I’m self-taught and have no qualifications in art or design. A lot of people have asked me how I did it.

Here’s the story…

Since around the age of four, I’ve enjoyed drawing and making art, especially pictures of buildings and landscapes…

…I also loved volcanoes in school.

After school, I was at a crossroads. I needed to decide on whether I wanted to study art or
geography.

I chose geography because it seemed more
sensible.

When the course ended, I decided to study ‘Real Estate’ because I had watched loads of tv
programmes featuring building houses and
Sarah Beeny.

‘Urban Geo-Block’, 2011

…This was partly for fun, but also so that I could make pocket money through royalties earned from a stock illustration site.

Making illustrations to be sold made me think about what worked commercially, and forced me to develop a style that stood out.

‘Kidney Island’, 2010

Within a couple of years I had a portfolio of 350 illustrations on the site, earning me enough to buy sweets and pay the rent each month.

This also got me some commissions and I soon quit working in an office and set out to work for myself.

‘Fishing Gear’, 2006

For the next few years I paid the bills by making pictures of monkeys, undersea creatures,
landscapes and buildings, for various people.

I learnt so much about promotion and the business of illustration in a short time, that I decided to write a book and set up a website to help other creative people: the one you’re reading!

On Google+ itself, I soon got into a conversation with a future designer at Google.

He liked my work and was interested in the other projects I was working on, except the ones where I was taking pictures of my cat.

When he got hired by Google, he dropped my monkey illustrations in front of the head of design at Google+, and a while later, I was offered the job via video chat, while snarfing sushi in Tokyo.

And that’s my Google story.

Takeaways:

Be aware of early interests and talents.

College training can be really useful, unless it’s not.

Doing interesting things that are useful to people will be useful for you.

Making friends with people in the right places can change your life.

‘Snow Apes’, 2007

Do share this with people who might be interested, and join the newsletter above for regular tips for creative people who make cool things.

Thank you for reading!

Alex (March, 2013)

Instead of butcher his vision with my attempt at a description of it, I’ll let you peak into his world, here. Genius is…

What follows might come as a reminder of your brilliance but it could also be a reality adjustment for some of you. The aim here is to reveal some of the things that turn away people from the art that you create, so that you can start with greater clarity to really make the most of what you can offer the world.*

*This is not to say that I regard my own work to be great; I still feel I have only just started. We are all in this together and I too am learning every day.

Some of these reasons are common sense. Some of it might really help you; some might surprise you and some of it you’ll see is pretty unfair. This is the nature of the art world, and it is also dependant on the specific industry you’re in, with some being a lot more reliant on trend than others.

Despite all this, it is my aim that you come away from this with a refreshed sense of what you might be doing wrong, what you are getting right and what you can do to put yourself in the best possible position.

Here we go…

1. It’s not refined yet

You simply haven’t got to a stage where your style and presentation of the work you do is honed and refined. This means you reach a point where your work possesses a level of clarity and is distinctly your own. This takes time and practice, but people will notice when you get there.

2. It’s not targeted

Not having an idea of who the end user or admirer of your creations actually is, will muddy your decision-making process and affect the clarity and message behind your work.

“Art, especially the visual stuff, requires some grasp of colour, light and layout.”

3. It’s been done already

Emulating and taking from other artists early on as you develop a style and a voice is perfectly fine, in my view. But don’t expect people to fall head over heels for your stuff if it isn’t original.

4. You don’t understand light/colour balance and composition

Art, especially the visual stuff, requires some grasp of colour, light and layout. In writing, the equivalent would be along the lines of pacing and sentence structure. These compositional ‘rules’ apply to all other forms of creative work.

Make sure you ‘get’ these basics before expecting people to like what it is you do.

5. You don’t know why are doing something

Knowing ‘why’ means having an understanding of how your art will serve the end user. I use the term ‘user’ in a broad sense, encompassing admirers and fans, as well as users of a product. For example, in understanding what message you are putting across to readers of a magazine to which you are providing illustrations.

Knowing why in this way creates real clarity of purpose, which will have a direct effect on the work you create.

6. It lacks consistency

Having some form of consistency in what you produce is important. People recognise your style, it builds credibility as an artist, strengthens your brand, and looks professional.

Staying focused in this regard is therefore important.

7. You’re not making sacrifices

It’s not everyone who has the balls to consistently make truly great work. Some things need switching off in order for your own creative spark to flourish long enough to ignite into fire.

Strategically saying no to things that obstruct this is very necessary. You very likely know what these things are.

8. It’s not fashionable

This is when it helps to be aware of what kinds of things people are drawn to at any point in time.

I’m not an advocate of shifting your style according to fashions. These come and go, and the real artist is the one that is leading or bypassing the trends. Just make sure you aren’t working to a style that is clearly emulating something that isn’t fashionable in your corner any longer.

“Look towards something greater than yourself.”

9. Your portfolio is poor

Cut out the stuff that is subtracting from the quality and excellence of your portfolio collection. Don’t include crap work and keep work of different mediums, or entirely different styles within separate portfolios.

Overlapping painting and photography within a single collection, for example, will only serve to detract from the clarity that you are aiming to achieve as a creative pro.

10. You lack a purpose

Know why it is you do what you do at a level beyond the end user experience.

Look towards something greater than yourself. Take pictures professionally to contribute to society, over solely making you look good. A solid purpose in this way will motivate you, thus leading to better work, and work that people are drawn to who also share your purpose.

11. You aren’t well known

Whether you like it or not, there is a lot of power rooted in people knowing you and talking about you. Your work literally will appear more appealing to people if they know other people talk positively about it, well beyond someone’s rational response to a piece of art.

This is helped through building up credibility and exposure over time through the work you create, putting up testimonials, the way in which you promote yourself, meeting people, and just getting your name out there.

12. You’re just creating

There is a difference between simply creating something new, and creating something new that builds on your previous work or experiences. What made Picasso fascinating was not simply a single painting of his. His whole body of work was interesting to so many because of the progression he’d show in what he was creating.

Ernest Hemingway drew a huge amount out of his personal experiences during wartime and from his time in Africa. These were things that added great depth to his writing, even though he apparently wrote a lot of poor stuff before getting highly skilled over time. Think about how this applies to you.

“Don’t expect to be brilliant in a short space of time.”

13. You don’t present it well

Take care over the presentation surrounding all of your work. This means a well designed website and a portfolio that demonstrates real care and pride has gone into it. Good presentation is half the battle.

14. You haven’t given it enough time and practice

Don’t expect to be brilliant in a short space of time. There’s no side-stepping around improvement through putting in the hours and minutes, and practice in honing a style and a skill. It takes time. Know this, and enjoy the journey.

15. You don’t understand ‘cool’

In the ‘Red Lemon Manifesto’, I talked about the importance of grasping the concept of ‘cool’ and incorporating it into your art and the presentation of your art. I talked about cool as the fascinating quality that encapsulates an up to date awareness of what really interests people, and being original, honest and authentic as you go about delivering it.

This awareness is not something anyone is simply born with. Put in the research; learn about what your people like; and you can generate cool work.

Different audiences are matched to different forms of cool, which is why it pays to know what type of person reacts well to your work and tailor what you do towards them, instead of trying to reach everyone.

When a few people react to your work with an: ‘oh, that’s so cool!’ response, you know you’ve cracked it.

“When you achieve skill in something, you switch from observer to owner.”

16. It lacks emotion

This means your art either fails to transmit any of your own emotion conveyed through the work, or it fails to kindle any emotional response in the person experiencing your art. Both are important.

17. It lacks skill

This ties in with practicing over time, but deserves to be mentioned on its own. Skill is something that, by its very nature, requires ongoing, repetitive practice. After some time, you get to a certain level at which the way you work could be considered skillful. Prior to this, you are an observer and a student.

When you achieve skill in something, you switch from observer to owner, and your creations take on a whole new form.

18. The work itself lacks care

Ok, so there is such a thing as creative licence, and this plays a role in dimming the line between interesting and experimental work and poor skill, but if you are genuinely not putting everything you have into taking care over your creations, this will cheapen them.

The result? Work that isn’t made to its full potential, and unhappy customers and/or disinterested viewers.

“Understand your user too. Understand them really well.”

19. You aren’t generating exposure

You’ve heard it before. If you don’t put in the effort to get eyeballs in front of your work (and the right kinds of eyeballs at that), no matter how masterful the work is, you won’t get very far in terms of gaining a positive response from people, let alone any response.

This applies to all your best work, because if you promote one piece well, but no one knows your other work, and have therefore not grown in approval of you (including through social proof), that piece may not generate the response it deserves.

People are funny creatures, and react with some distrust towards things they are unfamiliar with. People respond better to things they trust; and this leads to good previous exposure of your art.

20. You are too interested in yourself

An ego-driven creative process can be great, if you make good use of emotional energy and express it through the work. But be careful about how self-interest can harm the experience other people have of what you do.

Perhaps you are making things that are of interest to you, but will it interest others? Understand your user too. Understand them really well.

21. You lack passion for your work

The passion, obsession or interest you have for what you do is undoubtedly felt by others through what you create. If you have none, it will show, so find something to get passionate, ideally obsessed, about. It makes actually getting work done easier too.

22. You don’t do much else interesting

The art you make is almost, if not as important, as the stuff you do that forms the context around it. Do fun, unusual, weird, exciting things with your life outside of the work you do, and make people aware of it too. It will make a difference as to how people perceive you, and also your art.

“Remain focused on making more with less.”

23. You are seeking approval

There is a fine line between creating with an understanding of what makes people tick, and creating with the specific intention of impressing people. When you are seeking approval, you are only focused on outcome, and you are trying to do something specific based on a preconceived idea of what you think people like, instead of letting the work flow naturally from you.

The danger lies in diverting your attention away from the process of creating. The perfect balance lies in knowing why you’re creating (to spread joy? To make people think? To inspire? To inform?) whilst maintaining a solid presence with the work.

Granted, finding this balance is one of the more complicated aspects of creating good and meaningful work, where feedback over time can be the best guide.

Approval will come after you quit trying, and simply do.

24. You spread yourself too thinly

The best art springs out of a determination to remain focused on making more with less. Taking on too much will inevitably result in less concerted effort placed on more stuff, and your work will suffer as a result.

Get really good at one thing. Excel at one thing, before moving on to the next if you must. All else is distraction.

25. You aren’t aware of the world around you

Maintaining a healthy interest in the world around us and the knowledge accrued through doing so will add a depth to your art and the service you provide for the better. I wrote in another post that eradicating ignorance is one of the biggest hurdles to progress of any kind. It will likely benefit your creativity too.

26. You take it too seriously

This is easier said than done if you care a great deal for your craft. However, often the thing you need most in improving the quality of your work is to shift your mindset. Make a conscious decision to enjoy your process, your business, your customers.

Calming down and seeing the joy in what you do will have a profound effect on your output.

I could probably write much more on this topic, but I’ll stop here for now. These points demonstrate that creating likeable, loved art is not restricted to the gifted few, but available to anyone who makes conscientious steps in making it happen.

An awareness of what works and what impedes your progress can make all the difference in how others respond to your creative contribution to the world.

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As always, I’m interested in seeing your feedback and your thoughts, which you can add to the comments area below. Do sign up to the tips newsletter and share this post via social media too. I will be very grateful.

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Surveys are showing (at least in parts of the world with better access to technology) people having fewer close friends on average than ever before. Smart phones, information availability, entertainment, social media and other forms of technology are having an effect on our ability to interact effectively with real people in the real world. If you work independently as a freelancer, these issues can be even more real.

It is becoming easier and easier to avoid taking what I call ‘social courage’.

On the other hand, the benefits of social skills are unquestionable, not least in feeling a greater sense of connection with our fellow human (which is vital for happiness) but for pushing ahead in life and career. Some of the most noticeable strides taken forward in life, rely on social leverage and talking to people.

Many of you will have no trouble in social settings, but there is virtually no one who wouldn’t stand to improve. So I’ve put together a list of things that all require a certain level of this courage. The beautiful thing about taking courage is the fact that you will receive an equal measure of confidence for taking that courage, in return. As in, you do an act of courage, and the energy taken, will translate directly into confidence through improved self-image. It’s how we work.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself.

Taking courage in small steps, will generate confidence in you in small bits, and this can apply to anything that is new or potentially frightening to you. You will get more confident. But you need to actually take action. Forget therapy, reading about it, talking about it and worrying. Just choose what to do and go and physically do it.

The following are some ways, including some unconventional ways, to begin building social confidence, so that you can gradually feel more and more at ease, socially. You will feel the difference.

I’ve listed these in an order of roughly increasingly difficulty, but that is just my opinion, so it is up to you how you use this. Pick and choose. Start easy, from what generates some fear in you, and lean into it. Take small steps. You will benefit more by repeating ‘tasks’ until they no longer create a lot of anxiety for you. Do a task fifty times if you feel you need to.

Slowly desensitise yourself to what makes you uncomfortable in this way (namely, worrying about what others think) and you might just thank me at the end.

Here are some things to work on:

• Ask someone for the time / directions
• Give money to a busker or beggar
• Ask someone to watch your stuff at a public place
• Start a course in something new
• Call someone you’ve never spoken to before
• Start a brief conversation with a cashier/similar
• Ask a stranger for change from a money note
• Record a video of you speaking that will go public, such as youtube
• Call your bank and ask them to lower credit card rates
• Ask for food that is not on the menu at a restaurant
• Do pressups or jumping jacks in a public space (this is to desensitise over self-consciousness. You do it; you realise the world doesn’t end; you gain confidence, and you move on.)
• Compliment someone in public
• Take improvisation classes
• Sell something you own to someone in the street
• Dress radically different for a day
• Ask for a discount before you buy something
• Take dancing classes
• Offer to help someone you don’t know to carry their groceries
• Organise an event or meetup
• Offer to give advice to a stranger
• Ask someone new you are attracted to out for a coffee
• Start a conversation with someone in public
• Offer to get interviewed on a blog, either podcast or video interview
• Interview someone on a podcast or video
• Offer to give a talk on a subject you know about
• Do stand up comedy

If you can knock off several of these, especially more than once, you will instantly see the effects.

Beyond this list, you can get creative and think of your own things to do that are uncomfortable. This takes bravery, but the rewards are huge. The important thing is to do stuff that could potentially lead to discomfort or even rejection. Being comfortable with rejection is the real driving force behind all this. Knowing that rejection is ok, is liberating in itself. Know this!

There’s one other thing that many of you know but that I wanted to include here, in terms of how you interact with people. Bring out the best in others. Go out looking to build confidence in other people, and suddenly all your own insecurities will fade. It’s not all about you.

Get out there and own your life, step by step.

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It was a fresh, drizzly January evening in East London when I made the decision to return to Japan for a longer stint as soon as I was able. I’d been twice before. Once in 2007 on a solo trip for ten days, and again to Japan and Korea with two friends for a month in 2010. My interest in Japan: its food, its culture, its people, its ‘Japaneseness’ had grown stronger with each visit. It’s funny how certain places tighten their grip around you the more you reciprocate your own interest for them.

There was nothing about London that I wanted to leave. I loved where I was living and was perfectly content with London-life. London will always be home for me. It must have been a longing for extended adventure in a place other than home that I knew I would love, coupled with a realisation that my freelance work could take me anywhere in the world.

“My freelance work could take me anywhere in the world.”

In all my ‘busyness’ over the past few years I had been oblivious of the fact that I had reached a stage where I was completely footloose and not really tied to any particular location. Having seen ‘location independent’ people like Tim Ferriss and Colin Wright in action, I wanted to see whether this kind of unattached freedom, whilst still earning, was really possible.

Two months later (including a month of focused saving), having moved out and found lodgers to live in my London pad, acquired a ‘Working Holiday Visa’ and organised my stay in a Tokyo monthly apartment I touched down at Narita airport in Japan.

There is nothing like the nervous thrill of finding yourself on the other side of the world with no contacts, facing almost a year in an environment that was still completely extraterrestrial to me. Even the vegetation in Japan is different to what I’ve known.

“There is nothing like the nervous thrill of finding yourself on the other side of the world with no contacts.”

I don’t plan for this post to be a short novel (perhaps another time), and wanting to spare the time-conscious reader a large piece of their day, I’m going to break things down into the trip’s highlights. Then I’ll share some important lessons learnt, particularly in the interest of the intrepid amongst you who are considering an undertaking of something similar.

The important thing for me is to show you what is possible, and that it is possible.

So here are the partial highlights…

• Happening upon a traditional Japanese wedding procession at midday in the grounds of the very special Meiji Jingu shrine in Yoyogi Park, Tokyo.

• Perusing the entire original set of artwork for the Akira manga by comic legend Katsuhiro Otomo at an exhibition in Tokyo’s garish and ‘geeky’ (Otaku) Akihabara district. There were thousands of pages of original, beautifully inked artwork to look at. Then comparing this on another occasion at the National Museum with a set of traditional woodblock prints and comparing the similarities.

• Trekking to the crater of Mount Fuji in pouring rain, before enjoying the satisfaction of a bowl of Ramen noodles at the peak.
• Having tea and cakes overlooking the intense Shinjuku urban jungle from the 40th floor of the Park Hyatt hotel, where the film ‘Lost in Translation’ was set.
• An awkward, yet comical game of dice, figurines and cards with a dressed-up Japanese maid in a ‘meido cafe’.
• Blurry-eyed 8am train travel with suited commuters going to work; I returning home after a night’s dancing in Shibuya.

• Learning to surf in the Pacific with local Japanese surfers.
• Having the ‘world’s busiest transport hub’, Shinjuku station as one of the half-way points on my jogs.
• Splashing through a very early morning Tsukiji market, the world’s largest fish market, marvelling at the extraordinarily rich selection of sea creatures that the Japanese haul out of their oceans every morning. These beautiful offerings of the sea would end up on the serving platters of hundreds of sushi restaurants across Tokyo that very day.

• Yelling to Radiohead playing an electric night-time gig at FujiRock festival to the backdrop of the Japanese alps and lightening in the sky.
• Looking out over the entire city from my ‘office’ in the Academy Hills library on the 49th floor of the beautiful Mori Tower in Roppongi.
• Meditation on a sunny November day on a mountaintop in full view of a crystal clear Mount Fuji.

• A trip over to Kyoto and Kanazawa to see Geisha and blood red maple leaves on the bullet train via beautiful alpine countryside, with a stop at a Space Odyssey-style capsule hotel.

• Witnessed a Japanese ‘salaryman’ who was so drunk at 9pm that he fell between two train carriages, before being swiftly yanked back onto the platform by attendants.
• Experiencing around 15 substantial earthquakes and tremors over the space of 9 months, culminating in a 7.3 Richter earthquake at the end of my stay that caused a small Tsunami and had me running out of my building out onto the streets in my socks.

• Making new friends, expats and locals, including some neighbourhood cats, and sharing these amazing experiences with great people.

Lessons learnt as a freelancer in Japan (these thoughts are my own opinions):

• The process of dropping everything and moving somewhere is not as stressful as it might seem. Obviously it’s easier the more location-flexible you are with the work you do, but for many freelancers, this is just a case of taking your laptop with you. For me, I needed to find people to live in my place in London so that my mortgage payments were covered, and find somewhere reasonable to live in advance. That was basically it.
• Getting a permit to work (in this case, using a ‘working holiday visa’) in Japan as a UK resident was very quick and easy. You simply need to demonstrate your ability to support yourself for the length of time you plan to stay, as well as your interest in Japan.

• Accommodation is not cheap in Tokyo, but if you’re ok with sharing, or living somewhere small, it’s not that bad. Monthly apartment schemes run through English-speaking agencies are great for short-term stays.
• What you put in you will get out. The sense of fulfilment you get from independent travel, is directly proportional to the effort you put into things like going out and trying new experiences, learning the language and making new connections.
• I found my interest in Japan and it’s seemingly contradictory way growing deeper the longer I stayed. Tokyo is certainly never short on being fascinating, especially from a ‘Western’ viewpoint.

• Traveling (and living, for that matter) extremely light is the way. The only way.
• Japan is a great base from which to explore other parts of the world, including China (like I did during my time there), Korea and Southeast Asia (photo below taken in Shanghai, during my visit there).

• Japanese green tea is surprisingly addictive, and the fibre is great for you.
• It is possible to work anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection for many types of freelance work, including in my case, digital illustration and writing. Just make sure you are legally allowed to work in a place, and I would recommend finding somewhere other than your own home to work in. For me, it was a desk overlooking Tokyo from up high. Magic!

• Learning to speak Japanese is very logical and, with practice, could almost be considered easy.
• There is enormous satisfaction to be felt in living somewhere that is unfamiliar, and sharing the experience with others.
• Opportunities for local freelance work like being a tv extra, teaching, and voice over work, available in Tokyo (and presumably other cities in Japan) are vast if you know where to look. Refer to David Chester’s excellent site and book: ‘Freelancing in Tokyo’.

For anyone with an interest in travelling the world, whilst continuing to earn money as a freelancer, you need to first ask yourself what is stopping you. More often than not, a lot of the things we think are barriers to doing so can be overcome and dealt with with relative ease.

Preparing for and actually going somewhere requires logical sense. It will be more challenging I suppose in going to the Congo as a travel writer than to the Maldives, and for all the technical details you need, this is where your research and contacts come in useful.

I would also say to embrace the pressure and sense of fear you might have as well. Not really knowing what you are in for can help you get focused even more, and you will likely be surprised at what you can get out of your time spent overseas as a freelancer when you feel out of place.

I challenge you to allocate some time out of your year to experience the sense of aliveness that comes through combining work with travel.

Bon Voyage!

Thank you so much to everyone who put in the time to write a review for the new book. Congratulations to Lisa Ahlstedt from Knoxville, USA for her review of Promo 3.0. Your free brand new Kindle Paperwhite device will make its way to you shortly!

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This is a quick announcement!

My new book: ‘Promo 3.0: Why Creatives are Failing at Promoting their Art, and How to Attract Buyers and Fans in a Modern World‘ has been accepted by Amazon’s Kindle. As such, you can now buy it for ultra-cheap there.

I’m aware many of you have already downloaded and read the pdf-version of ‘Promo 3.0‘, but as I’m a brand new Amazon author, I’m asking anyone to help me out with writing a quick Amazon review for the book. You can either refer to your own pdf copy, or download the ebook via the site first.

Obviously with more reviews, the more credibility the book gets, and the more eyeballs it, and the important message contained within, receives. I would hugely appreciate your help on getting this out to the world, especially if you enjoyed the read.

Win a Kindle!

I’m offering a brand new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite E-reader for one of you who can take a second to review it. The winner will be announced early in the New Year.

To leave a review, and be in for a chance of winning your Kindle:

- Go to the book page here (or find your country’s equivalent of the book page from there),

- Scroll down to beneath the customer reviews, and click the ‘Write a Customer Review Button‘.

- You need to be signed in with an active account. This way I will also be able to find the winner by name.

- Write your honest review in the box and hit publish!

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Good luck and thank you so much!

Having seen responses to various questions from hundreds of you, it is obvious that problems with clients rank high on the list of frustrations for creative people. Such issues range from being paid too little and late, being under-appreciated as providers of important services and things of real cultural value, miscommunication, ignorance, being dropped at the last minute, downright abuse, being unable to find them, and lack of respect.

Poor clients can be a real source of stress for many of us (not meant in the financial sense, though some of them could be! We’re talking about those people who we provide a product or service in exchange for cash).

For the most part, the ‘clients’ we deal with who give us grief are inexperienced.

They will likely be new to hiring and working with people and immature to the needs and the system behind a functioning relationship between client and service or product provider (that’s us). Think of a poor or difficult client you worked with in the past. It’s likely they were amateurs. For those of you in the process of working out your target client, simply knowing this will already help you get more focused in who to target your services towards.

Before you think of this post as an all out rant at horrid client monsters, know that many clients work with freelancers and others with the best intentions, and for the most part are perfectly nice people. The problem will most often be found in their inexperience and unfamiliarity with working with contractors effectively.

The reason many of us end up with these kinds of people is through a combination of an absence of options, and a lack of personal standards. Let’s look briefly at having options first…

Options

We might be new to the search for clients right at the start of a freelance career, be pressured to bring in extra income, be short on time and unclear about what it is we want and how to proceed.

We jump at the opportunity to make some money on any project and with any client when we are short on choice, desperate, overwhelmed and/or clueless about our direction and in terms of what to prioritise. In this case we often end up serving the client more than entering into an agreement that benefits us mutually.

What are more options? Simply having more potential clients to choose from, so that potentially poor clients can be dropped, with choices as backups, if they crop up in the first place. This kind of ‘weeding out’, has the benefit of forcing poorer clients to improve the way they do business as well.

Having more people approaching us more often, or within our thriving network, means that we as service-providers are in the cockpit, as opposed to falling at the feet of the first prospect to come and offer us a job. We may well be satisfied with a single client who provides us with on-going, well-paid work, year round. But the danger lies in the risk of losing that client overnight, and then being faced with a lack of options.

“Having more people approaching us more often, or within our thriving network, means that we as service-providers are in control.”

This is why it is important to maintain a healthy range of choices for you in the form of prospects, ‘warm leads’, and strong connections. This is the first component in minimising poor clients in your career.

So how to increase the options you have? After obviously working on presenting a quality product or service, this is through making people in your target market aware that you and your quality product exist. In other words, self promotion.

Now don’t fear, self promotion doesn’t have to be cringey and ‘salesy’. The form of self promotion I always advocate, what I call ‘Promo 3.0’, involves a softer, more organic form of growing real and relevant connections into a thriving network. I talk more about this in my book, which you can download here.

With the right kind of promotion, directed at the kinds of people you aspire to work with, you’ll be making ideal clients aware of you, whilst cutting out the chance of working with those you wouldn’t want to, all at the same time.

Having options on their own can be a very solid deterrent to working with poor clients, but is massively strengthened by exerting your own standards too.

Personal and Business Standards

Closely intertwined with lacking options, is not having certain standards in place that help clarify to both the client and yourself, how it is you operate as a professional. A standard that you set as a freelancer could be in not working at a weekend, only working with those who agree to sign a contract, charging for transferral of copyrights, or only working with people who agree to pay an up-front payment of 50% overall fee of the project, for example.

Having a set of standards benefits you in two ways.

Standards help guide the screening process for clients who approach you (once you have created further options, discussed previously) so that you weed out potentially poor clients. Secondly, having clear standards will demonstrate your professionalism and dedication to work (and your craft), which will have the effect of attracting the better clients anyway.

The standards, boundaries and conditions that you set will be incorporated into your interaction with prospects, as well as being displayed anywhere that people can see them when considering whether to work with you, such is within your website’s ‘About’ page and for more technical aspects, your ‘Terms and Conditions’.

Standards do not just appear as written rules, but are also felt through the way you deal with prospects, the character that you show and the attitude you possess. High character will inevitably and often attract clients with similar character maturity. Exhibiting a good attitude can have a strong effect on how others talk about and refer you.

“Standards do not just appear as written rules, but are also felt through the way you deal with prospects, the character that you show and the attitude you possess.”

If you have options, then there is no need to panic about losing a client if they don’t fit in with the standards you have set. As long as you promote yourself regularly with an understanding of your target client, keep standards reasonable and comfortable to you, and you deliver them in a professional manner, you’ll be attracting the right clients consistently.

Do add your thoughts and experiences in the comments area below.

Having discovered the functional beauty of using apps (software applications such as ‘Habit Streak’ on Android) to help chart the progress I make with my own habits in improving myself and contributing to the world, I felt it a good moment to turn to a set of habits that can be specifically meaningful to creative professionals reading Red Lemon Club.

The following habits range from daily steps you can take that benefit your creativity, as well as those that will have positive effects on the more technical aspects of your business. Overall, however, I’ve put together what I feel are a set of actions that complement each other very well.

Connect with 5 people

Reach out to five people that serve to gain from your expertise or that simply might gain from knowing you. Connect in some way through a simple greeting or introduction (as long as you are relevant to what they do), or better yet, giving some kind of value.

I talk a lot about this is my small book: ‘Promo 3.0’, which you can download here.

This needn’t take buckets of time. This is a daily thing, and small connections here and there over time is what separates the pros from the amateurs at self-promotion.

Do a self-assessment

Look over your recent work and put that against your older creative endeavours. Realise how much you’ve improved and how you intend to keep your style and craft evolving from this point on. Having a regular overview of where you’re at with your work like this will keep your momentum ticking nicely.

Record all your expenses

Often overlooked, and one of the harder habits to master, but the value that lies in this is huge. Knowing where all of your money is going will help you take charge of your spending and keep you on top of your finances. Being unaware of this is the biggest cause of money that runs away from you.

“Being unaware of your expenses is the biggest cause of money that runs away from you.”

This means writing down every single financial cost to you over the course of a day and recording it in a spreadsheet, app or somewhere else that is easily accessible.

Remind yourself of your personal mission

Read your personal life’s mission or purpose to yourself with gusto. I’ve written more about purpose in ‘Promo 3.0’.

Check your targets

Check in on your year’s and future goals and tweak if required. If you haven’t set any targets or goals, I would highly recommend you do so, and record them somewhere where you can see them every day, such as on Google’s document cloud: ‘Drive’ (previously Docs).

Seeing them every day will keep you focused on where it is you are going, as well as providing you with the opportunity to update them if you feel uncomfortable with what you have set for yourself.

Make a quick earnings assessment

Take a look at how much you have earned this month and how much more you need to earn in order to reach your designated minimum monthly income level (this is a term I just made up right now).

If you haven’t set a minimum amount you need to earn each month, to keep bills paid for, whilst enjoying a reasonable standard of living, you’ll want to get on that.

Checking in like this every day will make it very clear to you what is required in order to reach your threshold, and hopefully blast through it. A great habit to keep!

Clear your brain

Spend some time clearing your head through meditation, exercise, yoga or others. Your brain is like a machine that requires daily care. Caring for your brain involves a lot of things, but especially for the benefit of creative and focused-thinking, diverting your thoughts from unnecessary ones, is one of the best things you can do for yourself each day.

Educate yourself

Read a chapter or more of nonfiction that will benefit your career and your craft. Obviously fiction is great for expanding your imagination and unwinding, but there is so much goodness to be gleaned out of teaching ourselves a little bit every day, especially those things that directly benefit our ‘careers’.

Do something nice for someone else

This is simple one, but far too often do we take actions that are aimed at bettering our own lives. Help someone else out, give something to someone and improve the quality of someone else’s life with no strings attached.

Inevitably this will bring about a sense of wellbeing, good karma and even returned favours later on anyway.

Work on your masterpiece

Put away some time, even 5 minutes daily, to work on some personal creative work that you will be immensely proud of looking back over the rest of your life. Pieces of work that you put everything into will continually raise the bar in terms of what you can do, and will change the perspective others (friends, fans and potential clients and customers) have of you and your output.

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Even though I’ve provided what I think are 10 self-supporting habits, I’m always interested to hear from you and what other ideas for habits specifically for creative pros you might have, especially those that have worked for you. Do comment below! Thank you!