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- I was worried about launching my product
- A few years ago
- I was in a pretty good place
- 25 hours was a long week for me
- Did what any self respecting person would do… start another business!
- Started Freelance Transformation
- Created a podcast
- Last year – launched a product
- Researched
- Launched
- Built
- That’s the important order. Got $4,500 in presales before building
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- Start building an audience
- Started an email list
- Page with opt-in form
- Guested on podcasts
- Got several hundred on my list - Started my own podcast
- Start building an audience
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- The magic “biggest struggle” email
- Didn’t know what people wanted yet
- So I started surveying them
- Emails were dribbling in, but it wasn’t huge
- Met Ryan Levesque (author of Ask)
- He had me send a “biggest struggle” email
- 2 hours after they receive what they opted in for
- “Hey. A couple hours ago I sent you an email with the link to access your ideal client worksheet. Quick favor? Will you hit reply to let me know if I sent it to the right place? While you’re at it, what’s the biggest struggle you have with freelancing right now?”
- I’d get vague answers. I’d reply again asking for more specifics
- They’d send back a paragraph. Or an essay
- The magic “biggest struggle” email
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- I got on the phone (OK, Skype)
- “Would love to chat more to learn about your points below. Do you have 30 mins…?”
- Talking to people works!
- Often became 60 minute calls. We just kept talking
- What they’re struggling with
- Finding clients
- How to get started (how to go from full time job to full time freelancing)
- I got on the phone (OK, Skype)
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- Build a webinar targeting the most-engaged subscribers
- I still wasn’t making money
- Used Drip’s lead score feature to find most engaged subscribers
- Sent invite to 60 people
- “Is freelancing really possible for me? (private invite)” - Took everything I’d researched, and packed it into a slide deck - Ran the webinar
- Build a webinar targeting the most-engaged subscribers
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- Profit
- 9 students agreed to pay $500 for a pilot run of a course; $4,500 in sales
- Building an 8 hour video course over 2 months… I don’t think I’d recommend it. But it did work
- Released v1 of my course – Freelance Start
- Could use the presale money to hire an incredible designer – Laura Elizabeth
- Profit
- FreelanceTransformation.com/microconf
- matt@freelancetransformation.com