How to Deal with Potential Clients and Holiday Downtime
High-five to Marie Sultana Robinson (and official office cat, Whisper) for asking about this topic! What do you do when you have a potential client who wants to revisit working together after the holidays?
How do you deal with that when you need work? How do you handle following up? Is there anything to know about the changes over the holiday season? And what do you do when you don't hear back from them? This is all the good stuff we're going over in this week's livestream.
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How to Deal with Potential Clients and Holiday Downtime
So how do you keep potential clients in the loop and follow up and keep them kind of warm while you also get some holiday rest time? So today we're talking about how to balance those two things, how to set everything up, and how to make sure that you kind of keep everybody in the loop while you also get some rest time.
Hey Holly. Hey Vicky. Um, yeah, speaking of downtime, Uh, so we were a little slow today, so thanks for hanging in there. But we're gonna talk about some cool things and we have some friends. So our friends are here, but they're down here. Hold on, they're there. Oops. There they are. As best I can get them both on one screen.
Hey Lisa. So we're talking about a few things that I think are really important for, um, What we're gonna do over the next few months. So I think this is a good topic to do right now and Maria asked for it. So, Marie Soltana Robinson, I don't know if she's here or will be here, but she always asks some really good questions and this was a, A one that I thought, you know, we need to do it now cuz Thanksgiving is next week.
Christmas is coming up, winter holidays, Hanukkah, all those things that people celebrate in December, new Year's. So now we kind of need to get the information so that we. Plan things over the next few months. So we're doing it now and we're gonna talk about number one. Hello Vicky. Which I'm pretty sure I already said, but my brain's a little tired today,
1) How can freelance writers handle warm potential clients and holiday downtime when they need work?
So, all right, so number one, we're gonna talk about how do we kind of deal with this? So, um, when we kind of need work. So what are we kind of balance here? So when we need work and we have rest time and we have potential clients. So the one thing that I. Is, sorry, is, um, I plan all my vacations in the beginning of the year.
Right. Which isn't that helpful right now. Right? So right now we're like, wait a minute, like what are we gonna do right now? So, just a tip. So January is coming right in January. Plan out all of your desired time off for the year. I have a dry erase calendar that I put it on, and I also put it in my I Cal or my Apple calendar or whatever it's called now.
I put it all in there so it's blocked off so no one can ever schedule anything. And that kind of helps me plan. But if we haven't done that yet, now is the time to start planning all of your stuff. So before December hits, before January, start planning your time off so that you know when you're actually working.
Because one of the questions that I get oftentimes is like, I really need work right now. And, um,
How am I gonna manage, like actually taking time off when I need work, while other people are taking time off? And projects are different. And it also kind of depends on like how things are going. So right now a lot of companies are kind of shelling up. They're hermit crabbing, right? So they're either letting people go or they're getting really shrunk down, just like hunkering in and seeing how things.
So that means our job is to plant a lot of seeds right now because we don't know what's gonna happen in January. They could get new budgets, things could kind of shift in their industry. Um, they could be getting more funding. A lot of things can change. So our job when we need work is to plant a lot of seeds.
And if we're thinking over the next few months, this is something that I think a lot of freelance writers are like, everyone's asleep. No one answers emails. They do, they answer emails every single day of the year. I've had, um, I've had people answer emails on every single holiday ever sit like there is always someone who answers an email on holiday.
We all know that some people are like spending a lot of time with family and that can be really stressful. So they're like, let me just get, you know, on my email and kind of like scroll for a bit. So , we are planting seeds, so when we need work right now, there's a bunch of different things like one. We can't really control what other people are doing, right?
We can't control what they're doing in their business. We can't control like when we get work or what the timeline is, but what we can control is planting a lot of seeds. So anytime someone comes to me and says, I need work, you need to be sending a lot of lois and pitches. Magazines are slower, like traditional magazines are slower, and, uh, trade magazines are a little bit faster.
But sending those Lois, what can be cool about that is like, let's, let's. Round up the troops in January, right? So if I'm sending them now, or if I'm sending them in December, um, or even early January, we can get people that respond and say, Hey, let's kind of circle up. Then we have the potential right? Of getting more work.
Um, the other thing is that a lot of people plan poorly , right? They end up planning poorly and they do need help between the three weeks of Thanksgiving and like when people typically take off for winter holidays, right? Like all the stuff that happens over, you know, end of December, early January. And when we're kind of thinking about that, there's people who are like, oh crap, we need extra hands.
Like we're, you know, we need an extra person to come do these things. Um, do these things. And then if you're sending Lois, you can land in their inbox and be like, Hey, do you need help? And they're like, oh, thank God you're here. Like, I've gotten that a bunch of times, like, oh, like thank you for saying this.
Like we really do. . So that's another way to plant seeds because there are people who don't plan well for the end of the year, or they end up like sometimes cutting staff and then they're like, well, we still have to get this out. And paying a freelancer, you know, Like somewhere between a thousand and $10,000 to finish a report or to help with something is cheaper than what you would, what they would have paid for the full-time person that they let go.
So when you need work, you need to be planting seeds, bar none. Whether that's sending pitches, which is just telling you that's slower. Or if you're sending Lois to businesses, you're planting seeds. Right? And this is the thing where. Like a lot of times I also get asked like, how do I make them go faster?
Like how do I make them sign a contract? How do I get them to not be slow snails and how do I get, what can I say? Nothing. There's nothing you can say. Yes, there are scripts and there's like funny little language and there's like salesy things I guess, you know, that we can say, but there's. No matter what you say, you cannot control what they're doing.
You cannot make them go faster. You can't make them make decisions. You can't control whatever they're doing in the business. Like you don't even know what's going on behind the scenes. Right? They could be having a massive layoff soon, or they could be totally recalibrating everything and they want to like have you do content strategy for like $30,000 in January, right?
So you can't like force them to give you work. This is something that I get a lot is like. Um, you know, like this feeling of like, oh my gosh, like I just need them to sign. But they're, you know, there's, I thought of this idea the other day and um, I'm gonna put it on my whiteboard because I think it kind of illustrates it really, really well.
So your freelance business is like this. You operate like this. Okay. So this is your freelancer. and your corporate people are like this. So I think this is a better way of doing it. So hold on. Um, 1, 2, 3, 4. So your corporate people are like this potentially. So let me explain that. Oops. Yeah, the whiteboard's back, so let me explain this.
Your freelance business is you are taking action every single day, almost all day, right? You're sending pitches, you're sending marketing, you are working on projects. You are working on your LOI or LinkedIn. You're updating clips. You are doing this. This is your day. Most of the time, this is your day, right?
These are the next two weeks for them where they're like, mm, oh, we should talk about that thing at our meeting. Oh, let's do this thing over here. Oh, let's kind of like gather everybody up here. So this is, is fundamentally not aligned, right? So when someone asks me, how do I make them go faster, you are already fundamentally not aligned.
Freelance businesses operate completely different than a corporation, even a startup, even startups where they're doing a lot of stuff and they're moving and shaking and you know, need to show investors that they're worthwhile. All that stuff like your, this is like a day, this is like their two weeks. So, and I know my handwriting's bad, but deal, like work with it
So we are taking, we are doing stuff every day. So for example, you are like, if you do a day in the life, right? A day in the life of a freelance writer, you're spending an hour on marketing, you're spending two hours pulling your research, you're spending three hours finishing a different blog. You have two calls and you also need to make sure that you follow up on four emails.
That's one day that you're doing right. And it could, it, there's a lot of different ones, but that's just like me giving you something they're doing like a project that was set like six months ago or some other kind of thing, or they're trying to get in a meeting or like this, their clients being weird or like, they're not , they're doing things at like.
A snail pace. They, they live in turtle Land. Okay? You live in Cheetah Land, , these things. This is why it's really, I think, useful to understand that you can't force people to, to operate at your level, right? You can't force them to participate in how you run your business. But what you can do is follow up, you.
Say like, Hey, my calendar is filling up, which, you know, most of the time it is right, and we wanna be truthful. Don't lie to people, please. But, um, you know, your calendar is filling up. Um, you're under, uh, you're interested in asking if they need any help for Q1 or Q2 of next year, right? Q1, January through March and q2, April through June, um, to kind of like pre-plan your schedule.
And this kind of gets in alignment with what they're doing. Freelancers also don't plan enough like far enough ahead. This is when they get in this struggle, sorry, this is when they get in this struggle of like, I need work now. It's cuz they didn't plan far enough ahead and they're not doing enough marketing.
They're like trying to plug the holes with a bunch of other things. But these people that move at turtle space, you have to get in there early. You have to plant seeds, you have to follow up. So just as you're kind of thinking about these things and you're thinking about when you need work, this is why you have to plant the seeds, because this can be very slow.
And there's a lot of times where people will not sign contracts for months. Like they just, they're, they're having an internal meeting or their budget got changed or they're changing their mind, or, um, I don't know Steve's gonna do it. I. And there's all these different factors that you can't control, but what you can control is the action that you take every day, right?
Treat your business like a cheetah business. You're taking action every single day to move your business forward, right? Whether that's marketing, whether that, or whether that's sending lois and pitches most of the time, Lois, if you need work, um, or whether that is. You, um, following up on past Lois, like where people got back to you and scheduled a meeting or wanted a proposal or something, um, or whether you are, um, getting your work done that you currently have, whether you're planning for the future, whether you're doing all these other like phone calls and stuff that you have to do, but as you kind of go online, they live internal land.
They do live internal land, but I think this diagram kind of makes more sense to. Um, when I kind of show them like how we are operating, like we, like we are operating. If you're asking me like, I need work now, how do I speed them up? You are coming from your needs, right? That's not their needs. Their needs and your needs may not even align at all, right?
So you're like, I need work. Why won't they sign the contract? And they're like, we need to kind of evaluate whether or not we wanna even do this project, right? So this is kind of the thing that I. Is an important thing to know about holiday time and marketing and kind of getting your potential clients all in a thing, right?
Like all in a loop. We're gonna use something like Boomerang or we're going to use, like you can snooze things in Gmail or you can use gmas, right? But you're using all of these things to like follow up or ask questions or see if they need help. But as you kind of go along your job when you need work or your job when you're.
In this weird like holiday kind of thing, is to just plant seeds. Because those seeds, you never know when they're gonna grow and you're not planting seeds to harvest. Now, every once in a while you'll get an early bloomer, right? And you're like, don't step on her. Every once in a while you'll get an early bloomer and no, don't, no, you can't go over there to step on her.
Lay down. Here you go.
Here you go. There you go, buddy. All right. Every once in a while you'll get in early bloomer, right? Like every once in a while there's like a little crop that like shows up in the early parts of the snow. They're like an early riser. , but that's not the norm. The norm is all the rest of the crops kind of come in their own season, right?
You can't just like force tomatoes to grow at a certain time. You can't , you can't force strawberries to grow out of season. I mean, you can, and, but you have to set up a lot of very difficult circumstances to do it right. Put 'em indoors and like put them under all of these lights and fertilizer. Um, but think about it as like right now you are planting the seeds for.
Yeah, don't step on the early bloomers either. That's a good one, Vicky. Um, you are planting seeds for the future. You don't know if they're gonna work out in November or January or next November, but you need to be planting seeds now. Okay. So I don't like the black whiteboards. I'm not, I'm not a fan. I like the white whiteboards cause I feel like they stick out better and it's easier to.
So in any case, we're planting seeds now to harvest later, but we're also planting seeds in the event that there's an early bloomer who's like, Hey, I need help on this report, or We need to kind of generate some sales right now, or We need to do this thing and we just fired six people, but we need support or stuff like that.
We are making sure that we. getting ahead of like their problems, right? We're getting ahead of the things that they might need help with, and that means planting seeds now. Okay? So that's our first thing, and then we're gonna do a quick one of these. Cause I finally got everybody settled so everybody's sleeping and don't tell them, but I forgot the bag of.
T R E A t o s, which I'm not gonna say because I'm pretty sure they, they can't spell, they don't know the spelling yet, but I forgot those, so I don't have them. So we'll just hope that they sleep for a while. Mm. I don't know if the black one would have the same problem due to shine. Like the shine on this is mostly because I didn't write it very thick.
Like the marker isn't very thick. So like the marker itself is kind of thin, so maybe it's better to use a black one, but I didn't, it's, it's not, um, like I didn't write very hard. So if I write hard, it's more like this. Hold on. So if I write hard on it, it looks more like those two blue lines. But I didn't write very hard.
2) How can freelance writers follow up and create systems and processes that work while they rest?
I wrote kind of, yeah. So maybe it's, I need to write a little bit harder on the whiteboard. All right, let's talk about number two. Let's talk about number two. Okay, so number two, we're talking about what we're gonna do, right? We're gonna follow up. So as we send our Lois, right, we're on our cheetah schedule.
We are planting our seeds, and our seeds are not for harvest right now. They could be, you can get in early bloomer, but most of the time you're plant ahead and we've already planned our rest time, right? So we planned our rest time. So that's all scheduled. We know what days off we have so that we can start setting deadlines with potential clients that come in.
But when we have a bunch of warm leads, um, follow up with them. Like even if you just talk to them, I always like to follow up with them near the end of the year, like right before kind of the holidays and, um, either in like right after Thanksgiving or right before winter holidays. It's a lot easier to know what they're planning.
A lot of them, a lot of them have meetings around Thanksgiving and before winter holidays to set things for the next year. So we wanna kind of like capitalize on that by following up. And like I said, I like Boomerang to follow up because I can set dates and I can say if they don't reply, do this. Gmas is another way to do it.
Um, and GMAS is, um, It's, it's more for like, if you wanna set like a follow up schedule, like you can send gmas to a bunch of different people and it can be really good for sending a lot of Lois out. But gmas, I think it's best at like setting a follow up schedule. So you say like, follow up with them in December and if they don't reply, send this email in January and if they don't reply, send this email in March.
And like kind of getting a kind of like a drip follow up for them. Oh, Vicky. Vicky chalkboards are out. I do. I cannot, I, that is like, one of the things I, I do not like the feeling of chalk. I just, I hate the feeling of chalk. It like makes my mouth feel weird and. I hate it. So like, chalkboards are out.
Plus I had this like , I had this weird, okay, I don't know if everybody's elementary schools were like mine, but my elementary school we used, um, dry sponges, like old used sponges to erase our, ugh, even thinking about it, like, ugh. Um, to erase our chalkboards, like you can see my hand doing this like, Um, and these were like, these weren't like brand new sponges where they were soft.
These were super hard crunchy sponges that made this like, very specific noise. And I, it was like, it scarred me. And then we eventually moved to socks to like erase our chalkboards, but like, ugh. So yeah, I, I don't mind this smell, Holly, but the, the feeling of the chalk and like rubbing it around and like, I could never be a gymnast.
Like once we introduced the chalk into gymnastics, I was like, I'm. I'm over it. Um, and even in art class, like I just, the feeling and the, oh, I just, yeah. Chalkboard is gonna be definitely out. Maybe we'll get some other kind of fun situation, like, I don't know, someday we'll figure it out. But maybe on the whiteboard I'll just have to write, um, with a little more pressure than I have been.
So, um, when we're following up back to our topic, besides my like, weird problem with chalk, um, We, we are following up on like a regular cadence, right? So like, I often talk about the three month follow up schedule, but if we're following up with potential clients, right? We ha know they're gonna have holiday downtime, we know we are gonna have holiday downtime.
So we're following up with potential clients where, um, we are following up either before Thanksgiving, after Thanksgiving or like right before winter holidays. So the week before, um, like Hanukkah or Christmas, like kind of in there. You know, the fir the, the second week of December, basically, and we're, we're planning for January.
We're planning for the, the next three weeks between Thanksgiving and winter holidays. Um, we are making sure we're kind of like in their mind before they leave for holidays, and if they say follow up in January, we do that. Or if we don't hear from them in December, follow up in January. There's a lot of things that change between December and January.
Like I said, they're planning a lot. They're doing a bunch of things internally that you don't know. Following up with Boomerang or GMass or some other type of situation. Like Boomer, you're writing all these emails, like GMass is more automated, but with Boomerang you're just like setting, you're writing the email and set it and forget it kind of thing.
But when we're following up, we want some sort of system to do that. The other thing you can do too, is to set a bunch of things. And I've did, I did this, um, I've done this before. Is like, let's say there's 10 or 20 potential clients where you're just like, I need to follow up with them. Like they've been on your three month follow up schedule, or maybe there's 50, I don't know, pick a number, but this is just an example.
So let's say there's like 10 to 20 people. You can boomerang those messages to send on the day they get back to the office, right? Like, so usually people get back to the office either like the week after. Um, uh, new Year's, right? So even if people go back to the office after New Year, like they have New Year's day off and then they go back to the office, they're not like awake until the following week.
So I usually send it the Monday after, um, new Year's Day. So you can boomerang a ton of messages to just get, go, send out on that day, right? So you don't have to do anything in December before you take time off. You can just boomerang a ton of messages to send on that Monday after, um, new Year's. And then people will hopefully answer you, and we've already kind of preset that up.
So we want kinds of these follow up schedules where we can either, um, send them now and say, Hey, put this email back in my inbox if they don't answer by X date, which is what Boomerang does. Um, or you say like, Hey, I need to send, you know, a bunch of stuff. Like I need to follow up on a bunch of things with potential.
Send them the Monday, a New Year's day to like see what happens. The other thing you can do is you can do that with Lois. Like you could, you could potentially, and I did this before, you know, we haven't talked about this, I should have talked about this. Um, I used to send like a, a clump of like 25 or 50, I can't remember.
I used to send those in January, so I used to set them in December. I would have a whole bunch of Lois that I would send via email cuz like I couldn't afford LinkedIn. Um, at the time. And so I would send them, like through Boomerang. I would send 25 to 50 of 'em on that Monday after, um, new Year's Day. And then now my marketing for January is pretty much taken care of, right?
Like I've already kind of set the stage, I've already put things out. Um, so that's another good way to kind of warm things up or get your Lois out or plan ahead. Um, Ooh. Maybe someday we will get fancy and we'll get an electronic board. We'll have to see. I don't know. We'll have to see someday. It's also like I don't have a ton of space in here, so the more like props and items.
I have the, like I don't even know, like one of the things is right. I only have like, this is the width of my camera area, which is. Two and a half to three feet, right? So like I have this two and a half to three feet that I'm holding right here where I would have to have this board. So if I had like a board that I had to roll in, or like, I, you know, I like space is a factor,
3) What business changes can happen over the holiday season for your freelance clients?
So that's another thing. All right, let's talk about three. Let's talk about three here. So, um, and luckily, luckily, we're all, we're all snugly. Um, let's talk about three. So when we're kind of, um, going over things for the holiday season, um, this is gonna be short and sweet. So your changes over the holiday season, right?
What we wanna talk about here is like the things that change over, um, oh, they were handheld. Okay, cool. Well, maybe I would do that. Um, the things that change over the holiday season are like, the business could be cutting a lot of staff. The business could be hiring a lot of. The business could be hiring freelancers cause they cut a bunch of staff.
The business could be changing the trajectory of like, where they're going. They could be needing more strategy. They could be having a lot of meetings to figure things out. Um, they could be pre-planning for, like I said, like reports or end of year projects, or they could be, um, pre-planning for January.
So a lot of the things that we're thinking about over the holidays and over, you know, like our rest time and over our, um, Like our potential client kind of like system is like getting ahead of it, right? So like this is kind of the point I was making with number one is like, we wanna keep sending those lois and planting the seeds.
You don't know what kinds of changes they're going to make internally. Excuse me. So we wanna make sure we're sending Lois, we wanna make sure that we're following up and we wanna make sure that we kind of have. Um, like understanding that a lot of things can change between November, December, and January.
So this is why we wanna get like ahead of things. And you wanna understand that like every business operates differently and they have different goals. So yes, even though we can't evaluate their website, and even though we can evaluate their content, even though we can evaluate social and LinkedIn and blah, blah, blah, all the platforms that.
It doesn't change the fact that you are not plugged in to a behind the scenes of their company, right? You don't know what's going on, so your best guess is to reach out with an LOI and say like, Hey, do you need some help? Right? But just to like put it in perspective, lots of times, especially now where like everybody's either hermit crabbing or hiring, like there's a lot of stuff going on right now.
We kind of wanna like get ahead of that before next year while they're planning budgets, while they're seeing things, and there's a lot of times. Where people will say like, Hey, we were gonna hire a full-time person, but can you come in and like help us do X, Y, Z? And you're like, of course I can. And hiring a freelancer is like, I don't think there's been, mm, I don't know of any instance where hiring a freelancer was more expensive than hiring someone else.
So even if you go in and you do, like, let's say you're doing like a full content strategy package, plus a full brand messaging slash positioning project, like that would be a lot of. They would pay someone six figures to come in and run content strategy and run brand messaging. Not all the time. Right?
Like there's different things where like some people get underpaid at like 50 K, but there's a lot of big time marketing and strategy and like growth. People who get paid six figures, they could pay you half of that to get everything done. Right. And so when you're thinking about this stuff, these kind of changes are, um, things that we wanna keep in the back of our mind as motivators to keep marketing, right?
The marketing isn't necessarily like we're getting everything now, but there could be a lot of changes that happen over the next, however many days between now and the Monday after New Year's. So like, I don't know, 50 ish days. So like a lot of things can change over those 50 days, and we wanna stay ahead.
4) What should you do when you don’t hear back from potential clients over the holidays? When should you follow up and what tools should you use?
All right. Let's talk about four. Let's talk about four. Um, okay, hold on. Let's talk about four. So number four here is what do we do when we don't hear back, right? So we already, um, well first of all, if you're not hearing back, well, first of all, if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up.
If you feel more like you wanna build, um, a freelance writing business, you adore, or you wanna build like a six figure freelance writing business, subscribe. Okay, so if you don't hear back, this is one of the things I wanna remind you. One of the things that you are doing is having downtime. That means you need to unplug from your business.
So you should not be thinking about, oh my God, what are they doing and what should I do next? And all that. You need to have actual downtime, and this is something that, um, I keep in the back of my mind. There was a study that was done. I did this research like years ago, so it might be a little different.
There was a study done where if people went on vacation, it took an average of nine days. It took about nine days for them to fully decompress from work. Okay, so if you waste time over a short Thanksgiving holiday, not decompressing from work it, you're not gonna feel rested. You're not gonna be ready to go.
You're gonna be tired and grumpy and you're, you're gonna be like thinking about all this stuff and you're gonna be stressed, and it's not gonna be fun to get the marketing done when you come back on the Monday after Thanksgiving, right? So keep this in the back of your. This study was really important to me cuz most of the time, right, people take less than nine days off, they take a vacation and it's not weekend and we like the, um, the weekend plus the week plus the following weekend, which is nine days, right?
Um, they end up like stressing about work, right? It takes them two days to stop stressing about work. Then they go on vacation for five days and three out of those five days they've thought about work. Then they go back and like Saturday and Sunday they're like, oh, I'm going back to work. Right? So they don't actually de.
So you need nine days to just like fully decompress, relax, be in like a chill state, and actually kind of like separate yourself from work. So don't forget that if we're wasting our downtime by wa, by stressing or thinking about all the work stuff or whatever, it's demotivating you, I, I'm telling you.
Like it's making you tired and you can't take action, right? You're supposed to be having downtime, right? So if you're not supposed to be taking action, now we just have this like anxious energy. So what we wanna do is be like, you know what, I'm taking rest time because if I take rest time, I will be more productive when I come back, which has been proven by many studies.
So you need rest time. You need to figure out like what you're gonna do to keep your mind off of work. And remember that you are kind of powering back up. I have to sneeze.
That was close. So you're powering back up for the times when you need to do a bunch of marketing. So we're making sure that we are. Um, recharging the battery so that the battery's ready to go for like a big marketing push or for a big follow up push or whatever. So the first part of it is like, you actually have to rest, unplug, stop thinking about it.
And this is the other thing. It's like, remember, other people are unplugged too. It's okay . Like you're not gonna get an edge by like working thurs like th you know, uh, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday on Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving and Black Friday, or. Like it's just, just rest. Like I can tell you as someone who has burned out and someone who like struggles a lot sometimes with getting enough sleep or putting too much on my plate, just rest.
Just like, just pull the plug, just rest. The second part of that is like, what do we do if we don't hear back? So let's say we're doing a bunch of marketing, we've got our rest time, we know we're gonna unplug from our business. We don't need to stress if we don't hear back, right? We're just gonna send like our follow up.
So this is where that follow up schedule comes in. So you sent a proposal, you sent whatever you did. I still would follow the same thing. So let's say you sent a proposal before Thanksgiving. I would still follow up the week after Thanksgiving, like, and see if you can set it for January. Um, like set the project start for January.
I would follow up before the winter holidays. I would kind of get that situation, um, under control with Boomerang or GMass or whatever your favorite follow up. System is for putting emails back in your inbox, but when you don't hear back from potential clients, your job is still to follow up and, and kind of nurture.
So you're sending articles, you're saying like, Hey, I saw you got funding. You are, um, sending helpful resources their way. You are doing a lot of things that are kind of keeping you top of mind, but also like, you know, doing something useful. Even if like even if you don't hear back, let's say you're following up and like still nothing follow up in January.
My default is follow up in January. If I hear nothing from October through December, still following up in January, because January, like I said, a lot of things can change over November, December, and into January, so you always follow up in January. I think that that's always helpful. Plus let's say that like you followed up in December, didn't hear anything.
Now two, maybe three weeks have gone by. Follow up again. What we're doing to kind of keep our potential clients in the loop are a couple things, right? We're following up, we're adding value. We're sending articles, we are congratulating them on funding. We're like saying, Hey, I saw this new piece of content.
It's super interesting. Here's why I liked it. Good job. Um, and then we're also following up on things like, Hey, did you wanna schedule that call? I sent you a contract and proposal. Are you interested? Um, we talked about these things. Do you wanna move forward with that? Like, we're using a bunch of different types.
routes, basically to follow up with potential clients, right? We can't control whether they're gonna say yes and we can't control what they're gonna do or when they're gonna do it, or if they'll do it right. But we can kind of keep following up. We can be persistent in our follow up, and we can use different types of follow up to kind of keep the conversation.
Um, but most of the time when you're kind of doing this, you wanna make sure that you follow up in January. Like that's kind of, I just love doing that cuz things change so fast like you would not believe. So if you're not hearing anything in November, if you have potential clients who you've sent proposals to, or contracts or whatever, or you've had calls, follow up in January, like, and then put them, if you don't hear anything in January, put them on your three month follow up schedule.
What we're trying to do here is make sure that we have our downtime and that other things are managed. So what I'm hoping that you have gathered from this live stream is that you are allowed to have time off. You do not have to be working or nurturing potential clients when you have time off and you can set up.
Systems and processes to do stuff while you are taking time off. That's why I love sending those Lois on the Monday after January. I don't have to do anything, right? I'm working in December, so while I'm working I just set that up. Now I get break time cuz I know it's taken care of. Same thing with following up.
If I really wanted to, I could set up a follow up schedule in gmas. To follow up with these potential clients, right? Hey, you didn't get my propo. Or like, are you interested in this proposal? Do you wanna hop on a call? Do you have questions? Um, would love to know if you'd like to move forward. That's four emails right there, right?
And I could preschedule all of those, or I could do something like Boomerang, where, um, I follow up, you know, the, the message comes back to my inbox on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I follow up, I don't hear anything. I follow up again in December, and then I boomerang it out to follow up in January. So there's a lot of different systems and things and tools that we can use to like do stuff while we take rest time or where we can kind of alleviate the stress or the anxiety or the worry about work because these tools are doing it for us while we take rest time.
Okay, so you are allowed to rest or you should rest. Don't forget it takes nine days for people to like totally decompress. Okay. So Thanksgiving is usually like not enough time, but winter holidays where people take two weeks. That's usually a good time. You're allowed to have time off. You're allowed to decompress.
Do not think about work. Just put it to the side. And if you're really like, worried about it, like the times when, um, that I like was really needing work and I was very, like, there's still times I, I need work. Like just, I don't wanna, I don't want people to think like that. I never struggle to get work or like I'm, I'm never trying to like, change pieces in my business.
But the times where I'm really thinking about it, it's like I'm doing, I'm sending a ton of Lois, I'm booming Lois out. I have some kind of follow up schedule that's automated and I have stuff that's working while I sleep or while I have time off so that I don't have to be so anxious or so, um, concerned about like, oh my gosh, I'm not taking action today, or I'm not doing XYZ in my business, or everybody else is getting ahead of me because I'm taking rest time.
We can set things up to move and shake and poke your clients and see what's going on while you take rest time. Okay. Okay. So those were the main points I wanted to make. We'll see how our friends are doing. There's, oh my gosh, this is a miracle. People , this is a miracle. This hasn't happened here on the livestream in like a year.
Like, they're usually awake. They're usually doing stuff like they, um, it's really cold here and by. , like I, I, it's chilly. I like to say chilly because like as someone who came from upstate New York, like Austin is very rarely like cold. I would not, it's not cold, it's chilly. So I wanna come back on and say like, I'm still rochesterian, sometimes
So they've been really cold, but, so if you like put blankets on them, they immediately go to sleep cuz it's been chilly in here. So they're all sleeping and they look like little tiny furry angels. , you just wanna squeeze 'em. I just like wanna, oh, you know what, let's give, I'll give you guys a little update on them.
They are hibernating . So, um, I'll give you guys a quick pup date. Um, Barry went to his, um, ophthalmology appointment. So he's had a lot of trouble with his eyeballs and, um, he had a mass removed and he's looking good. So everything is going good. He has to go back in six months. Um, to check and see how he's doing.
His, uh, corneal ulcer is still healing and still, you know, moving along. So it seems like things are getting better. And, um, let's see. I don't think Charlotte didn't French any cactuses, any cacti recently, so that was good. Uh, when she did a bonus though, what I always love about vet services is like anytime they put your dog down, they clip their nails.
And Charlotte is like, it's a thing when I clip her nails, it's a thing. So , it's, it's a whole process. So every time, like whenever she gets, um, you know, put to sleep for a little bit and they clip her nails, I'm like, thank God. So Charlotte's all clipped up and um, she's gonna get a bath soon cuz she loves to go outside and roll around in the dirt and the dry grass and make herself dirty.
And she comes in covered and grass and dirt and other things and leaves and bits, . So they're both doing really well. They're having a good week. It's been chilly, so they're nice and happy being all comforted up in their. With their support duck and with their little blankets and they look so sweet.
Right now they're just sleeping over there. Lucky for me because I forgot Thet e a tos downstairs today, but I hope that this was helpful. So I hope that you have kind of, this has helped you get a plan in place to deal with. Following up with potential clients, with nurturing them, with connecting with them, using tools to do that while you take rest time, actually scheduling your rest time.
All that stuff is really important and I wanted to make sure we preempted before Thanksgiving. If you're like, Hey, I wanna send some stuff out. You still have today and however many days, right? Let's say you're taking Wednesday through Friday off. You still have today, Monday and Tuesday to set up a bunch of L Wise to Boomerang for the Monday after Thanksgiving, right?
We still have the option too, of setting up a bunch of things over the three weeks, between November and December, and we have the option to boomerang or GMass a bunch of things for January. So if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up if you feel like you wanna learn more about building a freelance writing business you adore, or a six figure business subscribe.
Um, let's see. We are here every Friday, but not next Friday. So next Friday I'm actually gonna be off just like you should be . Um, so I'm not gonna be here next Friday, but I'll be here the Friday after that and then we'll get back on track with everything. But, um, I just wanna remind you too, this is the last thing I'm gonna.
Um, when you take days off, it doesn't matter over the course of the year. So if, even if you took all next week off and you're like, oh my God, I can't do that because I da, da, da, da da, I need work and money. It literally doesn't matter. It's one business day out of the whole year. If you're really, really worried about it, you can work some weekends later on.
Like you, you, the idea that like most people are gonna take Wednesday through Friday off for Thanksgiving. So if you take two extra days, two business days out of the whole year does not matter. And I always try to tell this to freelance writers where they're like a week off. Like, I can't do that. Yes you can.
It's five business days. Nobody cares about five business days. And if you are so worried about that later in the year when you have tons of energy because you took time off, you can work as many weekends as you. , but if you don't take time off and you don't rest, you like, you can burn out, you can hate freelance writing, you can quit, which is what I almost did.
And that rest time is critical to being a good writer and having creativity and delivering for your clients and paying attention and paying, like getting all the little details and like, it's really important to let your brain rest. And whenever I talk to writers where they're like scared about taking a week off, it's just five.
It's five business days. Like the postal service barely, barely delivers in five business days anymore, right? So just remember that there's you, you have 365 days. Well, you have different kind depending on the year, right? We have different number, but on average 365. So we have all these days, and if you took multiple weeks off during the year, let's say it's 15 business days, that is a drop in the bucket to all the other business days that you.
Having those days off really improves your writing. It improves your ability to listen to your clients and pay attention. It improves your diligence. There are so many things that have been studied about giving your brain rest time, and if. There was, um, someone that I, I talked to like a writer a while back who said like, oh, well I just take a bunch of four day weekends.
And they always were exhausted. They were like, this is working. I'm like, then why are you tired if you're, if you're spending, you know, like, uh, I think it was summer, they would spend summer taking four day weekends. And then they're like, oh, well the, you know, I just worked the rest of the year. I'm like, then why are you tired if that, that's not working right?
If you take a bunch of four day weekends for three months in the summer and you don't actually have a combined week off like those nine days, or you don't have a clump of time that's really off and it's just like, you know, Thursday through Sunday, like that's not working for you. Right? So just remember that you can take time off and it's really important to your freelance future.
So since I'm not gonna see everybody, I hope everybody has a than a happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate Thanksgiving, um, or has some nice time off planned or some little activities or family things and, uh, we are like, and by we, all of us are, um, sending you little holiday wishes and hope that you have a good time and we'll see you the following Friday.
So we won't be here next Friday, but we'll be here the Friday after that. And, uh, hope everybody has a good Thanksgiving.
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