by Varun Mayya
Sign up on EmailMatcher using your corporate email. Remember that part where we told you to make your personal website? Make sure it comes with an email id and use that one—EmailMatcher doesn’t let you use a personal email like Gmail or Yahoo.
Once logged in, enter your contact’s name and company domain and watch the magic happen. How the tool finds the emails of your prospects isn’t very important for us to discuss (if you must know, it tries several combinations of the first name, last name and domain and pings the email of each combination and checks which ping actually returns a result). What’s more important is copying the emails that it returns back into the spreadsheet we had created on Excel. Do this manually for all 100 prospects (again, there are tools that will help you speed this process up). What you should have at the end of the day is a list of 100 prospects, with their corporate emails.
Step 3: Sending Personalized Emails
This step is simple—you send over an email that the recipient will want to read. While simple in theory, it is extremely hard to figure out what your recipient likes. Lucky for us, we’ve got Google on our side! Since you have the first name, last name and company, you can actually find out relevant information about each person by simply dumping the three into Google. Here’s an example of what copy pasting a column with data about me would return:
Sample search results when you Google a lead’s name
Off the bat, you can see certain keywords that might be useful while sending me a cold email. Let’s focus on “Psychologist” for now. While salespeople spend a lot of time doing research about a prospect, we’re going to use a smarter technique—this time using Google News.
What we’re going to do is type the keyword “psychology” into Google and hit the News tab.
Type a keyword and navigate to the Google News tab
We’re looking for something to form a connection with our prospect. Look at the third link—“4 ways to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life”. In sales, we use any interesting articles, news pieces or even trivia to get a conversation going. Here’s how I’d draft an email if I were emailing me.
Example of a personalized cold email
Let me break this email down for you.
In the subject line, we used something extremely generic like “Quick question?” Humans are fundamentally curious creatures— and we love exploring. There’s been a ton of research into which email subject lines have the best conversions, and “Quick question?” seems to have performed the best. The ambiguity and the simplicity of the title seem to work for it.
The first line of the email is where it gets really interesting. We first indicate the fact that we’ve done some background research about the prospect. We then link them to a recent, relevant news article and ask them for their thoughts on it. Asking questions is always a good habit. Most people you email probably get anywhere between 10 to 10,000 emails a day, mostly about work! We make sure the email starts with a topic that has nothing to do with work, yet stimulates the prospect enough to take notice (people tend to notice what they already like or are interested in).
In the second paragraph, we let the prospect in on the real reason we sent them the email. Remember that pitch we made back on Upwork? We’re going to plug that in the place that says “
Finally, we end the email like a good sport. We tell the prospect we don’t really know too much about the topic you started out talking about (unless you do, then mention something about it like would with a friend) and that you’d be willing to learn and have a chat about it, even if the prospect isn’t interested in your graphic design services.
If a client ever rejects you for your graphic design skills but wants to talk to you about the topic you initiated take the call! You never know what can come out of a good conversation. I’ve had clients who weren’t really interested in my skills end up referring me to their friends. One final thing about human beings—at the core, we want to help people we like. Same goes for every single person you’re cold emailing.
Another high converting email that I use is the “friendly wager” email that I learnt from Alex. It works extremely well if you know the recipient is a sports fan. All you need to do is find that person’s twitter or biography and figure out which sport they like and what their favorite team is. Here’s how it goes:
Subject: Friendly Wager—Manchester United/Arsenal
Varun,
I noticed on Twitter that you liked Manchester United. Rather than me sending you an uncreative intro e-mail, I thought I would propose a friendly wager.
Man U is playing Arsenal this weekend (Soccer). I assume you will take United, so I will take Arsenal for the win. If United win, I will send you some football gear and if somehow Arsenal wins, then you will agree to take a 30 minute phone call with me to learn more about how my graphic design skills add value to your company.
Do we have ourselves a deal?
P.S: I’ve attached my portfolio if you’d like to take a look at my skill set anyway.
It seems counter-intuitive to send a mail so informal to someone you don’t know. The reason this email works is because most of the people you send an email to get thousands of emails a day. The subject line of this email stands out and is extremely clickable not only because it doesn’t seem sales-y, but because the recipient can relate to the topic (soccer). It shows that you’ve done your research, you understand their interests (in this case their favorite team) and the informal style of the email doesn’t put your ‘ask’ out there until the very end.
Now it’s your turn. Send a personalized email to all 100 prospects. It’s time consuming and you might HATE doing it, but it’s critical to your success. I see a lot of smart young people come up to me and say they like doing sales. At the very beginning of my career these were the kind of sales reps I used to hire. Over the next four years though, I realized how dead wrong I was about what it takes to be good at sales. Sales is less about smart and more about determined. Today, when I meet a potential sales representative, I ask myself just two questions.
Can this person follow our script?
Can this person send 100 personalized email or do 100 calls every single day; day after day, without losing motivation or energy?
Sales is all about repetition. You have to do the same thing over and over again. You have to face rejection almost all the time and still get up the day next day to start emailing and calling with a smile on your face. It’s tough, but only the tough survive. Lucky for freelancers like us, we only have to do sales when we run out of projects—which means in time as you build a brand, rarely.
Step 4: Converting Replies to Calls
Let me give you some stats from my own experience. Out of every 100 emails you send, you should expect around 1% to reply. If you sent out all your emails, you should expect to get just 1 reply. Typically, an interested client might reply with a time or ask you some follow up questions. Share your phone number or Skype details and try to get them on a call as soon as you can. The longer it takes for the call to happen from the client’s first reply, the higher the chances you will lose your project. Humans make decisions on impulse so it’s important for you to get on a call as soon as possible, while your email is still fresh on their minds.
Step 5: Finding Opportunity on a Call
In the business world, the only thing that can lead to opportunity is conversation. Once you get on a call with a client, be genuine and upfront about your experience level and your interest toward the prospect’s company. Be friendly and try to make conversation about things outside of business.
When I get on a call with a client, I try to make the call exciting. Most people in business have very boring conversations; so it’s critical you make yourself out to be someone who is fun to with! It could be something as simple as talking about the latest news around the prospect’s location or Trump’s election or a
bsolutely anything under the sun other than work!
During the call, try finding places you can help out with and try to let the client know you’re a responsible and accountable freelancer. When the client explains their business, try to listen carefully so you can find synergy between what you do and what they do. This isn’t an interview—you can find opportunity if you listen closely enough.
Step 6: Closing a Freelance Contract
A contract is an agreement between two parties that has legal binding. In other words, it makes sure you make your money and the client gets their services in exchange. Here is a sample freelance contract for designers that I recommend to new freelancers:
https://www.hellobonsai.com/freelance/sample-freelance-contract
A good contract will cover a lot of ground with very few words. Simply looking up “freelance contract” on Google will return a handful of contracts that might be useful to you. I would recommend hiring a lawyer and having them run through what each of those terms mean. For simple contracts, I actually think it’s a good idea for you to read through it yourself and understand every detail. It’s very important for a freelancer to have basic legal and financial intelligence and a simple contract is a good way to learn. The next chapter is a good intro to managing tax and contracts.
Send a signed contract over to your client, have them sign it (you can simply type in your name—many of these small contracts don’t require handwritten signatures) and send it back to you. Now you can work for your client, anxiety free!
Prospecting and sending out cold emails are a brilliant way for you to create your own pipeline of projects. Being great at sales simply means being great at making conversation. It isn’t hard to learn and is critical to your evolution as a freelancer.
Chapter 9
Tackling Tax
“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
What in the world is tax and why should I care?
Whether you’re a full-time employee looking to freelance or coming straight out of college, this is probably a very important chapter for you. There are many types of tax, but we’re going to talk mainly about income tax. While we’ve kept this chapter India specific, you can find the tax slabs for your own country online.
The government does not have its own money. In very simple terms, you pay the government a percentage of your income to provide you with the following services:
– Medicare and Health
– Transportation and Roads
– Military and Police Protection
– Basic Education
– Research into Science and Energy
So every rupee you give the government will be allocated to something that they deem useful to the general public. Because these slabs change often, we haven’t listed them here. Check Cleartax.in or another website to find your tax bracket.
As a freelancer, you probably have some expenses that help you do business. The first thing we’re going to do is calculate your Gross income and your Net income.
a) Gross Income
One of the advantages we have as freelancers is our ability to receive all income as online payments. It is super easy to calculate gross income this way. The gross income is always calculated for a given financial year—from the 1 April of a year, to 31 March of the next year.
b) Net Income
Unlike an employee, you have some expenses when it comes to doing business. Whether this is spending on task management software or buying a phone for work, you can put this down as a “business expense” and save tax on it. Gross income minus expenses equals net income.
c) Depreciation
When you buy a phone or a computer, its value reduces over time. That means to say that wear and tear catches up with electronic gadget over its lifespan.
The amount of decrease in each item’s value is termed as depreciation. Photographers, for instance, can calculate the depreciation accumulated towards cameras, tripods and printing equipment they own. Web developers can denote depreciation towards laptops, time-tracking software and other devices they use.
Remember, depreciation is an economically beneficial way of spreading the cost of a given asset over a period of time, rather than showing expense upfront.
Filing Tax
Filing tax as a freelancer is fairly easy—you use the ITR (Income Tax Return) 4 form while filing your returns. Also, if your income is more than ₹1 crore, your account books need to be audited according to ITR laws, before 31 of September.
Part of a sample ITR form
However, if your turnover is less than ₹1 crore, you don’t need an audit and you can wait until 31 of July. Remember that a lot of this information is subject to change as tax rules change.
Chapter 10
Managing Your Finances
“Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don’t know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.”
—JESSE JACKSON
Building your support infrastructure
One immediate, major drawback to freelancing is the lack of a support infrastructure. In a stable job, your employment probably includes at least basic health insurance, allowances, disability benefits, housing (sometimes) and a savings corpus.
In this chapter, we’re going to talk about a topic I ask people who are starting their careers to take very seriously, something that most people find boring and have no inclination towards. We’re going to talk about managing your finances. This will probably be the most boring chapter in this book after the chapter on tax, but this again is very important for life in general. This is meant to be a personal perspective and not investment advice; so please do your own research into what works best for you.
Many people, especially those fresh in the workforce, have absolutely no clue on how to effectively use their money, and this chapter is a crash course in making money work for you. I’m also giving you an insight into how to protect yourself in case of an accident, emergency or disability without you having to put too much money up front.
I learnt much of my personal finance skills from my co-founder at Avalon Labs, Shashank. At some point, we hope to write a longer thesis on managing money at the start of your career, but for now I’m going to create some simple financial rules. You might have heard the saying “money makes money”. This couldn’t be any truer. The magic of compound interest and mutual funds can only be experienced, not described. There are a plethora of ways you can lock your money up and have it make more money for you, and we’re going to have a diversified portfolio that balances out risk and reward. Managing your finances is often complicated; so I’m going to make it as simple as possible. This guide is useful not just for freelancers but also for people in corporate jobs (you can skip the health insurance, though).
The first thing we’re going to do is split our available capital in three ways:
– Savings and health insurance fund (35% of your after tax income)
– Monthly spend (25% of your after tax income)
– House rent and subscriptions like gym, Netflix, Apple Music, etc. (15% of your income)
– Experiment and learning fund (10% of your income)
– Splurge fund (15% of your income)
Let me quickly break this down for you and how to structure it. My suggestion is to have multiple savings accounts with banks. Some people don’t even know they can open multiple bank accounts! Almost every private bank in India allows you to create multiple accounts to section your funds. You should create four bank accounts.
a) Business account
b) Savings account
c) Monthly spend, house rent + subscription and experiment account (all three can be in one account)
d) Splurge fund account
Let’s talk about each in a little more detail
a) Business account: As a freelancer, money should always be sent to yo
ur business account. Whether you take payments from your clients via Upwork, Paypal or direct bank transfer, you want to make sure it’s this account the money is wired into. From a tax standpoint, it’s easier to manage all incoming payments when they’re arriving in one account.
b) Savings account: There are many ways to save money, but I’ll quickly tell you what has worked for me. I’ve done considerable research on the topic and I’d advise you to do the same, but this is a broad overview of what you need to know.
ELSS: The Indian government encourages you to save some money. Investments in tax-saving mutual funds, also known as equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS), qualify for tax benefits. Tax-saving mutual funds invest in the stock market and a bunch of other assets. They are geared toward investors with medium-to high-risk appetite. Because you are probably young and have time working in your favour, it makes sense for you to invest a proportion of our savings in a slightly high risk fund. Remember, investments are locked in for three years, but that’s a good thing. Investments towards tax-saving mutual funds are tax free up to a maximum of ₹1.5 lakhs. Since we’re going to investing in multiple tax-saving funds, we’re going to aim to save up to ₹1 lakh in ELSS and the minute you hit that value in any financial year, lock it in!
