• Does the market agree with you?

    Does the market agree with you?

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    I’m sitting here on launch day (to my email list) for my Hope is not a Strategy course and you know what, there hasn’t been a single purchase yet. Of course I sat around last night talking about how sales could work and running numbers. Yes I even dreamed about selling out of all packages

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  • You’re not perfect – find a problem and fix it

    You’re not perfect – find a problem and fix it

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    We’ve all been faced with a problem that’s clearly outside our comfort level. Maybe it’s a coding challenge that you just don’t know the answer to. Maybe it’s an estimate for a big corporation and you just don’t know how to position it. Maybe it’s a tough blog post that you don’t know how to

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  • Your services are a commodity because you don’t specialize

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    Yes WordPress can be a commodity service, but that’s your fault. You’ve never taken the time to stake out some territory and specialize. You flit from one thing to the next just like a humming bird. If you want to charge more and get some more respect, specialize.

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  • The rule of thumb I run my business by

    The rule of thumb I run my business by

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    I wrote yesterday about your screw up not being your client’s fault. I told you about my screw up and what I did to make it better for the client. But I didn’t tell you my guiding principle to running my business did I? How do I think you should treat clients at every interaction?

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  • Your screw up isn’t your client’s fault

    Your screw up isn’t your client’s fault

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    It’s Thanksgiving Day in Canada and I screwed up. Last week sometime I emailed a client about a project that had some extra technical issues. They had a bunch of plugins that were simply broken. There were errors that prevented me from working. They had a whole day of downtime with their host last week,

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  • Don’t say it’s easy, you have no idea yet if it is easy

    Don’t say it’s easy, you have no idea yet if it is easy

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    It’s so easy when your on the phone with a client or in a meeting to tell them that a certain feature is ‘easy’ or as the tweet below says “straight forward”. https://twitter.com/edwinbrady/status/521592849784385536 Edwin has it right, saying something is easy is often a way of saying I really haven’t thought about it yet. Limit

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  • You are Gandalf, Start acting like it

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    What you do is freaking magic, and magic has value. Don’t short change yourself just because you do it every day.

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  • Art of Value is 1000% worth your time

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    You ever find a great new resource that blows your mind with every piece of content you get? You know one that makes you really think about how you’re running your business. How your pricing your projects. The weight you put towards project management as the thing that really makes a project awesome. It’s all

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  • Throw Hope out the window – Start 2015 with a plan

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    Today I’m excited to offer you the opportunity to work with me personally to ensure you start your 2015 off right. Last week I talked about the three areas you’ve got to get right when you’re starting your business. These are also the three areas MOST freelancers or small teams get it wrong. You’re stuck

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  • Vetting clients with your first email

    Vetting clients with your first email

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    We all get a lot of email don’t we, it’s hard to keep up with. It’s hard to keep up with the new client requests if you’re doing your marketing right unless you take some steps to automate it. I have most of the emails I send to clients automated in templates because it lets

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