Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Grant Holmes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Grant, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

The biggest challenge to free-lancing is that it is pretty much totally dependent on you. We all have 24 hours. As the business grows, it’s harder and harder to 1) track the work 2) fit the work into the clock that’s ticking. THEN, finding downtime to recharge and enjoy life.

So, I’ve created a handful of excel workbooks to help manage work flow. With some irony, it adds to the work I need to do to produce the work. But it keeps me from missing work that comes from multiple sources.

I have several streams:
1) Business advising; (GrantHolmes.com)
2) Webinar advising, production and delivery; (TheWebinarGuy.com)
3) Voice Acting; (GrantsVoice.com)
4) UGC (User generated content production; (UGCActor.com)

So part of the strategy is to spread the risk/reward quotient across multiple streams. But the good or bad of all this is that it all comes back to: Time.

It doesn’t matter which I’m doing. They are all time. And with few exceptions, there is little to nothing I can hand off.

So the ways I manage quality, is to
1) Do more up-front work, asking more questions of potential clients to make sure I’m not missing requirements and re-doing work.
2) I’ve raised prices two or three times incrementally this year. This brings down the number of items to produce, allowing me more time to concentrate on work I’m producing.
3) Better tracking mentioned above.
4) Ensuring I have the best equipment and studio setup I can afford at all times.
— For instance, over the last three years, I’ve upgraded studio video cams and lighting four times.

A story on that: I wear glasses and eliminating glare is nearly impossible, but mitigating that has been the goal. So TONs of “youtube university” and better, and better lighting with more controls and better cameras has eliminated as much as I can eliminate.

As far as advice; Stay on top of your input as much as your output. Make sure your processes to land the work and bring it in eliminate as many problems on the delivery side as is possible. In the video/film industry, there is a famous line about, “We’ll do that in post(production)” Try to eliminate that!

Then when you’re satisfied, go check it all again!

Grant, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve been on stage since the age of five when I sang my first solo. In 1999, I went into corporate training & development and keynote speaking, one year delivering nearly 200 dates. It about killed me!!

That lead to work as a business turn-around specialist- where my business advising kind of started. I attended business acceleration intensives where 200-300 entrepreneurs met to learn business. I went there with a new software development idea that later failed (investors got nervous), but attended 9 times. After three trips, I was put on staff and helped literally hundreds of entrepreneurs start, improve and grow businesses.

I had a stint as a morning drive DJ and that led to work as a voice artist (I also have sung professionally). Then a few years ago after turning around a failing Chamber of Commerce, I decided to go full time into Freelancing. It started with voice acting, but while I always advise new business owners to have a target/goal, also let the marketplace push you around a bit. The marketplace will tell you what they like most about your product/service. LISTEN. Then deliver!

This led to the morph to also including greenscreen work, managing and producing webinars and more. The greenscreen spokesperson stuff led to UGC content. I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life.

I’m most proud of maintaining clients that refer others and constant high quality reviews and comments. Clients that don’t even ask about pricing any more- they just send work and request invoices.

With the exception of business advising, for the rest of my work, I’m in sales. I work to give the buying public the belief that your product service is the best thing they can buy/invest in.

I have a “been there/done that”, kind, yet authoritative voice and presence that is popular in the marketplace.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

I believe one of my greatest attributes in business advising is that two significant business I started with investors failed. Spectacularly. I help people avoid these pitfalls.

In one, I was very young. And I had this idea. I thought I needed $15-20k to get rolling. I found three guys to buy in. They ended up putting in $5k each. There were four of us. I figured 25% each was fair. They agreed.

STUPID.

They were new to investing/starting a business. So we went through $10K of their $15 investment, they got nervous and holding 75% of the business, shut it down. The lesson?

1) They were the wrong investors.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

This and the next question on building clientele are the same to me. And it’s as hard as it is simple.

1) Commit to ONLY doing amazing, stellar work that your clients will come to count on and come to you as their choice.
2) Ask for referrals!
3) Be so good at what you do, what you know and how you can help a client in your slot that they don’t even consider lower cost/price competitors.
4) Be willing to let lower price work go away.
5) Clients return when they see the value you brought to their project.

Contact Info:

• Website: TheWebinarGuy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewebinarguycom/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewebinarguy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantwholmes/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCchHjftS1QwgsO5-V_zvfHg
• Other: 1) Business advising; (GrantHolmes.com) 2) Webinar advising, production and delivery; (TheWebinarGuy.com) 3) Voice Acting; (GrantsVoice.com) 4) UGC (User generated content production; (UGCActor.com)

Image Credits
I own all images.