The 5th Annual Creative Freelancer Conference, June 21-22 in Boston is rapidly approaching and the early bird deadline has been extended to April 30! (Register here now.)
For today's speaker podcast, I interviewed David Baker from ReCourses, who previewed his session, “Positioning yourself as if you were outside looking in.”
We talked about how most freelancers simply respond to opportunities that come to them and haven’t proactively positioned themselves. David says:
The scariest thing about positioning is that it will have to be broadcast on your website and you're afraid of two things:
- A current client who doesn't fit that positioning will see it. (I’ve never heard of that happening.)
- Some big juicy project comes along and the prospects wants to give it to you, but your positioning turns them away.
If you have a reputation in the marketplace for doing terrific work, and they want to give you a project, even if it doesn’t fit your positioning, there’s no reason you can’t take it. It’s just that you can’t talk about it because it waters down your positioning.
Also, once you start to taste competence with the positioning you are developing, you'll start to feel that you won’t have the time, budget or money to be as competent in an area where you don’t do as much work.
Also, David explains why positioning is so difficult to do for yourself when you do it all day long for your clients, and why poorly positioned firms are often chosen for the high profile work over the specialists!
Listen to our interview here.
And listen to the rest of the podcast interview series with our speakers, including Dyana Valentine, Mark O’Brien of Newfangled.com, Shane Pearlman and Ed Gandia of International Freelancers Academy, Cameron Foote of Creative Business, Alan Murabayashi, Sarah Durham and Marcia Hoeck.
How can a deaf freelance designer such as myself "listen" to podcasts? A lot of information looks very helpful and I want to be able to benefit.
Thanks!
Lisa
Lisa, I'm not sure -- we only transcribe short excerpts from the interviews, not full transcripts -- but I will look into it. Thanks so much for your interest!