How We Are Helping Our Students Make Rs 10 Lac – Rs 25 Lac Per Year As Freelance Digital Marketers! 10 Lac Club Month 1 Report!

07 Feb How We Are Helping Our Students Make Rs 10 Lac – Rs 25 Lac Per Year As Freelance Digital Marketers! 10 Lac Club Month 1 Report!

Before I begin this article and Reveal how we are helping our students make Rs 10 Lac – Rs 25 Lac as Freelance Digital Marketers… let me quickly give you a Gist of why I qualify to write on this topic.

Well, first and foremost… I have worked as a Freelancer for almost half of my working career before I started my own company. So I know and understand about Freelancing better than most people do.

In fact, I recently wrote a book called – The 1 Lac Formula (How to make Rs 1 Lac or More Per Month as a Freelance Digital Marketer). You can grab a Free Copy of the book by Clicking Here.

Alright, so now that I have kind of established why I qualify to write on the subject of Freelancing, let’s dive deep into this topic.

FREELANCING! A lot of people today want to Freelance and live life on their own terms.
And why not? Right!

Thanks to the Internet, today you can Freelance for a client in the US as easily as you can Freelance for a client in Mumbai.
There are literally no geographical boundaries when it comes to Freelancing.

So does that mean you should jump into Freelancing if you have been thinking about it? Well, not really! At least not until you read this article cum report completely.

You see, Freelancing sounds really cool, especially when you hear the BuzzWords like:

• Become Your Own Boss
• Live life on your own terms
• Dream Life
• Make a Lot of Money
• No BOSS
• Work from Home
• And the list goes on and on.

Although, these buzzwords are a True reflection of the Life of a Freelancer… Here is the HARSH TRUTH about FREELANCING!

Most Freelancers Struggle to Make Ends Meet And Pay Their Bills For 2 BIG Reasons! 

Now you may read a lot of different stats on the Internet talking about and showing you the Life of your Dreams as a Freelancer. But what most people MISS is the fact that most of these surveys or studies are done with successful Freelancers. The ones that Struggle are never a part of these Surveys.

Now, I may have not formally done any of those surveys. But if you just used some common sense, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure that over 90% of people who jump into Freelancing FAIL!

Wait, what? Did I just say, Over 90% FAIL?
Where I’m getting this number from?

Well, it’s coming right from FORBES!
Forbes wrote an article saying – 90% of Startups Fail.

And if you think about Freelancing…

It’s similar to starting a company, and to an extent, it’s more difficult than starting a company.

You see, as a Freelancer – You are now someone who apart from delivering the services also needs to go out and find a client, close the sale, negotiate the pay, do the contracts, do the accounting, do the customer support and everything in between.

You are now a one person company!

You are unfortunately your own BOSS and Employee now. And this I think is the worst part of Freelancing because most people are not great at following their own orders. Most people are not tough enough on themselves. They never make those calls needed to get new clients, they never build those connections needed to keep their pipeline full. They never do most of the stuff needed to become successful at Freelancing because they are their own boss. (Hint: Don’t most people study just when the exam is around the corner.)

Most people need an actual boss or a coach or someone else, someone other than them to get things done and keep them accountable. But sadly, most people who jump into Freelancing alone thinking that their life is going to change now. Thinking that the clients are going to reach out to them and everything will fall in place. Which in reality never happens!

So not having someone to keep them accountable – A coach or a mentor is the #1 Reason why most Freelancers FAIL. 

And this is just half the battle… Let’s say, you are someone who is motivated to get things done.
You don’t need a coach, you are self-driven and work really hard at building a successful Freelance Business.

Here comes the second problem… and the 2nd reason why most Freelancers Fail.

Most Freelancers lack SKILLS outside of their Domain! 

Just like I spoke above, to become a Freelancer to an extent is more challenging than becoming an Entrepreneur.
As an Entrepreneur, you may have additional help to run your company.

But as a Freelancer, you are the only one running the whole company.
As a Freelancer, you will need to wear the hats of a:

•  Marketer
•  Sales Ninja
•  Customer Support Rep
• Lead Generation Specialist
• Business Development Manager
• Service Provider
• Finance Officer

Now, most people jump into Freelancing because they are passionate about something that they do. It could be:

– Fitness Training
– Dance Training
– Cooking
– Singing
– Writing
– Designing and Web Development
– And the list goes on and on.

They are good at their craft. Everyone praises them for their craft.

But when it comes to Freelancing, they now need to focus the majority of their time on things outside their craft. They need to Sell, Close, Do the numbers, think about business… Things that they may not be passionate about, HATE and/or have no skills in.

So even if you are motivated to do the work, the lack of Essential Business Building Skills is why most Freelancers FAIL!
They may be Great at their Craft, but not being able to find the clients, sell their services, not being able to negotiate a fair fee for the services and a host of other business related reasons is why most Freelancers Pack their Bag and go back to a Steady and a Stable Job sooner or later.

In fact, when my partner Sandhya Valecha and I started Freelancing back then, we almost gave up a couple of times.

Before we started Freelancing, Sandhya was making over Rs 1 Lac in salary as a Writer at her job.  But after we jumped into Freelancing, neither Sandhya nor I knew how to package and sell our writing services at a fair price. So most times, we ended up working for $0.5 to $1 per 500 words. We were slogging day in and day out, pulling in almost 14 to 16 hour days to make Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 per month.
No wonder we wanted to quit, right?

The first 16 odd months were really hard, miserable and frustrating for us. We were working with clients who were not respectful, did not pay enough and did not pay on time. It took us over 16 months of Trial and Error, Blood Sweat & Tears to really understand how to become successful as a Freelancer.

If it wasn’t for our perseverance to build the life of our dreams… we would have quit Freelancing long long back. I’m sure, most people in our place would have quit Freelancing long back and gone back to their happier and less stressful jobs.

Wait wait wait… I’m sure you must be wondering by this point, with the picture that I am painting about Freelancing in this article… what am I really trying to communicate?

Am I trying to say that – Becoming a Freelancer is a Path to Guaranteed Failure?
If yes, then why did I title it about making Rs 10 Lac to Rs 25 Lacs as a Freelance Digital Marketer?

Well, with this article cum report, I’m not trying to discourage you from getting into Freelancing at all. In fact, my attempt with this article is to help you jump into Freelancing with the right preparation so that you MAXIMIZE your chances of Success.

You see, as I told you earlier, the reasons most Freelancers fail are because…

1. They don’t have someone to keep them accountable and most Freelancers are not self-driven or lose motivation after a point and
2. They don’t have the necessary skills to become successful at running a Freelance Business.

But if you jumped into Freelancing, having someone to keep you accountable while acquiring the necessary additional skills to run a successful Freelance Business… The chances of you becoming successful go dramatically higher.

In fact, keeping that in mind… Earlier this year, I launched the Beta Version of The 10 Lac Club Coaching Program.
It’s a 12 Month Long Coaching and Mentorship Program designed to help Digital Marketers get into Freelancing the right way and make anywhere from Rs 10 Lac – Rs 25 Lacs Per Year as a Freelance Digital Marketer.

We are exactly 1 month into the program today.

The program kick-started on 7th January 2019. By publishing this article cum the 1st report from the 10 Lac Club today, I want to document the journey of the students in the 10 Lac Club. And also give you a roadmap on how you too could become a Successful Freelance Digital Marketer and Earn the Income of Your Dreams.

As I already discussed this several times in the course of this report – to become successful at Freelancing, you need to find a way to keep yourself motivated and accountable. Plus, you need to learn the other skills required to help you become successful at running a Freelance Business.

So keeping this in mind… The major goal when I designed the format of The 10 Lac Club Coaching Program was to:

• Make sure all the students were kept accountable, every day! And to achieve this, I have 3 accountability coaches in the program (Namrata Soni, Megan-Lee Collins and Farzeen Tinwala) who ensure every student is putting in the work required to become successful.

• Make sure all our students acquire and master the following additional skills: Business, Finance, Sales, Client Communication, Leadership etc. And to help our students learn these necessary skills, I designed a curriculum which consists of all these subjects. And every week, via Daily Video Check-Ins, something the student’s in the program are required to submit every day, we understand how well are our students grasping the concepts on Leadership, Finance, Sales, etc.

For the Beta round of this program, we hardly did any promotions.
All I did was posted a few stories on my Instagram Account about this program along with 4 emails that were sent to my list. That’s it!

From this little promotion I did, we received 161 applications.
To be honest, from the 161 applications we received, about 40 were not qualified to move to the next round. So we rejected their application in the first round itself.

And I know, rejection is a hard pill to swallow for a lot of folks. But we were very clear about who we would select and not select in the program. We did not want to select someone with major self-defeating attitude issues,  who did not want to take responsibility for their lives. We did not want to select those who said, “I know that”, “but I don’t want to work for even 3 hours per day” in this program for their benefit. Because even if we had selected them, we knew they would most likely never get a client because of their self-defeating attitude. And we did not want to take their money if we couldn’t help them.

As I have repeated this several times during the course of this report cum article, to become successful at Freelancing, you need to have or acquire several other skills. And a positive attitude, and taking responsibility for your life are some of the most important ones at that.

So from the remaining 120 odd applications, we selected 11 students. Here are the criteria we used for their selection:

1. Hunger (We only wanted students who were hungry for success)
2. Should Be Able to Communicate
3. Commitment
4. Risk Taker
5. Have a Positive Attitude
6. Take Responsibility for Their Life
7. No Wannabes (There are many who get lured because of the big money, but are just wannabes and talkers with no action)
8. No Delusionals (A lot of people during the application say stuff like, “I don’t want to borrow money from my parents”. I would do it later and pay for it myself all the while they live with their parents, use their money to buy phones, drive the car that they gifted. When we hear that, it’s a clear sign of – “I’m not that hungry for success”, so they are rejected)

Great! Now that you know the criteria we used to select the students in The 10 Lac Club. I want you to pause here for a minute and do this exercise. Ask yourself:

– Am I Really Hungry for Success? Will I go the extra mile when things become difficult?

– Can I communicate with people, and get my message across? If no, then what am I doing to communicate better?

– Am I committed? Do I follow through with everything that I commit to?

– Am I a Risk-Taker? How well can I digest taking some Risk to Grow?

– Do I really want to become successful as a Freelancer? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad do I want this? What excuses do I make to finally make the jump to becoming successful?

Answer these questions, reflect on your answers and then decide if you are really ready to commit to becoming a successful Freelancer.

Becoming a Freelancer has its own share of ups and downs. And if you are not hungry for success, if you cannot digest taking risks, if you are not committed… the moment things head south, you would give it up. And if that’s the case, it’s better to SAVE time and do whatever you are doing now than heading the Freelancing path.

But if you are ready to commit to your success and take the next leap, find someone who will keep you accountable and go for it. One way to do that is to Apply for the 10 Lac Club Coaching Program. The whole idea is to find someone who can guide you along this journey, someone who knows the path, someone who has done it all… This way, you can reach success FASTER.

Alright, so coming back to the program:

Now before I move ahead, let me get you to meet the 11 Selected Students, students who came out at the Top, students who won us over with their commitment, hunger, students who rightly deserve the tag of ‘The 10 Lac Club Member’:

1. Divyesh Daftari
2. Varsha Sharma
3. Abhilash Dixit
4. Saraswati Ponkia
5. Unais Kamle
6. Sanjay Yadav
7. Hussain Lohawala
8. Hemin Ghela
9. Faisal Maniar
10. Hardik Purohit
11. Adil Malkhani

Their names are listed in the order of their picture.

The first thing I asked the selected Students in the 10 Lac Club to do was to watch this video, and I think you should too:

And after they watched it, I asked all of them to post a letter on their wall and mark the date in their calendar as the date that they decided to change their lives.

Now since it’s a 12 Month Long Program, each month of the program is designed to help the students achieve a specific goal set.
In the first month, I wanted each student in the program to hit the following milestones:

•  Get Great At Doing The Pre-Qualifying Calls. If you are not aware of what a Pre-Qualifying call is, let me define that for you.
  A Pre-Qualifying call is the 1st phone conversation with a potential client. The objective of the call is to determine if the person you are talking to is a right fit to become your client, while you build your authority and credibility during the call. So apart from giving our students the Proven Call Scripts and Templates, we make sure they practice these calls with our coaches to get some personalized feedback. In fact, just last night I did a webinar for the students of the 10 Lac Club showing them how they need to structure the call, play around with soft intonation, and subtle modulations to overcome any objection they may face during the Pre-Qualification call.

• Daily Video Check-Ins For Long Term Branding: Now it goes without saying, videos play a HUGE role in Building a Brand. And it also goes without saying, it’s relatively easier to close clients for your services if you turn yourself into a Brand. But here is the thing: Not everyone is comfortable on camera. And not everyone is great on camera. So right from Day 1 of the program, they had to submit daily video check-ins. In the video check-ins, they had to talk about the books they read, the assignments they completed and anything else in general. I added this to the course curriculum to ensure that every student in the program not just becomes comfortable on camera but becomes great at it. This would help them build their own brands for the long run and establish more credibility in the market place, thus leading to more clients. Here is a screenshot of the video posts. And in all honesty, I’m really impressed with how comfortable they have all become with the camera after doing this for just a few days.

• Big IDEAS From Important Books: I’m big on reading books. I believe, if you read the right books, get one BIG IDEA from each book you read and implement it in your life, success will be by your side. So as part of this program, in the first month, the students were required to read 2 books a week. In all, they had to read 8 books in the first month. I know, it’s a lot of books to read if you are not into reading. So they were given the choice of listening to the audio books or use an App like Blinkist to get the book summaries. And once they read the book, they were required to post their understanding of the book. The books were on various topics – Right from Business, Leadership, Money, Finance to Mindset. If you want the list of the books they read, drop in a comment!

• Reading the Balance Sheet: My grandpa (maternal) always told me, that you need to learn to read numbers to make money and run a successful business. I never took his words seriously back then. But as my business started growing, I realized it’s one of the most important keys without which it’s almost impossible to grow a business. And not just to grow your business, but knowing how to read a Balance Sheet can help you close the clients faster. The financial statements of a company can reveal a lot about the business, and if a client knows that your understanding of his business goes way beyond providing a stand-alone service like SEO, or Facebook Ad Campaigns… Closing him wouldn’t be difficult. In fact, you would be able to command a very high fee comparatively. How the students would use the skill of knowing how to read a balance sheet comes into the picture in the later months of the course. Keep an eye for the next report that I publish.

• Getting the Brand Communication And Positioning Right: Well, the last goal for the first month was to ensure all the students get their Brand Messaging and Positioning right. Most Freelance Digital Marketers have very poor Brand Messaging (if they have one). And most of the messaging Freelancers come up with is a copy of what’s common. One of the important goals of Marketing is to ‘Stand Out’. So, I wanted to make sure that all the students in the 10 Lac Club Coaching Program have a really STRONG Brand Communication that helps them Stand Out in their Market Place. Apart from Standing Out, a Strong Brand Message helps you ATTRACT Ideal Clients instead of chasing them. At the moment, almost half the students have tweaked their Brand Positioning and Messaging while the other half are working on re-vamping their message.

Well, so all in all here is the conclusion at the end of the 1st month!

– Almost all our students are very confident on camera now! You should see them conquer their MarketPlaces in the coming months!

– Most of the students can now understand the Balance Sheet. Some who HATE numbers are slowly getting a hang of it and will be able to read one by the time I publish the next report.

– The average number of books read in the first month is 5. And most students hadn’t read that many books in their life. So great going guys.

– We’ve noticed a major shift in the communication and language pattern of all the students. We are documenting every communication/interaction of our students. And it’s safe to conclude that each one of them is communicating way better than they did before in terms of word selection, projecting brand authority, and cutting out vague messaging.

Like I said earlier, one of my goals with the report was to give you a Framework to Start Your Freelance Career. And I hope, by publishing this report, and giving you deeper insights into the structure of the 10 Lac Club coaching program, you can now create a roadmap for yourself to launch your Freelance Career.

Of course, if you need professional help in kick-starting your Freelance Career as a Digital Marketer, you can always apply to join the 10 Lac Coaching Club Program. To Apply, click here.

We look forward to seeing your application. And of course, if you have any questions, please post them in the comments below.
I would love to answer any questions you may have with regards to Freelancing 🙂

Karan Dharamsi!

P.S. Make sure to follow me on Instagram. I post a lot of helpful content on Instagram Stories!
Click Here To Follow Me On Instagram.

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Karan Dharamsi

Karan Dharamsi is the CEO of The Marketing Nerdz and several other companies. He is also the highest-paid Direct-Response Copywriter in India. From making Rs 6000 per month in salary as a Personal Trainer to becoming a Self-Made Millionaire and running multiple successful companies... he did it all thanks to his Copywriting and Digital Marketing skills. At the moment, Karan is busy working on the launch of his new business magazine - TMN Prime.

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