No one likes generating leads

No one likes generating leads.

I’ve continuously overlooked the importance of getting leads in each business I’ve run.

I get excited about the business itself. Doing design work or a cool business model.

Then the businesses fails or flutters because I haven’t considered the lead funnel.

And I stress over where the revenue will come from.

All of this has put me off going freelance.

Until I had an interesting idea…

I’ve launched a new brand to focus on freelance designing. You can check it our here →

The motivation: Do the work you love and enjoy in a flow state.

The rest of this post: how I’ve chosen to generate leads

What to work on

My last post was on taking a sabbatical and embarking on a route to find balanced work.

Much of the last three months has been agonising on what to do for work.

Whilst exploring, a consistent problem came up: generating leads.

Choose your problem

I really like the concepts shared by Mark Manson (author of the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck).

The idea that whatever we choose in life will have problems has been a key piece of guidance in my decision making.

When choosing what to work on, I’ve been using this as a guide - each option will have a problem.

E.g. startup - finding product market fit / VC funding.

E.g. Get a job - loss of freedom.

Using this, instead of choosing what I wanted, I decided to focus on the biggest blocker or problem.

Work in AI?

First I had FOMO on missing out on AI. Maybe a cool AI advisory business could be be fun. Exciting yes, finding clients in a competitive market, not so exciting.

Not choosing this problem.

Get a job?

Sounds like a good option, consistent pay. Something I’ve not experienced. However, I’ve never had a job and it feels too much of a sacrifice of freedom.

I’m not choosing this problem!

Build software?

Then I discovered and dived into the indie maker community. There’s cool people like Pieter Levels and Marc Lou releasing products as solo entrepreneurs.

I love the idea of a business or product not being a VC backed startup. Releasing a simple piece of software that can be a business of one person generating decent monthly revenue.

I hit two problems.

One, I can’t code. This can be overcome and there are also brilliant no code tools using Webflow, Wized and Xano. Mixed wi

With some help of chatGPT, I could probably learn and release a product in a few months.

A huge shout out to my friend Sylvian who introduced the tools and is doing exactly this. Find him on Linkedin ↗️

So I learn some basic code and/or use so no code tools. Then launch a product, then what?

Problem two, leads. It’s back to leads again!

I learn to code, launch a cool product, it still needs customers and a market.

Indie makers know this. They repeatedly launch new products until something works.

This is actually a great tactic. I’m really in admiration of the quick release, test market fit, move on and release something new.

Diving into the indie maker community, I noticed a trend that all the successful products are made for the indie maker community.

The products launched are successful because they launch to this community and the founder has built a successful following on Twitter (or other social network).

So the route to success launching own products: tweet about building products, build a following of other makers, launch something to your following.

Problem two a little more defined: To be successful as an indie maker you need to focus on building a social media audience.

Build a social media audience?

I don’t want to be an influencer. I deleted my facebook and instagram years ago. They didn’t bring me enjoyment or value. Just a feeling that I wasn’t good enough.

I’m not choosing this as my problem.

Side note: it does look like I’m still doing something like this as I write nice little posts like this for fun!

Freelancing

In the last three months, the one thing I’ve enjoyed the most is designing.

I find myself in a flow state. Solving problems or drawing pixels in Figma.

If I’m doing this, work does not feel like work.

When I first focused on product design in 2018. At a similar point of not knowing what to do next in my life. I started designing for web3 startups.

One of the first was Nexus Mutual. I asked Hugh the founder if I could design their website to keep up-skilling. I was inexperienced and had given myself a learning sabbatical to see if I could gain user interface skills.

Hugh, remarkably to me at the time, liked the design. Offered to pay, then offered for me to work on the user experience design of the application.

This was probably a life changing moment. Leading me to design interfaces for many web3 startups and the launch of Deep Work. A web3 design studio.

I’d follow this exact same strategy if I was to start again.

Design for free to up skill, gain the trust of interesting people, start working.

I’d been put off freelancing because I felt it wasn’t good enough.

My ego said I needed to start a new “business” or something bigger.

But, the evidence was showing me that I’ve been happiest again and again when I’m designing. Not building a business.

Then something I struck me. If I didn’t have to worry about money anytime soon, but should be learning new skills or moving towards a revenue generating business, what would I do?

I’d design things.

This is when I came up with a more defined strategy.

Design ➡️ Leads ➡️ Freelance Design ➡️ Revenue (use to repeat Design)

Design for leads

I don’t know if this will work, but it’s worth a try:

I design projects for free and put them out there to the world. Or, for interesting startups and share them with the founders in cold contact.

I got interested about it and thought it could be a system:

System:

X Design Projects per year.

Generates Y leads.

Convert leads to customers for R Revenue.

Use Revenue to pay myself for doing X projects.

Example:

Here’s a very rough idea with made up figures:

Projects X / year = 20, generates Y Leads per year = 20

Convert 20% of the leads = 4 customers

Average customer value = $20,000 (Made up figure but I’ve based it on freelance work in the past and the work we did with Deep Work (typical value between $20k-$70k).

Revenue = $80,000

Optimising

This figures are made up but with some amount of estimation.

However, it is a model I can refine and enter in real world data as I learn.

So my plan is to start this, gain some data, update, and keep exploring.

Feeling motivated

What’s most exciting, is that I’ve chosen the problem, leads, and found a solution where I work in a flow state.

I must admit, this might not work out, I might stop enjoying designing. There might be a tonne of other work around designing to gain these leads I don’t enjoy. If it doesn’t work, I could easily end up demotivated.

However, my plan is to start, consistently review the system and make it better. The result in one month to a year might look entirely different.

Startups have taught me that if you can have a model, and iterate repeatedly, you’ll get somewhere and learn! Let’s see!

Further criticism

If you read this far, I’m really grateful. If you have any experience in this domain or could critic my approach I’d really love to here it! Please reach out!

For now, I’ve chosen a problem. Generating leads.