Competence, Confidence and Baseball
One fact about playing baseball: To advance to the next base, you need to leave the one you’re on. Baseball forces you to advance to
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intake process
ARTICLES.
Tips and Insights on Mission, Mindset, Mechanics, and Marketing for Freelance Creatives
Discovery Isn’t Strategy
A mistake freelance creatives can easily make is to diagnose and strategize with a prospective client before they become an actual client. This often happens
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159. To Quit, Or Not To Quit
How do you know if you should quit or not? Sometimes quitting is in fact, the wise and right option. Freelancing isn’t easy. It takes courage and tenacity to push through. It starts out being fun, like a great adventure, especially when you land your first couple of clients and get paid for the projects. But when obstacles and opposition show up, what will you choose?
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12 Steps To A More Secure WordPress Web Site
Every independent creative professional should have a web site. Hands down, WordPress.org is the most popular self-hosted content management web site framework. Over 50% of self-hosted
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3 Things To Do Before The End Of The Year
One of the benefits of freelancing is: You get to decide for yourself what you will accomplish in any given year. You’re able to set
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Advice For Clients: A Designer’s Value
Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance, form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form. –Paul Rand
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How To Work With Purchase Orders
You’ve landed a highly-desired big name client and they’ve sent you a purchase order. What is a purchase order, and how do you work with
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How To Manage Your Brand
In Part 1 of this article I focused on what a brand is, and the visual and conceptual components of an effective brand. Brand is
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Three Things To Do Before Responding To An Unhappy Client
Has something like this ever happened to you? You have a solid, signed written contract with your client that includes payment terms and penalties for
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Which is Better for Self-Promotion: Email or Mailers?
Self-promotion is an ordinary and necessary aspect of doing business as an independent creative professional. Unlike social media marketing, self-promotion campaigns are targeted to contacts
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How To Use Change Orders To Manage Freelance Projects
When I first learned about the power of change orders it changed everything in my workflow. When I implemented the practice, I actually began looking
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Creating Lovability
How can you invest your product or service with “lovability” and create devotion in your customers? Here are some options: Love it yourself. If you’re
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Why You Need To Love Your Tools
A colleague recently switched from the PC to the Mac, from Windows and Android to OS X and iOS. There’s always a learning curve when
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Should You Display Your Pricing On Your Website?
Every project and every client is different. Freelance creatives need to consider the unique needs and objectives of each client when determining their fees.
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Good Success
The Practice and Principle of Accomplishing Something Upon learning about what I do by trade, an employed acquaintance asked with some concern, “But will you
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10 Proven Networking Strategies for Introverts (and Everyone Else)
Building a business requires connection with people: prospective clients, colleagues, mentors, customers, and sometimes even family members. When we connect, we share information, ideas and
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How to Save on Gasoline by Freelancing
You probably already know that you can deduct mileage as a business expense. But did you know that, if you work from home, all mileage
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How Much Will It Cost?
All too often a business or organization seeks a designer to execute an untested, unrefined idea as quickly and cheaply as possible. A business that’s design-oriented will not regard design as an afterthought but as the basis for its marketing communications and brand awareness.
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How To Build An Effective Professional Network
When you’re in business (and freelancers are in business), you build reputation through social and in-person networking. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a network is a
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The Designer and the Relief Pitcher
If you know me well, you know that baseball is my favorite sport, and I often employ baseball analogies to explain concepts to students and
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5 Stages of Customer Loyalty
To be meaningful, design needs to connect on five successive levels of significance…
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How To Overcome Overwhelm
Did you know that most freelancers struggle with time management, project management, and getting things done — on time? With margin? We deal on a
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Green Scheduling: 6 Tips for Sustaining Your Creative Time
Design your time. Time is wasted when we do the wrong thing at the wrong time. It’s easier to keep your time boundaries and your well-being intact if you plan ahead.
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Your Website’s Magnificent 7
Like any design, websites are experienced. Your goal should be to provide the best experience to the largest percentage of people who visit your site.
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