CEO Problems You Can Solve as a Freelancer
Identifying the problem to solve is the first step to freelancing
If you want to shift your career from a boring 9 to 5 job to the exciting world of freelancing, you need to go through a huge mindset shift. Many people get jobs based on their degrees. They get campus placements or sometimes they get an offer after an internship. The mindset of a job seeker is “I have got my degree now I deserve a good job.”
When you are a freelancer, your clients do not care about your degrees, recognition, or awards. They will work with you if they think you can solve their problem, as simple as that. In this article, let’s look at the CEO problems you can solve as a freelancer.
Why Target CEOs?
As a freelancer, I recommend solving a CEO’s problems because it’s easy to convince CEOs. They have decision-making powers and they don’t have much time. They will value what you offer and might not want to do a hard negotiation because they like moving things forward.
CEOs are also more likely to experiment with different freelancers before they make a long-term relationship. For example, when I was looking for a good video editor for my YouTube videos, I gave the project to at least five freelancers. I paid $50 to each freelancer to edit a small video and then chose one of the five for long-term contracts.
If you are just starting out as a freelancer, you need personal branding skills, sales skills, and technical skills. If you are good at personal branding and sales but do not have the deep technical skills to deliver good work, you will fail. At the same time, having very good technical skills alone is not enough. You need to know how to generate leads, build relationships, and close deals.
Top 5 CEO Problems
Let’s look at the top problems CEOs face in their career. I am still going to call business problems as CEO problems because many freelancers and agencies think that a business has a problem. But businesses are made of people. And the decision maker is mostly the CEO. So the lines are blurred and not very polarized.
1. Personal Branding
CEOs have a hard time building their personal brand. Something or the other keeps sucking up their time and energy. Once a CEO has built a startup that makes more than $10,000 a month in revenue, he has some team members, customers, compliance requirements, customer support that surfaces to his decision making and so on.
A CEO might have a lot of knowledge but they do not have the time or patience to share it with the world.
As a freelancer you can help a CEO build their personal brand by:
Helping them post content consistently on social media handles like LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram.
Replying to posts and sparking discussions on social media
Build a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter writing from their voice
Help them publish a printed book
Help them get speaking engagements at conferences, universities and other businesses
Help them publish YouTube videos and short form videos (Reels, Shorts etc) by taking the content they have already published and repurposing them
A CEO has to sell to three types of people:
They have to sell products and services to customers
They have to sell the dream to build their team
They have to sell promise of future returns to investors
When a CEO builds a strong personal brand, all the above activities become easier. You can position yourself as a personal branding expert for CEOs if you want to provide these services.
Here’s an idea of what you can charge for these services:
You can charge around $0.05 to $0.30 per word of written content depending on your expertise and sales skills.
You can charge $50 to $100 for long form YouTube video editing.
You can charge $1000 to $5000 to publish a book.
You can charge $100 to $500 a month retainer for maintaining their newsletter.
The numbers I have given above is an indicative pricing structure. It will vary a lot depending on the level of the CEO and your technical and sales skills.
2. Lead Generation & Lead Nurturing
Paid advertising is getting extremely competitive and is becoming unsustainable for startups to acquire leads. Organic content marketing can help offset some of these costs.
I do a lot of content marketing myself like writing this newsletter, managing my own YouTube Channel and so on. It helps me not only nurture the leads I have already generated through paid advertising but also attract new leads into my funnel. These new leads eventually become customers for my startup.
Lead generation cannot happen without lead magnets. You can help CEOs build lead magnets to be used in their campaigns.
You can offer the following services as a freelancer
An eBook written by the CEO (freelance work includes content, design, layout and publishing)
A mini video course on a specific topic
A community in a specific niche related to their startup
Cold email outreach
Social outreach
Paid advertising to generate leads using the lead magnets
Tools, Templates, Calculators to solve a specific problem for the target customers
Lead generation services can be built on top of personal branding. People prefer to access lead magnets built by a personal brand than by a business with just a logo.
3. Executive Assistance & Time Management
You can help CEOs manage their time effectively as a freelancer. A lot of CEOs are unable to manage their calendars and appoints themselves. If you manage it for them as a remote executive assistant, it will save a lot of their time and they will be ready to pay you for your services.
I do not have a personal assistant right now, but I used to have one when I was a lot more busy than now. If anyone asked for a meeting with me I would reply with her on the CC and she would send a calendar invitation along with a phone confirmation. She would also remind the gues and me one hour before the meeting on Email and WhatsApp.
Small tasks can be delegated by the CEO to the assistant.
This includes stuff like:
Managing office administration
HR functions such as issuing salary slips
Approving employee leaves
Issuing offer letters, relieving letters etc.
Assistance in hiring new employees
Sending postal emails and getting documents printed and signed if it requires a physical seal and signature.
Organizing team off-site meetings
Printing of business cards, buying stationary and sending welcome mails via post to high value customers
Managing data and backup of all sensitive and important business documents
The cost of such work can be a monthly retainer or can be a hourly price that is agreed upon by you and the client.
4. Book Keeping and Financial Tasks
A freelancer can help CEOs with a lot of money matters. A lot of tasks require back and forth and repeated follow ups. It’s difficult for a CEO to keep track of everything and have an idea about the financial health of the startup at the top of his mind.
A freelancer can help a CEO with:
Book Keeping: Keeping track of all financial transactions, including expenses, revenue, and other financial activities.
Bank Reconciliation: Comparing the company's financial records with bank statements to ensure accuracy and consistency.
Invoicing and Accounts Receivable: Creating and sending invoices to clients, tracking payments, and managing overdue accounts.
Expense Tracking and Categorization: Monitoring and categorizing expenses to ensure accurate financial reporting.
Payroll Management: Handling payroll processing, including calculating wages, taxes, and other deductions.
Financial Reporting: Preparing regular financial statements such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.
Tax Preparation: Organizing financial data and preparing tax documents to ensure compliance with tax regulations.
It’s not easy to get a job in this category without some experience, prior relationship and strong recommendations. It’s not easy to build trust with someone for them to trust you with their finances. But on the other side, once the trust is built, you have an advantage because they cannot switch to someone else easily.
Finding a new person that they can trust will be difficult. So once you start working with a business on money matters, as long as you do good work there is a high chance that it will be a long-term relationship.
5. Market Research & Competitor Analysis
CEOs and startup founders need to be aware of what’s happening in the market. Looking at competitor’s activities will help CEOs learn from other’s mistakes instead of making mistakes of their own.
As a freelancer, you can help CEOs with:
Competitor Analysis: Researching and analyzing key competitors to understand their strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, and strategies.
Customer Surveys: Designing and conducting surveys to gather insights directly from customers regarding their needs, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
Target Market Identification: Defining and profiling the ideal customer segments for the startup’s products or services, including demographics, psychographics, and buying behavior.
Market Size Estimation: Estimating the size of the target market, including potential revenue and market share, to assess the startup's growth potential.
Pricing Strategy Research: Analyzing pricing models and strategies within the market to help the startup develop competitive and profitable pricing.
The above list is indicative and new requirements might come up based on the CEO and the startup’s needs.
There are a lot more categories of services that you can provide as a freelancer. This is just focused on the top five services you can provide for CEOs.
Download Digital Freelancer Playbook
I have covered a lot more content in Digital Freelancer Playbook. You can download it at no cost.
I will also be publishing a print version of this book soon.
Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju