The #1 thing that made the difference in building enough lead flow to support my 11-person agency was becoming an educator.

(Have you seen Zach’s “Practice Being An Educator” idea?)

Most freelancers don’t bother with blogging, podcasting, or writing a newsletter because they “don’t have the time.”

It’s also – maybe mostly – because it feels scary and vulnerable.

…And very triggering of imposter syndrome.

• “What if I write something and people tell me how wrong and dumb I am?”
• “I’m a crappy writer, no one would want to read what I write”
• “I don’t have anything to say that others haven’t already said before”

Any of those sound familiar?

If you really want to build a solid foundation and get your rates to the top 1%, it’ll benefit you greatly to practice pushing through that imposter syndrome.

It’s difficult at first, but gets easier with practice and repetition — believe me.

Huge tip for authority-building: write a book

Once you’re comfortable writing and creating blog content, it can be incredibly powerful to write a book or eBook.

And before you state “I don’t have the time” objection, hear me out…

The expression “She practically wrote the book on XYZ” exists for a reason.

Being an author on a topic automatically frames you as being knowledgeable and authoritative on that topic.

After all, if you were going to hire someone to… I don’t know… re-do your roof, who would you rather hire?

• A: The random company you found on google maps, or
• B: The company headed by the person who wrote the “Best Practices For Roofers” book?

Beyond the authority, there are other benefits:

• eBooks are great resources for tackling FAQs to save you time and energy (e.g. you can send one on your workflow process to each new client as an onboarding resource)
• They can also be passive income generators that aren’t tied to your time, which helps you diversify beyond your freelancing income
• They give you a chance to showcase your expertise in a reader-friendly format

“But Brennan, I don’t have the time to write an eBook!”

Didn’t we agree that you’d hear me out? 😂

There’s a solution to the “it takes a lot of time” objection:

Friend of DYF, Kaleigh Moore, created a free guide on how you can repackage your blog posts into an eBook, making the book-writing process much easier and quicker.

Learn how to repurpose your blog posts into an eBook

Authority- and audience-building steps to take:

Here’s a step-by-step process you can take to get comfortable with content creation and stepping into the educator role.

Eventually, this process will move you into more public marketing strategies.

1. Use Zach’s tip to “practice being an educator”
2. Start writing case studies about your clients
3. Start blogging on your own site consistently to get comfortable writing
4. Start repackaging your blog posts into an eBook
5. Create a funnel so that you can start building your audience
6. Get started marketing by borrowing other people’s audiences and using your new skills to create huge lead flow into your business

For an in-depth, step-by-step course that walks you through #5, you can check out our flagship marketing course, The Blueprint.