The DYF Accountability Buddy Finder

The fastest, easiest path to the accountability & support you need to grow your freelance business or agency.

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The reason most freelancers get stuck underpaid, with not enough clients:

There's one big cause of most freelancers staying underpaid...

Most of us only go out and "do marketing" when we're out of client work and need a new project.

Unfortunately, this keeps freelancers stuck in a "feast or famine cycle."

Here's how...

In any negotiation, the power is in the hands of whichever party can most easily walk away.

By waiting until you need a client, the power is in the hands of the prospective client.

(Because you know you need them to say yes.)

This desperation makes most of us bend in ways we'd prefer not to...

Maybe it's taking on a client who seems like they're going to be high-maintenance...
Maybe we let ourselves get negotiated down on our prices...
Maybe we submit our proposal at a lower price than we'd prefer, so as to guarantee they accept it...

The way you fix this?

Don't wait til you need a client to find one!

If you can get to the point where you always have a client waitlist, you'll find that your rates quickly shoot up.

But in order to get to that position, you need to spend time marketing consistently.

Ideally every week.

And here's the thing... When you're busy with client work, you're not gonna want to work on client acquisition every week, even if you know it's important.

The solution: get an accountability buddy to keep you on track.

Someone who will chase you down if you slack off and ensure you keep moving forward.

But you can't just get any ole accountability buddy — you need to partner up with a fellow freelancer or agency owner with a similar trajectory and vision.

Normally, this would be hard — most of us don't have too many freelancer friends IRL.

And if we do, chances are they're not taking their businesses as seriously as us.

Gosh, if only there was a way to, like, browse a directory of good-fit buddies and match with the perfect one...

Oh wait, there is!

Fortunately for you (!!!), there's this nifty tool that Zach made for you:

Introducing...

The DYF Accountability Buddy Finder

The fastest, easiest path to the accountability & support you need to grow your freelance business or agency.

Benefits of an accountability buddy + the buddy finder:

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Build a client waitlist

A buddy will keep you accountable to continue growing your business and doing your marketing, even when you have client work on your plate and don't feel like it. (This is the #1 key for a waitlist)

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Raise your rates

When you keep working on your business and marketing and build a waitlist, you finally have the security, comfort, and power to experiment with charging more.

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Be lifted up when you're feeling down

Running and growing a freelance business is hard, and friends/significant others often don't quite get it. Having someone on a similar path who can reassure you when you're feeling down will help you stay motivated and hopeful.

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Keep going when you want to give up

Relying on willpower and self-motivation is a huge mistake — both wane & fluctuate. Having a buddy there for you to keep you motivated and keep you from giving up can make the difference between success and failure in your business.

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Feel less alone

It's lonely working online. Having someone to connect to regularly who's working on something similar is good for the heart (and the wallet).

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

Access to new partnerships and opportunities

As you and your buddy grow, so will your abundance of opportunities that might benefit the other. 1 + 1 = 3 here.

👍 Benefit of having a buddy:

HUGE business growth

By actually investing into your growth consistently as a result of the accountability and support, you will be shocked at how much you can accomplish when you actually, you know, do the work consistently.

❝

"...Sometimes saying something out loud can go a long way to addressing your roadblocks..."

For me, the benefit of having an accountability buddy is less about the "accountability" part, and more about the "buddy" part.

When my buddy and I do our check-ins, we talk a lot about all sorts of other things outside of specifically what happened in the last week:

What we're struggling on, what we're not sure about, or even just the weather in our respective countries.

It's really helpful having that community connection, a sounding board, and insight into someone else's journey so you can learn from each other.

Also... sometimes saying something out loud can go a long way to addressing your roadblocks.

Carl A.

Web Developer

❝

Two Roads...

Here's what life might look like solo vs. with a buddy...

Going it with a buddy...

You start with high motivation to work on your biz — "THIS is gonna be the year I grow the biz and break free of crappy rates," you say to yourself
You go out and put in the work to get some clients
But then you get sick, or your kids/fam get sick. Or maybe you just get busy. Or tired.
To make up for lost time, you cut out the non-essentials. The "on the biz work" and marketing work are the first to go, to create more time for your current project on your plate.
You speak with your buddy and they notice.
They comfort you and validate you, but also remind you of your commitment to growing your business. They challenge you to keep working on the biz, even if for just a couple hours a week
So you do. You keep working on your biz and marketing in a sustainable way alongside client work, even though you don't want to
By the time your project is over, you've got another one in the queue to start on immediately, and an ADDITIONAL one booked for after that one that you quoted at 1.3x your normal rate (they accepted)
So you keep the rhythm going, and you also learn some stuff from your buddy that's working in their biz that allows you to charge even more and get more leverage out of your lead gen efforts
You keep going and growing, and everything just keeps getting better and better. You like your clients more, they pay you more, and you live a low-stress life
You buy a small child's swimming pool and fill it with cash and flap around in all this money you have. Some people say it's excessive but they are idiots and don't understand
You look back years later when you're earning kajillions of dollars, and trace all your success back to this one thing: working ON your biz consistently.
And you know you wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for your buddy.

Going it Alone...

You start with high motivation to work on your biz — "THIS is gonna be the year I grow the biz and break free of crappy rates," you say to yourself
You go out and put in the work to get some clients
But then you get sick, or your kids/fam get sick. Or maybe you just get busy. Or tired.
To make up for lost time, you cut out the non-essentials. The "on the biz work" and marketing work are the first to go, to create more time for your current project on your plate.
Everything's fine for now though; you just keep working on this project
But as you move forward, you see the end coming, and feel overwhelmed because you don't know where your next client is going to come from
The gig ends and you scramble to get a client, scared and desperate
You spend like 10 hours a day doing anything you can to get a client. linkedin, upwork, cold outreach, whatever you can do to get something — anything
With each passing day you get more and more stressed, which makes your sleep, relationships, and body suffer
You start to wonder whyTF you're even doing this whole freelancing thing rather than just getting a job
The thought worms its way deeper over the coming weeks and months, and eventually you give in.
You throw in the towel and say "I'm just gonna get a freakin job"
You get a freakin job
You hate it but feel stuck because you feel like you "didn't have the discipline" or "weren't motivated enough" or "strong enough" to hack it at your own biz
When in truth, you only failed because you set yourself up for failure by putting too much pressure on yourself to "go it alone"

Cool thing about the DYF Accountability Buddy Finder? It's...

The Fastest, Easiest Way to Get an Accountability Buddy

5 simple steps and you'll be up and running — saving yourself hours of wasted time and frustration trying to find a good accountability buddy on your own.

The fast & easy 5-step Setup:

😌 Step 1:

Complete the 45-second profile setup

Fill out a few fields to help buddies find you.

👀 Step 2:

Browse the accountability buddy directory

Find 1-3 potential buddies you like. Use the bonus pre-filtering checklist to help you pick good-fit buddies FAST.

💬 Step 3:

Reach out to them

Use the bonus buddy outreach scripts to make it easy. 🙂

☎️ Step 4:

Set up an initial exploration call

Use the bonus exploration call template to help guide the call.

👯 Step 5:

Choose the buddy you vibe most with and meet up regularly!

This is your one-way ticket to awesomeville.

Use the bonus weekly checkins notion db template or single checkin worksheet to help guide the calls.

I enjoy having an accountability buddy because I don't feel "alone" in the journey.

Günter G.

Developer

Ready to get-cho-self a buddy???