It takes far more than just design skills to find success as a creative entrepreneur. Your success hinges on your business management: marketing, sales, client relations, people skills, delegation, ambition, vision, and numerous other nuanced skillsets. Perhaps one of the most daunting aspects of finding success is actually selling your…
I have had some nightmare project disasters. Like the time I waived a $70k invoice just to tell a client, “We are done.” Or that one time I refunded a client $54k to get them out of my life. It is easy to use the excuse, “They are just a…
Esmeralda recently committed the fatal error of letting her client go out of scope. Her original project scope was for the design of a brochure. Part way through the project, the client asked for a “super simple” Powerpoint presentation. “It is just a simple little template that we can use…
A few months after I started freelancing full-time, I landed a small tech client in search of a new logo. I was young, dumb, and eager to please, so I pulled out all the stops! Round one: I designed 10, or so, logo options for the client. The client was…
Let’s get one thing straight, you are not a pixel monkey. The sooner you break the habit of pushing pixels around like a well trained chimpanzee and begin offering strategic insights that can move the needle of your client’s business, the better. This is the key to unlocking bigger budgets…
During my 15 year agency run, I rebranded the company four times. If you’re reading this, perhaps you are exploring thoughts of a rebrand, but you’re a bit nervous about a potential downturn in work. Will the clients remember me? Will my SEO plummet? Will my workload decline? Will it…
Though we all hope we will never have to experience it, it’s inevitable that freelancers, designers, agency owners, and other creatives will eventually have a client that will be late on payment or won’t pay for their project at all. That is one of the downsides of the industry, bad…
You landed the pitch meeting! Excitement fills the air! Now, all you have to do is close the deal, easy peasy. Getting the potential client to say “yes” to working with you requires more than just showing them your fancy portfolio and talking about your Photoshop wizardy. It requires getting…
When it comes to the dilemma of aligning with your cheap clients on a more realistic rate for your freelance design services, the problem is just that: alignment. If you have a cheap client you are struggling to get up to your rates, it’s because they don’t understand the value…
I’ve seen some advice that a creative entrepreneur should ALWAYS require first payment to be made PRIOR to starting a project. While I understand the positive intention behind this advice, I don’t agree that it should be a required policy for your business. Here are few things to consider when…
There is a debate in the creative community that you may not be aware of regarding source files. Should you send your source files to clients as part of your original project fee? Or should you charge the client extra when they request that you send them the source files?…
