My long term history isn’t important. But in the interest of transparency, I’ve laid everything out here for you in very brief terms.

At 18 I moved to Hong Kong to study Martial Arts.

After 2 years in Hong Kong (and no work visa!) I went to University in Southern China at Guangzhou University (广州大学).

The course at GZ Uni was crap so I moved back to the UK to undertake a four year degree in Chinese and International Relations, the third year of which was spent at Beijing University (北京大学).

After graduation, I oversaw logistics purchasing for a Taiwanese shipping line.

I then got into property and worked with some of London’s biggest property development firms and local councils.

And this is where the freelance history begins. After a change in management at the company, I decided it was time to leave.

My biggest complaint with my life at that point was how little travelling I was able to do. I’d spent years as a young man travelling the world, having great new experiences and seeing places some are never fortunate enough to see.

Yet I’d traded it all for a corporate job. I wanted to travel again, but I knew 2 weeks vacation time every year wouldn’t be enough. So I started researching jobs that would allow me to travel. I read countless articles, books and watched the odd documentary. All of which eventually led me to Marianne Cantwell and her site Free-Range-Humans.

I was amazed that Marianne was operating a business from a beach in Bali one week, then writing blog posts from Hong Kong the next. It was the life I wanted, and so I did what any irrational person would do. I handed in my notice and set to working up my own freelance writing business.

I had zero experience and no real idea what I was doing. But that didn’t stop me from purchasing a domain name and starting to reach out to potential clients.

I’ll be honest here and say that for the first 18 months, I saw very little progress. I had to live on a friends sofa for 6 months before I could afford to live in another friend’s spare bedroom. Even then I was earning just enough to get by.

The problem was following the advice of every other writer out there. Some of this advice is great, but what stifled my progress was not realising that the pitch template I was copying was small part of a larger strategy. I didn’t really understand that a prospect needs to be warmed before they’ll hire me. I’d send one email and, if hearing nothing back, abandon the opportunity.

It wasn’t until I started writing for conversion optimisation sites and landing commercial writing work that I started to understand what was required to run a successful business. It’s not about a single email here or there. You’ve got to set up a comprehensive sales funnel, one which attracts potential clients and warms them until they’re ready to hire you.

I can attribute much of my success to what I learned whilst writing for these business focused sites. The lessons I learned through researching their articles helped me grow my income to the six-figure level. It allowed me to clear much of the debt I’d accrued and take to the road. But after a few months in California, a spell in Mexico and a conference job in New York, disaster struck.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d caused a slight scratch on my eye whilst surfing in Mexico. One week later, whilst my conference client was waiting for a full write up of what happened, that scratch developed into a corneal ulcer.

I woke up one morning blind in my left eye. I spent the day in hospital in New York for immediate treatment. I cancelled the next leg of my Americas trip to jump on the first plane back to the UK to spend three weeks in hospital regaining my sight.

(If you want to see pictures of my eye, click here. I'll warn you the pictures are grim!)

I couldn’t work for approximately two months. A two month period which decimated my business. I lost 80% of my client base (all but one client who was on hiatus for an SEO audit), had to move in with my parents as I’d given up my UK base to travel, had zero new leads to fill the gaps and to top it all off, one client was demanding payment from me for breaching contract and causing them to lose money.

When the dust had settled I’d lost nearly £10,000 in medical fees, emergency flights, and paying off a former client to avoid them taking me to court for breach of contract.

To top it off, I had no money coming in to replace everything I’d lost. I’d managed to clear the majority of the debt I’d accrued in setting up the business, but this £10,000 had put a huge dent in my progress.

I was, pretty much, back to square one. But thanks to the strategies I’d learned the hard way first time round, I was able to rebuild my business to a mid five level income within a few months. And, unlike most of the articles you read on freelancing we're not talking about a one-off month of $5k+.

I'm writing this 8 months after the accident, which is around 6 months after getting back into work. I have two retained services fees which total $4500 per month and are guaranteed for at least the next three months.

On top of that, I have two other stable clients bringing in ~$2000 per month and I pick up easy one off consulting or writing jobs to add a little on top.

And that's whilst also focusing a lot of time on this course. Once this is done, I have a £2000 per month client lined up. To show this isn't all bullshit, here's a screenshot of January 2017's earnings from my accounting software (the accident was at the end of June 2016 and I eased back into working around September 2016).

About £6000 of that will be just from freelancing. The rest is from product sales and affiliate links. The expenses are mainly on contracted design services and advertising spends.

And to show that's not a one off. Here's a 30-day snapshot for my earnings from Freelance Writing alone in March 2017.

£5085 paid, £1601 to be paid by the end of the month. That makes total earnings for the last 30 days £6686, or by today's exchange rate, $8340 USD.

I'm not saying this to brag. I know it seems that way but honestly, that is not my goal. I hate talking about how much I earn because I'm of the firm belief happiness is paramount.

You didn't move to freelance to become rich, right? You did it to live the life you want and tackle the work you feel most passionate about.

So why am I focusing on my earnings? Because I understand that money removes many of the stresses of daily life. A decent income allows you to enjoy extra holidays, not have to worry about bills, and purchase the nice little luxuries you want.

And I also understand, regardless of how crass it is, outlining impressive income reports sells.

I'm not promising you will earn the same as me. I'm not promising you'll earn more. I'm not even promising you'll earn anything because I don't know how committed to this you will be.

What I am promising is a full explanation and step by step tutorial of the tactics I've used to grow my freelance writing and consulting business to the above level. Twice.

This is what the course teaches. The tried and true tactics that help grow your influence, authority, and profit.

We’re going to look at everything I’ve done to land work with some great companies and how you can use the same tactics to build your business.