Category: Life

HOW TO DO COOL STUFF (AND EVENTUALLY GET PAID FOR IT)

I had a phone call recently with someone about dipping their toes into the freelance waters, and that led me to writing this. As someone who’s been without a full-time job since 2006, this is something I’ve dealt with over the years. 

This is not a step by step guide. If it were like that, then there’s a map (nod to Seth Godin for that), and if there’s a map, it can be done by monkeys, and you’re smarter than that.

DUMB IT DOWN
Say you make websites. Cool. Now, figure out a way to explain that to people who don’t need websites, because there are a lot of people who don’t need websites. Why? Well, those people probably know someone who needs a website, and after meeting you and having a lovely conversation they’re more likely to recommend you over someone who just throws jargon and fancy job titles around.

Remember – this is for starting your freelance journey! You’re a small fish in the big pond, so you need to start off working with other small fish.

REFERRALS
Stay awesome friends with awesome people that you used to work with. No, not in a sneaky way so you can ask them for work, but because you like working with rad people, and they probably know rad people. Rad people do rad things, so you’ll want to always be around them. And that leads to rad things.

On the other side of the coin, don’t be friends with jerks. They probably know other jerks, and you don’t want to work with jerks.

SHARING IS CARING
Share what you know; the principles behind it, how you made it work for you. Show your work. Freely give this knowledge that took you thousands of hours to gain, because someday someone will see it, and say, “hey, I want that.” And then you can bill them for those skills.

Remember, not everyone who needs a website knows they need a “front end developer.” Convey what you do in language that is kind and relatable, as you’re new at this and chances are the people you’ll be working with are new at all this, too!

START TODAY
The sooner you start helping people, and establishing yourself as someone knows a thing or two, the better. Don’t wait to take a class, don’t wait to finish your degree, don’t want to get some brand new piece of equipment – start helping someone today. Go through your social media feeds and find a friend who has a problem and help them fix it. No, don’t work for free, but do something to help. Illustrate your knowledge in helpful, no-pressure ways and you’ll be amazed where it’ll get you.

This post originally posted on Patreon on March 14, 2016.

YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S WATCHING

I love Billy Eichner. HE’S FANTASTIC.

On a visit to Seth Meyer’s show a year ago (the video clip is no longer available for some reason), Meyer’s explains that he and his fellow SNL friends watched Billy’s videos back in the day. Billy had no idea, but found out many years later.

Creating and publishing something for years without knowing if anyone is really paying attention is difficult. It’s easy to look at the standard metrics like pageviews, plays, or RTs, and base your success on that. For validation. But please, you are so much more than that!

Never lose sight of the real people behind those metrics, and then never refer to them as metrics, or eyeballs, or traffic. Ever. They are lovely people, and some of them have just never emailed you yet telling you how amazing you are.

Hard work isn’t a guaranteed ticket to stardom and appearing on late night TV shows, but you spend the time and do it the right way. Treat every video, every song, every appearance as if Amy Pohler might watching.

This post appeared on my Patreon on March 12, 2016, but I’m posting it here because I’m deleting those old posts. It also had this note saying “This post originally posted on Jul 21, 2015, but had been modified for Patreon.”