Trust takes time to build with clients, especially as a freelancer. Early in your career, people hire you as a band-aid; someone to “patch up a hole in the business real quick.” Clients look for someone who seems like they can fix their problem, and who doesn’t cost too much, and they hire them. 

They were both selling their paintings for thousands and thousands of dollars. They both had commissions from wealthy buyers, and were working hard to keep up with demand. Every artist’s dream. So what changed?

#4. Set up a one-day sprint work session. I’ve seen photographers do this. They’ll rent a studio for the day, and then sell 30-minute portrait sessions to their friends, family, and audience.

Saturation is a budgeting software—specifically for video productions. And it is genuinely...incredible.

"...once you start making things, once you take that leap, you have the same status as any other artist."

Little things can add up over the course of a year. Especially if they’re mostly automated. 

“What we know is that if you A-B test a website enough times, it will turn into a porn site."

“Play hard while you play, but do not mistake it for work."

As a child you may have been way into dinosaurs or ballet or firetrucks or mermaids. You are probably not way into those things anymore. You quit them! You found other hobbies and interests that serve you much better now. Except maybe you haven’t touched those hobbies recently, either.

Good news: your mind is a master negotiator. The bad news? It’s only good at negotiating with you. You know what I’m talking about. You know the crafty promises it makes, when it convinces you to stay in bed for “just a few more minutes.”

You want to post consistent social content. But the last time you made a video, it took more than an hour. Posting content every day of the week would take up a whole workday. Obviously that’s not worth it. 

You got ghosted by a client again. Let’s talk about why that might have happened. 

So many people claim to have a dream, but they aren’t sitting at the table. They don’t have a chance to win, even by a stroke of luck or genius or happenstance.

As Steven Pressfield shares in “The War of Art,” there’s always so much resistance to doing creative work. The resistance shows up in cunning, crafty ways to block us from the creativity we so desire.

How did you discover that views were down? Hopefully, by posting. I have a lot of respect for people who continue to put in the work, sharpen their sword, and stay in the game, even when the economy or the algorithm isn’t exactly in an optimal place.

Even after publishing over 700 articles on my website since 2018, writing 465 days in a row, and writing over a quarter of a million words…the resistance was still strong. The imposter syndrome was still there.

If you’ve been on Instagram for a few years, your followers are probably made up of people you know. Friends, family, acquaintances. This creates a strange scenario if you’re thinking about posting consistent content to grow your audience.

I posted more than 100 short-form videos last year. And I’ll post 365 more videos this year. How am I so confident, even though my motivation is dwindling? It’s because I don’t rely on motivation. I rely on a system.

On November 28th, 2023, I had 2400 followers on Instagram. By December 23rd, I had 10,000. By January 12th—20,000. February 5th—30,000. Next week, I’ll likely hit 40,000.

Guess what? I’m bored of it already.

I don’t brush my teeth every day, but once a year I spend all day brushing them to remove all the plaque at once. Do you see how ridiculous this sounds? Yet we apply this strategy to many areas of our lives.