Freelance Editing Essentials: Launch and Build Your Video Editing Career with Confidence | Ryan Kao | Skillshare
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Freelance Editing Essentials: Launch and Build Your Video Editing Career with Confidence

teacher avatar Ryan Kao, Cinematographer, Video Editor

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:40

    • 2.

      Going Freelance

      11:06

    • 3.

      Decoding Editing Definitions and Terms

      5:58

    • 4.

      Choosing Your Editing Rate

      4:42

    • 5.

      Getting Started

      10:37

    • 6.

      Defining Success

      4:15

    • 7.

      Final Thoughts

      0:42

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About This Class

Find success as a freelance editor by combining the power of taste and technical knowledge. 

There are a lot of things Ryan Kao wishes he had known before starting his career as a freelance video editor and cinematographer. From learning editing essentials to finding his distinctive visual style to properly managing client projects and marketing himself on social media, developing skills like these have helped Ryan go on to secure opportunities with brands like Nike, Adidas, and IKEA as well as cultivate a community of almost 250K across YouTube and Instagram. 

Now, Ryan wants to share everything he’s learned about starting a career in freelance editing and things he wished he could’ve told himself when he got started. In this class, you’ll learn the must-knows of a successful video editing freelance career, common mistakes and pitfalls and how to avoid them, and general tools to help you develop strong client relationships. 

With Ryan as your guide, you’ll:

  • Decide which of the three video editor types you are
  • Discover key editing terms, skills, and definitions
  • Define your editing rate and what success means to you
  • Learn the exact steps to take to get your career started

Plus, Ryan will share a downloadable guidebook that will help you through your first few months of becoming a freelance video editor.

Whether you’ve been exploring the idea of freelance editing for a while and are looking for a way to jumpstart your career or you are an entry-level editor who is looking to gain more confidence and a better understanding of the industry, you’ll leave this class knowing what it’s like to be a full-time freelance editor and what actionable steps to take towards your dream career. 

No freelance editing experience is required to take this class. Some understanding of the video editing industry and video editing as a craft will be helpful but not necessary. Consider printing out your guidebook or bringing paper and a pen to take notes as you watch. Learn more about video editing in Ryan’s full Learning Path.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Ryan Kao

Cinematographer, Video Editor

Teacher

Ryan Kao is a cinematographer and video editor based in Los Angeles. What started as a simple childhood hobby over 15 years ago has grown into a thriving and transformative career as a full-time freelancer in the video industry. With cinematography and post-production work ranging from commercial, documentary, and narrative pieces. He is proud to say that his work has taken him all over the world. Making and learning from mistakes along the way has allowed him to discover some unique perspectives and strategies over the years. He's also been so honored to share his knowledge and experiences on YouTube with an audience of over 200,000 subscribers. This creative community has fueled his career beyond anything he could ever imagine possible, and he's beyond excited to share even more with ... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Finding success as a freelance editor is as much about your tastes and your instincts as it is about the technical knowledge and program experience. Since I've adopted that mindset, the growth that I've seen in my career is more than I ever would have expected. My name is Ryan Kao and I'm a freelance video editor and cinematographer. You may have seen some of my work on YouTube where I have a channel talking all about cinematography, video creation, kind of my entire journey as a freelancer. I regularly create branded content for companies like Nike, Jordan, Adidas, and as of more recently, have been getting into documentary and narrative filmmaking. In this class, I want to take you guys on a deep dive of what it's like to be a freelance video editor in today's industry. I want to take you through the tools, the definitions, the must-knows to building a successful freelance career. Talk about some of the mistakes, some of the common pitfalls that I see editors make, and most importantly, I want to give you some ways that you can help define success for yourself. I hope that walking away from this class, you are left with a more realistic understanding of the freelance industry, some general tools that will be absolutely critical with regards to communicating, to developing strong client relationships, and hopefully just a better sense of what you want to do with your career. I couldn't be more excited that you are here. Let's dive in. 2. Going Freelance: As an editor, you are effectively a professional puzzle builder or solver. This job comes with a high demand for on-the-fly problem-solving, excellent organization skills, a diverse understanding of various video formats and styles, and most importantly, a strong work ethic. In many ways, editing is as much about tastes and instincts as it is about your technical knowledge or program experience. Being six years into my career as a freelance video editor and cinematographer, I can honestly say there have been more unexpected roadblocks and hard-learned lessons in both my professional and personal life that I ever would have imagined possible. I've worked with many of my dream clients, I've cultivated a creative community of over 200,000 incredible people, I've traveled the world getting to do what I love. But along the way I've learned some incredibly pivotal things that have shaped my career into what it is today. So in today's class, I want to take you guys through some of the mistakes and the sticking points that I learned and hopefully equipped you with the tools that you need to start a successful career as a freelance editor. I think understanding the root of what type of an editor you are can really help you to grow past a lot of challenges and a lot of sticking points that you're likely to face. From my perspective, there are fundamentally three types of video editors. In all likelihood, you'll probably touch all of these throughout your career and there's certainly great benefit to being multifaceted with all of them. But the most successful editors, more often than not, tend to be quantified as one of these specifically. The first type of editor I like to refer to as a content editor. Now this is generally going to be a person who is doing work, whether it's social media, it's usually delivered to the web. That might be content for yourself, it might be content for somebody else's personal brand. This is usually going to be short-form work that doesn't typically have a lot of involvement in the pre-production process or a lot of significant story elements. The next type of editor are commercial editors. Now when I say commercial, I don't literally mean like a video that's airing on television. But more broad in the sense of purposefully marketed and strategized video content that is on behalf of a brand, something that exists in the world in the form of marketing or pushing a product or a service. This can be a huge range of things and it can be content that lives on social media, but it's ad spots, it's music videos, it could even be branded documentary work. The final type of editor, narrative editors, I think this one's a little self-explanatory. This is generally going to be people who are working on feature-length content, whether it's narrative films, whether it's documentaries. Generally speaking, this is going to be content with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and character development. So before moving on, if you take a look in the workbook, we have a table to help identify what type of editor you are. Place some checks next to some of those qualities to help determine what type of editor you currently are or you are aspiring to become. Before jumping in here, let's talk about some of the mistakes and the common pitfalls that I see a lot of entry-level editors in. The first of which being a lack of diversity in the work that you initially chose to take on. In the early years of my freelance career, there was this trend that was happening on social media, there were these things called cinemagraphs , maybe you've seen them. Basically it's a still image and there's a portion of it that's animated or has motion. So maybe think of a still image of a waterfall, but the water would be moving. I always thought this trend was not that exciting or interesting, so I never really decided to try it. Well, fast forward a little bit and wouldn't you know it, I was approached by a brand, pretty big brand Fitbit actually, to do a campaign for an ad that they wanted to do for 4th of July, and they wanted to create a cinemagraph. Well, I didn't have anything in my portfolio to show for that and so because of that lack of interest in trying these new things as an editor, I didn't get that job. That was definitely pretty disheartening because that would have been probably one of the more substantial projects I would have gotten at that time. It's important to start somewhere to broaden your skill set and try different things as an editor. Eventually, you'll come to the point where you decide to niche down. But that experience and diversity is so critical in those early years. A couple of ways you can go about doing this is maybe accept a couple of jobs at a lower rate. Even doing some stuff for free is never a bad thing. Or in some cases, you could even just do spec work, maybe just trying to find a trend of something that you see on social or a type of ad and try and mock it up with some of your own footage or existing footage from a past project. The next mistake, not practicing on your own time on a regular basis. It can become easy to let the editing be a day job once you start earning that consistent paycheck and making regular income with projects, it's a really great level to hit. But at the end of the day, so much of what we do heavily relies on our own personal creative identity and just general personal happiness to fuel the stories that we create. The next mistake, having unrefined communication skills or an ability to explain your decision-making in your creative process. Simply put, if you're not able to communicate your ideas, to be able to explain why a certain thing might work for a project to a client, but this other component might not work, that's going to severely hold you back in your ability to take on bigger and bigger jobs. The next not often seeking or even difficulty receiving feedback from your peers, from mentors, or even clients. If you're somebody who struggles with feeling really personally tied to some things that you create, and you have a hard time hearing sometimes negative feedback from a peer or a mentor or a client addressing that early on and figuring out how to see the positive criticism in the work that you create will help you so much in the long run. At the end of the day, so much of what we do is very personal. But being able to disassociate that personal connection and just actively take criticism from external sources, will only help you to improve. The final mistake, not expanding your creative network and I mean this in a variety of different ways. For one, if we're thinking about how we can learn and actively improve, having a circle around you who is encouraging you, who is creating work on a regular basis that's inspiring you. But also people who are giving you that feedback and criticism. That circle can help to cultivate stronger relationships. It can help you to develop a better sense of confidence within your own work. More often than not, when you do develop those relationships, they can oftentimes help you find clients. Word of mouth is such a strong thing when it comes to editors. Ironically, even though most of what we do is online, but just being close and cultivating strong relationships, the other people in the industry, even beyond just editors, maybe it's shooters, maybe it's producers, directors, writers. Those relationships can ultimately be what will help your career to thrive and to grow beyond what you're able to do solely on your own. Look a lot of those mistakes, they're not fun, we've all probably made them or are actively making them. But I want to flip things around a little bit and talk a little more positively and talk about some traits that you may have already that lend themselves well to professional video editing. The first one being a proficiency in a wide range of software and technology. I think it's no surprise that as editors we generally have to be very familiar with our primary editing program. But you'll find that there's going to be a lot of situations where maybe you need to pop into Photoshop to quickly edit a photo or a logo. Maybe there's a scenario where you need to be able to work within a spreadsheet to help fill out a project management board of some sort or a pre-production board. Being comfortable in a variety of different applications even being comfortable in two different types of video editing applications is an incredibly important attribute as a video editor. The next one, having natural storytelling skills, basically just your ability to understand narrative structures, to understand plots and emotions, and pacing. Being a regular movie watcher certainly helps. Or maybe you are one of those people in school that really liked to read, or maybe you were really into English or literature or something like that. These are all different traits that can really lend themselves to understanding and navigating projects as a video editor. Our next one, time management. Let's face it, some of us are very good at sticking to a rigid schedule and some of us aren't. I definitely have had my fair share of experiences of poor time management. As a freelancer, you are effectively your own boss. You're generally responsible for organizing your schedule, so being able to accurately assess how much work time you need to complete a certain project, how much time it's going to take you to get ready for prepping this project before going into final delivery. All of these things are so important and this punctuality is absolutely something that will get you recognized by clients. The final point is just simply adaptability. Earlier you heard me talk a little bit about how this job calls for being an on-the-fly problem solver. There's going to be so many situations in the freelancing workflow and lifestyle that you might run into small issues. Maybe you need to source footage from a weird location on a website or off the cloud. You're dealing with slow Wi-Fi, you're dealing with external family issues as you're working remotely, being able to manage those emotions and those awkward situations that don't necessarily fit in the job description as an editor is so valuable and absolutely will get you a little bit more credibility and trust within the client relationships that you're likely to encounter. After all of these mistakes and these different attributes that we've talked about in your cases workbooks, maybe mark down a few of your own personal strengths that you think lend itself well to being an editor, and maybe what are some of the challenges that you faced or the more difficult things that you have a harder time managing that you'd like to work on? Now that we've talked through some of the general lay of the land of Freelance Editor 101, let's jump into our next lesson, which is talking about some of the must-know tools and definitions that you're going to encounter as an editor. See you guys in the next lesson. 3. Decoding Editing Definitions and Terms: So to get ourselves prepared to tackle the landscape of freelancing in the post production world, I want to take you guys through some of my must know terms and tools; kind of specifically technical definitions and also client facing definitions that you're absolutely going to need to know to at least get the conversation started with potential clients or collaborating with other editors. Our first technical definition, time code. This is funny enough, kind of a scary one and certainly one I wasn't comfortable with for quite some time. It's a lot of numbers, but all it really is specific data source that both a camera and a sound file can hold that can allow them to sync together. I'm sure you've had to do it at one point. Syncing audio and video. More or less it's a headache. Time code simply just solves this. This is super important, obviously, if you're working in longer narrative projects where there's a lot of separate recorded sound and video files. Time code takes all of the guesswork out of all of that and can align everything for you. The next one, proxies. You're more than likely at some point going to use these as an editor. Let's say you're working on a project that was shot on a camera that has raw recording capabilities. The file sizes are massive and maybe your computer isn't capable of editing those files. Proxies are essentially a reduced resolution, much easier to edit copy of those video files. If you're sending stuff to video editors and they don't need all of that original data, then proxies are a great solution for this. Our next term selects, and think of these basically just like pulling the best parts of a video clip, the most usable sections. Usually what a lot of people do to get these selects is you would go into your source viewer in your editor, set an in and outpoint of that clip and drag that in. That is essentially your select. Our next term kind of nicely segues from selects and these are stringouts. Stringouts are basically just a rendered time line of all of your best footage. It can also be just all of the footage onto a singular timeline, but then that is exported as one long video clip and usually sent to a client. More often than not, you do this with things like interviews. Lay in all of the interview footage, the client can then view that as one big long file, pull timestamps, notes, any feedback that they might have relative to that footage to then share back to you. It's basically just a simple way to share a batch of footage, whether it's your selects or your master footage with the client for review. For our last technical term, XMLs. If you end up collaborating with other video editors or you're sending a project for somebody to add sound design, XMLs are something you're going to use. In a way, it is a universal file for you to share your timelines with other editors. Of course, if you're working inside of a program like Premiere and your other collaborative editor is also working in Premiere, it's simple enough to be able to share a project file. But if you're working between multiple programs, XMLs are, again, like a universal language to be able to share those timelines. Now that we've gotten through some of those technical terms, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the client facing terms and definitions. Things that you're going to have to know and understand when you're approaching a client or a new project. Our first one, scope of work. This effectively serves as a high level outline of the project, all the expectations and responsibilities. This is where you're generally going to see things like your rate, the timeline, the number of deliverables, and general production related info or deadlines. Even things like rights and usage or payment schedules. Think of this as just a master guide as to what you will be doing in that project, how you'll be compensated for it, what your responsibilities are, and what the client is going to be doing on their end. The next term while can sometimes be confused with scope of work is be creative brief or treatment. This is the document that you're actually going to get, the creative behind what you're going to execute as an editor. You'll generally receive this in the form of something like a Google Doc or sometimes a slides presentation, or sometimes just written in the body of an email. But you'll find things like references to past videos that the client's looking for. Kind of a general write up of the expectations of what they're looking to achieve within the edit, maybe resources to the different footage. Of course, there's likely to be some back and forth communication on some of these creative details, but this brief or this treatment usually serves as the North Star, kind of the reference that you will be going back to throughout the life of the project. This next one, it's not exactly fun, but we all got to deal with them, revisions. Once you finish an edit and you turn over a project to a client, they're going to have feedback. Now it's important that we are again, able to receive that feedback and interpret their notes and ask good questions. They're basically going to ask you to adjust certain things. Maybe remove a shot, maybe we want to adjust the timing of a certain clip or change some logos. These revisions can sometimes be significant, can sometimes be very small. But going through this revision process and knowing how to communicate on all of these revisions is definitely something that we need to know as editors. So now that we've gone through some of these must know definitions in terms, let's jump into our next lesson and talk through some of the first actionable steps to becoming a freelance video editor. 4. Choosing Your Editing Rate: All the terms aside, let's get into what you guys are probably most interested in. The numbers, rates specifically, are probably one of the more confusing parts of freelancing in basically any part of the video production industry. It all depends on various things like skill level, general experience, the type of project, and even your location. To get started, an entry level editor, somebody who's just getting familiar with the process of editing. They're still understanding the program and learning a little bit more each project they take on. These people will likely see somewhere in the range of 20 to maybe $50 an hour, or about 150 to maybe $500 per project. These are going to be things like small social edits. Maybe you're just quickly cutting together a little montage with some music. Maybe you're adding logos to the front and back of a video, maybe even subtitles on a long interview or something of that nature. This is generally going to be people who are doing that content editing. Our next step would be mid level editors. These are people with generally at least a few years of experience. They're probably pretty proficient in the video editing programs and will likely be taking on work that has a little bit more strategy in marketing behind them. These guys can probably expect somewhere in the range of 50 to $100 an hour, or about 500 to maybe $5,000 per project. These are things like low budget commercials, maybe music videos, small short films, or branded work. Finally, our highly skilled video editors. These are veteran people who have been working in the industry for a number of years. They're very proficient in various forms of editing. These are generally going to be more complex projects with more people involved in the production process. Usually you're working with a producer, a director, maybe even a writer. Once you reach that level of highly skilled editing where you're working with a lot of people in your post-production process, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be billing or quoting, or bidding on projects with an hourly rate. Generally, it's going to be a day rate or a project rate somewhere in the range of 5,000 to even 20,000 and above per project. Once you get in and get your rate established and where you fall in that tier as an editor, of course, there are going to be things that you will charge outside of beyond your normal rate. This could be things like rush jobs or rush fees, or maybe there's more revisions than was initially quoted in your scope of work. These are all things that you definitely need to understand and be able to discuss openly with a client. Keep in mind, it may make sense to charge different clients different amounts depending on the project. I think it's important to look at the differences between quoting for an hourly rate versus a day rate versus a project rate. Hourly rates I think makes sense if you're doing these small one off jobs where, again, maybe you're just adding subtitles to a video. Maybe you're just quickly cutting out some of the dead spaces in a long take. This is stuff that will maybe take you a couple of hours, and so in these instances, an hourly rate will probably make sense for you and for the client. For projects more complex beyond just a few hours of work can sometimes be a little bit difficult to quantify the exact amount of time that it will take you in a given day. For a general rule of thumb in these cases, I like to charge a day rate. The reason being is that it can sometimes be a little bit challenging to quantify the exact amount of work time that goes into a project in a given day, and so a day rate is a safe way to quote for these types of projects. Now to take it a step further, if a project requires an extensive amount of involvement from you in the pre-production process, or even the creative direction, then in these cases, it may make more sense to quote for the project as a whole. This can help you to account for that time that may extend outside of the general tasks as a video editor. But of course, when it comes to rates, there's not really a one size fits all solution. It would be great to have a perfect calculator that works for every project and how much you've charged. But being a successful freelancer really does rely on your ability to communicate with the project and help them to establish their needs and what we can do within their budget. 5. Getting Started: Now that we've gotten through the little bit more mundane, nitty gritty terms about the freelance editor 101, let's get to the more exciting part, the actionable steps that you guys can take even today to start your journey as a freelance video editor. The first one of course, simply make it known. If your goal is to be a video editor and begin getting paid jobs but there's nothing out there that's pointing to or saying that you are a video editor, how do you expect to find any clients? This would be like having an amazing restaurant on a busy road, but with no branding or signage on the front of the building, people would just walk right past without ever knowing it was there. Sharing that you're an editor can be as simple as just posting a project on your social media. It can be a personal or a paid project. An important thing to consider here though, is that if a website is where you primarily choose to share your work as an editor, the fact of the matter is that the visibility and searchability of your site versus the reach that you can receive on social media platforms just simply doesn't even compare. Take something that you've created, again, it can be a personal project, it doesn't have to be a client project, and post it on one of those platforms, maybe like Instagram, YouTube, even Twitter. These are all great outlets for you to share your work and make it publicly known to the world that you're a video editor and you're looking for work. The next step, develop a strong habit of experimentation. Spend less time researching and more time doing. This experimentation is the fuel that will continue to help you evolve and grow and refine your style as a video editor. A good way to approach this is to try and create something for yourself at least once a month, or just come up with some schedule for you to create content for yourself. If this started as a passion for you, then this habit will help you to keep that personal connection and keep it thriving and not turning into a day job that you'll burn out from. If it's purely a career opportunity for you, this is still a hugely beneficial practice, and at the end of all of it can help you to avoid niching down prematurely. While niching down can certainly have some pretty distinct advantages in a saturated video market, doing so prematurely can have some pretty significant drawbacks. The first of which being an increased potential for burnout. Simply put, doing a repetitive type of work or a certain type of project on a regular basis, while can yield a consistent paycheck, it can rob you of that excitement and creativity to continue growing and might put you in a bit of a creative rut. Niching down can also lead to a plateau in skill development. A good editor should be versatile and constantly adapting to the new genres and video formats and allowing their style to grow and change. Finally, it may create limited networking opportunities. Niching down puts you in a particular type of work and you're generally going to be working with the same people on a regular basis. This certainly makes the workflow easier, but this will limit you in your opportunities to discover new potential clients, new projects, or even just inspiration from other types of work. This leads me into my next actionable step, which is to expand your creative network. Learn from as many people as you can. But let's face it, it's not exactly easy to go about collaborating with new creators, reaching out to people for advice or guidance, so here's a few steps to help you in that process. First, research and discover. Take a day to spend some time looking for other freelancers in your creative field. YouTube and Instagram are both great places to do this. Find creators and brands who align with your current tastes and the goals within your work. While initially it may seem practical to search for just strictly video editors, it's hugely important to find other people in the video production process to learn from. You can look for video shooters, maybe even producers or directors. The best editors are ones who are generally familiar with all aspects of a videos production, and so having a network of people to learn from in each of those roles can help you to expand that network and be able to learn more and share that knowledge. When you're discovering new people, it's important to be mindful of reaching out to creators who might be a bit less accessible. It's tempting. You come across those incredible creators that are big in the industry, they're well known for what they do, they're posting incredible work. The truth is that those people are usually dealing with hundreds of messages a day, they're dealing with client communication, they're working on active projects, and so sometimes maybe you sent them a message and you didn't get a response. Just because they didn't get back to you doesn't mean that they aren't interested in chatting with you about what you're looking to talk with them about. Sometimes it just means that they are a little bit too busy. In order to go about this more effectively, try and find people who are maybe more close to your current skill level or even just a little bit higher than where you're at now. More often than not, dropping a message with those people is a better way to potentially start a new conversation. An important thing here to remember is be mindful about what you're trying to reach out to them about. Keep in mind that everybody has a busy schedule. I've found that maybe even just dropping a comment about something they're working on relating to something they're doing or giving them some praise on a project that they just shared. Things like that, responses and messages like that will definitely yield a higher chance of you getting a response. From there, you can begin to open up that conversation a little bit more. Maybe start asking some more specific questions or advice about your own work. One little trick that I've found in my years of doing this is find people and reach out to people who are local to you. Look, I get it, not everybody lives in a city with hundreds of people in the creative industry like Los Angeles or New York or something like that, but I think you'd be surprised if you spend a little bit of time researching your market, just how many other creators or editors there may be out there. Being local to somebody not only is more beneficial in the sense that you could possibly work with them or help them out in person in the future, but also it's just one way that you can relate to another person. How you can start doing this is of course maybe just location-specific searches on social media. You can even use Upwork and LinkedIn in to search for professionals in your area. Then you could also go on Facebook groups or meetup.com where you can find events that are usually specific to things that we do as creators. If there's one that's about video editing or just filmmaking as a whole, maybe see if you can check it out and go meet some other people and build that creative community around you. Now, learning from these new people that you're reaching out to, as much as I'd like to say, here's the questions you should ask, it's going to be different for every situation. But I think more importantly, I want to talk about some of the things you definitely shouldn't ask somebody if you're reaching out for the first time. The first one I think would be finances or specifics on project rates. I think it's a little bit of a difficult thing to talk about money and it's certainly not a pleasant one, especially if somebody's approaching you for the first time. I would probably avoid if you want to know how much somebody was paid for an edit or how much the budget was for that project, asking those types of questions right off the bat. Now it may seem obvious, but also just don't ask questions about people that you wouldn't want asked about yourself. Don't ask them about religious beliefs or politics, or family, or how long they've been working with somebody in particular. Don't ask questions or send long technical messages that take a significant amount of time to read. Again, keep things simple and keep things digestible, just be mindful of people's time. Our final actionable step is set your professional goalposts. It may seem obvious to some, but starting your journey as a freelancer, it's like getting in a car. If you don't have an end destination and you just start driving, you will eventually run out of gas at some point. Setting these intentions early on, whether they're big or small, is one of the best ways to establish a sense of direction and intention behind your freelance career. In all reality, a career goal post for just about everybody will likely have some amount of financial motivation. Let's say your goal is to simply hit $5,000 a month in consistent video work. That's great, but I think it's important to understand the route why, and how to go about achieving that goal. For me, in the earlier years of my career, I definitely had a lot of financial marks that I wanted to hit. But generally, I just didn't have much of an understanding as to how I wanted to achieve those things. Was it that I wanted to get more respect in the industry, therefore taking on higher-level projects? Was it that I wanted a more consistent schedule? Was it that maybe I wanted retainer clients that I didn't have to find on a month-to-month? Those have all changed and evolved with me over time. In recent years, I've found myself leaning more into the personal life impact of these goalposts. How am I able to manage a social life? How am I able to clock off at a certain time every day? Once you have the why and the real meaning and importance to you behind it, assigning a number to that goal can be a lot simpler to achieve. 6. Defining Success: Hey, success can look different for just about everyone. Everybody's journeys are their own. But here are a few marks of success and some questions that you can ask yourself to defining your own, meeting your financial goals. That's a huge one for many people. One way that I've quantified this in my own mind is the self-sustaining fire, as I like to call it. In a way, if you think about building a fire, you have to feed it kindling in order to get it burning. That combined with air flow, and eventually it will burn on its own for quite some time. Your career, in a way, can be compared to this. In the early phases, you do have to do a lot of work to keep it alive, to keep it burning. But once it gets to a point, you might be able to go hands off and maintain clients on a month to month and have consistent work with minimal effort in that outreach process. To me, once I've reached that point, and I'm bringing in enough work on a consistent basis that's covering my minimum monthly overhead, financially, that is my mark for financial success. That being said, I do think we'd all be lying to ourselves a little bit if we said that money wasn't a motivating factor when it came to starting a career as a freelance video editor. To give you guys a little bit of an insight to my career evolution. When I first started, maybe seven years ago, some of the first paid editing jobs I had was editing logs for other YouTubers. I think I was making maybe $100 for a 10-minute video that took me probably three or four days to edit. Fast-forward to now, I'm doing post-production for some of the most well recognized brand names in the world for well over five figures per project. As you start finding success as a freelancer, you start making more money, getting consistent work. It's important to do so in a way that's realistic and in a way that is sustainable for you in the long run. Using that little bit of extra time you had in a month to make just a little bit more money might not be worth risking your reputation and failing to deliver on a project because you're just that close to burning out. It's just as important to know how to say no to a project as it is to say yes to a project. But consider asking yourself that question. What is financial success to you? What do you hope to be able to earn out of your freelance career? Success can also mean a certain amount of work-life balance. How much are you able to do in a given week and still maintain a personal life? To still be able to connect with your family, to still have hobbies. Some people are amazing at working 40, 50, 60 hour weeks. But some people need that breathing room to stay creative and to stay motivated and determined to continue with their career, so ask yourself that. What is a good balance for you? How many hours do you want to work in a given week? When do you want us to be able to say, I'm done working for today, and I'm going to do things for myself now. Some other marks of success that you can ask yourself might be, are you proud of the work you're doing? Are you rooting for others in your field to win? Are you spending time chasing fun and not just chasing that next paycheck? Are you creating art regularly for yourself? Maybe even spending time online without that anxious fear of comparison, and instead, comparing yourself to previous versions of you instead of others. The question then becomes, is the work that you're doing creatively satisfying you? Are you able to maintain a good personal work-life balance in doing this, has the passion become a day job? I think that once you're able to confidently answer these questions for yourself, the doors really begin to open for the long term trajectory of your career. There's so many ways that we can define these things, but these are some great starting places to help you figure out your definition of success in your career. 7. Final Thoughts : That's it. We've made it through freelance editor one on one. I hope you guys were able to get a little bit more of an understanding of the landscape of the video industry and maybe get a bit more confidence in taking on your career as a freelance editor. I hope you guys check out the workbook and maybe share some of your pages. Maybe some revelations in the community page. Even meet some of the other editors that might be here and have some discussions If you want to dive deeper into what it takes to become a successful freelance editor, we've created a few more amazing classes. Hope to see you guys there.