Austin L. Church's Linkedin Analytics

You have 82 big and small problems right now. Tell me something good instead. What’s something good that happened this week? When there IS a lot wrong in your life, in your business, in the world, it’s that much harder to reach for gratitude. Gratitude can feel naive, disingenuous, and irresponsible. None of us has to look far to find injustice. Even so, tell me what you’re thankful for.

If you want to grow, make yourself less important in your own business. Despite what your clients say, they want certain outcomes more than they want to work with you. If you’ve proven capable and consistent in delivering those outcomes, then it’s understandable why they’d associate you with them. However, as soon as you stop delivering them, they’ll look for alternatives. This doesn’t make them transactional, disloyal, or unfeeling. It means they have other responsibilities and commitments to consider. This is good news. All sorts of possibilities open up once you step back from “It must be me” thinking and realize what they want more than you, your responsiveness, or your personal handling of every detail or project: - Expertise - Predictability - Attentive service - Proactive support - Clear communication - Fair value for what they pay - Timely solutions to problems - Simplicity over more complexity - Feeling seen, respected, and cared for Now, there’s some nuance and deftness required in how you preserve and enhance these functions and roles you’ve been serving in your own business while removing yourself from them. People generally don’t like disruptions, clients included, so you frame changes in terms of benefits to the client and introduce most of them slowly. Once of the single best ways I’ve found is to plan a strategic vacation, tell all your clients you won’t be available but they can expect no disruptions because [outline of who will be doing what in your absence]. Then, when you return, you simply never take those tasks and roles back. So my opinion is this: Assume that you can *improve* the bespoke client experience you pride yourself on by making less and less of it dependent on you. In fact, right now, you represent the single biggest risk to the business: If you were to get a knock on the head and be out for weeks, your clients would suffer. Create a resilient, anti-fragile business *and* deliver better client experience by recognizing that outcomes are more important to your clients than you are, even if you consider them friends. In *Let My People Go Surfing* Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard wrote something I’ll never forget, which I’ll paraphrase: “Your ability to grow is directly tied to your ability to relinquish control.” If you want to grow, make yourself less important in your own business.

Don’t have a foolproof connection request message template? I got you. This one has 3 parts: 1/ Greeting Show the person that you’re using a schmancy tech stack to automate connection requests by including their middle initial. Nothing says, “I’d make a good, strategic contact” like a personalization misfire. Example: “Hi Austin L. - “ 2/ Bland Sentiment Prove that you’re a fair-minded, reflective professional by reciting the words from the poster on your middle school guidance counselor’s wall. Bonus points if you can depict an inspirational animal using keyboard characters. Example: “I believe that we’re stronger together.”    /\_/\   ( o.o )   > ^ < 3/ Fragments Show that you value their time by dropping subjects from sentences or really any part of speech you can’t be bothered type. Example: “Look forward to connecting.” 4/ Gratitude Satisfy the requirements of your daily journaling habit and release oxytocin by expressing gratitude. Example: “Thanks!” 👍 That’s pretty much it. If you use this template, you can connect with anyone. If you want all my other templates, you can get them for free here: [tracking link]. We all need to help one another, so I am paying it forward.

It’s 1971, Errol Gerson has graduated from USC, and he hasn’t gotten a single response from the 60 résumés he sent out. What would you do? Remember, this is before personal computers, word processors, and all the lovely fonts a discerning MBA could ever want. Gerson was really frustrated. He had barely any money. He could have concluded, “There just aren’t enough good jobs out there.” Or worse, he could have internalized the outcome: “Maybe I’m just not good enough.” He could have gotten offended when his next-door next, an architecture student, looked at his resume and said, "No wonder nobody's calling you. That's hideous." What would you do? When I first came across this story in Chris Do’s book, A Pocket Full of Do, it was so good that I had to track down the original. It's a masterclass in differentiation, and Gerson offers this piece of advice: "If you want to be effective in your life, you've got to learn how to stick out an eighth of an inch." Check out this week's LinkedIn newsletter, and read to the end. You'll be glad you did. Oh, and I'll drop the link to the video I found so you can hear the whole story from him.

Just because something is wrong doesn’t mean you did something wrong. Business is one long parade of problems. No matter how smart, strategic, or proactive you are, you’re always going to have problems. This reality check came up during the Office Hour on Tuesday with the Freelance Cake Community. A member, who’s an SEO specialist and writer, is already booked out for several months. She had a mental block related to marketing. Like, why create more demand if there’s no more of her to go around? I told her to pick the set of problems she wants. Which future situation is preferable? - She lets mental block cause her to stop marketing, and she may kick herself in 3 months if the work has dried up. - She establishes a Morning Marketing Habit, gets more leads than she needs, and finds creative ways to expand her capacity through project deposits, streamlined onboarding, VAs, and subcontractors. Or, she simply turns people away. Or, she refers them to other people she trusts, and they pay her a 10% finder’s fee. It’s obviously less stressful to have a surplus of leads and have to get creative than to find yourself in a famine after several months of feast and scramble to get yourself paid. Freelancing involves addressing one problem after another, and these two questions help me identify my Preferable Problems: 1. Which problem would I rather have right now and three months from now? 2. What’s the ONE thing, such that by doing it everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?* *Kudos to Gary Keller and Jay Papasan who share this question in their book, The ONE Thing. P.S. Send me a DM about the community if you want more info. The conversations we're having related to the problems, er, opportunities, that more advanced freelancers have.

Hey, writers, Daniel and I have a challenge that will make you giggle: Write a fake story to sell something you own. Here are the rules: 1. Pick something in your attic or basement you no longer want. 2. Write an absurd, hyperbolic "Most Interesting Man in the World" type story about it. Really let your hair down. 3. Take some photos of the thing, and remember that they don’t have to be good because it’s about the story. 4. List the thing for sale on Craigslist, Facebook, or whichever local marketplace creeps you out the least. 5. Please share your story on LinkedIn for the amusement of all. 6. Once you sell the thing, put the cash in your savings account. If you want to see examples of this, check out Daniel’s original post or my “Ugliest Couch in the World” Craigslist listing from circa 2009 in the comments. What’s the point of this challenge? To goof off and to put a little money in savings to increase your walkway power. When freelancers are really desperate for income, we find it really difficult to walk away from bad-fit clients. When your spidey sense is chiming, you ignore it: “Maybe they won’t have tons of changes. Maybe I can make this budget work.” Against your better judgment, you put on a brittle smile and tell the client, “Let’s do it.” Later, when it turns out the client’s mom was an English teacher and suddenly he’s an expert in English prose style and has nothing better to do on a Saturday than blow up your immaculate GDoc with suggested revisions (90% of which would make it worse, of course), you must admit your miscalculation. Again. Having a bit more in savings will position you to say, “I’d like to work with you, but for a project with this scope, I charge $XXXX. If you’re not able to swing that, I totally understand. Maybe we’ll have a chance to work together in the future.” Walkaway power. So yeah, find some doodad or dusty box and write a story that will make you smile or snort. Surprise yourself. I’m choosing between these two treasures: - Plastic bin full of old fireworks from last July - Spiderman bike my youngest outgrew Which one should I go with? More importantly, what are you going to sell?

Each freelancer has a “local cheat code," and I was reminded of this last week when I took my kids to get donuts. Since 1971 Thomas Donut & Snack Shop has frolicked in processed sugar and frying oil the way dolphins frolic in the sea. Or, on airbrushed t-shirts. It’s everything you ever wanted in an unhealthy breakfast in Panama City Beach, especially if you know how to skip the line. Now, before you get all judge-y, let me clarify. There’s a blue door you can barely see in my photo. Anyone can walk through it, no credentials or secret handshake required. Once inside, you can belly up to the counter and order your confections or, if you’re especially discerning, a Texas-style kolache. Tourists don’t know this, so they stack up like unbuttered pancakes outside to order at a different window. This was my plight until several years ago when I was standing behind several dozen people like an amateur dad and a local lady sidled up to me. “You can just go through that door and order inside,” she confided. Lo and behold, she was right. When I took my kids through the blue door of fritter fantasies last Friday, I found a short line of two folks. The guy directly in front of me turned and said with a smile, “So you know the local cheat code.” That got me to thinking, each of us has a local cheat code, not in our hometowns but some advantage intrinsic to who we are as individuals. I love freelancers. I don’t make that confession to be sentimental but because it’s true. I can’t help but care. These smart, creative, multipassionate, and hard-working people are my people, and I want to participate in their transformation. This work that doesn’t feel like work to me. It’s much closer to eating a donut with my eyes closed. My local cheat code (or blue door, if you like) is genuinely caring. The unlock for me was (finally) launching the Freelance Cake Community so that my business model was aligned with my wiring, talents, and preferences. A lot of the coaching I do, both one-on-one and in the community, involves gently helping advanced freelancers see that they’d be more satisfied if they rebuilt their businesses around the local cheat code. What’s your blue door? Seriously, brag a little. What’s effortless for you in how you serve clients that other people find hard, tiring, or tedious?

Of late, I’ve been thinking about how much uncertainty freelancers face. There's the usual uncertainty that comes with the freelance territory, an occupational hazard if you like. And there's the extra amount on top, the anti-cherry, thanks to the current geopolitical, economic, and technological environment. Things are crazy. Certainty is a fool’s errand under the best of circumstances. We know that, and yet we’ll wish that freelancing and life were more predictable, familiar, and comfortable. I see in myself a tendency to daydream and have dalliances with regret when I should be reminding myself, “What’s done is done” and preparing and positioning myself to capitalize on what is. Take AI, for example. Can we go back the way we came or is that way closed off forever? The mustard’s not going back in the bottle, friends. The question is, how do you and I adapt and make ourselves and our businesses anti-fragile instead of bemoaning what AI is doing to knowledge workers, including freelancers? Rumination isn’t strategy. Griping is cathartic but otherwise fruitless. What is most strategic for freelancers right now? Building core competency with the best tools available to you and picking up anti-fragility as a value, mindset, and compass. With that in mind, I’ve got 3 anti-fragility goals for you in this week's LinkedIn newsletter. Is becoming anti-fragile something you think about? If so, what does that look like for you?

One Wednesday a couple of years ago, I closed $20K+ in new engagements. Though the revenue was certainly welcome, the bigger breakthrough was the way I felt about the sales process. I used to loathe sales, or rather what I assumed “sales” was. It took me a while to come around to the idea that if you have a business, if you're a freelancer, you're in sales. There's no way around it, and if you let a distaste for sales turn into willful mediocrity and reinforce bad technique, then you hurt your business, your finances, and yourself. Thankfully, I met some folks who taught me that sales can be ethical, empathetic, and client-centric. Sales can be a form of service where you facilitate a process of self-discovery and help the other person even if you don't "get" anything in return. Sales can be enjoyable because you leave folks better off than when you found them. Sales can be something you feel good about getting better at. Check out this week's LinkedIn newsletter where I explain my approach to discovery calls. I don't have to pitch and I never feel weird or anxious beforehand.

Confession time: At times, I have compared myself to peers (first mistake) whom I considered less talented (debatable), have watched them progress faster in their careers, and have wondered what my problem was. That's the drawback of being multitalented: It gives you too many options. Because you can go so many directions, you end up directionless. Or, because you try so many things, you spread yourself too thin and don't build real momentum with any of them. Here's a question I have puzzled over: How can highly creative people find their way forward, especially if being multipassionate, multipotentialite, and perhaps a tad noncommittal ensures that you struggle to go all-in on anything? We may not know what we want to do with our lives (except keep them), yet we still need to make decisions about how to spend our time and what to do for work. If you're confused by what I've just written, this week's LinkedIn newsletter isn't for you. I appreciate the fact that you got this far. Please go hug the "unfocused" person in your life. If what I wrote resonates, then check out the newsletter. In it, I share the 6 concepts, or tools if you like, that have helped me find my way without always knowing my destination. The first 4 are the magic word, experiments, semesters, and career portfolio. Not all who wander are lost, and not all who are lost have to stay that way. (And remember that comparison is the great joykiller, my multi friend.)

There's only 1 thing to do with freelance clients who question your every decision. Learn from them. During this project with a one medispa owner, I became the glorified pencil, and my partner, the puppet paintbrush. It sure was tempting to write her off. Instead, we started asking why: Why did she not trust our point of view on important creative decisions? We pulled on that string until we unraveled the project back to the very first conversation. Oh! We hadn’t given her clear, compelling reasons to trust our POV more than her own, so why would we expect her to hand over creative control to us? She didn’t believe that she had EXPERTS guiding her. Other clients had trusted us, so when we made comparisons, we noticed some critical missteps. Here’s what we learned: - You can’t assume a referral knows your full capabilities. - You can’t assume new clients know how to be a good client for you. - You can’t assume new clients know and value the steps in your process. - You can’t assume they know what happens when you do steps out of order. - You can’t assume they’ve had satisfying experiences with talented, conscientious freelancers, consultants, and agencies in the past. My partner and I obviously wanted the opposite. We wanted clients to show up to discovery calls eager to work with us because they already trusted us. So we created a positioning deck, which we called our “Welcome” deck. We started sending it to clients before we got on discovery calls. A positioning deck can help you reinforce the perceptions you need to charge premium prices, discourage bad behavior, and shepherd clients to their desired outcome (and yours). This month, members of the Freelance Cake Community are focused on creating a positioning deck. I’m updating mine alongside them. Message me if you want to join us. If you’ve been getting pushback, ask yourself, “Are my clients signaling that they don’t believe they’re in good hands?” Then, ask, “What would they need to believe in order to be a good client for me?” Then, ask, “How do I instill that belief?” Sales and fulfillment are easier if you prove early and often that you’re trustworthy.

Here’s how I got over my fear of self-promotion: I wrote every day for at least 15 minutes. A daily commitment to writing accomplished several things: 1. Using ideas Every idea became less precious when I realized that I had an unlimited supply of them and any single idea could produce a dozen or more posts. 2. Learning mechanics I wrote many good pieces that made bad posts. A short story isn’t a poem isn’t a screenplay isn’t a LinkedIn post, so I had to get past my literary pretensions to learn the different conventions and mechanics of effective posts, such as hooks, stories, lists, and calls to action. 3. Refining process In the early days I worried that I’d misrepresent my own point of view, be misunderstood, and ring the troll dinner bell: “Chow time! Come and get it!” This anxiety caused me to overedit, but meanwhile, I was working out the kinks in my ideas and process. 4. Publishing more It takes lots of posts published to get to the top 10% of topics and ideas that resonate most with the people you’re trying to reach, and you can’t get to the outliers without publishing a lot. 5. Overcoming fear Some people are going to willfully misunderstand you. They’re going to say unfair things. They’re going to treat you in a way they don’t want to be treated. It’s going to happen. It’s a rite of passage. Plan on it. When it happens, you can take trolling as confirmation of your courage. You actually overcame fear and put yourself out there. On the flip side, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to say the wrong thing. You’re going to feel the fire of a thousand suns in your face as you debate whether to delete a post that didn’t go… well. Believe it or not, you can delete a post or issue an apology. You can also delete comments and block people who are being ugly because they’ve got more fear, insecurity, arrogance, and self-righteousness in them than love. Your house, your rules. This insight was important for Austin, the recovering people pleaser and nice guy: “Not everyone is going to love you.” Be more committed to the minds, hearts, and lives you can change for the better than your fear of injury. You’re going to pick up scars and bruises, so start today.

Though I enjoy freelance writing, I prefer to sell strategy. Here are 9 reasons why clients buy it: 1. Revenue or growth is flat. 2. The old strategy isn’t working as well as it used to. 3. They don’t have tons of in-house marketing expertise. 4. They have so many options and ideas that it’s hard to pick. 5. They have no shortage of opportunities and no clear outlier. 6. They have a budget, but they aren’t sure how to maximize it. 7. A sole founder needs someone to bounce ideas around with. 8. They need to tighten up their brand or define it for the first time. 9. They have goals, but they’re struggling to see the path forward or they don’t know the best sequences of steps and projects. That list could easily be 10 times longer because the problems strategy solves get more specific based on the type of strategy. Strategy is something we talk about every week in the Freelance Cake Community, and learning how to sell and deliver it was a major turning point in my business in early 2016. I was reminded of this last Friday when I was in Nashville for a 1-Day Strategy Sprint with a client. We worked hard, laughed a lot, and decided what she is going to do and why. It felt more like play than work. It felt like being human together. So yeah, I prefer to sell strategy. With the AI mustard not going back into the bottle, I believe more freelancers should be swimming up the value stream and learning strategy. *** P.S. DM me about the community if you're not a part of one talking about how to future-proof your business.

Here’s the easiest way to get repeat freelance clients: Quarterly check-ins. Instead of hoping you’ll remember to follow up with past clients, with hopes of getting more work, make it an every-90-days thing. Either send yourself an email reminder that you keep snoozing to reappear every three months, or automate reminders using a CRM. Reach out using the email template below and ask for 20 minutes to reconnect. Tell clients in advance that you’ve got 4 questions: 1. What’s going well with your business and marketing? 2. What isn’t going well? 3. How can we work together more effectively next time? 4. What’s on the horizon for you? Why these questions? The first two icebreaker questions will be easy for them to answer. The third question gives both parties a chance to clear the air. Sometimes, you need to bring areas for improvement to the client’s attention, and sometimes, they need to vocalize what they’ve been thinking: “I wish Austin would send us a status report every Monday so we’re not left wondering if everything is on track.” “The way Austin formats GDocs is confusing for our marketing team.” “I wish he would respond to emails within 48 hours.” Otherwise healthy relationships die by a thousand paper cuts, and you preserve and deepen client relationships by creating an opportunity to course-correct before small issues can grow into big problems. By doing this when neither party is upset, both you and your client will be more fair and constructive in how you deliver feedback and critique. Finally, the fourth question reveals new opportunities you can sell into. Hello, repeat business! So yeah, don’t hope you’ll remember to follow up. Instead, schedule quarterly check-ins. Below is the email template I’ve used. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hi Darth Maul, Let's get a quarterly check-in in the calendar. It's something I like to do with clients to talk about what's going well, what needs improvement, and any new priorities you have. Do you have any availability on Friday, April 12 (I'm wide open) or Monday, April 15? Or, you’re welcome to use my scheduling link if that’s easier: [link]. Austin

If you’re getting bored with your freelance business, you’re on the right track. Take it from a guy who has a near-pathological tendency to stop doing certain things when they start working: - My sales process is effective, but it feels mechanical. Let’s experiment! - My cold outreach emails got replies, but sending dozens is monotonous. I’ll stop. - Tech leaders will buy my content marketing retainers , but I have to chase them to get reviews, decisions, and approvals. Instead of remedying that with better process, I’ll start over. Once I solve the creative or intellectual puzzle, I find more of the same to be monotonous, tedious, and draining. Didn’t I get into freelancing precisely because I dislike repetitive work? I’m endlessly fascinated, so I chase rabbits instead of expanding my orchard. Over the years, this boredom allergy has caused me to abandon projects and ventures almost as soon as they were getting traction. A conversation Alex Hormozi had with a friend who exited a sanitation company helped me recognize this subtle form of self-sabotage. Here’s the paraphrased version: “What are you going to do now?” Alex asked. “I’m going to build another sanitation company and then sell it to the same company who bought my last one,” the friend replied. “Aren’t you bored with that?” “I don’t look to my business for my entertainment.” This may sound crazy, but before I heard Alex tell that story, it hadn't occurred to me that expecting my business to entertain me might be hurting it. The idea that I was giving up competitive advantages as soon as I had gained them hadn’t occurred to me either. Though I recognized that a lack of focus can hurt freelancers and consultants, I hadn’t connected all the dots: - Variety is the spice of life, and it creates complexity in business. - Novelty keeps us entertained, and it distracts us from doubling down on what works. - Boredom isn’t the enemy of meaningful work but rather a natural byproduct of repetition. And repetition of the right things in the right direction is the basis of a thriving business. So if your freelance business is sputtering right now, ask yourself the hard questions: 1. What was working that I stopped doing? 2. Did I stop because it truly stopped working or because I got bored? 3. Was I bored because my heart wasn’t in it or because my processes made it harder? I’m not suggesting that you build a boring business you hate. I am suggesting that boredom can be the sign that you may need to build better systems and process. You may need to simply double down on what’s working by removing friction through automation and delegation. Don’t avoid boredom. Let it tell you what to optimize. P.S. If I had read this post written by someone else ten years ago, I would have ignored it. I hope you’ll be less stubborn than I was. P.P.S. If on the other side of optimization, your heart STILL isn't in it, fine. Scuttle the business with full awareness of what you're doing and why.

Tell me you're a freelancer with ADHD without telling me you're a freelancer with ADHD. I'll start: 49 tabs open at the same time... on a slow day.

Prospecting is like hitting yourself in the face... It feels so good when you stop for the day. Keep going, my freelance friends.

I’m thrilled for my friend Sara Howard who just published Beyond Solo, which every freelancer should read. Here’s why… So many freelancers and consultants feel stuck because they don’t know all their options. This book is about understanding and weighing your options. You may decide you want more: Money Impact Satisfaction Time freedom Or, you may decide you want less: Stress Busyness Complexity Calendar DENSITY Ultimately, the best business for creative entrepreneurs isn’t the one that spits out the most profit. The best business is the one that you love because it enables you to live a beautiful life. As Sara observes in the Introduction, “Strategy is not just a series of decisions about what to do. It’s a conscious choice about what not to do.” I hope you’ll buy the book today, devour it, and get clarity around your strategy. I'll put a link in the comments. Sara is speaking the Growth Without Burnout Summit for advanced writers that I’m putting on in May. She’s planning to do live Q&A afterward. Bring all your questions.

Earning $10K as a freelancer is easier than you think. Here are the 3 steps: 1. Fix any limiting beliefs and cognitive biases so you can always make good decisions. 2. Fix your scarcity mindset this weekend so you can start charging what you’re worth. 3. Do excellent work, no exceptions, even when clients would be satisfied with B-. 4. Get 9 hours of excellent sleep so you have good health, energy, and focus. 5. Always be marketing, even when you’re sad, sick, uncertain what you want next, or overcommitted on the client side. 6. Pick a niche where there’s no competition and the decision-makers have lots of money and value the outcomes you deliver and like you as a person. 7. Master branding, positioning, marketing, copywriting, pricing, packaging, process design, project management, cashflow management, strategic planning, delegation, and one-armed pushups. 7b. Stop caring so much what other people think and ask Pepper Potts to tie you up like a pretzel, cover you in beer cheese, and deliver you to the office of your dream client where they’ll shake their heads in happy disbelief and say, “Take my money.” 7c. It’s all about the lifestyle! Whenever you get bored, want a break, or need to feel the sand between your toes, tell your endlessly patient clients you’ll BRB and spend a couple of weeks tossing back fruity drinks, taking selfies, and sharing income screenshots. 6 weeks to 6 figures. Freelancing is. the. best. Sign up here: [tracking link]. P.S. If you’re already independently wealthy because of freelancing and you think I forgot a step, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. I’m just trying to pay it forward because I’m a good person.

On Wednesday I sent a freelance client a draft , and she replied, “This is perfection.” Dangit, my tail wagged. I’m such a sucker for words of affirmation. Did you get any compliments or encouragement this week? Do share.