Do the work you want to do, grow as an Artist, and take charge of your life
(Even if you have no business experience, no clients, and no clue.)
I took the plunge and went freelance. My salary tripled overnight.
In my first year of freelancing, I worked 10 months and took 2 months off to travel and hang out with my girlfriend (now wife). I also had the time to get back in shape (no more desk job ass) and ran the Boston Marathon.
But do you want to know what the best part was?
I took two weeks off just to make something cool for myself. I used the time to teach myself a new skill: Matchmoving. I worked on a 10-second clip where I tracked and composited some 3D type into footage I that shot in my neighborhood. I slaved over those 10 seconds all week and then put the final result on my reel. The next client I showed my reel to asked SPECIFICALLY about that shot, said they were impressed I had something like that on my reel, and booked me soon after.
And here’s the kicker: I would never have had time to focus on one task like that if I were on staff somewhere.
On staff, you’re stuck doing the work that’s given to you.
You generally don’t have the time or energy to tackle those personal projects that raise your stock as a Motion Designer.
If you want to grow as an artist, you need to make space for that. And, it turns out that freelancing is an amazing tool to do it. On top of that, once you get the hang of freelancing, you get to control your own schedule and optimize it for making big money — or taking big time for yourself.
If you’re stuck on the 9-5 hamster wheel and desperately want to jump off, or you’ve made the leap to working for yourself, but it’s not working out, you may be worried that you aren’t cut out for freelancing.
You email a potential client, they don’t ever write back.
They write back, but never book you.
You don’t like your current clients, the work sucks, they don’t pay enough.
Or maybe you like your day job, but you want to do cooler work…
But you haven’t got a clue what to charge!
All of these worries or negative experiences can make freelancing seem like something that “some people are good at” and “some are bad at.”
But that’s just not true.
Nobody begins knowing what they’re doing, but those who make it, make it their business to figure it out.
If you think that raw talent trumps business savviness, reliability and even personality, and that doing awesome work is all it takes to get clients and make a living — I hate to say it, but you’re fooling yourself.
I see this all the time: a talented motion designer is working their ass off for little pay at an agency job, or they’ve made the leap to working for themselves, but “wor or getting and keeping clients had nothing to do with my talent level, and everything to do with a few simple tips, tools, and routines I’ve built into my business that have helped me achieve six-figure success on my own terms.
In fact, after learning some simple strategies, you will:
- Understand how to approach and book the RIGHT clients that are going to allow you to make money on “money jobs” and then take time off to do the “cool jobs” that you’re itching to do
- Have the tools and systems in place to generate tons of potential client leads, craft pitch-perfect emails to them, follow up, and land as many jobs as you can handle
- Stop feeling like an amateur and start acting like the valuable, in-demand commodity you are
- And realize that this whole thing is really like a game — and one you can certainly win!
Man, THANK YOU! I reached out to you back during the holidays about your freelance webinar. I have been following your advice and my freelance business has been booming. January alone my partner and I made around $20,000. Now we have a long list of potential clients to reach out to, and a couple extra clients that look to be regulars. Thank you a million times. I owe YOU money lol.
Devon Laird, FreelanceU student
plus3video.com
See, the way I look at it, freelancing is just a tool in your arsenal.
Just like the license of After Effects or Cinema 4D you’ve invested in, freelancing is a tool to help advance your career to where you want to be.
How you use that tool is up to you. You can use it to make more money than you currently do at your staff job. You can use it to take off 3–4 months of the year and travel the world (at the expense of that fat paycheck). Or you can take- 2–3 weeks to crush a personal project that will get you more of the kind of work you WANT to be doing.
There are always tradeoffs, but you get to choose how to allocate your most important resource: your time.
No more 9-5 ass-in-a-chair.
Slowly but surely take control of your time.
Want to pay off your mortgage in a year? Triplebook yourself on nonsexy jobs and make $260K in one year (true story I talk about in the course). Want to snowboard 6 months a year and live on $50–$60k? That’s possible too. Want to work from home so you can see your kids a lot more? Get ready for that parent-of-the-year mug to be yours.
Freelancing is the tool that will get you there, and FreelanceU is the user guide that will teach you how to use it smartly.
One year and a baby boy later, I’ve managed to thrive as a freelancer. Still, there’s always been the thought in the back of my mind “what if all of my gigs just stop coming in?” I would have no idea how to find work, and was terrified that I’d have to start looking for another day job.
That’s when I found FreelanceU. Just halfway through the webinar I went from having no clue how to find work, to feeling 100% confident that I’d be able to find well paying gigs with relative ease.
Jake Bartlett, FreelanceU student
jakeinmotion.com
I have seen every level of this game called “Motion Design.”
Before running School of Motion, I freelanced for years. I’ve been an employee, a freelancer, and I’ve run a studio. I think that the insights I’ve gotten from both freelancing and hiring freelancers helped me craft a freelancing methodology that works.
I created this course because I didn’t see anything else out there tailored to the unique demands of Motion Design. Motion Designers are my people, and it makes me crazy to see someone slaving away for $50K a year on salary when I know they have what it takes to be a six-figure freelancer.
I went from making around $40K a year on staff to over $100K my first year.
I was 25 when I went freelance for the first time. Since then, I’ve made over $200K in one year freelancing, and it’s enabled me to have incredible control over my work / life balance.
I also had an incident a couple of years ago where one of my best clients called me up with an emergency, last -second gig. It would require me to stay up for 3 days straight animating as fast as I could.
I used my “system” of reassuring her, under promising, over delivering, etc… and then I threw out a HUGE pricetag thinking that this job needed to be expensive or it wasn’t worth my time. I was floored when she not only didn’t balk at the price, but actually said, “we have more money than that for this, charge more.”
I knew at that point that I’d reached a level of trust with this client that was special, and I wanted to break down how to get there in a repeatable way with other clients.
That’s what I’ve done with FreelanceU: I reverse-engineered my systems, the nifty tools I use, and the exact emails I write and created a framework anyone can use to create a freelance business that gives them the life they want.
This mini-course shows you in painstaking detail how to find clients, contact them, make them like you, book the project, and then turn those clients into raving fans. It’s a very systematic approach to freelancing, which takes the fear out of stepping up and actually doing it.
The webinar was full of golden advice nuggets! It’s made quoting and project managing easier. I’ve raised my prices since and have a queue on projects lined up with different clients. I’m at the point where I can’t take on any more work and am asking clients if they can wait 3 months til I have some availability. The webinar gave me more confidence in handling multiple clients and staggering jobs while also raising my prices. Prior to the webinar, I would either try to fit all the projects in and let my quality of work (and health!) suffer or turn the work down
Mair Bain, FreelanceU student
mairperkins.co.uk
4 hours of Freelance Training
FreelanceU is a 4-hour presentation that walks you through the exact systems I’ve developed over my years of freelancing, providing you a step-by-step recipe for starting a freelance business that will become your perfect tool for creating the life you want to live.
Learn the step-by-step tricks to find leads, contact them, get booked, and make them love you. It ain’t rocket science! This stuff is teachable.
This mini-course includes:
- A 4-hour video presentation that lays out my exact systems for finding the right clients, approaching them, gaining their trust, and turning them into raving fans.
- An audio only version of the presentation to download so that you can listen in your car, on a run, at the gym, on a plane… wherever you like to learn.
- A printable PDF full of tips, software tools, email templates, and more to give you everything you need to get started right away.
- PLUS, my exclusive client-tracking spreadsheet template that makes the business end of freelancing much easier to understand.
And the investment for this is only $79.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. But it will teach you all the stuff that’s hard to figure out on your own. For example: Do you know how to send an invoice? That’s a very easy thing to learn via Google or YouTube. We’ll briefly talk about the software I recommend to do that, but we’ll spend most of the time focusing on the tricky stuff: Getting clients and making them happy.
Yes, it will still work. The rate you can charge in your country may vary, and of course you’ll need to respect local laws and customs and make sure you pay your taxes correctly… But the core concepts of finding clients and turning them into raving fans is universal.
FreelanceU was made just for you.
I’m spilling all the secrets I figured out (the hard way!) of turning freelancing from a confusing chore into a precision tool that helps you craft the life you’ve always wanted. The mini course includes:
- The exact email scripts and templates I use to contact cold client leads, warm them up, and sign them as customers
- My “little black book” of tools that keep my business running smoothly and automate some of the trickier parts so that I have more time for the parts I love
- My recipe for picking “money jobs” and “dream jobs” so that they all balance out and create a growth cycle that keeps me busy, excited, and making bank
- And a step-by-step plan for taking your customers from casual acquaintances to raving fans in record time.
- I’m offering this entire mini-course now for just $79 dollars because I want to reach as many people as possible — even as I’m fleshing it out into a full-length book and course. But all the details are already here for you to use.
And I’m doing it because I know how truly revolutionary and life changing finally making freelancing work can be:
I was working in house for a major broadcasting company which had commended me on my improvement in animation. I knew my contract was coming to a close with this company and immediately jumped at the opportunity to take FreelanceU and see what I could become.
I have now been on my own for a month and while I truly have to push and network, I have doubled my income. I worked for straight two weeks in January for a project and can take off the entire month of February just from how much I was able to charge vs. my in house position. Am I doing that? No, but the option is there.
Thank you so much for these courses! You have changed my life.
Liam Clisham, FreelanceU student
five-31.com
If you want that kind of freedom in your life, don’t wait.
Don’t spend another minute struggling as a freelancer or hating your life as a 9-5er. Invest in yourself, and you’ll see massive dividends in your career and your life.
Learn the art of getting clients to know and love you, and you’ll not only open the door to lucrative opportunities, you’ll find a new capacity to do the work you really want to be doing.
Good luck!
The post FreelanceU appeared first on School Of Motion.