My good friend Paul Jarvis is my guest on this episode of the Business of Freelancing Podcast. Paul began as a web designer and applied what he learned in his work to writing for creative freelancers looking to better run their businesses. Today we discuss building products, especially for those freelancers who may not have a huge audience and a solid idea for a product.

Paul has authored numerous wildly-popular books designed for a particular audience.  Paul’s product training wheels involved a book based on his vegan diet called Eat Awesome.  It served to teach him some important lessons around product development.  Some of those lessons he talks about that can help freelancers get started on a product include:

• The importance of working with an audience you like and want to serve
• Allowing the audience you’ve worked with to help spread the word about your product
• Finding your product through the people that come to you with their problems
• Getting the before, during, after and after-plus interviews with clients in a spreadsheet
• The importance of having processes in place with a built-in mechanism for data collection
• Allowing yourself to be an expert to your audience  

Paul is a firm believer in the importance of data collection to drive your business decisions.  Paul says be confident in the data even if you aren’t confident in yourself.   

To find out more about Paul, head over to his website pjrvs.com.  While you’re there sign up for his weekly newsletter, The Sunday Dispatches. Paul also offers Creative Class –  12, self-paced online lessons where you’ll learn the business of freelancing from Paul.

You can sign up now for the 2016 class of Double your Freelancing Clients.  Fill out the opt-in form and I’ll contact you with details in November.  

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