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Making Money Sexy
30:50 with Danielle EvansDanielle Evans talks about some of her experiences as a Food Typograher and what it means to live within your means.
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[SOUND] So sometimes in the long long road to
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freelancing there are the inevitable face plants and a
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lot of those are financially related, now often times
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when your looking at business and starting your own.
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There's that daunting figure that like 80% of businesses fail within the first year.
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With the idea of money being sexy, how do you make money sexy?
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By still making it, by making it and then making more
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and not only making it but holding on to some of it.
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So I'm hoping to explore today some ideas of maybe how we can do that.
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A lot of them are practical.
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And a lot of them I'm hoping can be
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translatable to you as well so you can be awesome.
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Anyway, so I have to give a little bit of a disclaimer
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just because all of this information is based on my personal experience.
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I understand that a lot of people might not feel the same
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way that I do about certain elements of how I run my business.
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So just throwing it out there.
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Any numbers I might speak about or throw out,
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you can be happy to debate them with me afterwards.
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Please keep the hating to a considerably pleasant level if possible.
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But anyway, let's jump headlong into controversy, shall we?
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The first thing I would like to talk about is living realistically.
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Essentially.
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Part of living this lifestyle are knowing what your
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limitations are and realizing that sometimes, it's gonna be
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a lot easier to cut back on certain activities
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or to cut back on having the coolest car.
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Sometimes you have to junk around on a computer from 2006,
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which I just did until most recently and then I felt
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like, when I got my 27 inch iMac which I'm so
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thankful for, I feel like I'm going to fall into the internet.
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I mean you plug your phone in and you're expecting to go take a lunch break
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because that's how long it's gonna take to
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upload your Instagram photos to your hard drive.
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And then it's done in 30 seconds.
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And you're like, oh my gosh what do I do with all this extra time.
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It's like time traveling.
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So, I feel like even while that was a frustrating thing
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for me, the incremental growth that I experienced as a business by.
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Starting small and then working into larger,
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better purchases has been a lot more helpful
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for me than trying to, work and just be, living up to other people's standards.
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I feel like it's super important to remember
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that a lot of people will flaunt the
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things that they have and then, of course, not talk about the things that they don't.
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So, when you're starting your business, expect to,
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perhaps, be living on some macaroni and cheese.
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Which is awesome for a long time.
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I feel like creative people never really lose the taste of macaroni and cheese.
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Or peanut butter and jelly.
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It's like ingrained in our DNA from years and years
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and years of constant eating out of jars and such.
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But I feel like, as part of living realistically.
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It's okay to remind yourself that you're not always gonna have the fanciest thing
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but that doesn't mean that you have to live like, out of a cardboard box.
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It's entirely possible to do beautiful new things,
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to have great experiences, and to own some stuff.
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But you have to do it in a way that kind of scales back somewhere else.
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For example, I don't technically own a car right now.
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I will at some point need to, but I don't technically own one right now.
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Am I able to go travel and do lots of cool things on the weekends?
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Heck yeah, I am.
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And that's awesome.
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Who doesn't love that.
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I have amazing shoes that I've purchased.
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And I wept over it because they were so
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expensive I didn't think I deserved to buy them.
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But in reality, it looks like my purse has been run over
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by a car a few times, because it actually has, true story.
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So, it's okay to scale up over time, and it's
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okay to indulge yourself, and it's okay that as a professional,
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and as someone who is, like, not only a person
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but a business, it's okay to treat yourself every so often.
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[LAUGH] It's not a problem.
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And in fact, part of living realistically for me, was also using
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materials when starting this new aspect of my business doing food type.
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I started it with found things, with things I actually owned.
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Oh, that's weird that's not a slide.
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There it is!
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Ha!
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I started with things that I owned in my house.
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With stuff that.
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I had available and I could get on the cheap
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and because I wanted to explore and because I wanted
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to do new things, and because at the time I
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was very, very broke, it was the obvious thing to do.
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Now a little bit of background on my work.
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Essentially, I started doing food type as an escape from what was my current life.
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Which was trying desperately, desperately hard to come up
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with new ideas and make my work multi experiential.
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I've found that my work was lacking a lot
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of substance and it was lacking a lot of interest.
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Because I was only working on the computer.
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And that's not to say that computer work isn't interesting.
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But for me, I felt like my work was flat.
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Literally.
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So in looking at these things I thought well, lots of other
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people who are doing very successful
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work online are using additional sensory experiences.
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They're using weight.
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Like FPO had an amazing festive show a couple of years ago where the person
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who won had a, a bar in the book of rules for this giant corporation.
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So you literally felt the gravitas.
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Of what they were trying to tell you and
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the ethics that they were sending out to different clients.
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So, I think that's, that's such a fantastic thing because it,
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it brings a different sensory experience and that's not just visual.
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Because a lot of what we do in theory is visual, but there are
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a lot of practical applications that still need to be made at the same time.
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You'll see the same thing here.
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This was a very smelly application, albeit fantastic to do.
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And as I started to get more confident in what I was doing,
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I was able to experiment, and to bring in more obvious forms of type.
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This is based off of a [UNKNOWN] calligraphy style
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that's used a lot in Arabic and Islamic type.
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Styles and synagogues sorry mosques, so I was trying to refine my work
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and make it more interesting while still using things that I had readily
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available and as my business was growing I got to bump it up
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to shaving cream wow, that's such an
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investment because it's really hard to use.
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I went through like 6 cans so that took forever.
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But at the same time it was such a rich and rewarding experience of
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course I don't own any of those props because its part of living realistically.
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I realized I had to source it from a lot of different people.
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I worked with local barber shops.
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I've worked with local bakeries.
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I've worked with all sorts of different people trying to get.
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Crafts and things that I don't currently own.
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I'm trying to pick up extra croppings from different people.
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I go to thrift stores all the time and find just that
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cute little spoon that you're like what is that gonna be used for?
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Well, I'm gonna use it.
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So, I think it's important that at any point, if you can barter, steal or gather.
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Respectfully.
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To increase your business you should absolutely
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and totally do it and it's very manageable.
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It's so easy.
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So part of living realistically essentially, is
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knowing what your limits are, knowing how
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to circumnavigate your circumstances and also realizing
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that everybody around you has these similar circumstances.
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Nobody is just born with a silver spoon
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and then amounts to greatness because within even
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that kind of lifestyle is an expectancy and
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an expectancy of a consistent life lifestyle I guess.
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Now as part of this in saying that we all deal with these things.
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One very controversial thing to talk about is debt.
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I firmly believe that when starting your own freelance gig, debt isn't necessary.
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I think you can honestly avoid it at
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all costs, if you're doing incremental growth properly.
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Again, for example, upgrading your equipment, it's
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not necessary to do that right away.
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I know of a couple friends who wanted to start a business.
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<< They became a very successful silk screening studio out of upper Ohio.
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The problem the faced initially was how are we going to
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start our business, we'll get a giant loan, a bunch of laptops.
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We'll get very nice laptops and giant like computers, and one of the guys was
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very insistent that they keep there stuff
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from school that was in perfect working order.
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And in fact, that was the right thing for them to do.
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And they were able to grow really, really well.
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Really fast.
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So, I think that for, for us and for me, I've
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realized that debt as a, as a freelancer is super crippling.
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There is nothing worse than having to make, like, an $800 payment a month
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and then have to choose whether or not, you're gonna like skip on your rent.
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Or you're gonna eat.
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That sucks.
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So, most of us already have mountainous debt that we've amassed from
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going to school, where we learned to be creative and follow our dreams.
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So, it would make sense that if we're gonna continue to follow our dreams,
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that we continue to chop down the amount of debt that currently presides over us.
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Because, when you don't have a lot of debt, it enables you
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to take on jobs that you really, really love and it allows
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you to say eh, no thanks, bye to jobs that don't sound
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as appealing or you know from the get go are not gonna work.
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It gives you a freedom to press past
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what you're currently doing and to explore new things.
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Like for me obviously, food is a very easy and readily available thing but I've also
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been working in for example piano parts as of late on a project for a pianist
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based out of Toronto and with him I had to go source the piano and we
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tell you piano parts even though they are
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rotting and thrown away are not always the cheapest.
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But at the same time, beating up a piano is fun and
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the fact that I have done some cool work and that I
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am trying to eliminate my debt and taking care of myself gave
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me the time to go beat up a piano with a sledgehammer.
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Who doesn't love that, that's so cool.
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I want to do that every day, but it's really hard so maybe not.
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But essentially part of ,part of keeping an eyeball on your debt.
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Is also and I'm sorry I know that talking about debt feels really uncomfortable
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but the reality is again we all have it and it's not something that
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we need to propel into our business as far as, a as far as a like personal
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debt that's hard enough so amassing further life debt in a business.
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That, that's not very helpful to anybody.
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You don't want to keep accumulating.
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So, part of dealing with debt, is kind of
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knowing where the cheddar goes, before you eat it all.
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I think, Shawn McCabe had a very interesting post
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on his blog recently about, the amazing success he had
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with offering some new classes and just the overwhelming response,
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and him actually knowing where his money went before he.
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Had it all because if you don't where it's going, of course, your imagination's gonna
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run wild and you're gonna spend 15, like over 15% more of what you actually made.
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So like, I've been told in the past that people have an
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imagination that is like 115% higher than what they're actually living at.
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So, you'll constantly amass this feeling of needing more and needing more.
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But if you can have some sort of idea of
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where your money should go, and that could mean budget.
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Or it could mean just percentages through your projects.
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It could give you a much easier understanding of how
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to then grow your business or just to do something fun.
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Also I, I have to do that.
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I'm sorry.
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Cheddar.
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Anyway, essentially, I feel it's very important that when you're looking at.
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at breaking down a job once you have a fat
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stack of money, you have to decide where it all goes.
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For me, a small percentage immediately goes to my agent.
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A small percentage goes to the government.
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A small percentage goes to church.
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And the rest of it is to me.
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And I can determine where, how I'm going to segment that
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which right now the vast chunk of it almost 70 to
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90% of the money that I make goes to paying off
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my student debt, and the rest of it goes to me.
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But the beauty of having this and doing this this
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way is that I've learned that I can take about.
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.05 to a percent of smaller jobs, like under $3,000.
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Well, no, its over $3,000 that I can take a percentage of that.
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And its under $3,000 that I'll take around 15% And use that to treat myself.
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Treat yourself 2014, best of the year.
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It is.
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Cuz then you can look at that thing you've always wanted, and go for it.
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You save up for it, you're a responsible human being, and you make it happen.
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There's nothing more exciting than being the kind of person that
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is empowered in your business to not only grow, but how.
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How to expand that into your lifestyle.
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It's so important to be focused in your money, which is really
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tough because as creatives we don't want to be bothered with the numbers.
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But doing the excessive part, the invoicing, the billing, and again the
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budgeting is how we like elevate the backbone of our own business.
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So, I would encourage everybody to consider that very strongly.
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It's one of the best things you can possibly do for yourself.
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Now, more importantly, I would like to get into some discussion about,
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like, how [UNKNOWN] should look at
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themselves specifically when they're handling money.
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Before you get these fat stacks of cash, you
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have to be able to garner that with your work.
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And one of the hardest parts is really setting yourself
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up for success, to have a wonderful and healthy business.
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I think that more creatives personally, should be
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setting themselves up as a product versus a service.
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In art school, I think a lot of people
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are taught that they should be setting themselves up.
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To kind of be a specialty person or to
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be a tradesman and they they're more like a plumber.
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They come in and they do what they need to do
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and sometimes they have to bend over a table to do that.
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Nobody likes being bent over a table by a bad client especially.
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That's awful and I think that sometimes when people get out of
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school they almost expect themselves to be a like a fine artist.
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They think they're going to make prints they're going to make.
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posters.
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They're going to do whatever it is and
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that's how they're going to substantiate the rest
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of their lives, when in reality, that's not
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how most people substantiate the rest of their lives.
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So, how essentially do we make
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the distinction between product versus service?
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For example, I had a friend recently who was
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invited to participate in a design feature that I had
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of my house, my tiny little like 500 foot shoebox
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and I asked her to put a painting in it.
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And she looked at my work or my, my house and she looked at her work and she
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Photoshopped several pieces up and realized, oh my gosh,
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I've never pictured my work in someone's house before.
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And I thought that was so odd because that was initially the point of her business.
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So essentially, I think that artists should
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distinguish themselves as having some sort of.
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Like the art isn't, is not just the point.
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The art is the expression of your creativity,
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but it should belong to many different vehicles.
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Even with web people.
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Like, having a purpose for your website.
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Even if it's something as simple as the like, is it raining app or how do.
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How does caps lock work on the new iOS seven.
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People need to know information like that as base
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as that is and it can be really entertaining.
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Its sharable.
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Its fun.
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It can it can work for you.
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I think that as well within a product
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its important to have offerings at different levels.
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For a lot of people it's like, oh, I'm just gonna put out posters.
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They'll be like 20 bucks and it'll be amazing, but that's
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not a good way to life substantiate unless you're super popular.
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So, it makes sense that you should offer things at
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different levels and for me, I offer ads to clients.
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So, I do like editorials and advertising at a very high rate for larger companies.
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And then I do some mid-size here and there.
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Usually they're, like, replicate my logo type things.
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And something that I'm working on right now, for the individual designer
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person, that just loves my work, I'm trying to put together prints.
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I think its important to hit all those tiers
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and especially when budgeting out and, and pricing jobs
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for people, its very important if you're not doing
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it already to offer, like, various amount of money.
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Different tiers of service, and to allow people to, to choose from those.
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I know, initially starting out as a designer, I did not know that.
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I just put a number out there and went, kay do you like it?
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And then, of course, when they ran away, I went, God, why did they run away?
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Why do they always leave me?
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And unfortunately, that's the reality is
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that people want the opportunity to choose.
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And if you're not going to meet them at exactly the place where they
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are willing to work with you, with their expectations, then they're gonna run away.
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As part of being a product, you're also considered, like, a master of your craft.
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People are coming to you for expertise.
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For example, if you're going to go buy pillows, for example, from Ikea.
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You're gonna go there, and if you don't have enough money for three pillows.
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Even though you want three pillows, you're only gonna get two.
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And if you still insist that you want three pillows, then they're gonna
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point you to the bargain bin and go get your three pillows and go.
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Because as a product based service, someone
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is not gonna come and haggle with you.
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They're not gonna try to finagle you into.
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Diminishing some of your services and diminishing some of your value.
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In order to get everything that they want.
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So, I think it's important to be empowered.
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In what you think you're offering to someone.
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To be empowered in the prices that you're sharing.
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And to understand that when someone says that they
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can't afford you, you should negotiate and work with them.
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It's important to be extremely flexible.
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And I don't think people realize that
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flexibility doesn't mean, yes, I will, I will
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decrease the amount of money that I'm willing, I'm willing to take on this job.
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It actually means, I need to decrease some of my service.
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And scale everything so that you're happy and I'm happy.
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So, we have this beautiful idea of being someone who's an expert.
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Who is being and noted for the kind of work that they
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love to do versus someone who is just kind of doing whatever.
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They're offering a service which means they could do anything from identities to.
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Promos and collateral and websites and whatever, which
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makes your work feel cheaper, to something that
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is slightly more specialized, but at the same
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time, it has a value because of its specificity.
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Secondarily, I like the idea of accepting all forms of capital.
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I think that a lot of times as well when you get
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out of school you are taught that you should just look at the
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dollars because if you want to make a go at this you
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need to be able to eat and being able to eat is great.
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Everybody loves that but at the same time there are
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more ways to make money than just through monetary capital.
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So in my experience, I've noted that there are three different
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times, you have monetary, you have social, and you have emotional.
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Monetary capital is kind of like that Parks and Recreation scene where Tom
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Haverford is like, here you go guys from Venezuela, here are your candy bars.
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I have been your slave boy all day.
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But then he's like, whoo, money, I got to pick this up.
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He, he puts himself through this long string of embarrassment
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just so he's able to, like, cash out at the end.
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Ans that's how sometimes monetary jobs are.
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And depending on who you're working with, sometimes it's the bigger guys.
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Or sometimes it's just someone in a smaller, a smaller company
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that doesn't know how to let go of their money very well.
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18:49
You can run into these jobs that are just painful to do.
-
18:51
But at the same time, they're gonna pay your bills.
-
18:53
Everybody to some extent has monetary capital driving them
-
18:57
and the idea is as you get more involved in
-
19:00
your business and as you grow to scale that
-
19:02
number back so that it's smaller and smaller and smaller.
-
19:05
If you're really lucky, you have very little of it at all.
-
19:09
It's just good jobs with good money driving you.
-
19:12
Secondarily, a social capital is, is huge.
-
19:15
For example, this job that I did at Target, my very first
-
19:19
food type, like large company job, with the notable Alan Peters down here.
-
19:24
He and I were trying to reach an agreement with
-
19:27
what we wanted to work on as far as budget.
-
19:30
They had a certain amount of money available, and I wanted a little bit more.
-
19:34
But he came back to me with this beautiful concept of a video where they flew me out.
-
19:38
They, like, interviewed me.
-
19:40
They made me look so good and that's amazing because I was
-
19:43
so sick for the parts where they were actually talking to me.
-
19:45
I was gonna puke the whole time, and they made me look beautiful.
-
19:48
I could never have achieved that level of photoshopping.
-
19:51
I could never have achieved that level of
-
19:55
social reach that they had by sharing that.
-
19:58
And that video has carried over, and over, and over again certain parts of my career.
-
20:02
And I'm so thankful to that.
-
20:03
But I encourage you to tread carefully on the idea of social capital.
-
20:08
If someone does not have the background, like Target,
-
20:11
to back up their claim that this will be socially.
-
20:14
Beneficial to you, very strongly consider not doing it.
-
20:18
[LAUGH] It's very easy for someone to go, Oh man
-
20:21
that looks so good in your portfolio, oh it'll get around
-
20:23
to everybody in town and everybody who does like plumbing will
-
20:26
just, they'll know that you're the person who did my logo.
-
20:28
You're like great I, I wanna do a thousand
-
20:31
plumbing logos, yes, you're right, thank you so much.
-
20:35
You have to be so careful.
-
20:37
So, just know that while social things are
-
20:39
amazing and beneficial and they make people smile and
-
20:41
they're authentic and beautiful, that you have to be
-
20:44
very careful with who you work when doing those.
-
20:48
Secondarily, or tertiarily, pardon me.
-
20:50
Is emotional capital.
-
20:52
Emotional capital is the kind of job that makes you just feel good in your soul.
-
20:57
It gets viscerally into you, and it just makes you feel alive.
-
21:01
But of course, it's no money.
-
21:02
[LAUGH] It's almost always that way.
-
21:05
But it's such a beautiful and fun thing.
-
21:07
And for me, that was this project here with Portfolio Creative.
-
21:11
They had asked me to do their quarterly calendar.
-
21:13
Their company in Columbus Ohio where I come from.
-
21:16
Columbus Ohio, Columbastwood?
-
21:18
Anyway, but they they had spoken with me and wanted me to
-
21:22
do quarterly calendar during the holidays and I thought that's super convenient.
-
21:26
Of course I'd love to do that that would be amazing.
-
21:29
So I sign up.
-
21:31
And I realize I have to buy all the supplies myself.
-
21:33
And I have to shoot it all myself.
-
21:34
And I have to retouch it all myself.
-
21:36
And I have to compile everything to make this calendar all by myself.
-
21:39
So, bad on me for not getting my expectations better.
-
21:42
But this project was so much fun.
-
21:45
I got to play with mashed potatoes, which, by the way, you
-
21:47
should never make mashed potatoes out of instant mashed potatoes with almond milk.
-
21:51
That is the most disgusting smell in the entire world.
-
21:53
I was not remotely thankful for that at all.
-
21:55
And that was super ironic because it was November.
-
21:59
But, this piece, I then, because it was still free.
-
22:03
We worked out a deal where I was going to be
-
22:04
able to like do some sort of iPhone wallpapers and desktops.
-
22:09
And this is my by far, one of my most passed around images that I've done.
-
22:12
I was shocked.
-
22:13
Even people from other countries, all about this.
-
22:16
they don't celebrate Thanksgiving.
-
22:17
What?
-
22:18
That doesn't make any sense.
-
22:19
[SOUND] But it was such a great project.
-
22:21
And it was a great way to learn them and to, like, experience
-
22:25
the beauty of doing something almost out of the goodness of your heart.
-
22:29
And then seeing the impact that it has.
-
22:31
I would also caution you as well if you are working in
-
22:33
this form of capital too much it's going to affect your business.
-
22:37
So, realize that if you are doing a lot of favors for people, that
-
22:40
likely, you need to step it up on the monetary end to compensate for that.
-
22:44
I'm usually feeling really warm and fuzzy after I get a nice big job done.
-
22:48
And so, I will take on several of these because I want to give back to people.
-
22:52
But I found that if I'm not careful about that,
-
22:55
I'll end up working for free, or very close to
-
22:58
free, because the money gets eaten up right away if
-
23:00
a logo is like 200 bucks, that's not going anywhere.
-
23:03
I then start to feel resentment and you never ever wanna
-
23:06
be in a position where you feel resentment against your clients.
-
23:08
Your clients are your mainstays and
-
23:10
they're your partners and they're your friends.
-
23:12
So be very careful as well with this one, but know that when
-
23:15
you do take these on they are going to make you excessively happy.
-
23:19
Now, I want to get back just briefly to the idea
-
23:22
of accepting all forms of capital because I feel like it's
-
23:26
important to talk about numbers, and I am not going to
-
23:28
be super super specific with them because they vary greatly and.
-
23:33
It just depends on where you live.
-
23:34
It depends on if you've got usage fees.
-
23:36
It depends on if it's an all-day shoot.
-
23:38
Whatever, whatever your medium is that you're working in, but I will
-
23:42
say that it's entirely necessary to make at least $100 a day.
-
23:46
That is base line starting, okay?
-
23:49
So new designers, if you are making $100 a day.
-
23:53
You can probably feed yourself.
-
23:54
That's really great.
-
23:56
ideally, most jobs start out between $1 and $3,000,
-
23:59
depending on what the circumstances are and that's fairly safe
-
24:02
for, small web design, that's fairly safe for logos,
-
24:07
and that's fairly safe for lettering, letterheads, what I do.
-
24:11
Day rates for photographers are somewhere between like.
-
24:13
1,000 to 1,200 and again this depends where where you and where you live in
-
24:19
the country and how much else your expecting
-
24:22
to do with your project but it's super
-
24:23
important to note that if you feel like
-
24:26
your getting to a place where your uncomfortable
-
24:29
with how much money your investing or how much your giving to someone for a price.
-
24:34
Know, that if you can break it down by day and kind of look at almost a day rate
-
24:38
idea instead of an hourly idea, it should give you
-
24:41
a better understanding of whether or not it's actually fair.
-
24:44
Which to my next point is, it's super
-
24:46
important to make emotional decisions when you're pricing things.
-
24:49
And to that I want to clarify, emotional decisions
-
24:53
do not mean like, oh, my God, whatever you say.
-
24:54
That sounds amazing.
-
24:56
Fifty question marks and explanation points.
-
24:59
That's not it at all.
-
25:00
We've learned recently with science that emotions are shortcuts to
-
25:03
logical paths and data processing that you've accumulated over time.
-
25:07
So, ideally the emotion is supposed to give you
-
25:09
some sort of like a shortcut to overthinking your process.
-
25:13
So, essentially you want to, when you're looking at budgeting, for me
-
25:16
at least, budgeting, pricing when you look at pricing for me at least.
-
25:21
Its important to realize OKAY, this is this is like 2000 dollars.
-
25:26
Do I feel comfortable receiving 2000 dollars for this piece?
-
25:29
Is the client amiable?
-
25:31
Is the process going smoothly from the get go?
-
25:33
Do I think its going to end on time?
-
25:35
How likely is it that we're going to
-
25:37
have snares or something going terribly terribly wrong?
-
25:39
In which case I will decide that I can probably afford to ask more than that.
-
25:43
If I am like these people are amazing and everything
-
25:46
is going swimmingly, this is going to be so wonderful.
-
25:51
I can do lower than that, that's fair.
-
25:53
I think in those ways it is okay to flexible
-
25:56
and it is okay to be emotional there I think that.
-
25:59
A lot of times, when I look at again, how I'm,
-
26:02
how I'm budgeting for an example, I do it somewhat emotionally.
-
26:06
Yes, I know my numbers.
-
26:07
Yes, I know where my stuff is but I think if
-
26:10
I were to have something crazy happen right now, how does
-
26:13
that feel to me and because I can sit down and
-
26:15
go, well, if my computer completely blew up, I would be devastated.
-
26:19
I know to keep around $2-3000.
-
26:21
In a personal savings account but also in like my business savings account.
-
26:25
So technically, I have two.
-
26:27
And whenever something starts to go awry like say, this
-
26:30
part where I had to buy a new computer or I
-
26:31
have to fly somewhere to do a job, I have some
-
26:34
money on me at all times, and I'm not freaking out.
-
26:37
Essentially, people go into debt, again debt, because
-
26:41
they don't prepare themselves for these sort of times.
-
26:44
And I don't know about you but I can usually feel one of these coming on.
-
26:47
I'll be like god I have been on the airplane
-
26:50
in awhile and then I'll get a call for a job.
-
26:52
It's the weirdest, weirdest thing.
-
26:54
And, I'm always so thankful that I have some sort of backup in place.
-
26:57
And it just, it's so odd because money itself is a very emotional thing.
-
27:03
It requires a lot of frustration and anxiety and planning from us
-
27:08
in a lot ways or you could be totally loosey goosey with it.
-
27:10
But that, that drive and the pointedness of
-
27:15
it causes us to very much act irrationally.
-
27:18
I don't think we need to act in such a way that our
-
27:21
emotions cannot, cannot help us to make better decisions if that make sense
-
27:27
and I'm thinking like when I think about being emotional I think about the
-
27:33
amount of effort that I give to god sorry I lost my thought.
-
27:37
[Laugh] Sorry,
-
27:41
I think about how important it is to be processing
-
27:45
though my money with determination, but also at the same
-
27:49
time giving some sharing with other people, allowing myself to
-
27:53
treat myself a little bit, allowing myself to enjoy my life.
-
27:58
Because when you're running a business, it's very easy to sit in the dregs
-
28:02
and to work long hours and to not actually go out and experience yourself.
-
28:07
Not go out and experience life with friends.
-
28:09
Not put yourself in a position to be happy and joyous.
-
28:13
And I think that when you're making these kinda decisions with your money.
-
28:16
You should very much err on the side of being
-
28:18
cautious, only because it can benefit you in the long run.
-
28:21
But I think, generally, it helps, too, to be excited
-
28:24
and to share and to spend just a tiny little bit.
-
28:28
So with these things, I would offer you that as creatives it's, it's often.
-
28:35
Us thinking that oh, man if I could just
-
28:37
get into a situation where I can only create.
-
28:40
If I can just get into a situation, where
-
28:42
someone can take care of all these situations for me
-
28:44
If I can just find an agent so I don't
-
28:47
have to look for things anymore, then I'll be set.
-
28:50
In reality, that's not how, having your own freelance business works.
-
28:54
It has nothing to do with that.
-
28:56
And you have to, you have to do paperwork.
-
28:59
You have to think about where your money goes.
-
29:01
You have to be looking for the next job.
-
29:03
And by doing those things, you can
-
29:04
essentially empower yourself to be more thought out.
-
29:08
You can empower yourself to have a longer, like, broader career.
-
29:12
And you can help yourself to.
-
29:15
Think and act more capably with the knowledge that you
-
29:18
have and the success that you have with your finances.
-
29:21
So, I would encourage you to get cracking essentially, to get started
-
29:24
on something new and to decide to do it today if you can.
-
29:27
Here is some wonderful resources.
-
29:29
I love Jessica Heche and Businessology has
-
29:32
wonderful, wonderful things to say about value pricing.
-
29:35
And I feel like, they have covered that so
-
29:37
beautifully that I don't have to within this discussion.
-
29:40
Ethical pricing and, and hand guide, or guidelines handbook.
-
29:43
That one, it's an industry standard, and as I
-
29:46
found out, America is very special in this way.
-
29:49
We are one of the few countries that has standards like this, put together.
-
29:53
So, rejoice in the fact that you have numbers to go by on almost anything.
-
29:59
Particularly for me with lettering those
-
30:01
numbers have expounded even since last year.
-
30:04
It's like two or three pages worth of stuff and it's very accurate.
-
30:08
I would also encourage you to look at Dave Ramsey,
-
30:10
this guy has all sorts of wonderful, brilliant things to say
-
30:13
about budgeting and strategic planning and all sorts of really
-
30:17
great tools for that, and if you have any questions about.
-
30:21
Again, the idea of conic versus service,
-
30:23
or emotional versus like capitals, please email me.
-
30:28
I would absolutely delight in that.
-
30:30
So hopefully, going to be really smug right now, and encourage
-
30:33
you to come find me on any of these wonderful social medias.
-
30:36
And of course, feel free to ask any questions.
-
30:39
I would be happy to take any.
-
30:40
Thank you guys so much.
-
30:42
[SOUND]
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