We try to focus on everything: making good work, and making a lot of money, and treating our clients well, and finding work-life balance, and having a good brand. When we focus on all of it, we aren’t really swinging that hard at any of it.

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?

To be in business is to take a risk. In a capitalistic society, success is not guaranteed, or even likely. 

#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.

"...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."

I mean it. 

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. 

I’ve produced online courses for half a dozen different solo creators in the past. Full Time Filmmaker blows them out of the water. It has 10x more lessons than the biggest course I ever produced.

If you’re a freelancer or a creative, and you don’t know where to find new clients… I got you. Here’s a list of seven places you can find new clients.

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.

You know the difference you can make for someone’s project in a day, or even just a few hours. Yet we have a hard time believing other creatives could do the same for us. This is walking. This is the left foot and the right foot of commanding larger budgets for your projects: invest in quality, then get more money.

I often encounter photographers, graphic designers, and writers who refuse to post short-form video content. They miss the old days of Instagram, when images were king, and their content performed without them having to try very hard.

When a client trusts you, you can follow your vision to an interesting creative end.

When a client trusts you, they'll happily pay more to work with you, instead of your competition.

When a client trusts you, they'll buy you the time you need to do a good job, and even understand when there are delays.

Photographers and videographers (and all sorts of creative freelancers) spend tons of time tinkering with their portfolios, hoping that big brands will notice. What they don’t realize is that big brands are searching for something beyond just good work.

Wherever the folks in your industry are spending time, you need to spend time there too. I’ll add, it doesn’t matter which end of the industry. Clients and colleagues are equally as important in the freelance game.

There’s a study in which different people were tasked with interpreting an email. Those deemed in “high-power” positions were much worse at understanding the perspective of the email sender than those in “low-power” positions.