Know Your Worth: How to Properly Price Your Freelance Services with Brett Fritz

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing marketing. platform. Today, we'll be breaking down knowing your worth, how to properly price your freelance services. To drop these value bombs, I brought Brett Fritz in the EO Fire studios. Brett's entrepreneurial career catapulted after being laid off from a corporate role in 2018. He started out as a freelancer and now has built several multi-million dollar companies across various industries. And today we're talking about why the freelancer market is on fire, the biggest challenges freelancers face in today's market, why pricing is so difficult to get right and oh, so much more.

0:41And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Brett and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Brett, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. JLD, Fire Nation, super pumped to be here. You know, we live in this world of social media, instant gratification.

1:23And I think we all believe that success should just be given to us. It's fast, it's now. But I truly, with all my heart believe that success takes way longer than most people expect. And that's okay, right? You should not be bummed out if it takes longer than you were expecting it to take. And you shouldn't be bummed out if it's harder either. Like I love when people come to me and say, but John, it's so hard. Like what I'm doing is so difficult. And I say, good, because guess what? The higher the barrier, the lower the competition. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it and there would be no competition, but it's because it's hard that 99 plus percent of your competition will quit.

2:04They will give up. And because of that, you will succeed. So embrace it being hard, embrace it taking a long time. And today we're talking about knowing your worth, how to properly, properly price your freelance services. And Brett, the freelance market, let's be honest, it's on fire right now. I want you to break down what the freelancer market actually is just for Fire Nation, like in your definition and why the heck is it so hot? Yeah. Yeah. Freelancer market is super hot right now. I think it's a really trendy topic, you know, a freelancer definition wise, right? So it's anyone that is doing work outside of their normal nine to five, right?

2:44That's kind of the traditional way. Think of it as a gig economy. You're not working as a W-2. You're a 1099 for yourself and or for another company. Now, that can become a full-time gig. And there are millions of people that have jumped into the freelancer world and become very successful entrepreneurs. In fact, in the US alone, there's over 75 million people that consider themselves a freelancer, whether that's they've done one project, they're full-time freelancing, or they just do it on the side as a night gig. But really, think about that. I mean, that 75 million is crazy, right? That's one out of five people.

3:21Well, JLD, I know you know at least five people and it's safe to say one of those five is doing some type of freelance work. And that market is only growing. You know, by 2028, there's expected to be over 90 million freelancers in the U.S. Think worldwide now. Holy cow, we're talking about 1.5 billion freelancers now. And that number is only going to continue to skyrocket. So it's a huge market. And I really think that the shift took place during the pandemic. Right. Think back four or five years ago, we were all stuck working at home and companies now, you know, they they saw freelancers as the ability to find strategic, low cost, you know, cost effective talent without losing any expertise.

4:07And so that really made a huge shift in the market because now companies, you know, they can combat inflation. They can keep their costs down, you know, from budgeting, but they're still finding experts, right? And they're filling their project needs with experts out there without having to, you know, to onboard, to have benefits, to have all the big salaries that come with it. And the numbers don't lie, right? You know, the growth is there. There's big platforms out there to find freelance work like Upwork or Fiverr. Those are some big ones in the US. And their year-over-year numbers are just phenomenal, 15 % to 25 % growth year-over-year.

4:47And I'll finish with this, JLD. I think from a freelancer perspective, the appetite really grew, especially during the pandemic and beyond, to have more autonomy, right? And freelancers, you hear all the time now, top professionals are leaving their corporate roles to go start freelancing because what do they want? They want more time. They want more income. They don't want to sit in the commute for 20 minutes a day, so many hours a month. They want to control their clients. And so freelancing gives them that flexibility. But, you know, unfortunately, the problem is that because of this, you know, growing market, because of the platforms that are out there that are able to match talent with demand, we've also seen this kind of race to the bottom, you know, that's really made it difficult for freelancers because, you know, companies start to look for who's the cheapest.

5:44And that's not always the best. You don't want to just be the cheapest. Well, I want to jump in here because that's one of my favorite quotes from Seth Godin is, the problem with the race to the bottom is that you just might win. And nobody wants to win that race, Fire Nation. Brett, you can go ahead. You can use that. Just give me credit twice, and then it's yours forever. But I love that Seth Godin quote, the problem with the race to the bottom is that you just might win. And we've been kind of nudging into the obstacles, the challenges, the struggles that freelancers face. What are the biggest ones, Brett?

6:16Yeah, I mean, there's definitely big ones, right? Like we talked about the competitiveness of the market. That's probably the first challenge that a lot of people talk about when I talk to freelancers. They think it's just super competitive. And as a result, they don't wanna dive in. I think that, yes, it is a challenge. I think it's more of a perceived challenge though. More so, I think there are reasons why people don't wanna be in a competitive market. And that's because they struggle to communicate their ROI. They can't really define who they are, right? And so when they get into a competitive market like the freelance world, they think, oh my gosh, I'm competing with the global economy.

6:54I'm competing with people in different countries and different rates, and it's so hard to figure out. And the reason for that is because there's traditionally been a lack of transparency and access to market insights for the freelancers. That just hasn't been available. And because of that, then freelancers have to guess, right, on what to charge and how to go to market and what to do. And, you know, it kind of becomes this black box that they're jumping into. And so those two big ones are key. But I think it all really leads down the path of it really depends on, you know, the freelancer themselves, the gig worker.

7:31Did they come from a traditional world of work? And if they did, they were a W-2 employee somewhere else. they were able to trust that every other week, every, every other Friday, they got a paycheck. And, uh, it was, you know, in their, in their inbox, it was direct deposited. Right. But with the freelancing world, you have to become a hunter. You know, you're hunting every day now to try to find that next income, that next client. Um, and that's really one of the biggest challenges that, uh, that freelancers struggle with is, you know, that inconsistent income and trying to figure out where they're going to land their next job.

8:03Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of different challenges out there. You know, we hear about scope creep a lot. We hear about, you know, the difficulty to stand out in the challenging market. And the last thing I'll say too, is I think there's just a lack of business training with freelancers. You know, they, they, they maybe came from a traditional world. They're really good at what they do. They're, they're an expert at photography or an expert in consulting or strategy, but then they forget that as a freelancer, you're running a business. You know, you have to have all of the steps put in place.

8:36for incorporation, understanding your taxes, know how to do branding and market positioning and know how to get your pricing in place, right? So there's all of these different components to beyond just delivering your services that freelancers aren't really taught. They just think, I'm gonna go be an expert and I'm gonna do this great. That's phenomenal. You're an excellent practitioner, but at the end of the day, you still have other stuff that you need to deal with because you're running a business now. Well, Fire Nation, properly pricing your freelance services is really one of the main focal points of our conversation today.

9:09And we're going to be hitting that as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business. And they are also our featured partner, High Level. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, High Level is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white label solution. You can build funnels, send SMS and email campaigns, schedule appointments, manage pipelines, run memberships, and even launch your own branded mobile app.

9:47It's drag and drop simple, incredibly customizable, and built for serious growth. My favorite part, you can resell high level under your own brand. That means recurring revenue, loyal clients, and total control. So whether you're tired of duct taping tools together or ready to start offering high value services with ease, High Level is your unfair advantage. On top of it all, their support team is second to none and has your back every step of the way. Seriously, every question that pops up, they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial.

10:18So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together High Level, join the revolution There are certain cities and towns you visit and can't help but think how does this place actually exist? I love uncovering these gems and I'm about to visit one of my favorites in Maine Drake's Island Visiting Drake's is like walking onto a movie set cottages all in a row along hundreds of feet of white sandy beaches just beautiful We're extra lucky that we have family that rents a beach house here every year, and we love visiting places with people who know the area well.

11:01In fact, we think that's the best way to travel, as if you're a local. This also includes staying in actual homes, which we always do on our travels, thanks to Airbnb. It's a perfect way to truly immerse yourself in a new place. And what better time to not only enjoy someone else's home, but to also have others enjoy yours. Think about it. Next time you find yourself in search of that super special city or town, consider making some extra cash by hosting your home on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. You've got AI helping you write emails and name your dog.

11:38Shouldn't you be using AI to help you invest too? Seriously, I know investing can seem a bit overwhelming. I've been studying it since a young age, and I still have questions 30 years later. but it's an incredibly important part of my overall long-term wealth strategy. Is it part of yours? Public.com is the investing platform for those who take it seriously. With Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and more. You can also access industry-leading yields like the 4.1 % APY you can earn on your cash with no fees or minimums. But what sets Public apart? AI isn't just a feature.

12:11It's woven into the entire experience from portfolio insights to earnings call recaps. Public gives you smarter context at every touch point. Plus, you can earn up to$10 ,000 when you transfer your existing investment portfolio over to Public. Go to public.com slash fire to fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Brett, we're back and I wanna talk about pricing. It's so difficult for freelancers to get this right. Why is that the case? It's funny, John. I jumped into freelancing in 2018 after about a 15-year run as a successful sales and marketing executive.

12:54I jumped in because I got laid off, right? Full transparency. I lost my job. And I said to my wife, well, I know how to do sales. I can go be a sales freelancer. But when I got into it, I just, I didn't know how to price my own services. And no one really tells you that. There's no freelancer glass door type company out there that says this company is going to pay this much for this service, right? And so freelancers like myself back in 2018 and others, you know, it just becomes a guesswork where you talk to peers or you just look at what you think the budget's going to be and you kind of back into a number.

13:29But pricing ultimately becomes all about confidence, right? And if you don't have good confidence in your pricing, you know, you have to realize pricing is not just math, right? It's more than, you know, that it's got some psychology behind it. And so, you know, freelancers start to struggle with rejection. And so they're going to lower their prices. And I mean, truth be told, I was the same way. You know, my first couple of projects that I was doing a freelancing work with, I just was lowering my prices as low as I get that race to the bottom, like we talked about, just to win the deal, just to get a client on board.

14:02But yeah, you have to have that confidence and you have to have that research. You know, I think a big component that we advise a lot of people on and what we've been working with on is understanding the difference between value pricing and hourly pricing. And I'll just quickly touch on the differences here. I mean, you know, hourly pricing, think of that as when you run into that trap of trading your time for money. You know, you say to a client, I'll give you 10 hours, I'm going to charge you$10 an hour, so this is going to be a$100 project. I mean, that's great, but it's a trap. You're stuck in that limitation and those molds of the hour and that time for money model versus the value pricing is all about allowing you as a freelancer to get paid for what the impact is that you're going to deliver to the client.

14:48And that's where the boom happens, right? That's where it really starts to take off. But you can't really make that transition. You can't jump that gap until you know, you know, all of the market data, the insights, what's important, you know, how the client's going to react, what is actually the market bearing for your pricing. And then what we see happen a lot is often the freelancer either is overpricing their services and they're going to win a client or two great, but then they're going to scare off others because they're too expensive or they're underpricing and they get burned out, right?

15:21Because you're just churning through over and over clients. And I'll give you a couple of quick examples of how market data and research can help you with your pricing. For instance, let's just say that you're a freelancer that does UX, UI, you know, for design work in fintech as an industry. Well, most people don't realize this, but fintech, you know, you can charge a lot more than you would in other industries, say, like the educational services industry. and research shows that a UX UI freelancer can charge twice as much in their industry versus they can in education. And so let's just flip that around.

15:59If you're an educational UX guy and you've got experience doing that and you get offered a bid to go do some UX work for FinTech, a FinTech client, if you don't know the research is out there, then, oh my gosh, you're just leaving money on the table. And so it's super important to have kind of that backbone of knowing how to price your services, because otherwise you're just going into a black box again. And really the same goes for, you know, for localized data, right? If you're living in New York city versus you're living in Houston, Texas, you're going to have very different components of how much something is priced at, what the client is willing to pay for.

16:34And, you know, as you get international as well, it becomes a, it becomes a big crapshoot. And, you know, it's, it's sad to say this because pricing is so difficult and it's such a key component to, you know, business success. And remember, freelancers are business owners now. But in 2023, there was a survey that came out, interviewed, you know, thousands of freelancers across the world. And 74 % of the freelancers said they weren't sure if they were pricing their services correctly. And that just blew my mind. Like three out of four people didn't know if they were pricing it properly. So yeah, there's a lot of difficulties with how freelancers, you know, need to get their pricing right.

17:10Well, first off, thank you for just being open and vulnerable and transparent and telling your story a little bit there because, you know, it's never easy to get fired. It's even less easy to talk about it, you know, but most of us or all of us have been there at some point, you know, along our journey in life as well. And, you know, it's how you deal with it. It's how you react to it. And, and how I personally love how you reacted to it. You know, we've had some conversations prior to this interview and you've really figured out, you know, some of the major problems in this industry. I mean, that 74 % number that you just shared, you know, it's pretty staggering because if that many people don't even have a clue of where to start to price their services, I mean, that's a huge gap in the market.

17:50And you've actually decided to take a stand for that. And you are creating the tools, you are creating the software to solve this. This is something that you believe that every freelancer should have in their tool belt. So talk about those tools that you believe that every freelancer should have in their tool belt and specifically what you're creating to fix this. Yeah, thanks, John. And, you know, it's, like you said, it was a journey jumping into the freelancer world. But yeah, I've been at it since 2018. There are hundreds, if not thousands of tools that freelancers can be using for their business.

18:28And, you know, so I've broken this down into five different categories of tools that I think are most important. And the first category is the one that we are focusing on for our business. It's called Price Pulse IQ. But this category is all about business resources and market research and pricing intelligence and giving freelancers data points, understanding, figuring out how to price their services and understand the market appropriately. I think this is one of the most overlooked parts of the freelancer, call it tech stack, but it's probably the most valuable, right? Because if you can't price right, if you don't know your market right, then you're going to really struggle to grow and have those real-time insights is so important.

19:08But, you know, so yeah, Price Pulse IQ is the name of our company. We're super pumped about it. I like to tell people that you can't grow if you don't understand something, right? So you have to understand everything and that's what we're doing. We're helping freelancers understand market trends, pricing benchmarks, educational content, seasonality, hyper-local data, trends in the marketplace, and doing so through a very organized way that becomes really just like a freelance management platform, right, for the freelancer to manage their entire business in one spot. So I think that's number one.

19:45You know, having some type of business resource that gives you that market research and the pricing intelligence is super important. So number two, another key piece of running a business, especially as a freelancer, is client and project management. And, you know, most that have been around, you know, some type of B2B sale, they're familiar with, you know, CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot. Those are great tools. They're definitely enterprise tools, right? And they come with an enterprise price tag. So having some type of way to really organize your client relationships, your communication, your outreach, keep yourself organized.

20:24Because as a freelancer, you might have one client and that's going to be somewhat easy for you to manage. But as soon as you get to 5, 10, 20, awesome, 100 clients, right, you need to be organized with that. So having some type of client project management system in place is super important. There are tons of great tools out there. You could be a visual thinker, maybe use something like Trello, or if you're more detail-oriented, look at ClickUp or Notion. Monday.com is another great one. So tons of great opportunities for the client project management. Number three thing that, you know, tool set that you need to look at is contracts and proposals.

21:01And I think there's another one that gets overlooked often because a lot of freelancers, when they first start their business, they work with one of those middlemen like an Upwork or a, or a Fiverr, you know, to help them find jobs, bid jobs out. And then that platform becomes the middleman for managing the client relationship, which is great. They do a phenomenal job. I worked with Upwork many times and that's great because they take care of all the paperwork for you and the protections. But as soon as you start to get into where you want to do direct to client relationships, you need to have some contracts.

21:35You need to have some paperwork, right? You need to protect yourself. And those freelancers that are able to professionally show who they are through a contract with, you know, interactive pricing grids, options, good T's and C's, terms and conditions, you know, making it very easy for the client to sign, whether it's DocuSign or some online signing platform. Those are the types of freelancers that are winning more projects because they're given the right resources. So a couple of great examples of those would be like Bonsai, PandaDoc, Better Proposals, all great, great options there for the proposals, the contract piece.

22:13Number four out of five that we've got here is your finances. So I'm talking about finance and accounting. That's another super, you know, super important piece. Remember, as a freelancer, you need to be focused on this being a business. And this is not just a side gig now, right? So you should be separating out your finances and your books from your personal life. Doing so, you know, is really important to be able to track your revenue, your expenses, your cash flow, your taxes, right? Your invoices. You don't have to go super big on this. There are some free platforms out there. When I first started, I used an accounting software called Wave Accounting.

22:53They've got free versions. You know, most people have heard of QuickBooks, another great tool. So there's plenty of options out there. But keeping that organized is super important. And then the last thing that I don't think anyone talks about enough, and I wish we did. I wish we did, JLD, is having a support and learning structure. And what I mean by that is that, you know, as a business owner, especially a freelancer, you can't grow in a vacuum. You know, you can't sit in a room by yourself. And many times we do as freelancers. Like we sit in our office, we're by ourself and we just are plugging away at our computer, but you can't do that.

23:27You can't grow. Nothing grows in a vacuum. And so, you know, the most successful freelancers are those that are surrounded by people that are going to push them up and level them up to the next, you know, echelon of what they're doing. And so listening to podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire or learning from mentors, you know, having Slack groups, going out to a mastermind, you know, some type of connection point to a support group, I think is super, super important. And it's something that's not really talked about often. Brett, you just gave an absolute masterclass on really everything that comes with freelance services and so much more.

24:05If Fire Nation's interested in learning more about what you have going on specifically with Pulse IQ, give us a quick rundown. Where do they go to find out more? Yeah. Well, listen, I really appreciate you having me on the show today. It's been awesome. If you're listening and you're a freelancer that wants to take your business seriously and you want to get to the next level, I'd love for you to take a look at Price Pulse IQ. We've got a special offer for all of the Fire Nation listeners today. You can go to pricepulseiq.com forward slash fire. That's pricepulseiq.com forward slash fire. And as a special thank you to you, JLD, and your listeners, we're offering 20 % off of our subscription.

24:48We have a free subscription as well. So don't feel like there's any cost, no credit card needed. If you want to just jump right in and start using the tools, we've got things like free pricing calculators, some light CRM tools, accounting tools, you name it, great resources. But if you do want to jump in and get serious, there's a 20 % off coupon. All you have to do is enter the coupon code EOfire at checkout. That's EOfire to get that 20 % off. Besides that, if you want to connect, brainstorm, just want to ask me a question. I'm pretty easy to find and I'm a total open book. So you can reach out to me directly on my email.