Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks

Should Freelance Graphic Designers Handle Female and Male Clients Differently?

For the most part, female and male clients are different and they should be managed differently. They act different, talk different, and often expect different results from working with their freelance graphic designers. This isn’t to say that one is better than another – they are equal, but different.

Should you assume that when you work with a male client that you have to be analytical and conventional, and with female clients you have to get in touch with “your feelings”?

Of course not. People are individuals. While there are guidelines in how to deal with females versus males, that’s all they are: guidelines.

Below are some guidelines I’ve come up with from years of working with clients – direct observation from working with over one hundred male and female clients each. Again, one client isn’t better than another one, and there are MANY exceptions to the rule, but this is what I’ve learned and use as guidelines:

I’ve tried to be as politically correct and yet fair and honest about both sexes. Feel free to post your comments, but please don’t call the “PC Police” – these are observations, not facts. I know there are exceptions to the rule, that’s why I’ve called these “guidelines”.

Female Clients:

• I use the word “feel” more
• Emotionally driven
• Want to enjoy the process
• Need you to pay attention to them
• Task oriented
• Change their minds a little more
• I give comfort, reassurance
• Have to feel good about the project and working with you

Male Clients:

• I use the word “think” more
• Logically driven
• Want to get good results
• Need you to hit deadlines
• Results oriented
• Change their minds a little less
• I give facts, figures
• Have to feel good about the results

Action Step for You: Make a list of your clients right now: males on one side of the page and females on the other. Next, think about common characteristics of each group - can you see similarities in the way each group acts, talks and thinks? If you can see similar behaviors, etc. with either the female or male group how should that shift how you work with them in the future?

Special note: the Being a Starving Artist Sucks book will be available in pdf form BEFORE the official release date of August 31, 2007. The book isn’t an 50 or 80 page flyer that gives you some quick tidbits – it’s not even 200, 300 or 400 pages...it’s 500 pages on the dot. That’s a butt load of content that’s all geared towards making you a more successful designer.

Be sure to check back over the next couple of weeks and find out first hand what people are saying about it.

It Shouldn't be a Mystery: Why Some Freelancer Designers Get Hired and Some Not

A business coach, who has now become a good friend, hired me on to help her design for a few of her clients. She’s well-known and respected in the business community, and I am sure she knows at least a dozen different designers, so I asked her, “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you select me to help you?”

Here’s what I got back:
•    I like you
•    I trust you
•    I know people that trust you
•    You didn’t try to sell me on something when we’ve run into each other
•    You’ve always seemed more concerned in what you can give rather than what you can get
•    Oh, and lastly – I like your work (notice this was the last thing she mentioned)

This woman hired me because of who I was as a person, not my company. People do business with those they know, like and trust. I know why I get hired, and I can almost predict when it’s going to happen.

How about you? Do you know why people hire you?

Note: Not all people have this exclusive set of criteria, some are more speed conscious and others are perhaps price conscious. However, if potential clients don’t like you and trust you – buckle up, being a freelancer’s going to be a rough ride.

Shameless, Being a Starving Artist Sucks book reference:
Page 67, How to quickly and easily deal with a client that is totally pissed off - and I've dealt with my share over the years.

A Potential Client is on the Phone and Wants to Meet – How Will You Know He/She is Worth Your Time?

I had a potential client call me a few days ago, he was referred over by a mutual friend. This guy’d done his homework, he’d looked at my web site, read my articles and was all but sold on the idea that I was the guy he wanted to hire. After talking with me for 20 minutes on the phone he was even more convinced I was the designer for his business.

One problem though, it takes two people to agree that we’re a match, and I wasn’t so sure. From years in the business I know who is a good client for me and who isn’t. I know what characteristics they exhibit, what values they have, how intelligent they are and how long they’ve been in business.

This doesn’t mean that people who are not a good fit for me are bad, or that people have to have some status level to work with me. What it does mean is that over time I cataloged which potential clients were good fits for me, and which ones weren’t. Then I looked for common threads as to why some were good fits and some weren’t.

Anyway, this guy’s convinced he wants to hire me. He requests that I meet him in his part of town (which is coincidentally 30 minutes away – 1 hr round trip). The guy seems nice, he’s intelligent and is energetic about his business – but he’s a bad fit for me, and I know it. Even after I suggested I might not be the best fit for him, he insisted that we meet.

I didn’t take the bait – I trusted my gut and my past findings. Instead, I suggest to him that he look at other firms, shop around a little. If he still felt that I was a good fit after shopping, we can continue talking. It turns out he meet with 3-4 other designers who either had no idea if he was a good fit or not, or we’re fooled into thinking he was a good fit for them. The guy wasted a lot of his own time and theirs. He contacted me a couple of weeks later and said he abandoned the project because everyone was too expensive – a common result with some people.

Fortunately I had a system and a strategy in place to see this coming. Instead of wasting 2-4 hours in a meaningless meeting like these other designers, I didn’t waste a lot of time on a bad client.

What strategies and systems do you have in place to make sure this doesn’t happen to you?
Do you know SPECIFICALLY who makes a good client for you, and why?
Would it frustrate you to waste several hours of your day meeting with people that were never a good fit for you to begin with?

I had enough of meeting with all the wrong people so I did something about it. I documented some of my favorite strategies so I don’t waste valuable time. I address this in detail in the Being a Starving Artist Sucks book. You’ll be able to see my examples, and I’ll help you determine your own criteria for deciding who’s a good client. If this section alone could save you avoid throwing AT LEAST 10 hours away meeting the wrong people, would it be worth it to buy?

If you're not ready to buy the book, focus on:

• Identify your good clients and those people that didn't work out so well
• List out as many characteristics (age, income, intelligence) about both groups
• Look for common threads
• Keep a list of your findings by the phone so when you're talking to a new potential client, you'll be able to look at your list of common threads and be able to identify who's a good/bad fit before you waste hours

How’s Your Phone Message – Fantastic or Forgettable?

Get a little clever with the message you leave on your business voice mail. Everyone knows that if you don't pick up your busy. Why waste time telling them that? Instead, why not leave an impression on people that call - something that reflects your personality and the value that you provide clients that work with you.

On my message I tell people who call that I am working hard for a client when they call, but if they leave a message I'll make certain I'll call them back promptly and work just as hard for them. This approach works for me because of my personality, here are some other ideas for you:

• Quickly mention the greatest value that clients get from working with you
• List a special web page that callers can immediately check out for free, valuable information
• Provide an interesting tip about design, etc.
• Provide callers with a quote of the week, or word of the week
• Share with callers a quick testimonial you've recently received from a satisfied client
• Say something funny or off the wall if it matches your personality

 Whatever you decide, make sure it's uniquely you. You're a designer so have fun with it. The last thing you want to do is to come across boring, stuffy and forgettably average.

It's Official - Talent Alone Will Not Make You a Rich, Successful Freelance Graphic Designer

Business has been good lately – really good. And I’d finally made the decision to bring on another designer to help out with the additional work. It wasn’t long after we posted the ad online that inquiries, resumes and portfolios started pouring in. What was surprising to me was the number of talented – I mean REALLY talented freelancers that were looking for more work because they weren’t bringing in enough business.

These guys were terrific artists and yet they didn’t have enough work to keep them busy – it’s kind of depressing to see this. It’s amazing to me how many talented designers out there are starving – that’s why I wrote the Being a Starving Artist Sucks book. Staving does suck, especially if you know you’re a talented artist.

It occurs to me that there can be a number of reasons why talented designers are starving, however; there are 2 primary reasons:

1. Designers know what they need to do to be successful, to bring in business and to make good money as a freelancer, and they choose not to do it.

2. Designers have developed their skills in color, layout, HTML, software, etc, but they don’t have the expertise or the business savvy to bring in business and to make a crap load of money.

Truth is, there a lot of designers in both categories. The bottom line is there are a load of great designers out there that are starving, they can either choose to do something about it or pray that things will get better doing what they are doing. Most of them will choose to do nothing or pick up a tidbit here and there on the Internet – never realizing their true potential to be successful.

What's your strategy for becoming a more successful designer?

If you don't have a plan, and you're not taking action to get help, can you expect that you will all of a sudden become successful?

Are You Sending Proofs in RGB? Be Prepared for Clients Complaining about Dull Colors

Have you ever had a client complain that their printed artwork wasn’t nearly as vibrant as the proofs you sent them over the computer? It’s happened to me before, and it’s a pain in the butt to explain to clients after the fact why their artwork wasn’t as bright as they thought it should be.

Of course the problem is the color space on a monitor (RGB) will allow more colors in the spectrum than (CYMK). Both color spaces reproduce color differently: RGB is additive and CYMK is subtractive...but none of that matters to your client, all she/he cares about is that the brochure you designed, “Looks dull or washed out.”

You’ll of course want to address color proofing with your client before the project begins, this will save you from having to try to explain yourself after the artwork’s been printed. Another trick you might want to consider is if you are working in an RGB color space in let’s say Photoshop, make sure before you send all of your proofs that you quickly change the color space to CMYK, then change it back to RGB. If you do this you’ll remove the colors that fall outside the CMYK spectrum. The reason why you change the artwork back to RGB after going to CMYK is because it will reduce your file size (3 channels in RGB versus 4 in CMYK), and no, going back to RGB will not make the vibrant colors come back.

Taking this added step will give your clients a much more realistic view of what their artwork will look like when printed – if only you could get them to accurately color calibrate their monitors J

Do You Make it Easy or Difficult for Clients to Hire You?

I’ve just about had it with the chair I have in my office. It’s one of those $97 plastic/leather chairs from Office Max or Staples, I can’t remember. A lot of work is coming in and I am finding I am spending more and more time in the office, in my $97 uncomfortable, cheap chair, so earlier this week I finally decided to spring for a state of the art high-end chair.

After looking around online I settled on a Herman Miller chair: an impressive looking but expensive chair that looks more like something you’d see out of Star Wars than Office Space. I searched their web site (which isn’t very user friendly) to find a local store to buy one of the chairs. After finding what I was looking for I contacted the closest location to me and found that they only carry 1-3 chairs in stock at any given time, and if I wanted to see them I would need to set up an appointment. Furthermore, if I wanted to order the chair it would take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

What?!?!? You’re telling me I am going to drop $1000 on a chair and you’re going to make me jump through hoops to get it?

I politely told the sales rep on the telephone that I would be going elsewhere. This got me thinking about how people buy from me and other freelance designers – do I make it easy to buy from me, do you?

Action Item for Today: Step back and take a look at how your clients buy from you, do you make it easy for them to hire you?

Bad Ads: Why Freelance Designers Might Not Be Getting Clients from Their Printed Ads

Do you use these phrases in your marketing and adverting?

* We're the fastest
* Best service
* Get the job done right
* Largest selection
* Most convenient
* We're experts

Don't get me wrong, these are good qualities to have, but how often have you gone through a magazine or telephone book and sifted though countless ads that all looked and said the same thing? With no separation, no distinction, and no way to tell one business from another; it was hard to choose a business wasn't it? That's largely because the businesses were using overused, tired phrases called platitudes (listed above), that have little influence in getting prospects to act. When this happens, we as prospects can’t tell which designer is better than another, they get confused and become disinterested, which translates to a lot of wasted money and no clients to show for it.

By unwittingly using platitudes in marketing and advertising, you're in effect telling your prospects that there really isn't any difference between you and the competition, and there's no real reason they should choose to do business with you. If your marketing and advertising says the same thing as everyone else, you'll blend in and get lost in the crowd, and you’ll end up starving.

You can conclude that in order to get more customers or better customers as well as get the absolute most out of your marketing and advertising dollars, you have to discover and bring out what's unique about you.