Scott Greer – Consultant for Digital Marketing Strategies

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• Scott Greer
• Consultant for Digital Marketing Strategies

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Scott Greer Consultant for Digital Marketing
Strategies

• 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

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Scott Greer

• 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 clients 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.

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Scott Greer

• 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. Im not even sure I wouldve
  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.

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Scott Greer

• 3) Do you sometimes think about going back to
  fulltime employment? What are your career goals
  for the future?
• So far I havent thought about going back at any
  point, but I will say that its 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. Its certainly helpful that Nashvilles
  freelance community is growing so quickly.

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Scott Greer

• 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 Godins blog is
  one of my favorites.

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Scott Greer

• 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 clients
  business.

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Scott Greer

• 6) Lets go for a question which might be
  interesting for all newbie freelancers and
  Start-ups. How do you find new clients?
• Ive 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.

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Scott Greer

• 7) Can you provide any Marketing tips and tricks
  for freelancers?
• Its 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 its 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 cant
  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.

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Scott Greer

• 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?
• Its essential to stay organized in order to meet
  deadlines and keep clients happy, and fortunately
  Im 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 cant live without
  are Harvest (time tracking and invoicing),
  Sunrise (calendar), Evernote (notesimagine
  that), Slack (collaboration) and Wunderlist
  (to-dos).

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Scott Greer

• 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 shouldnt
  simply decide one day that youre 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.

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Scott Greer

• 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.

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Scott Greer

• 11) Freestyle! Is there anything you would like
  to tell our readers?
• In freelancing, Ive learned that you cant take
  anything personally and you always have to keep
  moving through the good and bad. Even if youve
  created the best proposal of your life (or so you
  think), you may never hear back from that
  prospect again. Its 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.

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