Networking

I recently finished reading an excellent book called “Mindset” by Carol Dweck that explores a growth mindset and a fixed mindset (we all have one mindset towards some topics and the other towards other topics).

With so much research on the topic, we are joining the freelancing ‘movement’ at the best possible time in history because we can use this research to make our lives easier by understanding ourselves better.

Specifically for freelancing, that means adopting a growth mindset and working with other people to speed up your learnings (and earnings).

A growth mindset could be feeling that there are enough clients for everyone to be a successful freelancer. While a fixed mindset might be that if I get a freelancing project someone else has to lose it in order for me to win it.

Allow me to show you how by using a mastermind..

Masterminding: a simple tool for learning FAST

Masterminding is simply two people (or a small group) getting together and working on a mutual challenge.

For example, you and your friend masterminding how to get your first freelance project via the Upwork platform.

There is another hidden benefit besides conquering the challenge itself: it is an excellent way to make new, lifelong, cool friends that are similar to you.

You might solve that challenge together in a week whereas if you are going at it alone it might take you a month.

Why? Well, you have to go through everything yourself without any shortcuts but because you don’t have the accountability, typically it is easier to get emotional, overwhelmed and stuck.

In a good mastermind, you’ll get much more done than the work you put in. In a decent mastermind, you’ll typically get twice the results without doing much extra work simply because you share your experience with each other.

However, in a good mastermind, you’ll get much more than that because of the perspective you are able to get. It’s like mapping out the landscape in the dark- the more people to cover ground, the more ground you can cover.

Now, imagine if instead of being two, you are three or four people sharing your insights with each other…

It hasn’t always worked out well but I’ve experienced amazing results several times – simply because consistently getting another perspective on your exact challenge helps you get unstuck.

Typically a mastermind is time-limited or limited to solving a specific challenge and once that is done, the mastermind dissolves itself but it can be restarted again around a new challenge.

Contrary to what seems to be the popular opinion you don’t need to get to the same final place, routine or goal- you just need to experiment together. 

For example, you’ll do experiment A and they experiment B, and you compare the results and work to understand why they happened.

Two powerful masterminds that can help you today

I’ve experimented with different mastermind types and structures, and these two really it hit home:

1. Accountability
2. Mastering a topic together

Accountability can be as simple as the way a friend of mine likes to do it:

Get together a couple of people and each of you decides 2-3 tasks you’d like done within the next couple of hours.

Besides specifying the exact time you need to be done with the tasks and specifically what those are, you put down a meaningful amount of money right there on the table (literally). If you don’t finish what you intended, your money is now your friend’s money. 

That sucks and that’s why it works. It can be a painful experience.

For example, the other day we met to finish some work and I decided I needed to finish a report and send out an email related to it. So, those were my two tasks.

I decided that two hours would be just enough time for me to finish it while still needing to work effectively. I put down $25 and placed ‘my bet’ that I could do it meanwhile my friend did the same with his own tasks.

You don’t have to put down $25 – just whatever amount is meaningful enough for you that you will take it seriously. For some that will be less and for others it will be more- experiment and find the best fit for you.

If you are unable to meet up in a cafe, you can also do it online via Skype, Discord, Slack, etc. You simply run a live video chat with your friend while you both work.

This variation of a mastermind is more of a short-term, quick and dirty one. With types like an accountability mastermind, you can stretch it out for a longer period of time and catch up with your partner say once a week for 30 minutes on a set time and day.

In that session (whether it be a phone call, video call or meeting in person), you can talk about what you worked on this week, what kind of challenges and successes or failures you had and what you’d like to work on the following week and discuss on the next call.

I find it important to keep a structure to make sure you cover all the things you need to without feeling like it has to be a dreaded phone call you need to do for hours each week.

By the way, it does not have to be weekly- some people prefer that it is bi-weekly, monthly or even yearly and that is totally fine.

Another option is masterminding a particular topic together.

Masterminding a particular topic

This type of mastermind typically takes longer as it focuses on a small group cracking a particular challenge or topic together.

That could simply be you and your friends getting together and figuring out how to get your first three clients on Upwork.

Typically, you’d go at it alone by sending out proposals, and in the beginning probably not hearing back from most of them and not knowing why. I know because I’ve tried it and so has my students. It is hella frustrating.

In that case, I imagine you would also either dread sending out more proposals because nothing is happening or you might continue and luckily someone eventually writes you back, yet you don’t really understand why.

Compare that to jumping on a call a day later only to discover that your buddy just landed their first client while another just got a write-back from a proposal they sent.

In my experience, you do start to feel like you are falling behind. Yet, they help you critique your proposals to figure out what you did wrong.

By next week’s mastermind call, a few potential clients might already be eager to jump on a call with you – because of the feedback your mastermind helped you with based on their newfound experience.

That is the difference between working in a mastermind compared to going at it alone. There is no magic to it.. It is just being smart and effective.

The key to this type of mastermind is that everyone is at roughly the same level and have complete commitment to the ground rules that your group set up to follow. 

If someone is slacking off, the rest of the group will get annoyed and lose momentum. It’s funny how someone without momentum can destroy the traction of someone who has.

I’m not really sure why but I’ve experienced it many times and it is dangerous as hell because getting back into traction-mode takes a while.

How to find people for your mastermind (even if you live in the middle of nowhere)

I’ve found it to be quite easy to find people who want to join a mastermind. The challenge is that people often misunderstand the concept and think someone will help them without them contributing equally.

I also often see another variation where people want to join a mastermind with someone that is more advanced than they are which presents a whole different challenge: why would they help you? What do they gain? And how can you help them?

If you are in that position, typically there is something you can help a more advanced person, with. 

However, oftentimes that person is prioritizing differently because they are further down their own journey and therefore typically just focuses on a few things to really move the needle in their freelancing business.

Therefore it is often the case that you can’t help as the things you are trying to learn is what they have already worked past (there is no point in learning advanced things before the fundamentals).

So in short, it’s usually just not a good fit to work in a mastermind with someone who is not at the same level as you – unless it is a paid mastermind where you pay for expertise, which is a topic for another day.

Your mastermind is only as good as the people in it

So, rather than doing a million masterminds with different people to find the right fit, we can spend a little time qualifying them upfront before getting into the hard work itself. 

You’ll never know for sure until you get down to business but if you do it right, surely it will help you avoid the big mistakes.

That will also help you avoid awkward situations when you want to leave a mastermind because it is not a good fit.

Typically, the easiest way to qualify if someone is a good fit for a mastermind is by spending money. Most high-end, exclusive, masterminds come with a high price tag to weed out those that are not a good fit.

The challenge is that people might still pay to join because they want to be in a room with advanced people yet they don’t fit. 

That’s why creators usually combine the high price tag with an extensive questionnaire to make sure they only accept people that make up a good group for everyone involved.

The simplest way to get started is by paying to join an online training program related to your field (e.g. freelancing) that also has a mastermind-aspect to it, so students are paired in masterminds based on their timezone and goals.

Following a program particularly helped me the first couple of times I was learning how to put together a mastermind because I had the program owner help facilitate rules, structure and matching up with people so we knew it was done right from the beginning.

However, you don’t need to do it that way and you can certainly do it for free too. It is just a bit more challenging to find the right people.

The first challenge is to find a place where people who are looking to do the same as you, hang out. The reason I like online programs for finding mastermind-partners is that this part is done for me. It is definitely the most time-consuming part.

I don’t know your exact situation, so I’ll give you an example using a Facebook group to scout for people and you should be able to tweak it to your own situation.

I’d go to Facebook Ad Hacks (a Facebook group), check that I am not breaking any rules and post something like this:

“Hello everyone,

I’m creating a mastermind for people that are looking to get their first freelancing client through Upwork while helping businesses with marketing-related services.

If anyone is on the same journey and want to collaborate, let’s chat.

-Ideal time zone: +1 GMT

-Max. 4 people (incl. me)”

Then I will add each place that I post it to a spreadsheet and track where I find the people that are the best fit. You can steal my spreadsheet template here (click FILE > MAKE A COPY). 

You don’t have to track this, especially if you only post it in a couple of places, but for me, it works well as it is easy for me to forget the details over time. If you want to create another mastermind down the road the information will become handy.

If no one responds to you, you probably posted it in the wrong place- try a couple of new ones 🙂

If you find some people you think might be a good fit, you could make them jump through tiny hoops to see how much action they take – if they can’t do a couple of basic things to join your mastermind, how can you expect them to contribute to the actual mastermind itself?

It could simply be that you prepared a couple of open-ended questions that they need to respond to before you jump on a casual call with them. 

I’ve listed out a couple of questions you could use to get started below.

• Which stage are you at with your freelancing? Beginner? Intermediate? Advanced?
• Where do you go to learn about freelancing? (which websites, etc.)
• Which timezone are you in?
• Who are your clients and what do you help them with?
• What is your goal with freelancing?
• What is challenging for you right now?

Basically, you’ll want to get on a quick and casual call with them (say 15 mins) just to see if you’ll be a good fit. You can talk about the mastermind itself but also spend a bit of time getting to know each other as a person.

This is a key step- I strongly recommend you do not skip this and only use text chat. If you do, you’ll see for yourself what happens down the road 😉

Mastermind “rules” to get your started

Typically, a maximum of four people in a mastermind is great. Less can also do it but more definitely complicates things.

Of course, life can always get in the way or you’ll have a holiday or something but generally, the work of the mastermind should stay consistent week by week with only minor changes/hiccups here and there.

If someone is not committed, even though it might be hard, you have to let them go. Oftentimes it is easier to agree on a set of rules upfront that includes when someone should be exited from the mastermind – it makes that difficult conversation easier.

As you finish the set of challenges you’ve set up for the mastermind and it is time to dissolve it, you might want to turn it into say a 30-minute call every month to casually talk about new challenges.

In the beginning, you’ll want to talk more often about the smaller challenges within your core challenge but as time progresses you’ll benefit from talking about bigger and bigger challenges rather than the day to day minutiae which is why half an hour once a month should be a good fit.

As you prepare the mastermind, you’ll need to agree on a clearly defined goal. That goal needs to be specific, within a certain timeline and you need to agree on what each member commits to doing weekly along with how many ‘strikes’ each person has before they are out of the group.

Assuming you are all starting out learning how to freelance, a great goal would be that each of you work together to land your first three projects from Upwork in the next 90 days (notice I said ‘land’ not ‘complete’).

In that case, each of you needs to be ready with an active and prepared Upwork-account that is ready to send out proposals (otherwise those who already have one will be waiting for those who doesn’t have one). That also means you need to have figured out which service you would like to provide and which clients you’d like to serve.

In an ideal world, each of you would have a slight overlap. For example, one might be a Facebook marketer, another a content writer, another an email specialist and one a search specialist.

That way, you’ll really be able to help each other without competing for the same work.

Each member should commit to doing the same amount of work each week. Within the goal mentioned above, there are several key steps from sending out proposals to closing the projects and delivering them successfully.

In the first few weeks, you will likely focus on sending out proposals and getting leads to reply back to you so you can talk with them further.

As you progress, that might turn into a focus on how to close them on the phone and later how to get referrals to other clients. One step at a time.

A simple way to get your group started is to simply agree that everyone sends out 5 proposals over the next week.

It will be valuable for all of you to compare your proposals and especially those where the client wrote you back.

Not only that but you will also learn much faster how the platform selects which freelancers it recommends to clients, how much other freelancers charge, etc.

There will be times where life gets in the way so you’ll need to agree on a certain number of strikes before someone has to leave the mastermind. Three strikes is typically a good place to start.

The challenge is if people start to slack and not send the five proposals they promised – they won’t be getting real world-feedback that the whole group will be able to learn from. Then that person will leech on your hard work. Not ideal.

The single most important thing is total, complete honesty. If that doesn’t work, not only are you cheating your new friends -which means they can’t trust you in the future- but you also cheat yourself.

One of the powerful things about a mastermind is that what you share might spur something for someone else that leads to you getting better results.

There is nothing more powerful than trust because you can use it to get help down the line. 

Imagine a successful friend that you have been good friends with for many years – since the time before they had a successful business. Do you think they would help you if you ask? 

Probably.

During your weekly calls, you’ll need to agree on a clear set of rules for communication. Say, you do a weekly 30-min call each Sunday at 5 pm. Typically, it works best to have someone controlling the meeting agenda and gives each member time to give their weekly update – with a reasonable time limit as well so your meeting doesn’t drag out forever.

A good place to start is by asking them to prepare to summarize the work they did the past week (you most likely agreed on a set of tasks for the week in the past meeting) along with key insights. That might take five minutes per person.

Then you might spend the next five minutes discussing the feedback that someone asked for followed by the last five minutes agreeing what each member should do and prepare for next week’s call.

Overview (30 mins-call):

• 5 mins/person (total: up to 20 mins): each member updates the group on what they did and learned in the past week
• 5 mins: discussing/giving feedback to someone who is asking for it (e.g. on their project proposals)
• 5 mins: agreeing on what needs to be done by each member for the next week

This is a good place to start and you should tweak it as you go to fit the needs of your mastermind. 

You might find in the first call that you want to double each section of the session so that it becomes 10 minutes for each part and it the whole call lasts for an hour.

When I started this whole freelancing journey, my biggest dream was to work while traveling the world. You know the romantic picture-perfect image of a sandy beach and a couple in love.

I thought that it is already difficult to find someone you really connect with, so giving that up simply because of something as dumb as visas or other logistical challenges seemed ridiculous.

It turns out there is a dark side to living and working as a digital nomad. Not only does your work and income take a serious hit in the beginning but your relationships too.

Traveling gets exhausting after a while. It doesn’t take that many temples and sights until they are all the same.

You will face challenges connecting with clients because of internet- or transport problems (delayed flights, anyone?). You know how everyone has those random days where life throws you a curveball?

Normally, I bet you’ll be able to find room in your day to be flexible whether that is a change to your day-to-day plans, client calls or something else.

When you travel as a digital nomad, it consumes all your life and every aspect of each day until you have worked out your new systems and adapted your lifestyle and habits.

When traveling, that ‘buffer zone’ you are used to from home is usually all spent dealing with all the random things a foreign country, city, and culture throws at you.

Do a short practice run and see for yourself how much work you actually get done.

What it actually requires

Consider this a disclaimer to help you avoid making a big mistake and travel before you are ready. The alternative is you are forced to go back and start over.

You should not be traveling until you are experienced in each step of the freelancing process from finding a new client to completing the project and getting paid.

By experienced, I mean to the point that you can do it in your sleep. When you travel there will be a lot of random things you can’t control so you don’t want to be learning new things at work too. When one thing in life is unstable, other things need to be stable to avoid a breakdown of your systems.

If you have, say, three core things to keep you stable in life you might let one become unstable temporarily while the other two will keep you sane.

An example of three things could be: your day-job, freelance income, and your relationships.

If you start traveling all of these three will take a hit – at the very least for the first 90+ days until you get a chance to build new systems.

In this case, after saving up a year’s worth of living cost, I’d start by potentially moving abroad with my significant other (or another important relationship to you) to a single city.

Stay there and develop your new freelancing-systems for being in a new city or do a bunch of short-term trips (think weekend trips) to practice.

As you eventually sort these out, you can switch your focus to working on your relationships and building new ones along with a system you can use for traveling. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t meet new people right away, I mean you shouldn’t focus all your energy on it.

Your new connections will make or break your new ‘expat’ life, so they are definitely important. You want to aim for spending about 50% of your non-sleeping time on freelancing, 20% on meeting new people and the rest on other things like working out and finding good cafes to work from, etc. until you are confident in your new setup.

Spend your best hours doing your primary focus (getting more freelancing projects online and completing them) and focus on relationships secondary. If you switch to different time zones you might want to prepare your clients on how this benefits them.

These are the basics, you’ll also want to have a war chest ready to cover your living- and travel cost for at least six- to twelve months (I like numbeo.com for checking what things cost in each city around the world).

You could save up from your day-job but in an ideal world, this war chest is made from freelancing, so you have proven to yourself and your market that doing well freelancing is possible in your niche of choice.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, for the small group of readers that will be ready to pursue this dream, let’s talk about how to make the transition and your big win when traveling: creating powerful connections.

Both in terms of impressing clients by trying services or products from your clients or their competitors, and also by meeting your clients or leads in person (both are excellent ways to build trust).

It is powerful to ask “is it possible for us to meet for coffee? I’m in town the next two days” – of course, you shouldn’t misuse it.

Traps you (probably) haven’t anticipated yet

How does it affect your freelancing business when you have work to do but you are traveling and

1. Flights, trains or boats are delayed?
2. When you are tired, your Airbnb host cancels last minute and the weather fucks up your plans, and you can’t find any decent food?
3. You can’t find a good internet connection and or place to work that you like?
4. You can’t get yourself to be productive for whatever reason?
5. The list goes on..

Better solve these challenges first, build systems and a contingency plan for what you are going to do WHEN these things happen.

Benefit from traveling by building powerful connections

Even with the list above, there will be a ton of small details you don’t know and can’t really research online- you’ll experience a lot of annoyances and the best way to help make the move work is by making new friends quickly.

Experienced expats can help you with housing, visa, work-setup, etc. in your city of choice so you can get a stable ‘day-to-day’ going fast.

The best place to start is if you have a friend who can connect you with someone that knows the city of your choice. Going in ‘warm’ will usually help you move quicker. Otherwise, I’d check the expat-Facebook groups for that city although those are usually a hit or miss.

I’m not going to comment on housing, etc. as it is different in each city and I don’t know your specific situation. Rather, it sucks to be abroad for three months only to wake up with no friends. And then it’s too late.

People often leave a city behind because “there are no cool people”, “I just don’t like the vibe” or whatever they wanna call it. It usually comes down to the same thing; they did not make enough good friends.

Usually, because they didn’t try hard enough and expected things to come by themselves. Which makes a lot of sense if you haven’t traveled much- most of us, including myself, did not learn how to go and seek new people- they came automatically via schools, jobs and clubs.

Not you, though. Not FreelancingWithChris-readers.

My comments below are intended to help you meet new people both professionally and non professionally while having a lot of fun abroad.

When I came back home after traveling the first time, friends always asked me “Weren’t you scared of not having any friends when you moved abroad?”

I was! Hella scared!

Before moving abroad, I had only been traveling to a few countries. I wasn’t particularly interested in traveling – and I was a bit shy, to be honest. Fortunately, as it turns out, expats communities are quite different from what we are used to from home.

My impression is that a lot of people worry about this for little reason. What many fail to remember is that most other foreigners have the same issue as you which means they want to make friends 10x more than people do at home.

Of course, if you just arrived compared to someone who’s been living there for a while, you will have fewer friends than that person but as all expats know it is common that people come and go – it’s just part of the expat life.

That means that if you stop making new friends you will end up with none at some point. I tried both so I hope you’ll learn from my mistake.

There are many cool things about making money online but one of the challenges is that you don’t have an office with co-workers to talk to every day and you have to proactively meet new people.

Like anything else, you can only get better by practicing and it is much easier to do abroad. Nobody knows you, so you can act in any way you want or be who you want to be.

It might take time getting comfortable doing something different but it is much easier abroad. Once you have done it a few times and you realize that people judge foreigners much less than locals, as you can play the ‘innocent, dumb, foreigner’-card, you will feel doing things that scare you becoming so much easier.

Once you have some friends, things will start to snowball as people are much more open to introducing you to their friends.

What does a group of amazing connections even look like?

A great network doesn’t require a specific number of people; it all depends on how you are as a person and I’ve found diversifying to be important.

Some people like to connect with everyone all the time and others are slightly more private. When you are working online and living in a foreign country, there are various sets of people that will be helpful to know both professionally, non-professionally, online and offline.

The key here is that the inputs from all these different types of people will help you stay balanced while knowing what is happening in your industry as well as in the online industry in general.

As you get a better lay of the land, I’m sure you will see lots of new great business opportunities MUCH faster than those people who are lacking a proper network. In fact, it’s a HUGE disadvantage to not have a proper network – you don’t even know of all the opportunities you are missing!

Of course, you should also have friends in your network that you don’t do work related stuff with.

Personally, I like to have a mix of local friends and foreigners that don’t work online. In my experience, it is very rare to become as close to a local as you do to other foreigners unless it is someone you are dating.

Locals will just never understand what it’s like for you to live in a foreign country doing what seems to be the dream to many. Just like we will never truly understand what it is like to be a local like them.

They are great if you are a curious person, like me, who like to learn about the culture, food and a bit of the language.

Most of us will be proud of our home country and love to answer any questions about it, just like many of your new local friends will. Use that to your advantage but showing interest with the locals rather than reading the latest lonely planet or travel blog.

Foreigners, on the other hand, will understand your new situation much better and you will probably connect way better with them.

On that note, I suggest avoiding living with your countrymen. You will get a much better experience if you don’t live with them and instead meet up with them on occasion.

The problem with living with countrymen is that you will get into a comfort zone very fast where you might speak your own language at home.

Since you already took that leap of faith when you moved abroad and busted your comfort zone, you now have to work harder to break it again. It’s much easier for you if you learn to live without them and appreciate it when you meet up them instead.

Professionally it will be helpful for you to have these people around you

1. Some at your level to battle the challenges out with
2. Some at your level some doing something similar yet different online
3. Some 1-2 levels above you – doing something similar to you
4. Some 1-2 levels above you – doing something vastly different
5. Some way better than you – doing something similar to you
6. Some way better than you – doing something vastly different

These six groups of people will give you a great mix of different knowledge so you get a better idea of knowing what’s moving in your industry both in your niche, type of business and other online industries.

Don’t underestimate the power of knowing people who can help you when you’re stuck. If this sounds overwhelming, relax. You don’t need to find these people tomorrow- it’s one step at a time.

It’s an art to be perfected and personally, with the people who are levels above me, I take my time to make sure I approach them in the best way possible.

I like people whose beliefs aren’t too similar to my own so they can challenge them once in a while and help me stay open to new ideas.

However, if you have none of these groups in your network, the first group -people at your level to battle the challenges out with- is definitely the one you should start reaching out to TODAY.

When you have some friends who are doing something similar to you and at the same level, you can help each other professionally but more importantly support each other on bad days.

We all have those and it’s really helpful to have some motivation rub off on you on a bad day from someone who understands what exactly you are going through. I’ve been guilty of thinking I didn’t need anyone to help me for a very long time – don’t make the same mistake.

Having the right people around you is probably the most important thing you can do. It’s amazing how a little bit of advice from an expert can boost your results. Not to mention the fact that you can refer clients to each other.

The key to a great network is just a little bit effort each day and it will snowball quickly.

How do you find the right people?

Finding people can be done in very different places. Usually, each niche has its own online forum but the people and how they react probably varies a lot from place to place.

I won’t get into details about specific sites as there are way too many but the key is knowing your sources – what type of people you find where. For example, public internet forums are probably much worse than private forums if you are looking for serious people.

Where to start looking

• Internet forums
• Industry meetups
• Networking events
• Co-working spaces
• Home-country events such as get-together at the embassy or chamber of commerce
• Through other friends/flatmates

If you are starting from scratch, start by finding someone who is doing the same thing as you – create a mastermind or something.

When I move to a new place I usually use the opportunity to find flatmates that have 9-5 jobs so I’ll have some friends who are doing something completely different than I am.

Hack: leveraging your lack of knowledge to make new friends

There is one thing that has been extremely useful to me when making friends both online and offline; curiosity.

As mentioned previously most people are proud of their country and will be happy if you show interest in their roots.

At the same time, you will learn about new food, culture and perhaps the language that you can use to impress your friends and family.

One of the best things about being abroad is that when you meet new people the topic always seems to start out with where you are from, which also makes it an easy icebreaker because you can follow up by asking them if they know X and Y from the same country.

This gets much easier the more you do it as your network grows and you know more people and learn more cultural insights you can turn into questions.

If you go to an event where you know there are is a mixed crowd you can be pretty sure there must be some locals so if you don’t know what to say you can always prepare some questions about the country’s food, culture or language. You can use the news or history books for inspiration.

Action steps you can do today

Professionally – if you don’t have any friends online that you are working closely with on the same topic, get started there!

If you still have no clue about where to start, go find an online forum about your niche and private message people who seem to be doing the same as you. Don’t get discouraged – sometimes it takes a while to find people that you connect well with.

Non-professionally – plan something with the people you’ve already met and make sure they invite some people you don’t already know (you should do the same for them) and speak to those strangers.