How to get paid to do the work that you love
Vol. 042
How to get paid to do the work that you love.
Sometimes you need to prove your worth before you get the work.
A quick bite:
Are you struggling to get paid to do the work you want to be doing? Sometimes the act of simply doing the work you want to get paid before actually getting paid to do so is the solution. Stop making your prospects visualize how your work could be a good solution, and simply start showing them.
Continue reading below…
One of my main points in my keynote talk “From Practice to Professional”, a hindsight perspective on how I went from a self-taught lettering artist to a 6-figure creative business is: “Prove your worth to get the work.” The idea that you often need to show that you’re capable of doing/creating something before you're actually hired to do/create that something.
I felt frustrated for years that I wasn’t doing more illustrative, type-driven, fun packaging and branding projects.
In hindsight, I wasn’t hired to do these things because I wasn’t prioritizing doing that work in my free time and marketing those services — I wasn’t proving my worth to ultimately get that work.
Most of the business world isn’t capable of visualizing creatively like you are. Sometimes you need to do a bit of spoon feeding and literally show that you’re a professional before you’re hired as a professional.
Are you an illustrator or graphic designer, and you feel confident that your illustration work could be easily applied in logo design and branding—but you’re not getting hired to do so? Time to start spoon feeding...
It was only through practicing and applying hand lettering (as fake branding projects, pseudo-campaigns, apparel, etc.) for a couple years, on my own terms, that I was then hired to do so professionally. Through integrating lettering into what looked like brands, logos or campaigns, I was then hired by companies to create lettering for brands, logos and campaigns. It was only through practicing illustration that I was ever hired as an illustrator.
Think of it this way: are you going to hire the guy who simply says he’s a mechanic, or are you going to hire a mechanic whose shop has great ratings on Google? Obvious answer. This same principle applies to the creative industry.
When you create the work you want to be hired for, you’re bridging the gap in the mind of your potential customer. Instead of having them try to imagine how your hand lettering work can be incorporated into a branding project, you’re showing them. Your goal is to help them literally see what you can do, not guess. You’re essentially performing risk mitigation for your prospect.
So, what the hell are we saying here?
Give people (prospects, employers, clients, etc.) a final product and SHOW them what you can do. Tell them what it is that you did and highlight that value. Speculating what could be or how things might work only gives your prospect one more thing to work about.
Whether you refer to this as practice, passion work, side projects—whatever—they can prove to have a profound impact on the direction of your career. Not only does creating this type of work allow you to showcase a tangible, actual example of what it is that you want to be creating, but through the process of doing this you’re able to hone in on both your skillset and your process for creating. I.e., now when you get hired to do this, you have a game plan. And from my experience, your client is going to like hearing that game plan.
Make a routine of creating what you want to get hired to create. You’ll get better, faster and seen as a more suitable candidate for the projects you wish you were working on.
I spent the first 4 years of my career waiting for dream opportunities to come to me; I thought that if I simply “got better” the clients would start to find me. I spent a lot of time waiting around simply hoping that my career would magically shift into one that I loved. Those first 4 years of my career were spent being reactive, and the script totally flipped once I started focusing on being proactive: when I focused on creating the style, application and work that I wanted to be hired to create.
To be proactive is to take your career in your own hands. You’re intentionally pursuing that which you desire, and you’re chasing the fog. And yall know I’m a big fan of that chase!
If you prove your worth (by creating and highlighting the value of the work that you want to be hired to do) before you’re actually hired to do so, you’ll find that landing or selling paid opportunities creating similar work will be far easier.
In closing:
Make the shit you love, sometimes you can do it for a client for free, get it out into the world, be persistent and be patient.
