Scott greer – consultant for digital marketing strategies

FREELANCER INSIDES
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© freelancermap.com
Scott Greer –
Consultant for Digital Marketing Strategies
11/9/2015 info@freelancermap.com

“The most difficult part about starting your
own business is building up the courage
and putting yourself out there.” When
Scott and his wife found out they were
having a baby, he decided to take the risk
and became a freelancer. Getting started
can be hard sometimes, but word-of-
mouth and Scott's attention to detail have
helped him build up a unique selling point
and broad customer base. Find out more
about Scott and how he successfully
established his own business…

1) Hello Scott, thanks for your participation in our freelancer insides
interview series. Firstly, can you tell our users a bit about
yourself and what you do?
Thank you for having me. My name is Scott Greer and I help
businesses develop digital marketing strategies with an emphasis
on design, paid search and social advertising. I was born and raised
in Nashville, Tennessee and launched my business this past May
after spending some time in the agency world. The services I
provide vary based on the client’s needs, but right now my focus is
consulting with small businesses and advertising agencies on
Facebook Advertising, Google AdWords, media planning, email
marketing and graphic design.

2) What was your inspiration and when did you actually decide to
become a freelancer?
Prior to freelancing, I worked at an advertising agency in Nashville for
several years and after that at an early stage healthcare startup for
about a year. Both experiences were incredibly valuable and paved
the way for launching my own business in 2015. I’m not even sure I
would’ve left my agency position to start freelancing full-time, but
the startup environment really taught me a lot about business and
ultimately helped me carve out an opportunity to pursue
something new. Another factor was that my wife and I found out
we were having a baby earlier this year, so that immediately made
the idea of freelancing even more appealing.

3) Do you sometimes think about going back to fulltime
employment? What are your career goals for the future?
So far I haven’t thought about going back at any point, but I will say
that it’s easy to take the luxuries of fulltime employment for
granted, including health insurance, guaranteed income and other
HR benefits. Operating a one-man business obviously has its
challenges, so I would eventually like to build a collective of
likeminded freelancers who share the same values and have
various skills that balance each other out. I realize this is easier said
than done, but the fact of the matter is that I want to work with
(and for) people who I genuinely enjoy being around. It’s certainly
helpful that Nashville’s freelance community is growing so quickly.

4) What was the most challenging obstacle when starting your own
business?
Honestly, I think the most difficult part about starting your own
business is building up the courage and putting yourself out there.
I know the high-risk lifestyle comes naturally to some, but you
really do need to be comfortable with embracing chaos and facing
the unknown. It can be a long process to finally reach the point
where you know you can do it on your own. Fortunately, there are
plenty of awesome resources out there to help motivate those
who might be on the fence about freelancing full-time. Seth
Godin’s blog is one of my favorites.

5) How do you set yourself apart from your competitors? What
makes you special?
I like to think that my biggest selling point is a strong attention to
detail, along with the ability to manage account service tasks,
creative direction and digital strategy for a single client. I know
clients really appreciate attentiveness, which seems to be a lost art
these days. I also have experience in a wide range of industries
from my agency background, so that gives me a unique
perspective on each client’s business.

6) Let’s go for a question which might be interesting for all newbie
freelancers and Start-ups. How do you find new clients?
I’ve been fortunate enough to get most of my clients through word-
of-mouth at this stage. Several of them have actually been
referrals from past colleagues, which is a testament to the fact
that everyone should try to avoid burning bridges in his or her
career (whenever possible). I am lucky to have met so many
talented entrepreneurs in this city and truly believe that the best
new business strategy is to meet as many new people as possible.

7) Can you provide any Marketing tips and tricks for freelancers?
It’s not really a tip or a trick, but I think the most important thing
about marketing is to understand that consumers have all of the
control today. The importance of digital marketing is no longer a
mystery in 2015, but it’s amazing how many businesses are still
using social media ineffectively. Businesses have to realize that
consumers have a million bits of information bombarding them all
day every day, so you can’t stand out from the crowd with a sell-
sell-sell approach to marketing. Oftentimes a strategy that is
authentic, clean and simple goes a long way.

8) How do you manage the pressure of meeting deadlines? Do you
use any specific apps or software tools for self-organization,
invoicing and something else?
It’s essential to stay organized in order to meet deadlines and keep
clients happy, and fortunately I’m able to do some of my best work
under tight deadlines. Since every client is different, however, you
have to learn to adapt to those who like to have a long-term plan
in place and others who deal with everything at the last minute. In
either case, the tools that I can’t live without are Harvest (time
tracking and invoicing), Sunrise (calendar), Evernote (notes—
imagine that), Slack (collaboration) and Wunderlist (to-dos).

9) What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about
starting a freelance career? And what does it takes to be
successful as a freelancer?
Depending on your current job, I would definitely spend as much time
as you can outside of work planning your freelance career before
handing in your resignation. That is to say, you shouldn’t simply
decide one day that you’re going to start freelancing and think it
will happen overnight. Everything takes time before you actually
build your client base, including creating a business plan,
prospecting and countless administrative tasks. Once you have a
strategy in place, I think the best way to ensure long-term success
is to be honest, persistent and organized. You also need to have a
great deal of self-discipline.

10) Last but not least, what are the top three books, blogs or
magazines you read to stay up to date in the IT-market?
If I had to narrow it down to three, I would say Business Insider Tech,
SocialTimes and TechCrunch. Twitter is still my go-to channel for
consuming it all though.

11) Freestyle! Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?
In freelancing, I’ve learned that you can’t take anything personally
and you always have to keep moving through the good and bad.
Even if you’ve created the best proposal of your life (or so you
think), you may never hear back from that prospect again. It’s a
hard truth of the business, but sometimes you have to roll with the
punches and have faith that it will all work out in the end. Nothing
is more important than remaining positive and trusting your
process.

© freelancermap.com
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Scott greer – consultant for digital marketing strategies

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