#24 - Jay Clouse of Unreal Collective
[#24] - Freelancing School with Jay Clouse
Jay Clouse is a writer, podcaster, and entrepreneur. Jay is the creator of Freelancing School, which provides the training and community to help people make a living freelancing. With three courses, coaching, and community support, Freelancing School has the tools to help creatives thrive as business owners.
In this episode, Jay and Conor discuss the fundamentals to help freelancers earn more and the techniques for building a business to support personal lifestyle goals. Key points covered in the episode include;
Introduction to freelancing and climbing the freelance ladder.
Having control in your professional path.
The stove of cash flow.
Being comfortable with vulnerability and the power of asking.
The value of relationships.
The importance of effective communication and building trust.
Engaging with your advocates.
The benefits of themed days and calendar planning.
The impact of having to-do lists and task tracking systems in place.
An insight into networking and joining dynamic communities.
Jay’s top tips for freelancers.
Jay is also the founder of Unreal Collective, a community for founders, freelancers, and creators. The flagship product is a 12-week accelerator program.
Jay hosts Creative Elements, a podcast for creatives in the trenches of building their businesses, and upside, a podcast about start-up investing outside of Silicon Valley. You can connect with Jay on Twitter @jayclouse or sign up for his weekly newsletter for creatives.
Connect with Jay Clouse:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayclouse/
Connect with First 10 Podcast host Conor McCarthy:
http://twitter.com/TheFirst10Pod
http://www.linkedin.com/in/comccart/
Resources:
Creative Elements Podcast: http://jayclouse.com/podcast/
Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, freelancers, freelance, business, podcast, clients, started, unreal, projects, community, courses, create, building, find, relationships, realised, jay, deadlines, trust, programme
SPEAKERS
Conor McCarthy, Jay Clouse
Jay Clouse 00:01
I just want to help you earn more put a business in place that supports the lifestyle goals you have, which is probably giving you more time, whether it's creating digital products or content, or just spending more time with your family. So I made it agnostic of the discipline you're doing just to help you sell more projects earn more.
Conor McCarthy 00:21
Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the first 10 podcast. I'm your host, Conor McCarthy. And in each episode, I interviewed Business Builders on their first 10 customers, who they were they found them how they talked to them, or what effect they had in their business so that you can learn what worked and what didn't. When I'm not recording podcasts, I help Business Builders find their first 10 customers and grow their businesses. I do that with one to one coaching, and a series of online workshops. please do check out my website, Conor mccarthy.me. For more details, and to sign up to my regular newsletter. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Jay Klaus Jay's website says that he quote, helps creatives thrive as business owners, unquote. And while that's true, Jay actually does so much more. And we really get into what those things are on this podcast. Jay is a true freelancer, he climbed the rungs of the solo freelance ladder to this point where he's created a series of assets in the form of courses, blogs, podcasts, etc. His courses are on topics such as podcasting, selling for freelancers, marketing for freelancers. And as we talk about these things are really must have for all freelancers out there. I'll include links to those in the shownotes. We start by getting into Jays early days, and the value that he found in his close relationships when he was looking for those first projects, as well as figuring out who to approach to work with. He has a great framework though chaturbate. We also talk about the power of the ask, and as well, earning trust from yourself. First, we talk a lot about the idea of finding balance as freelancers which is so important, especially when we juggle so many plates in our businesses. We talk about community at Jay started a community called unreal collective A number of years ago, was when I first met him, and he recently got acquired by Pat Flynn. So we get into the weeds of what it truly looks like to create, grow and manage a community of people. J really walks the walk. As I said, he has personally created a bunch of resources that have helped a tonne of freelancers launch successful businesses. And apart from just being a great guy, as you'll hear on this podcast, Jay really is a model for understanding what it takes to run a great freelance business. Also, there's a secret surprise in the show notes. And it's something Jay was kind enough to share something that he used when he was starting out, that will help all freelancers listening to this episode on their journey. So please enjoy my chat with J class. So Jake lives First of all, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be with us here today.
Jay Clouse 02:53
Anytime I can hang out with you, Connor, I'm up for it. So I said about to go before we started recording, like it's kind of hard to throw in that era Do you and what you do, because you do a lot. So you want to give us a quick summation of your business journey, even in the last few years. And we can we can jump in at one point. Totally. And it's been pretty, pretty much tied to my own journey of expanding my view of what entrepreneurship is. Because I started with a software company that sold tickets. That was in 2014 2015, we sold that company. And then I took a job as a product manager at a healthcare startup that was super venture backed. and realise I didn't want to freelance forever. In fact, I wanted to freelance for as short a time as possible, because I would rather decouple my time from how I'm earning an income, and instead focus on building more leveraged passive assets. And so that became online courses. It became content, which is mostly it's not a course it's either a workshop or the podcast that I do now. And so today, I mostly identify with the idea of being a creator, because most of the time I'm writing or I'm podcasting. I'm studying other creators through my work, and really focusing on building community online, as as something that's interesting to me. But that's always evolving. And I'm sure that will change over time as well. But probably the core of being a creator and trying to make an independent living from my work is going to be the most consistent part. Okay,
Conor McCarthy 04:51
it's so interesting because this is this whole season of the first 10 podcasts is the freelance season. So it's really exciting to talk to you Who has been a true freelancer, and you've done something, you've done a few things that a lot of freelancers I meet, want to ultimately do, you know, have paid courses have community elements have a body of content that the they're kind of proud of it is that they're working on their behalf. If you like, when you go back to the start of your personal kind of freelance career back when you were starting off getting your first 10 customers, can you tell any stories from back then that you could remember about getting those those clients, those customers, I remember
Jay Clouse 05:31
probably the greatest gift being that I had a good friend of mine, who was just so excited that I was going back on my own again, because he and I were building businesses and parallel software businesses. And then when we sold that company, and I ultimately took a job, he continued building that business. But we branched off each other's paths a little bit, because he continued to be independent. And when I left that company, he was just really excited for me and happy for me and supportive of me, and was my first client. And I don't know how intentionally that was. But I think he was probably, in some regards, trying to just show me that I could do it, because I hadn't actually just like, sold my time or expertise for money up to that point. And there's something really magical about being able to prove that you can do that. And so he was starting a podcast, ironically enough, and I was helping him to produce that show in the beginning and make a good show and, and get the artwork, right. Then I had another also friend from college, who also was supporting me in finding Funny enough, the sweater that I'm wearing is, this logo is the entrepreneurship organisation at the university, one of them. And the other guy was starting a company and he didn't know what to name it. So he gave me He gave me a project basically, to come up with some suggestions for names for that company. And I created this like really cool spreadsheet that I would take like a root word, or take a word, and then I would have that word plus the root of that word. And then it would add, like every prefix, you could think of every suffix, you could think of just like create some sort of variation. And then I would check and see like, which one of these is fun and makes sense. And seems like a good name, that's a good jacket, see, like, is the.com available the.co really, really fun project. But those guys have given me those projects really early on, as my freelancing I think gave me a lot of confidence that, okay, it's possible, people will actually just pay me to help them with things. And I could probably get enough projects like that I could make do. And at that time, I was still very much thinking that entrepreneurship was software. And so the idea was, I will just freelance enough to afford the time and space to figure out what is the next company that I want to build. And that never really quite happened.
Conor McCarthy 07:51
He never got out of the out of that lane, I guess. But you've built something, you've built many things that are definitely bigger than you than you in person. If that makes sense.
Jay Clouse 08:01
Yeah, well, I just realised that I could build assets that weren't software. But that could be leveraged in a similar way. Like, I could use that time and space to create podcasts, or I can use that time and space to create courses. And now all of those are assets that can sell. And what was beautiful about all this, when I was doing the first company or even the job that I had, as a product manager, I was working with a lot of designers and engineers, and to make the things that I wanted to make, I had to go through other people to ultimately create the thing. And it was very freeing to find that I could make content for lack of a better word. That was my vision, and I had total control. And I could make it real. And I realised that was what I wanted to do. Probably forever.
Conor McCarthy 08:51
Wow. Okay, that was to be a great feeling when you realise Oh, I can I can do this. And I can start and keep going and get better as I go and build things you've got, you've got a great positioning statement. After say, like on your website, it's I help creatives thrive as business owners. And I think positioning is something that when you're starting out as a freelancer can be difficult. Because, you know, as you mentioned, you you worked with some friends for your first couple of jobs and you did this one naming job. But you didn't ultimately end up doing that. So did you go through many iterations of I do this for this, or I do this for those people over there.
Jay Clouse 09:32
I'm still going through it. And candidly, like, I'll probably change that positioning statement in the next month. If you don't treat your freelance business like a business, you're going to end up working more hours and you've ever worked. You're going to be earning less than you've ever earned. And you're in a worse position, actually. And when you when you share that with people, usually they relate because like yeah, I feel like I'm working all the time. And I'm not happier. I don't have more time. I'm not making more. It's like well If we really looked at, you know, the rigour that you're putting into running your business, there's probably a lot of holes. In terms of prospecting and finding new clients, a lot of people wait too long to try to find new clients or create new projects. And they're in this constant state of like Panic of, I gotta find that next projects. And then they go into overtime, like working like crazy and talking to a tonne of people because they need to project tomorrow. Whereas if you have a little bit more rigour and process around your your sales pipeline, and even how you manage your finances, this can be much slower and more sustained and predictable. And give you that time that you're looking for. That is you're saying, You're saying all the magic stuff that I totally agree with? And but I also noticed like to be on the other side of that kind of going. They said like dirty words to me, but they are they are the business, weirdly enough, the projects and the clients and the relationships are kind of the the exhaust at the end of all, that of all the good planning and the good systems. Was there a moment where you, I mean, I don't I don't assume this came to you in a flash. But was there a moment where you kind of went, Oh, this is I got to pay as much attention to this as I do. The projects that I'm creating for the clients. Yeah, I ran out of money. My first my first year after I got out of MBA, and I started doing unreal, this accelerator that I was putting together, I started doing that. And I set up the model of the business that I would work with 15 to 20 people for a three week period, two to three times a year. And so it was very understood to me that if I have 15 to 20 people, that's going to cover my expenses, and that is good. But then I immediately need to start another cohort at the price that I'm able to charge to cover my expenses. Again, what I miss calculated was the calendar, actually, my first my first paid cohort that year was in the fall. And it wrapped up around October. And I realised there is no way I'm going to get 15 people to sign up for a 12 week intensive programme through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. So that model didn't work. And I ran out of cash. And I realised Oh, I need to find some projects. And I got lucky, another person that I actually had known for years from this club. I just chatted with people that were close to me. And this is, you know, spoiler a lot of how I got my first time customers, I had conversations with people I already knew who already knew liked and trusted me. And I felt comfortable being vulnerable with them. When I would ask, you know, how are things going for your business? And they would tell me, they would then usually say How are things going for you. And there's a point at the end of that year where I was just like, things are really good, unreal, went really well. But I miss calculated my own cash flow. And I'm not gonna go do another programme until January. So I have a couple of months here where I have time, and no cash coming in. And that guy hired me on retainer, and said, Well, I know you're good at this. And this because I've seen you do it, I love your website, I love the way you do email helped me rebuild my website, and how many put in some systems for my email, and taught me a couple things. One, the fastest way to find a new client project is to go to people who already know like, and trust you and you can be like, pretty open with and like, you can just have a much more honest conversation. And to if you don't watch your cash flow, and understand that we're how this is all gonna work, you can find yourself in a bad position really quickly. Like, I'm somebody who will often run at something. And I'll touch the stove to realise, oh, I shouldn't touch that stove. But once I touch the stove, I figure out how do I make sure I never touch that stove again. And I touched the stove of cashflow. And I hadn't realised how to never do.
Conor McCarthy 13:57
This type of cash flow might end up being the title of this episode. It's pretty, it's a great mental image. That is, you know, the know, like trust framework, if you like is is such a great one. And I think it's often approached or thought of in the sense of it's the trust piece really. It's like oh, I need to find people who trust me and what I do, but what you've just said, I don't think I've ever heard it expressed that light before you kind of went from a place of vulnerability and being honest and saying, You know what, I actually need work, which I think a lot of freelancers sounds like a needy statement. But in lots of cases that you'd have need to make the ask and that can feel scary.
Jay Clouse 14:37
And I wasn't asking him even specifically like, Can you give me work? I just felt like our relationship was strong enough that business owner to business owner, I could say, here's where I'm at. And he kind of filled in the dots actually of Well, I know you can help me with this. So I'll hire you to do that. The other thing that I like to talk about but haven't talked about in a while when somebody hires you It's because they believe you are elevated on like a skill spectrum from where they are, you know, I think of it like ladders against a wall. And each ladder represents some sort of skill. Maybe it's building a website or doing email. On those two ladders, I was a couple rungs above this guy, and he knew it. And he knew he could hire me because I would be better at it. There are a million ladders that he's higher than me, he's better at hiring, he's better at outsourcing. And I think a lot of times we we get kind of afraid to be vulnerable in these conversations, because we think that it's just one absolute ladder of like, Am I worth hiring? And we think like, why would this person hire me, they're so impressive. But chances are like, if you're ahead of them on a couple of these rungs, they would rather hire you, then try to invest in the time to get as good at that skill. So you can just basically say, like, I can do these things. And I know these relate to your business. You know, can we talk about that? Is there some opportunity here? And be kind of Frank, and if you know, somebody, you have a relationship like I had with this guy, you can be very frank. And that's very valuable in the beginning, because if he says no, I also would have felt comfortable to say, Well, why not unknown, he would have given me like real feedback. And that's hard when you're having like a first time conversation or just sending a proposal to a client. Useful, probably a good idea to try to do but that type of candour i think is positive.
Conor McCarthy 16:28
Hmm, yeah. That's fascinating. And did you ever did you ever reach a point with any client, where, you know, they trusted you so much that they keep giving you more and more work, which consultant which is great. But sometimes you maybe need to put in some boundaries or some guardrails to make sure that you don't end up spreading yourself too thin, or
Jay Clouse 16:48
most of my clients actually. Because, and this goes for both unreal, but even some of the freelance stuff that I did. I strive to just be the best freelancer, contractor person anybody ever works with like, and I'm thinking about it very holistically, like, I want to have the clearest communication, I want to make things the most efficient, I want to make as much of this relationship as possible just feel like magic, like it's effortless. And when you strive to hit those bars like that stands out, there are just a lot of people who don't follow through on deadlines, or the things that they say they're going to do. They're flaky, they're flighty, you can't, you can't like get a hold of them. When you are communicative. And you hit deadlines, that sets you so far apart, that people like want to hold on to you so strongly, because there's some innate amount of onboarding that goes into any type of work relationship. And if they hire somebody else down the road, they have to redo that onboarding, here's how we work, here's who to communicate with, here's like, our standards and our practices. Nobody wants to do that over and over again. So if they find somebody that they've already done the work of getting them up to speed, and that person delivers what they say they're going to do when they're going to do it. That is so valuable to those people. And we often underestimate, especially people who are doing that we often underestimate how valuable how valuable that is. And we could probably earn more if we recognised that as as valuable as it is because people would pay more to keep you around, than to go through the process of onboarding somebody else. And hoping the quality is as good as yours is,
Conor McCarthy 18:26
yeah, I love that there's probably a handful of ways that outside of the body of the piece of work you're doing that you can add 10 20% to whatever project you're doing, even if it's striving for such clear communication, or just just being on time, just being punctual. There ways to add value that are free, essentially,
Jay Clouse 18:48
yeah, we'd like to work with who we like to work with. So if you're somebody that people like to work with, you're going to be in a really good spot, you just kind of have to get your foot in the door in the first place. And, you know, we talked about this know, like and trust factor. These people are your advocates, whether they hire you or not people who already know you, who already like you who already trust you, they are your advocates, to people around them to themselves even. And it's so much faster, to go to your advocates first and see if there's a way you can collaborate. You know, I don't even think of finding clients as finding clients. I think of it as creating clients or creating projects, because I go to the people in my life that I feel like would be potentially good clients, because they're business owners because they're doing things that are interesting. And I have conversations with them to understand what they're doing, where they're going. If they have some challenges that are intending they're aware of, and if I can plug in and solve those challenges, boom, I just created a client project. They didn't have to go out searching for somebody, they didn't have to do any price shopping. They just realised Oh, I have a problem. Jesus has a solution. I trust Jay, I know he'll do a good job. Perfect. This makes it easy for me.
Conor McCarthy 19:56
Yeah, that makes that makes so much sense. I hope you're enjoying this Episode and that there's some actionable and insightful advice that you can take out to your business, helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast and want more information, including a bunch of free resources on how to find your first 10 customers and grow your business, check out first 10 podcasts.com, that's 10 one zero, or find me on Twitter at the first 10 pod. Now, you probably hear what I'm about to say on every podcast you listen to. And it makes a really big difference to the show. If you find this podcast in any way useful or enjoyable, I'd be so grateful if you left me a review on iTunes, it really does make a big difference in terms of other people discovering the podcast. Also, if you leave a review, you will get to see your name on the review. In lights. What I'll do is I'll design your words and post them online attacking you on your project along with it. I know it's a pretty sweet deal. Okay, let's get on with the show. Just to switch tracks a little bit. You mentioned unreal collective a few times. Do you want to just describe briefly what that is? Because actually, it was the first time that we properly had a call where it's like, I remember reading about unreal or being damned, that is good to know, I was probably a bit jealous of it. I was like, Oh, I don't want to do that. So yeah, just take us back and just talk about the start of that
Jay Clouse 21:21
unreal collective was basically how I started freelancing. I had had a conversation with a friend of mine. And I was telling him that I was gonna quit my job, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And he said, If I was you, and I had your network, I would facilitate mastermind groups. And I didn't know what that word was, I don't know what that meant. And I said, Tell me more. He said, Well, I'm a lawyer. And I meet with other lawyers a couple times a month for an hour at a time, and we help each other grow our business. And that sounds like fun to me. It's not like something I would be good at. It was at its core kind of a facilitation role, but also a little bit of a consultant role. And I thought, if people value that, I can definitely put that together. So the concept was I would put five business owners together in a group plus me, we would meet every week for an hour for a 12 week period. And at the beginning of that 12 week period, we would do a road mapping exercise where I talked about their goals I learned about about their business, we created like these four, eight and 12 week check ins through that programme out group people based on the stage of their business, the nature of their work, and their timing, availability. And we will do that we meet every week for an hour for 12 weeks. And I did that in groups of 15 to 20. Total, like a cohort was 15 to 20. People all this language is hilarious, by the way, because now with cohort based courses, this is like a very common sort of structure. And that wasn't really as much of a thing then like I came out of old MBA and realised Oh, is this similar to an MBA, I'll do something like that. But I worked with 15 to 20 people at a time in groups of five, for 12 week period. And on the back end of that anyone who had gone through that programme, I added to a slack so that we can communicate between calls between groups. And that became a little bit of a private community. And yeah, I did that for almost four years, that community and, and me as a person, were acquired by Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income at the end of 2020. And now I'm leading community for Smart Passive income. But yeah, that was the experience. It's pretty incredible. And congratulations on being acquired. I think it's, it's not something you hear often about communities, or at least you haven't until this point, maybe we'll see more going forward. The you know, community is again, it's one of those words that's now in the culture. And I I still meet quite a few freelancers who along with the, you know, I need to have a blog and a podcast, I need to maybe write an E book. But I but there's a vague sense of needing to start a community. And I sometimes think it's because it's so common to hear Oh, there's a community here. It's a community there that people kind of go what it must be easy to start a community. What what's it like running a community J. tarde, it's exhausting. Because it's, it's a never ending. Like you're never done. You know, a lot of people are thinking that Oh, extra community because it's easy. And you think it's easy because the tooling exists. And the tooling feels easy. And it's like I communicate with people. And I have a tool I have access to if I put the two together, magical happen, it will have a community. And that just like could not be further from the case, in my opinion. You mean you could have people in a community platform, but until people identify with it as a community, it's not really one of those things until people are having continuous sustained interactions. It's not really happening. And so I think people underestimate the amount of work involved in starting a community and I can talk more about this, but I think people really, really underestimate the amount of work involved in starting a community and making it something great that people continue to return. And spend time investing in investing in and putting attention and effort into that platform. I think we're all a part, a part of many communities that we haven't checked into in a long time. And you don't want that to be your community, you want your community to be the one that people can't stop talking about, I can't help but visit. And that comes from a lot of intentional effort in cultivation of relationships and shared language and things like that.
Conor McCarthy 25:28
Hmm, yeah, it's part of more dead communities than alive ones, unfortunately, are a part of one or two, where the the person who started just rarely shows up, but there's a kind of a culture of helping each other. And it's totally fine. They don't need to be there. You know, they're not the rock star on stage, and we're all kind of waiting for them to show up for the gig, we're just happy to hang out with each other. And that's kind of great.
Jay Clouse 25:52
Yeah, when you get to a point where you are not the, the attraction, you have a great example here of like a rock star, if you're not the attraction, you are the curator, like my thought is, as a brand, or as a creator, you are basically putting out the signal that is bringing people to you, and they say, I agree with this, I believe in this, I align with this. And you've created this very specific segment of people in the world who have a shared set of values or beliefs. And you, you've just been the lightning rod to them. But the opportunity is connecting them to each other. Because people probably have a hard time finding people like them, that's why they followed you in the first place. And if you look at your role as community creator, after, you know, being a curator of those people, then you can create a really special place where you're building relationships between the nodes of your audience, and they will always attribute those relationships to you to your community. But you're right, it's not about you at that point. And it shouldn't be about you, if your community is a place for you to talk about you and essentially be another broadcast channel. It's not serving the right purpose, in my opinion.
Conor McCarthy 27:07
Hmm, yeah, cuz when the community is, is, is good, it's great. Usually, you know, it doesn't. So I was gonna say doesn't take a lot, it takes a lot. But the value that's created within the, my working communities is just incredible, proper internet, friends, people I may never meet in person, but that I know, like and trust.
Jay Clouse 27:25
Exactly. It's, it's, it's exactly what we've been saying, you know, this organisation that I keep pointing to on my dress was a community when I was in college, and you meet people through these shared interests through these shared sets of beliefs. And those become really strong relationships that even if they go dormant for a little bit of time, they can still be like, strongly reactivated ties, these people. And when you have this history, and this shared vocabulary, it's just a lot easier to be vulnerable, be open and communicate, have candour. And, you know, get to the root of things quickly, even if that is like maybe a potential project
Conor McCarthy 28:01
like that. We just talked for a second about balance, and not the kind of you I honestly don't know how you get everything done that you do, because you've got so much going on. But I suppose in the context of people early on in their freelance career, and they're trying to figure out, you know, what, what do I work on? I know, it's probably easy to kind of go, I'll go and set up an Instagram account, or I will build my website, or, you know, probably Unfortunately, the last thing is, usually I'll go and find clients, or I'll go and you know, work on my craft, how did you balance those things?
Jay Clouse 28:36
Well, there are some very tactical ways. I'm a big fan of theming, your days, and time blocking. So it got to a point where like, when I got groups, together for unreal, I always tried to actually have the groups meet on the same day of the week. So that if Wednesday was the day that I had unreal group calls, I could get in the headspace of nothing else matters today, I need to show up and make this a great experience for these people. And if and when that was true, or if it was two days a week, there would inevitably be a day or two where I could just say, I'm not going to take any calls through calendly. I'm not going to make it possible to book a call with me on this day. This is a deep work day for me to do this type of thing. And I basically would align that with the cadence of my content. You know, if I have a podcast coming out on Wednesday, which the time was upside and now I have one on Tuesday as well. It became a game of Okay, well, I'm going to have my interviews on Thursdays. And that's going to give me several days to do this. Even the days where I had calls. I don't do this now. I don't take calls in the morning, because that's my best creative time. And I can get two hours worth of work done in 30 minutes some time. If it's in the morning, because I'm just way more focused and I can get a lot more done. So it's it's really leaning into your energy throughout the day. You know, I think about energy management as important as timeout spend a lot of time and context switching drains your energy. So the more that you can have continuous contexts throughout a day, the more you're gonna be able to get done.
Conor McCarthy 30:12
I love that the themed days, that's really smart. So it's, you know, I've read deep work twice. Now, I think this is a great example of kind of putting it into action where you say no to everything that isn't that piece of work for the day, which is, which must be quite freeing in a way, because that's all you're doing.
Jay Clouse 30:31
Yeah. And I think I think we underestimate like how much you can get done in a week, if you just have a couple of things like, these are the important things to do this week, even when I was going through and hosting these calls for unreal, at the end of every call. We had a public accountability spreadsheet. And I would look at every single person and say, What are the things that are important for you to get done before next week on marking a spreadsheet? And then to start the call the next week? Let's say did you get that done? Yes or no and calculate a percentage of how well you're doing on the things that you're doing. And it forces you to distil you know, three to five things every week, and my list began to balloon because I got just really good at managing my time. But it does still like the five things that if nothing else, if I get these five things done, the business is moving forward. And it's not stuff like for example, because I knew that I was going to publish every Sunday a newsletter and publish every Wednesday, a podcast, I never put that on the sheet that was going to happen. It was stuff beyond the norm beyond the status quo, like build this asset, or finish this presentation deck, or reach out to three potential guests for the podcast, stuff that is moving forward and building on the business as the main like blocks for that week.
Conor McCarthy 31:50
I think that's, that's smart. Because it's probably easy to put in this stuff that you know, you're going to do already, but that decision has been made your you know, your decided to do that. So yeah, what's actually going to make a difference, which takes a little bit of courage. Sometimes it's like, Okay, I'm putting it down.
Jay Clouse 32:04
Like, start small, you know, if you don't have a system like this, and you're not as trusting of yourself as I am to hit like, content deadlines, put everything on there, like give yourself that magical moment of crossing something off your to do list, even if you know you're going to do it without being on your to do list, because that gives you momentum, it gives you confidence, you're implicitly training yourself that when you say you're going to do something, you get it done. By the way, if you're not doing that, you're kind of implicitly doing the opposite. If you continue to miss deadlines, you're continuously reinforcing to yourself that it's okay to miss deadlines, which becomes at least on a subconscious level, like a negative thing. I always find like, if I'm starting to slide, I will do something to psychologically wipe the slate clean and say, Okay, that was then we're starting fresh. And I am a person who hits my deadlines. And he said that mines that matter. And I just have to continues to prove myself because you need to earn trust in yourself that you're going to do the things that you're going to use a you're going to do on the timeframe that you're you're going to do it and that becomes such a superpower, because it will empower you to commit to things that you know are going to be good. And to say no to things that you know you don't have time for. Because you trust yourself to get done the things you're going to do. And if you commit to something that you don't have time for, and you miss it, that's going to change who you are to yourself into those people. A little bit of a rant there, Connor, but this is important to me.
Conor McCarthy 33:28
No, no, no, I'm sorry. That is I love a good rant. Because I think that's coming from a place as it's sobering, I guess like it's coming from a place of putting so much thought into actually how to advance your business and your craft and down to the nitty gritty of how you plan your days and your weeks. And you've accomplished so much from this, this system that you've outlined and it's it's kind of amazing it works and having having things like accountability and and everything you said it's like they are they're part and parcel of running successful business.
Jay Clouse 34:00
Totally. Yeah, time management, energy management, super important because ultimately, if you look at your calendar and you don't know where something on your to do list is going to happen. It's probably not gonna happen.
Conor McCarthy 34:11
So freelancing school if I attended free, let's go what I learned the magic art of producing as much quality content and quality courses as Jay tell us about free lead school.
Jay Clouse 34:27
freelancing school is my first set of courses that I continue to update and, and make even stronger. But it started from, you know, with unreal, I thought I was going to be working with a lot of startup founders. And what happened was a lot of freelancers and creative service providers were coming to me be as they realised I could help them get the business stuff in order for their business. Things like cash flow, budgeting, accounting taxes, but also marketing themselves to get more clients and selling themselves when they have those conversations. So I took every thing that I had been teaching for years through unreal. And I put them into three courses, business for freelancers, marketing for freelancers and selling for freelancers, to give you the toolkit, regardless of whatever service you provide, to better market yourself to sell larger projects, and to get the back office, operational stuff under control, so that you can actually have this time and income that you're looking for, as a client service provider, or Freelancer or contractor.
Conor McCarthy 35:28
And when did that kick off when to Freelancer School of start?
Jay Clouse 35:32
I want to say middle of 2018, maybe, or maybe it was even 2019. I think it back it might have been 2019. I think I started dating my now fiance. 20 2018. And we I finished, I finished this courses as we were dating, so it would have been the middle of 2019 that I started releasing them.
Conor McCarthy 35:55
Hmm, I love they're they're almost a holy trinity of freelance courses.
Jay Clouse 36:01
Yeah, you can, you can, you know, pick a pick or choose one of them. But there are a lot of people who do really great work teaching you how to be a better copywriter, or a better designer or a better developer. And that's not the lane I'm trying to play in. I just want to help you earn more. Put a business in place that supports the lifestyle goals you have, which is probably giving you more time whether it's creating digital products or content, or just spending more time with your family. So I made it agnostic of the discipline you're doing just to help you sell more projects earn more.
Conor McCarthy 36:31
I love that. And it's obviously drawing on your years of running on real and everything else that you're doing. I do recommend people check that out. It's exciting just to read about it from a freelance perspective. It's like, Oh, yeah, this is this is all the stuff that, you know, if you googled any one of these things you would be swamped with is seconds, and I've been that person. Whereas you, you've done a great job of I guess, kind of distilling down, let's say marketing for freelancers. It's like just that. I think it's really it's really great.
Jay Clouse 37:02
Yeah, I mean, all the stuff in those courses candidly, like, you can find resources and articles and YouTube videos to tell you all this information, probably pretty credibly and pretty well for free. But at the end of the day, like this is a very efficient, distilled way to go through this. So you can actually put it into place and get on with the rest of your life, get on with solid projects, doing the client work, things like that.
Conor McCarthy 37:27
Lovely big freelance enabler. Just as a final question, what would what advice would you give to someone who is just starting to find their first
Jay Clouse 37:35
10 customers? Start with people you already know, we've already talked about it, but start with your advocates. And even if they become a client themselves, is because they advocated to themselves that they should hire you. So always, always, always start with people who you already know and like, or who already know, like and trust you, because somebody has to know you exist, like you. And trust that you can get the job done if they're going to hire you. And so you might as well start with people who are that is already already true, then start from zero with somebody and build a relationship from scratch. chances are they're people in your life, who you could have a conversation with. And even if it's not them, who hires you, that can become a great source of referrals, a great advocate for you. And if they swim in the same pond as your potential clients, it's better just to make sure that they know that you're freelancing, that your coaching or consulting whatever you're doing, they need to know what you do and who you help. So they can effectively advocate for you when they have
Conor McCarthy 38:35
the opportunity. That is a great place to wrap up. Jay, thank you so much for imparting all that hard earned wisdom of love the show notes to include and I do recommend people check those out. A lot of them will be put in by to your website Jake lattice calm. Yeah, thank you very. Is there anything else you'd like to add any other places you want people to check you out?
Jay Clouse 38:52
Nope. Easy to find jayclouse.com is a great place to start or at Jay Clouse on pretty much every social media platform.
Conor McCarthy 38:58
Cool. Thank you very much a. Hey, thanks, Connor. Next time on the first 10 podcast, Peter Shepherd, unpacks imposter syndrome, and how you can use it to your advantage.
Peter Shepherd: It's really about what do you do with 10 you figure out a way to what I've talked about in the past is dance with it. And and sort of say give it a voice. You know, I see you I hear you. Okay, so I feel like a fraud. Interesting. And here's what I'm gonna do about that.
Conor McCarthy 39:23
That and more on the next episode of the first 10 podcast.
