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The Briefcase Technique
“Top to Bottom”
Today, I want to emphasize a top-to-bottom approach to earning money on the side.
How many people do you know that get hung up on the details?
- “I need to get my website up!” (without ever understanding their customer)
- “Where should I advertise?” (without ever understanding exactly what they should say in the ads)
- Worst of all is when we get hung up on the million things we could do…and end up doing nothing
I’m going to challenge you to embrace a top-to-bottom approach when trying to earn money.
“Top” or “high-level” items are the big areas of your business — strategy (what you’re doing), target (who you’re going after), and things like that.
“Bottom” or “low-level” items are the tactics (how you achieve your strategy), down to the level of the individual words you use in your pitch.
3 Yes’s
Yes, at a high level you need to understand your customers and get in their heads.
Yes, you also need to understand how and where to reach them.
And yes, you also have to be able to write a compelling pitch to them — down to even using the phrases that will resonate with them.
In other words, to successfully earn more, you’ll have to get good at handling your approach from top to bottom — at every level.
This can get overwhelming, so today I’d like to show you TWO examples:
- The Briefcase Technique: A low-level technique that you can use with your very first paying client. This one has generated thousands of dollars for me
- A high-level look at how to think about earning more money, a sneak peek of the full Earn1k course
- Getting Inside Customers’ Heads
- Webcast: #1 Mistake Freelancers Make
- Moving from Free to Fee
- Andrew going from $0 to $1,500/month in 2 weeks
Let’s get to it.
The Briefcase Technique
Here’s a simple tactic you can use with your very first paying client.
Note that it looks obvious, but the real magic is in doing your homework before you ever set foot in the room. As I’ve said, 80% of the work happens before you ever sit down for a meeting.
Here’s a sample from the full Earn1k course, which contains hours of all-new techniques, lessons, and examples, shot in HD video
http://earn1k.s3.amazonaws.com/R_Solo-the%20briefcase%20technique%20copy.flv
Why does this work? How can you use the principle here for yourself?
How do you earn more money?
Here’s just a taste of the worksheets you’ll find in the full Earn1k course
The Earn $1,000 on the Side 16-Step Roadmap
Does this surprise you? How does it change what you previously thought?
Friday To-Do
So far this week, you’ve learned about:
Now, let’s get to the action.
LEAVE A COMMENT WITH
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Matt, Ramit, & Jenn,
I, too, am starting up a web design business. Ramit’s course has already completely changed my perspective from what *I* want to what the *customer* wants. I am also having the struggle of having to educate my customers as to why they pay that price and why they have to maintain their own site. They just don’t know enough about web design to know how much is involved behind the scenes. And I now realize it’s not their responsibility to find out. They don’t care. That’s not even their focus.
I’m going to take my own stab at what Ramit is trying to tell Matt:
The customer wants to see numbers. Not the price, but the results of the improved sales to their business. And if you package the site maintenance in a monthly way like you’re thinking of doing (and me as well), that can be part of an “ongoing results” option. You and I both know enough about SEO to know what happens to sites that are showing new and fresh content on a regular basis, and other ways to gain an advantage. The clients would not, but they would like to see numbers on it. In fact, if you add in even more results-oriented marketing for them, ie Facebook, Twitter, your mama, whatever, you (and I) may be able to bring this whole thing even further up into a total business marketing “program”. And not just a website. Exactly like your analogy of the stocked kitchen (which I love).
Learning about marketing is icky (for me), but also painfully eye-opening. I’m seeing that I was a fool when I started this, thinking only about me and what I wanted to sell. Now I am seeing why my original plan would have flopped before it even started. And why so many others’ do as well.
Okay, so that’s my stab at it. I agree that threaded comments would be great! Thank you Matt, Ramit, and Jenn for reading!
Karen
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The amount of hands-on, “watch-how-this-works-in-reality” material along with the “meta-lesson” demonstrations through the course itself.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
I’ve been trying to get myself off the ground for a long time, striving for the unrealistic goal of launching *everything* once it’s “perfect”.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Completely sold — to the point that I’m convinced that this really will be a magic bullet when acted upon. Honestly, the PDF at the end of today’s lesson really did seal the deal for me, EVEN RIGHT AFTER YOU FINISHED TELLING US WHAT A BRIEFCASE TRICK LOOKS LIKE AND IS MEANT TO DO.
Good Lord. I must have these powers for myself now.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The daily todo’s, and some folks getting direct feedback. It does make you wish everyone did, but I know that’s not really feasible with how many people are reading!
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Picking an idea and going with it. If I do pick, I get overly invested in concepts and fail to fail (fast) while my enthusiasm for it peters out.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Based one what I’ve seen so far, super-interested in getting a kick in my ass and some guidelines to make me push something through. Getting a more independent opinion/guidance is probably the most looking forward to: ‘this is a good idea, tweak’ or ‘this sucks, here is how to fix it up’, or even ‘what the hell are you thinking man, no no no’. Hoping my piddly bank balance can take it though.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
Honestly, what has surprised me is how much we’ve been getting sold on the course. I knew coming in to this that you must have been planning something, but it feels like we are constantly reminded about the course. You’ve done a good job at not making it feel like one big advertisement though. A lot of really good stuff has been offered up by you leading up to and including this course.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Just getting started/finding the right idea to start with. You have said it before, but passion comes from doing something well (as opposed to doing something well because you are passionate about it). My issue is finding my niche. But I feel like once I find where I can put my skills to good use, I can make great strides after that.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
I would say that I am very interested.
1. I’ve been primarily surprised by the slow roll of the course. I’m not particularly more or less interested in it now than I was when the week began. I’ve learned some useful ideas this week, which is what I expected based on your prior work. I’m still waiting for the final sales pitch.
2. My biggest area of weakness at the moment is a lack of market research and a concomitant lack of customer focus.
3. I’m interested enough to take the course if I can afford it.
1. I was surprised that the course seems more of a prolonged sales pitch for the earn1k course than really teaching techniques. I am not saying I did not learn this week. I did. But was expecting a little bit more information than 1-5 minute lessons.
2. My weakness right now is, that I started second guessing myself in the area I want to freelance (photography). I wonder if I should get back to the drawing board and decide if there is something better. Especially that I have another – product based business idea, too.
3. I am interested in the course although I do have a little bit of concern. It seems to me that this course is for freelancing. What about a product based business? As I mentioned above, I am second guessing myself on the freelancing decision. If I decide later to change to a product based business, will this course be relevant? My guess is that it will probably be to a certain degree. But I cannot tell.
Before I answer your questions, I have a question of my own. I get the having a plan to solve all of of the client’s problems, and the theatrical event of taking it out of a briefcase (hope a folder will work, since I don’t carry a briefcase) but at what point DO you bring up cost? Is it on the proposal? Do you wait until they agree to the project and then throw a price at them? I typically try to ask what the clients budget is, get them to tip their hand first, if they do, then I throw out a number thats near what they had in mind. However, some clients are hesitant to show their cards first.
1. I’ve followed the blog for a while now, so I came in knowing your style, but I guess I never used to watch all the videos you posted. This was also my first time attending one of your live webcasts, and the sheer volume of people surprised me! It was overwhelming at first, but fun.
2. Oh, there are many weaknesses… Deciding IF I should niche it down, and how. Asking for money…. I always feel like I need to justify the cost I am asking people to pay. I tend to over deliver, but more because I feel bad asking people for money. Finding new clients… so far, they have seemed to find me.
3. I am definitely interested, but it will really come down to cost for me. I have been saving for a new computer (business expense) and planned on making that purchase this month. If I have room in the budget, I think this would be great. I have a couple of business advisors, and lots of connections in the industry to get specific advice from, but this is really the focused on the business end, and presented completely different than anything else I have done/am doing.
Also, as someone else mentioned, I am hesitant about how many people will be in the course… I lost connection half way through the webcast, and was never able to get it back.
Looking forward to the tear downs, hoping I am one of them
To be honest, I wouldn’t say that anything here has “surprised” me in so many words. It is fantastic and I expected nothing less from Ramit, I hope that many people follow in his example in their own fields of interest and can provide this much value to people. That is what it takes to really make money, you have to want to improve people’s lives, not make money; when you improve people’s live they WANT to pay you because they feel grateful and are often inspired by your honesty and dedication. What is said in this course doesn’t “surprise” me because it is all perfectly logical, but I WOULDN’T HAVE THOUGHT OF ANY OF IT ON MY OWN and neither would most of us. Ramit doesn’t just tell you what to do, he TEACHES you how to THINK. He gives you techniques as well as the understanding needed to DEVELOP YOUR OWN.
My biggest issue is that I care far more about growing my own skill set than about making money. I need to find a way that I can make money, WHILE I am developing this skill set. But who wants to hire a Philosopher/Inventor/Computer Engineering Student/Artist/Writer/Wannabe Linguist? I’m have trouble finding practical use for the skills that I consider to be the most important. I’m a really fast learner (good self-learner) and a very good problem solver but I don’t know how to bring that down to a niche. I feel like I just need more education and further developed skills.
I am interested in it to read and understand the method so that I can apply it to other things, such as the business plan for a service website I am working on with a friend. We aren’t free-lancing but we still need to be inside of our customer’s heads, we need to supply a service that people are looking for. But I’m not sure how much of the course will be as easy to translate into our model. I am certain that the course is fantastic, but not certain that the time is right for me. I don’t know if I can market my skills in a way that would not hamper my education, which is the only thing of importance to me, besides helping others. Of course, I do need to find a way to continue to pay for college.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The most useful bits for me have been the assignments you give out and the questions you ask. So far for me, it’s been all about the right questions and what they’ve made me think about. If I were imagining the best parts of the course before we started I would have guessed the videos or other materials would be the most effective.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
I sit around thinking too much instead of executing.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Honestly, I’m interested but still doubtful. The doubt is mainly centered on me rather than the course. I’m sure the course is worthwhile if I can execute on what I learn from it.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect, as this is the first time I’ve signed up for one of these online-courses. I very much like that there were specific exercises to do, which changed it from being ‘just another blog-like post’ to somethin I was actively engaged with.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Time. And money! I understand what you are saying about investing in yourself, but I have very little income that isn’t spoken for by bills. Yes, I have started applying your book, and recently automated everything, but I need to earn more in order to invest in myself!
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Yes I am, but it’s entirely dependent on cost. Not that I don’t think you’re worth it – but I won’t put it on a credit card. That I have relatively little disposable income probably puts me out of your target market !
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
How well everything has been broken-down in to ‘bite-size’ chunks. No self-respecting human could say that they don’t know what to do next after reading the material you’ve shared over the last week. I did the to-dos (actually wrote the answers down), and was surprised of the value I got out of them (rather than just doing them in my head). It’s the reason why I’m actually replying to this post!
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Finding the time to invest in it. I work an intense 40-hour-a-week job, which leaves me drained at the end of it all. I know I WILL do it eventually, but it might take me a little longer than someone with more free time/works a more menial job.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Very interested. I’ve been impressed with the quality of the material so far, and am looking forward to finding out what could be in the full course.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The amount of hands-on and TRUE information. I have absolutely no experience in stuff like this, but everything you have said so far is so logical that a five year old should get the point and a ten year old should be able to come up with it. Except they don’t.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
I have just finished the equivalent to High-School and am not sure if I have a skill that could earn me 1k. So the biggest area of weakness is doubt in my abilities.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Man, you sold me yesterday already. Even if I use this 5 years from now it will be worth (value!) the money. Remember how it was when this guy told you about his 5k fee and wanted to walk away? I feel like you right now. -.-
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The thing that’s surprised me the most so far was how much I got out of the Work for Free quiz. To be honest I have incompletely engaged with most of the material, but the quiz drew me in in a way that still amazes me. It has me thinking about free to fee and how to get that going as a business model
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
The speed at which it’s happening. At my current rate, which I hope to fix by raising my prices, it will take me 3 months to reach $1k
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
At this point I am mildly interested. I see myself as a proto-salesperson. Sales is not my expertise and I don’t think I have enough experience and background to successfully extract enough benefit to make it worth the effort.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
Nothing much has surpised me about the content of the course as it fits in with Ramit`s style that I’m used to via the blog. What has surprised me is the effect it has had on me in terms of how it has made me look at myself and ask exactly what I am prepared to do to generate extra income and why I’m not already doing it.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Not taking sufficient action. Not thinking clearly enough about how I can use my skills.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
I have found this site to be very beneficial so far. I has complements two evenings courses that I am currently taking and I feel that the full course will be even more motivating and more of the ‘just get on with it’ style that Ramit has. So I am really interested.
What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
I can tell you what I found most useful:
* Do ONLY the things that count. Fail fast, and fail cheap.
This resonates with me, because I am such an analyst when it comes to doing things – my number one mistake. But starting with the idea that I can improve things as I go, that nothing is so permanent that I can not improve it later, is liberating. And shouldn’t I be improving things as I go anyway? If I wait until I have everything figured out, it will never get of the ground. Good stuff.
* Define a highly specific niche for what you offer , and exclude everyone else to create uniqueness and scarcity.
This was a bit counter intuitive for me – that a smaller demographic could in effect be a larger market – and probably the second largest mistake I have been making in developing sound ideas.
What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
* Assessing my skills and knowledge in a way that translates into a sale-able, scaleable, niche-able product. This is in itself, a skill. It is going to take some work to get good at it.
How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
* All indications are that this course is going to be expensive (> $100) and time consuming (> 1 week to absorb). I get the value proposition, but something of this size and expense could be more of a barrier to me getting started. Plus don’t forget, the amount of time I invest in absorbing it is part of the cost.
At this point I need to start integrating your concepts into my efforts. In other words, I am not there yet. I see your course as more of a way to solve the problems I have after I have had some experience developing my ideas, testing my markets, etc.
Still, I am interested in the course as a body of reference material. I want to learn the concepts quickly, and then be able to find specific answers when I run into a hitch. I do NOT want to take on a large learning effort as a prerequisite to starting things moving. So at this point I just do not know enough about the way the course structured to know if it meets my needs.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
The number of people at the webcasts. I secretly hope that a lot of people don’t sign up for the course so that those who do can get more personalized attention. (I was also *very* interested in a one-off mention you made referring to the fact that you are working on material involving productizing as a business. I think this is where my inclination lies.)
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Determining what kind of offering to go with…then doing it all. I know the course is designed to alleviate that.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
When I signed up I was mostly in it for the free stuff. Now I’m quite interested. Other than the financial aspect, my big barrier is myself — is freelancing what I really want to aim towards? Will I honestly put in my best effort to do the material? (I’ve been, um, less than fully engaged with the material this week.)
These fears are currently battling with the voice of reason that tells me I take home $1500/mo right now, so if I do nothing more than replace my current income at your minimum acceptable hourly wage ($25/hour), I’m coming out with 20 extra hours a week. I like this.
Finally, whether or not I buy the product can be vetoed by my partner. We have a strong relationship and have learned the value of getting a second pair of eyes on things.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
Ramit – I just found your blog and this course at the same time, so I honestly had no idea what I was signing up for! So far, I’m really enjoying it. The biggest surprise for me has actually been how much I’m enjoying your videos. In past courses, I’ve always *hated* video, as it’s usually paced way too slowly (I end up reading another page while the person is talking). Your videos are awesome though – *very* entertaining (you’re a funny guy!) while still offering wonderful information. I actually find myself looking forward to them
Another (good) surprise – is how interactive you are. The fact that you don’t JUST survey, you actually talk about what you find and act on it. And that you react here in the comments. As a potential customer, it makes me feel *valued*. In another course I took, the upfront promise was “we’re here for you, you’re not alone, we’ll walk you through everything” – but the people who set up the course never actually answered questions or responded on the forums after they got paid. It was very disheartening, and has made me less inclined to buy any courses online. So I’m surprised – and THRILLED – to see how accessible/interactive you’ve been.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
- Still no clue what I can offer. I’ve been playing with a couple ideas, but I feel very far behind everyone else that seems to have a business already in place and is just looking to optimize/make more money! There is a huge amount of fear around this too – worry that maybe there’s just nothing I can do that will be valuable to anyone.
- Time. I’m still super stressed about time, and being pulled in too many directions. I’m taking a week off in mid Feb. though, so that should help temporarily give me a little more to work with. (It’s hard to feel insightful at 1 am, when you know the alarm is going off at 6:30!)
- Divided Interests. I’m really torn between a desperate need to find a way to support myself without a corporate job (all of the jobs I’ve had feel like they’re making me LESS intelligent, creative, and fit. The job is killing me
!) and writing. I’ve put off the writing for years – to go to college, to get a job, etc… and I’m afraid that I’ll never get to it. But, I also think that I have to find a way to ditch the job, or even with the writing, I will never be happy – the job just sucks too much out of me.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Very. I’m sure this was on purpose, but I feel like I’m already IN it.
PS To Matt re: the websites…
I think you are right that they want the BENEFITS of having a website, but not the work. (And why would they, they’re not web developers!) It DOES sound a bit like Ramit’s “I don’t want to learn to cook!” video
– and I think if you charge monthly, you create some nice income streams!
About the trouble you’re having, it sounds like they’re not getting VALUE part of the equation.
IE – they’re hearing the cost, and it seems like too much. (They don’t perceive that the value of what they’re getting is worth that much money.) But, you are countering by justifying your cost in terms of how much work you are doing.
From the client side, the amount of work you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is – is the benefit they get worth the cost. If you could do something that made them an extra $100k, but it only took you 5 minutes… do you think they’d only pay $20? For $100k, isn’t that service worth alot more, no matter how much time it takes on your end?
The reverse is that – if they don’t see how they will actually make money or otherwise benefit, it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to implement, why would they want to pay?
So – I think you need to figure out how to reframe the value they receive into terms they care about. Something like – how many new customers will I get? How many sales? How much more business will I have because of this? Will they be able to gain more market share? Will it be easier for new customers to find them?
If they think they will benefit more than the cost (“pay me $100/month, but you’ll be making $1000/month extra” – it becomes a no-brainer.)
Also, can you see what their competitors are doing online, and use that? If the competition doesn’t have a website – great – you are now more visible, people who search online will find you but not them. If the competition does have one, get some traffic estimates, show them how the competitor is taking customers away from them, it’s not even a fair fight, because they’re not in the ring – they’re losing by default.
I don’t know, that’s what occurred to me when I read your posts. Hope it gives you some ideas! Good luck!
PS for Ramit…
re: the person who suggested threaded comments, yes yes please! Or even better, for the actual course, a “forum”. It’s hard to keep up with conversations in this format, where everything is mashed together!
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
How interactive it is; the quality and depth of case studies (loved the pitch from Matt to you) – real life; the level of specific detail.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Frequency of prospect/customer engagement (and consistency of same).
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Very – need to align time commitment with my travel schedule over the next 8 weeks. Also, would like to participate in some of the web events, but am 8 hours ahead of PST which means 7PM does not work for me.
Thanks so far.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
There was no holding back on the quality of material presented here. Shouldn’t be a huge surprise I guess, but even for free I’ve learned a lot, and feel better for having been able to take notes so far rather than do nothing.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
I have absolutely NO idea what I would do. I haven’t had that “Aha!” moment, where a skill I have seems to fit with a present demand. I feel the need to do more research, introspection and generally immerse myself in figuring out what I could do that would work for me. (Reading case studies helps a LOT with this — seeing how other people figured it out.)
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
I’m very interested, but the timing just does not line up for me. Right now, I don’t have either the financial resources or the time to devote. I hope that this is something you’ll do more than once, Ramit, because I would absolutely love to go through it when I’ve got the time! (Time is more important than money.)
Also, I think that something like this would be even better for me after I finish the Personal MBA Business Crash Course. It’s the basics I need and I feel like with that under my belt, I’ll be a better student in other business-type courses.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
How “simple” some of the techniques you recommend are. E.g. Briefcases are very 1980’s. Are people still impressed by that kind of stuff? Not saying they aren’t but suprising.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Actually getting THE idea that will bring me $1000 and more.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific
I’m pretty interested but wondering how I would get out of it knowing I don’t have my million dollar idea yet.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
I expected the course to be beneficial, but I was expecting the content to more along the lines of the iwillteachyou blog: straightforward and instructive with examples. I didn’t expect actual case studies with video or assignments, and these added to the course tremendously!
I didn’t expect to get SO MUCH valuable info from a sampler, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far! Just doing the exercises and answering questions has been phenomenal. I was answering the questions on how I’d spend $500, $1,000 and $5,000 (didn’t post, but did it for the intrinsic benefit), and my immediate response was “I actually have at least $1,000 I could spend in the next few months…why am I not already investing in these things?!”
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Time. I work 40 hours per week, train in the gym 15+ hours, have a 90-minute roundtrip commute daily, and I’ve struggled to complete these assignments on the day given. I am willing to put in the time when I can put it in. I also think my lack of time will mean results will be slower since I’ll be working on the side business piecemeal…and I’ll need lots of patience with that pace in order not to give up too soon.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
VERY INTERESTED! I hope I’m able to pay for it without having to dip into any savings…only because my savings is earmarked for my train-fulltime-in-2012 fund. However, I think the course will pay dividends, so I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen!
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
How tough it was to answer the questions. It really helped me focus on my goals, and think about what my niche is.
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Time. Focus. I’ve learned a ton about the focus part in the free course, and am using the money I earn now to pay for more free time.
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
I am very interested in the program. But, and I know you will find this ironic, I don’t have the money and time to invest in the course right now.
1. What’s surprised you so far in the private Earn1k course? Be SPECIFIC.
Changing focus from “what can I deliver with my wonderful talents” to “how can I get into my customers’ heads to solve their needs/problems/fears/wants/desires”
2. What’s your biggest area of weakness for earning your first $1,000 (and more)?
Self confidence. Breaking through the self- and family-imposed barriers (“Why are you doing this when you have a good job?”, “How will this utilize your engineering degree?”)
3. How interested are you in the full Earn1k course? Please be specific.
Show me the dotted line. Need to figure out how to sell to wife so she’ll agree. Maybe I should show her how this solves her needs/problems/fears/wants/desires
1) How common sense most of the advice is, and yet how few of us thought about/applied these ideas in the past. For instance, your first lesson about asking the potential customers what THEY want.
2) Deciding what to do or focus on is my largest hurdle thus far. By asking people about my various ideas I can let the market choose what I offer them. I dog sit for one person now, perhaps I can expand that (I know you don’t like pets, Ramit, but for some people they replace children, which means people spend money on their care.). I also pick up an adjunct position every other semester or so, which might be expanded into tutoring during semesters I’m not teaching.
3) Very interested, but concerned about being able to make the live video events. I feel that your program surpasses some business classes, which I would otherwise take.
Cheers!
I just semi-tried the briefcase technique minus a briefcase and Ramit’s smoothness but the client completely turned into my puppet practically. I was shocked. After that I pulled out my prices and they weren’t phased at all! They barely even glanced at it and I was able to offer more products and they just said put it all together and give me a final number. Its for web design by the way…
I know its not a done deal yet but the reaction I got after my sad attempt of the “briefcase technique” was enough for me. I am definitely going to work on fine tuning this process!
Thanks Ramit!
Awesome, I did this on an interview (not for freelance work)awhile back and they were all over it – I created a presentation about all the areas of their site and online marketing that I would change immediately and the projected outcome. Good reminder that this is how we need to approach freelance pitches as well.