This is an ongoing series where we share how a past student has been able to significantly grow their freelance business by applying the concepts they learned from Double Your Freelancing. If you feel your story would be a good fit, share why.

Who are you and what’s your business?

I’m Kai Davis, an Outreach Consultant in Oregon. I work with brands who sell products online and help them increase their sales. Typical outcomes for my clients include more traffic, more leads, more sales and an improved image.

I run a small marketing agency, focused on outreach, link building and SEO. I have been freelancing as a marketing consultant since 2006. I made the leap to working full-time for myself as a consultant in 2012. In 2014, I started to explicitly focus on an audience of eCommerce business owners.

What was it like to quit your job to freelance full-time?

It was a wonderful combination of excitement, scariness and the unknown.

When I quit my job, I quickly picked up a long-term consulting contract with a local startup. That contract gave me some income stability, but there were still so many unknowns about full-time consulting:

• How do I identify the value I’m contributing to a client business?
• How do I reduce the number of proposals I’m writing?
• How do I build an ongoing relationship with a client as a trusted advisor, not just a disposable pair of arms and legs?

When I discovered Brennan’s courses, I started to discover the answers to these questions and build a sustainable business.

Did you ever want to give up?

No. Never.

Even in the face of adversity — a contract getting canceled, a relationship with a client going sour — I had adopted an abundance mindset.

If one opportunity doesn’t work out, that’s not a reflection of me or the client. Just a single project that didn’t pan out. There are hundreds of interesting clients to work with. I couldn’t let one get me down!

This shift from a scarcity mindset (“This is the only project for me! If it fails, I’m a failure!”) to an abundance mindset (“Life and business is testing and experimenting with opportunities. If one opportunity doesn’t work out, there will be hundreds more in the future.”) was instrumental.

Which course(s) have you taken?

I’ve taken both versions of Double Your Freelancing Rate and the first version of Sell Yourself Online: The Blueprint.

These courses were instrumental in helping me grow as a consultant. They gave me the skills to provide more value to the clients I decided to work with.

What were you struggling the most with when you ran into Brennan’s courses and how did they change the way you worked?

Pricing! I was a bundle of uncertainty with everything to do with pricing. I knew I was bringing value to each client that I worked with, but I struggled with how to price my services on value and move away from a role as an hourly commodity.

Double Your Freelancing Rate helped me understand how to effectively price my services on value. Since I completed the first version of the course, my rate has increased by over 500%.

But, honestly, that’s not the biggest impact of the course. The biggest impact is that the quality of the clients I choose to work with has increased dramatically.

What are you most excited about for your business in the next year?

Growth.

Last year was about focusing my business down on a specific audience (brands who sell products online) and set of services (SEO, outreach marketing and link building).

This year is about scaling and growing my consulting business, attracting and working with exciting clients and building something sustainable.

Anything else to add?

Thanks to what I’ve learned, I’ve been able to charge dramatically more (500%+ and counting), work with a higher quality of client and implement marketing that attracts my dream clients to me.

Quantitatively and qualitatively, they’ve helped me lead a better, happier life. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want?

Kai Davis is an Outreach and SEO Consultant in Oregon. He helps brands who sell products online generate more sales. He connects with influencers and works with them to promote his client’s products to their audience.

Kai, thanks for sharing your story and how your business has changed over the past few years. A 500%+ markup in rates is amazing!