Doing It For The Kids Doing It For The Kids, Frankie Tortora, Steve Folland

“Hi Frankie & Steve!

I am giving a 10 minute talk next week and I need your help.

Public speaking is something I never do, so I had a little practice and filmed myself doing my talk and my voice is soooooo wishy washy. I hate it when I ‘ummm’ a lot so try to actively pause instead, but then the flow of the talk is all wrong?

I just feel like my voice has no authority!

How do you both make your voice sound so clear and confident? Have you always been good at speaking or have you just improved with time?

Thanks!

Esme”

“I work with corporate clients around workshop facilitation and keynote speaking. My question is around pricing transparency.

I am finding that I am getting lots of enquiries (which I am very grateful for!). Most of the time I respond via email with my fees and the potential client doesn't have the budget. I would say this happens three quarters of the time.

My fees are probably higher than average but I'm happy with the price point and the value I offer and I have lots of repeat clients that I work with closely. It's not a major admin task to respond to each enquiry individually but collectively over a month or so it can take up quite a bit of time.

So I am looking at reviewing how I do things.

I'm keen to understand what others do and why.

Do they:

1. Display prices on your website?
2. Send fees in response to an enquiry, prior to setting up a meeting with the potential client?
3. Meet with the potential client first and then send prices after?

Which approach do you think is best for maximising revenue, building relationships but also protecting time?"

“I had a situation recently where I responded to somebody who I know really well offering to help me with something. I said yes, appreciated the service they did for me and I paid them for that service.

Afterwards, they asked if I’d be happy to give a testimonial and I said, ‘sure — how about you draft something and I’ll tweak it?’

They sent me something. I tweaked their words so it was more like me and shortened it so it wasn’t so gushy because… you know how some services just go the extra mile and they’re brilliant and you were wax lyrical about them because you loved them so much? Well, this wasn’t one of those situations. But nor was it a shit service. It was just… bang for your buck type stuff.

Since then my endorsement has been used as a propeller for this particular service in online spaces and it’s just made me feel really uncomfortable.

It’s made me really think about how we ask people for testimonials, but also, how we use those testimonials and how that lands with the person we’ve asked.

Now I know it’s really important to get testimonials, and I know it’s really important to bang our own drums and promote ourselves — but is there a way to do that without making the people we’ve asked feel icky?

I mean, should have I said — ‘happy for you to use this, but could you not plaster it everywhere, everyday, for 50 weeks of the year?!’ (which is how it feels at the moment)

Because, if I’m honest, this experience is going to make me reluctant to give testimonials in the future and I would hate for any of my clients to feel like that.”

“As well as my work as a freelance project director and manager, I have a blog on the subject of everyday joy (in life and work), which I write on every now and then.

I’d like to do more with it, but am afraid I could easily spend all of my time doing that instead of paid work, which of course isn’t really sensible!

How do people who have similar side projects (blog, podcast etc) manage to balance it with paid work (or even manage to get paid something for doing the side project)?”

"I see a lot of freelancers ‘doing good’ with their business, donating x % to the planet or to another good cause. I really like this idea, but — with two small children, one of which is still in a private nursery — I feel like I just don’t have the spare money to do this? Should I just suck it up and do it anyway??"

“Hi Frankie and Steve

I’ve worked for a company (employed) for over 12 years. It’s grown from 50 people to a 5,000+ strong agency.

I work with digital technology as an Account Director and I’ve managed some decent clients. My key skills are listening to, understanding and challenging client requirements, and then translating them into actionable, achievable outcomes. I have the soft skills of technology, but I don’t code.

I’m now fed up with the increasing internal hierarchy, unnecessary process bollocks and the required emphasis on being seen to do things (like PowerPoint decks) rather than actually achieving valuable outcomes for clients.

Anyway, I’m currently on 3 months of gardening leave so I have some time to plan my goals, brush up on skills, and, of course, do some gardening…

Ultimately, I want to go freelance, but I don’t want to be known as a “C” word (Consultant) as I intend to actually roll my sleeves up and do work such as designing Proof of Concepts, helping their development teams and deciding on the right technology.

What advice can you give someone wanting to go freelance when it’s about services and outcomes rather than outputs? That is, I don’t create, say, graphics or videos. Instead, I help clients define their problems and investigate solutions.

Any thoughts? Thanks, Colin”