How to Thrive as a Freelance Graphic Designer w/ James Barnard

there's a lot of people who are going to be thinking to themselves like gosh does this specialization thing actually work done everything from digital layout websites to print to a little bit of Animation flash adverts back in the day email newsletters like I can do it all but by focusing on the logo design things and then wrote a couple of landing pages just targeting the keywords freelance logo designer London and within the space of something like 2 months I was number one the more the following increases the more I can start to um charge for this what is the most you've ever been paid for let's set the bar it's like prices start at these days when people go through my website there's a form there that says what is your current budget what are the ranges they can choose from 1,000 to 5,000 5 to 10 and 10,000 plus and obviously everybody selects zero to [Laughter] one James before we go any further for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory do you want the long version or the short version cuz I watched your um I watched your I listen to your podcast with yasine about the LinkedIn guy I've got my LinkedIn headline ready for this episode so check this out logo designer design educator proud freelancer that's my LinkedIn headline I what do you think pretty succinct I saw that yeah yeah yeah so basically I'm a logo designer that kind of teaches everything I know online so I'm 30 9 years old I have two children I live on the Gold Coast of Australia with my wife and young family and but I'm from the UK I immigrated from London um in 2021 right in the middle of a pandemic and had to do two weeks of quarantine when I get here with my daughter who was two at the time which was awful um but I live out here with my tiny little home studio doing freelance graphic design for you know Brands and businesses all over the world um so I'm sort of old enough to have had a bit of experience in our industry but young enough that I'm still up with the cool kids and I can still be on Instagram making you know social media content and just about pass for you know popular well not popular well well you determine that but um yeah I basically at some point in um I think it was 2022 I had my first viral moment on Tik Tok where I shared something online that I was pretty proud of and I had something like 3 million views instantly got something like 70 leads in a single day for my logo design business and was like wow like why have I not been doing this sooner um so these days I split my time between creating content for social media and doing client work and at some point last year I think it was my Revenue split the percentages tipped over from making more money as a content creator than actually from the logo design side of thing things it's close but it ever so slightly tipped into the sort of content creation side of things so um you know you and I both are friends with a guy called Jamie brindle and he talks about how half your time should be spent on marketing your business and the other half of your time should be spent on your client work and I totally see this social media um content creation as marketing for my business it's a way for me to generate leads it's a way for me to get people to my website to book me for for jobs and the simple fact that it actually helps people at the same time is a massive bonus and really fulfilling but I am using this as um you know a lead generator for my business I'm trying to win more clients and this is how I do it now okay um how transparent are you with your business stuff like numbers and things like that I can do percentages with you uh whether we actually get into figures you know ask me the questions and I'll I'll tell you if it's uncomfortable or not to answer you know it's a business Channel so I asked the business questions but it doesn't mean you have to answer anything that you don't feel comfortable with but all right I think it's an important moment in your business life your professional freelancer life that all of a sudden now this thing that started out as a curiosity probably as it is for most people when they start creating content like I don't know let me try it's not going to hurt just try something and you said for the first time in your business life the content part of it is has generated more than 50% of of the revenue in which you kind of take home so first breakdown for us where that Revenue comes from is it sponsored deals is it is it Instagram and Tik Tok actually paying you where is that money coming from it's predominantly sponsorships and paid Partnerships yes so the split looks like this so I actually work this out before this podcast I've got my notes here okay 42% of my business is paid Partnerships 40% is logo design and traditional graphic design clients uh 15% is digital products so selling things like online courses um and you know bits and pieces that way and 3% is public speaking and Affiliates so going to places like Adobe Max doing Summits on um you know around the globe online and and doing talks for those but yeah 42% is paid Partnerships now so that's working with people and clients around the globe promoting their services online in a way that fits in with my content as best as possible um one of the biggest ones obviously is Adobe because I am in their software all day long it's basically the majority of my content is teaching you how to be a better graphic designer hidden software T tips and tricks so things like how to go faster an Adobe Illustrator and then how to be like a better freelancer or how to be a better graphic designer so a little bit around like design principles or you know your daily workflow that kind of thing um so the logo design things is obviously massively in there and I love that because it is keeping me on the ground around it keeps me you know in the trenches doing the client work and actually tackling those daily problems that we face as graphic designers and I I take all those problems bundle them all up and regurgitate them online in my videos uh to help you know the next generation of designers and I must say I'm not just saying this because you're on the show I follow you I watch your videos on Instagram and I find them to be helpful and you are showing me the the nooks and crannies I've been using I don't want to say illustrator longer than you've been alive but I've been using it for a really long time 30 two years plus yeah you would right well you're 39 I mean I'm getting close to using it longer than your life but what I wanted to say is that an old dog like myself is is using illustrator like version one or two and there's constantly new improvements tools that they sneak in there different ways more efficient ways of doing something and I enjoy the way that you present one simple lesson a quick trick and you do it kind of in a funny humorous way there's a style of which that you use that other people use but I really enjoy it's like he's something super technical but the old way is like oh you're going to talk me through every step and I'm going to fall asleep during the thing you're doing cutaways to a reaction like uh frustration some kind of emotion and then you just do it without dialogue most of the time and you just fix it and it's hard to tell a story without dialogue well actually those are the videos that kill because they're kind of language um they don't rely on language so globally they're more popular immediately because you not having to explain I do a lot of content that is that goes into more in-depth stuff and I I talk on camera and I get into that but you're right the videos that tend to go viral are the ones where it is like reaction based problems that I'm facing in graphic design like and like horrible reactions to that problem I'm facing and then fixing it with a simple software trick and usually the simpler the better and if you set that to sort of like um um an absolute Banger of a track and put a bum shell Adobe Illustrator tip in there 16 million views later you're absolutely laughing um but the the the greatest thing is is that yes that the you know the Adobe Illustrator that you started out with doesn't exist anymore it's evolved over time and there's this plethora of graphic designers like my age who learned maybe 15 years ago how to use the software and updates have come along and they might have missed them and it's hard for Adobe to kind of get those updates in in front of people's faces other than on the little wizard that comes up when you open up a new software the simple fact is that I I and discover something new teach it to these graphic designers who've been using the software for a long time and to them it's mindblowing I do get a lot of comments from younger designers like how did you not know that um this this has been out for like three years how did you not know it's like I'm sorry I learned a long time ago and I've evolved that you know the software is evolved around me um luckily I did a bit of research and found out about it and shared about it so half the people in the comments are like how do you not know that the other half like mind blown emojis and how this is incredible so you you know it's it's a bit of a mixed bag look you could share some tip and trick that just dropped or one of these most archaic ones where you have to be like 75 years old to know what that trick is and someone in the audience like yeah I knew that all the time see yeah there's always somebody and that's totally fine okay I'm I I want to get into the business part but before I do I want to make a request of you if you've done this or not I remember going to Max a couple years ago and it was a super nerdy session that was hosted by Engineers from a Adobe it's said hey you know the default type face and the default Point size and lighting you can change that you know and you can have it stick I think you did something similar to this yes I did I actually have a course about this like going faster an Adobe Illustrator by changing those little defaults that you have to revert around all the time so something like when you draw a new shape in Adobe Illustrator it automatically sets it with a one pixel black stroke and a white background which you always have to switch off the stroke change it to the color that you want you can change that default um it's a little bit fiddly annoyingly um so that's where I come in and help you how to you know how to do that um but things like shortcuts keyboard shortcuts defaults and templates workspaces using actions and macros that kind of stuff is um what I kind of pride myself on is going faster in the software and I've always been a designer that is really efficient might not be the best designer but I'm definitely one that works fast and when I was in the sort of agency space as a freelancer in London um I was rolling because I could go so quickly and turn workover so fast I was getting booked left right in the center purely for the fact that you know I could sit down in an agency turn on an illustrator change a couple of things and 10 minutes later I'm busting out client work for them in absolutely no time so you know when I went freelance it really helped that kind of um efficiency and speed in the software so that's what I'm trying to teach now is you know to get people to go faster so they can turn over more things like more logo projects because the the simple factor is that they're going faster in a illustrator they can get more clients through the door so um yeah that's that's really sort of helping people and it's made the content sort of really kind of popular people love it yeah you're um what I would consider a power user one who comes in and changes all the defaults the keyboards the mouse the preferences and it takes a minute to set up on each computer and I'll tell you the story from the other side as one who employs Freelancers I always am kind of Blown Away by the people who bring you a little hard drive they set things up takes them a few minutes sometimes they bring in their own keyboard monitor setup and chair even and that's how you know like this person is ready to work and whatever they do in the time in which you book them it's going to run circles around the other people who are literally just working with one hand the whole time just I consider them like Mouse jockeys you know they just can move the mouse around a lot and like you know you have two hands you're allowed to use your second hand and use keyboard shortcuts and things like that to make your workflow more efficient but I I just want to give that for our audience number one is if you want to be booked consistently as a freelancer which is something you know a lot about come and be prepared be a professional be ready to go and optimize your workflow that most of your processing power your mental processing power is on creativity thinking through the problem looking for new ideas as opposed to fighting the software and if you learn One keyboard shortcut multiplied over how many times you you do that over the course of your professional life you're talking about days weeks have got months off of your life that you get back and I think that's really cool okay now I know that you do a bit of work with Adobe and so do I so Adobe if you're listening to this podcast i' just like to make a request for non-technical people it should just be in the preferences that we can just change everything about illustrators default that we don't have to rely on guys like James to show us the weird back door hack on how to change all these things because it's a little intimidating to go in there and just like man why can't I change this and most software you can change these things yeah true also but if they do do that then I'm out of a job so Adobe please don't do that keep it the way it is so I can keep my content going Adobe Illustrator is massive though it has something like I think there's like more than 20 tools on the toolbar alone and then obviously like hundreds of subsets of menus and preferences and all the things it can do it's a behemoth of a platform just just alone Adobe Illustrator you know is like probably like 75% of my content because I could just talk all day about it it just goes on and on and on but when you think about the the entire Suite of adobe packages and all of the things inside Photoshop and Premier Pro and all the little bits and pieces the content um is endless you can just create content all day long about going faster or tips and tricks inside these software packages so the simple Act of just teaching this brings certainly brought me more followers and um that's obviously then Diversified my income stream so it's a complete win-win okay let's do some of the business stuff but in case you're just joining us today on my podcast I have James Barnard he's based out of the Gold Coast in Australia by the wave the UK and he and his family moved there he describes himself as a logo designer design educator and a proud freelancer yes I'll have to talk to you about the proud part later but let's get back into the business part of it okay what is the average deal size for a sponsor like you have a lot of followers on Instagram you have 500,000 plus and you have I I think where's my stats here almost 200,000 let's see here 250,000 followers on Tik Tok so about half of your your IG followers that's a lot of followers you're an influencer Bonafide certified what kind of deals can someone get as a creative person with a highly specialized Niche you drawing logos with AI Adobe Illustrator um what what can the sponsor deals look like uh so there's like bands of um sponsorship deals and typically upwards of like half a million followers you can start to charge in the five figure range for that kind of thing and obviously like the content is super Niche really really specialized but because of that um I've actually got a really kind of dedicated following and a real Community around sort of what I do and I've I've worked really hard on that making sure that the content is very specific and focused and ideally you know just used to drive leads to my business but it helps the next gener of graphic designers like you do and because that content is so neich and so focused when a brand does reach out to me they can do such targeted um sponsorship posts that you can you can charge a little bit higher so yeah typically it's it's it's recently in into the sort of five figure range which is unbelievable and and so fulfilling as well because I'm I'm actually being paid to create content which I love doing it's such a rewarding job I love this side of the business actually putting these videos together and digesting and dissecting this information and regurgitating it in a way that people can understand and as simply as possible and I think I'm pretty good at that um this kind of funneling the the complex into something that's meaningful and understandable um and then there Partners like Adobe come along and my content just sits in harmony with their offering and when they come out with things like new um software updates or packages or releases I'm the perfect guy to go to for that so yeah Doby has been my um a little cash cow for the last couple of years um I don't know how long that will continue for but um long may it rain it's it's it's brilliant and I love being a part of you know being a partner with those guys they're a great company I I think would be a great company to work for they've got a really um culturally diverse group of people there they're all very friendly they're all really professional And Timely and they pay well and um I absolutely love it so yeah hopefully I'll do more with them in the future yeah one of my goals in life is every company I give money to meaning Services I buy or product that I I pay for I want them to eventually give me my money back to give me the products for free and to to thank me for the experience and it's a wonderful feeling that that the first time you get a a decent sized sponsor check and you're like dang I would have done this for free and now I'm getting paid for it okay so I'm gonna ask you this question it's a weird question what is the most you've ever been paid for in a sponsored post and you don't have to tell us the client or anything I just I'm just curious like where you're what is the biggest score on that sponsored thing because 42% of your income that's a lot y obviously that's not from like one or two um single posts but um yeah it it do I tell you the exact figure something like 12 a half th000 USD but that increases every single time I go up to you know when my following increases so at the minute combined with Tik Tok and Instagram it's upwards of 750,000 followers that's that's getting up there in the sort of the big leagues now and I'm starting to turn away sponsors you know a year ago I would never have done that I would have taken anything uh that you sent my way I'd have done a sponsored post for 500 quid uh or a freebie which I often still do um you know give me hemorrhoid cream yeah well maybe not you know but something that's in line with my content like um it's really cheeky like I really wanted a new office chair um and I couldn't get a a sponsored post with a um a brand that just wouldn't do it it cost them slightly too too much it got to the point where I was like you could just send me one and I'll you know it'll be in the background on all the videos and even then they they wouldn't do it so I had to buy my own office chair which was disappointing um but you know we're getting to that point where I can start to kind of be a bit cheeky there and actually get a few freebies set my way but yeah it's it's great the more the following increases the more I can start to um charge for this and the value sort of goes up with them as well it's about the trouble is it's about um you get to a point where you start getting worried about like views on videos rather than the content that you're actually displaying so if a video posts and it flops that's a bit embarrassing considering that just paid you five figures for um you know a brand deal so there's um there's you know sort of highs and lows between those those Partnerships do do you think there's a problem when you post so much content about creative workflow that the companies like Adobe or like he's talking about AI Adobe Illustrator all day long why would we pay him now he's already doing organically we're getting that reach and exposure anyways uh that's always one of these challenges I hear from people so that's why they genericize everything because if they give the space for free then what would compel a company a brand to give you money to continue to do what you do do you find that to be a conflict what's your take on that I mean they haven't really had an issue with the con I guess I guess it's mainly they can kind of control a little bit of the messaging when they want to put something out into the world so if they if I was going to do it for free that also means that I could slam it if I didn't like it and absolutely rinse on this new software that I didn't agree was you know good or or efficient um I guess if they have um a campaign that they're running and it's about sort of saturation of social media with them you notice when Adobe illustrators oh Adobe launches something new every designer that you follow on social media is suddenly posting at the same time about this this product or feature and that's kind of really impactful for them they can control the flow of um that sort of social content and it comes in like a wave where you kind of then can't miss it and I think that's one of the reasons why it's about timing and messaging for them I I recently met a couple of agents who manage creators and it's kind of interesting what they do for people and they negotiate much better deals they get you the brands that you want to work with and they help you to kind of control the amount of uh I guess they help you to get a level of autonomy so that you're not like oh you want me to change that one thing huh okay I don't want to do that again is that something that you're looking into or consider I've been approached by a few people offering to do that for me the trouble is they take 10% and that's a huge cut when it comes to like um you know if if you're dealing in the sort of hundreds of of pounds or sorry dollars range it's a lot of money to kind of put on the table but by by being a freelancer for all these years I've kind of learned to sell myself uh I've done it for I've been a freelancer for something like eight or nine years now so I'm getting pretty good at selling the value of what I do and and it's exactly the same with the social media side of things I have been able to um command pretty big deals maybe I might have gotten more if I'd had um an agent or someone representing me um but I want to learn this process and I like the fact that I have one-on-one communication with these people and if there's any problems I don't kind of need to go through an intermediary for it um and I take the whole package as well I don't have to put any um no one takes a slice for themselves I can almost certainly guarantee You' get paid a lot more money if somebody else managing it for you I run into the same problem I don't have an agent or a manager but I have a team and often times I like to keep church and state separate so that I'm going to deal with the creative stuff I'm I I want to be considered like good cop and then bad cop my business manager comes in is like you know I'm taking this out we're removing this and you need to pay him this and we're not bending on this because they know if they backd door that conversation to me back Channel it I'm like yeah I'll just do it whatever and so that's why uh what I'm getting paid is way far more than I would if I were negotiating myself and you you know I do have a reputation as being a negotiator so it's just being able to objectively say someone else is managing that it's really out of my hands you got to get them to prove it otherwise I can't move forward and it's nice to be able to have that whether they work for you or they're an independent contractor just putting that out there yeah I'm sure that would help I um I'm in the infancy of this whole thing though this is very very new to me uh it's only the last sort of couple of years or even 18 months really where this has all kind of taken off of me it's been a huge explosion so I am going through um some growing pains with it and definitely even within my freelance business there's there's ways I could improve I'm not the best converter I'm not very good at converting leads into sales and and I need to work on that but the social media side of things has kind of helped that um so yeah I I probably would do better with an agent so maybe that is something that I need to address in the the next year or two yeah okay let's do this because I want to talk about more important things but there's still three more categories I just want to quickly go down maybe we can just give me the number or the number that you're not comfortable with that's fine so I looked up your course it's it's uh what is it called here it's called turbocharger logo design and it's $99 pretty reasonable price and you have a a hit list of who's who like everybody I know on social media has given you a testimony on it's like no I follow them I talk to them I interviewed them I just met them you know it's everybody on there it's pretty impressive what is lifetime sales for your course right now oh I only launched it in um December last year it's my very first well actually it's not my first course yeah it was my first sort of fora into digital products and like I said earlier something that was a that was a chunk of change it was 15% of my income for the year came from that one course so it's not to be sort of sniffed at it was it was really good I think I probably could have done better with the sales um it was around about sort of 45,000 I think I took home from that course which is you know in the grand scheme things that's incredible but it was a lot of work I put my heart and soul into this course I took two months off or so it started out was six weeks of client work which was I plan to I ended up being two to three months I did everything myself I filmed it edited it I set up the website launched kajabi set up that whole system to sort of host the course I did it alongside with skillshare so I did a kind of joint launch with them um marketed it myself all of my own social media did my own email marketing and I don't have much of an email list either so uh it was it was a huge Undertaker and I was so burnt out by the end of the process it's great to have it there under my sort of Arsenal but it was really really full on um so yeah it was it was it was hectic as hell but yeah it was it was a great return on investment it was definitely worth my time and such a steep learning curve I learned loads about doing it so the aim of the game is to try and do more of that this year and kind of diversify that stream a little bit more change that pie chart into a little bit more of sort of digital products um versus the client work maybe take on bigger and better clients but fewer of them and do more digital products and courses sort of going forward but yeah I'm I'm at a huge inflection point right now with my business this social media side of things has really taken off just over the last 18 months and now I can start to maybe use that following to help you generate a little bit more income outside of of the client work yeah it's impressive that you took on all this work by yourself and I want to say congratulations $45,000 is not a small amount that's like a BMW 3 Series I believe with some options so I mean sometimes we get numb with the the numbers you know where it's like it's just that but I'm like well what is it that you can exchange that money for so it's pretty cool plus you're building up a library and over time the library generates more money for you maybe somebody starts off as being a fan using the tools but then they become a client somewhere because they tell their boss their boss tells their boss the next thing you know you're in through the the back door okay logo 40% of your incomes from logo design bespoke custom work would do you have a um minimum size of Engagement so yes and no I have a floor price okay so I I made a massive mistake um a few years back on my website I put my floor price on my website um because I was kind of getting so fed up with people asking me for to do a logo for 50 Quid um the admin alone of trying to sort of bat back those proposals and leads coming through was kind of annoying so I put my floor price of like a few thousand on the um my website and I got no leads in two months people came to the website saw that floor price didn't see the value that I was providing um by you know with my services and just bounced off to a competitor and I did everything to kind of sort of stem the flow of the cash flow problems that I started to face I half the price on the website to see if that would work didn't help at all I put some paid advertising towards my website to try and drive more leads that was an absolute disaster didn't know what I was doing wasted money until eventually I took those prices off my website and got the ball rolling again with the leads coming through to the point where I can sort of massage out um those juicy leads but yeah I I do have like a a minimum sort of level that I will I will personally take on and that will kind of fluctuate depending on whether I I think the client is cool or not um how long a Lee time we have in the project um those kind of things so yeah there's definitely a bit of Lee we there but I do have a kind of a bit of a rule about you know who's who's coming on board yeah so if somebody's listening to this or watching this video later on and they're like I love his work I want to work with him let's set the bar it's like prices start at otherwise please don't call me wasting my time or do you not want to say that so that's my first you I actually want me to answer that question because that's the first I do I do want you to answer the question or you can say pass that's on that one because it would it might stop people from getting in touch so you know sometimes that's a bit of a barrier to people people might feel a bit embarrassed about getting in touch um considering you know that I might want to work with them if the client is cool so I I'll often do jobs that I'll do really cheap just because I really want to do the project things like um badge designs for motorcycle clubs in Texas um designs for motor racing teams you know that kind of thing like that kind of stuff really floats my boat and I would probably do those jobs for like a few hundred quid um if I had the time so you know I don't want people like that to not get in touch and that was really interesting when I did put my prices on my website and no one got in touch VI my website I got a couple of leads through other channels like Reddit um because they hadn't seen the prices and they reached out with can you do a motorcycle badge for our Texas motorcycle club I was like yes please that's a cool job I really want to do this I think I did it for something like 500 quid at the time this is years back now but um you know I never would have got that job had they to my website and I I'd have missed out on that opportunity so I'd like to get the lead first check out the job check out who they are then I'll go back to them with an with an initial offering and just to give them an idea immediately of what the sort of budget range is but these days when people go through my website there's a form there that says what is your current budget range and there's ranges that they can select so I have at least have an idea of what they're looking to spend um so that kind of gauges that first conversation that could help me what are the ranges they can choose from so 0 to $1,000 1,000 to 5,000 5 to 10 and 10,000 plus and obviously everybody selects zero to one because they're chancing are you serious yeah something it's a huge amount I guess by the nature of me being a freelancer and not being an agency and the types of clients I work with I work with small you know smmes the middle of the road people and I like that I like being able to help people that might want to invest just a little bit more in their um in sort of trying to help their business in sort of early stage so I got a lot of startups come to me especially like Tech startups from places like California they'll come with a little bit more money to spend to kind of take this process seriously um I have the occasional like whale will come through $10,000 plus um which is fantastic and they're they're mainly coming to me these days because of the sort of clout of social media um I run a lot of case studies on my social platform and that's kind of a freebie yeah I call it I used to call it t clicks I'm going to stop calling it that it's Tik Tok client logo case studies so anytime you know I finish a project I'll go through how I worked with this client showing the rounds of revisions that we did and how we got to the final product and that's really cool because it it helps designers and shows them the process of logo design and how we got to that final product but it also showcases to a client you know this is how it might work for you and how um it's what it's like to work with me as an actual um service provider so yeah having those case studies is really really sort of powerful and really really helps the the sales as well quick question do you ride a motorcycle nope I don't would you like to work with motorcycle Brands yeah I would I like I think it's something to do with like the style of um the the industry I aesthetic yeah you mean I follow a guy well I'm friends with a guy called Alan Peters now is a wonderful logo designer he's the king of the badge I want to be him I love badge design and lo using logos as sort of like the central emblem to build on a a larger badge and patches and badge design is a a great sort of hobby of mine I love it uh I I think there's uh if memory serves me correct there is a French designer who does a lot of Raceway motorcycle logo self hand painted work it's beautiful it goes I think it goes by the bmd design are you familiar with this person I'll look it up later okay he does excellent work it's like if I had something that had that kind of aesthetic I would just hire him to to draw and paint he and he can paint and we'll talk about your inability to draw and sketch yourself but we'll we'll get there okay so I think we covered it I'm happy with that there's a philosophical difference between you and I and the proud freelancer and I'm like uh what is the difference between a freelancer and an agency and why is it that an agency can do this and a freelancer can't and I I'm not I didn't bring you on the show to debate with you but I'm just curious you're like if I okay as an agency owner previously currently retired I want to put up barriers so that people don't call me and waste my time and I want to make it feel like you you you just can't afford this if you if you're worried about money don't don't call me and here's the fundamental belief I have and I'd love for for you to upine on this is if someone wants to work with you money will not be a problem they will find a way and I've I'm talking about like 20 plus years working in the advertising space we've never lost a deal because of money we lost a deal because it wasn't the right creative for us we didn't come up with the right creative it was uninspired whatever it was or there was a personality conflict it's almost always one of those things that's not because they couldn't afford it because if two parties want to work together they will find a number my my theory is this that that motorcycle brand hears this podcast and looks at your work it's like man we we really want to work with him I don't know would he take $2,500 for 4 grand they would call you and You' float a number and you would work it out and then maybe they were like you know what we can give you like 14 leather jackets and we'll give you the 2500 would you cons and you like yeah I'll do for that come on that's my theory I want to make it difficult for people to to come and and buy from us because I only want to talk to a handful of people I don't want to talk to 50 people and find out it's not a good fit yeah your take on this please well I'm in the infancy of this um success as a freelancer I think and I think that's one of the key things to note here is that this is an early stage for me yes I'm 39 years old old and yes I've been designing for more than 15 15 years um in terms of actually selling my words it was you who put me on to you know how to charge more and I started following you years ago and as a freelancer I started taking things more seriously and charging differently packaging up my offering the main problem with me is that I'm such a control freak uh I've I've controlled the process for so long um that I like being part of almost everything in the business and it's something that I've really had to deal with as a freelancer is relinquishing some control and I recently hired a couple of people and it's the the first time I did that was last year I hired an assistant to help me do things like um roll out logo exports for clients help me with presentations and do brand guidelines documents I have a copywriter now helps me do my newsletter and helps me with it's starting to help me out with um you know the the copy on some of the presentations and the brand guidelines documents that's the plan anyway so yes I would love to be at that point where I'm acting like an agency and putting up barriers and walls so that you know clients can't can't speak to me and eventually maybe I'll even get an assistant to do all my in inbound leads which I'm currently totally controlling and checking out um but at the minute it's just I'm I'm right there I'm at this inflection point where the success has just happened almost overnight for me in the space of the last couple of years my my business my 23 24 Financial year closed 217% higher than the year before I start started teaching on social media it's exploded overnight so it's it's there's been a lot of learning curves with it and a lot that I've had to deal with personally to kind of come to terms with this fact and and how to kind of eek more cash out of this situation that I've got myself into now but it's it's ludicrous like it's really it's it's happened so fast that I'm just sort of you know I've got a few Growing Pains to deal with yeah you're already technically no longer a freelancer because you're allowed to well I I don't think you were ever a freelancer to be honest because you you run your own independent Studio you work on your own time your own machines and theoretically you're not even billing hourly so you're an independent business owner just so happens that previously you were a company of one but now you're you have a writer you have an assistant so it's like a junior designer somebody helping you already so it's now it's not even just you anymore a freelancer technically sells their time I don't think you're selling your time so as as you continue to grow you're you're no long you're a Studio or something just a small Studio but maybe that's that's a personal branding thing that I need to address because I evolved into this from an actual freelance role I was a gun for hire when I left publishing in the UK um something like eight or nine years ago I went into the freelance space and I went into agencies all over London and sat down at a desk and was you know Higher by hour professional and then covid hit and we all started working from home less of the agency work more of the sort of client direct work and that's evolved into this logo design space and at some point after you know watching all of your videos during um the early stage of Co I I I dumped all of the sort of generic graphic design work from my portfolio started focusing only on Logo and visual identity and that has morphed into this new business that I have now and I guess yeah I've just kind of always called myself a freelancer because I do I feel like a freelancer because I'm doing my own thing it's just me in this business well it's not anymore but realistically you know I'm I'm in this office that you see before you all day long by myself and the kind of the the pains that you have as a freelancer and the picks and troughs of business and all that kind of things that go along with running your own offering um that's just the way it's kind of felt so maybe yeah maybe I need to do an overhaul of my personal brand and brand myself as an agency and change the name of the company and who knows no no no it could still be exactly the same you just have to present yourself a little bit differently you and I have a lot in common actually I'm in my own Studio I'm here all by myself me myself and I but I don't consider myself a freelancer I have not considered that since like the first year of being out of school now I I'm I'm just sitting here thinking I'm gonna make a bold prediction James by the end of 20124 you will no longer be displaying proud freelancer you might call it something else end this podcast I'm going to be no longer displaying proud freelancer deleting it from my right it might be like reformed freelancer turned agency Studio owner business extraordinary something like that and I I want to just reinforce this thing because there's a lot of people in our community our audience or our Collective audience yours and mine who are going to be thinking to themselves like gosh does this specialization thing actually work and I believe you just said that so I just want to reinforce it to everybody used to do lots of things you're like you know one day you're like I don't want to do that I just want to be the logo guy I want to be really fast I be really good and I can do amazing things without even knowing how to sketch is that the case have you benefited by specializing unbelievably so yeah it's it's quite insane how much my life changed when I stopped becoming this generic graphic designer in a world saturated with you know graphic design jack of all trades people like I I I have a vast experience in graphic design I've been a graphic designer for 15 years worked in publishing I've done everything from digital layout websites to print a little bit of Animation flash adverts back in the day email newsletters like I can do it all um but by focusing on the logo design things side of things it meant that immediately just from like an SEO perspective it was easier to attract clients that way when people typed in that was one of the things that that immediately changed things for me is that I changed my website removed all the generic graphic design work off my website focused it on visual identity and logos and then wrote a couple of landing pages just targeting the keywords freelance logo designer London and within the space of something like two months I was number one so if you search that term I think I still am now I think if you search that I come up as like at least up the top do right now go ahead um it might be because you know I was based in London when I was doing those searches but I think I tried it in Australia the other day and I was still pretty close to the top so that was crazy you're number one look at that number one right after sponsored and I I I basically did a few changes to the website updated the the headline on my site and got a few leads coming through that way something like seven to eight leads a week which was not to sniff that that was decent for you know the offering at the time that's a lot people would kill for that kind of right unbelievable and that was just from you know a few small changes to the way I was selling myself the way I was displaying myself online the social media side of things when that came along I um the number of leads now through social media is something like 85% through social media and considering that I teach graphic design to an audience of graphic designers the number of clients that I'm getting through from social media or as like my content marketing is beyond ridiculous and I need to work on converting them because I get a lot of leads through and there's still you know some some work to do there to kind of e a bit more out of that in terms of percentages of closing those deals but it's wonderful I've been booked out something like three month solid ever since that first viral Tik Tok video because of the nature of those the volume of those leads that are now coming through from the business which video was that I'm going to reference it was a was was luck it it was pure luck okay I got three logos accepted into this book called the logo lounge and I bragged about it on Tik Tok via a stitch it was really lucky the way it worked out the Stitch was something like um how did it go it was give me an example of a niche Flex that means nothing to the whole world but to you it's a big deal and I just showed that my logo's got into this book and it's a prestigious book and I think you were a former judge on this book actually the logo allowances Bill garders and and one of my logos is on the cover of this book now so I was I was bragging about this book getting into the book and then people were like well show us the logos then I was like okay so then another video came off the back of that and then I got started people started asking me questions in the comments and initially the content was basically me just responding to the questions like how do you do this how do you use the shape Builder tool and W illustrator and then noticed immediately that people were kind of loving this explainer based um value based content so like for the longest time my social media was just me showing off my portfolio like here's a new logo project I did his this his that when I started providing value and teaching on the platform my follower account just exploded to the point where about six months later one of my videos about the pencil tool in Adobe Illustrator the most Niche thing you could possibly imagine um hit 15 million views on Instagram and my Instagram account went from like 8,000 followers to 120,000 followers in two weeks um because there was like a plethora of other sort of design education based content behind it and since then it's just it's just not stopped um I've just kind of kept this this hype train going that that's awesome man and that goes to dispel another idea that people keep thinking if I create tutorials or content to help other people like myself well clients don't want that and you just proven that theory completely wrong because as far as I know you've not created anything that's like hey come hire me this is what I do and talk about your wares and and the significant change that you have which I've observed myself too and I don't think we're breaking new ground here this is not like Anderson Cooper breaking news or Wolf Blitzer on CNN you're basically saying the minute I stop talking about me my portfolio my work and I made it about them you right because you know no one wants to read a headline they they want to read the things that they're interested in as soon as you do that everything changes and I think this is a perfect segue for us to talk about your public speaking and the things that you're going to be doing more of I saw you at Adobe Max recently I was pretty awesome sat in the audience while you working through your talk yeah thanks for that you know that was n working I was there to support you man just to let everybody know you you know Christo you're a hero of mine I followed you for years this was my first big forer into the public speaking world and in my rehearsal Chris walks in and sits in the front row and stares at me during my 15minute talk when there was nobody else in the room so I was absolutely uh bricking it so that was a kind of baptism of fire into my world of uh you know public speaking but you gave me some pointers there and it totally helped for the actual um thing and then and then the next day I got to stand front of the line to to go into your talk and learn even more so that was brilliant yeah the public speaking thing is new for yeah yeah go I love seeing creative creatives take their art and craft find a way to make it meaningful to an audience and watching that Journey it's a beautiful thing to witness and I can say years later man I was there when that guy was just reading his notes and it was like a little stiff and he got through it and now look at him Global Superstar you okay well you have some new ideas that you're going to drop on us what is the new thing that you're interested in talking about well this this whole um platform of teaching my sort of um what I know on social media um has led me to a bit of a discovery and that the more I teach the more I'm actually retaining this information so you know the very nature of my content is explaining what I know on social media and and it got to a point where I was actively starting to look for new ideas and to learn new things because i' basically covered most of the topics that i' that I knew about just being as a graphic designer for a number of years so things like optical illusions within graphic design um how to deal with sort of overshoots that you know the typical things like why why we don't use red and green red green and blue print ink and printers um answering those kind of questions and actually going out there and actively learning led me to the re realization that while I'm teaching this on my own platforms I'm actually remembering this information and I was on an adobe live stream a few months back where I got asked a question live on the stream like what's the difference between like mathematically aligned and optically aligned and I just went off on this like absolute tangent about optical illusions and I was like reeling off well there's the overshoot there's the POG andorf illusion there's the radiation illusion um and the the next comment along was like how do you know all this and I was like because I've taught it and this realization of this sort of see1 do one teach one approach which was sort of synonymous with the medical industry has um been mind-blowing for me so I think it was like during covid I was like watching reruns of ER and um Dr Green is showing Dr Carter how to do this lumbar procedure and he says see1 do one teach one and it was this going to like what like what do you mean see1 do1 teach one this is crazy like this is an actual medical practice that was founded in the late 1800s I've looked this up since it was I think it was a guy called William holstead who was like one of the founders of John's Hopkins University this is a practice that they put into approach was that he would show someone how to do a procedure they would do it immediately afterwards and then straight after that teach it to a junior resident and the act the simple Act of passing that information on something about about it hard wires that information into your brain so there was this study um about something called the Protegé effect and it was it like I think it was like um in 2009 a group of people were given um some material to learn so a group of students were giving the same material to learn with the intention of being sort of tested on it later on they split the group in half half of the group was told at the end of this session you're going to be tested on this material the other half of the group was told you were going to teach this material to another member of this study so you're going to have to present this information in a way that they can understand but in reality at the end of the test they tested everybody the same they just give every Everybody a test and they found out that the people that had been told they were going to have to pass this information on and teach them retained the information better in a more engaging way to them and did better on the tests so the simple Act of actually knowing that you're going to have to pass this information on hardwires it into your brain and there's something called it's called let me try and remember this it's called enhanced encoding so by reorganizing information in a way that we Enis we're going to have to explain it to somebody else our brains make connections between what we already know and the new information which helps us remember it better it's wild like so I found like I I'm actually you know with clients now I can um I'm find that I'm I'm more articulate with clients I'm better on camera with them when I'm when I'm having to rationalize my designs and defend them I can use fancy terms and Technical terms that I've remembered because I've taught it to my audience and it's it's it's so powerful it makes me more confident when I'm speaking to them but also another benefit is is that I um you know by teaching this information I'm blowing up my my own social media and I'm creating value for another audience which builds community and then Fosters the spread of information within the design industry so I just wanted to share that I thought it was awesome I like that and many years ago before I went on this public teach Journey that I'm on today my friend and Mentor at that time Jose cabay said Chris you know what the best way to learn something is I'm like no he's like to teach it and I was like are you being a prick right now like you're saying I don't know how to do something so the best way I can learn how to do something I don't know how to do is to go teach someone and there was some Brilliance in what he said there because when we when we know we have to teach somebody it's like okay what do I got to do I got to do some research I got to read up I got to figure this thing out and I got to remember it in a way that I can explain it to someone simply nontechnical way so that they can retain it so the better expression that I've come to discover later on is one teaches to learn so it's a play on words so one teaches to learn something but there's one teacher but there's two students which is kind of interesting it's not just the person in front of you you're learning by explaining it to them and i' I found the same thing the biggest confidence booster I've ever had in my life was my journey into education back in the early 2000s so when you have to explain something to a room full of people they're going to ask you questions that you didn't think you even knew the answer to in that moment it's like trial by fire you either have the answer or you don't if you don't you say I don't know good question it's going to require a little bit more thinking for me a little research I get back to you and if you know it something really cool happens you discover something about what you knew which most people don't ever have that inner dialogue where they're like what do you know so it's not into someone extracts it from you that you're like oh I knew this that's kind of cool it's a confidence Builder isn't it as well like when you suddenly find that you can answer a question it can be yeah that feels great the the another great thing is as well is that by having to disseminate that information and then kind of regurgitate in a simple way it lends itself to creating content on social media so well because you're H actively having to digest this and explain it in under a minute or at least you used to on Tik Tok having to explain something that's maybe quite complex like gal principles in graphic design I I did that in like a minute and a half and that's like a vast array of things that could you know gal covers it's huge I managed to kind of cover that in about you know a minute and a half video which was which was really challenging but at the same time while doing that I was having to sort of simplify everything down and it helped me sort of retain that information so much better H I think I've counted now you've said regurgitate three times so there'll be a drinking game so each time you guys hear James mention the word regurgitate go and take a shot I I don't prefer that word because it sounds horrible it's vomiting out what it is that you've taken in yes well yeah I think I need to work on my on the way I deliver this um this you know this is a potential future public speaking talk but there's no denying that what the actual Act of teaching is helping me sort of retain that information a little bit better but the personal benefits alone to it are just unbelievable um and I'm I'm having more fun in my work by doing this by by actively learning and and and spreading this wealth is so fulfilling to teaching is fulfilling as hell um I've sort of like I said before I'm delving into the sort of digital product space now and this is slowly starting to become my job and it's it's really rewarding um but now that I am sort of teaching a little bit more I started to worry that I'm a glorified High School teacher with absolutely no qualifications to do this okay so at some point last year I did a um I took the Adobe certified exam and uh became Adobe certified in Adobe Illustrator and that was not an easy exam right it's quite quite involved but I passed it with almost a perfect score and one of the questions on the exam was something that I just recently taught on my social media about subtractive and additive color models like why don't we use red green and blue ink printers I've made a video about that maybe a month prior and it was one of the questions on the exam so I thought that was just a lovely little yeah well you know to you but I'm not embarrassed to say that I I I can't always recall those facts but the act of me having recently taught it was just such a I thought it was a lovely little um you know call back to this uh this sort of teaching thing that I've got going on now no I'm just being a I'm just being a deag in case people are like what the hell is he doing trying to rain on James I'm just messing around just joking around with James most people don't know what that is and luckily you prepared uh unwittingly prepared for a question that came up I know people are certified Adobe instructors they they tell me like they have to read that to prepare because every year you have to take the test again because new things change yeah yeah and there's some like archaic things that they'll ask you it's like do you know this thing and how do you you're oh my gosh so they really make sure they don't just hand that out to any Tom Dick or Harry okay so okay you're preaching to the choir here you know saying you need to be a teacher I'm like H but that's you and me because we're both teachers doing things and we're making a living doing that someone's listening to this or watching this all right you guys are you saying everyone should be a teacher and is everyone gifted at it the answer is no and no because clearly if everyone is gifted you and I would have five followers clearly so the question for you is I'm hearing this as the audience member I want to be a better teacher I want to speak at Max I want to speak on the big stages I want to have half a million followers I want to make thousands of dollars with my sponsored content and get seven leads a week I want all that give me give me give me what can I do top three tips on how I can become a better teacher okay well it depends where you work so I mean I guess these days we're all working from home so this the the The Simple Solution is social media and your own content marketing so getting on camera was one of the things that absolutely helped me in in the early stage and that's harder for some people um I I certainly struggle with when I first started out on social media so one of the top tips I would give out is to write a script for your content on social media um you can just read off a script to a camera and then cut those sections together and it looks like a lovely articulate piece of Pros when in reality you're stuttering and stammering through your um you know you're doing loads of takes in front of the camera doing claps and like cutting the footage together just write a script so that you can succinctly say what you want to say read it back and cut those clips together um that's what I do I you you'll hear from this podcast I'm actually I'd say um and AR all at ter I say words like regurgitate when I don't mean to and you know it means that I actually have can edit that and make it look like I'm I'm kind of uh what's the word more sort of succinct than I actually am in real life so yeah writing a script was huge um and don't be afraid to just share what you think might be basic to an audience because if it's new to you it it will be new to other people I find this all the time time um people come out and I I might get my facts wrong or I might say something that they think is a little bit basic what happens is the audience kind of corrects you so the community that you build let's say I put a tip out I did this recently I I did a w Illustrated tip about how to combat the IR radiation lusion when um white designs on a black background can often look really bloated and to do it you have to shave a little bit off the design to kind of thin it out slightly to stop it look looking fat and you can do this in a number of ways the way I showed was to use the shape Builder tool to kind of cut the edge away after adding a stroke and someone went just use offset path and then the comments started coming in like use offset path why are you not using offset path I'm like what is offset path I've never heard of this and I I learned from my own audience and they taught me something so um I was just really transparent about the fact that I didn't notice I made a follow-up video saying guys I was wrong um look at this the audience showed me how to do it and that transparency went so far the audience they loved the fact that I was owning up to the fact that I didn't know it having you know 15 years in the industry and I just credited the people that gave me that information was like look these guys have told me and I put in the video like screenshots of the comments and look everybody knew this and it's just made for such a lovely little kind of turnaround on things and that really helps build the the community see yeah don't be worried about if you're embarrassed about getting facts wrong or something is a little bit basic or um you know just putting stuff out there that you think people might kind of crap all over um you'll find out pretty quickly what's popular and what's not and just don't be afraid to sort of share that first time you're saying that you can get over your fear of not knowing what to say and stammering your way through using a lot of filler words and rambling on and not being coherent if you just sit down write an outline then create a script from it and then use that as your training wheels that makes a lot of sense there's a danger to that but maybe maybe I can get into that the danger is in real life when you're on stage and doing a Fireside or podcast as you're a horrible Communicator so I think it's good to do that at the beginning but you need to wean yourself off the scripts and be able to speak off the cuff and so start to master public speaking and that I think that's a skill worthwhile in terms of getting good at number two I said it a little differently or I wrote it down differently than the way you said it which is basic as best I had a conversation with one of my my my my staff and her name's Carrie and car's like Chris is is it important for me to tell a story about like where I was and how I learned at the beginning he said you'll be surprised Carrie when you tell those stories we're going to get a ton of people are really interested because there are more people out there that are in that place than there are with people who are like trying to like figure out their life and business where I'm at there's way more of you than there are of me please do that basic is best don't be afraid of those fundamental things that you've learned that you've taken for granted because people will eat that stuff up it's oftentimes those are the videos that pop off on the internet and go viral number three is learning teaching is collaborative don't be afraid of that you'll learn from them they learn from you it's a good exchange if if you're not a total jerk about it because if you're like no I always know the right way then that's going to come back and it's not going to age well right that's like Instant Karma for you so those are the three things I got was there something I missed no I think I think you summed it up pretty perfectly I mean obviously we're doing this is like to further our social media and the active teaching online totally helps but there's other ways you can do it um you don't have to just be using it for your own content marketing I mean I used to work in a in a company where knowledge sharing was really really important so every Monday morning we would meet for half an hour a team of six designers to to share something cool that we found that week and the simple Act of having to sort of come up with um something that we'd learned or something that they might not know and have to present it in a sort of five minute slot that was really powerful it furthered the team as a whole because we all learned from each other and we got ideas from it but at the same time your public speaking getss a little bit better you actually break out of your comfort zone and start speaking to people in a sort of semi-public forum and get used to having those conversations around design which totally will help with you know dealing with clients in the future so yeah you can start doing things like that now within your teams if you're if you're working within a team of graphic designers but yeah if you're on your own it is going to be your your social media and which will then inform your your content marketing and you can write articles about the same thing which then leads to Great R SEO and there's all sorts of benefits it's crazy one thing that you've mentioned but not talked about specifically with this question is I think the thing that makes someone go from being average or okay to being good to Great is they're willing to do the work to research to read to learn themselves so every time there's a question they're not just winging it they're not just giving you their uninformed opinion about stuff you'll go and research your the just adult principles or like why circles need to be a little bit bigger than squares or triangles have to go beyond the cap height line or something like that because the Greeks the Romans the Egyptians they've already figured this out a long time ago where if it's perfect it doesn't work it looks off and so they correct for like how we perceive things so do your research everybody be prepared to speak about the things that you want to speak about and the good news is if you don't know something don't just wing it just say you know what I don't know darn it that's a really good question if somebody here knows the answer please tell me and be wiser for it and that way you all grow together definitely transparency is so crucial on social media and being genuine because you can't sort of maintain um you know a online Persona that kind of isn't you and so if you don't know something be be truthful and just own up to the fact and I do this all the time I found a new tool and illustrator the other day that's been out for 10 years didn't know about it I use it every day um that software and it's quite embarrassing I just end up to the fact and yes there are a lot of people in the comments that said how could you not know that it's right there but then half the comments were like I didn't know this either that's mind-blowing so you have you will help people um no matter what you kind of put out there just you know don't be afraid to um correct if you get it wrong which does happen yeah you're doing this Spirit of teaching and helping other people it's done as an act of generosity so if people want to get all bent out of shape that's really their issue not yours and so as long as you don't take it too seriously you'll be fine all right well I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of that potential talk as you're kind of just beta testing those ideas I think it's a wonderful idea to share with people especially because it's good for your content it's good for SEO it's good for generating leads it's good for yourself your own personal development there isn't really a bad way to do it except for the people who just wing it and there's lots of people out there who do that and those are the ones that make me bristle a little bit like G what are you doing learn a thing or two before you go out there and try to pretend like you're an expert or just say I'm just learning this I don't know what I'm doing if you enjoy like wacky commentary with it's probably the dumbest way to do welcome aboard and then you're forgiven for everything because you just disclose hey this is why I'm doing it right you're self-deprecating and being transparent right up front and they can't kind of shoot you down for that can they yeah okay is there anything else you want to talk about James I'm good I'm good I'm ready to start my day it's 10: a.m. here I'm going to crack up with some Cent work sorry you so late wonderful okay I really enjoyed our conversation James thanks for coming on the show and for people who are interested in more about what you do maybe want to take a course or looking into potentially working with you from a client's side where should they go so my website is bard. so you can find my portfolio there inverted comment portfolio uh with links to all the places that I I hang out on so I'm on Instagram at Barnard Co Tik Tok Barnard Co so yeah you'll be able to find me wonderful thanks so much thanks Chris oh [Music]

Channel: The Futur

Views: 16,361

Keywords: the futur, logo design, graphic design, content creation, graphic design tips, graphic designer advice, business of design, make money graphic design, make money as a graphic designer, make money online as a graphic designer, freelance graphic designer, freelancing graphic design, how to get graphic design clients, freelance designer, graphic designer, graphic design seo, freelance tips, graphic design business, james barnard

Id: HTTW0A3kxxA

Length: 64min 58sec (3898 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024