Brewed for Success: Kevin's Freelancing Journey Without Coffee

That's good.

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Dyster.

And you guys know, just subscribe to the podcast.

It does help out and never miss an episode because it's only once a month, so you might actually forget every once in a while.

But anyways, I have Kevin with me and he is a founder and lead trainer of Optimal Performance Academy.

And he's worked with small business owners to and startups to help them just gain traction in their business because we all know it's hard to start up a business and usually most of them fail within the first five years.

So he helps them all with that as well.

He's also been self employed since 2004, which we're going to be talking about freelancers, because it's a big market right now and a lot of businesses are trying to find freelancers.

And I'm pretty sure a lot of people want to know, how do you do this thing?

It's called freelancing because it's not an easy task to do.

But he's also has lived in Las Vegas, but now currently resides in North Carolina.

So welcome to the show, Kevin.

Well, thank you.

It's great to be here, Brett.

You're welcome.

And the first question is all my guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

I'm a tea drinker.

And here's here.

And here's a funny thing I note about that.

I was in the Navy for almost five years and I've never in my entire life has ever had a cup of coffee.

So I'm definitely a tea drinker.

So you've never been curious to try it, to see what the obsession is with coffee?

Well, I tasted it once when I was in Alaska at the airport on a stopover and I got an Irish coffee, which is basically Irish whiskey with coffee in it.

And I picked the first sip of that, like, oh my goodness.

So that's like a $5 wasted drink right there.

Yeah, it's pretty.

Actually, no, coffees are now about $5.

Never mind.

That's not expensive anymore.

That's about normal.

Well, this 90s, so.

Or the 80s, actually.

The late 80s.

Oh, yeah, yeah, Back then that was pretty.

Actually pretty expensive.

But and also one other thing.

What type of teas do you like?

Do you like, like green tea, black tea?

Like what types of teas do you usually drink?

Green tea and black.

I mean, green tea is probably my favorite.

In black tea, I used to drink an ice.

An ice chai latte but that right now has too much sugar or too much caffeine in it.

So I stopped drinking that.

Yeah, yeah.

You like green tea?

Or if I drink a regular brown tea, it's usually going to be ice.

Nice.

And I gave a brief introduction to your expertise, but can you.

Can you give a little bit more to our listeners about what you do?

Sure.

In 2021, I was making a transition in my life.

I was, because I was in real estate.

I was real estate consultant for a few years and then became a realtor for a few years.

In 2020, toward the end of the whole Covid thing, I wrote my fourth book called Launch the A to Z and Creating a Successful Business.

And that being said, 2021 was my kind of a transition year.

Was not quite sure what I was going to be doing.

And then when I moved to North Carolina in 2022, that's when I decided, like, you know what?

I've known a lot of people try to start a business, Realtors especially, and they have.

They are starting a business with a nine to five corporate America mentality.

And that just didn't work.

And so what I decided to do was I was actually.

I created my company, which is called Performance Academy, and I wanted to start taking some of the stuff I wrote in my fourth book, my book launched and make that into training courses, coaching programs, consulting programs.

So that's why.

So I formed the academy to be a place for people to come to get an education, albeit through one of our online courses, through our consulting practices, attending our workshops or our webinars we conduct.

So what I'm hearing is you got out of the real estate business right before it started turning really, really bad.

Because 2021 was still pretty good.

And then 2022 is kind of like, okay, interest rates are really, really high and no one really wants to buy anymore.

Exactly.

Actually, I got out in January 2020, two months before the entire world shut down.

Oh, yeah, that was pretty smart, actually, because actually, no real estates were still going.

They were just a lot harder to do.

That's what.

That's what it was.

Because to my understanding, showing up houses was difficult because if nobody knew how, how covet was transferred.

I don't know about touching a doorknob or people say anything that you touch could have covet on it.

And then one thing I joked around with some people about, what's the one thing that everybody touches, but you never think about that you're touching it.

Doorknob money.

Oh, that's true.

You mean just walk down this door now or then you're going to buy something and you pull out five $1 bills and you know, and a 20 and give it to the cashier and that goes to the next.

Money to me at that time is like one one of the scariest things to touch because everybody, nobody thought about money.

People just talk about handles and, and things like that at the beginning.

That's fair.

I mean we don't use money as much anymore, but yeah, it transfers to a lot of different hands and you never really know who's touching or who's not exactly.

And even if you paint with plastic, I mean back then that's before they really had the little this scan and go style.

I mean I think it was, it was somewhat popular, but.

Yep.

No, you're right.

But speaking about freelancing, just like what has changed with the freelancing market?

Because as we're talking about the pandemic, it kind of became like this like really, really popular thing got really good in the limelight because all businesses are like, oh, we can hire freelancers because we don't really know if we can come back into the our business.

We don't really know how many people we can actually hire back.

So like what has changed between that, between the pandemic and now post pandemic in 2023?

Well, in my opinion, one of the biggest things that changed was that people decided to go online.

And so I mean they started doing having zoom calls or Skype for business because I did that for a little while.

More people get on some of the other platforms which eventually became like a Microsoft meet or team meet or whatever it's called.

And so people got used to working online.

And then the second thing is even if you had a job, a lot of people, they had to work from home.

They had to, they got used to the, to the idea working from home.

Now a lot of people also lost their jobs because when stores shut down, when hair salons shut down and restaurants shut down, a lot of people who employment since there was green nobody hiring, it's too much.

Some people took advantage of that situation and actually started creating business online.

So I think Covid actually inspire a lot of entrepreneurs to begin a new business because people got used to doing things online.

One of the ideas of me having an online course and making a series of online courses four years ago, I probably never would have thought just I would say well everything has to be done live, everything has to be done in person.

I never would have thought let's do this thing and It's a call where everybody's talking through the microphones and camcorders.

Everybody started a podcast, but apparently the podcasting is actually down this year because everybody went back to work.

And that's.

Yeah, exactly.

And as people were actually going back to the workplace, because at that time I was living in Las Vegas and it was so scary because all the casinos shut down and some of the casinos didn't have doors, so that brought up the entrances.

No, it was really weird once when I walk in, walking on the Strip and there's not a single person in sight.

I took several pictures of that.

Like, if you want to go, you would look at the Venetian Mountains, and there's not a single car on the road and not a single person there.

I'm the only one there.

Of course, the phones aren't going off because there's nobody to see it.

They want to look at it.

But it was, it was.

It was really, really odd.

And I remember at that time, this, this is why, why I started writing my book into late 2020 was because of.

Everything was changing.

Everybody was.

I guess the thing was, what is the new normal?

As they were saying.

Gotcha.

And for people, like, wanting to do it, wanting to start out, want to be new, like, what are some tips for the new freelancers are like, I really want to do this.

This sounds like a great idea.

You can work for yourself, kind of, sort of.

But it sounds great because I don't have a boss.

So, I mean, what are some good tips for them and some realistic expectations to understand about freelancing?

Wasn't going to be doing any kind of freelancing.

Number one, I say you need to do your market research.

You need to go out there and find out is there a demand for what you're going to be offering, because the last thing you want to do is one, two, three months, that's trying to start a business, you know, going through all the headaches of getting everything started, and then to find out that nobody has a problem that you're solving.

The other thing is, yes, you're.

You're now your own boss in this particular case.

And that could be a good thing or that could be a bad thing.

A joke that I've heard around the entrepreneurial community for years was a true entrepreneur is willing to work twice as hard to make half the money.

And that's going to be true in many cases, because when you're just starting out and you're trying to get your first customers or clients, you're going to be Working really, really hard.

You may be putting in an 8 or 10 or 12 hour day.

You may be working seven days a week.

You may be working on a holiday, national holiday.

I mean that's just, that is, that is just kind of expected.

But once you start getting your momentum going, you can start creating systems that will make things a lot easier or start hiring other people to do some of the stuff that you don't want to do, like a virtual assistant, or we call them a va, a virtual assistant or a part time employee, or even a full time employee, depending on what your income is and what it is that you're going that you don't want to be doing.

As an example, let's say you're building your business and you need a, need a website, but you know nothing about how to build a website.

Or you freelancer to build your website.

Or now just use AI because now there's actual websites that use AI to build your own website.

That's another thing is you can have anybody that's starting out right now.

You know, in this day and age, you need to be able to embrace all the new technologies.

Don't be afraid of new technology because if you don't adapt to that new technology, you're going to get left behind.

And the joke I often tell people about this, especially when we talk about AI, is that let's say you had a business, say you had a brick and mortar business, you had a bicycle shop, whatever this would be a few years ago.

And you refuse to go online.

I only want to do business with people.

I can actually shake their hands.

I want somebody that I can physically touch.

Well, you're going to lose a lot of your market share because if you can sell your bikes online and ship them, then I mean, that'd just be another, right?

But if you did adopt that new technology of having an online business as well, you're going to get left behind.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean like there's things like Descript that we'll do like take out the ums and uhs and it's actually pretty good in the audio.

I've used it before.

And then also can do editing through just words.

But also you have like AI type of things for, I'm talking about podcasting specifically that can write your own show notes, that can write all this stuff for you.

So I use it so I know how to do it.

But also it just automates my workflow way quicker than me doing all the writing and everything else that I need to do.

Because I rather have some things automated than have nothing on me because it just cuts down on the time I can focus on things that I need to focus and not the things I don't need to focus on.

Absolutely.

I mean when I had a podcast in 2017 and 18 and it was an interview based show and I ran it for right about a year, I had 59 episodes.

I did edit every single audio and my shows like 45 to 60 minutes long.

So I did edit all the audio.

If I stutter anybody, you know, when you start a sentence and then you repeat that, that thing, all that came out, all the breathing came out, all the came out.

So a 45 minute show took literally four, four hours to edit.

But if new technologies now here it is, you know, five or so years later and you can tell, hey, that cuts that down, then that makes having a podcast more enjoyable because you're not doing all the tedious work of doing the, of doing the audio editing.

And so in whatever market, freelancers should just embrace the AI because I've heard that the for marketing specifically, it's those that understand how to use AI will keep their jobs and those that don't understand how to use it will lose their jobs.

That's depending on where what the business is.

As businesses adapt to new technology, again as an entrepreneur you need to adapt with it.

But if you're still working at a job like that, then you need to adapt to that as well because otherwise you're going to become obsolescence.

Well, except for the Hollywood, because they're fighting to keep AI out.

Yes.

Well, if you talk about like copyright infringement is what I'm thinking about with the Hollywood sub, if I was an extra in a scene in a movie, now they're going to use my likeness in other scenes, but I don't get paid for it.

They that is more like a copyright infringement or probably even a personal infringement.

It's true a lot of those AIs that do use like pictures or do videos will just copy whatever they find on Internet and then create a new one in a way.

But it's still like it's still a close copy of whatever is out there to a certain extent.

And how should freelancers market themselves?

Should they use social media, LinkedIn?

Like what, what is the best avenue?

Because I mean you could say you're a freelancer, but if you get no gigs and you don't actually advertise yourself, are you really a freelancer?

It's kind of like if the reef falls in the woods, does Anybody hear it?

Well, definitely you want to use social media to the best extent that you can and use the social media platforms that your potential clients are going to be on.

For an example to business owners, I'm probably not going to go to TikTok.

I'm probably not going to go to Instagram, mainly focusing on LinkedIn.

If I was posting images of travels and stuff like that, then maybe I would go to Pinterest or Instagram or Facebook.

So wherever your potential clients are, mainly that's the kind of social media that you're going to be platforms that you want to be on.

One of the other things, and I realized this back in 2009, is that I don't care what your colors are, your brands, your brand colors are, I don't care about, you know, you know, what is your logo looks like, you know, that's all, that's all fine.

And Danny, everybody needs a corporate colors, everybody needs their own logo.

But one of the other things for a small business owner, a not talking about the solopreneur or what also I like to call a buypreneur.

If you're, if there's two people working together, one of the main, one main things part of your brand is this here is your face.

The thing is there's, there's this old saying, people only do business with people who they know, like and trust.

And one of the ways for people to get to know you, get to like you and get to trust you is to see you.

I mean, I mean you may go to Starbucks and buy the coffee and you got the little green and white, I think it's called a siren or their logo.

But if that was your own coffee company, your own business, you probably want to be doing some, some YouTube videos.

You want to be getting your face out to the public.

And that to me is one of the most important things out there.

Because I, for an example, when I was in 2009, I was attending a real estate conference somewhere in California and there was maybe four or five hundred people in attendance and they were giving away two rifle ticks or two door prices.

I won the second door price.

And that one item probably at that time cost 2 to $300.

But it was revolutionary at that time.

And what it was, it was, if you remember this is 2009 we're talking about, it was a flip camcorder.

What that was is it's a little tingler device.

Mine was green and white, a little rectangular device that will record to one video or multiple videos, maximum of one hour.

And then you have this little knob on the left hand side, a little slide on the side that you click down on.

It'll flip out a USB thing that you could plug into your computer.

In 2009, I started shooting video of all the houses I was representing over the course of maybe, I don't know, I stopped shooting video like that in like 2019.

So over the course of that 10 or 11 years, I probably shot over 500, maybe 600 videos.

I would say the first three or 400 world was on that flip camcorder.

Before technology, cell phones got to the point where your cell phone could do it that time, that was revolutionary.

And people got to know who I was in my.

After a few months, my business skyrocketed.

And secondly, talking about this, and this is another little tip is when you put your videos up on YouTube, always make sure that you have a link going to your website with the keywords that you want to be known for.

Because the thing is, after some time, if you got a hundred, 200 videos, 300 videos, or just call them backlinks going to your website, that's going to build up your branding as well as your SEO as well as your SEO.

When people are googling the words that you're using, the keywords that you're using, you will start coming up on page one or page two of Google.

So these are all things that you need to be doing if you're.

My answer to your question is gonna say, well, I don't look good on film or I don't like shooting video myself.

My answer to that is get over it.

Do it anyway.

After.

Almost nobody is good at video, to be honest with you.

Whenever I shoot video of like say of an ad or a new program that I'm doing, it takes me three or four, sometimes five takes to get it done right, Everybody.

I mean, do you think every actor on every movie or TV show never do they.

Do you think they take more than one take?

Of course.

So why you?

Why would you be any different?

Everybody messes up on video.

Thing is what you record it and you.

All those bad things, they're all.

They don't get thrown away.

Yeah, to be fair, the first few years of listening to my voice was rough.

I hate listening to it.

But you get over it.

Same way until I started editing my podcast all the time.

No, that was actually editing.

I hated.

I had to edit my own stuff and I not anymore.

But at that time I just did not like listening to myself.

So you have to get over it basically is what I would say for your YouTube thing.

They're actually changing it.

So I want to update the listeners where they're not allowing links anymore.

You have to actually put it in your profile page now because they are banning links because of all the scams for crypto and everything that's happening.

So that's not here yet, but you could put 10 to 12 links now.

So they're changing the profile around.

So you're going to have to do it through there, unfortunately.

So it's a great thing for getting rid of scams.

It's a terrible thing for us because then we have to point them back to our profile to get them to click on the link.

Well, hopefully the algorithms on Google and those other search platforms will adjust for that as well, because that's.

To me, that's one that is height back then because of all the videos that I had going on my website.

And all of a sudden I had my website, my website was changing almost on a daily basis after like a year of doing that.

If you saw somebody typed in my keyword, which was lease option, at least opt in Las Vegas, I would be on page one on Google at least five times.

At least two of them were YouTube videos.

Yeah, I just want to update you and our listeners as well because I try to keep up to date with all that stuff.

But yeah, I haven't seen it yet.

But it is coming, unfortunately, because of all the scams of people posting links into their comments and everything else.

YouTube's like, we're, we're done with this.

Like we can't keep up with.

Because I can't.

I mean you're, you would literally have to have like seven AIs to keep up with all the scamblings going in through comments and everything else through that.

So they're doing it this way.

So I think the first four links, they'll be noticeable and then you'll have to click on the more to find the other eight links.

So I would say for people, freelancers, anybody else, put your first important links before on top of there so they're easily clickable.

Then whatever else you have, just put it below.

You basically have to prioritize kind of like when MySpace with your top eight, when that, when MySpace was popular, you're going to prioritize like that.

Like what's my most important links?

One that you should be would be your website and then your.

Whichever social media platform that you're that you be known for.

LinkedIn or Instagram.

Yeah.

And then going Back I mean to your YouTube videos and stuff.

That was basically a portfolio.

So that could actually help freelancers too of like having what depending on their industry, what portfolio that they want to showcase.

So in a way videos can help bring a familiarity but also have a portfolio of your knowledge and just your camera work if you're in that industry.

Oh yeah.

And then this is, this is a pet peeve of mine and you cut me off if you need to.

Whenever you go, whenever you shoot video or even pictures, that is, you need to be completely aware of which platform you can be putting it on.

Because if you're going to shoot for Tick Tock and Instagram, you should be in vertical or portrait mode.

If you're going to be on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn you need to be in landscape or horizontal mode.

And the reason being is Instagram and TikTok are designed to be.

I'm talking in front of my camera and you're holding the palm of your hand while the other ones because while the others are more like to fit your TV screen or your laptop screen.

If you've ever seen any, let's say you watch the news, it doesn't matter which one you watch and somebody's feeling and they're showing somebody filming any you watching it on your horizontal screen and you're only seeing half of your screen, the middle half, everything's blurry on the side.

That's somebody that should be putting that is shot in the wrong direction for the platform that they're trying for.

I would say by default always shoot in the horizontal mode and then you can go vertical mode if you go do Instagram or TikTok.

Yeah, I mean a lot of the editing softwares now will allow you to do either one.

You'll just have to like either blow it up a little bit.

But if you have a good camera it won't really matter, no one will really know.

So yes, you should be aware of where you're shooting if you're doing it live.

But if you're doing a pre recording you can just go to DaVinci Resolve Final Cut.

They have all the dimensions for you.

There's also a few AI stuff.

There's a video one online where you can put transcripts but also we'll put it in the whatever format you need to put it in as well.

So there's options now where you don't have to like cognitively think about it.

You can just shoot in vertical and then or horizontal and then it will change the vertical or square or whatever.

You need to do.

If you're going from vertical to horizontal, then you're zooming in, have to zoom in really tight.

And if you're on horizontal and vertical, you're just cutting off the edges.

Yeah, I would recommend, if you're going to do like different formats, use like a dslr.

I know Panasonic just released one where it has like open gate.

So basically it has a wider, so it has a more up and down for your shots.

So you can do the vertical without losing too much of it because a lot of times it'll just be.

But with open gate you can actually have more of the sensor pickup, more of the up and down ness of it.

So when you do do the vertical stuff or you transfer to vertical, it won't be as blown up.

But if you're using a professional DSLR like I am, you really won't notice the difference because they're 4k anyways.

But moving on, do you have any, do you have some tips for, let's say they're getting going.

Do you have some tips for freelancers to like continue this?

Because I'm pretty sure the start is hard, but also the continuation of doing freelancing is just as hard because you're like, okay, I kind of made it.

Now what?

Well, I mean if you're getting started, make sure that you, that you do know who your target market is.

I mean the last thing is if you're one of those people that says everybody is your client or anybody could be your client, then you need to focus more.

So you definitely need, I need that.

If you're, as you were just saying, if you know everything is going well, sometimes you get to that point, maybe you're up or five or so or lower as a six figure earner.

And then at that time you start looking at what Tim Ferriss said in his book for our work week.

He had this thing called Deal D A L.

Is that what can you, what is it designate or have it go off someone else?

What can you eliminate and what can you automate?

So delegate.

Eliminate, automate.

So therefore now you can start focusing on the core of growing your business.

And then of course the letter L stands for what do you do when you have liberation or liberate.

I love, I love that acronym.

Because if you're doing a lot of stuff and you're doing well, start growing your business, start hiring your, those va, Start hiring employees part time, independent contract, you know, whatever it is.

And I would say talk to an attorney before you start doing that.

Just make making sure.

You have all the paperwork properly, correct?

Yes.

All legal would probably be a really good imperative because you don't want to get yourself in trouble.

Well, because the thing is if you, because when you start hiring people you're going to have to have some corporate policies and one of the things you don't have in there is maybe a race or something that could be considered racist.

So you want to make sure that you are treating everybody and setting everything up properly.

So just go talk to a business attorney on something like that.

Got you.

And leads to my next question.

What should freelancers avoid when doing all this stuff?

Because we talked about like great tips but avoiding is just as important as what you should be doing.

Well, I would say avoid just doing something to be, just to be busy.

I mean just creating a busy work for you is often going to be a waste of time and a waste of money as well.

So you want to make sure that you are strategic in your day to day activities as well as your week to week activities.

So avoid just doing busy work.

I mean, what would that entail for busy work?

Because I know every, I mean every industry is different.

Is like busy work just doing small tasks?

Is it just like updating a website?

You don't need to update like what would be considered busy work, I guess.

In a broad sense like that just, it's just getting in your day and it's not something that's critical that needs to be done so that could be put off later or completely eliminated is.

And just stop doing that kind of stuff.

So focus on how do you find your clients?

How do you serve your clients, what you know, what services that you, that you may be needing as well as the, you know, is there any additional education that you're going to be needing as well?

Like either hiring a coach or a consultant like myself or taking a course or in some, in some industries you have what's called CE courses or continuing education courses.

So you know, make sure that you, that you keep yourself open for that, you know, in additional education.

And what is the best advice you ever gotten for like, for life or like freelancing from somebody that you know.

Best advice that's, there's so many good nuggets out there.

I'll give you top five if that helps.

Well, I, I would say number one, make sure that whatever you're doing is something that you love because, because you, you're getting married to your, to your company.

And essentially what I, you know what I say about that is, and this is even for those of you who are listeners that have jobs is if I ask you what would your what what is your favorite time of the week?

If you say 5:00 on Friday with a 9 to 5 Monday Friday job, then you're not in the right place.

If you're, if you say 8:59am on a Monday morning, then you're in the right place because you got to love what you, what you do.

Nice.

And where can people find you online?

Well we Academy does have a website.

It's called optimal performance academy.org again it's optimal performance academy.org and on the front page you'll see a link to our classes.

Also how you can schedule a 60 minute strategy session with me and also on there you'll see all the other stuff, our workshops and other stuff that's coming or you can find me online.

Again, I prefer to be on LinkedIn because that's where business people are and it's just my name.

So be LinkedIn.com for/in Kevin A.

Nice and any final thoughts for listeners?

I would just say, you know, just remain open as well as adapt to new technologies.

I mean whenever a new technology comes out, see how you can use that in your business.

Like with AI.

How are you going to use AI to help you start writing parts of your website?

You're going to have it come up with titles of your of your course courses.

You're gonna have to come up with slogans or just start using AI.

And when I say AI you're coming up with like say a slogan for an example.

Always ask like say chat CBT or Bard or Brad whatever it is for Google to give you at least four or five different variations.

That way you stuck with the dope.

Which yeah it is called Bard.

So you were right the first time and any I actually know that was the, that was the final thoughts.

But thank you Kevin for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on freelancing.

It's been my pleasure Brett.

Thank you and thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

As always been subscribed from your favorite podcast apps to those podcasts to VR.

Donate once a month or missing episode that way but joyously next month that you talk to me with the PR marketing industry.

All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding from the freelancer your business very well and love what you're doing and see you next week later.