Offering Recurring Subscriptions As A Freelancer | The Holy Grail Of Freelancing

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 306

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.

I want to start this episode out a little weird today. I'm going to ask you some questions. I want you to think about this.

What if you knew every single month, how much money you are going to earn as a freelancer within a factor of like 10%, plus or minus? What if you knew every single month exactly how many clients you're going to have that month, and next month, and the month after that? And then what if client acquisition, instead of being this ongoing treadmill that you're on for your entire life, what if it's more of a season or a series of small seasons?

If those things sound appealing to you, it makes sense. I think all freelancers want those things, but the problem is most freelancers are never going to get those things because most freelancers make the exact same mistake.

We offer one-time projects.

Mr. Client comes to us and says, hey, Mr. Freelancer, do you want to get paid for this thing? And me, I'm like, yes, I want to get paid for this thing. And they're like, okay, cool, do the thing. Okay, I will do the thing. I did the thing, now I get paid for the thing, and then we wash our hands and we part ways. That is the extent of most freelance relationships that I've ever had and that most people will ever have.

And we're going to make a case today that there's a better way to run our businesses. Because the truth is, if that's the way we keep running our businesses, we're going to start every single month at $0. We have $0 of revenue, zero clients, zero projects. And then every month, we have to fight to change that. We have to struggle to earn our keep every single month.

So in May, I'm focused on keeping my clients happy, doing the projects that I've built up to this point, the clients that I've gathered through my client acquisition efforts this month.

While I'm also supposed to fill my calendar for June and maybe some in July as well.

And if I don't do that, I make $0 in June or $0 in July. And outside of getting a day job with a salary, the only real way to have this sort of predictable income and have truly stable income in your life as a freelancer, the only way to do that is to have a recurring offer of some sort. And we can call this a bunch of different things. You can call this a subscription package. You can call this a retainer. You can call it a recurring package or a monthly package. People call this different things.

But at the end of the day, and the thing that I like to call it in my head at least, made popular by the book, The Automatic Customer, is an automatic customer. In our case, it's freelancers, automatic clients.

So the client relationship is very similar as before where the client comes to me and says, hey, Mr. Freelancer, do you want to work on this thing? And I say, yes. Hey, Mr. Client, I would love to work on this thing. Here's my recurring pricing package. Mr. Client says, yes, great. That's what I need. I didn't even know I needed it, but now I know I need it. We shake hands and then we start a recurring subscription.

And until Mr. Client is either done with me or done with the needs that I fulfill or hates me for some reason, they keep paying me every single month. They're an automatic client. So I know that this month I have that income in the bank. I know that next month I will have that same client and that same revenue. And the month after that and the month after that. So my shift as a freelancer, as a business owner, goes from continuous client acquisition to now I can just simply focus on filling up my roster. You only have so many slots you can fill on any sort of retainer package as a freelancer. You can fill five, 10, 15, 20, depending on what your pricing and packaging is. So you just fill your roster up. It's a season of client acquisition. And at that point, you know your workload every single month. You know how many clients you have every single month. You know how much you're gonna earn every single month. And the only time you ever really need to worry about client acquisition is when a client cancels.