Tag: sales and marketing

Episode 150: How Calista Solved The “Waiting For Referrals” Problem (As a New Freelancer!)

Episode 150: How Calista Solved The “Waiting For Referrals” Problem (As a New Freelancer!)

by on April 2, 2025

In this episode, Zach talks to Calista from nimblecrafted.com about how she went from relying on low-paying referrals to building a confident, repeatable system for landing freelance clients. Over the past five months, Calista has transformed from a burned-out developer stuck in commoditized pricing to someone with real control over her business—without sacrificing her desire…

Episode 149: How Devs Can Escape Commoditization in an AI Vibe Coder’s World

Episode 149: How Devs Can Escape Commoditization in an AI Vibe Coder’s World

by on March 26, 2025

In this episode, Zach dives into how developers can escape commoditized pricing by aligning their skills with high-value business problems. Learn how positioning your expertise around solving specific problems can help you stand out, charge higher rates, and attract better clients. You’ll discover how to shift from being a “keyboard for hire” to a problem-solving…

Episode 148: How To Get Paid For Project Discovery, with Laura Elizabeth

Episode 148: How To Get Paid For Project Discovery, with Laura Elizabeth

by on November 15, 2024

In this episode, Zach talks to Laura Elizabeth, co-owner of Double Your Freelancing and creator of Project Pack. Laura is talking about how she does “paid roadmapping” for her clients, often charging upwards of $6,000 for ONE roadmap. In this episode, we’ll discuss what paid roadmapping is, why freelancers should consider doing it, and common mistakes…

The Ultimate System For Automatically Qualifying, Scheduling, and Preparing New Project Leads

by on February 3, 2016

Long before I got into consulting I used to sell leads to mortgage brokers. (If you want to talk about shady, look into generating and selling leads for mortgage brokers. Sheeesh.) We sold leads for about $100 a pop, which was about 20x more than most other lead providers were charging. Companies like LendingTree would generate…

Two Big Mistakes I Made When I Launched My Last Course

by on October 14, 2015

I want to share something with you that I haven’t made public until now. As you know, in about 2 weeks I’m opening up the 2016 enrollment window for Double Your Freelancing Clients, a course I offer only once a year that teaches you how to build a system that will reliably bring your business in high-quality and…

How To Get New Clients With Facebook Ads

by on June 26, 2015

One of my first marketing experiments after opening up my agency’s office in downtown Norfolk, Virginia was to setup a Facebook ad campaign advertising our web design and development services. Fast forward a few hundred dollars in budget… and you can probably guess what happened next. I shut down the campaigns. The clicks we did get (which weren’t many)…

The Ultimate Guide To Starting A Freelancing Business (2024 Edition)

by on June 3, 2015

Over the last few years, I’ve been on a lot of podcasts (for a complete list, see here). When I’m interviewed about freelancing and consulting, I inevitably get asked the following question: If you could start over… with no network, no “name”, nothing. Just a laptop, and maybe $1,000 in seed money… what would you do? Usually this…

New Industry You’ve Never Worked In Before? No Problem!

by on May 8, 2015

Cole tweeted a great followup question to Episode 23 of the podcast: https://twitter.com/colehooey/status/590999273048670208 Whenever any discussion around niching or breaking free of general purpose commodity work comes up around here, I almost inevitably get questions like Cole’s. So rather than trying to answer the question in bursts of 140 characters, I told Cole I’d think through my…