3 Projects You Need to Hire a Freelancer For Today
Quit procrastinating, start creating today by hiring remote freelancers
Here’s the deal, your customers are waiting. Not for you. But for a solution.
2021 is the year of reinvention. Whether in travel, commercial real estate, or big tech, the original FY21 plans are out the window.
As a leader, your gut reaction needs to be to build, measure, then learn as fast as possible what your customers need.
BUT there’s a teeny…tiny…problem - who will do this?
You don’t have the time to hire (nor should you). You don’t have the budgets to hire an agency.
Instead, you need to hire a freelancer.
To get started, below are 3 projects that will give you informed ideas, test whether you should further invest, and design the PowerPoint to present across the company and across your industry.
3 Projects To Hire For Today
1: Market research, between $100-500
If you had an extra 10 hours on Google what would you search?
Idea’s:
Start with a massive pain point or job-to-be done, and find the top 10 solutions with at least 3 pro’s & con’s for each.
Start with your target user, and find the top 5 channels they use to communicate, then find the top 5 insights of problems they’re having.
Find the top 10 startups in your industry, list funding stage, team size, traction numbers, and contact info for the founders.
Example (Deliverable Below): When the book was still an idea (fun fact, it was called Our Big Leap Forward at this time), Lauren Detweiler created a market analysis on the top 30 books. As you can see below, she listed the number of reviews, positive & negative themes.
Then when it came time to pitch to publishers, guess who created a comprehensive go-to-market plan?
2: Product launch, between $1k-5k
From the insights above, what can you build within 2 weeks and announce to the world to test interest?
In my experience leading product within startups and the enterprise, ‘launching’ usually means 5 things:
Press release
Social posts
How to video
Landing Page
Wireframe or Prototype
Each can be done by a freelancer, and most freelancers will own the full launch for between $1-5k.
Example, website for The Human Cloud Book: We had an initial site, but for under $5k Max Pete and Celestine Fabros owned the end to end design and development for the site you see today. While we could have built the site on our own, both the look and technical sophistication wouldn’t have been 10% of what Max & Celestine created.
Extreme Example, launching an enterprise product: When building the Microsoft 365 freelance toolkit, a tech stack using Microsoft tools to help companies hire & manage freelancers, I didn’t actually know how to use Microsoft tools. I understood hiring & managing freelancers, but I needed to accelerate my Microsoft understanding in order to launch what became the toolkit. Instead of reading every “Microsoft for dummies” book (I did read one), I turned to Russ Crowley, a Microsoft expert who collaborated side by side with me to convert customer insights into product. Since I was just a single Product Manager, I then engaged freelancers for everything needed to bring the toolkit to market.
Another Extreme Example, designing a textbook: In college I created an intense book summary for the Lean Startup that was a hybrid between Ebook & Website. I showed it to a college professor, and he asked if he could use it across the entrepreneurship curriculum. The problem: it was only a Word Doc with no design. But instead of keeping it on the shelf, I hired Emerson M-Castro for end to end design. Within three weeks it was in the hands of a top University, and subsequently led to an opportunity to guest lecture at Georgia Tech once a semester.
3: Executive presentation, between $1-3k
Let’s say you generate 100 users within a week, now what?
Time to make the presentation to use both internally and externally. I doubt you’re the one that can design a Davos level presentation. But J Cheema and Stephanie Larson can among others. Both have worked intensively with executive teams in both Fortune 50’s and small businesses. So it’s not just ‘here’s a slide, design it’, but rather an expert to own the strategy and design required to stand out.
Example: My presentation below was made by J Cheema in under a week for $2,500.
Need some help?
If you’re trying to figure out what you should hire a freelancer for, download our worksheet.
Or if you want to learn how other leaders are hiring freelancers, read The Human Cloud today!
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We recommend starting with the book, then hammering us with questions (you can respond to this email). Like yourself, we’re both pretty busy so expect atleast 72 hours of response time. Unless you send a Golden Retriever meme, then we promise 24 hours.
The Matthews