If there’s a trick to building a freelance business, it’s focusing on value. Whenever you listen to experienced freelancers (the ones who’ve been running successful businesses for 10, 15, even 20 or 30 years) talking about how they’ve survived and thrived, that value concept is going to come up. That’s because value is everything. Value […]
Black Bloggers Need to be More Than “Bloggers”
Every time I see someone say they’re working on business goals as a blogger, a little piece of me winces. It’s not because blogging isn’t important or powerful…it is, I’ve started a whole business around it and still do it myself. It’s because too often, when people are talking about blogging on its own, they’re […]
Exploiters vs. Partners…Are your clients taking advantage of you?
I just dropped a survival client that was getting on my last nerve. If you want to get caught up, they ended up getting me through a few tight months after a pretty large retainer client dropped me (and after I’d been slipping on my marketing), so I’m glad I found them, but honestly? They […]
Intro to Value (Read this even if you’re employed…especially if you’re employed)
There’s an uncomfortable little truth to freelancing that I think some of us are just starting to accept. It’s a truth that’s so fundamental to business, that eventually, even employed people are going to have to start paying closer attention to it. It’s pretty straightforward and might be a tad confusing at the same time, […]
Movin’ on to 2018 (Did goals make it into this year’s plans?)
So we’re headed out of 2017 and I can’t even say it flew by. The further away from employed life I get, the more realistic my perception of time seems to be. That means 2017—even with the walking disaster America’s got at the steering wheel—felt like an actual…year. It was a year that overall went […]
Supporting Black Businesses: A New Opportunity for Black Writers, Part 4-Handling Kickback
Haven’t read part 3? Check it out here. We’re at the last part of this series, so it’s time to deal with what’s probably going to be your biggest challenge in breaking into Black content marketing. If you’ve read this far, I’m confident you’ll be able to pick up the skills and techniques you need […]
Supporting Black Businesses: A New Opportunity for Black Writers, Part 3-Taking Action
If you haven’t read Part 2, check that out here. So you’re all fired up and ready to help Black businesses build content presences that help them grow…now what? In this section, we’re going to cover some action steps. Keep in mind that this isn’t so much a step-by-step process as it is a list […]
Supporting Black Businesses: A New Opportunity for Black Writers, Part 2-Truths
This post will help you with Phase 2 of your Freelance Workbook…if you haven’t started yet, download it now! Also, If you haven’t read part 1, check it out here OK, so I’m going to tell you to start prospecting right now. Seems early right? Well, prospecting is something every freelancer should be doing on a […]
Supporting Black Businesses: A New Opportunity for Black Writers (Part 1)
I sat down to write a quick blog post after a conversation on Twitter this morning and it kind of…exploded into a 4-part series. So we’re going to be having a long conversation about the opportunities freelancers have to support Black businesses, a few critical truths that we all need to accept if we want […]
10 Business Truths Every Freelancer Needs to Understand
This post will help you with Phase 3 of the BlackFreelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! Most freelance frustration starts with misunderstanding something about business. Anytime I hear someone say they’re frustrated with not earning enough, not getting clients, or not knowing where to focus, once we dig a little […]