A friend and I were recently talking about personal development, primarily things like habits, goals, etc. We were discussing the possibility that by attempting to so closely regulate and discipline ourselves, we were missing the bigger picture, or missing some vital opportunity for life and freedom. A popular blogger who shall remain nameless has espoused [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Along with sharing an office with another freelancer and hiring several coaches, starting a mastermind group has been one of the best decisions I’ve made for my business. The feedback, accountability, and resources I’ve gotten from the group have been invaluable. So I thought I’d take a few minutes and write a short post on [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Yesterday, I did my first webinar in about 18 months. The audience was roughly 225 people from my email list, and the topic was building a freelancer support system. The webinar went well. A few hours before the webinar went live, I stumbled across this checklist I made a couple years ago on how to [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I suffer from the triple threat of ambition, perfectionism, and cheapness, which leads to something I call “the delegation yoyo”. I want to do a million things, but I try and do it all myself, because: “No one else will get it right, PLUS they want how much?? It’ll cost me $0 if I do [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.| RyanWaggoner.com
When you’re working from home, depression caused by loneliness and isolation can really sneak up on you. You may not have spent much time thinking about how to avoid being lonely as a freelancer. I certainly didn’t think much about “entrepreneur loneliness” when I rashly quit my job back in 2007 to work for myself [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I’ve been building an email newsletter since about 2015, and more than 20,000 people have subscribed to it so far, which is amazing. But creating good content is hard, and it’s easy to feel like you’re on a treadmill if you constantly have to be crafting new content for an email list. But then back [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
For many of us, the hardest part of freelancing isn’t the technical skills like development or design, but the skills of finding clients, negotiating projects, and getting paid. No matter how good you are at these skills, the difference between a good client and a bad client can be the difference between becoming a six-figure [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I’ve tried and failed to write annual review posts before. Part of the issue has been that it seems so big and overwhelming, so I’m going to try and make it easy by using a short template that I fill out. Hopefully that’ll make it easier to stick with going forward. Two things to keep [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
In 2018, I changed my mind about drugs. Like many, I am getting more stuck in my ways as I age. I’m still in my 30s, but compared to a decade ago, I change my mind less often, I do more things by routine, and I take more things as settled fact. I am less [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
In 2015, my wife and I packed up our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, put our three-month-old daughter into our newly purchased Volvo, and drove out of New York City for what I thought was the last time. After nearly a decade of fast-paced and expensive fun in San Francisco, New York [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I’m so stressed out today. It’s a holiday, so I should be relaxed, right? But see, it’s also Monday, and Monday through Friday I do a set of five core habits: Workout for 60 minutes Read for 60 minutes Write for 60 minutes Do 4 hours of deep work Turn all devices off at 830p [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
In a previous article, I talked about my experience of freelancing for almost a decade. In particular, I talked about concepts to transform freelancing into an awesome career. A lot of us didn’t start freelancing because we saw it as something we wanted to do long-term. We started out of desperation, on the side to [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I just passed nine years as a freelancer, and I’ve been thinking about the ups and downs I’ve experienced along the way. At the same time, I’ve been having a series of ongoing conversations with another freelancer who is struggling right now to understand how to grow his business to the next level, or if [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
During an internship in college, my supervisor mentioned that he used to freelance full-time. I had never done any freelance work at that point but I was interested in it, so I asked him what he had learned from the experience. His answer? It’s hard to try and juggle everything and you’ll always be stressed [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
This article is a little unusual. I want freelancers who are more inexperienced to know that no one is perfect or has all the answers, so I thought I’d give you an example of a situation that feels really crummy at the time, but has some lessons attached if you look for them. I don’t [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
A reader named Jorge sent me this question, which I’ve tweaked for clarity: I have a question: how do I get those first few clients when I don’t live in the country I want to target? I live in Colombia, a Spanish speaking country in South America and I don’t really want to do consulting [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Imagine that you need a new website and you have a budget of $20,000. You find a freelancer that seems to be able to do the job. Well, they quote you $30,000. OK, it’s more than you budgeted, but this is an investment! You find the money and hire them. It’s supposed to take 8 [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I have a lot of hobbies and interests, some of them nerdier than others. One of my favorite areas of interest is personal finance, particularly as it relates to building wealth towards the goal of financial independence. One of my favorite forums on this subject is Bogleheads, which is a very high signal-to-noise ratio and [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
“There is no advertisement as powerful as a positive reputation traveling fast.” ~Brian Koslow We all know that testimonials are an important part of marketing. Humans are social animals and social proof is a powerful signal that can turn a prospect from a skeptic to an enthusiastic buyer. The problem is that actually getting good [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
A very common question I hear from freelancers that I coach is: “I know I need to raise my rates, but my current clients will never go for that and I can’t afford to lose them!” First of all, recognize that if you’re too afraid to raise your rates with existing clients, you’ll also probably [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. — Henry David Thoreau I know, a clickbait headline. I must be exaggerating, right? Unfortunately, I’m not. If you work for yourself for two or three decades and don’t follow this advice, you could be leaving $100,000 or more per year on [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
You might be wondering: “Why are my clients always driving me crazy?” If you pop into pretty much any freelance forum, you’ll see lots of posts bitching about clients and all the stupid stunts they pull. Like every freelancer, I sometimes get frustrated with my clients. It’s tempting to think that I know better than [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
If you’ve read more than a couple articles about freelancing, you’ve probably heard that you should be careful about putting all your eggs in one basket by working for a single client on a long-term basis. And yet a lot of freelancers (myself included) seem to fall into this trap at one point or another [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
If you have a full-time job you love (or feel like you can’t leave), the thought of freelance might seem irrelevant to you. On the other hand, if you’ve always been intrigued by freelancing but are skeptical it could work for you as your sole source of income, then read on. You’ll find some useful [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Note: this is a long guide that will take some time to read and fully digest. If you’d rather just grab a PDF of this post and all the bonuses and read later at your leisure, just grab the free VIP pack, which contains a PDF of the full guide. “In the midst of winter, [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Recently on a Facebook group for freelancers that I’m a part of, the topic of the best way to collect payments from clients came up. A surprising number of high-end freelancers — most of whom make six figures per year like I do — are accepting all of their various project fees via credit card, [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
In my day-to-day consulting, I try to steer clear of phone calls, especially conference calls, but I occasionally have to do one like everyone else. Today was an uncommon bit of hell, as I had two different conference calls. Both of them were with potential clients, and just due to my role on these projects, [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
In the last article I talked about the first two levels on the “pyramid of biz dev” activities, which are prospecting and promoting. Now I’d like to talk about the top two levels, which are networking and thought leadership. Both of these deserve (and will get) full guides of their own, but this is some [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
The previous article was about how you need an avalanche of leads to give you the margin and confidence to be able to start making the kinds of positive changes that you know you should be making, but haven’t been able to pull off yet. Things like raising your rates, picking a niche, setting boundaries, [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Last week, I wrote an article about how I’m dedicating 2016 to helping as many freelancers as possible hit six figures, and be on the way to $250k per year. As I’ve said, I’ve consistently made $250k+ as a freelancer for the last few years. So if I’m going to help other people reach this [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
If you’re a freelancer and you’re not making $250k per year in net profit from your business, we should talk. Yes, a quarter of a million dollars per year. Yes, you. In this article, I’m going to give you a couple simple ideas to dramatically grow your business, well into being a six-figure freelancer. At [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I used to set annual goals (aka New Year’s Resolutions), but like so many others, I typically didn’t accomplish them. So I do a couple things differently now: 1. Break the year into smaller chunks (quarters and months) and do things around those timeframes For example, I set quarterly goals for a few different areas [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Lately, I’ve been worried about one of my projects and whether it is going to be able to provide enough revenue to be viable. I’ve been worrying that I haven’t yet found the right combination of things to do in order to make it all work. Here’s the thing though: I haven’t tried the combinations [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Here’s my prediction: sometime in 2012, an A-list film director will successfully fund a feature film using Kickstarter. Kickstarter’s time has come. If you haven’t heard of Kickstarter, you’re about to. If you have, you’ll still find this interesting. Background Kickstarter was launched in 2008 as a “crowdfunding” site and it works like this: Someone who [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I got a question last week from a reader named James on how he could start doing freelance web design and development, and how much he should charge. I was pretty brutally honest with him, because I don’t think it’s helpful to sugarcoat things. I’ve posted his question and my answer here, with his URL [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Image by Philo Nordlund There are some side effects of always blogging about your life and your efforts to improve it. Some good, some bad. For instance, I feel like I’m becoming that guy who is always trying some weird lifehack. I’m not quite to Tim Ferris status yet in terms of bizarre behavior for [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Photo by US Forestry Service I have a list of things I’ve been putting off for awhile. Stressful, unpleasant things. Things like calling the IRS with a question about our taxes. If you’ve never had to actually call the IRS, it’s horrible. And none of these things are things that really needed to be done [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Most people do not know what they want. The other day at Starbucks, I watched the person in front of me get smoothly upsold from a cup of coffee to a $20 tea sampler set. I’m not saying that the guy was pressured into buying it; he wasn’t. I’m not saying that he got ripped [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
CC Image via Wikimedia Commons There’s a recent guest post on Zen Habits about how you shouldn’t set goals. The headline was intriguing enough to pull me in, and then I was dismayed to find that the author had setup the story as a conflict between goals and habits. And concluded that since people fail [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Two upfront warnings: first, this post is long. Second, this post is about my experience in a startup incubator over the last four months or so, so it might not be relevant to you. However, I think many of the takeaways can be applied to other situations. Background For the last four and a half [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
This is kind of a weird post, but I’ve been really impressed by this guy recently, so I thought I’d share. I listen to a bunch of different podcasts, including a few from NPR. Ken Rudin is a political editor who appears on “It’s All Politics” and on a weekly political segment on “Talk of [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
You know that thing that’s stressing you out, that you’ve been avoiding, that you try not to think about? It will not get better. Not on its own, anyway. Things almost never resolve themselves. But we consistently wait as something turns from a minor issue into a serious issue and then into a full-blown crisis. [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Are you practicing the way you want to perform? Knowing how to learn is one of the most valuable skills you can have, and I think it’s one that most people are worst at. A big part of learning is practice, and how you practice makes a [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
For the last year, I’ve had about 25% of my total office whiteboard area covered in scribbled blog post ideas. I’m trying to clean it up now, so yesterday I went through and put them all in a file with a short explanation of what each idea meant and what inspired me. As it turns [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw: A little sleep, a [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Here’s a simple rule-of-thumb for knowing if you’re being too generous with someone: if you taking away your generosity would anger them, you should. Families are the poster children for this pathology. How many parents have indulged their spoiled children because they didn’t want their kid to be upset with them? How many extended family [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
I had a great morning today; got up early, got in an early run, had a good breakfast, showered, and got to Starbucks right when they opened. Then I had a few hours of really productive work. All in all, a fantastic start to the week. And it was really pretty easy, but not because [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
Photo by pollobarba It is my right to be uncommon—if I can. I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” ~Warren Buffett Like any successful business owner, I spend time thinking about profit margin, and trying to ensure that I’m maximizing my profits, both on an individual project-level and over the long run. In order to do that, I need to have some idea of [...]Read More...| RyanWaggoner.com
