About this episode…

LOgo designer james barnard

You might think choosing a niche would make the biggest difference to James’ freelancing career.

But wait until you hear what happened when he decided to start posting design tutorials to TikTok and Instagram.

There’s a LOT going on his this conversation.

Steve and James discuss pricing strategies in attracting the right clients. When to first discuss budget. And how James uses forms and a CRM to help him filter who will be a good fit for his freelance business. 

James also discusses the role of social media in lead generation. How content creation has brought him work and amazing opportunities with the likes of Adobe. AND inspired him to create digital products like courses for his new found audience.

On top of that, he shares his experience of hiring an assistant, not for admin like emails, scheduling and accounts, but for the 'grunt work' of design freelancing, and a copywriter to up his email game.

From a work life balance side of things, James discusses his move from the UK to Australia and how freelancing allows him to be there for his young family.

Getting on camera has made a huge difference to James' freelance business and life. Not just through the connections and opportunities that have come via social media, but through the confidence it's given him in dealing with clients.

And if you want to see James Barnard & Steve Folland on camera, you’re in luck as this episode is also available on YouTube.

Read a full transcript & get Links in the tabs.

More from JAMES BARNARD

James’ website Barnard.co
James on Instagram
James on TikTok
James on YouTube

More from Steve Folland

Steve on Instagram
Steve’s freelance site
Being Freelance Community
Steve’s course for new freelancers
The Doing It For The Kids podcast

Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Logo Designer James Barnard

Steve: We're off to Australia to find out what it's like being freelance for logo designer, James Barnard. Hey, James!

James: How's it going? How's the weather back in the UK?

Steve: As you can tell, James isn't from Australia, but we'll find out how, how he ended up there, perhaps as part of this story. As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?

James: Sure. I am a logo designer, but previously my first job in graphic design was just a generic all rounder digital designer. I worked, my first job in design was for a publishing company. I worked for. Nat Mags. So I worked for Runner's World magazine and Men's Health magazine on their sort of advertising and editorial teams, just doing things like email newsletters, flash adverts, that kind of stuff.

And then I sort of bounced my way around a few different publishing houses. I went to Bauer media and then eventually the Daily Telegraph, which is like kind of like my last full time role. It actually wasn't my last full time role because the one I went into after that, which was like head of digital for The Times and The Sun. I absolutely hated it. And it's the reason I went freelance. It pushed me into that freelance career, which is my final full time role was doing so little of the actual graphic design work and more of the kind of managerial side of things that I just was not enjoying it anymore.

There's too much admin, too much putting out fires, dealing with little managerial issues and HR things that weren't to do with the actual grunt work of design. And I just missed it. I missed it so much. I think I lasted six weeks in that role. I quit the job. With no other job to go into and went freelance to try and pay the bills while I found something new and really quickly after maybe a few weeks of the new freelance life, I realized this is all right now I can take naps in the middle of the day.

I can just run an errand whenever I want and not have to be under anybody's thumb. And I just, I never went back. And that was something like eight or nine years ago, but I started out as like a gun for hire. I went to all the agencies in London, try to find just work just to pay the bills while I had absolutely no work coming in.

So I was like a freelancer on a day rate. I would go into the office, do what they told me. And then after a little while, you know, COVID sort of happened. And my first child was born. And I was then working from home a lot more. So I was trying to find my own clients and yeah, things kind of sort of snowballed from there.

Steve: When you were going into the agencies, what do you feel worked for you there? Like, did you struggle to find a work?

James: No, honestly, I didn't. I found it quite easy, if I'm honest, because I had that background of working in the publishing industry and especially somewhere like the Daily Telegraph, where the deadlines were so intense. It was a daily national newspaper. We work really quickly there. So that was like a real baptism of fire.

Like I was you know, absolutely flying when I worked in Daily Telegraph and also got me loads of experience in print and digital. So I was kind of like a really good all rounder known for being kind of quick in the software. So when I went into agencies sat down at a desk, I was absolutely flying.

They were giving me work. And I was turning over so quickly, they were struggling to find work for me, which was kind of good and bad because you know, obviously you want to do a good job for them and work quickly. But a lot of the time I won't lie, I was sat there twiddling my thumbs waiting for work to come in.

Steve: And you'd obviously been an experienced and, you know, big companies. Like, had you built up a network? Was that any use to you? Or was it almost like starting from scratch going in? Albeit, here's my experience to show you.

James: Yeah. I had a portfolio. So there were some, clients trickling in. And I also was burning the candle at both ends while I had my full time role. I was pulling freelance jobs for my own clients evenings and weekends while I was working alongside a full time role. Also when I was in the publishing industry, they have, let's say an industry like Something like 20 magazines, more than that.

I'm sure that it is absolutely huge library of magazines that they have. And each one of those departments always needs extra design resource filling. So what would happen was I would end up doing little bits, little odd jobs for those magazines for different departments and earning kind of. Bonus money on top of my salary each month, which was actually paid through my normal salary, but it was like my own little sort of half freelance gig at the time.

So when I eventually went freelance and, you know, pulled the plug on that last full time role, I had some contacts already from the industry that I could kind of lean on, but it was, it was kind of, you know, it wasn't great fun work. It was a lot of you know, digital display advertising, a lot of, JPEG outputs, that kind of stuff.

So it wasn't very much fun, paid the bills, but it wasn't very rewarding. So I kind of dropped that as soon as I kind of could and took on a couple of retainer clients just through contacts that I'd made in the industry and a little bit of SEO help as well. So this is way before I was doing the logo design thing.

I hadn't sort of niched down into logo design. So something like five years ago. So I was doing everything, absolutely everything being the sort of generic saturated market of generic graphic design, print advertising, flyers, email, newsletters, you name it. I could do it. It wasn't until I decided to sort of niche down into logos that finding the clients actually became easier.

Setting yourself as an expert in one thing allows you to attract more clients as backwards as that sounds. Being targeted at one. Area totally allow me to sort of target more logo design clients and therefore actually get more from that by being the kind of expert in that, in that niche,

Steve: Yeah. Did you know what you were doing business wise when you stepped out?

James: Not at all. I had it's one of the horrible things about our industry is that there's very little education around like the actual business of The business of design, you know, what to do in terms of like how to price your work, how to deal with clients, how to run retainers or time sheets and all that stuff.

I learned a lot about time sheeting and, and billing from my time in agencies, but it wasn't until I started watching all of Chris Do's content from The Futur when I started learning about the business of design, like how to value what I do, how to put a price on it, how to package it up. So it's easier for, And I basically took my website and rewrote everything on, on the site to target better SEO terms so I could be more discoverable and to put my my logo design packages on there sort of as a tiered structure, you know, good, better, best, and that meant for a lot more leads.

But my SEO was really, really good. It was something like if you, if you Googled freelance logo designer, London, I came up as number one, all because I tweaked a few things on my website. I changed the copy in the content and just to kind of, once I decided to niche into that area, really sort of specialize on it, removed all the portfolio work off my portfolio that wasn't to do with logo design.

So it was absolutely specialized and that just started bringing the clients in. It wasn't like. Crazy amounts of leads, but it was decent and it was enough to live on

Steve: Yeah. You, it's interesting you say about time sheets and you know, your first experience in an agency was of a day rate and yet because you'd worked in this intense atmosphere in the press, you were quick. So did you feel like you were being penalized by, by charging for your time?

James: totally and it took me so long to realize that You think like by working faster people will hire you because you're more efficient But you're right you you get penalized because you work quickly, especially if you're charging hourly So yeah, it was a huge kind of like bombshell moment when I realized that this is insane.

Why am I billing? Hourly on little projects like that, I guess at the time it was because I was working on lots of small little projects and it was easier to do that rather than sort of bundling things up as like a package of say, like digital display design work and giving them a certain number of deliverables rather than a certain number of hours that would have been made much more sense and I could just bust those out really quickly, do them in half an hour and charge, you know, four times what I would have been paid hourly, but yeah, it did take me a while to kind of realize that.

But as soon as I kind of figured it out. Yeah. It meant that, you know, I'd had, I had a kind of full price for everything. And it meant that it was easier to, to build clients. They knew upfront what the whole project was going to cost. And it just made for a much more sort of better customer experience.

It was just finding that sweet spot with pricing that is still today. You know, one of the hardest parts about what I do actually, it's so fluid. I made a massive mistake a few years back of putting my prices on my website like that. I was getting kind of annoyed with people asking me to do logos for 50 quid and you know, it's kind of insulting when someone of my experience has asked, you know to either do something for free or to do something on the cheap And so what I did was I put my floor price on my website and I got no leads in two months.

So it was just a case of, you know, actually getting people to inquire and then eking out a price from them and working with them to find their budget and guiding them through that process a little bit more was the way to do it rather than going. This is my floor price. It's set in stone. It's my way or the highway.

Which just didn't work. And I almost, I almost went under, I'm not going to lie, like the two months with absolutely no leads coming through dried my cash flow up completely. Until I, I tried everything to kind of like stop it from going under. I threw everything away. Money at like Facebook advertising and Google advertising to try and get people to my website.

That was a total disaster. I, I halved the price of the floor price to see if that would bring in leads. That didn't work. It was just the case of that price being on the website was so, it was so easy for someone to go somewhere else and just bounce to a competitor that until I removed it and then started those conversations back up from the, from the ground up you know, it was just a total disaster.

It just did not work.

Steve: Man, that is so interesting because, I mean, obviously it's a very nuanced discussion, the whole prices on the website thing, but that experience is so clear cut. Even then though, how do you, so, you take away the price, you're getting lots of leads. How do you then not spend all your time dealing with people who are still trying to get you for 50 quid, for example?

Like, how, what's that process like, of filter, of filtration?

James: Yeah, it like because I went through that experience of nearly losing my business because of this pricing problem I then suddenly started looking at that in the lead gen and a totally new light and was like I don't mind dealing with those kinds of queries anymore Just give me leads and if there's money to sort of mass out massage out of a client I can It's interesting.

While that those, those prices were on my website, the work that I did get was through somewhere completely different. It was like a Reddit post. Someone family thought I hadn't seen my prices came through. It was a a logo design job or a t shirt design job for a motorcycle club based in Texas. Like the coolest projects you can imagine.

I would have done it for free probably. Cause it was just such a great project to work on. I think I've got something like 500 quid for it at the time. It was like, yes, thank you very much. But I would not have got that job had they gone through my website and seen the prices, they just would have gone somewhere else.

So that was quite an interesting experiment that I'm probably missed out on a lot, a lot of opportunities where I might've taken the job on for cheap because the job was cool or the timeline extended or other deliverables could have been cut from the project. And that's what this, what this project kind of made me realize is that you need to have a discussion.

You need to. Talk to that client before you go back to them really with a budget, or at least find out a bit more about them so that you can kind of figure out where they are on the grand scheme of things and then start massaging that budget out of them and working with them to kind of show the value of what you're bringing rather than, you know, here's my hourly rate.

This is how much it's going to cost. It's more about the return on their investment rather than, you know, the upfront cost. And then from there, like, cause it's logo design, I can cut it up, sell services. So start with a logo, use the logo as the starting point of the sale, and then add things like websites and marketing material and business cards and all that jazz.

Steve: You say, massage. What's the Barnard Massage like?

James: This needs to be branded doesn't it it needs to be something on my website The Barnard Massage welcome..

Steve: Just like, cause obviously you could have a conversation. You could get re in fact, I've done this, you know, you get really excited. Oh, I could be editing this person's podcast. These guys seem like really great people. I really liked this and sure on some instances I might then tell them the price and then they might say, nah, we really can't.

And I'm like, Oh, but I love your project so much. And we negotiate, but on somebody else, they might, I might just have to say goodbye. Did I waste? Is that time wasted?

Or is that somebody who might come back further down the line? When should, if I'd only bought up budget sooner, would they have stayed?

James: Oh, yeah. It's here's how I handle this at the moment Okay, so when you want to get in contact with me You go through a funnel. So there's like a short questionnaire. It's something like four questions. The very first question is what is your budget range? And that ranges from something like zero to a thousand, a thousand to 5, 000, 5, 000 to 10 and 10, 000 plus whatever box they take immediately tells me they value this project.

And most of them, you know, you know, as you'd expect, we'll take the lower end box, those guys get an email that I don't spend as much time trying as hard with those guys. I'll send them an email saying you're not quite there on the, sort of, on the sort of level that we're playing at here. Would you be open to spending a little bit more to discuss this?

And that's just off an email straight off the bat. So immediately I've crossed that bridge. I've, I've dealt with the budget issue immediately and told them, you know, we're not quite on the same page. Would you be willing to increase to sort of bridge that gap, the ones that have ticked over. They get a dedicated detailed response from me based on some of the questions that they've answered.

And then usually I get on the call with them as soon as I possibly can. So schedule a call here, that kind of thing. And that allows me to kind of have that conversation and find out a little bit more about the project find out more about their timelines. So if it's a longer lead, if it can be done in like three months or so, maybe we can bring the price down this first time.

And on the proviso that if we work together in the future, I'd have to charge where I normally charge that kind of wording. So it's all about having that first conversation. But yeah, I totally deal with the budget straight away. It's the first thing you see on my, on my form on my website. And that kind of just sets the tone right off the bat.

Steve: Okay. What about retainers, though? You've mentioned them, are you still what? Once you've decided to niche, ah, okay. Go on, What, what was your experience of retainers like? Maybe it just doesn't suit, maybe it just doesn't suit logos in the same way,

James: It doesn't like if there's a bit of an off boarding process, let's say I do, I upscale and I. You know, provide something like a website, or maybe they have things like a pitch deck that they aren't willing to do themselves and something like PowerPoint. And they need a bit of design expertise going forward.

I have one or two clients where I do work on retainer with them. I don't like it though, if I'm honest, because it's again, it's like it's with retainers. It's like hourly. And you have to kind of timesheet it and there's no real way around it in my experience. So I do that kind of few and far between.

Logo design is like more of a project. I can put a price on that project based on a certain number of deliverables and then they pay a half upfront deposit. And then the final deposit is paid once the logo files have been delivered. So it's really set in stone. It's contracted. You kind of can't move away from that.

If they move outside of things like revisions or, you know, like numbers of amends on a project, or they don't get back to me within a certain period, there are clauses in my terms of service that allow me to either to stop that job or to switch to an extortionate hourly rate to take on you know, revisions and amends.

So yeah, I like to deal with pricing on a kind of project basis. It just makes more sense for me.

Steve: Yeah. How do most of your clients find you date? Is it still via SEO?

James: It was until my social media exploded. It's something like 85 percent of my clients now come through Instagram, TikTok, or a little bit on YouTube. Instagram is by far the biggest lead generator for me. It's it's huge. It's absolutely massive. And that's all become. From the first time I kind of went viral on TikTok, I posted basically something would be showing off.

I got a couple of my logos got into a book called The Logo Lounge and that video did 3 million views. And overnight I got 70 leads for logo design, which is more I'd got in like, I don't know, months prior to that. And then I was booked out for three months solid. So, and I have been booked out like that ever since.

So social media is just. It was kind of a huge mind blowing moment. Like why have I not been doing this sooner? And started putting way more effort into making good social media content that gives back to clients and designers. And that's kind of been the story from, from here on in. It's just, it's.

You know, it's where the, where the love is. All that, I'm going to put more attention to that as a lead

generator.

Steve: When did you start, well, putting out more concerted stuff on social media?

James: So I was always on like Instagram doing things like time lapse videos of me working in Adobe illustrator, showing off my work. So if I ever got a new logo design project, I'd do a carousel post and show off. The work that I just done, but no one really seemed to care about the portfolio side of things.

You know, no one really gives a toss when you need to launch a new logo projects. It's cool for you and it's awesome to share, but no one really cares. Do they, the things they do care about is when they get value out of your content. So as soon as you start teaching people or explaining difficult concepts and things like graphic design or logo design specifically for me, or showing your work, but in a way that kind of shows the process.

So I do a lot of case studies on my account in a video process. I talk about how we got to that final design with rounds of amends, the routes that we took, the sketches I did dealing with the client and their feedback, and then showing the final product and that kills, that's really great for both designers and clients because designers are learning about the process and how that it might work.

Work for them or how they should deal with clients themselves. And then any clients watching this or people who want logos and seeing, you know, this is what it might be like to work with me in the future. How do I get in touch with this guy? So it kind of, it's so self serving. It's fantastic. It's like, I'm helping out one side of the audience and getting leads from the other.

It's brilliant.

Steve: How much time does dealing with social media, and actually there's probably two sides to that, there's probably content creation and just being social on social media, maybe?

James: Yeah, it's huge. It is. It is a huge chunk of my time now, but I, I talk about this guy all the time. Jamie Brindle. He's like this freelancer guru out of the U S I've met him a couple of times now, actually, he is, he says 50 percent of your time should be spent on new business and 50 percent of your time should be.

Driving is current client work. And I see that, that new business side of things as my social media. So it is something like half my time is now devoted to creating content for places like Instagram and tick top. But you wouldn't believe the, how much that has diversified my income off of client work. I see building a.

You know, following on social media, building a community allows me to do things like eventually sell courses digital products, and then you know, paid advertising on my site and then other things like public speaking and, and sort of live streaming with. People like Adobe, it's just opened up all these doors for me to the point where logo design is now actually not my main source of income anymore.

It's the, the other side of things, the, the social side. So it's somewhere, somewhere mid last year, I think it was the, the, the scales tipped in terms of me being a kind of you know, content creator, which is kind of scary, but you know, quite exciting at the same time.

Steve: But it's content creation based in doing what you love, which is what made you go freelance in the first place.

James: That's right. That's right. And as a freelancer, I could never do this as a full time employee. It dedicates so much of my time. I need to be able to split my day and manage my time how I need to in order to get this done. So it is literally like I'll start the first half of the day working with On my client work and looking at my, my leads and, and sort of speaking to clients in that respect.

So the morning will be, you know, getting on calls with people in the afternoon, it'll be busting out a video or coming up with something some kind of idea to do, you know, the next piece of content from. So, you know, as if I was working in a job, like a full time role, I would have to do all of that in the evenings and on the weekends, and there's no way I'd be able to get that kind of a following.

Steve: If you're getting, you know, you post a video and then 70 people are getting in touch, presumably in DMs to say, you know, I'd like a logo. What do you do at that point? Are you just pointing them towards that form on your website or

James: kind of, yeah. So you'd be surprised, actually not. A lot of the leads come via DMS. I forced them through to my website, especially on places like TikTok, because it's harder for people to get in touch with you via messaging, or at least it used to be. They would have to go to your website to check you out and then get in touch.

And then if anybody messages me on Instagram, I have like a text replacement thing. I just press I in my iPhone now, and it replaces it with a piece of tech saying, sorry, I don't deal with leads on Instagram DMs. If you want to get in touch, email me here and we'll take the conversation there. Just allows me to track that conversation a bit easier.

Cause it'll get lost in Instagram DMS. So immediately move them off the platform and capture that email and then. You know, getting contact them, contact with them that

Steve: Brilliant in that case on your form, is it saying, how did you hear about me?

James: It is exactly right. So yeah, it's, that's the second question. How did you hear about me? Is it through SEO? Is it through Instagram? Is it through TikTok? And now I have a CRM that kind of pins that lead to a dedicated place. So I can always keep an eye on my analytics and see where all these leads are coming from.

And if anything starts to dip or anything starts to grow, I can put more resources into that. But yeah, it's like just looking at the stats, it's so easy for me to, So that is something like 85 percent of leads is through the social side of things. So it's just a complete no brainer to be putting my dedicating my time.

Steve: Brilliant. Is that a, like an automated CRM type process? What's the CRM?

James: Yeah. So I work with a company called Bloom and they have a portal that basically is just a, from the call to action on my website, it goes through to a landing page with a really, it's like a job form thing, basically just like a really, really simple questionnaire. But you can do all sorts with that. I can, I can book projects and do invoicing and contracts through that system as well.

Also have like like a lovely little project workflow so I can see which projects are coming up. I've got it all scheduled out. It's really handy. Like I don't need an assistant to help me with that kind of stuff. So it's brilliant. And I can also send emails from it as well. So. Ideally, when a lead comes through, it's basically just me pressing a button, assigning that client to a specific tag and then sending them an email directly from the system.

And it's honestly, it's turned my life around because it used to be, I would spend an hour and a half in the morning responding to emails from all the leads that would come through. Now it takes me 10 minutes. I'm like, click, click, click, click, click, and they're all done, ready for me to start my

Steve: Amazing. You, you said you, you don't need an assistant to help you do that. So do you have any, anybody helping you at all?

James: I do. I do now. Yeah. This is one of the biggest challenges I faced as a, as a freelancer was really crushing a bit of control and hiring an assistant to help me do the things that just weren't a great use of my time. And I did a podcast last year with a guy called Josh Hall, who is like a web designer pro and runs courses on people on how to start their own web design businesses.

And he actually did a one on one with me and. Sort of guided me through the process of hiring my first assistant broke had me break down. What are the pros and cons about my daily life? What do I like doing? What do I don't like doing and how can I offset the things that I don't like to somebody else?

And it took a while. I put the call out for an assistant at some point last year I think it was last year and now a lovely lady called Beatrice who lives in Germany helps me out with my client presentations, my logo exports, building brand guideline documents for clients, all of the kinds of stuff that I can do, but it's not necessarily the most creative part of the job.

She totally helps me out with all of that. And even now she's starting to come on board more with the actual concepting of around logos and. Now, before I start on a job, she does a little bit of research for me. She helps me out with a few concept ideas. She takes on some of the client brief questionnaires and answers and does her own thing for a little bit.

And then I'll take that on and kind of pick up from where she started and finished the job. So it's been absolutely amazing.

Steve: You know, it's not somebody who deals with your calendar or sorts that emails. 'cause hey, you've ticked that one off in 10 minutes. It's actually the client work side of it, the actual design bit of it.

James: It's the time consuming side of things. Yeah. It's like, like exporting logo. Logos and doing brand guidelines, documents can be so, so time sucking. It's ridiculous, but it's so important. And every client needs to have one. And making that beautiful presentation is half of the job was sort of selling in a new logo design idea, but it takes ages.

It takes, you know, just a lot of grunt work with pulling a photo shop mock ups. And I, I write all the copy for the presentations. I'd like to control that. And it's my tone of voice. So you are working with me, but when it comes to like. Exploring something like a business card mark up. I don't need to do that.

I can have somebody help me with that. And that's what Beatrice does for me. And she's, she's fantastic. She's been really, really helpful. But now she's starting to like, now that we've had that relationship and she's done all of this kind of legwork with me, she's coming on board more for the sort of more creative side of things now, which is really exciting.

So it could hopefully free up my time even more to the point where she might. Eventually take on the job, the jobs completely. And maybe I'll bring on somebody else to help out her with grant design work. And now we've started an agency, which is quite exciting. The problem is at the minute is I I'm too much of a control freak.

I just absolutely have to control that process. And I'm part of the reason I think people are coming to me is because they want to work directly with me. And as a freelancer, I think that's kind of important. Otherwise you kind of working with an agency. So there's, there's, you know, Ums and ahs with that with me, I'm not quite sure where I'm going to go.

I'm under a bit of an inflection point right now. But I still enjoy the client work and one of the great things about me still doing client work is it keeps me on the ground and it keeps me fresh with the software, which allows me then to teach it better to others and make courses about, you know, what's coming out on the new features and releases of products like Adobe Illustrator, I'm right on the frontline, I'm doing it with you.

So, you know, I'm not losing my edge. So that's one of the reasons I think for me to kind of stay in the game.

Steve: I was going to ask actually about this, the sort of content that you're creating and putting out there. Is it all aimed at other designers and yet bringing you logo work because people are just going, Flippernack is good. Is that the,

James: Yeah, so the way I treat it is i've had like the four pillars of content. I'm not even sure I can remember these now Yeah, like software tips and tricks Freelancer advice case studies and there's one more I always forget it. It's like the principles of design so Or you know, it's basically how to be a better designer and how to be a better freelancer and What happens is my following has grown because of that value that I've kind of given back.

But clients are looking at this or seeing it on their feed or anyone kind of interested in design, or maybe even someone that's just like searched on social for like logo designer. I'll come up because of that and that's, You know, search on socials should not be overlooked in terms of SEO. If you do good captions, you'll come up in those searches for things like logo design when people are looking for it.

And all of a sudden, who's this guy? He's got like half a million followers and can design logos like, you know, and then that's why people are starting to get in touch more also kind of means that I can chart a little bit more as well, because, you know, I've got to a point where I'm working with bigger clients because of the success on social media.

I've set the tone a little bit with my content and, and there's going to be really no surprises now when someone gets in touch that it is going to cost a certain amount. So that totally helps, but yeah, I do all the content is for designers. It's so great because it just serves both audiences. Graphic designers get something out of it.

It makes me feel great because I feel like I'm teaching and imparting knowledge onto the next generation of designers and building a community at the same time. It's honestly a complete no brainer.

Steve: When was the first course or perhaps maybe not a course, but when was the first time that you created something that you could sell to help the audience that you'd created?

James: So initially, when I had a bit of success on TikTok, I was getting questions on, you know, interviews and things like that. Like, how have you done this? How have you built this following? So I made a short course about how to win more design clients with TikTok, and I did a little public speaking thing for a design summit a few years back.

That was my first kind of taster into Like I'd made this piece of content for this public speaking gig. I cut it into chunks and sold it as a course. Didn't do very well because I didn't market it very well. I didn't know how to sell it. I hadn't really built an audience and had no emails didn't have an email list to sell to.

A year or two later, I tried it again with my latest course, which is Turbocharge your logo designs, like how to go faster in Adobe Illustrator. And I partnered up with Skillshare on this one because at that point I had a bit of a following and they kind of, they contacted me and it's been amazing.

It's, it's a totally different experience. Like people like the fact that I can kind of explain. Design principles and explain design software really succinctly. So I've had so much experience trying to get all this content down into under a minute for something like a tick tock or an Instagram reels.

And that means I kind of really cut the bullshit when my courses aren't like wiffly waffly, they're really truncated and to the point. So when someone comes to my course and it's like an hour and 15 minutes, it's kind of, it's hard for me cause I'm trying to get more money for the course, but they look at the length of the content and go, that's not very much.

And then someone does the course and they're like. I just got more out of that than I probably would have done, you know, had I watched a six hour long video. There's so much in there. So the reviews on like places like Skillshare have been so good, and the feedback has been really glowing. You know, they have this little slider on Skillshare that says, Does this course meet your expectations or exceed them?

And, Like 75 percent of the, the reviews are like exceeded my expectations because there's just so much that I can say so quickly that it's just because of the, the nature of my content has just been so succinct, I can really just get the point across now.

Steve: Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? But actually that limitation, that restriction of a 60 second video makes you focus.

James: So I, I script everything like I find it really hard to talk on camera, or at least I used to, I script everything when I did my social media. I write it all out in notes, I record to the camera, say a line. With the next line record and then cut all those clips together. So it takes four minutes into, you know, under a minute.

And also is meant that I'm better on camera and I'm better at sort of now I'm better at articulating with clients. It makes me a better salesperson. I'm totally getting practice by making this content that I'm, I'm actually able to talk to clients with more conviction and more gusto. And, and it's, it's absolutely fantastic.

It just serves so many, it has so many benefits. It's ridiculous.

Steve: You said that, you know, you didn't really have an email when you put out that first course email list that is. What did you do to try and build that? Because you've got that social following, but what about people that you can just reach out to?

James: That's still a working process for me if I'm honest bringing my audience off the platform and trying to take more ownership of them Because let's say Instagram closed down tomorrow. I would lose half a million people And have no way to get them back So I've been slowly trying to build my email list by offering out freebies here in there, you know like Sections from my course downloads, that kind of thing, trying to build that up.

And also that's another part of the business. I've actually hired some help with as a I had a copywriter to help me do my newsletters because I was really struggling to get those out every week. A lovely lady here in Australia called Anna is now helping me with my content for my newsletters, which is such a weight off my shoulders.

I always find that a real. Burden having to put those together. And now she's, she's totally taken that on board, which is, which is amazing. So yeah, it's about kind of providing more value there. I've got a landing page for my newsletter now. So it's actually like a dedicated thing. I'm trying to actually build it.

It's still, it's not huge. It's like 5, 000 subscribers compared to socials. That's nothing, but actually in terms of like when you want to sell to somebody or, or plug a digital course, that's pretty powerful. So yeah, still building that.

Steve: Getting a copywriter on board is quite cool. When you, you said you found it a burden and yet you are obviously good with words, you like writing the copy in your brand guidelines and things. So was it more like the time

James: That's it. And this has been one of the hardest parts is that I, I do think I'm, it's one of my strong suits as I've always written very well. I'm quite articulate when it comes to like creating articles and blog posts and it's something that I've always done. And it helps with the script writing as well, allows me to get my point across quicker because I'm actually half decent at writing.

So when my new assistant Anna sends me a copy over, I'm really, it's been quite a steep learning curve in terms of my kind of tone of voice, and I think she struggled with my direction because I wasn't really giving her any just, you know, she would write a newsletter for me. And I would say, I don't really say words like that.

That's kind of not how I speak. I like to write very colloquially. I like to write how I talk. So she's had to really learn quickly, but she's done a great job. And now it's getting to the point where I'll give her some topics to do for newsletters, some topic ideas, and she'll structure that content out for me and I'll just tweak a few things and we'll get it out there.

It could be getting to the point as well that she might start writing articles for me and helping me with that to put a bit more content on my site in terms of like the actual articles. But yeah, it's a pretty, it's only been something like. I think it's been, so it's very, all very fresh.

Steve: There's obviously been this diversification in what you're putting out there and your income streams and things. So have we touched upon all of them?

James: All of the income streams, obviously client work, a little bit from public speaking, not too much, but you know, I do whenever there's something like an online summit and or something like Adobe max was when I went to LA last year to speak there, that is just the, you know, something like 10 percent of the business now, which is great.

And I love that. And I really want to get more into the kind of public speaking space. Affiliate deals and brand partnerships is a big one. And then, yeah, the other one was digital products, the courses, which I'm just dipping my toe into right now, but we'll get there. Hopefully we'll expand that as the, as the years go by.

Steve: I'm just going to double check. Did I dream this up once upon a time? Did you create like brands in order to sell a brand?

James: Yeah, a long time ago. I tried that out. So what happened was so I've always had a line in my terms of service that says any unused artwork that I create as part of your logo design process belongs to me. So what happens is often you'll, you'll pitch a design idea to a client and they don't like it.

In my mind, that's still a great design that might be applicable for another client. So I'll just put that on the shelf and maybe I'll pick that up later on. And that happened with a job a few years back where the client didn't like the logo and I was like, ah, it's a real shame. That's a nice design.

What I did was I made a fully fledged brand for something like a startup to just pick up off the shelf and run with. And it was called Karmr. K A R M R And it had this lovely sort of endless knot logo with organic growth coming out the top of it somebody ended up buying it and I had a website to go with it and the only issue with that is it's quite an investment of time to create a fully French black brand like a full bright Brand guidelines, document, the logo files, the marketing assets, the website, the presentation decks, it's a lot of work to put in for no return.

Which is the only reason I kind of didn't carry on doing that. So I tried it once more with a company with a logo called Suno wave, not as, not as good. And it just didn't sell. And I haven't, to be honest, I haven't really pushed it. I haven't really put it out there in terms of like marketing it at all.

I imagine if I did it now on my channels, I'm sure someone would buy it, but it's kind of just sat there at the moment. And. It's on my shop. So it was like a little secondary income, but the model just didn't really work for me because there was too much time I needed to put into it with no guaranteed return, whereas like putting that same amount of time into something like a course where it's much easier to sell that as in terms of value, rather than creating a brand for a company that doesn't exist yet so that they can crowbar their company into that slot.

It's a bit harder. It rubbed a few people at the wrong way when I started posting about that, because. Obviously, people are like, well, brands should be tailor made for your business. Why would anybody do that? But then there's other people who are like, that's a great idea. You could totally create a startup.

And then with about 10 to 20 hours design time, fill in the blanks and write the copy and change some of the design to fit what you need it to. So it was an interesting model, but just for me, it just didn't work out.

Steve: It's when, when I saw it, it did make me think, huh, he's someone who looks like he's enjoying playing around with, I guess, like the entrepreneurial businessy side of, you might not have known what the hell you were doing when you started James, but that you've, you, you embrace it. That's what I saw when I saw that.

James: Yeah, it's just trying to make more money in the end. I was just, I've tried it all. Honestly, like selling much you know, I've got, I've got a shop on my website that sells t shirts. Nobody buys those. It was just how to make more cash to be honest.

Steve: I introduced you as being in Australia. You're not from Australia. So when did you head out there?

James: So we came here three years ago, right in the middle of the pandemic. So I had to do two weeks of quarantine in a hotel room with my daughter who was two at the time which was not fun. But yeah, my wife's Australian. We met in the UK One of my publishing role jobs and we've been together, we've been married since 2016 now.

So yeah, I, she's Australian. We moved out here just cause she had a bit of a call of home and she wants to be back closer to her family and give, you know, the other grandparents a bit of time with the kids. And we love it here now. It's fantastic. My daughter's just started school, so I'm firmly entrenched in the Australian way of life.

And obviously being a freelancer, I can. The only issue is here is the time difference. It's a real pain with working with places like the UK and parts of the States. Like I think the East Coast America is the most difficult because there's not one single hour in the day that crosses over in business hours.

One of us has to take a call in the evening or early morning, something like five in the morning or 10 at night. So it's, it's a, it can be a huge pain there. But. You know, largely, if you can get around that, it's fantastic. You know, the lifestyle's immense. I have a spare room in my house, which is my office, a dedicated office.

I'm very lucky. And, and I do have two young children who I love spending time with. And the freelance lifestyle means that I'm home for every dinner. I get to put them down every night for bed and spend as much time with them as I possibly can in these, the fun years when they're. You know, bouncing around and causing trouble being very cute.

But yeah, it's, I wouldn't have it any other way now. I don't think I could ever go back to a full time role. I'm too far gone now. I'm a freelancer for

Steve: So work life balance wise, it's It's going all right.

James: It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Like I do, I've always kind of burnt the candle in terms of like working evenings. I rarely do weekends now. I definitely work evenings here though, because of the time difference, it's easier to get on the phone with people. And to be honest, the kids go down at seven, so I've got a few hours at the day with a little bit of peace and quiet, I can actually get some work done and I start my day just a little bit later each day.

I'll, I'll do a gym class in the morning and I'll probably pick up, you know, turn my computer on about 11 AM. Most days I have one day a week where I kind of do the normal nine to five. My daughter's in school and my son, who's two, he goes to daycare. But yeah, like I say, it's fantastic in terms of like being home for dinners and getting there for the bedtimes.

There's no commutes. I just open the door when I'm there. So yeah, I wouldn't have that any other way now.

Steve: You say there's no commute, right? But do you have a process of like switching off between that, that workspace in the home space?

James: Yeah, it's tough. I think that you that's one of the biggest issues with dealing with being a freelancer, isn't it? Like that separation. Just, just as a business owner as well, trying to do something that doesn't occupy your mind makes you feel so guilty. It's like you should be putting all this time into your business.

Like, over the Christmas break, I had to do things like jigsaws, just so that my mind was occupied, so that I wouldn't feel guilty. About not working on my business and turning the computer on and doing something there. It's strange, isn't it? When, when you are your sole provider and you're the only person bringing in money, you feel like all your spare time should be, you know, invested in doing that.

So it is really hard to kind of switch off from the work, especially because of the social media with me as well. Now I have to really put my phone to the side, especially at dinnertime. Still struggle to do, you know, to put it over in the corner. One of my friends has a great Piece of advice he gave me, which I totally need to implement.

I haven't done it yet. Is when he walks in the door, he puts his phone on the counter by the door and leaves it there. He's allowed to use his phone as much as he wants, but he has to go to the counter to use it. So it's a physical thing. He has to move to actually you know, pick the phone up and actually get to it.

And it's meant that he's totally separated his phone and, and social life. So I need to, you know, start putting those barriers in place. But it is really hard. It is really hard, especially as a freelancer. Cause you, you feel like you need to be on all the time and you feel like you need to be answering emails from clients and being timely with your responses and that's tough.

So yeah, it's, it's always a struggle.

Steve: You also find that, especially at this point you're in now, James, where you've got successful client work, you build up this following. So there's all these opportunities that must be coming your way. And so many things where you go, Oh, I could do this. I could do that. How do you choose what to actually?

Focus on do you put things on a back burner or like what's that like in your head?

James: Yeah. It's usually the ones that could be done the fastest. Like I really want to do like write a book for instance, it's one of my You know, goals in life is to write a book around the logo design. And I was actually approached a year or two ago to write a book by a publisher and got to the point where we couldn't really find the promise of the book, like what the book would do for people.

But at the same time that project is so long, that's like months and months and months of work, which I would have to chip at over the course of a year. Whereas something like making a video for social media, I can do in a few hours and it's done. So it's always been about like. you know, finding the projects that I think can be done in the timeliest fashion which will keep me interested in the project, first of all, cause I always struggle with that, like losing interest in something as time goes on, especially with logo design, because, you know, sometimes those projects can drag so yeah, keeping that momentum is, is being kind of hard.

So something like a digital course, like a longer course about the full process of logo design is something I've always wanted to do, but that I know from experience now that that's like a. three month to four month project that I would have to put client work off for to get done because I just would not be able to dip in and out of it.

It's too distracting to switch in and out of some of a project like that. My last course I did in the space of six weeks and it was so intense. I dropped all my client work, really put the back burner on the socials just to get kind of get through it, filmed it and edited it all myself. scripted it, screen recorded everything, made the website, did absolutely everything.

I was so burnt out by the end of the process that I kind of needed to take a holiday from that. But yeah, I'll, I'll get back to that at some point. So yeah, I think it's just a case of me finding a project and being able to project manage it so that I can dip in and out of it over the course of a few months.

Is one of the reasons, one of the sort of ways that I'll make a decision on what to do next.

Steve: Man, that passive income is so easy, right?

James: Yeah It's insane.

Steve: Right. James, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?

James: Don't be afraid to relinquish control, more control, basically hire an assistant, get there faster and get on camera, get on camera as fast as you possibly can. I can't tell you how much my life has changed. By imparting the knowledge and passing it all on to the next generation of graphic designers I had the idea for it years ago.

Honestly, I saw some Videos by a company called envision about making like design snacks and I had the idea to do it I just didn't have the conviction to kind of put it forward. But it just took one video going viral to give me the The motivation I needed and the leads that I needed to keep that kind of content coming.

So yeah get on camera And relinquish some

Steve: And I love the fact that you said that getting on camera also made you better dealing with clients, the confidence that you got from it as well earlier on.

James: It's so handy. So it's a handy skill to have, definitely.

Steve: But when people talk about putting across their life, you know, like showing, you show behind the scenes of your work, but do you, do you keep that side of everything private?

I don't see you on the beaches in, in Australia.

James: I don't really share that kind of stuff. I have a, I have a personal social account and I keep all of my kids to, to that. So only, you know, that's private. That part of my life isn't for public consumption. Yeah. I'm not posting holiday snaps unless I go somewhere to do a public speaking gig. And that totally is a trip for me and I'll post about that.

So I did lots of pictures of LA when I was there, but yeah, I do keep them separate ones for my family and friends and ones for the rest of the

Steve: Nice. James, thank you and all the best being freelance!

James: Thanks a lot, mate. Take care.

Episode sponsored by Riverside

Record high quality video & audio with Riverside.

Plus let AI help you create social media ready clips. Massive time saver.

Even stream to the likes of LinkedIn and YouTube… and then repurpose that recording with AI summaries and video clips ready to go before you’ve made a cup of tea to celebrate.

See how recording with Riverside can help your freelance business.

It’s free to get started - use code BEINGFREELANCE to save 15% on a paid plan 🎧🙌