[SOUND] So sometimes in the long long road to

freelancing there are the inevitable face plants and a

lot of those are financially related, now often times

when your looking at business and starting your own.

There's that daunting figure that like 80% of businesses fail within the first year.

With the idea of money being sexy, how do you make money sexy?

By still making it, by making it and then making more

and not only making it but holding on to some of it.

So I'm hoping to explore today some ideas of maybe how we can do that.

A lot of them are practical.

And a lot of them I'm hoping can be

translatable to you as well so you can be awesome.

Anyway, so I have to give a little bit of a disclaimer

just because all of this information is based on my personal experience.

I understand that a lot of people might not feel the same

way that I do about certain elements of how I run my business.

So just throwing it out there.

Any numbers I might speak about or throw out,

you can be happy to debate them with me afterwards.

Please keep the hating to a considerably pleasant level if possible.

But anyway, let's jump headlong into controversy, shall we?

The first thing I would like to talk about is living realistically.

Essentially.

Part of living this lifestyle are knowing what your

limitations are and realizing that sometimes, it's gonna be

a lot easier to cut back on certain activities

or to cut back on having the coolest car.

Sometimes you have to junk around on a computer from 2006,

which I just did until most recently and then I felt

like, when I got my 27 inch iMac which I'm so

thankful for, I feel like I'm going to fall into the internet.

I mean you plug your phone in and you're expecting to go take a lunch break

because that's how long it's gonna take to

upload your Instagram photos to your hard drive.

And then it's done in 30 seconds.

And you're like, oh my gosh what do I do with all this extra time.

It's like time traveling.

So, I feel like even while that was a frustrating thing

for me, the incremental growth that I experienced as a business by.

Starting small and then working into larger,

better purchases has been a lot more helpful

for me than trying to, work and just be, living up to other people's standards.

I feel like it's super important to remember

that a lot of people will flaunt the

things that they have and then, of course, not talk about the things that they don't.

So, when you're starting your business, expect to,

perhaps, be living on some macaroni and cheese.

Which is awesome for a long time.

I feel like creative people never really lose the taste of macaroni and cheese.

Or peanut butter and jelly.

It's like ingrained in our DNA from years and years

and years of constant eating out of jars and such.

But I feel like, as part of living realistically.

It's okay to remind yourself that you're not always gonna have the fanciest thing

but that doesn't mean that you have to live like, out of a cardboard box.

It's entirely possible to do beautiful new things,

to have great experiences, and to own some stuff.

But you have to do it in a way that kind of scales back somewhere else.

For example, I don't technically own a car right now.

I will at some point need to, but I don't technically own one right now.

Am I able to go travel and do lots of cool things on the weekends?

Heck yeah, I am.

And that's awesome.

Who doesn't love that.

I have amazing shoes that I've purchased.

And I wept over it because they were so

expensive I didn't think I deserved to buy them.

But in reality, it looks like my purse has been run over

by a car a few times, because it actually has, true story.

So, it's okay to scale up over time, and it's

okay to indulge yourself, and it's okay that as a professional,

and as someone who is, like, not only a person

but a business, it's okay to treat yourself every so often.

[LAUGH] It's not a problem.

And in fact, part of living realistically for me, was also using

materials when starting this new aspect of my business doing food type.

I started it with found things, with things I actually owned.

Oh, that's weird that's not a slide.

There it is!

Ha!

I started with things that I owned in my house.

With stuff that.

I had available and I could get on the cheap

and because I wanted to explore and because I wanted

to do new things, and because at the time I

was very, very broke, it was the obvious thing to do.

Now a little bit of background on my work.

Essentially, I started doing food type as an escape from what was my current life.

Which was trying desperately, desperately hard to come up

with new ideas and make my work multi experiential.

I've found that my work was lacking a lot

of substance and it was lacking a lot of interest.

Because I was only working on the computer.

And that's not to say that computer work isn't interesting.

But for me, I felt like my work was flat.

Literally.

So in looking at these things I thought well, lots of other

people who are doing very successful

work online are using additional sensory experiences.

They're using weight.

Like FPO had an amazing festive show a couple of years ago where the person

who won had a, a bar in the book of rules for this giant corporation.

So you literally felt the gravitas.

Of what they were trying to tell you and

the ethics that they were sending out to different clients.

So, I think that's, that's such a fantastic thing because it,

it brings a different sensory experience and that's not just visual.

Because a lot of what we do in theory is visual, but there are

a lot of practical applications that still need to be made at the same time.

You'll see the same thing here.

This was a very smelly application, albeit fantastic to do.

And as I started to get more confident in what I was doing,

I was able to experiment, and to bring in more obvious forms of type.

This is based off of a [UNKNOWN] calligraphy style

that's used a lot in Arabic and Islamic type.

Styles and synagogues sorry mosques, so I was trying to refine my work

and make it more interesting while still using things that I had readily

available and as my business was growing I got to bump it up

to shaving cream wow, that's such an

investment because it's really hard to use.

I went through like 6 cans so that took forever.

But at the same time it was such a rich and rewarding experience of

course I don't own any of those props because its part of living realistically.

I realized I had to source it from a lot of different people.

I worked with local barber shops.

I've worked with local bakeries.

I've worked with all sorts of different people trying to get.

Crafts and things that I don't currently own.

I'm trying to pick up extra croppings from different people.

I go to thrift stores all the time and find just that

cute little spoon that you're like what is that gonna be used for?

Well, I'm gonna use it.

So, I think it's important that at any point, if you can barter, steal or gather.

Respectfully.

To increase your business you should absolutely

and totally do it and it's very manageable.

It's so easy.

So part of living realistically essentially, is

knowing what your limits are, knowing how

to circumnavigate your circumstances and also realizing

that everybody around you has these similar circumstances.

Nobody is just born with a silver spoon

and then amounts to greatness because within even

that kind of lifestyle is an expectancy and

an expectancy of a consistent life lifestyle I guess.

Now as part of this in saying that we all deal with these things.

One very controversial thing to talk about is debt.

I firmly believe that when starting your own freelance gig, debt isn't necessary.

I think you can honestly avoid it at

all costs, if you're doing incremental growth properly.

Again, for example, upgrading your equipment, it's

not necessary to do that right away.

I know of a couple friends who wanted to start a business.

<< They became a very successful silk screening studio out of upper Ohio.

The problem the faced initially was how are we going to

start our business, we'll get a giant loan, a bunch of laptops.

We'll get very nice laptops and giant like computers, and one of the guys was

very insistent that they keep there stuff

from school that was in perfect working order.

And in fact, that was the right thing for them to do.

And they were able to grow really, really well.

Really fast.

So, I think that for, for us and for me, I've

realized that debt as a, as a freelancer is super crippling.

There is nothing worse than having to make, like, an $800 payment a month

and then have to choose whether or not, you're gonna like skip on your rent.

Or you're gonna eat.

That sucks.

So, most of us already have mountainous debt that we've amassed from

going to school, where we learned to be creative and follow our dreams.

So, it would make sense that if we're gonna continue to follow our dreams,

that we continue to chop down the amount of debt that currently presides over us.

Because, when you don't have a lot of debt, it enables you

to take on jobs that you really, really love and it allows

you to say eh, no thanks, bye to jobs that don't sound

as appealing or you know from the get go are not gonna work.

It gives you a freedom to press past

what you're currently doing and to explore new things.

Like for me obviously, food is a very easy and readily available thing but I've also

been working in for example piano parts as of late on a project for a pianist

based out of Toronto and with him I had to go source the piano and we

tell you piano parts even though they are

rotting and thrown away are not always the cheapest.

But at the same time, beating up a piano is fun and

the fact that I have done some cool work and that I

am trying to eliminate my debt and taking care of myself gave

me the time to go beat up a piano with a sledgehammer.

Who doesn't love that, that's so cool.

I want to do that every day, but it's really hard so maybe not.

But essentially part of ,part of keeping an eyeball on your debt.

Is also and I'm sorry I know that talking about debt feels really uncomfortable

but the reality is again we all have it and it's not something that

we need to propel into our business as far as, a as far as a like personal

debt that's hard enough so amassing further life debt in a business.

That, that's not very helpful to anybody.

You don't want to keep accumulating.

So, part of dealing with debt, is kind of

knowing where the cheddar goes, before you eat it all.

I think, Shawn McCabe had a very interesting post

on his blog recently about, the amazing success he had

with offering some new classes and just the overwhelming response,

and him actually knowing where his money went before he.

Had it all because if you don't where it's going, of course, your imagination's gonna

run wild and you're gonna spend 15, like over 15% more of what you actually made.

So like, I've been told in the past that people have an

imagination that is like 115% higher than what they're actually living at.

So, you'll constantly amass this feeling of needing more and needing more.

But if you can have some sort of idea of

where your money should go, and that could mean budget.

Or it could mean just percentages through your projects.

It could give you a much easier understanding of how

to then grow your business or just to do something fun.

Also I, I have to do that.

I'm sorry.

Cheddar.

Anyway, essentially, I feel it's very important that when you're looking at.

at breaking down a job once you have a fat

stack of money, you have to decide where it all goes.

For me, a small percentage immediately goes to my agent.

A small percentage goes to the government.

A small percentage goes to church.

And the rest of it is to me.

And I can determine where, how I'm going to segment that

which right now the vast chunk of it almost 70 to

90% of the money that I make goes to paying off

my student debt, and the rest of it goes to me.

But the beauty of having this and doing this this

way is that I've learned that I can take about.

.05 to a percent of smaller jobs, like under $3,000.

Well, no, its over $3,000 that I can take a percentage of that.

And its under $3,000 that I'll take around 15% And use that to treat myself.

Treat yourself 2014, best of the year.

It is.

Cuz then you can look at that thing you've always wanted, and go for it.

You save up for it, you're a responsible human being, and you make it happen.

There's nothing more exciting than being the kind of person that

is empowered in your business to not only grow, but how.

How to expand that into your lifestyle.

It's so important to be focused in your money, which is really

tough because as creatives we don't want to be bothered with the numbers.

But doing the excessive part, the invoicing, the billing, and again the

budgeting is how we like elevate the backbone of our own business.

So, I would encourage everybody to consider that very strongly.

It's one of the best things you can possibly do for yourself.

Now, more importantly, I would like to get into some discussion about,

like, how [UNKNOWN] should look at

themselves specifically when they're handling money.

Before you get these fat stacks of cash, you

have to be able to garner that with your work.

And one of the hardest parts is really setting yourself

up for success, to have a wonderful and healthy business.

I think that more creatives personally, should be

setting themselves up as a product versus a service.

In art school, I think a lot of people

are taught that they should be setting themselves up.

To kind of be a specialty person or to

be a tradesman and they they're more like a plumber.

They come in and they do what they need to do

and sometimes they have to bend over a table to do that.

Nobody likes being bent over a table by a bad client especially.

That's awful and I think that sometimes when people get out of

school they almost expect themselves to be a like a fine artist.

They think they're going to make prints they're going to make.

posters.

They're going to do whatever it is and

that's how they're going to substantiate the rest

of their lives, when in reality, that's not

how most people substantiate the rest of their lives.

So, how essentially do we make

the distinction between product versus service?

For example, I had a friend recently who was

invited to participate in a design feature that I had

of my house, my tiny little like 500 foot shoebox

and I asked her to put a painting in it.

And she looked at my work or my, my house and she looked at her work and she

Photoshopped several pieces up and realized, oh my gosh,

I've never pictured my work in someone's house before.

And I thought that was so odd because that was initially the point of her business.

So essentially, I think that artists should

distinguish themselves as having some sort of.

Like the art isn't, is not just the point.

The art is the expression of your creativity,

but it should belong to many different vehicles.

Even with web people.

Like, having a purpose for your website.

Even if it's something as simple as the like, is it raining app or how do.

How does caps lock work on the new iOS seven.

People need to know information like that as base

as that is and it can be really entertaining.

Its sharable.

Its fun.

It can it can work for you.

I think that as well within a product

its important to have offerings at different levels.

For a lot of people it's like, oh, I'm just gonna put out posters.

They'll be like 20 bucks and it'll be amazing, but that's

not a good way to life substantiate unless you're super popular.

So, it makes sense that you should offer things at

different levels and for me, I offer ads to clients.

So, I do like editorials and advertising at a very high rate for larger companies.

And then I do some mid-size here and there.

Usually they're, like, replicate my logo type things.

And something that I'm working on right now, for the individual designer

person, that just loves my work, I'm trying to put together prints.

I think its important to hit all those tiers

and especially when budgeting out and, and pricing jobs

for people, its very important if you're not doing

it already to offer, like, various amount of money.

Different tiers of service, and to allow people to, to choose from those.

I know, initially starting out as a designer, I did not know that.

I just put a number out there and went, kay do you like it?

And then, of course, when they ran away, I went, God, why did they run away?

Why do they always leave me?

And unfortunately, that's the reality is

that people want the opportunity to choose.

And if you're not going to meet them at exactly the place where they

are willing to work with you, with their expectations, then they're gonna run away.

As part of being a product, you're also considered, like, a master of your craft.

People are coming to you for expertise.

For example, if you're going to go buy pillows, for example, from Ikea.

You're gonna go there, and if you don't have enough money for three pillows.

Even though you want three pillows, you're only gonna get two.

And if you still insist that you want three pillows, then they're gonna

point you to the bargain bin and go get your three pillows and go.

Because as a product based service, someone

is not gonna come and haggle with you.

They're not gonna try to finagle you into.

Diminishing some of your services and diminishing some of your value.

In order to get everything that they want.

So, I think it's important to be empowered.

In what you think you're offering to someone.

To be empowered in the prices that you're sharing.

And to understand that when someone says that they

can't afford you, you should negotiate and work with them.

It's important to be extremely flexible.

And I don't think people realize that

flexibility doesn't mean, yes, I will, I will

decrease the amount of money that I'm willing, I'm willing to take on this job.

It actually means, I need to decrease some of my service.

And scale everything so that you're happy and I'm happy.

So, we have this beautiful idea of being someone who's an expert.

Who is being and noted for the kind of work that they

love to do versus someone who is just kind of doing whatever.

They're offering a service which means they could do anything from identities to.

Promos and collateral and websites and whatever, which

makes your work feel cheaper, to something that

is slightly more specialized, but at the same

time, it has a value because of its specificity.

Secondarily, I like the idea of accepting all forms of capital.

I think that a lot of times as well when you get

out of school you are taught that you should just look at the

dollars because if you want to make a go at this you

need to be able to eat and being able to eat is great.

Everybody loves that but at the same time there are

more ways to make money than just through monetary capital.

So in my experience, I've noted that there are three different

times, you have monetary, you have social, and you have emotional.

Monetary capital is kind of like that Parks and Recreation scene where Tom

Haverford is like, here you go guys from Venezuela, here are your candy bars.

I have been your slave boy all day.

But then he's like, whoo, money, I got to pick this up.

He, he puts himself through this long string of embarrassment

just so he's able to, like, cash out at the end.

Ans that's how sometimes monetary jobs are.

And depending on who you're working with, sometimes it's the bigger guys.

Or sometimes it's just someone in a smaller, a smaller company

that doesn't know how to let go of their money very well.

You can run into these jobs that are just painful to do.

But at the same time, they're gonna pay your bills.

Everybody to some extent has monetary capital driving them

and the idea is as you get more involved in

your business and as you grow to scale that

number back so that it's smaller and smaller and smaller.

If you're really lucky, you have very little of it at all.

It's just good jobs with good money driving you.

Secondarily, a social capital is, is huge.

For example, this job that I did at Target, my very first

food type, like large company job, with the notable Alan Peters down here.

He and I were trying to reach an agreement with

what we wanted to work on as far as budget.

They had a certain amount of money available, and I wanted a little bit more.

But he came back to me with this beautiful concept of a video where they flew me out.

They, like, interviewed me.

They made me look so good and that's amazing because I was

so sick for the parts where they were actually talking to me.

I was gonna puke the whole time, and they made me look beautiful.

I could never have achieved that level of photoshopping.

I could never have achieved that level of

social reach that they had by sharing that.

And that video has carried over, and over, and over again certain parts of my career.

And I'm so thankful to that.

But I encourage you to tread carefully on the idea of social capital.

If someone does not have the background, like Target,

to back up their claim that this will be socially.

Beneficial to you, very strongly consider not doing it.

[LAUGH] It's very easy for someone to go, Oh man

that looks so good in your portfolio, oh it'll get around

to everybody in town and everybody who does like plumbing will

just, they'll know that you're the person who did my logo.

You're like great I, I wanna do a thousand

plumbing logos, yes, you're right, thank you so much.

You have to be so careful.

So, just know that while social things are

amazing and beneficial and they make people smile and

they're authentic and beautiful, that you have to be

very careful with who you work when doing those.

Secondarily, or tertiarily, pardon me.

Is emotional capital.

Emotional capital is the kind of job that makes you just feel good in your soul.

It gets viscerally into you, and it just makes you feel alive.

But of course, it's no money.

[LAUGH] It's almost always that way.

But it's such a beautiful and fun thing.

And for me, that was this project here with Portfolio Creative.

They had asked me to do their quarterly calendar.

Their company in Columbus Ohio where I come from.

Columbus Ohio, Columbastwood?

Anyway, but they they had spoken with me and wanted me to

do quarterly calendar during the holidays and I thought that's super convenient.

Of course I'd love to do that that would be amazing.

So I sign up.

And I realize I have to buy all the supplies myself.

And I have to shoot it all myself.

And I have to retouch it all myself.

And I have to compile everything to make this calendar all by myself.

So, bad on me for not getting my expectations better.

But this project was so much fun.

I got to play with mashed potatoes, which, by the way, you

should never make mashed potatoes out of instant mashed potatoes with almond milk.

That is the most disgusting smell in the entire world.

I was not remotely thankful for that at all.

And that was super ironic because it was November.

But, this piece, I then, because it was still free.

We worked out a deal where I was going to be

able to like do some sort of iPhone wallpapers and desktops.

And this is my by far, one of my most passed around images that I've done.

I was shocked.

Even people from other countries, all about this.

they don't celebrate Thanksgiving.

What?

That doesn't make any sense.

[SOUND] But it was such a great project.

And it was a great way to learn them and to, like, experience

the beauty of doing something almost out of the goodness of your heart.

And then seeing the impact that it has.

I would also caution you as well if you are working in

this form of capital too much it's going to affect your business.

So, realize that if you are doing a lot of favors for people, that

likely, you need to step it up on the monetary end to compensate for that.

I'm usually feeling really warm and fuzzy after I get a nice big job done.

And so, I will take on several of these because I want to give back to people.

But I found that if I'm not careful about that,

I'll end up working for free, or very close to

free, because the money gets eaten up right away if

a logo is like 200 bucks, that's not going anywhere.

I then start to feel resentment and you never ever wanna

be in a position where you feel resentment against your clients.

Your clients are your mainstays and

they're your partners and they're your friends.

So be very careful as well with this one, but know that when

you do take these on they are going to make you excessively happy.

Now, I want to get back just briefly to the idea

of accepting all forms of capital because I feel like it's

important to talk about numbers, and I am not going to

be super super specific with them because they vary greatly and.

It just depends on where you live.

It depends on if you've got usage fees.

It depends on if it's an all-day shoot.

Whatever, whatever your medium is that you're working in, but I will

say that it's entirely necessary to make at least $100 a day.

That is base line starting, okay?

So new designers, if you are making $100 a day.

You can probably feed yourself.

That's really great.

ideally, most jobs start out between $1 and $3,000,

depending on what the circumstances are and that's fairly safe

for, small web design, that's fairly safe for logos,

and that's fairly safe for lettering, letterheads, what I do.

Day rates for photographers are somewhere between like.

1,000 to 1,200 and again this depends where where you and where you live in

the country and how much else your expecting

to do with your project but it's super

important to note that if you feel like

your getting to a place where your uncomfortable

with how much money your investing or how much your giving to someone for a price.

Know, that if you can break it down by day and kind of look at almost a day rate

idea instead of an hourly idea, it should give you

a better understanding of whether or not it's actually fair.

Which to my next point is, it's super

important to make emotional decisions when you're pricing things.

And to that I want to clarify, emotional decisions

do not mean like, oh, my God, whatever you say.

That sounds amazing.

Fifty question marks and explanation points.

That's not it at all.

We've learned recently with science that emotions are shortcuts to

logical paths and data processing that you've accumulated over time.

So, ideally the emotion is supposed to give you

some sort of like a shortcut to overthinking your process.

So, essentially you want to, when you're looking at budgeting, for me

at least, budgeting, pricing when you look at pricing for me at least.

Its important to realize OKAY, this is this is like 2000 dollars.

Do I feel comfortable receiving 2000 dollars for this piece?

Is the client amiable?

Is the process going smoothly from the get go?

Do I think its going to end on time?

How likely is it that we're going to

have snares or something going terribly terribly wrong?

In which case I will decide that I can probably afford to ask more than that.

If I am like these people are amazing and everything

is going swimmingly, this is going to be so wonderful.

I can do lower than that, that's fair.

I think in those ways it is okay to flexible

and it is okay to be emotional there I think that.

A lot of times, when I look at again, how I'm,

how I'm budgeting for an example, I do it somewhat emotionally.

Yes, I know my numbers.

Yes, I know where my stuff is but I think if

I were to have something crazy happen right now, how does

that feel to me and because I can sit down and

go, well, if my computer completely blew up, I would be devastated.

I know to keep around $2-3000.

In a personal savings account but also in like my business savings account.

So technically, I have two.

And whenever something starts to go awry like say, this

part where I had to buy a new computer or I

have to fly somewhere to do a job, I have some

money on me at all times, and I'm not freaking out.

Essentially, people go into debt, again debt, because

they don't prepare themselves for these sort of times.

And I don't know about you but I can usually feel one of these coming on.

I'll be like god I have been on the airplane

in awhile and then I'll get a call for a job.

It's the weirdest, weirdest thing.

And, I'm always so thankful that I have some sort of backup in place.

And it just, it's so odd because money itself is a very emotional thing.

It requires a lot of frustration and anxiety and planning from us

in a lot ways or you could be totally loosey goosey with it.

But that, that drive and the pointedness of

it causes us to very much act irrationally.

I don't think we need to act in such a way that our

emotions cannot, cannot help us to make better decisions if that make sense

and I'm thinking like when I think about being emotional I think about the

amount of effort that I give to god sorry I lost my thought.

[Laugh] Sorry,

I think about how important it is to be processing

though my money with determination, but also at the same

time giving some sharing with other people, allowing myself to

treat myself a little bit, allowing myself to enjoy my life.

Because when you're running a business, it's very easy to sit in the dregs

and to work long hours and to not actually go out and experience yourself.

Not go out and experience life with friends.

Not put yourself in a position to be happy and joyous.

And I think that when you're making these kinda decisions with your money.

You should very much err on the side of being

cautious, only because it can benefit you in the long run.

But I think, generally, it helps, too, to be excited

and to share and to spend just a tiny little bit.

So with these things, I would offer you that as creatives it's, it's often.

Us thinking that oh, man if I could just

get into a situation where I can only create.

If I can just get into a situation, where

someone can take care of all these situations for me

If I can just find an agent so I don't

have to look for things anymore, then I'll be set.

In reality, that's not how, having your own freelance business works.

It has nothing to do with that.

And you have to, you have to do paperwork.

You have to think about where your money goes.

You have to be looking for the next job.

And by doing those things, you can

essentially empower yourself to be more thought out.

You can empower yourself to have a longer, like, broader career.

And you can help yourself to.

Think and act more capably with the knowledge that you

have and the success that you have with your finances.

So, I would encourage you to get cracking essentially, to get started

on something new and to decide to do it today if you can.

Here is some wonderful resources.

I love Jessica Heche and Businessology has

wonderful, wonderful things to say about value pricing.

And I feel like, they have covered that so

beautifully that I don't have to within this discussion.

Ethical pricing and, and hand guide, or guidelines handbook.

That one, it's an industry standard, and as I

found out, America is very special in this way.

We are one of the few countries that has standards like this, put together.

So, rejoice in the fact that you have numbers to go by on almost anything.

Particularly for me with lettering those

numbers have expounded even since last year.

It's like two or three pages worth of stuff and it's very accurate.

I would also encourage you to look at Dave Ramsey,

this guy has all sorts of wonderful, brilliant things to say

about budgeting and strategic planning and all sorts of really

great tools for that, and if you have any questions about.

Again, the idea of conic versus service,

or emotional versus like capitals, please email me.

I would absolutely delight in that.

So hopefully, going to be really smug right now, and encourage

you to come find me on any of these wonderful social medias.

And of course, feel free to ask any questions.

I would be happy to take any.

Thank you guys so much.

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