8 Ways to kick start your hustle efforts
Being a hustler is normally sown into a persons DNA from birth, but there are ways you can fake it until you make it. You can actually trick yourself into being a hustler, until you’ve done it for so long that it’s a new habit formed and you can live like a hustler forever. Today we’ll be going over a few ways you can actually kick start your hustle efforts and keep the momentum going, even if you don’t know where to start.
First things first, do your homework
If you have a specific type of client in mind that you’d like to work for, start doing your homework to find out where they hang out at. There’s no sense in marketing yourself and putting yourself out there as a freelancer if you’re in the wrong areas.
The areas you can canvas could be local areas if you want to work for local clients – coffee shops, office supply stores, etc. Online, you can find people by looking through Twitter searches, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. You should also look for forums and other message boards where your prospective clients hang out at. If you want to work with sports companies, then sports blogs and forums would be a great place to start looking for prospective clients.
Put together a plan of action
Once you get together a bunch of names and information on your prospective clients, it’s time to start putting together a plan of action. To cut down on the time it takes you to write each email (if you’re emailing them or contacting them in any way online), I’d recommend putting together a skeleton file where you have your introduction paragraph already typed out and your concluding paragraph already typed out.
This way, you can write a little bit in the middle about the person you’re contacting so it’s personalized to them and you don’t have to rewrite your name, where you’re from, what is the link to your portfolio, etc. You might only save 2-3 minutes on an email, but after you send 100-200 of these, you’ll see how much time you can actually save over the year.
Now you contact them
If you’re writing an email, go ahead and send the emails out to everyone, as fast as you can without feeling like you’re missing something important. For instance, make sure there name is in the introduction (everybody hates “to whom it may concern”) and ensure that you’ve got the right website address or company name in the email.
If you’re wanting to call the prospective clients, make sure you’ve made some quick notes on paper so you can look at them in case they ask questions. I’d point out that you were searching _____ (insert place here) and came across their website and wanted to see if you’d be able to talk with them about working on their website/logo/copy/etc in order to help them boost their profits.
They might ask you how you could do that for them and this is where your expertise and planning goes into action. Point out (quickly) a couple of areas that you could improve and that you’d love to sit down with them for a free coffee (on you of course) to discuss things a bit further.
Google is your best friend
Another way you can hustle yourself and find extra work is by searching through Google. I didn’t mention this in the above places because I feel like it’s severely underused and I’d like to shine a little bit more light on it. The method of finding work here is simple, yet effective.
If you’re looking for blogs to design, search Google for “keyword blog” and start looking at every result that comes up. If you feel like you can help make their blog better, find their name and contact them with your skeleton email that I mentioned above. I’d personally go through the first 5-10 pages in order to make sure you’ve got enough contacts out there. Out of every 20 you send, you’ll generally get 5 or so responses and if you’re a smooth enough talker, you can land a couple of sales. Not bad for an hour or so of leg work, right?
Start working on free stuff
A great way to get your name out there more as well as show off your skills is to put together some freebies. For writers, you could release a free guide that gives tips to people you’d normally like to work with. For designers, you can release design freebies on sites like Design Moo.
This will allow you to build a reputation as a skilled freelancer, plus you’ll get backlinks to your website which is always good and could land you some extra work from people who might want something you’ve done customized a bit (this happens a lot with WordPress developers and xhtml/css coders).
Sleep Less
Listen, I know a lot of people out there feel like they need 8 hours of sleep in order to function, but in reality, it’s just an excuse that people use in order to work less. If you’re not where you want to be in your life, you’re going to have to change something. Watching less television and youtube videos is a great start, but by cutting out a few hours of sleep every night, you’ll be able to accomplish much, much more.
When you sleep less, you’ll be able to get emails sent out at night so that way you’re on the top of the list in the morning when people open their inboxes. This will increase your open rates and will hopefully land you some more sales. All while your competition is sleeping.
Study your competition
Speaking of your competition, are you studying what they’re doing? If not, you need to be. A lot of business owners talk about how they don’t care about what anyone else is doing, but in reality they’re full of shit and if they’re not personally checking it, they’ve got a team watching the trends.
By seeing what your competition is doing and building on their successes and making your offers better, you’ll be able to stay one step ahead of them. You can also learn a lot about the direction the market is headed by studying your competition and seeing what they’ve done right and wrong. Don’t worry about what they’re doing now – think about what they’re going to do in the future and do it first. Put yourself in their shoes and think “what would I do next?” and then go do it.
Comment on blogs you read
If you read blogs, comment on them. You never know who’s reading the comments you leave, so make sure they’re insightful and useful. By doing this, you’ll not only build up some face recognition in peoples minds who are reading these blogs (as well as the blog owners), you’ll also put yourself in a place where people you’d like to work for will find you. Viperchill mentioned that in a previous month on their blog, there were 800 clicks from their site to commenter’s URL’s. EIGHT HUNDRED!
If you’re not putting yourself in the position to be one of those clicks and commenting on blogs that you know your target market hangs out at, you’re leaving money on the table. Hell, comment on blogs that are run by people you’d like to work for. They’ll remember the same face commenting on every article and will feel happy about hiring you when they need your services.
This post was written in response to a comment that was left by Rick Wolff on our Benefits and drawbacks of being a hustler post. If you’ve got questions you’d like answered, or if you have topics you’d like to see covered, just send me a twitter message or contact me any time!
