Articles And Guides On Freelancing

“Hey Laura, Thanks for the proposal, it all looks great! Let’s go with Option 2. When can we get started?”

There’s nothing like getting a project accepted.

No matter how many times it happens and no matter how confident I am that the client is going to say yes, I always get a jolt of excitement (and do a little dance) when it becomes official.

It can be tempting to relax a little after the tedious back and forth of selling (cough, try Roadmapping).

But how you start the project is going to set the tone for how the rest goes. 

If you start by coming across as organised and professional (even if you don’t feel it), that’s how your client will see you throughout the whole project.

That’s why I’ve put a lot of effort into refining an onboarding process that:

• Makes me look good
• Makes the project more efficient
• Makes my clients happy that they’re working with a professional who knows what she’s doing.

In this article, I’m going to show you a repeatable process you can use to onboard every new client.

Whether you take my process in its entirety, or simply use it as inspiration to make your own, you’ll have everything you need to start each project on the right foot.

This guest post is brought to you by Francesca Geens, a UK based technology and productivity strategist, who loves nothing more than simplifying and untangling the way people do their work.

The problem with most articles on productivity is that they do one of two very annoying things.

They either list ten million ‘essential’ apps, or they prescribe the author’s own ‘system’.

Unfortunately, neither of these approaches results in the reader becoming more productive.

Why?

Because reading about and playing with a ton of new apps is one of the greatest productivity sucks around! You probably already have the right tools but you are not using them well.

The prescribed methodologies only work for a lucky few. Everyone else ends up more stressed because their new ‘system’ is not working for them.  That’s because everyone is different.

Isn’t there another way?

How about we look at what successful independent consultants do to be their most productive and effective selves?

No list of essential tools coming up folks. And plenty of different approaches.

Read on to build your own productivity toolbox.

Conferences are a hell of a lot of fun. When done right, they’re also very rewarding — both for the organizer and the attendees. I get to meet many of my customers in person, which to be honest is a bit of an ego boost. And the people who go usually get much more than they put into it… new connections, new friendships, and new ideas.

The problem is that from a business + focus perspective, DYFConf hasn’t been the best “product” for my company.

Every year we’ve either lost money or broken even.

Every year we’ve just barely had enough attendees (I was almost on the hook for paying for about a dozen empty hotel rooms last year because of how hotel group discount blocks work.)

Every year we’ve struggled to even secure 2 or 3 sponsors to help offset costs.

And every year it’s taken dozens of hours of time to promote, get speakers, deal with the venues, etc.

So from a purely business perspective — there are other things we should be doing. But until now, I’ve justified it. “It’s good for the brand. It’s good for attendees.”