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

Alright, Julia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

When I was first freelancing, I took on any project I could find, no matter how small. I also worked a few clients who whittled down the original proposal I sent to just one or two tasks I had listed. My business wasn’t really growing, and it wasn’t until a potential client said they would pay me under $100 just to improve their site speed instead of optimizing their whole site that I realized that these tiny projects were why my business wasn’t growing. I was spending more time talking to these clients instead of actually getting the work done. So once the realization hit me, I created set packages and wouldn’t let them be negotiated down to smaller tasks. These packages also benefited my clients because instead of having one small piece of optimization done and maybe seeing a little increase in rankings on Google, they got their entire site optimized and saw a much larger increase in rankings and traffic, which led to more clients for them. Having these larger packages helped me increase my income, and I was able to outsource some of the smaller pieces of the projects to my team, which allowed me to take on more projects and scale my business even further.

Julia, 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?

My travel photography blog is what got me started with freelancing. I learned SEO and social media marketing to reach more people, and getting into the blogging world introduced me to more people who worked for themselves.

After about two years working at my corporate job, I quit to become a freelancer. I was doing quite a mix of different jobs with social media and marketing for small businesses, and I enjoyed content writing the most. I was using the SEO strategies I had learned for my own content, and the businesses started to notice that they were getting more traffic from Google.

After about a year of freelancing, I realized that there was a need for SEO work for small businesses and I really enjoyed the mix of writing, data, and problem-solving, so I made the switch to focusing on SEO. I really didn’t enjoy working on Instagram and Facebook anymore, so I made the switch to Pinterest management since Pinterest is a visual search engine and uses similar strategies to SEO.

Today I work with small businesses around the world to rank higher on Google and Pinterest to reach their ideal clients. I also work as an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at universities here in Philadelphia and enjoy making SEO and Pinterest able to be easily understood for students and business owners.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

“Company Of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business” by Paul Jarvis has been one of the most influential books I’ve read. I enjoy working for and by myself, so I’ve never been interested in turning my small business into a large agency. I would prefer to do the client work rather than needing to train and manage a large team. “Company of One” was helpful in showing how companies can scale and still stay small, and it was validating to see that I don’t need a large business to be successful.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Since SEO is my specialty, I’ve had a lot of clients find me through Google. And each year as I work with more clients and connect with more people, referrals have become a larger source of getting new clients, too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://juliareneeconsulting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliareneeconsulting/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-bocchese/

Image Credits
Kristen Gregor from Petal and Glass Photography