Golden Revenue Ranges Freelance Writing Clients Need to Hit
I've talked about the ideal revenue ranges that freelance writer clients need to hit, but this week's livestream is going a little more in-depth. We're going over what those ranges are and why those are important to watch for, what the different niche marketing budgets can be, why ranges are so wide, and what to do when you get a big fish with ginormous revenue.
________
So I muted myself classic. I unmuted myself and then I pushed the button by accident and muted myself. So let's just start over and pretend like I didn't just talk for 40 seconds by myself, like a dumb, dumb, Hey, welcome in, um, feel free to say hi in the chat, feel free. I already fixed it. I already fixed it. Yeah. I mute myself. I fixed it. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so here's the deal. Um, we are gonna talk about the revenue ranges we need to know about, um, as writers. Right. But before we get to that, we need to talk about profit revenue and we need to talk about funding. So in order, yeah, I fixed it. I know it should pop back in. Yeah, I know because I, I pushed. So just as like a side note, uh, I did unmute myself, but then I accidentally pushed the button twice.
So I UN I always mute it just because I don't want there to be like a ton of sound before I go live, then I unmute it and then I talk, but sometimes press the button twice. So I unmute myself and mute myself and then I start talking and it's a whole thing. So V and Sherra, like we, we should be all good now. So we're gonna talk about profit revenue and funding before we get to anything in order to be smart cookie writers, we need to know about how these businesses run in terms of their content and their marketing. Yes. Sometimes I am a go. This is just how it is. I don't know what to tell you. Like, sometimes I just make mistakes like this and it's part of going live and it's just like, whatever. Hey Vicki, I like your wave. Hi Vicki. Um, let's do AUP date just to like, you know, ease the tension of me. Muting myself, like a, like a dumb, dumb.
Hey Barry. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. You're on fire today.
All right, there you go. MI. Good girl.
Everybody's bundled up. It's a little chilly. Uh, it's rainy and cold here. Kind of in Austin and by cold. I mean, it's like 40, so it's not that cold.
Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. You're so close me. You
Ready? High five high five. Come on. Good girl. Other one. Good job.
They're kind of soft and fuzzy today because they're a little slow, cuz they're all wrapped up being warm. Um,
Let's see if I can get Barry. All right, Barry, can you catch this last
One?
Ready?
1, 2, 3 dogs.
Oh buddy. Let's try one more time. 1, 2, 3 dog.
Yes. Good job buddy.
All right, MI ready? High five
High five. Good job.
All right. So let's talk about some things now that I'm unmuted and we can actually talk. So talk about, um, revenue, profit and funding. So the first thing we need to understand before we actually get into the revenue ranges is that companies, when we go look at their revenue, right? So what we're looking at when we go look at our companies is their revenue. That means how much money they're coming in or like how much money's coming into their business, right? How many sales they're, whatever, all the money that's coming in profit is what's left over. So this was, I know this sounds silly and very basic, but for me it took me a long time to understand it. I didn't get it. And I didn't understand how to apply to my business and like getting clients. So profit is what's left over. After we take out all the expenses, the salaries, whatever types of stuff that are, um, costs, fees, expenses of the business.
So revenue, when we go look at revenue, if even if they say a hundred million, let's say that the revenue of the company is a hundred million, but their profit only ends up being 10 million. Let's say they end up spending 90 million. They're not running their business very well. And they spend 90 million on salaries and fees and expenses and programs and whatever it is. And they only have 10 million. So that 10 million in profit is now gonna go out to budget everybody else. So that 10 million in profit is gonna end up being like, however much the marketing and content people get, right. They don't get 10 million. They only get a slice of that money because that 10 million funds all the internal projects. So Hey Marie, welcome in Marie. I've unmuted myself. So now we're on the right track. So the deal is that when you see a hundred million in revenue, that doesn't mean they have a ton of profit.
That's why understanding revenue and profit is really important because sometimes I talk to writers and they're like, but they had all this money. They had this big revenue and I'm like, ah, but they didn't have the profit. Their budget is really small. Right. So I always kind of tell this story too, that I think really illustrates this point a long time ago, years ago, like fi uh, gosh, it must be like five or six years ago. Now I was approached by a billion dollar company. They had a, more than a billion dollars in revenue. I think it was like 1.6 or 1.7. They had billions of dollars in revenue and they came and asked if I would write for free for exposure. Okay. So billions of dollars, not even just millions, they had billions of dollars in revenue. It was this big company. And they were like, Hey, do you wanna come right for our, our, our blog?
And you know, you'll get exposure. We can't pay you right now. I'm like, you have billions of dollars. That's the big difference. That means that their marketing department, they're not getting a very big slice of profit. Right. And they said they weren't paying anyone. It wasn't just approaching me. And I was like, uh, are you paying for any content? Like they weren't paying for anything. So at that time, that's a big lesson. That was a big lesson for me in like, oh, the fact that they have all this money doesn't mean that department, the marketing slash content slash the people we normally work with has money. So that's a really big differentiator between revenue and profit. That's something that we need to understand. So we are approaching these companies based on revenue, but we don't know until we talk to them, what their budget is, what their, like, basically their budget is their slice of the profit.
That's the slice that they get out of the base, essentially the company profits to move forward, grow the company, all that stuff. This is really important to understand. So that's why you get billion dollar companies coming to you, asking you to work for free, cuz their budget is super small cuz they're spending money elsewhere. And this applies to all different types of niches. And we'll go over that in a second. Let's talk about funding. Funding is a similar beast. So before we actually get to numbers, funding is always good, but there's different types of funding. There's seed funding. There's series a through like whatever, a, B, C, D, E like. So I often work with series B companies. I think we've talked about this before, but I often work with series B or series C startups every once in a while. I work with people with seed money or series a.
And this is when I work with startups, um, which is pretty often, um, and that's because when they get funding, it matters which round it's in. So sometimes when they get seed funding, that means they haven't done anything. They have a concept or they are trialing things and then they get seed money to actually build that out. Right. So that doesn't mean they're doing marketing and content. That means they're actually building out the physical product, whatever it is, like software or they're building out. Um, I don't know, like a community, let's say it's a, a really unique type of home builder and they're building out a community or um, a lot of times that seed money, um, or that series a money is going towards building the thing out. So it also depends on what slice you're getting, right? So the slice is what the marketing department or what the content department is getting.
And a lot of times startups don't have anybody, um, in marketing to, to until like series B. Sometimes they have it with series a, but usually series B is when the marketing people get hired. And I, like I said, this is what I've noticed in my own business after 10 years. Um, most of the time, if you're a series B or below or like somewhere in there, you're usually talking to the founder and like one marketing person. And it depends on how much of that funding, they, it towards marketing. So seed round and series a, they're usually building the product out, especially with tech and software products. Um, and then the same thing with series B. So like they're still building the product out, but series B is like, okay, cool. We've actually built it out. We've tested it. And now we need to market.
We need to like let more people know so we can build our revenue, all that good stuff. So the slice of the pie, the slice of the funding you get at series B is much larger. That's when they're actually kind of building efforts out. So when we go over revenue ranges, that's why this matters is every single point of this phase that a startup goes through. The slice really changes a lot more so than a regular company, like a startup, um, has to get through a lot of trials before they actually start selling and marketing the product. They have to build it out. There's a lot of different. Um, there's a lot of D and hoops that they have to jump through in order just to like reach a larger audience or to start their marketing efforts. Um, and that's really important to know because we don't wanna just reach out to people, just be like, I'm reaching out.
Why am I not getting a response? We wanna be really smart about who we're reaching out to. Right. Not only that they have the right revenue amount, but are in the right phase of their business to actually hire someone like us. This is the problem that I see with writers is they're like, I'm sending all these Lois, but they're not actually qualifying who that is and what phase they're in. And what's kind of going on. Um, they're just like sending them out to whoever they don't check revenue. They don't check the business. They don't see like how things are going. They don't check crunch base. They just kind of like send it out. They like do that thing, that real estate agents to talk about. They spray and pray. So they like spray everybody and hope that somebody hires them. Um, we don't wanna do that.
We wanna be really smart about who we reach out to and that they actually are, you know, have a much higher likelihood of needing our help. So let's kind of move to our next phase. Our next phase is like, what are those revenue ranges? So I should have put my numbers up, but I already muted myself today. So we're doing great. So two, we're actually gonna talk about the revenue ranges. So let me go back. So number one is the difference between revenue, profit and funding, right? Why those things matter. And then funding means seed money, series a series B all the way up for startups and the difference between revenue and profit for most other types of businesses. Most of the time when you're working with startups, um, they're using their funding money, right? Cuz they're not marketing, which means they're not getting sales or the sales are really low.
And every once in a while you get a unicorn. But so number one is we have to know those differences in order to narrow in on the right types of potential clients. And one last thing I'll say here is that we wanna align with the people who are going in the right direction. This is another thing is like we need people who are growing. We saw that they made it through seed through series a and B, or we saw that their revenue is growing over time, which you can see in the LinkedIn stats. If you have LinkedIn premium, you can go to the company page. And on there, it'll say their revenue has been growing. Their staff has been growing. It'll show you like percentages of year over year growth. That's the kind of stuff we wanna align with because we are growing as freelance writers, we're growing a business, we're growing a small business where we need, um, to align ourselves with clients who have similar goals for their content.
They're looking for growth. Like they're not in a fixed mindset, right. Where they're just like, okay, we're gonna do four blog posts forever. And just hope it works out. No, no. So we wanna align ourselves with clients who have similar mindsets and similar goals. And that is really important with this revenue profit and um, our funding pieces. Okay. Let's talk about number two. If you have questions, you can always pop 'em in the chat. Happy to answer anything you have. We can talk about anything freelance writing wise. And if you're watching this on the replay, hold on a second. If you're watching this as a replay, you can always go to mans.com/question, um, and pop your question or topic in there. So we have a question that popped in that we're gonna talk about from how later on, but if you have a question that's popped up and you're watching this and you're like, oh, I, I need to know what you know, what's going on.
Um, you can always pop it into Mandy ls.com/question, and you can even include topics. You're like, Hey, can you talk more about this? You can always pop it in there. So let's talk about two and we'll get to questions at the end. So we'll get to Hal's question at the end. So two is our revenue ranges. So let's talk about this. I've talked about this before. I'm sure you've heard it, but the deal is we are looking for companies that make five to 50 million, at least like regular companies. This is startups are different beasts. So we'll talk about them after so five to 50 million. Why is that range so big? Well, exactly the principle I just talked about is revenue versus profit. I could go to a business that has 5 million in revenue and they spend 50% of that on marketing. Great. Now I have 2.5 million of marketing budget to work with.
How do I know that I don't until I talk to them? That's why this range is so big. This is kind of what I figured out. I used to think it was much lower, but the deal is with all the changes from the pandemic and how marketing and content at marketing is growing and changing. I think 5 million, a, a business needs to make at least 5 million, not a startup, a regular business. They need to make at least 5 million to have a healthy marketing budget where we can actually get, um, bigger projects, not just like really small one off gigs that are a pain in the butt to do. Um, these are actually project projects that, that get them results. That's the really important part. It's not that they're small projects that are frustrating for us. It's that we have a harder time getting results for people on like one-offs we have a harder time showing people the value of content marketing, or we have a harder time getting results or helping them reach their goals.
When they wanna do baby projects, bigger project, really get them a lot more momentum and they live a lot longer. So they need at least 5 million. Now in some niches, they need more than that. So in some niches, like that's why I say five to 50 million, at least because some niches, they need 50 million because they've spent all this money on other stuff. Like they built out a sales team, they built out a huge, really expensive tech department to, to build their software product or to build their hardware product. Um, they've spent money on all these other different pieces of their business. So their marketing piece is smaller, but they make 50 million. Right? So this is why it matters to know that range. And of course, if they make more than 50 million go hog wild, that's totally fine. I just feel like five to 50 million is where we start from. And it matters in different niches. For example. Yes. Hello. You look super cute today. You can be at a trio cuz you look super cute. All right. Trio for you cuz you look super cute.
Can you gimme high five? Good job. All right. Be ready. 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. You're so close. Come on buddy. You can find it. You just touched it three times.
There we go. All right. So for example, let me give you some good. Um, let me give you some good niche examples here. For example, when I like I don't reach out to like general food companies anymore. Uh, I do more hospitality tech and restaurant tech and um, different types of things that help restaurants like softwares and POS systems and stuff. But when I reached out to food companies, they needed a ton of money. You, they needed 50 million just to have enough to do a big like marketing project. When I reached out to, um, like FinTech companies or InsureTech companies, they needed like five or 10 million. They didn't need as much money cuz they know they need to, to spend marketing money, to get people on board with the tech, the food companies operate way differently than the tech companies. Right? Um, the same thing with like health brands.
So if you're reaching out to a health brand and they make supplements or they make organic blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, sometimes they need to build a factory. They need to build out all these things. They need to talk to farmers like there's so many other pieces of their business or ag tech. This is another one. Ag tech is kind of similar where they need more money cuz they have to build, like, let's say it's one of those farm, those indoor farms. They have to build a giant indoor farm and they have to have money to do that and maintain it and pay people to make sure all the plants are growing and all the lights are on. Um, before they start giving a huge pile of money to marketing. And that's why that revenue range is so big. There's smaller tech companies or they're SaaS companies or um, hospitality, tech companies like hospitality, tech companies.
Um, that for me has oftentimes been like 10 to 50 or 10 to 30 somewhere in there million, um, some like different with startups. So the deal is that these companies are in different niches using money in a different way. That's why the range is so big and you can't know until you talk to the company. Right? So if I go to an ag tech company and say, you know, send 'em in lo Y and say like what's up, you know, I think, you know, like it seems like you make 30 million in revenue. I wouldn't say that, but I'd say like, Hey, I think we're a good fit to work together. I noticed that they're creating content, but it's not consistent. Um, it looks like they have a bunch of great testimonials that they could have made case studies, but they didn't, it looks like they have a bunch of video content that they could repurpose.
They have a lot of potential for really good content projects that can get them results. So I reach out to them and I'm like, okay, I double checked your revenue's 30 million. And I reach out and they're like, oh yeah, our budget for marketing projects is only $2,000 a month. And you know, right now we're doing that internally because to save costs, whatever that's, the big difference is like, we don't know, but we like, we don't know until we talk to them, but we at least need to fall in that 5 million to 50 million range because our chances are better that they come back to us and say, Hey, yes, we have some marketing budget and yes, we'd like to create some content. We're thinking about these ideas. What we wanna do here is up our potential of not only getting a response on our LOI, but getting a project, right.
We wanna like each time we do something we wanna get better and better results, right? So we have to keep refining and refining the process. So that means we start with the idea of five to 50 million on a regular business. We'll talk about startups in a second, five to 50 million on regular business. And then as we have more conversations, as you talk to more people in your niches, right? You talk to more insure tech companies, you talk to more food companies, you talk to more ag tech companies. You talk to more, uh, biotech companies, you talk to more food comp or um, restaurant companies or whatever your niches are. The more you talk to them, the, the more you realize, oh, I talked to these five restaurant companies that had 10 million and it didn't go anywhere. But I talked to these five restaurant companies who made 50 million and everybody was on board and want, you know, they had at least goals in a project and an idea of what they wanted to do.
That's when you start honing in on like, okay, these, this niche mine needs about this much. And this niche of mine needs about this much. Right. And if it's over that amount, like let's say hospitality, tech needs 10 million. If you find a hospitality tech company with 30 million, you're like, okay, pretty sure they have Mar a marketing team. They have a marketing budget cuz I know the minimum for that is about 10 million. So we are in the process of figuring that out. But I know from my own experience and from bugging my friends all the time about what these companies do, um, is that five to 50 million for a regular company is where we wanna be. Vicky has a question. So Vicky always comes in here with great great questions too. So Vicky says, do companies selling cheaper products need to have higher revenue for, to be good clients? This is a fantastic question.
I, it really depends. So for me, let's think about this. Um, sometimes there are products that are one time buys. So let's say someone's selling equipment. That's a one time buy, but it's $10,000 or $20,000. Let's say there's another company that supplies the software for that equipment. And that fee is $10 a month forever to run the equipment. So the idea here is that you would have to know how much volume they're doing in selling the cheaper products. So like when we look at it, the equipment is a one time fee of $20,000 and it would take a long time for a $10 a month software thing to like, um, subscription fee to get up to $20,000. Right. But we don't really know the volume. So the price, this is a tough question to answer. So the price of their product depends on the model of their business.
So the deal is that if I had a cheaper product, but it's a monthly subscription that has to be done, that could be more value than a one time $20,000 equipment fee. Cuz not everybody has $20,000 to invest in that equipment, but people have $10 to run the software every single month. So I think if I was thinking about selling cheaper products, they need to have more volume of items sold. So if you were able to go figure out if they have a high volume of products sold, that would probably tell you a little bit more than the revenue, the higher revenue part. So I would okay. If I was in this situation and I saw someone with a cheaper product, but they had the right amount of revenue, they were between five and 50 million. I would look at who their clients are more so than how much of that product they're selling.
So for example, if I go to a software company and their software is $10 a month, or if I go to a SaaS company or a FinTech or whatever, and they have Microsoft as a client and Nike as a client, that probably says a lot more so to me than a bunch of places I've never heard of or a but bunch of places that are only local to their area that tells me more about how they're doing their marketing, right? If they're marketing and cap, if their marketing is capturing a Nike or a whole foods or a Microsoft that tells me a lot more about their strategy and how they're executing and using their revenue and their dollars and like their product, then something that might be smaller and local and you know, their testimonials are from, um, like people I don't know about or um, it's, you know, and it depends on the niche too.
So for example, like for some of my clients, they're PropTech clients, they have a lot of local people, right? Because they're in certain, right. They're in Texas or they're in California or New York or Illinois, excuse me. And those things are important to have locally, but their product is something, um, that is relatively cost effective. It's not cheap, right. But it's relatively cost effective and people can keep referring that product. I know this is kind of like a weird tangent, but all the different products operate differently. So, okay. I think the answer to this is no, if I'm gonna be short about it, I think the answer to this is no, because the revenue really tells you what direction they're going in. And if you can see who they've worked with, if you can see past clients, if you can see testimonials, if you can see bigger brands working with them, then they're doing something right.
So I hope that answered your question. But basically what we wanna do is like we wouldn't really know the volume, like how many of those cheaper products they're selling, right. To create that higher revenue, or we wouldn't really know the back end until we talk to someone. Um, and most of the time, what we wanna think about is the model of their business. It is a lot harder for someone to work over $20,000 than it is $10 a month. This is why SaaS companies are growing really quickly or FinTech companies or anything that is under a subscription type model. Those subscription type models are affordable. They're regular, they have an ongoing thing. It's easier to get referrals. Um, and that product isn't cheaper so far to maintain or create like a software product isn't cheaper to maintain or, um, cheaper to build than the equipment.
It's just the model of the business. Does that make sense? I hope that's helpful. Um, I think for me that's the most important part is like, what's the model of their business? Who have they worked with before? How does this actually, you know, kind of, how is this run in the long term? Like, is it gonna be really difficult to keep up the marketing of that $20,000 piece of equipment? Maybe not. Maybe they, you know, maybe not, but it's a lot easier to get people to sign up for, um, a $10 a month subscription fee. Okay. And then share has a question she says, is there one best site or tool for finding revenue in profit? Yes there is. And we're gonna talk about that in a second. So yes. Grumpy. Hello? Would you like to submit a complaint? I don't know if you guys can hear her, but she sits over here sometimes and makes like these sad grumpy hippo noises. All right buddy. Right. One,
Two. Oh
Buddy. We were so close.
All right. Ready? High five other one other one other one. Good job.
Sometimes we gotta add the extra high fives in there. All right. So yes. When now that we've kind of talked about the breakdown, so your different niches will have different revenue ranges. One, you learn more about that. Niche starters, pistol is five to 50 million. They need 5 million to 50 million in any niche to be viable and how they spend that money. You won't know until you talk to them. Then once you talk to more companies, you realize, oh my minimum for, um, my minimum for FinTech, isn't 5 million. It's actually 15 million because I've talked to enough companies to learn that it, when they make under 15 million, they don't have enough marketing budget. That's something you learn over time, but five to 15 million is, is the buffer. Um, and then you define by niche. Now let's talk about, um, let's talk about startups and finding revenue. So share's question is a great one.
It's my favorite. It's one of my favorite questions. If I'm looking for a revenue for a regular business, I can just Google it. Like this is the, the thing that I just didn't realize for a long time, if I need to Google a company's revenue, I can usually just Google like Zillow revenue or I can Google, you know, whatever the company's name is, revenue and it'll pop up in Google. There will be a press release, a report, um, a, an article like something that says what their revenue was. If that doesn't happen, right? If I'm gonna go look up a startup, I love crunch base. I love love of it. I recommend it to everyone. When you go into crunch base, you just type in the company name don't press enter. Okay. There's a search bar in crunch base. Just type in the name. When you press enter, it sends you to this other dumb screen.
So type in the company name, just type it in. And there will be a list of companies that pop up, pick the, a one that it is right. Pick the right logo, pick the right name. Sometimes there's companies with multiple different, um, there's multiple different companies with the same name. I always kind of check LinkedIn. So go to crunch base type the name in don't, press enter, pick the name up and it'll tell you their funding round, how much money they have. If they've had any mergers, it will link to their LinkedIn page. It will link to their Twitter and Facebook oftentimes. Um, and then hold on. Um, and then you can go straight from crunch base to LinkedIn to send an LOI. You can send it through InMail, or you can find, find out who the person is. You need to talk to and go from there.
Crunch base is the best. The other thing about crunch base is sign up for crunch base daily crunch base daily is the newsletter. Excuse me, is the newsletter that they sent out every single day with funding announcements, with, um, articles about what's trending in your niche. Like in all of these things, it has helped me find so many clients helped me underst trends in my niches, understand who's getting money and why, what types of things like this is how I started figuring out that series B was where I kind of wanted to, to, um, work in more often that crunch based daily newsletter is the business. And then on the weekends they send a newsletter. That's like, here's a, a Roundup of all of our articles we publish the, this week. And sometimes they're in your niche. Like they talk about AgTech or FinTech, or they talk about, uh, women's companies that are getting more funding or they talk about international funding.
Like there's all this gold in there that teaches you so many things and gives you potential clients. So definitely sign up for the crunch based daily newsletter. Now, the other thing is you can use Oler, uh, O w L E R Oler. Um, and that will tell you, and that will tell you the revenue of different companies. I think it's not free anymore. Like the are certain things that you can see for free, but a lot of it is paid. Um, I always just Google the revenue. If I can't find it on there, I look on crunch base. Sometimes I'll use hour. You can find revenue announcements or funding announcements on LinkedIn. Like if you go to the company page, you can find it there. Um, you can use something like rocket reach, cuz that sometimes will tell you an email, but it might also tell you revenue information.
Um, there's lots of places like you can always Google the company names and press release. So like if I was gonna Google, like, um, whatever the, you know, I don't know, um, like just company name, press release. Sometimes you'll end up reading a couple of press releases and realize that their revenue is growing or, or they mention like, Hey, this thing happened or we got funding and then you can have more revenue information. Um, but, uh, yeah, so the deal is that, um, for me Google, just Google bla like company name, revenue, right? Like Zillow revenue or, um, whatever it is, like monster energy drink revenue. Um, and your second thing is crunch base for startups. But there are a lot of companies that are now like basic companies that started as startups and their stuff still comes up on crunch base. That's the next one?
LER O w L E R. That's another place to find revenue. Um, there's a lot of collection sites. There's like G2 crowd, which I think is now just called G2 that tells you all this information about different software companies. So one of my friends uses G2 all the time to find different competitors that she can reach out to, to say like, Hey, um, I'd love to work with your company. And this is how she starts making her list of companies to reach out to. So if you can find a niche specific site tech crunch, oh, tech crunch is a good to look at, um, a niche specific site like G2, where it lists all of these different companies. Um, there's lots of review sites too, that lists revenue information. So like, um, uh, there's like, I I'm blanking on the name, but there's a name there's this site that like collects a bunch of software products and all these different niches.
And it tells you like contact information. It tells you, um, revenue ranges and you can just Google it. So if you can find a niche specific site like that, like someplace that talks about different types of companies and collects them in a database, right. Basically, um, that's really helpful. So G2 is a good one. Um, but honestly, like there's lots of different places that you can find revenue information, um, and you can Google around if you can't find it. So if you can't find any revenue, right, this is something we need to talk about. If you can't find revenue, you need to have at least somewhere around 50 ish to a hundred employees for regular companies, startups could be 10 to 25 ish, maybe 25 to 50, probably more like 10 25. Oh my gosh. You
Are grumbling today. Muffin. You're a grumble B.
So that's deal. If you can't find revenue information, try to guess between 10 and 25 employees for startups and probably like 50 to a hundred minimum. These are all minimums, uh, for reaching out. Because sometimes for some other, like for some reason you can't find revenue, that's happening to be a bunch of times. Um, if you can't find revenue, don't abort, the mission. Just go figure out how many employees work there. Right. Go look at LinkedIn. And if they have about the right number, send your LOI, they might have some marketing, um, needs like some content stuff that you need help on. Okay. Hope that was helpful. Shera Shera also says, FYI, my dog loves vanity's live streams because he gets trios every time or, or peppers do. All right. So let's do that right now. Let's see if she's dog will get a trio.
All right. Ready buddy? 1, 2, 3 dog. Yes. Good job. All right. Ready? I five other one other one other one. Yes. Good job, Charlie.
Good job. I, um, I also work with cats. So if anybody has any cats, I know from experience that cats also enjoy the livestream because they get, uh, trios. When I give out
Trios, buddy, very,
Very, This is what happens when you have a senior dog, Bo is almost 15 and a half. So we just wanna do a little shout out here. Bo's almost 15 and a half. He's like 60, 65 pounds. So every time we take him to the vet, they just tell us that he's like a freak of nature, which he basically is like, he still runs around our backyard. He runs up and down the stairs. I don't know how he's doing so well at his age. Ready?
1, 2, 3 dog. Uhoh ready. 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. So
Close. He is getting cat, which is probably why he struggles with catching things, but he's always struggled with catching things.
All right, MI right? High, five other one other one. Oh, easy. Ouch. Easy. Nice, good job. Other one. Good job. There we go.
So Bo is basically like super geriatric.
Good job. All right, MI,
We're gonna have you catch on camera cuz
You're the more athletic one. Yeah,
I know. You're like, I'll just give you
High five.
Good job. All right. So.
I hope that she's dog. I hope she's dog got a, got a trio. All right. Vicky Vicky says what's the minimum employee number range. Uh, yeah, I still think it's 10 for startups. Um, it depends on how their money is going out. So the deal is that I, I think for me what I've seen in the past year or so, even with all the pandemic, I think startups are 10. I think regular companies are like 50 to a hundred. Uh, startups could be anywhere from 10 to 25, depending on how their money's coming in. But yeah, like they need, at least startups need at least some kind of structure in there. Like someone building the product, someone figuring out the roadmap of the product, um, someone driving the company, obviously, and then a bunch of ancillary people, HR and whatever. And then, um, the same thing with regular companies like regular companies, they downsize, but at least 50 to a hundred, I think is kind of the good range.
Yes. You can reach out to companies with less employees or less revenue, but the likelihood that you will get a ton of high paid work is much lower. What we're trying to do here is align as many different hoops that we can get through to align, to connect with the right company. So not only is the company growing or not only do they have the right revenue, but they have about the right number of employees. They have a content or a marketing person, or they are creating content. They are moving forward. They are doing all these things. We wanna align with as many things as we can before we get on a call, because then the likelihood of us connecting with the right people is much higher. And we've also had so many hoops that they've jumped through before we reached out at, um, the likelihood of us getting a well-paid project is higher.
And this is what I've done in my business is like, I, I have all these things before I ever reach out and send an LOI because then not only is my response rate for my Lois higher, but the likelihood I get a project is higher and that it's a well paid project, right? Like my rates work within their budget or their budget is, you know, they're like, Hey, we, we wanna do this stuff. Here's our budget. And I'm like, that sounds good. Okay. Hope that was helpful. Benjamin the hound. That's so cute. You know, one of my favorite things, we're gonna take a little sidetrack here real quick. One of my favorite things about this live stream, and one of my favorite things about, um, be being able to connect with other writers is that people send me pictures of their dogs all the time.
I had someone reach out to me from my newsletter, um, and send me a picture of his dog. Like I just love that is my favorite thing. They're like, Hey, I know you have dogs. Like here's a picture of my dog. And it makes my day, every time they're like, my dog's name is this. This is the kind of dog they are. Are, these are their favorite treats, da da, da, da, da. Um, that is like one of my all time favorite things. And one of my, my favorite things about having these guys on the livestream is that I feel like, you know, then I get to up my chances of getting cute pictures of dogs. You have to go to your habit hole.
Good job. Sit five. Good job.
All right. So that's one of my favorite things. So if you ever come on this live stream or, uh, you ever read my newsletter, my weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for by getting my pricing guide. So if you go and get my pricing guide, um, you get my weekly newsletter where I give tips and tricks, which is like usually fast action stuff like it's quicker. Cuz I only have the newsletter space on the live stream. We can chit chat, but if you go here and get my free pricing guide, then you can sign up for the newsletter and then you can send me all your dog photos. All right. So, um, we talked about, let's talk about startups. So, um, startups, we need to make sure that those startups are growing, that they're moving in the right direction. They are creating content or they're doing something they're they're growth minded.
Um, so when we're kind of looking at our startups, they need to have like, like I said, like 10 to 25 employees and they need to have at least 3 million in funding. So I have, I know someone, no, I have a friend, uh, who I know, uh, who works with seed rounds. She works a lot of time with seed rounds and series a I think. Um, and she does a different type of work. So when she does Mar messaging, blah blah, she does messaging and positioning projects. So if you haven't at April DUNS book, uh, like April, like the month and then Dunford, D U N F O R D, it's called obviously awesome. That will tell you about messaging and positioning for products. So that's more high paid work, like big time projects where you're helping people map out the messaging and positioning of their product.
She works in a very specific of IG niche. So she ends up working with seed companies. So her revenue range is, is different. But most of the time when you're working with startups, they need at least 3 million. That's what I've figured out. Um, they need 3 million because that's when they at least maybe are at series B or they're at series a and they're considering adding more stuff or considering adding more content stuff. Um, and for me, I used to think it was a million. I was like, okay, cool. But a million only sounds like a lot of money when you don't make a million dollars. So a company operating on a million is like nothing, a company operating on 3 million, you might get some money in there to expand marketing. So that's the minimum. I think three, million's the minimum for startups. I like five to 10 personally.
So like if a startup has at least five to 10 million, that's a, a better minimum for me. Um, but if they have more, like they're in series B and they just bagged a huge pile of money, that helps a lot because series B, I already know, um, that they're moving on to more marketing activities. I already know they're moving on to more content. They're getting the word out. Um, and if anything, content has become huge while everybody's still, you know, we're still kind of swirling around in the pandemic stuff. Um, or in the, all the stuff that's going on.
I know
I hear you. I hear you being grumpy. I hear you over there
Being a sassy rub. Maybe we can fix this so you don't look so shadowy and creepy. I don't. I think
That actually made it worse.
Hold on.
I know you look like a
Bat. That's
Our bat signal. You can see her shadow on
The wall. That's the bat signal so that we know
She can save us from any
Type of terrorist. Ready buddy? One, two. Oh, oh, sorry buddy. 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. All right, Charlotte. Ready?
Charlotte can catch anything. She's like the MJ of our house. All right. Well the MJ basketball, MJ, baseball, we all know MJ baseball was not great. Um, okay, cool. So let's talk about, um,
Anything else that I want to talk about? Okay. Let's talk about this last thing. So just as a recap, regular businesses need five to 50 million and they need probably like 50 to a hundred employees. Ish. If they have less than that, but they have the right revenue. Try it out. You just never know. The other thing is startups need at least 3 million. You're probably in the series, a series B category. Sometimes if you do these messaging and positioning projects, you might end up doing seed rounds. Um, but it really depends on the niche. So honestly, I think it's better to stick with 3 million. You can check it on crunch base. You can check it on hour. You can just Google their revenue. You can look for press releases, you can check tech crunch. Um, I like the crunch base daily newsletter that tells me about companies and trends all the time.
That's my favorite. Uh, you can also check the LinkedIn for their revenue and their company growth. All right. So let's talk about the third thing. The, then we're gonna getting a, we're gonna get to Hal's question. All right. So the last thing is when we get, um, a big fish with ginormous revenue. So number one, I already talked about my story, so, oh, if you've found this helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business. So subscribe. So the deal is that when you get a big fish with big revenue, that doesn't necessarily mean that revenue is going to you. So I've told this story, right? I had a billion dollar company. I think they made 1.6 billion in revenue and they asked me to work for free. I will never forget that story cuz it was insane. Like why they wa asked me to work for exposure. Like no. So, um, just because they have money and just because they're a big fish doesn't mean that their profit is enough to pay you well, right? So that goes back
To our original, can you stop bothering her?
Um, that goes back to our original thing where the, they have revenue of a hundred million, but they only have million in profit and that profit gets sprinkled around in different budgets. So the deal is that when we get that big fish, we can be really excited, but we don't work for free and don't work for less than what you think that work is worth. Like always charge your value, right? Always charge value, um, and always charge the value of that content to them. I think that that's something we miss a lot as writers is like, we're like, oh, it's only a, this, but that thing lives for years. And I tell people this all the time, like when you write a case, study, people use that for years, people use that study to get more sales for years, they might have paid you $5,000 for it or $3,000 for it or $1,000 for it.
But it brings them millions of dollars in money or hundreds of thousands of dollars of money. Oh, thousands of dollars more than they paid you in sales and customers. So the deal is that you always need to make sure that that's your priority. It doesn't really matter that the company's like a big fish and it doesn't really matter that yes, they might have a ton of revenue. The deal is that you need to charge proper rates. So you need to charge your value rates, the value of the project. Um, and then you need to have a discussion with them about that, right? So even if they come to you and you're like sweet big fish, they must have a lot of money. There's a lot of times they're big companies come to you and they have no money. And they're like, yeah, we're on a shoestring marketing budget cuz our money is all going to this other thing.
So sometimes when you get a big fish, the slice of the pie is very different, right? Depending on the company. So a big fish might give marketing a very slim budget and just be like work with it, deal with it. So the breaking point here is that even if they have a slim marketing budget, you still need to charge what your work is worth. You still need to charge good value rates for your work. It doesn't mean that you're like, oh, it's a big company. I'm gonna shrink my rates to nothing. Now caveat here. There are times where you may take less for your work because you wanna work with a big, because other people in your niche see that client as like a big deal. So sometimes what ends up happening is that you end up cutting your rates slightly, cuz you're like, okay, well their budget is this.
And that's close enough to my rates that I feel comfortable. And I really want this client. Sometimes that will happen. And these are the kind of one off decisions you have to make this shouldn't apply across the board. Okay. It should not apply across the board that you just cut your rates for every client that you get. There are very specific instances where you're like, oh man, I really wanna work with blah blah. Like this giant company in my niche. Right. It's okay to accept less because I really wanna work with this client. And it doesn't mean you work with that client forever at that rate. That means that you work with that client, get some clips and then you decide whether or not you wanna keep working at that rate with that client. Or if you wanna go off and find, I have everybody licking my hands on either side, do you wanna go off and find other clients that say, yes, I've worked for this giant, um, company in your niche.
Like, do you wanna work with me? So don't forget that. Don't forget that. Just because it's a big fish that they may not have the marketing budget, you need to charge value rates. The other thing is that every once in a while, when you get a big fish, sometimes you take the big fish client and yes, their budget is a little bit smaller than you'd hope for, but that's gonna be a client that you really wanna work for. You really like their company. You really like that. They're a big fish in your niche and you're willing to take a slight kind of pay cut to start, um, working with them and to, you know, hopefully maybe their budget will get bigger or um, maybe what'll happen is you then can say that you with this big client and that helps you get more clients and helps you grow your business. All right. So we're gonna get to Hal's question now and we're gonna do AUP date. So go back to your little HAA hole. Go
Back over there.
Charlotte, go to your HAA hole,
Charlotte. Hi five. Good job. Other one. Good job. All right. Ready?
Gosh. You're such a beast. I can't believe it. Bo struggle has always struggled so much to get those trios and you just, you just no, no big deal for you. All right. So let's do how's question. All right. Um, oh, and reminder, you can be just like how you can send a question in. So if you go to Mandy s.com/question, you can put a question in there or you can put a topic in there. If you don't have a question, you're like, can you talk more about this? I sure can pop it in here. So, um, if you can't make it to the livestream and ask questions, I know we had questions from Vicky and Sherra this time. So if you can't make it to the livestream or you're watching this as a replay, you can always go to mans.com/question, put in a question or topic.
So how says hi, Mandy, very insightful article this week and helpful perspective on how we should be thinking about the value we bring to clients in terms of the way we price our work. So he's talking about, um, my weekly newsletter. So my weekly newsletter, I know this is very large right now. So my weekly newsletter was talking about the difference between like clients who pay value rates and you charging value rates. This is something that, um, I think is a big confusion point that I talk to about writers. They're like, well, how do you find out if someone pays your rates? Well, there's a difference between clients with like a really good budget for content. And the times when you say like, these are my rates, does that work for you? So that's why I was talking about in the newsletter. And this is kind of like, what's nice about the newsletters. They're like quick hits that and read through. Um, so it says, how would you respond to a prospect who clearly sees your value, but is hesitant because of the rate and asks something to the effect of how do you justify your pricing would discussion of their ROI, be the primary response, niche, expertise going rates. I'm thinking if they're asking this question, they're probably not your client. Thank you. So let me edit this real quick. Um,
Alright, now it should be smaller. Cool. So here's the deal. They don't see your value. If they're hesitant about price, that's the, the number one, anybody who sees value is like, I wanna work with you. That's the deal. I wanna with you, whatever that costs. I wanna work with you. That's the big difference between when people see a, um, an article or a case study or a piece of content in your portfolio. And they're like, I want that. And you're like, that's awesome. I'm so glad you love that sample. That sample costs this much money for me to create for you, right? That's the difference. They don't see value. If they're hesitant to pay the rate, this is what I found over many, many years. The idea is that they say, I want this. They pick out stuff from your portfolio or they pick out something and they say, I want this. And you're like, that's rate it costs this. They're like, great. In order to get this thing, now it costs this. I will pay that because I want this result. Um, the deal is that if they're coming in and asking you to justify your pricing, they don't see value. They don't like the value is obvious. It's uh, oh my gosh. You're so SASY, I'm gonna
Pick you up here.
I'm gonna pick you up. If you're gonna be SASY I'm gonna pick you up. Come here,
Mark.
So think of it sort of like art, right? The value is set, right? And you want that thing. You go in there and you're like, I want that painting. And you're like, that's great that painting costs this much money. And if that thing is valuable to them, they will paint that at much money because they like that thing. They want that result. They want that painting to hang in their house. So anytime someone's asking you to justify your pricing, they've they don't see the value. They they've missed the value on the content. And my guess is they probably don't have like a lot of long term goals for their content. They don't see the runway. Like they don't see the whole full light plan. They're just like flu, flu around. So I wouldn't, I would not even bother discussing ROI because the minute you start getting in a conversation with someone who's like, well, justify this and justify that.
And tell me about this and what is your, like, you're just, you're getting too far in the hole. There's nothing wrong with saying, yeah. Like I totally get it. Here's some stats from HubSpot or here's some stats from my other projects. Um, that may be helpful in understanding how this content can help your business. But I've found that when you start getting in this long discussion, that's a way different discussion than someone saying like, Hey, can you help me understand? Like, um, what kind of stuff I can ex spec? Like, is there, you know, is there something I should know? Or like, these are our goals. Does that seem reasonable? Um, is there anything that like, kind of helps me understand, like timeline that discussion and UN and getting your perspective is way different than someone coming to you basically and saying justify why I should hire you or justify why you should get this ROI like that.
That's for me, most of the time has been a losing discussion that just does that their perspective is off. They're not coming to you discussing the content and coming from a position of like, I know the content is value because of X, Y, Z, can you help me get a deeper understanding? They're just like, I don't wanna spend this money. Uh, because it sounds like lot, like now you need to prove to me that it's worth it. Like that's no, the other thing here is that I guess if you really wanna like, get into niche expertise in going rates, like, I don't feel like you should be on a call with someone like that. Um, I think the deal is that when you talk to someone, they should, there should be a mutual thing. You looked through their website, you looked through their content, you looked at that, person's LinkedIn, you looked at all these things.
So you're coming to a meeting with an understanding of what's going on at their company. And who's running things. How they've been doing content. They should be doing the same. They should be going to your website. They should be seeing your clips. They should be seeing what's going on. They, they shouldn't come on a call and be like, oh, this is this random writer. Tell me who you are, what the? Like that kind of stuff. That's not where we should be. Sometimes that happens because you get passed along. So like the person who you originally talked to says like, Hey, I need you to talk to our CEO. And the CEO doesn't know as much as the person who found you and looked at all your stuff, different story. But the deal is that when you start going into all of these nitty gritty things like that conversation is starting from the wrong premise. It's not that we don't need to have a conversation about ROI or the value of content or whatever it's that we are aligning with with people who already see the value in that thing, right? Like we're already, I'm gonna squeeze you.
You gotta stop making a noise. I'm gonna squeeze you. I'm gonna squeeze those cheeks. Okay. So the deal is that there's nothing wrong with giving stats. There's nothing wrong. If explaining things, to get a deeper understanding of content strategy, why the content is being created, all that stuff. You don't wanna get into a nickel and diamond conversation, which is what this is. Hey, how, like, once you give someone a price, excuse me, and you talk about a project and they come back with, well, why does it cost so much? Or can you justify, excuse me, I have the little hiccups. Um, can you justify this to me? Um, tell me what your ROI is. Duh, da da, da, da. Like that's the wrong premise. We all know that content marketing takes a long time to work out. We all know that like that's content marketing is a long term effort, uh, sustained over a long period of time.
Right? Right. So if you go in there and someone's starting with the premise, not of like this long term goal or why they're creating the content or how it's bringing value to their audience, um, or how it's making a difference to them in their business or how it's helping getting get brand awareness or new sales and leads or new subscribers they're coming with like a one-on-one discussion of like, you, you need to justify like why this costs so much like, Nope, we're at the wrong premise. The premise is like, if you're giving ROI information and stats and whatever, um, and you're giving, uh, a bunch of information based on giving them a deeper understanding of like what I said before, right? Like, okay, here's our long term plan. Uh, we're thinking about doing these. Do you feel like that, like, they're asking for your perspective, they're asking for your opinion, and they're saying like, is there anything that you can help us get a deeper understanding?
And then you have a discussion with them. This is not a discussion. This is like an, like an aggressive, like, you need to tell me why this costs so much. And like, you need to tell me, like they don't see value. Value is something that makes the price obvious value is something where you're like, of course it costs that much. Or of course that makes sense. Or, wow. I thought you'd actually charge more for your work based on your samples. I thought charge more. Right? There's been times where I have, I have gone to clients and say, yeah, I typically charge this. And they're like, oh, we pay a lot more than that. And I'm like, sounds great. Right? That's something where, um, they see the value in that content to pay really well for it. That's the point. You don't wanna be going to clients where they're like trying to like, you know, wear you down on price or, um, where they are trying to get you to like lower things or where they're trying to get you personally to like defend your value and all this stuff.
Like, I'm sure you can do that, but it's just, it's they're in the wrong mindset. The deal is that any of us, any of us freelance writers can of course find stats, justify our pricing. We can tell us why tell everybody, like, this is my niche expertise. This is how many years of experience I have. This is the going rate. This is the ROI. We can say all that stuff. But those facts and logic does not change the emotional impact of the value part, right? People are paying value is, is a mix of logic and emotion. Okay. This is what I've figured out. Value is dependent on how they see it, right? How that person visual, like sees that thing long term, that's an emotional, like, I know this is gonna come back. I feel that this is important. Um, I feel that this will help our audience.
And then they back it up with stats. Like, I know content marketing gets this much ROI, blah, blah, blah. This is the problem. You can't change. Someone's emotional outlook on the content on value of that thing. You can give them facts and logic and like, you know, whatever, but that doesn't change their feeling of whether or not creating this content is valuable. That's the issue. So when you're looking at these things, someone who sees your value would be like, of course, that totally makes sense. Like, I have had many conversations with people where, where I say like, oh yeah, the ballpark ranges this. And they're like, oh, of course, that makes sense. Or I've had conversations where people are like, oh, we usually pay a lot more. You know, like normally our rate is a dollar 25, a word. And I'm like, oh, well, that sounds great. Let's do that. Um, you
Go buddy.
Well, you're so close. Um, but the deal that you should know, if they start trying to make you prove all of these little things, they already are on the wrong page, they don't see the value they're missing the boat. They're on the wrong bus. Um, I, I talked about this, um, you know, and I've talked about this with someone where it's the difference between you getting on a bus and saying, why are you get like, you have a bus, okay, let's start with this. You have a bus that bus has drinks and snacks and party lights and friends. And it's so fun. And your client gets on a different bus that has broken seats, Springs sticking out of everywhere. Um, and it smells like old bananas or something. And you're like, why are you on that bus? This bus has drinks and snacks and friends and party lights.
It's so fun. And they get on the other bus. Like you can't convince them that the drinks and the snacks and the party bus and the lights and all that stuff is fun. Like, they're just getting on the other bus when they don't see the value in the party lights or the, the drinks in the snacks. And they're like, actually I like this bus because it's more cost effective. Or like, we've always used this bus then you're not, you're not on the same playing field. Um, you can't convince someone like, um, here's another good example. So like when I went, um, when I went apartment shopping with my dad in Phoenix, my, um, the real estate agent that helped us was really great. She was really helpful, but she, her, the things that mattered to her clients to right, she's not normally doing apartments, she did, did it as a favor.
Um, but she normally does houses, right? So she's pointing out things that people normally care about in houses. And my dad is very like, does not care about that. So like, when she's like, oh, there's crown molding and, oh, there's this other thing. And, oh, well, everything is stainless steel. My dad's like, I don't care about that. Does this thing function? That's the same thing. You're not in the same playing field. She's talking about granite countertops or she's talking about crown molding, or she's talking about, um, you know, the view or she's talking about all of these things that her clients typically care about. And my dad just does not care about those things. He does not see value in those things. He sees value in like, yeah, but like, is this safe? And is this other thing, like, that's what we're talking about here.
Uh, we're talking about the people that understand why the drinks and the snacks and the party lights are really important. Not that they're just there for like, you know, fun and flare they're there because they need to be there. And because they're providing a lot of things that the content needs, I hope this is making sense. So like, it doesn't matter how much you tell people that crown molding helps the value of a house or makes it beautiful or whatever. If they don't see the value in it, they don't care. Or if they say, um, like you go to a house, right. It's the difference between like looking at a house that's like super gaudy, and that's not your thing. And looking at a minimalist house and being like, yes, they cost the same amount of money. Let's say they're both luxury homes. They cost the same amount of money.
And you just don't care about gold plated, toilets and gold plated sinks and like gold handles. Like you want something minimalist that looks like, you know, it's designed by those people in Sweden. I forget their names, but, um, who make those really beautiful minimalist homes, right? You don't care about those things. You're just on the wrong bus. I could tell you how though this gold came from like this place and like, oh, this was inspired by their trip to the Maldives. And I could tell you all these things, but it doesn't matter to you. You like the minimalism, you like this other thing, they can be the same price, but the preference is different. Okay. So I hope that was helpful. I know it was a long-winded response, but they don't see value in it. Like they they're, they're on the wrong bus. You're telling 'em about drinks and snacks and party lights and they don't care.
They're getting on the banana smelly bus. They're they're off the boat. Okay. Hope that was helpful. All right. Let's do one more cup date. Since we're all here. If you feel like this has been helpful, get a bit of thumbs up. Um, I always interested to hear this. So if you have different revenue ranges, or you found out different types of things in your niche, that work, make sure to drop it in the comments below, or if you have anything that you feel like could use a better explanation, drop it in the comments below. Let's do pub date. All right, Charlotte, you have to go back to your HaBO hole. I'm gonna pick you up.
Go back to ha hole. All right. Ready? High five other one other one. Nope. Other one high five other one. No, you gotta do the other one. Come on. You gotta do the other one. Gotta do this one. There we go. Good job. All right, Barry. You ready? 1, 2, 3 bear. Good job, buddy.
You did great. You're an all star. Every time I adjust the camera, I feel like you guys just like sit in different areas. Maurice says recently a potential client contacted me and wanted a discount when I gave him the, oh, this is actually a good thing. I remember this, we talked about this. So, um, recently a potential client contacted me and wanted a discount when I gave him the proposal and he came back and wanted a, um, wanted more and a bigger discount unless I did it free. He was not happy. Go back to your Hava hole. Um, yeah, this is the problem, right? Like it's not about,
No, you have to go all the way back to your Hava hole. Anybody's good job. Back up, back up, back it, up, back it up
All. Okay. So here's the deal is, it's not about the discount. It's not about the, it's not about giving them money off. It's not about proving all these things you're operating from the wrong premise, right? So even if you give someone a discount, even if you give them stats and facts, they're operating from the fact that they don't wanna do this in the first place that someone convinced them that content was important, or someone tried to convince them that they should do content, but they don't want to, or they don't see that it's important. So then it doesn't matter how much discount you give them, or it doesn't matter how much, um, stuff you do or what you say, you know, when it ends up happening, if you just end up getting unhappy clients. Cause they don't wanna do it in the first place.
Yeah. Good job buddy. Back up, back up your sausage, back up sausage, back up, back up. Good job. All right. Hi, five. Good job. Other one other one. Well, you gotta meet my hands. Oh, come on. Good job.
All right. So that's the whole, um, Hold on one second.
There we go. Okay. So where did it go? Anyways? Let's pop this up. So that's the deal, right? The deal is that when someone right contacts you, and you're trying to, the more you try to meet someone where they're at, when they're on the wrong bus, you then get on that bus. And then you're just like, Ugh, like what's happening. Like you align with people who are not on the same playing field. Like they're, they're not even remotely understanding why they're doing the content in the first place or how it's gonna impact their audience or how it's gonna impact their bottom line. They aren't convinced on the actual premise of content. It's not, you it's like the premise of content. And then now you are caught in the crossfire of like, why does it cost so much, right? Yeah. Don't give discounts. I just, I don't know if I'd ever given a discount.
I think I might have once on a clump of work where I was like, I would give them a discount if they signed up for more stuff. But that years ago, and I just don't, I just don't think that sets the right tone. Like there's sometimes where you negotiate on a budget where someone's like, oh man, we really wanna work with you. You know, we only have X amount of dollars. Um, you know, and otherwise like, you know, we'll have to refer someone else, but we really wanna work with you. Sometimes you'll negotiate down, but it'll be a small chunk of money. It won't be a huge pile of money. Um, but the discount thing is just like way that they're asking, like they want right. They want the champagne content on the beer budget and that just, they, they have a mismatch. Like if you want that thing that you saw on my portfolio, it costs this amount of money. That's it? Yeah. I don't think discounts are a good idea. All right, buddy. Ready? All right. We're gonna hop off in just a second after we do this. Good job, bud.
All right. Ready?
Oh man. You're on fire.
All right, Charlie. Ready? High five other one other one other one. Good job.
All right, Charlie, you're gonna catch this. Ready back up,
Back up. You gotta back up around. So I can't throw it to you back up over here. Okay. Well close
Enough. Ready? Good job. All right. We're gonna hop off. I hope that this was helpful. I feel like this is, um, sometimes a complicated thing to understand in terms of like revenue that companies need to have and why they need to have the certain amount of money and how that impacts your goals for your business and how that impacts who you work with. And if it's a good client or not. Um, these are really important things to know, especially revenue, profit and how startups work, you know, seed money through series, whatever they're in. Um, so I hope that was helpful if you feel like it was helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance right. Business subscribe. We, we always have pup dates and wild beans come here. Wild beans. She just like, I always know if she's, you know, bothering me by, by making noises cuz she knows she's not supposed to do that. If I tell her I'm gonna pick her up, she's like, okay. Okay. Snap. All right. So, um, I hope everybody has a good Friday and I will see you next Friday, um, with the live stream and um, happy writing, hope everything goes well and puffers say hello. All right, bye.
________
Trying to figure out how to price your work for what it’s worth? Check out my FREE Pricing Guide!
Need some fantastic contract and marketing templates to make your freelance writing biz run as effectively and efficiently as possible? See my Templates!
Want to stay in touch for weekly detailed advice plus updates on new freebies and courses? Join my email list!
Want to follow me for inspiration, tips, and to stay connected?
So psyched you’re joining me on this livestream adventure!
