Freelancers: 8 Things You’re Too Afraid To Ask For

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 342

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. Has there ever been anything in your life where you know you wanted it, but you just couldn't ask for it? You couldn't make yourself ask for it?

I think as humans, we're wired to be terrified to ask for things, whether we don't think we deserve it, or we're scared of what someone's going to say, or we have a fear of rejection. And so we miss out on so many good things by just not asking for it. And this is particularly bad for freelancers, because if you don't ask for things, you miss out on clients, you miss out on friends, you miss out on more money, you miss out on so many good things that we could be getting. And we end up, especially as freelancers, we end up with fewer clients, fewer friends, less money, more problems in life, more problems in business, a less fulfilling life in many ways, because you rarely get what you haven't asked for. If this episode comes out on time, it'll be Christmas Eve when this episode airs, and it's like wanting something at Christmas and hoping you get it, but you never ask anyone for it. You might get it, but you probably won't. That's that specific thing that you want. Or maybe a better example is you want to get married, but you never propose to anyone. That's a tough thing to make happen, especially as a man, in America at least. So in this episode, I want to talk about eight things you should be asking for as a freelancer, but you're just not asking for. And just by asking for these things, you'll get more clients, more money, you'll have a better business. There's so many benefits to just asking. So before we dive in, if this is your first time listening to the podcast, hi, I'm Brian Hood. Merry Christmas. Or if this came out late, happy new year. I have built four or five different six-figure income streams. I've built a seven-figure income stream in this business. And I earned over seven figures in my about decade of freelancing. And I consider myself a blue collar freelancer. That is where, as a freelancer, there's people that work with big names, huge industries. They work with name brand businesses or big musicians or artists in the music scene. I didn't come up from that. I came from what I call blue collar. I worked with small names. I was a music producer, small bands, some signed, many unsigned. And so I feel like I forged a very unique path in this world. And so this podcast is for you if you want to make more money from your creative skills and you want to do it without selling your soul and maybe do it in a non-traditional way. This podcast is absolutely for you. Over the years, I've gotten really good at asking for things. I am assertive. I am confident in many ways. I still have my own issues. I still have my own insecurities, just like everyone does. But if there's something that I want, I'm not afraid to ask for. And so I was planning out this episode today. I'm just like, man, there's so many things freelancers just never ask for. Things that can really change your business if you do these things right. So I'm going to give you eight different things that I think are absolutely worth asking for in your business that lead to great things. There's tons of other ones out there, but these are the eight that I really think will push the needle for in your business. Probably the most obvious thing, the first one is just asking for higher rates. That's a start here. Many freelancers get stuck on this revenue plateau because they're too afraid to raise their rates, either with their existing clients or with new clients. But especially for those of you on recurring retainers with clients where you have this monthly recurring revenue coming in, it feels nice, but you feel like you're overworked and underappreciated for the amount of money that you're getting. And so you never ask for an increase or ask for more money. In pretty much every case that I've seen with the clients we've worked with, when you ask for more money, you get paid more money. I've seen people ask for double. I've seen people triple their rates. I've seen people just do small. I'm putting small in air quotes. 20, 30, 50% rate increases. Still get yeses from their clients. And so one of the things that we are the worst at is perpetually undervaluing our services. So the first thing, if you have not raised rates recently, or you have a client that's been around with you for a while, you haven't asked for more money from them recently, let's start asking for more money. Easy way to do this, just to give you some kind of tactics on this, especially for clients who have been with you for a long time. This is easier to do on new clients, so I'll kind of just raise your rates, ask for more, and you're done there. But for those of you with long-lasting relationships with clients that have come back to you again and again for reoccurring clients, or clients that are on a monthly retainer for you for recurring clients, there's kind of two different approaches for raising rates or approaching the rates conversation. The first one is, hey, it's been a pleasure working with you for the last two years, last three years, last five years. Over the years, I've been raising my rates steadily with all the clients we work with. However, I've kept your rate low because I've appreciated how long you've been with me. However, moving forward, I'm going to need to raise the rates to X amount, in order to properly invest back into my skills and my services and my own business. However, if this is going to materially affect your life or your business, please let me know, and we can look at other options. And those options could be not raising the rates as much or at all, depending on the conversation, or finding another freelancer to pass off those clients too. That's one way to do this. And that's for, again, the clients where you feel like you have raised your rates over time with other clients, and then you've got these people that are kind of stuck at this old rate. The other kind of scenario we run into is where you've had a lot of clients, where you have a full roster of clients and they're all in this old rate, and you haven't raised rates in a long time. But I got this kind of framework from Alex Samosi from his book, Jim Launch Secrets, where he's raising rates on his Jim members. When you have like 100 something Jim members, you generally are going to send an email out to them or a letter or something like that. So this wording is kind of from that, but shift this into a one-on-one conversation. It goes something like this. This is all paraphrased. It's something like this. Hey, client, been a pleasure working with you. In order to invest in 2025 and all the things that we want to do, which are XYZ123, you might be hiring on help, it might be investing in your skills in these different areas, these different certifications, or anything that's going to benefit the end client, the client who you're raising rates on, in order to justify the rate changes. So you just list out those things that you're going to be investing in or doing in 2025 In order to make this happen, I have to raise rates. And the reason I'm in doing these things in 2025 is because I want to always offer the best possible service that I can. But in order to do this, I've got to raise my rates to X amount because I don't feel right keeping my skill set or keeping my service level or keeping my team where it's at. If this is going to a material effect your life or material effect your business, please let me know and we can make something happen or we can look at other options. There's probably another way of saying that. Those are two different kinds of ways you can do that. Again, word it to your own needs, but this is a really good framework to go from. Where this is going to materially affect your life or materially affect your business, you can explore other options, whether it's keeping the rates low for that client or finding another freelancer, another service provider to fulfill those services at the rates that they can't afford. There has to be some amount of detachment, especially in B2B space, where you're working with other businesses and they don't have the budget for your services. That's not necessarily your problem. It's only your problem if you keep your rates artificially low in order to placate those people who have too low of a budget. In many cases, you're better off just sticking to your guns. This is your new rate. If they can't afford it, they're no longer a client, and go find another client to fill that spot because there is only so many slots you have in your calendar as a freelancer. So that's the first thing to ask for. They're not all going to be this long, but that's the first one, asking for higher rates. If 2025 rolls around, it's a great time to do so. Number two, second thing to ask for is ask for referrals. Many freelancers just wait around hoping their clients refer people to them, call that hope marketing. You can get more referrals just by asking. When the project's done, or if you're at a high point where the client's really happy, that's just a great time to ask for a referral. And the easiest way to ask that is to just flatter and ask, hey, Mr. Client, you are one of the best clients I've ever worked with, or I've loved working with you for X reasons, X, Y, and Z. I wish I could just work with clones of you for the rest of my life. Do you happen to know of anyone who is similar to you? Just something like that, make them feel appreciated, flattered, and then go in for the ask, because you truly do, if you're asking for referrals, and you want more people like that. So this is a great framework to use when asking for a referral from people. So flatter and ask, that's the second thing to ask for in 2025 Ask for more referrals. See how short that was compared to the pricing one. There's so much junk around pricing that I have to talk around because freelancers are terrified of that. Referrals are a little less scary, especially if you get to flatter the client first. So that one's got a little less stuff. But let's go to ask number three, and that is ask your clients if they need other services. So when you sell a client on something, they come to you for service A or service one, and you know they need other services from you or you think they might need other services from you, just ask them. This is called cross-sell or upsell. You can do this during the sales process, the initial consultation, or you can do it after you've closed the client and after you've fulfilled on the service, and then when they need the next service. Again, every freelancer is different, so you can kind of put yourself in the situation. But when a client comes to you, you generally have a lot of skill sets, especially if you're niche down. You may be hyper focused on, let's just say branding for online e-commerce businesses or something like that. I've talked about this in past episodes, but generally as a designer, you have a lot of other skill sets. You can sell them. We have an entire episode about this on episode 335 My favorite seven ways to make every client worth more. In that example, I gave a web design example. And so a client came to you for a website, and you sell them on the website, but then in the actual process, you realize their branding sucks, so we need to actually rebrand them, do all their branding assets. Then we realized that they need ongoing maintenance with the website. They need copywriting to get better copy on the site, for the conversions to go up, et cetera, et cetera. There's a long list of things that you can sell them once you get the foot in the door with the one service. And many freelancers, they just say, the client can be for this, and so I'm going to just sell them what they want versus selling them the thing that they need. A client comes to you for an outcome, and they may think the outcome is a new website. They may think the new outcome is just an album. They may think the new outcome is just a new branding package, right? But the outcome is actually something that that leads to. They want a new website so that, what? An e-com to say they can sell more products. What else do they need in order to sell more products? They need better copy on their site. They need conversion rate optimization. They need a faster loading website so that when they have someone click to the website, it's not taking forever to load and people bounce off the site. So if those are the things they need, put a package together of the things that they actually need in order to get what they want. If you're afraid of losing the sale, that's where you can just close them on the thing that they want. And then along the process, you realize, hey, here's like 30 other things you need. Let's talk through some of these things to see if we can get you closer to your goals. So we're not just sending your website and sending you off into the sunset without getting what you actually came here for. So that is the third thing to ask for. That is, ask them if they need other services from you. And again, think about the things they need, not just things they want. Many times as a freelancer, we are the consultant for the client, where we have to educate them on the things that they think they want or don't think they need, and why those things are important to them, and why other services that you have to offer are going to be an important part of getting them to the goals. I think that e-commerce store example is a really good example that illustrates this, where the client comes for one thing, but they actually need 10 other things in order to get the goals that they want. Thing number four to ask for.