Solved!
How to charge - and get - the freelance fees you need to support the lifestyle you deserve;
Get the true professional respect of your clients and help save our whole industry from itself;
And build a business that fits your life and passions, with the hours and clients that work for you . . .
Even while other creatives are racing their offshore competition to the bottom in a price war that will only leave them broke and burned out - and their talents devalued to brainless-commodity status.
Maybe you think I'm crazy. But I'm not.
We're in yet another recession, and this one's worse than the last three combined.
In the next five minutes, the ad bloggers will publish news of another round of layoffs at a bunch of big agencies and traditional design firms. Many of those jobs aren't coming back. Many of those agencies aren't coming back.
One look at the portfolio sites will show you there's a huge glut of creative talent out there.
18,000 art directors and designers on elance. Thousands more really good ones on The Creative Hotlist. For what - a few hundred posted projects?
Not to mention Flash animators, webheads, combination designer/programmers - the list goes on. And every one of them ready to sacrifice everything, just to get a shot at those few gigs - and for next-to-no-money per hour.
Well, until things started to change for me a couple of years ago, I had trouble bringing in decent business, too.
- Even though I'd been established for 13 years - and in the business for way longer than that.
- Even though I had a couple of blue-chip clients on the roster. You'd have thought they would either keep me busier or be able to open doors for me when they couldn't.
- Even though I'd been painstakingly building my reputation and portfolio - online and offline - the whole time.
- Even though I'd partnered with account people all over the country who claimed they could bring in more big clients than I could handle.
Still, even when things were tough, I knew that independence - or joint ventures with the right people - was the right thing for me.
Then I started doing a few things differently.
In the spring of 2007 I changed the wya I did some things in my business. And that made all the difference.
For one thing, my client list started to grow.
In the past, anytime I started to pay attention to getting new business, my ongoing clients have come out of the woodwork with new projects.
But this time I also started getting calls - lots of them.
Starting in spring 2009, some new clients have had to wait up to six weeks before I could even meet with them - and I still charge premium fees. With 50% down before I even touch their project.
And I NEVER make cold calls.
Friends joke that I'm allergic to the phone. It's hard enough to get me to call people I'm already doing business with, or actual friends.
So there's no way I would dial the numbers of complete strangers - who won't return my call anyway. And then, if they answer, I'm supposed to beg for an appointment, only to have them call and cancel when the big day comes?
Nope. These days, prospective clients call ME.
Who am I, and why am I so special?
Hi. My name is Mary Baum, and I'm NOT special.
I'm not some superstar goddess from a New York agency who hit the freelance market dripping with national and international awards.
I live in St. Louis, Missouri. And in a supposedly image-conscious business I'm no goddess. Take a good look at my picture: I'm visibly overweight and I'm pushing 50 years old.
By the very highest standards -the standards of the international awards shows, like the Cannes Film Festival, the Clios and The One Show, and Communication Arts, my work is . . . decent.
I have a few awards.
I have three.
One Addy and one Arrow, from the local Direct Marketing Association. The Arrow was actually for a piece of design. And a Tulsa Golden Quill, whatever that is.
Now, in the last few years I've made some friends online who are dripping in real awards. Say hi to Harry and Jack, over there in the right-hand column. If you push hard, they'll say my stuff doesn't suck.
(What they really like are my strategies and business models for creatives. When you see those in a minute, you will, too.)
But here's the thing: even if my work isn't breakthrough enough to win a bucket of Clios, it works for the clients. It helps them attract their audiences and grow their businesses. And that's the main thing I've cared about over my whole career - all 30 years of it - and it's the only thing the clients care about. It makes them money.
Of course, you know better than I do that getting real results for clients isn't what most agencies care about - a fact I still find appalling to this day.
Call me naive. Call me stupid, or worse.
But I'm not.
I worked in four ad agencies in the Eighties and got steadily more disillusioned when not one of them put client results anywhere near the top of their priority list.
And I could not shut up about it. (Forgive me, Ron White. I too had the right to remain silent - but not the ability.)
In general, none of them ever had any complaints about he quality of my creative product.
But of those four agencies: One wasn't even a real agency - it was a storefront sweatshop that I left within about fifteen minutes (actually five months). It was my first job out of college - the only opening in town as the recession of 1982-3 was winding down, and I thought I could make it work. Nope.
But I got fired from the other three. Not laid off. Fired. Ultimately, for not playing along, when people's priorities drifted too far from my main goal: moving the sales needle for the clients.
At all three firings, I heard the same things: "Mary, you've got the talent, and you're a hard worker. But you've just got to learn to play ball a little."
Fired? Caught in a layoff?
Sick to death of the sweatshop?
If you were, or you think it's coming, I've been where you are now. More than once.
I had no real idea what I was going to do next or where I was going. But just as I did, you actually have some options.
You could try another agency.
If you live in a big enough market or you're willing to move, you could take a chance on working in another agency. (By which I also mean design firm, interactive firm, or whatever - anywhere that puts words and pictures together to help clients sell stuff.)
One thing we independents hear all the time is not to get too dependent on one client for all your billings.
Well, when you get another full-time job, you're depending on one source - the agency - for all your income. And if something happens to that job, which is just about guaranteed, you're right where you started. Right back here at square one.
Another year older, with another year's worth of restaurant bills on your credit card. Maybe stranded in a new city, hundreds of miles from friends and family, with only Facebook to keep you warm at night.
That was me at 25. Only there was no Facebook back then - no internet at all.
Then there's the FUN of agency life.
A friend of mine used to say:
"They don't pay you to make the ads. That's fun - you do that on your own time. They pay you to put up with the crap you have to put up with in order to get to make the ads."
Like the concept of billable time.
- Have you noticed that the best ideas often happen in a flash?
A 10-second burst of inspiration will burst forth a concept that an agency and a client will milk for years, maybe decades, of print ads and commercials. The cleint will sell millions of dollars' worth of stuff from that idea.
And, thanks to billable time, you'll get credit for less than one billable hour if you're on staff and paid for that one hour, plus the time it takes to lay it out, if you're a contractor.
On the other hand, a team of five people can spend a week in a conference room, brainstorming, and come up with nothing better than some half-baked idea that will end up costing the agency the account in six months.
But that gets billed at everyone's top hourly rate for five days - thousands of dollars' worth of time for very little value for the client (or even anyone's portfolio). - And has anyone yet found a way to fill out a timesheet that won't make somebody mad? Management wants timesheets full or - better - overflowing, to justify staffing levels. But account service sure doesn't want to have to bill any of those costs against their clients' budgets: That could lower gross profit on the jobs (and therefore sales commissions) or, worse, the client might ask them a question about the bill!
- Or, on an interactive budget: The development team budgeted 154 hours for the project and billed 154 hours on the project. So when we've spent 154 hours, we're done - even if the thing doesn't have half the features that were in the contract.
And just what are those agency priorities that are so much more important than client results?
- For creative, it's all about the awards. I like them too, and I love doing the best work I can. But what happened to doing work that sells the product?
- For account service, it's all about the schmooze. Let's put the client on television. And we can get them some free sports tickets! Who needs strategy when they can be starstruck instead?
- For production, it's about padding the budgets. Hey - that photo budget better include the vase I want to give my mother for her birthday. Yes - I realize it's a motorcycle shoot.
- Now, to be fair, production also cares about meeting clients' media deadlines. Those production files have to be at the magazine by midnight or we can't bill for the space. I don't care if the client's approved the artwork - just get it uploaded!
Well, maybe things are better now. But I doubt it.
Maybe it was just me. Maybe I just picked the wrong agencies to work in. But I doubt it.
And agencies are laying off people like they have the sine flu – 35,000 people total, at last count. Talent Zoo has 250 openings for art directors for the whole country; Creative Hot List had 60 in early August.
How's that going to be enough jobs for the thousands of protfolios registered on the Creative Hotlist site alone?
My big dream through school had always been to do agency work. But in the real world, I found one roadblock after another in my way. It became clear that to do the agency-type work I wanted to do, I had to get out of the agencies.
You could go in-house.
Disclosure: I spent four of the best years of my life in that role, in one of the best organizations I've ever been around, with some of the best people I've ever met. It was pure magic - until the morning my boss got escorted off campus, having been caught snorting cocaine on video.
Then the magic was gone.
And I've had the pleasure of supporting some in-house groups that were almost as good.
The good news: no timesheets.
The bad news:
In-house creative is a staff position. It doesn't directly produce revenue. So it's easier to downsize, unless you're the entire department. Then you're safe, unless the company gets bought - and the new owners decide you're redundant.
You must be willing to devote your working life to one company's products. If it's PVC pipe powder today, it will be PVC pipe powder tomorrow and PVC pipe powder for the next five years.
You might have no budget for visuals. Not small or tiny. Literally, none. In my staff job, the one I freely refer to as having been magic, I still created all my visuals from scratch: for a company picnic, I scanned a gingham napkin. That started a whole theme of scanning found objects for other projects. I got very good at Bezier drawing in Illustrator, which was new at the time, and even bought a mid-range 3D modeling package on my own dime and learned to use that.
And be prepared: you might not have budget for much of anything else.
A small company might not budget for tools. A friend of mine once had to produce print pieces on an old PC the secretaries had outgrown. As you know, print pieces produce much bigger files than web work. So you can imagine the wait between mouse clicks and the endless crashes as the poor old machine tried to keep up with a bunch of 50-meg Photoshop files! As you also know, in print, your software has to be current - or your printing bills will be through the roof. When the printers saw the file formats my poor friend had to submit, they just laughed - and marked up the invoices. And then my friend got told that printing was too expensive . . .
You won't automatically get cooperation. Believe it or not, some people in the company won't want to help the company get more publicity or even generate more revenue.
Finally, there's culture. Even if nobody's wearing a tie (or pantyhose), a typical American company is not an agency. I didn't really understand that myself until it was too late:
- People are actually going to care what time you get to the office and how long you're gone for lunch.
- You'll have to ask before you can telecommute, and I don't mean that morning. You might even have to negotiate that as a benefit.
- A lot of people will need to approve every little thing on some projects. On others, they won't - you'll have almost complete freedom to do what you want. And you'll be shocked at which is which - there will be no rhyme or reason.
I had a great time on my in-house gig. But I'd still rather be on the outside, supporting an in-house group, than be on the inside as part of one.
So if you can't go back to an agency or in-house, what else is there?
You could freelance the traditional way.
We talked about that a little upfront.
The portfolio sites are full of great, talented people who are working cheaper than ever.
Of course, some superstars are doing very well, thank you. I have a friend who's continually on retainer with the big agencies in New York and LA. In fact, he has an agent who sees to it that those retainers keep going up.
Even on elance, there are some stars making a nice living.
But that takes a lot of work - and a certain amount of being in the right place at the right time.
It also takes a ton of money, superstar skills - and a true love of working every night and weekend of your life:
- You need to keep entering the award shows.
- You need to develop your web skills - especially Flash - to the point that even if you're a direct-mail designer, you're also going to become a Flash developer.
- You need to spend several hours a day monitoring the web and maintaining your personal brand.
- You need to do the paying projects you've landed, so you can pay the bills and build your business, sometimes on impossibly short deadlines.
- You need to handle the time between getting the projects and getting paid, which can stretch into months with some clients.
- You need to be happy coming to a project at any point - sometimes very late in the game, when you can see that the strategy or some other early decision has a giant problem that may make the whole project miss its objective, and there's nothing you dan do about it. Yet your name will be forever associated with the campaign that didn't sell.
And in the traditional freelance market, you're still primarily going to sell your services to the agencies, those paragons of integrity who have already broken your heart (and mine) so many times and in so many ways, for a set hourly fee and under conditions they control.
Yet as we've seen, the agencies of my experience have never done a particularly good job of meeting clients' business needs. They always had their own priorities.
And now they're dying. As of June 2009, BNET lists almost 33,000 jobs lost in this recession just from the agencies. And there could be more they're missing.
So . . . who's going to serve the clients who still need help?
Ah - there's the opportunity.
I figured out years ago that it was better for me to work directly with clients than to subcontract with agencies.
But as I said earlier, it was a struggle to find the clients I could really help. It was even hard to get in front of them. And almost impossible to know when they were going to be ready to work with someone like me.
Until now.
Starting a couple of years ago - but gathering momentum in the spring of 2008 - I made a few specific changes in how I approach my market.
Some of them are fairly simple.
Some are absolute no-brainers once you think about it, but nobody ever did them in our industry before.
I certainly made mistakes along the way - just as I did for the previous 13 years I was on my own.
But by summer 2008 I realized I had found an actual, working business model for independent creatives.
Take another look at how this model's helped my business:
- Instead of wondering where my next project will come from, right now I have a 2- to 6-week waiting list of new clients.
- When clients do get to the front of the line, they pay my published fees – starting with a 50% deposit up front.
- And later, when progress billings come due, I get paid in minutes - not weeks or months. Certainly not 120 days, as the Fortune 500 are telling their suppliers.
- I used to have real trouble telling friends what I do, in a nutshell. I don't make many ads, so saying I'm in the ad business doesn't really say it. And 'marketing communications' doesn't mean anything to them. Well, now I have a short and sweet little elevator speech that makes sense - and in the right situation I can keep going or cut it short.
- And my 2008 income - a recession year - was almost triple my 2007 income! 2009 is on track with 2008.
I'm obviously not struggling for business now!
And neither will any other creative who can grasp the magnitude of the opportunity.
Over the next couple of years, a lot of clients are going to find themselves without an agency, for one of two reasons:
- Either the agency flat-out died for lack of capital or because too many of its existing clients also died.
- Or the clients realized they needed results the agencies were never really going to deliver - and maybe didn't even know how.
And clients are already figuring out that a lot of the extra personnel at those agencies were just that - extra. All they really need are the folks who actually do the work - you - not the senior managers and not most of the assistants. Just the concepts and the production files.
Plus, the number of possible clients is about to explode. Especially for independents.
Big companies have been laying off their own executives - millions of them. With the car business shrinking as it is now, that trend will only continue. Most of those highly experienced businesspeople won't be going back to Corporate America, and they're not going to find the jobs that pay anything like what they're used to making - or that come with the respect and prestige.
(In fact, I have one friend who took six weeks to realize she couldn't just get up from a meeting to take any phone call that came in. Now that she's not the CEO anymore, she has to respect other people's time, too. It's been a real adjustment!)
So what will they do instead? They'll be starting their own companies - smaller companies, true. But they'll find needs in the market and begin to fill them.
They'll need our services to get started, and they'll need our services to keep people coming to buy from them.
That's a vast, NEW, untapped market for effective marketing services that's coming literally out of thin air.
I firmly believe the next several years are going to be the age of accountability. The Age of Results. For clients and the entrepreneurial creatives who replace the crumpling, dying agency model of the recent past.
That presents a big opportunity for you and me.
Plus, now, after the two years I've put in on my system, we're ready to take advantage of that opportunity and build something that really helps the clients. Something that rewards US, for once - the creatives who do the work - with a lifestyle that celebrates our contributions.
I mean, think about it.
Since we were in school, people have been telling us we have to sacrifice for the privilege of doing our jobs. So we sacrificed our personal lives to work longer hours. And we sacrificed our job security and learned to jump from gig to gig to gig. Then the elance crowd and the offshore folks wanted us to sacrifice our incomes and work for slave wages - and the traditional freelancers, bless their hearts, are still doing it. Frankly, it's killing our profession along with the agencies.
Well, how about you and I sacrifice the idea that we have to sacrifice anything?
Here. Try this on for size:
What if the only way to save our profession is to let it make us rich?
Or at least wildly successful?
What would it be like to do the work we love - and never worry about another layoff?
What would it be like to present your work to a client . . . without first having it go through a committee of ten people who probably can't even spell creative . . . let alone know the good stuff from bad . . . or what will work for the client?
Now . . .
What would it be like to live wherever you want in the country, work with only the clients you choose and name your price?
What would it be like to go to the beach, or play tennis or golf, every day if you want? To work from wherever you want - and not have anyone ask you where you were all afternoon? (Or let any of that threaten your income.)
Or, just,
What would it be like to pick up your kids from school on time once in a while - and not have the teachers giving you that look . . . the one that says that if you were a better parent, you could leave the office half an hour earlier and not be such a slave to your stupid computer (or your clients and their deadlines) . . .
Are you ready to hear a little more about my system - and the lifestyle it could bring you?
If so, you don't want to miss a very important teleseminar on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 3 pm Central Time.
In 90 minutes or so, packed with valuable business advice - tailored just for us creatives - you'll hear the celebrated wealth-building coach Kimberly Schneider, The Manifestation Maven, interview me on the exact details of this industry-rocking, lifestyle-saving business model.
You'll hear exactly how to get good clients:
- Real businesses, with the money to afford you and the sophistication to .
- Their full respect as a professional, not a commity vendor.
- And full value - every dime you're entitled to - for the critically important work you do to help their businesses grow.
You'll discover the biggest reason why agencies are failing – but you and I can succeed – often with the very same clients.
And five more. All in the language of designers and creatives
And you'll make some decisions about whether this system is right for you.
(Fact is, it may not be.)
But you won't know until you investigate, will you?
What does it cost you to get on this call?
FREE.
Why FREE?
Because I've been where you are. I know how tough it is.
I didn't like feeling I had to sacrifice to stay in our profession.
So I'm making damn sure nobody is ever going have to sacrifice for our profession again. (At least, not when I have anything to say about it.)
You'll find out how to take control of your professional life.
Earn a good living.
And do the work you love.
Or . . . I'll double every dime you spend to join us! :-)
Seriously, though - we only have space for 37 people on the call, and I would hate to see you miss out on something that could make such a difference in your life.
After all, I can't believe the difference it's made in mine.
Let me tell you one last story.
Three years ago, I was still dependent on one major client for almost all my revenue, and it looked as if that firm was about to lose its major competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Not only that, but a few months had gone by when I was busy with a remodeling project, and I hadn't heard from them much. So I was starting to think they didn't want to work with me anymore.
Now, as much as I like this client and I really think, to this day, that their product is the best thing of its kind, it started to occur to me that perhaps they weren't as great a client as I thought. What if they didn't really value my contribution the way I thought they did? If that were true, it was time to get serious about finding some new business - and soon.
Over the next few months I started to make plans, and decided to hire an account person who could help grow my business into a real communications firm. (Even though I was starting to think the agency model was breaking, for all the reasons we've looked at here.)
Here's the thing. In the past, whenever I've seriously started to market my services, a strange thing has happened: Current clients would immediately get in touch with me and fill up my time. It happened so often I'd joke about it, as if that was the way things were supposed to go!
And sure enough, it hapened again. Almost the minute I started talking to possible account reps and networking with prospects, my client called. They were finally making the major move I'd been pushing for, for more than three years. Suddenly we were rebranding everything, and there was a weekly meeting - but there were also new players involved.
But this time, I was also wiser.
I didn't stop marketing.
I didn't stop networking, as I might have in the past. And the more times I found myself having to stand up in front of 25 people and say what I did, exactly, in words that were understandable to someone who'd never heard the term 'creative director' before, the easier it got.
And then it was like a dam broke.
I started speaking up a little more in those networking meetings. And the folks who were there could connect some of the suggestions I was making to the services I was talking about when I stood up and told them what I did.
Over the next year, I refined what I said in that intro speech about what I did; built a product line; and started talking about those products and services in a very concrete way. I also made some presentations about what I was doing and how it could help businesses grow, just as the economy was tanking.
It didn't take long before the people who saw the presentation started asking me to work with them. And of course I said yes - to three new clients - just after a new principal had come on board at my long-term client. I had finished their rebranding and helped them get ready for an important next phase in their growth, and now it was time to pass the baton to someone with a slightly different skill set.
We parted friends, and I got very busy with my new clients.
Now, here's where it gets a little wild:
About three months into my new model, when I really didn't have time for them, my old client called with an emergency project. And out of habit, I put eveything aside for two weeks to take this emergency project and help my old client out of a jam.
(Why did it feel like I was getting sucked in by an old, bad boyfriend? Because, as it turned out, I had a lesson to learn . . .)
The work was its usual quality, and the client's stakeholder (the ultimate client, really) was thrilled, especially since my replacement had been a little tough for them to work with. It was like old times - including after I sent the invoice.
Oops!
After months of doing business my way, with clients paying what I charged, no questions asked, and paying at least 50% in advance, I'd forgotten how tough this guy was to bill.
I had looked back at a similar project and its invoice to make sure my totals were well within reason. And yet he still scrutinized every line item and objected to quite a few, including and especially the ones I expected the very least trouble on!
It was an eye-opening experience that just reinforced the wisdom of my new direction.
So then and there I recommitted, for you and me, to the path that leads away from depending on just a few clients - and especially from clients who nickel and dime their way through our lives.
I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough of that. And, really, how is that any better than elance?
Especially since, with elance, I don't have to get dressed up and drive my car to his office - let alone show up there on a Saturday morning because he doesn't have time to meet during the week.
So, to recap:
Two years ago I decided it was time to find a new model for creative services.
One year ago I put that model in place.
On my October 20 FREE teleseminar you can hear exactly how it works, and how I'm reaping the benefits today. And how you can put the very same model to work for you - to build the life you want and save our industry from the elancers of the world.
But while this teleseminar is FREE, I only have slots for 37 participants.
So I need your registration NOW, or you'll be locked out forever.
Just click the button to register, and check your email for confirmation details. Then, a few days before the seminar, I'll send you a pdf study guide you can use to follow along with the call and get the very most out of the seminar - even a chance to email me your own questions and get them answered, then and there!
Then, after the seminar, I'll give you a special URL and password where you can download my exact business model to review and use starting the very next morning, if you like, FREE! To be in our business the way we were meant to be - and help our clients the way they need our help the most.
All the best,
P.S. You'll also discover some important business tips you can use - or sell - whether you use the model or not. And some ways to make your first year in business easier than you ever thought possible.
But the main thing is to make sure your years of talent and training start paying off for you instead of just some bosses you hardly see. And, to stop worrying about layoffs and the economy - so you're in control of your future.
Click the button NOW. Seats are strictly limited, and we need time to make sure you've got the chops to make the most of this model.
Good luck on your registration - and I'll see you on October 20!
