[00:00:00] I don't care if you're starting a photography business, videography, design, editing business. These three skills are ones that you need to become a creative freelancer or a creative entrepreneur. If you want to actually succeed as a freelancer, these three skills will be critical. I came into this game with none of these, but over time I was able to learn and increase my skillset.
Let's get into it. Welcome to the creative biz launch podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale it to six figures, whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here. Creative business is a tough game to get into. There's never been more competition out there.
The barrier to entry has been lowered. And only the best people are making it. By learning these skills I'm about to teach you, you'll be able to gain leverage and actually make a living doing something that you love. By the way, my name is Chris Pieta. I run a production company and teach creative business and product photography online.
I know why you're here. When I decided I wanted to work for myself and start my own business, I knew nothing about [00:01:00] business. I was great at photography and I had other things going for me. But I thought that would be easy to get clients. I thought that my photography skills would be enough to land clients and actually make money.
While it's true that you might get some clients just because you're really, really good, you won't be able to make enough money by doing this full time. If you only focus on your photography or your core skill, we need to learn other skills. These skills will focus on increasing our ability to work.
We'll learn how to get clients. And we'll be able to learn skills that will help us get us through those really tough times. Let's get into it. So everyone has the same 24 hours in their day. You have the same 24 hours as Elon Musk. You have the same 24 hours as me. How do you choose to use your time and stay organized?
That is going to be critical to your success of your business. A creative business has so many moving parts. You're reaching out to clients. You're following up with clients. You're creating concepts for clients, organizing shoots, adding final assets, all this [00:02:00] stuff, the list goes on and on. So how do you stay organized?
Well, if you can stay organized. I know I wasn't the most organized person in the world when I was starting my business. Back in college, I was that kid who crammed for exams the day before. I didn't care to use my time as effectively as I could. But when I started my business, this had to change. So, let's start with the basics.
Use a calendar. Google Calendar is free, and you should be putting everything in there. Meeting up with friends, that's a calendar event. Sales call, calendar event. Client shoot, that is a calendar event. The last thing you want to happen is to miss a sales call because you forgot about it. Using a calendar to stay organized is a non negotiable.
There are a lot of ways to stay organized and different things will work for different people. But I love using just basic to do list because it ensures that I don't miss any tasks that I have to do. It also lets me transfer my tasks from my head onto a to do list and clear my head of that task. That means I don't have to be thinking about what I'm doing in the future, [00:03:00] only about what I'm doing in the moment.
Then, when I have to do another task, I just look at my to do list. Pick one and then go at it further. If you have any client projects, then get some sort of project management software. I use notion to stay organized on that front. You don't want to miss a client project because you forgot about it.
Level two of this is putting all of your to do's in your calendar. Yes. We want to have all our meetings in our calendar. but we can also schedule every single second of our day in there and be super, super productive. Okay. So once you're somewhat organized, you'll be able to use your time way more effectively as well.
You need to become aware of how things eat away your time and what to focus on. It's super common for entrepreneurs to work all day. And at the end of the day, Feel like they didn't accomplish much. This is coming from focusing on the wrong things. You might even be procrastinating doing the difficult work.
Maybe taking photos to update your portfolio is probably a lot more fun for you than spending time reaching out to [00:04:00] clients, but that doesn't move the needle forward. Spending an hour to email 10 new companies. Is a way better use of your time than updating your portfolio for the 10th time, you're going to have to identify what actually moves the needle forward inside your business and what is just busy work that doesn't do anything.
There's a difference between working all day and working productively. You can work all day long and not really get much done. Sure. You'll be busy all day and you might feel like you're exhausted. But at the end of the day, there might not be anything to show for it versus working productively, focusing actually on the things that matter, identify what matters, and then focus on that relentlessly.
Now, once you've been in business for a while, you're going to learn a lot more ways to free up your time to help you focus on the important stuff. For me, I free up my time by paying my team to do stuff that isn't worth it for me to do. Exhibit A is editing. Editing photos takes a very long time, and if I could spend that time trying to acquire clients, then I'll be able to pay my team and make a profit on top of that [00:05:00] because I'm leveraging my time in a smart way.
You can also do this with automations and other ways with software. I'm only able to do this because I'm pretty organized. When you start getting a lot CRM, or customer relationship management software. This is a great way to keep track of all those potential clients, current clients, and people to reach out to in the future.
I've got hundreds and hundreds of contacts in my own CRM, and there's no way I could actually keep track of all that in my head. I recommend using a CRM like HubSpot or my personal favorite, Close, and these things will make your life a lot easier. Don't go into those CRMs that are made specifically for creatives because From my perspective, when I used those, they just weren't enough software.
Um, they didn't have the features that I actually needed. Use a proper CRM. I recommend Close, but there's a bunch of other ones, um, that you can Google and find.
Okay, a CRM is great. But what if you don't have any clients yet? Let's talk about client acquisition. [00:06:00] Client acquisition is going to be the most important skill that you learn. When I started, I knew absolutely nothing about this. I thought clients were supposed to come to me if my portfolio was good enough.
Well, luckily I didn't fall into this trap of thinking that clients were supposed to come to me over the past few years. I've been able to work with over 50 brands and only three of those came to me. If I'm remembering correctly, definitely less than five. I learned sales and marketing so that I could acquire these clients myself.
If I waited for them to come to me, I just wouldn't have a business and I wouldn't be teaching you right now. Now, as a creative, sales probably has a negative image in your mind, but it's not what you think. Initially, when I was thinking about sales, I thought that was being like the wolf of Wall Street, just shoving things down people's throats.
And I want to tell you right now that sales is nothing like this. Sales is way more about matchmaking. The goal is to identify clients that have a problem that you can solve. Finding people that need new photography and you pitching yourself to them is a great match. Pitching clients that already have it [00:07:00] all figured out probably won't get you far.
I'm a product photographer for food and beverage brands. And for me. Sales means reaching out to food and beverage brands that are small to medium sized companies. All the positive responses I get are usually clients that either need to upgrade their photography to the next level, replace their current photography, or find a new photographer for whatever reason.
Or they're coming out with a new product that they want photos for. And a lot of the time we also just work on their social media presence and work in that capacity. So in each of these problems, or sorry, in each of these situations, the client has a problem here. I come in with a promise that I can solve that problem.
I'm not coming in, begging or forcing them to buy my service. I'm just presenting them. What I can offer and I let them decide if I'm the best option. If I did my job, right. As a salesperson, they're going to see that I can help them. And that's where the money they spend with me comes in and they'll get a positive return on that investment.
So I come in, I offer this service. They can see how this will help them and they'll get a [00:08:00] positive ROI on, uh, working with me. Right? So sales is nothing to be intimidated about. I have plenty of videos on my YouTube channel about this topic. And there's even a free workshop linked in the show notes, so you can grab that and learn sales yourself.
Now, I recommend you check out, um, all those resources because sales is such a big part of the client acquisition process. Now, the second part of the client acquisition process is marketing. I do think sales is much more important, especially early on, but marketing should not be overlooked. Sales gets you clients early on marketing, gets you clients one or two years down the road.
If you're a creative, then I'm assuming that you're already marketing. You just don't realize it. If you have an Instagram page or a TikTok where you post your work, well, congrats, that's marketing. You're building a brand image for yourself. You're sharing the work that you do. Potential clients see this and they decide whether or not they want to work with you.
Where a lot of people go wrong in their marketing is trying to appeal to every audience out there. [00:09:00] Photographers will tend to post everything from portraits to landscapes to product photos. And this is terrible marketing. You're all over the place. Your portfolio needs to be niched down so you can appeal to a certain industry.
Just like you don't want your dentist to also be your doctor. You wouldn't trust a photographer offering every service out there. You wouldn't be perceived as an expert. Make sure that your marketing is niched down. For me, I'm a product photographer, but I don't stop there. I target the food and beverage space.
I own the space. I'm the expert in the space and brands see that. Your website should be hyper focused. On this as well. And you should be offering a couple services for this one niche. If you're going to focus on any of the three skills I talk about today, make it client acquisition, because if you can't acquire clients, your business will fail.
You won't make any money and getting clients in the door is going to be the key to a profitable company. And sales and marketing is how you get those clients. And honestly, learning sales was one of the best things I learned through my entrepreneurial journey. I know that my business will always be okay because I know how to sell.
Now let's talk [00:10:00] about number three here. The third skill we need is perseverance. Starting a business is hard. Owning a successful business is even harder. There's a reason why something like 90 percent of businesses fail in the first five years, you're going to need a lot of perseverance. Things are going to be tough.
Things are not going to go your way. You're going to have dry spells, where it feels like every client rejects you. You're going to need to persevere through this. I've had quarters where I signed maybe a couple clients and thought that things were headed downhill, but I kept putting in the work and the next quarter I would sign a client a week.
You need to persevere through these tough times because the easier times will come. If I told you that you're going to have to work hard for a year, And for that entire year, feel like you're not getting anywhere in your business. Would you still do this at the end of that year? You would have progressed and succeeded in business, but it would take one year of rejection after rejection to get to that point.
That's the kind of perseverance I'm talking about here. Early on, you'll come home. You'll be tired from your nine to five. And the couch is going to look really, really comfy. Are you going to choose Netflix or your business [00:11:00] in the morning? When an alarm clock rings before your job, are you going to choose to sleep or your business month after month after month of this?
Will you be able to persevere and keep it up? This is what you're signing up for. You can build perseverance by doing the stuff over and over and over again. You can also build it through other areas of your life. For me, I built a lot of my perseverance through my fitness journey.
To prove to myself that I could do this. I signed up for an Ironman triathlon and trained every single day for a year. And after that 14 something hour race, I knew what it took to start a business. Now, I'm not saying go and sign up for an Ironman, but there are ways you can build perseverance in the morning, spend the last 30 seconds of your shower on cold water, build mental toughness, do things that are difficult on purpose to build perseverance, build habits that are uncomfortable, seek discomfort.
And through this discomfort, you will grow. It will build up your perseverance to push through and see your business through the end.
Now, if you're still listening to this, you probably have what it takes. So congrats. You want to face this [00:12:00] challenge head on. Entrepreneurship is a path that's tough, but there's nothing else like it. I love every single day I get to work. I know I'm building something special. I'm helping loads and loads of people all around the world.
And that's an amazing feeling. If you've got any value of this, please drop a rating. It takes 10 seconds and it's going to help another entrepreneur out. That's all I got today. My name is Chris Pieta, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
