Stop calling yourself a freelancer. A lot of clients perceive freelancers as cheap, replaceable, and low quality. Embrace what you actually are. You are a creative business. You are a business owner. A lot of you listening to this right now might call yourself a photographer or a videographer, and that is the bulk of the service that you deliver.
Personally, I'm mainly a product photographer. I do video here and there, but I don't call myself a photographer. I'm a creative business owner. Now, in your head, this may sound like a small distinction and you might think it doesn't impact your business or your clients or your rates.
What you call yourself has a direct impact on how much you can charge and how you are perceived by clients. By the end of this podcast, you'll be convinced that you should stop calling yourself a freelancer and start embracing the reality of what you actually are.
I'm going to be using freelance photographer as the example here, but this is applicable to any type of creative field. When clients hear the word freelancer, they immediately have some sort of perception of. When they hear freelance photographer, they think of someone that sets up some lights, pushes a button on their camera, then loads the photos into their computer and sends them to the client.
This is what freelance photographer sounds like. They wear one hat and the client wants to pay them for that one skillset. . The reality of a freelance photographer is much different. You don't just push a camera button. You need creative direction before the shoot begins. You want to take the photos that you think are good marketing materials in terms of creative direction.
Are we going to be using harsh light or soft light for the shoot? What colors and what types of props are we using? You need to be able to set up a scene and style it with the client's products. After the photos are taken, you're editing them in Lightroom and in Photoshop, in just a short section. I described all the different roles that you play, and when you call yourself a freelance photographer, you're not doing yourself justice.
You are not a freelance photographer. You are a freelance creative director, a freelance marketer, a freelance editor, a freelance re toucher. You get the point here. The problem with calling yourself a freelance photographer is that the client doesn't know all that goes into the. , they hear freelance photographer.
They think you just press a button and they assign a price tag in their head based on what they think that should cost. And sure, you can try and explain all that you do to a client and get them to really understand what you do, but there's an easier and more effective way. Just call yourself a creative business.
Call yourself a photo production company. Call yourself an agency. These words carry a different. words matter. And when you call yourself a freelancer, that hinders how much you can charge per project. When you call yourself a business owner, uh, agency, a production company, you can charge a lot more for that work.
You wear a lot of hats in your work. You wanna make it clear from the very. What you do by calling yourself a creative business, you automatically come off as more expensive and you will attract higher tier clients. There's no reason to make this harder than it actually has to be. It's very hard to get clients.
There's a lot of competition out there. Do whatever you can to stand out. Let's face it, low budget clients tend to be a pain to work with. They want everything done their way. They micromanage and they don't trust you. Now, I'm kind of generalizing here, but that's been mainly my experience. It's 80 20, 20% will be great, but 80% of these low budget clients you won't want to work with.
That's where higher ticket clients come in. Hire ticket clients are a lot easier to work. They're paying you a lot of money, so they assume that you know what you're doing. It's your perception of value. You have a perceived value. When you charge a certain amount, you charge what an expert charges. You gain their trust, and they're not going to try and micromanage you by presenting yourself as a business rather than as a freelancer, you come off as more professional and you earn the client's trust.
In turn, you're able to deliver a much better end result to your clients because they trust that you will.
How exactly are you delivering this better result? Well, when you're not being micromanaged, you can think clearly and do your best work By calling yourself a creative business, not only are you going to make more money for yourself, but you're going to provide a much better experience for the client.
And that's really what's all about, right? Providing the best service possible for our clients. We got into this business to help our clients and make some money for our. So we want to make sure we check both of those boxes. What we call ourselves is such an easy way to improve our perception from clients.
Let me tell you about how I made the shift. Personally, what have I, mentors told me from the very beginning to call myself a creative business, but I didn't fully embrace this for a long time. I was referring to myself.
As just a freelance photographer. My business name was Chris Pieta photo. I had this for the longest time. The problem with Chris Pieta photo is that it comes off as a freelance photographer. It's just one person behind the camera taking the photos. The first impression that clients got was that I probably wasn't as expensive as the big agencies out there, and that was fine for the beginning.
I was still getting my footing in the door. I was still willing to take on any client that came my way, and I was okay with this for the first few months, but then I couldn't land any bigger clients. I was struggling, so I made the shift. I went from solo photographer calling myself Chris Pieta photo. To calling myself Pieta Productions.
This was going to be my new company name. Pieta Productions was more than just one person behind the camera. Pieta Productions would be the company that creates ideas for your brand, executes on these ideas, and gets your results. . After I made this shift in just my name, I immediately noticed I had a new perception from my potential clients.
Piano Productions was a bigger company offering a more premium service, but behind the curtain, not much changed. I was still doing all the same work I was doing before. I was still behind the camera. I was still editing. I was doing all this stuff myself. I was just presenting myself as a production company rather than a free.
And I wasn't lying here. I would do all that production company does. Pretty soon after I started calling myself this, my team actually grew to four people. We provided production company service, and we charged way more for it than Chris Pieta photo did. And because I changed my name to Pierre Productions.
I felt compelled to actually grow my team. I knew that I could hire people on and that I would represent my company better to my clients because we had a team behind my name. Now, I didn't have a big team. I just had four people and most of them were part-time. We had an editor. For a photography, a video editor, a sales rep, and only one of those was a full-time position.
The other two just worked on a per project basis. We provided production company services, and we were able to charge way more than Chris Petta photo would've charged. This entire shift came just as a result of me calling myself a business rather than a free. There was a shift in my client's minds and in my own mind that second point is pretty important here.
I had a new perception of myself. I gained confidence in myself that I didn't have before. By such a simple switch of just calling my name, I was able to do all of this for my business. And you can do this too. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. Wouldn't you much rather be called a business owner rather than a freelancer.
Both of these words carry meaning in your own head. When you begin to think of yourself as a business owner, you'll see areas of your own business improve. What do most businesses have? They have a team of people. As a creative business owner, you should be building out your own team as. Now, this doesn't have to be a team of full-time employees like I was talking about.
This can be just a few contractors that you find off of work and they help with your editing. They don't have to work for you for 40 hours a week. Maybe they just help out five hours a week to start, and you go from there. My first hire was a photo editor and she's still with me to this day, and she's just been in.
As a business owner, you begin to think in terms of what is best for the business. By hiring an editor, you realize that you can save a bunch of time. You no longer have to deal with the tedious, time consuming edits. by paying someone else to do it. You save yourself time and that save time can be devoted to getting more clients.
It can be devoted to producing better quality photos. You can expand your service offerings as a creative business owner. You're building out a team, you're still wearing a bunch of hats, so it makes sense to refer to yourself as the owner. But like I said earlier, you're not just a photographer. You are responsible for sales and marketing for your own business.
You're responsible for making the best marketing photos for your clients. You're doing creative direction, styling, shooting, all these different things. When you view yourself as someone who is greater than just a freelancer, you see a shift in your thinking. Suddenly you feel like you're capable of so much more.
The ceiling has been raised, and now there's a new top of the mountain to get to all because of a simple change in the language you used to describe. You've allowed yourself to take on this new responsibility, this new title to Embrace You are now building a company. That's all I got today. Thank you so much for listening.
Please rate the show on Spotify Apple Podcast wherever you're listening to. It really helps spread the message to more people, and I'll see you in the next episode.
