side note, Troy says that WPE has gone back to using Skype for recording podcasts after discovering that Zoom compresses the audio on the recordings whereas Skype doesn’t.
New Data: Six-Figure Freelancing Is On The Rise
A research study that was done in the States showed that there are more and more freelancers earning more than $100k per year. The huge shift of people leaving their jobs to go out and become a freelancer is fantastic! Find out more in this article.
Maverick's Mastermind
At the 14.50 minute mark, we cut to the San Diego Maverick’s Mastermind which took place in late June. One of our Flight Instructors Pete Perry tells us about his experience with all four Masterminds that he has attended and how it has helped his company to elevate.
What Made the Wee Come Out?
At the 17.30 minute mark, Troy tells us what made the wee come out a little this week. He says that Season 3 of his favourite podcast has been released – Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman (the founder of Linkedin). It’s about scaling your business and apparently, it's just epic. It has incredible production and great storytelling… basically, the podcast that we aspire to be!
The Golden Nugget
At the 20.20 minute mark, we talk about auditioning your clients.
You don’t need to take on every client just because it means that you will get paid. It’s not necessarily good revenue if it won’t help you grow, it’s not repeatable and it will keep you in the red zone. According to Troy:
There's revenue, there's profitable revenue and then there’s profitable revenue with zero turbulence.
What is Turbulence?
Turbulence happens with the difficult clients, clients that disappear or clients who drag their feet on getting you the content. You can end up sitting on the project for months while your profit declines and you waste time chasing them for the content.
Why Audition Your Clients?
- Increase revenue
- Overcome turbulence
- Build a more sustainable and profitable business
- Build consistency
How Do you Audition Clients?
Give them hoops to jump through to make sure that they are a compliant client.
Troy says that it’s like this…
When you go to the Doctor’s what do you do? You walk up to the desk, announce yourself then sit and wait (because they’re usually late). You don’t tell them that you need to see the doctor at this very minute or message and call them until they see you.
So why don’t we push back on this business model? Because there’s an authority there and they have positioned themselves this way. They consistently follow this process every time and it's comfortable for you because you know what to expect.
When Troy does the Go Wide Go Deep session with the client, one of the things he likes saying is “think of me like a doctor. I can't give you the right medicine until you tell me all of the symptoms. That’s why I'm asking so many questions.” Then they trust your process, but they will only trust the process when you have one and stick to it.
When you're getting started with your process, practice is key. Here's what to do:
- Have an intake form. It doesn’t matter how hard the client pushes to meet up straight away or get around this step. Always start with this step.
- Follow up
- Always secure the next meeting
- Always follow this process
If you’re getting leads coming from everywhere such as Facebook messenger, email, phone etc sometimes they get overlooked. So Troy has discovered that you can collate all your leads and put them through your sales process using amoCRM. No affiliation here – he has just been using it for that last four days and is loving it.
Tool of the Week
At the 37.10 minute mark, Simon introduces the Sip app which surfaces the most interesting and important tech stories of the day, from breaking news to profiles on favourite tech products. They present it in small digestible pieces of information at a time instead of having a long post to read.
Let’s Get Unstuck
At the 42.25 minute mark, the guys help Brendan get unstuck. Within our Facebook group he says:
The biggest complaint I get is that clients don’t see the value in care plans.
Troy’s answer? It’s easy! Just hack their website! (Please don't do this! LOL)
Simon’s answer is that it is getting much easier for people to make their own websites with Wix etc. So you need to know what is valuable to your client. You don’t need to waste time on convincing someone of something they don’t need because as Troy so delicately put it “you are pushing sh*t up a hill”.
Just because they have a problem and you know how to solve it, doesn't mean they are obliged to take the offer. And if they can’t afford it, it doesn’t mean you’re not worth it – it just means they can’t afford it so don’t lower your prices!
Move on and find another client who will benefit from what you’re offering. So work out who that type of client is and target them. Then your services are a no-brainer for them to sign up!
Wrap Up
Next weeks episode is going to be the most amazing, explosive episode we’ve ever done according to Troy. We can't tell you why – you have to just tune in. So we'll see you then!
Also, if you haven't already, make sure you are signed up to the WP Wednesday to stay up to date with all the latest news and tech in the WordPress space.
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