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Alright, mama. It's time. Grab your coffee, water, or wine because we are starting. 

Benjamin, welcome to the podcast. It's a great, great day when I get to spend a little time with you, Micala.

Yay. I'm so excited you're here, and you are one of the very few men that have made it on to the live free podcast. So congratulations. Wow. I'm touched. I'm touched. That must be a real special guy.

That's what my mom says at least. Oh, yes. I agree with your mom. But I'm so excited to have you on to share with us eventually more about, like, the tools we need to run our freelance business and how we can streamline that process.

But before we get to that good stuff, I'd love to just hear your story, who you are, what you do, how you got started, previous work background.

I just love hearing everyone's kind of journey from what they did and what the different what was their path to what they're doing now?

I think it's so interesting, but also so inspiring to those who are sitting there kind of in that place of, I want to do something different, but I just I'm I'm I'm still learning and and and hearing from others and, haven't quite got the courage yet to take that leap.

So I'm excited to hear hear your kinda background story. Yes. The the the grand, adventure that has been my life.

Yeah. Well, actually, I, so currently, as you know, I work with Full Scope. I have a lot to do with software tools for freelancers small businesses, but actually, this is completely the opposite from basically my entire life before.

I started my career as a freelancer in the music and audio industry. So when I was in high school, basically, my only, talent seemed to be playing the guitar.

So I went off and I studied music, and I studied, composing music for, like, commercials and online content. So basically everything that's smaller than a feature length film.

And the music industry in general is very much a gig economy. There aren't a lot of, you know, full time jobs. There are not a lot of employers who kind of go out and wrestle up some some work for yourself.

And so freelancing was basically a given. And so that's basically what I did for almost fifteen years. I did a lot of different things. I mean, almost any job that you could imagine someone doing that's related to audio.

I did it at some point. Like I said, I composed music. I played, guitar for, you know, for bands, for weddings, private events. I did audio recordings and editing for podcasts, for all kinds of different content.

Most recently, I was working with, like, virtual reality and making kind of the the sounds of the metaverse, and, high fiving Mark Zuckerberg along the way and, doing just all kinds of work.

And that kind of became the thread, into what I do today is that my my job and my task and my business, you know, business of one, so to speak, was always evolving and going in new directions, and, you have to stay really flexible.

I think particularly in such a creative industry, you know, new things are happening all the time that kind of throw you a curveball, and you need to react.

And, I think creative people in general also have and lots of ideas bubbling up, and there's never enough time in the day to try them all out.

But occasionally, you know, I would at some point, I was like, you know, I really should write a newsletter, or maybe I should start a blog, or, you know, maybe I should share some of my ideas or my work on YouTube, or maybe, you know, I've I've done a lot of work in this industry for, for some years now.

Maybe I could teach a course and help other people learn. So I always have this little, side project, so to speak, going on.

They were all related to my business, some of them very close to my day to day activities. Sometimes I would have, like, a full, you know, like, a small branch off in a particular direction.

Education was one thing that I really enjoyed. So I had a blog that was kind of a part time job, and I I taught and did coaching for other people who wanted to break into the audio industry.

And that's kind of the that brought me to, software in a funny way because I was, again, like, you know, just a one man show, one man band. I was freelancing.

It's it's all me, and I just had all these different tools I was juggling, you know, updating my website, writing my newsletter, writing for my blog, and posting on social media, this, that, the other writing invoices, sending out contracts.

And at some point, I just had, like, eight, nine, 10 different pieces of software that I alone had to manage and structure and systematize and and make somehow work together and, hopefully, not drive me completely crazy along the way.

And, so full scope, what I do now is kind of, just scratching my own itch because I always wish that there was a tool that would combine all of these different things into one place, just make my life easier.

But that wasn't something that was meant more for, like, enterprise level businesses, like like HubSpot. HubSpot, for example, is a is a great one. It's a tool that does all of those things I just mentioned.

But if you don't have a team of full time people ready to dedicate their lives to, like, setting that up and managing it for you, it's absolutely impossible to deal with as a solo business owner.

And, yep, that's that's basically what And also expensive for a small business owner. It's exactly. Yeah. The the the price can skyrocket pretty quickly, with HubSpot. So, yeah, I always wish that I had something like Full Scope.

And so, as as many entrepreneurially minded people often do, I just said, you know what? If no one's scratching this itch for me, then I will scratch it myself, and here we are.

So you started Full Scope? Yes. I'm one of the cofounders. So luckily, I had some other people who agreed that the itch needed scratching, and, so we decided to get it off the ground.

Yeah. When did you guys start? Officially, Full Scope, launched to the public in August 2023. Right? It's 2025 now. Yeah. So not that long ago, but, of course, we were working on it, for some time.

Before then next to all of our other activities and other duties. But I I think, the world is definitely going in, like, you could say, like, niche software direction, especially with the help of AI and all these new tools.

It's much the, you know, the the barrier to entry for building a tool that helps a certain, you know, subset of people do a certain thing is much, much, much, much lower.

You don't have to invest, you know, 500 k, and hire a team of developers anymore, to, you know, work full time for a million dollars a year in total to keep something like this going.

And so that's, I think that's an advantage for us, obviously, and an advantage for everyone who wants to work with us.

Yeah. Because that helps keep the cost for users down if your costs aren't as yeah. That's awesome. Do you still do, like, some of your freelancing stuff on the side in addition to running full scope? Or Occasionally.

Yeah. There are a few let's say, music is is a fickle, lover, and and so there's there are lots of times where there are, for example, like, musicians I would love to go play guitar with, but, it's just, you know, like, hey.

We're gonna drive four hours out to the middle of nowhere on a Saturday and play at a cafe for, like, a hundred dollars each. I'm like, I have a kid.

Like, I can't disappear for an entire day. So often I find myself, you know, at this point, it's like, I either will do it because it's something fun that I wanted to do, or I will do it because the dollar signs make sense.

So there are, like, a a few, projects I have where I'm like, I like this.

This is fun. I will make time for it. And there are a few, for example, singers I work with for weddings and things like that where I know they always pay me well and the the work is easy enough for my okay.

I can, you know, jet to the middle of the city on a Sunday, play someone's, in a wedding ceremony. Lovely. You know, three songs. And then we're out of there after, you know, one one glass of champagne, stuff like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Well, I'd love to hear more about, like, full scope and the how it comes in and really is, like, the best tool for freelancers.

So maybe you could share about, like, when you're starting your freelance business, when you're in the early stages, what are the tools that you actually need to run your business?

Right. Yeah. So all in all, it it very often comes down to what it is you're doing exactly. And I think a lot of people start the with, they they start things backwards. They think, what do I want to do, and how do I want to do it?

When the correct question is, what am I offering and to whom? And what will they want to see, hear, you know, be presented to that would make them want to give me their money in exchange for whatever it is I'm offering?

So a lot of people, I think, jump the gun and start doing things that in retrospect don't make a lot of sense for their target audience, for their ideal customer.

So at the at the beginning, you know, I I think, a a lot of people can can get by with simply thinking, where do I find my customers?

How do I reach out to them? How do I put, you you know, my services, my offer in front of their eyeballs in a way that makes them think, oh, this looks interesting.

And so for for everyone that's going to be different, you know, if if you're selling, you know, virtual assistant services to business executives or C level people at, you know, a big company, something like this, then probably they're not on TikTok, you know?

So why why would you start making TikToks and, you know, dancing around and highlighting your services, something like this? They probably you want to update your LinkedIn profile.

You want people like that are going to want to see, you know, a crystal clear contract. You know, if you get to that phase with them, they want to see structure. They want to see, you know, that everything has been thought out.

They want to see a system that shows them, you know, that you're a reliable person. So you usually, for most people, I think, one of the first things they can start doing is, just getting some kind of online presence going.

Because the Internet, you know, is is is not news to anybody that the Internet is the tool of, the modern age. Everybody's online.

Even people who don't wanna be online probably, you know, somehow they their name's up there somewhere and escape it. And often people, if they're interested in you or your services or what you do, they're gonna look you up.

They're gonna try to find you somehow, and so you need to make sure that what they find is something that makes them think, oh, yeah. I've got the right person for me.

For most people, at the very, very, very least, it's gonna be some kind of really optimized social media profile. Like I said, if you work with business execs or something like this, probably on LinkedIn.

But, of course, if you're wanting to help, let's say, I don't know, you know, working in a more creative industry, you might wanna be somewhere where it's more visual like Instagram or whatever it might be.

And I think, for most people, it's maybe not it's not 100% necessary, but still 80 to 90% necessary to have some kind of website.

Even if it's very basic, even if it's very simple, the website is simply just the storefront of the digital age. And it's also, it's also the one place where you have, at least for a short moment in time, people's undivided attention.

And that's something that you can never ever ever get on social media because the point of social media is to keep people on social media, keep them scrolling.

You know, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care if people migrate away to your website. In fact, they they don't want you to. They want you to stay on their platform where they can keep serving you ads and make more money.

That's their bottom line. And so if you can have, you know, the basics of your offer, who are you? What do you do? Who does it help? What value does it offer to them?

How do they take the next steps to get a conversation started or, you know, get the, get the ball rolling to work with you? That's really hard to present in a meaningful way on social media or in other free to use platforms like that.

But if you can just push people to your website suddenly, at least again for a few seconds, maybe longer, if you've done a good job, you've had their undivided attention.

There aren't any pop ups. There aren't any, like, flashy videos, on the bottom of the screen that are you know, distracting them.

You've got their complete attention, and you have the chance to, you know, present to them your pitch, basically. Your website is really, at the end of the day, your pitch, to a potential client. And so that's a really valuable tool.

And considering how cheap websites are nowadays, I think it's absolutely worth it to take the, you know, the little amount of time it really takes to just set up. Again, a basic it could be a one page website.

You don't have to have a blog or, you know, 20 different pages talking about all the different ways your services do this, that, the other thing, and a detailed about you, where you went to school, all this, you know, just a a simple, here's what I do.

Here's who I do it for. Here's the value you are going to get by, you know, by hiring me, by working with me, by taking advantage of my services. Yeah. Absolutely.

In the beginning, back when I got started so I started in about 02/2016. There were no, easy ways to build a website. It was like WordPress back end. I remember trying to build my first website for my freelance business and gave up.

And I was like, this is hideous. I've downloaded a theme, a template. Like, this looks nothing like it. I have no idea what I'm doing, so I gave up and just I just used the digital portfolio.

I had a Facebook pay like, business page as my online presence and would send people to a Canva portfolio. A lot of my students still get started with that because it's free. It's easy. We have templates in the course.

But I love how simple Full Scope makes having a website because I do think that helps sets you apart and and just appear a little bit more professional, a little bit more put together, a little bit more reliable, when you have when you have that.

And, for those of you guys listening, if you don't have software set up yet for your Brilliance business, you can use my affiliate link, to access Full Scope.

You'll get a extended thirty day trial and then a really great deal on all their software moving forward. It's, just FullScope. tools/Micala, and we'll link to that in the show notes.

But I would really, really, really encourage you to check that out. And when you do use my affiliate link, you also will get a, template library that Ben and his team designed just for, just for just for me and and you guys.

And it comes with that a website template that is, like, drag and drop, super easy to have that website launched in a very, very short amount of time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All Micala approved, stuff that we basically, set up for you.

So you're 50% of the way there to having, again, at the very least, that that basic amount of presence online that's gonna just help, you know, sneak you above the competition who are maybe, you know, just not don't wanna deal with the website and and are confused by it or worried about, you know, not being able to make it work.

Again, especially if I think if you're offering, for example, like virtual assistant services, most of them these days are gonna be digital. You're working with software.

So if you can already proven yourself to be at the minimum, competent enough to create a website, which a lot of peep you know, people most people have not made a website, and it seems like, wizardry to a lot of them.

So if you say, yeah. I made my website. Actually, it only took me, you know, half a day. It was really, really easy. I'm I'm just good at that kind of stuff.

You know? And I can do, this kind of stuff for you and your business too. Yeah. Yeah. So what else? So online presence, that online kinda storefront, what else do we need to get started with our business?

Right. Well, I think, again, depending on who your audience is, who the people you want to work with are, some things are more important than others.

So when I think of, for example, you know, trying, again, trying to get maybe a business owner to hire me to do some work inside their business, they probably want to see a certain amount of, professionalism from me.

So like we mentioned before, you know, having a contract that's ready to go that on, like, details in a clear, way exactly what's gonna happen if, you know, they hire you and provides all of the you know, expected protections and provisions that they want to see that all again, just gives them that extra confidence.

Like, oh, look. This person has really taken the time to think about this. They've put this contract together. I like it. It, you know, it it seems clear to me. It, shows me exactly what I'm gonna get.

It provides protections for both of us and not just for you, the freelancer. So, you know, maybe if I again, if I was going to, you know, go play guitar at someone's wedding, probably then I'll need a contract.

They don't care about a contract. They're just, like, you know, show up at my wedding place and play guitar for thirty minutes.

And, that that's something that's less relevant to that type of customer, but more relevant to another type of customer. So, again, things things like that may or may not be very important to your business.

You always have to think from the from the perspective of who you are going to be working with and what they will want to see, what they expect, what are, you know, what are they going to want to get from you that is going to inspire them and and, you know, give them that confidence to say, oh, yeah.

Here. You know?

Like, where's the dotted line? I'm signing. This looks great. You're awesome. I'm so impressed. That kind of stuff. So I know, again, having an airtight, legal contract, you know, if if you're working in law, that's a must have.

If you're doing something on the side, you know, that's a tiny, tiny job, at the very minimum, some kind of just, you know, quick, no jargon, plain English, contract that just makes everything clear and sets the expectations for both parties is good.

Other paperwork things like, like invoicing, you know, just just having some kind of system for also for your own sanity that, helps you just document and keep track of who's supposed to pay me what, when, and did they.

So having a simple invoicing tool, you know, that isn't a a big complicated Excel spreadsheet mess is also pretty nice and, and helpful. Like, one thing I love about the full scope is that you can set up, automatic invoices.

So for those of, you know, those list you listening that are going to be offering retainer service, whether it's ongoing virtual assistant services or social media management services or maybe ongoing tech support, whatever that is, if it's an ongoing month to month contract package, having automatic invoices is going to save you a lot of time, but also your clients and help make sure that you you get paid.

And there's less downtime in following up like, hey. Did you pay my invoice? Hey. Don't forget to pay. Like, no one likes to be that person.

So having those automatic invoice set up inside the full scope software, I think, is such a huge such a huge perk. Absolutely. And, again, from the customer's perspective, you're making their life easier.

They don't have to open up invoices every month, go to their bank app, you know, transfer money, whatever it might be, having, even if they don't go with the, just retainer method of just getting, you know, sign up use the credit card, like, that's it's gonna pay you every month unless otherwise discussed, even if that isn't the case.

Full Scope, for example, sends out invoices with the, like, pay now button, and they just click and pay. It makes it easier.

You never want to put any hurdles in front of your customers when it comes to paying you. Otherwise, that's when you end up having to chase people down, and it gets uncomfortable for everybody involved, and it's stressful.

And you start to have, like, nightmares, like, are they not gonna pay me? What's going on? When maybe they're just, like, sick that week and they just haven't gotten to it. And who knows what kind of a mess you can get into with that?

Yeah. So we need the online presence, contracts, invoices. What other, like, starting out tools do we need? Yeah. So we we discussed really I think, a lot of the best ones, I think, for really you're just kicking off your your business.

Having a website, having the right social media presence, you know, even just, again, even on just one platform that is relevant to your customers makes sense.

You don't need to open up five social media accounts and try to become, you know, full time social media manager.

That's totally, unnecessary. And, again, so just getting the paperwork in order so that you, at the very least, come across as a, you know, clean, organized professional.

Those are really a lot of the biggies, I would say, that apply to basically everyone, and that's why they're also, we, that's that's also the launch package that we offer through full scope.

So if you're just starting, those would be the things that we offer you in our lowest tier.

And, so I would say those are, like, the the things that I would I would count as, you know, pretty much must haves for the beginner freelancer slash, you know, small business owner, anyone who's looking into that kind of stuff.

I I think you can and, of course, the the other thing that could be involved if you're not freelancing, but rather maybe trying to sell some products, maybe homemade candles or, you know, whatever it might be.

Maybe you you love to knit, and people have always told you you should sell those awesome Christmas sweaters you make. An online shop of some kind would then obviously be also helpful.

That's another tool you can integrate into your website with full scope as well. Yeah. I think the only thing that I would add to, like, tools needed must for the beginners would be a calendar booking.

So if someone wants if a potential client wants to talk to you, typically, you know, there's a discovery call, having that calendar booking ability where they can just see your availability, pick a slot, and get reminders.

You get reminders. It gets auto added to your calendar. I think that is huge because there's nothing worse than going back in email. Like, yes. I wanna chat with you. When are you available?

I'm available these times. No. I can't do those times. Do you have any other times? How about this time? No. I can't like, you've lost them. They're gonna find the person that's gonna make it easy for them throughout the entire process.

So make it easy to book that discovery call, easy to, you know with a proposal too before the contract showing here's what I can do for you. Here's what it's gonna cost.

Okay. Now here's our legal kind of contract protecting both of us. Now here's how you can pay me. Now I'm gonna get started working. Just make it easy throughout the entire process for yourself, but most importantly for the client.

Absolutely. You nailed it. And I think, honestly, you know, we're talking now in 2025. I send even my mother a link to my calendar when she wants to talk sometimes because it's just, you know, so busy.

So somebody and, also, I'm a forgetful person, so my calendar is is synced to all my calendars that, you know, that help me navigate my entire life.

And, otherwise, you know, I'll be promising someone to meet next Tuesday when I have a doctor's appointment, and then I don't realize until Tuesday.

And I think, oh, crap. No. Okay. What do I do now? So, honestly, an an online calendar tool, like you mentioned, it's great for the customer because, again, they just say, oh, look.

I want to talk to this person here. I click here. I look at their calendar. I can really quickly just say, oh, you know, you know, Wednesday at 09:30AM. Perfect. That actually works great for me.

They book it. It goes straight into the you know, these days, it goes straight into their Google Calendar or iCal, whatever it might be. It's all synced. It's all beautiful. Like you said, automation sends out those reminder emails.

So ten minutes before, you're not like, wait, something am I missing something? And with your with your client sitting, you know, tapping their fingers, you know, at the coffee shop or in the virtual, meeting room online somewhere.

So I I send myself probably twice as many reminders as I send any customers when we have calls booked just just because I don't want that to happen ever. Right? Yeah. For sure. Now how long like, let's say I'm just starting out.

I don't have a software yet, or maybe I'm piecing together free tools, but it's just becoming messy and disorganized. How long will it take with Fullscope to get this kind of the maybe leave out the website.

I love the website. I think it's important, but I think bare bones getting started. You can get started without that first. Like, if we just wanted to set up a calendar, our contract, proposal, invoices, how long would that take?

Oh, not very long at all because, they anyone who is listening to this will have access to your templates, which means there's already a calendar set up for you.

There's already a contract set up for you. There's already, or the invoice tool is is about as easy a tool, luckily, as we could we could make it.

So that one's very easy. So I think it's really just the the price of an afternoon taking a look, opening things up, finding where they are, clicking the buttons, seeing how it works.

But, really, that you've made it very easy for them. All they, really have to do is just come in and say, you know, where is the calendar? Oh, there's the calendar button. Cool. What does it look like? Oh, there it is.

So let me obviously add my availability, sync it with my calendar so I don't you know, get booked, next Friday when I'm dropping the kids off at soccer, whatever it might be. And then the link is right there ready to go.

You just send it to whoever needs it. Yeah. I mean, we walked through it, like, two weeks ago, three weeks ago for LFA students for LFA students, and I think we walked through the basics in about an hour, less than an hour.

So one to two hours, block out your schedule. You could have all of the tools you need to start and run your business streamlined.

Once you get that done, maybe a week or two later, set aside an afternoon to do the website, and then you are more than set to start working within taking on those paying clients.

Yeah. We try to make it as easy as we can because I've, again, I've been there, done that.

I've I've stood in those shoes. I know what it's like to start your own business, to kind of go off on your own. It's nerve wracking. It's scary. There are a lot of questions that you don't have answers to.

And, so we try to be as, available as we can for our customers. Every customer gets an onboarding call, and, your customers particularly get an onboarding call with me personally, every single time.

So we take, you know, a solid forty five minutes or an hour and really just sit down with you and show you exactly what you need, help you, you know, make sure you understand how everything works.

I can definitely say there there aren't many software tools that provide that type of service anymore, at least not the big ones. They don't have the time of day for you.

So we're trying to help out as much as we can so that you have, you know, less have to spend less time figuring out tools and can spend more time figuring out where are my customers and how do I get in touch with them.

So if someone did did sign up with my affiliate link, would it be best for them to have already kind of dabbled in the software and started setting stuff up so they could bring, like, any questions if they got stuck, or would it be best if they just came to that onboarding call?

Like, I haven't done anything yet. Let's knock this out together. It's totally up to them. And to be honest, if they leave the first call and say, you know what? Is it possible to do another one of these?

Yes. Absolutely. We're we're happy to do it. I'd much rather have a happy person who understands how things work sitting there and thinking, what a great investment of my time and energy and money, than someone who's like, oh my god.

What do I do here? If if I understood this, this I don't know how this works. You know? That doesn't help the them. That doesn't help me and our business.

So why, you know, why why not take another hour and make sure everything is absolutely ready to go? Yeah. Okay. Awesome, guys. You'll be in good hands when you use Full Scope for your software and your business.

I'm curious, Ben, kind of looking at, you know, all the businesses you served and helping with your own experience and that of your your your friends and colleagues in the space, what are some of the challenges that freelancers and solo business owners face when it comes to running the back end of their business, running the operation say side of things, and how can they kinda simplify that?

Yeah. I think the one of the big challenges is just all of the hats that you have to wear as a business owner.

You know, there there's just there it even if sometimes it's not true that there's a lot to do, it always feels like there's a lot to do.

And it always feels like you should be doing 10 times as much as you're doing, and it feels like there's 10 times less time available than you than you have for all of the tasks that you, I think are necessary.

So having things in place that make your life easier is, you know, kind of just one of the the goals of these tools in the first place. So if if the tool makes your life more complicated, then why should you use it?

Right? And, that's there's a reason you hit nails with a hammer and not a screwdriver. It's it's the best tool for the job, and it gets the job done way faster and more easily.

So I think being able to, for example, think through what's what's going on and, set up just a few key things that help you to, sort of systematize and automate a couple of the tasks that you otherwise would just have to consistently come back and manually take a look at is really, really great.

So for example, with our invoice tool, you can set up automatic notifications to go out to your customer if the invoice has not been paid on time.

And so at the very, very least, the first reminder goes out without you having to think about it.

And you could even set up two or three minder reminders that go out without you having to think about it so that you only have to manually, you know, pick up the phone or open up your email account and get in touch with them if that system has failed.

But that's one of those things. Once you set it up, once it works forever, you never have to come back to it unless you just wanna make some kind of edit in the text or something like this.

So that's a a great thing that can save you some time. The same thing with, like, we already mentioned, the calendar reminders such, you know, no it's a waste of your day if your customer forgets to come to a call with you.

And it's a waste of their time too because now they have to rebook. You've got, you know, an hour of your time was wasted and maybe they're even though it was their fault that they didn't show up, they feel like, oh, crap.

Now I gotta rebook. I missed this. Like, now I have a negative association with this person, even though maybe it's totally my fault. I just, you know, a dumb dumb, and I missed the the call completely.

So having those kinds of things just go out automatically. And imagine imagine before tools like this, if you wanted to make sure the customer is coming, you might have to actually set a reminder to yourself to click call them before.

But just so you wanted to remind you about your appointment today at 2PM. Please don't forget to come because I'm really sick of people forgetting to come. Right? So little things like that.

The great thing about Full Scope is that because all the tools are in one place, you can connect them and make them work together in all kinds of ways, and set up things that will kind of systematize and automate, at least a few of the manual tasks that might otherwise, you know, just be time sucks in your day that are important, but, nonetheless, you could be spending your time doing something more important.

The other thing that I think is really, helpful is, for example, the CRM tool.

You know, keeping keeping track of all the people you meet over time and what their relationship is to you and whether they are maybe if they weren't a good potential client for now, they might be later and setting yourself a reminder in three months from now to follow-up with them again.

It especially when you're starting, I think it's one of those things that where you feel like, well, I don't know that many people right now, so I I can remember them all.

Like, it doesn't really matter. But as time goes on, as you meet more and more people, you know, in three years, you look back and think, oh, wow.

You know? I've been to a lot of these, like, networking events, and I've gone out and talked up all these people and sent LinkedIn, you know, requests and cold pitched in emails.

And I don't even remember who 80 of them were or what we talked about or especially but the worst one for me was always names, you know, the classic classic struggle with remembering people's names, going spending my evenings instead of being, you know, at home with my wife and my son, going out to a networking meeting to try to pick up new clients and going home and and then going to the next network meeting and looking at these people thinking, oh, crap.

I talked with you last time. What was your name? What did we talk about? Oh, uh-uh. Maybe I'll just avoid you today because I don't remember who you are.

So having a tool where you can kind of just, like, dump that information, keep track of the people you've met. Again, if they say, for example, you know what? That's not something I need right now, but maybe next year.

Well, if you don't set yourself a reminder somewhere, somehow, in some system, it doesn't have to be, you know, ours, but a a post it note next to your bed or a reminder on your phone, whatever it might be to actually call that person again a year from now, then that could have been a new customer for you a year from now that you just totally missed out on just because you didn't have somewhere to, you know, put that information so that it would be brought to your attention again when the time is right.

So that's actually, I I forget. There's another, great podcast for creative freelancers. I'm forgetting the name right now. I think it's called Six Figure Creative. And the, the guy who runs the podcast, Brian, I I'll I'll never forget.

He had a podcast on following up and was talking about how it's how crucial it is to have a system that helps you to remind you who you're talking to, when you talk to them, and when to follow-up again with them.

And he had estimated that, something like 40% of his business over the last ten years came from customers who had, like, basically given him the cold shoulder, but he had nonetheless followed up with them later and brought it back to their attention.

Like, hey. You know, remember we had talked about this before three months ago, six months ago, whatever. Would this be something for right now or, you know, do should we pick up the discussion?

40%. That's a huge, huge, huge number. So imagine is these are people you've already spent the time to find, already spent the time and energy to reach out to, maybe already had a discussion with. So they already know you.

They already have some kind of, you know, a relationship with you and maybe trust you a little bit based on that relationship. So pitching to someone like that is way, way, way easier than someone who's completely new.

So if you spend all the time and energy to go out and find these people, connect with them, build a relationship, and it wasn't the right time then, why not follow-up with them later?

But it's really, really hard over the years when you, you know, at some point, you've met dozens, if not hundreds, of people, and, you know, they're they forgot about you.

Maybe you forgot about them, and it all just disappears like like a Thanos snap just, you know, off into the ether.

And that's all, you know, business that could be helping you pay your bills, you know, keep, keep the lights on, buy your kids the the nice toys they want for Christmas or whatever it might be. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

We're getting to the age where I think my son with baseball not quite yet, but I'm seeing, like, all these I get targeted with baseball mom stuff, and it's like, oh, I'm wearing my, like, sports bra from 02/2004, and my son's swinging a $400 bat.

I'm like, oh god. That is that is insane. So kids are expensive, people. Kids are expensive.

Hi. Kind of wrapping up, Ben. I'd love if you could touch on we talked about the basics. Like, this is what you need bare bones to get started making money, give a, you know, really stellar impression to your first clients.

But how can, Full Scope grow with us as our business grows? I think a lot of people will, grow in different areas.

Maybe they'll start, doing paid strategy sessions or paid, like, brainstorming sessions, whatever, creative sessions where, you know, for 250 or $500 or whatever it may be, you can, you know, buy it, maybe their social media manager, like a social media brainstorming session or strategy session.

Or, as they've been doing it, they have a really good framework and plan down for their clients.

They start teaching others how to do that and offer courses or digital products if they have, like, a cheat sheet of 10 real hooks or, you know, whatever.

Those are some of the various ways I see a lot of freelancers kind of start to really grow and scale their business. How does kind of full scope help support that next stage of, of, small business freelance growth?

Yep. So, luckily, we have a bunch of tools that are also extremely flexible to help you transition from being, you know, a day one freelancer into, hopefully, one day being the owner of a perhaps not so small business anymore.

Maybe you'll have your own VA. Maybe you'll even have people working under you or partnerships.

And, so what we've done, especially with you, Micala, is what people get with your, special link is they get access to our highest tier of tools. So, basically, all the tools that we have and will ever have.

So if we bring out anything new, you will get it automatically for the price of the lowest tier of tools. So, basically, you're getting the beginner price, but you're getting the big boy, pants from from day one.

And so that gives you all the options not only to, of course, grow in any direction that you see fit for your business, but also the option to try out other tools that you're maybe not 100% sure whether you need or whether will work, but you're interested, but you don't want to sign up for a new software and pay for it for half a year only to find out it was a big nothing burger for your business.

So it's kind of like a if if now now I'm thinking of, like, parental metaphors.

Imagine if you could buy a box that had not only all the clothes that you your child needed at their size now, but all the clothes they would ever need until they moved out.

That's basically what you would get with full scope. So whether you want to if, like you mentioned, sell some digital products, you could do that right away with full scope with the online shop.

If you wanted to do those strategy sessions, you can use our calendar tool and connect it to payments so people actually pay during booking, and they could pay right away for an hour of your time to do that session with you.

If you wanted to launch an email newsletter because you got a lot of followers now and you wanna convert them better through email, you you can do that.

If you at some point thought, you know what? A lot of people are asking me how I've done it. How did I do it? How did I get so successful?

Well, besides obviously pointing people in the direction of Mikaela Quinn here, you might want to launch your own course or even create a private community where people can connect with you, learn from you, learn with each other.

Those tools are also available in your account. So basically, you have everything that you will need now and could potentially need in the future.

It's all there. And, again, the stuff you don't need now, you just don't you don't have to use it. There's there's no no skin off of anybody's back for that.

But luckily, flexibility is actually one of the the big topics with us because we know lots of people are doing lots of different things with our tools, and we don't want you to get kind of, you know, stuck in just like a you have to do it this way or otherwise, you know, sorry.

You can't do it, with our tools.

So that we have tons of different people doing lots of different stuff, super creative, like video editors who work full time making YouTube shorts for creators, all the way down to bookkeeping people who have a very kind of dry numbers oriented working style all the way to virtual assistants who, some of whom actually open up separate accounts for the businesses that they help because they need the same tools that they're, that we offer them.

So I know we have a few VAs in our system who actually have brought their own customers into our, system, gotten a kickback from us for doing so, and then they can help them with the tools they're already familiar with and, and also, you know, bounce back and forth between all of those businesses right within the one screen in full scope.

So it makes it makes their lives also much easier. So there's there's so many different things you can do, and I'm really, proud of, yeah, the flexibility that we offer.

So far very rarely heard someone, you know, raise their hand and say, but I can't do this. So that's what we're trying to accomplish.

It's just no matter what your goals are, no matter what your timeline is, no matter where you're coming from, no matter what skills or services you're looking to promote, we try to make it a platform where everybody can succeed.

And that's, yeah, that that's kind of our our motto and our mission. And I know we're doing it a lot of that with, your students, and that's been really, really great, especially as a somewhat newer father myself.

You know, my my wife actually just the other week invoiced her, also her very first freelance gig during maternal leave.

So we're kind of I immediately thought of you when, when she told me that the the invoice went out, I was like, oh, Mikaela would be so proud.

So so I totally get I totally get, you know, the the desire to, be have a more flexible working life, being able to be there with your kids.

I 100% understand. If I, you know, if I could just, like, get $10,000,000 and drop everything, I'd stay home with my son every day.

That would be awesome. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it's it's really cool when you can still be there and still make money. Because the reality that $10,000,000 is just gonna pop into your lap is yeah.

Right? You know, buy those lottery tickets, Ben. But it's it's so cool where you when you can step into entrepreneurship and small business ownership and create that that flexible life and business that that works for you.

And I love that Full Scope is here now helping make it even simpler for moms to get their business set up, start working with paying clients, and really impress those clients to keep them long term and bring them in referrals to really help them have that sustainable long term long term business.

So thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us and also for the amazing, affiliate deal that they get if they use my my link.

Guys, if you again, we'll link to it in the show notes. But if you're on the go or just wanna type it now, it's fullscope.

Tools/makayla, and you'll get their full suite of all of their tools at the lowest price point. Don't tell other people, unless you share my link. And, you'll get that onboarding call with Ben himself.

They have amazing customer support. I've heard nothing but good things from Live Free Academy students who, have decided to go with full scope to run the back end of their business, and you'll be in good hands.

Have everything set up in, like, one to two hours in the afternoon. Add another afternoon to get the website done, and you are just golden.

You'll have a tool that will grow with you as your business grows because where you're starting today, maybe just with the desire to make an extra thousand dollars or $3,000 a month, 6 months from now, you might be like, wow.

I I wanna triple my income goal or maybe it's, you know, 10 x that. Whatever that is, this tool is gonna help support you wherever your business goes.

So, I'm so excited for you to dive in and use this tool. And, again, Ben, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us your background as but also more about this software and how it can simplify our lives.

It's my pleasure. And if anybody has any questions or just wants to reach out to me directly, it's ben@fullscope. tools is the email address. I'm available anytime to help you out with anything you need.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Ben. 

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