Freelance Mastery: Skyrocket Your Design Biz

1. Introduction: Hey, my name is Jeremy Mura. I'm a designer and content creator based in Sydney, Australia, and I've been freelancing for nine years. In this class, how to run a freelance business for designers, I'm going to share with you my tips, tricks, strategies, and methods of running a freelance business on the day today. I'll share with you on how to set up your business and how to structure it. I'll give tips on how to present to clients. I'll share my process of how I manage my projects. I'll share with you my top freelance tools and apps. I'll be showing you my template and notion that I use. I'll also be sharing my top methods on how to attract high-paying clients and the key ways to price and charge for your work. If you're a freelancer or you're just starting out as a designer and you're launching out to the world of freelancing, then this course is for you. It's going to help you build that foundation so you can build a thriving desired business that generates income and generate results. If that's you, click on the enroll button and enroll today and we're going to get you launched out into the freelance world. [MUSIC] 2. How to set up business: Before jumping out as a freelancer, you need to set up yourself like a business. Now there are a few reasons why I suggest setting yourself up as a business and not do things dodgy and take cash in hand and do that type of stuff. You want to make sure that you do everything properly. Number 1, you'll take yourself more seriously. You'll start treating yourself like a business owner. You'll start thinking differently, and you'll just have more respect for yourself. Not only that, but others will see you as a professional as well, and they'll take you more seriously. If you set up your business number and you have a website and have everything looking nice and schmick, then people will see you as a professional and treat you like you do this as a full-time thing. Not only that, but you can pay your taxes properly, so you're going to actually contribute to society and not evade tax from the government. You don't want to do that, and you'll actually be in the system. Wherever country you live in, you'll be plugged into the system. Obviously, we try and break away from the system, get out of rat race, but you don't want to do things properly. You don't want to do things that are not right to the conscience. You want to make sure that you're living right and doing right. Not only that, but it's legal, and we want to do things according to how it's meant to be so we can do things properly and that we don't run a business that is just going to fail over time because we're just not doing the right things and building the right systems. Obviously, the world is mostly digital, so we need to make sure that everything is transparent and open and honest and online and people can search you as a business. The first thing that you want to do is actually register your business name. You need to come with a name. If it's just yourself, your personal brand, for example, me, it's just Jeremy Mirror. I can set up Jeremy Mirror Designs. I actually set up a name, I called it Mirror Design Core. I still got my surname in there. You can really call it anything. It doesn't really matter. It's just an umbrella name that you can use for your business activities, but make sure you register that. A lot of these links I'll be sharing is Australian-based, so just keep that in mind that a lot of the things are based on my experience and where I live, which is Sydney, Australia but you need to make sure that you check the links for your specific country, and area. Some of the things might not make sense, but I'm just going to show you the process of how I'll do it if you're in Australia and you might get some ideas on how to do it in your country. The website is register.business.gov.au. There's also third-party websites that help you to automatically, but I typically just go to the general websites from the government. It's just really easy. Number 2 is I'll get my domain name. I love purchasing domains from GoDaddy. They've always been good to me, and I love buying multiple domains on it. It's just really easy and it's affordable. You can spend $20 on a domain or even sometimes if you want to pay for three years or five years, you can get it for like 40 bucks or 50 bucks. It's pretty cheap and it's really simple. Make sure you definitely get your full name and then look for your agency name that you want. If you're going for the agency route, make sure you get that name fast because it can get taken. Then what you want to do is register your business number. For us, it's called an ABN, which is an Australian Business Number, and you want to register as a sole trader or a company. If you register as a sole trader, there's no startup fees apart from paying for advertising your name, which costs some money but sole trader is the easiest. It's a simple, one solopreneur, freelancer, a business owner. It's a really simple business structure, so I prefer to use that. Also, the taxes are a bit different as well, and I just like having just a simple way to approach it. Now if you do company there is fees paying $600, plus you have to register for all these other things. You've got to register for GST. If you have employees, you have to set up superannuation and tax and all these separate things that add on instead of the sole trader's structure, so just keep that in mind. Make sure that you register your business number and register what type of business structure you are going to be. Then what you need to do is figure out your taxes. For me, my sole trader taxes, I'll go to this website from the ATO, which is the Australian Tax Office, and I'll find out what's going to be my tax rate and what am I going to be paying? I want to hit certain income brackets. For me, this website helps me out there. I also like this website called the Pay Calculator. This helps me calculate my pay or salary for the year when it takes off the percentages and taxes and income and all those things and it does for me. I think that's a super cool tool for that. To find out more about a company versus sole trader, there is a link here on the screen that you can check out. This is obviously Australian-based, but there's always those differences, so make sure that you check them out. After you've done that, what I recommend doing is actually setting up a bank account. You want to make a separate bank account from your personal finances. Make sure that you set up a business account that has an income saver and also a debit. Usually, for me, I went with the Commonwealth Bank. It's a great Australian bank. I basically get two accounts. One is the main income account where I send all my income in and then I have the spending account which is for operating expenses when I pay for things for my business or things like that, or if I need to buy subscriptions or buy ghee for my office, then I use that card. It's a Mastercard debit card. Super useful, really great. Don't mix up your finance because personal and business, it's going to cause you a headache when you're doing your taxes later on, and it's just better for you because you're going to treat yourself like a real business and you're not going to spend all your money because it's separate. It's your business. It's an entity in itself, and you're going to treat it with respect. Make sure you set up a bank account, it's going to definitely help you. Now the last part is actually optional. You can opt-in to get insurance. Now there's two types of insurance. One is professional indemnity insurance and the other one is public liability. Public liability is usually for a bigger company or a company structure, and the professional indemnity is for solopreneurs if you're by yourself, a sole trader, sole proprietor. Now, it's optional to get this. I would recommend it just to save your back. Basically, it's insurance that you pay every month. There is a price. I got credit like $50 a month and it's inexpensive. But basically, if I design something, say for a small business and the logo was the same and I never knew that by accident and they try to sue me, then it's going to cover me for that or if you copied a design or something like that by accident, and you might get sued, then this is going to cover you for that. It rarely happens and I haven't really heard of my designer friends that have experienced that. It's really up to you if you want to spend the extra money and just be safe, I recommend doing that. Just another cool app for banking, Lance. Now, Lance is a business banking app. They're currently available in the US, but they are expanding to Australia, to Canada, and globally. Really they're a growing company and they're really great because you can actually automate all your finances and it all goes into one income and then you can make it go into different categories automatically. You can automate your taxes as well. It will pay your taxes automatically, and I think it's just really cool tool. But yeah. If you're in the US, definitely check the Lance app. I'll put a link as well in the project section, the resource section. Basically, that's how you set up your business. You can go simple, you can go complex. Whatever works for you, for your situation, just keep it simple. I personally recommend go do a sole trader and set up a business, that should be the main focus. 3. Creating your brand: [MUSIC] Once you are all set up and good to go, you need to develop and create your brand. Now, it doesn't matter if you want to go the personal brand route or the agency route. Personally, for me, I've done both. I used to brand myself as MURA DESIGN CO., but I've also branded myself as Jeremy Mura before. At the moment, what I'm doing is Jeremy Mura Designs. I'm going to share the pros and cons of both. If you've got to be a solo business owner and you have just your name, you're going to feel a bit smaller. It's not necessarily negative, but basically the clients will think they'll get to work with you one-on-one. It's more intimate. You're more agile fast because there's no team to marketing came to go through and self-adapt, and overall I feel like it suits me better. But here are the pros and cons of positioning yourself as a solo business or not, or a freelancer. It's easier to manage one person. You don't have workers for you. Sometimes you can outsource some work that's totally fine for freelance project. But overall, it's easier to manage one person than having multiple people. The other pro is that you have total control over the results. It doesn't have to go through someone else. You are overseeing the whole process from the mood board, to the strategy, to the design, to the delivery of the files. You control everything. Now if you're a person that likes that, then that's good. But if you're a person that likes having collaboration and creative thinking with other people, then you might want to grow as an agency. Now, the cons of being a solo business owner is actually your limited capacity. You can only take on a certain amount of clients or else you won't be able to get the work done, right? That's one of the things. Unless you outsource based on your knowledge and creativity. If you have other people that you work with, if you have a team, you can utilize and leverage their ideas in creative thinking, not just your own mind, but you have them to help you. Now, when you brand yourself as an agency here the pros and cons for that. Number 1, the pro is you can take on more clients because overall it's going to equal more revenue. More revenue equals more work obviously but overall, when you have more capacity, more ability to do the deliverables and tasks because you've got more people helping you. It's going to be easier to complete more projects, so you got to keep that in mind, but obviously you have to manage those people as well. You have to manage their thoughts, their thinking, their mindset, their emotions. You're dealing with people here, so it can be a bit tricky. You also will have more help, get more knowledge and more ideas. It also gives you space to focus on sales, proposals, templates, building your brand and building a business. Getting out there, going to events, reaching out to people. Because if you're just stuck by yourself doing all the design, then you won't have much time for creating content or creating sales pitches in proposals. When you have someone else that can do the design really well. Senior design or midway wherever it is, you can spend time on doing the business stuff. Now the cons of going the agency route is actually how to manage multiple people. You have to train them, you have to teach them. They will make mistakes and you have to be empathetic and you have to give them space and room to grow as well. That's what happens in human agency, and you'll obviously have to manage the growth and you got to keep bringing in money and income to actually keep up with the growth of your team. You have to train them, so you have to maybe invest in courses or materials, books. You have to invest in your own time to learn so you can teach them as well. Then lastly, it's actually going to increase the risk because if you don't have clients coming in and then can't pay your employees, then the business is going to start to fail so keep that in mind. You also will have more expenses, overhead expenses. You might need to pay for a laptop or a tool or subscription. Yes, the cool thing these days though, you don't have to work in a little office or in your house. You can actually work from home. Everybody's got their own [inaudible] now, like because it's just everyone's got their own setup. So it's super easy now because the remote work, the culture is better. These might sound like cons, but maybe they're not as bad as we think. Now he's a just a quick brand checklist that I feel like you need to just get to kick off to get started promoting your work and getting out there and getting clients. You need your business name or brand name, or if it's your personal name, a logo. You will need your visual identity. The topography, the colors, patterns, icons, textures, anything that involves the actual brand itself. Then you'll need a website, a website to put your case studies, to put contact details, put your services put more details because sometimes sites like Dribble and Behance, are not going to really give you space to express that, even though I do recommend putting your work on those in as many sources as you can, but a website is just great because you have full control over the creativity and you can put whatever you want on it. Then you've got social media pages. You've got to create banners for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, profile pictures. You've got to put bio descriptions. You have to create an e-mail so you can show. When you send emails, you look professional. It doesn't have to be animated. You can do gifts these days, but I just keep it simple. We could do a PNG. And then lastly, you've got brand templates. Now what do we mean by brand templates is your internal business templates. For example, proposals and contracts, a capability deck, a case study deck, a portfolio PDF. All these things need to be created and designed by you or by your team member. You have to build templates so then when you reach out to people you're saving time and you're building all these assets internally because it's going to help you in the long run. Now I just want to share a few thoughts on how to grow your personal brand. I believe everyone has a personal brand, everyone has a reputation. Everyone is building their image in conversations with their design work they put out there. Everything is about personality, personal branding. Now one of the things you can do is share your work often, so don't be scared. We always hear about imposter syndrome and is my work good enough? Look, we all sat as students. We're always learning, we're forever learning, and we just get better over time. Practice makes improvement. Make sure you practice by sharing your work, by posting, and don't worry about perfectionism. Just get your work out there, create content around what you do and how you can help businesses and it's going to benefit you. I do recommend posting educational or entertaining content 3-4 times a week. If you can do daily, that would be amazing. At least three or four times a week, either Instagram or TikTok, or even if you're good at YouTube, one solid video a week would be pretty good. Post as much as you can. That's right for you, without losing the quality of your client work, because you need a machine, you need a system that's going to bring in traffic to your website, to your portfolio, etc. Collaborate with other agencies and creatives. Now, we need to leverage relationships. Relationships are important. The way I've seen my personal growth on my social media pages, YouTube and Instagram is just by building relationships with other designers, being helpful, offering value, just connecting. It's not all know how can I get money of these person or can I get a project? It's about building genuine connections and that will build your reputation, and those people who refer you to other people or they recommend you when they get a client they can't take, etc, it just becomes a big spider web of connections, an interaction with people and you build that trust. Then lastly package your knowledge or share your process. If you want to make an extra side income, you can actually package your knowledge into templates. You can sell templates or maybe do a course or a webinar or a YouTube video series, or an e-book, something like that. No matter what level you're at, you can share knowledge you've learned. You can add your own spin on it, add some ideas from your own and build that up. It's going to build your brand, it's going to build your authority. I just feel like it's really cool. If you're a student that is learning, just focus on sharing your process. Share the steps of becoming a brand designer or how you created this logo from scratch for a specific industry or company or whatever it is. Think of ways to develop that and put yourself. 4. Attracting high paying clients : The number one thing that you need to keep in mind is that you need to do great work. If your work is trash or subpar, it doesn't look premium, it doesn't look amazing, don't expect clients to come your way because, if your work looks bad, how can someone trust you with their brand and with their money to deliver on an amazing experience or amazing project? You need to do the best work you possibly can. You really need to reflect on yourself, look at your portfolio, and ask yourself, is my work really up to scratch? Is it up to standard? Does it look professional? Does this look like $5000 or $10000? Really dig deep, ask yourself these questions, and figure out if you need to update your portfolio. If you do, then you can use some brief sites. I will mention some of those in my Tools and Resources section through case studies. If you don't have a client's yet, then just concept project, work with that and build your portfolio. Because I see a lot of students, they just do a brochure, or a flyer, or a logo for design college, and then what happens is that, they just have images. There's no rationale, there's no thinking, there's no full brand identity. It's like lacking details and nice mockups. Make sure you do the best work you possibly can and it's going to increase the chances of you actually attracting the right clients. This brings me to my second key point. People buy from who they know, like, and trust. We've all heard this before, if you don't have a good reputation, if someone can't trust you, they're not going to give you their money. There's a cool proverb from the Bible, is called Proverbs 22. It says, a good reputation and respect are worth much more than silver and gold. Because once you have a good reputation and people know you and you're an expert, people would trust you anyway because they're going to refer you to more people, you understand. When you have respect, reputation, you keep your word, you're loyal, you're a trustworthy person, money will be a prior product of that because people will want to come to you, buy from you, and you'll be able to serve them. You need to build rapport with people. You need to talk with people. Every conversation, imagine it as an opportunity for you to get a project. Every conversation I have with someone, there's always a potential for an open door to happen and open up from that conversation. They might know someone or maybe they have a project that they need help with or whatever. Every time you come into contact with someone, be genuine, be kind, be helpful, offer free value. Just serve people. Don't be selfish and think about sales, about yourself. Try and just be a servant, and people will like you more, and also be a good listener. That's such a key thing. It seems so simple, but it's so important. Focus on putting that skillset to a point where you can be trusted and people will like you. Have a happy, joyful personality, be someone that's energetic and happy. Now let's talk about some methods of actually attracting high paying clients. Number 1 is content marketing. Now for me, I'm very big on the content side. I find that that building an evergreen list of content on my YouTube, on my Instagram, on my website, on all these platforms, what it's doing is it's going to automatically generate traffic and leads for me over a long period of time. I've been doing this stuff all the way back since 2015. For me, I've generated all this content, so it's sitting there and it works for me while I'm sleeping. People can watch my content, people can check out my page, or whatever it is. You got to imagine that content is the vehicle in which you use to share your expertise and knowledge. Use content as a way to share what you're learning, to share your portfolio, share your work, share your design thoughts, share your thinking. Now three reasons why I recommend you should teach and share and create content is, it builds your authority and credibility in your industry. It shows you as an expert, and also displays your design abilities. Number 3, it helps you build your personal brand image and reputation. Content is the best way. We always hear from Gary Vay, content, content. Put content. I just put work out there. It truly does work. You obviously have to have a bit of a strategy. Now here's some ideas for content creation. If you feel stuck, you can share your creative process. You can show case studies from past clients. You can show a portfolio piece of a concept project that you had. You can share design tips for small businesses. You can talk about branding tips that help businesses grow. You can share your thinking or design research process, how you research for a project, how you come up with ideas, how you differentiate, things like that. You can share your tools that you use. Maybe you want to talk about Photoshop, or Illustrator, or resource websites. You can always talk about resources and tools that you use as well. That's super helpful. Now what platforms can you use? I recommend definitely using TikTok because the organic reach of virality is better than a lot of the other platforms. Instagram is changing a lot. LinkedIn is changing a lot, but, definitely TikTok. For me I love YouTube. I'm biased towards YouTube. It's always going to be the biggest platform. Google owns it. It's the second biggest search engine in the world. I think that's always a great go. You can use Instagram, so you can create carousels or reels. You can do Instagram stories, single posts. LinkedIn, you can actually upload PDF documents, so you can upload your decks or presentations that you create. You can even do live video on there now, which is amazing, and you can just do normal images. If you've got YouTube, is also thinking about doing like maybe you want to do a live stream of you designing a logo or designing a client project. That will be cool. You can also do tutorials, or just like talking head videos. You've got Facebook's, it's mostly good for live streaming and just image posts. You've also got Jubo as well. Now Jubo is great for using gifts and also image, just single shot, nice, visual stimuli. Very visual, very impactful images. Jubo is cool, but it is invite only. Then also you've got Behance. Behance is good for case studies because you can put a nice vertical design format. The community on there is very positive, so you would get feedback. We're done with content. Now we're talking about cold outreach. I know it sounds scary reaching out, calling someone, or coding emailing. But to be honest, I've done it in the past and it's not that bad. But I do agree with Chris DO that code emailing and code outreaching is one of the worst methods because you are the least likely to get the sale. Because if someone doesn't know you, if they're not aware of you, then they can't trust you or like you. When you reach out to someone, it's very risky like that. They most likely they will think it's spam. That's what happens when I get a lot of emails. I assume automatically it's spam because, they didn't even say, hello, Jeremy, they just say something else. There's no email signature, it's weird. For me, this is a bit more of a risky method, but it can work on people who use it. If you're going to code email and design agency or just a business, here are some rules. Number 1, don't spam or sell. Number 2, don't be needy. Don't be desperate, don't sound desperate either in the words you put. Rule number 3 is keep email short into the point. Don't make it long, don't make it two paragraphs, literally like a few lines and keep it short. Number 4, use links and format the email. If you have a link to your portfolio website, put that if you have a link to your YouTube, just put that, make it clean and simple and format the email, use dot points, use bold headlines that really helps someone's scan the email. Then lastly, check for grammar and punctuation issues. Make sure you have a timeout in there because it might seem that you're lazy or might seem that you're not fluent in English. Make sure you check for those things before clicking Send. I am going to put some email headline examples. I'll say one of them then I'll put the rest on screen or I'll probably just put it in a PDF for you guys. It'll be really helpful. Let's say I want to work for a small to medium-sized design studio and I'm a freelancer and I want to ask you if they have some work that they can't take on or a small client that had that don't want. This is what I'll do in the subject headline output, this studio name times Jeremy new redesigns. It's like a collaboration things The name times Jeremy your name or your business name. I'll say, hey, and I'll say that the creative directors name or whoever is the person that I've researched and found the name. Then I'll say, I want to design business called, Jeremy designs, and I want to see if there's any overflow of design work. I'm at your studio at the studio name that I can be a resource for. Can we have a chat question mark? Then I'll just say best or cheese or Ratti freelance job sites. There's always a question, should I go on Fiverr? Should I go on Upwork? Should I go on 99 designs? These sites don't necessarily have high paying clients. Most of them actually have low paying clients, even though design is being seen in a better light these days and actually it's been seen as more valuable, obviously with big tech companies and digital age and evolve in the metal verse and these are just getting better. Overall, there's nothing wrong with freelance job sites. There is sites like design crowd, which is like context-based and I only recommend doing a contest if it's for educational purposes or practice, because most likely 100 designers send something and you say in your design and you don't get picked and to me, feels like a waste of time, but it's only good to practice a real brief. That's why I would personally do it. Then eventually you'll get good. Then you'll start making money and probably getting picked. When it comes to contest sites, clients don't value designers as much. It's cheap prices on projects. Hundreds of designers designs are submitted, so it decreases your chances of actually winning. There's low return on investment. The only investment you're getting is that you're learning to practice your design a little bit, but if the client doesn't pick you can't get feedback. That's the issue and that's full context space. Now I'm going to give you some sites that I personally think is actually decent. There's plenty of sites out there, but here's some for getting graphic design work, logos, branding jobs all that stuff. Some of these sites are mostly Australian base / UK, USA so keep that in mind, not saying if you're from another country, you can't use these sites. But I'm just saying some of them are more location specific, Airtasker, Toptal, Guru, Bark, Upwork. These are the some sites that you can use. But there's plenty of it. I have a whole list of them. Now you can also check outsides like job boards. There's heaps of different job boards that post full-time jobs, part-time jobs, and freelance jobs. There's plenty we got wethemakers.club , pedestrian or TV. We got thedesignkids, weworkremotely, designmodo, freeup.net, solidgigs.com. Some of these you might need to pay a subscription like a small fee. But sometimes it's actually worth it because the clients are better quality. Then you've got communities. For example, Design social club that you got thefuturacademy, we all love the future. You've got independent.work. That's a good one too. But I recommend trying to focus on one side. For example, try and get on Upwork and get reviews, build up your portfolio on one side so you get a little reviews because that's going to boost your response rate and getting more clients than just trying to do 10,000 sites and trying to get jobs everywhere. Next up we have Facebook groups. Now Facebook is still really good in terms of using groups, private groups, public groups. Sometimes they get a bit saturated and a lot of people in it and the quality decreases. You want to try and find groups that are relevant to today and that people are actually talking and chatting in there. My other rule is don't just join design groups. Join startup groups, join business groups in your local area, in your city, in other countries if you want and build relationships, chat to people offer value, drop your two cents. It's all about offering free value, sharing, writing comments. If someone ask a question, just being helpful. Sometimes in some of these pages, people posts like, Hey, I'm looking for a brand designer, I'm looking for a startup. We need branding. Send me your website and then people just put their links. That happens sometimes in some of these groups. But other groups, it's less about that and it'll be more about like just try treat Conversations, talk to people, get an a core, etc. I do recommend spending an hour a day, just checking every group for design posts that people look for designers or for post that maybe you can contribute your thoughts to. Because every time you contribute or leave a comment, lead your thoughts. Your name pops up, your display picture pops up and people start recognizing you over time. For example, the area that I live in is called Elara and they have a private Facebook group. It has 16,000 people in it. For example, every Wednesday, everyone is allowed to post a business post and you put the hashtag business post. I think I'll put an example on the screen now a few groups that I have joined and that I use. You've got future of work. That's obviously a design group. Some design groups, posts design jobs, other agencies looking for designers or people want to outsource. That's totally fine. You can design joined design groups, but just make sure you design joined business groups as well. I've got Sydney Start-up Jobs, Startup Business Australia, Sydney Startups, Brisbane Graphic Designers, Design Kids Sydney, Melbourne startups, this is just a few, there's probably plenty more. But I know for me it's worked and I've gotten leads from there. I've gotten travel. Next is actually going to local events. Now, there are few sites that I person would use. Number 1 would be meetup.com. Number 2 would be eventbrite.com and these two sites are really good because you can search for events in your local area, your local town, and you can actually filter by different categories. Business or if it's a fitness thing, if it's a foodie thing or coffee thing, whatever it is. People always want to meet new people many faces. Look at the specific groups that you want to work in. If you want to work with maybe, yoga teachers or gym fitness coaches or whatever, look for fitness events and then talk to people. Now if you do go to these events, I do recommend having your website up, having your Instagram or LinkedIn ready to go and also a business card or on hand so you can give it to them. There's other thoughts like Fishburners.org. Now this is a Australian base location. Basically in the city they had these startup events where people pitch their startup ideas and sometimes invest as calm. Sometimes they just have meet-ups and that's really going to benefit you if you go and just chat to people and just tell people what you do.I love this quote from David Ogilvy. He says, "If you want to be interesting, be interested", have an attitude of, I want to listen to this person. I want to be interested in what they do. Their business idea or their startup. Don't just focus on you, I'm a designer, create a conversation. If you're shy or introverted, just go with it. Bring a friend along with you with these events. Maybe a couple of friends, put yourself out there. You're not going to grow by challenging yourself. 5. Pricing and charging your work: [MUSIC] The first question I want to ask is, is there a market value for design? Which means globally, is there one standard price, for example, for a logo or for a brand identity that everyone has to charge at a minimum? The answer is no. There is no such thing as market value. The reason is because design is subjective. We can try and be objective as possible. But at the end of the day, design still has a form of art to it, which means it's going to be subjective in some form. Every designer has a specific skillset, a specific expertise, and have different levels of experience, so each designer is going to charge different rates. Then lastly, the client's need is going to be different for every single project. You're never going to get the same client, so the price will always be different. When it comes to market value, don't think I have to charge a certain rate. It's always going to be different all around the world. Different countries have different expenses, different taxes, etc. It's never always going to be one standard price. Now before you want to price or create a bid for your client, you need to think about these key things. Number 1, you need to think about your time and expertise. How long does it actually cost you? How long does it actually take for you to create the logo or the brand identity or the illustration, how long is it going to take you? Is it going to take you eight hours? Is it going to take you four days? Is it going to take you two weeks? You need to think about how long it'll actually take you. You also need to think about your expertise. How many years have you had? I almost have 10 years freelancing and doing projects, working with clients and doing design. My rate is going to be significantly higher than someone who just coming out of college and only has one year experience. Because of my expertise, my skillset, I'm a lot efficient, I'm more faster, etc. I'm going to be charging higher than someone who has less expertise. The second one is scope of work. How many deliverables is a part of the project? Some projects can be really extensive and they might need signage, business cards, a website, packaging design, how many deliverables are there? The more deliverables, obviously, the more value you are creating for that job. Then you think about expenses. What are your business operating expenses every month? For me, I've got bills, for example, I pay rent, I pay electricity, I pay water, I have to buy camera key, Office key for my computer, I've to upgrade my computer. I have to pay for Adobe subscription. I have to pay for Envato or Yellow Images, subscriptions like that to get assets or graphics. It starts adding up. All these apps and things I use cost money. I need to incorporate that into my price and think about that when I'm actually charging. Think about the fonts you buy, the graphics, the pencils, the pens, all that stuff actually matters and actually counts. Then you need to think about taxes. Now, taxes vary in different countries and it will depend if you're actually a sole trader or proprietor or a company structure, that will depend as well. The example from Australia, if you're a sole trader in Australia, if you earn between 45,000 to 120,000, the tax rate is actually 32.5 percent. That's the threshold. If you're only earning $18,000, you don't pay tax because you're under the threshold. There's different levels of thresholds. For me, I'm paying around 32 percent once I hit a certain threshold. Under that, it's a bit less. It's around like 27 percent. That's for taxes. I need to incorporate that and think about that at the back of my head, it's like, after I charge this price, I have to pay for taxes for the government. You need to think about that. You also need to think about freelancers. Are you hiring an illustrator or read web designer to help you on the project? You need to outsource someone because then the price starts to increase and getting bigger and you might need to hire for big projects. You need to think about that, calculate the cost. If I hire an illustrator and it's 500 a day for a day rate, I'm not going to charge the client just $500 because I'm not going to make any profit. I'll basically double that and charge 1,000 for that illustrator, even though it's costing me 500 because you have to have a buffer. Then you have to have profit. You need to add profit on top. We call it mockup, and usually this is ranging from 10-30 percent. It just depends on your business. If you're a solopreneur or a sole business owner, then it's going to be okay, you don't need to add heaps of mock up. But I'd say like 15-20 percent is a good rule just to add on top. You're not scamming the client, it's just you run a business. Money and cashflow is the bloodline or the lifeline of a business. To thrive, you actually need to have profit because then you're going to go out of business. You need make sure that you're billing right and having profit into the business. Then lastly, it's good to calculate your burn rate. I do recommend buying these book from Michael Janda. It's the Psychology of Graphic Design Pricing. Twenty bucks on Amazon, super good book. He talks about how to calculate your burn rate. He talks about how to price certain projects. It's really practical, he gives his advice on different scenarios which are like calculate your minimum hourly rate that you can charge for a project for you to meet the minimum expenses to run your business. Because if you going below your minimum, then you're going to go in a negative. You always need to be positive. To calculate that basically, your annual salary that you want to earn. For example, if I want to earn $100,000, I'll put $100,000 divided by 2,080 hours, which is basically working as a full-time employer, which is a 40-hour workweek, which is the standard across the board. If I do that calculation, basically, my burn rate is actually $48 an hour. That's the bare minimum I can do. Obviously, I don't charge that low because I need to earn more than that because running a business, etc. But that's just one way of calculating based on annual salary. There's other ways to calculate it. But definitely get that book, it will really help you out. What are the three key pricing methods you can use as a freelancer, as a designer? There's actually three of them. Now number 1 is hourly, number 2 is flat fee or project-based, and then number 3 is based on value. I'm going to go through the pros and cons that I feel are related with each method. Now when it comes to hourly pricing, the pros are, it's easy for beginners to start out because when you're starting out, you're not sure how to price prejudice correctly. You don't know how long it's going to take you to do a project because you haven't timed yourself. You don't have experience. It's easier if you're a beginner. Then obviously the rate stays the same. If you know $30 an hour, you calculate how many hours it took it to the job, then it's pretty simple to calculate that. Now the cons of hourly pricing is you'll earn less because if you're more efficient or fast. If you get faster, you got shortcuts, your design really quick, then you can actually get punished because the more hours you do, the more money you make, so the less hours you do, the less you make. You tend to start adding some extra hours in there or start lying, which is unethical and immoral. You don't want to do that. Then the second con is that client doesn't know what to expect. Basically, you may go over the hours. You might estimate, instead of taking me 20 hours, then it ends up taking any 60 hours and then the client might not have that budget because you went over. That's going to frustrate the client. That's a big, big con. Then also it can limit your earning potential because you're stuck with that one rate and that's it. It'll be hard for you to increase the hourly rate when you just started working on a project. Those are the things when it comes to hourly based pricing. Now for me personally, I do the second method which is flat fee or project-based. I just like setting a specific number. It's better. The pros of it is a specific number, it doesn't change, so the client knows what he's paying. Whether it's we do a payment plan or not, they know what they're going to get. Number 2 is you're going to have more confidence when speaking to your client because it's easy to say one number or a range. It's just more simple than just trying to calculate how many hours and some of that, it's not worth it. Then also it's less risk for the client because you have that one set price for that scope of work. Yet, it's just really easy to calculate. The cons of this method is that if you work more or less, you know what you are getting. If you overwork, you're not going to be getting more. If it takes you longer to do something, you're still getting that flat figure that you calculated. That's the difference. But obviously, if it takes you less hours, it's good because you're going to be making more profit because you're not spending as much time. The second con is that if you do have extra work or added deliverables, added scope to the project that you'd never agreed upon at the start, you're going to have to write up a new contract or a new terms and conditions for that specific design. Maybe you did a brand identity and then the client, three months later, or maybe a couple of weeks later they wanted to add a website. You have to write up a new project and a new price for that because it's extra. You got to figure that out. That might take a bit of time to come up with that estimate, etc. Lastly is value-based pricing. Now a lot of designers try and get into this, but it's actually a bit of a challenge to do that. Obviously, you need to understand certain things. The pros of this is that it works well for big clients. If you can actually communicate that value to that team, that person, that direct or whatever, to that company, you have to be able to communicate that. It's great for big projects, big clients. It doesn't really work as much with smaller clients, to be honest. Then another pro is that you can actually charge high up because the client is able to perceive the actual end result and the value. You need to be able to get that result obviously, that delivers that return on investment to the client. Those are the few pros I think of. Now when it comes to the cons, it's actually harder to execute because you need to be a good communicator, you need to have negotiation skills, and you need to understand human psychology. It's not overly complicated, but you need to be really good at talking and being able to not convinced the client, but show them and reveal that value through the way you communicate, the way you talk, the way you ask high-value questions. In that regard, it can be very tricky. Then I'd also say it's actually better for experienced designers. I don't recommend younger designers doing it. Just stick with flat fee for now or an hourly if you want to do that. But yeah, I think flat feet is the best method. Project-based is simple, it's easier to do. What I recommend is that you do create tiered packages. For example, you can have package 1, which is the bronze package, the middle package is silver, and then the top high tier package can be your signature brand package or platinum or gold, whatever you want to call it. You can give it a name. It doesn't really matter. When you have to send a proposal, I don't always recommend sending proposals. It just depends on the client. I recommend sending 2-3 packages, at least two. The top package will be the bells and whistles, everything. The full logo, brand identity, signage, a brand collateral, business card, stationery. Do a full package. This one will cost the most. For example, that one will be like $10,000. Then the middle package would be the nice one, which most people would probably go towards. The middle one will be like a bit less of the collateral. Maybe they can only choose one piece of brand asset or two assets for that, and then it includes a logo. You can always maybe decrease the revisions or decrease the amount of concepts. Maybe instead of three concepts, you do two concepts. Feel free to tweak it and customize it based on how you want to do it. Then the bronze package is the lowest one. Some people just do like a brand strategy workshop or more brand discovery workshop by itself, other people might just do the logo only instead of the full identity, and that will be less, so that one will probably be like $1,000 or 2,000. The middle one will be like 4,000 and 5,000, and the top tier will be the higher price. That's typically what I do if I'm doing a proposal, I will do three tiers and the psychology behind it, etc. Then lastly, there is actually pricing calculators. I put a few of them in the freelance tool list on the notion gallery board that you get. My pin on it, I think pricing calculators are okay if you're starting out. I wouldn't use it as a rule of thumb. If you're really struggling with pricing and you haven't applied any of the things that I've mentioned, then you can use it as a baseline so you're not charging so low. But yeah, I don't recommend using calculators all the time. It's better to learn by doing, learn by experience, and then you can craft your own pricing later on. That's how you price and charge of work. That's just my thoughts. Hopefully that helps. 6. 5 Ways to Diversify your income: [MUSIC] I want to share five ways of how you can diversify your income, all about building wealth. The way you build wealth is not by having just one active income stream, which is 99 percent of people out there. They worked for a company 9:00-5:00, that's their only income source. But to build wealth, you have to have multiple income streams, you have to have multiple investments. I'm going to share five ways. For me, I have around 7-8 income streams, which is amazing and it's a blessing and it's just fun to be able to expand like that. Obviously you can invest in crypto and stocks, you can get real estate. That's just a few ways of building assets, but one of the best ways is to build high-value skills and build a business around those skills. But here is my top five for design specific of freelance specific. Number 1 is client work. You can do one of projects or you can do retainers. Now, a retainer is just a monthly subscription type of thing where maybe you design, let's say 30 Instagram posts for your client. It's all template-based and you create that as a content creation package. Or maybe there's a client that needs landing pages done and they have a big company that needs different sales pages done, that could be retainer on what you know. You do a couple every month or whatever, and you have a set price, like 1,000 a month, or a couple grand a month, whatever it is. Probably the top ways of generating income using those skills, selling a service. Some people might just focus more on products, which leads me onto my second point is actually products. You can create digital brand templates. You can create e-books, things like that. For me, I use Creative Market. I also use Design cuts as well. Creative Market, you can sell themes, fonts, templates, product mockups, bundles, graphic assets, illustrations, there's so much stuff you can sell. If I click on Illustrations here, they don't have to be expensive. They don't have to be big bundles, they can be a $10 thing incredible thing. There's so many things IDs you can create. But at the end of the day, just because you create a product, I'm not saying it's going to sell. You need to build a community, build an audience, have a unique product, and you've got to promote it, market it, etc. That's part of the game when you do products. You work for them as well. You can sign up to their platform , sell your products there. That's just a few sites that I would use if you're doing products. But products is a great start. You can sell your brand template or your discovery template or a logo pack or textured grunge packet, whatever it is. If we use assets for a project, repurpose it, create some preview images, design it nicely, package it up and sell that into a digital product. Next, we've got teaching, so you can teach a course, you can do a webinar, you can do a training series. Now the three sides that I would recommend is obviously Skillshare, I'm on there right now. I've got plenty of course on there, it's been a great blessing to me to be on this platform. It's been a great platform I've enjoyed it. You can also use Teachable , you can do coaching on there. You can do courses on their, good design, easier to use. Really great Teachable is a recommended site. Then lastly, Podia as well. Now Podia has more versatile features. They've actually got inbuilt webinars in tools like that, custom website, links, and stuff like that. But grateful courses, great to generate that extra income. Now, the fourth method is affiliates. Affiliates or referral programs is basically you promote a brand or a tool that you love or you use, or you vouch for. You can promote that on your blog, your website, your social media, your YouTube channel, whatever it is you can promote that and get clicks. Now, what I recommend is usually typing the company in Google and then typing programs. For example, if I go Freepik, I might type referral program or affiliate program usually. You can see here it will pop up contributed program. I've already got it up here. You can see if I click on this website, I can go to the bottom and click "Become a contributor". Basically I can create mockups, photos, vectors, whatever and upload that and so I get a percentage of the amount of downloads. You might get five percent or 30 percent, whatever it is. If I scroll down, they've got guidelines and you can create vector art. You can sell PSDS, so you get some income, you get paid per download. Every site is a bit different. That's Freepik, just to get an ID. You can also do Adobe for example. These are all design-related, but there's so many sites out there, you can promote different stuff. Adobe has a commission so you can see if they download. This is what you get there for the commissions and you click "Apply now" it will take you to the sign-up form so there's a few. Then Domestika is one. Sometimes when you're on a website that you love, what you want to do is scroll down the bottom and then you'll see affiliates. You just click on that, you'll see referrals or affiliates. It'll take me to affiliate page and all I've got to do is click "Join''. I can see some of the stats, the questions. If I click "Join" for example, it'll take me to the page. In this case, it's a type form and then I'll just click "Apply''. Then now I will just go through all these as you can see this. These are some ways of doing it. Then lastly, I'll go to Amazon Associates. Type in Amazon Associates on Google and click on the first link. You can actually sign up through that and so you get basically up to 10 percent on a purchase. Whoever clicks on a link, say you put it in your YouTube video. Sometimes I do that maybe I'll sell my camera gear or my computer stuff, I'll put a link. If someone clicks on the Amazon link, that's a tracking links. When they're on Amazon, if they buy that product, I get a commission or percentage of that product. I own a bit of cash, it's more of a side income. The more traffic you get though, for bigger audiences, bigger content creators, they obviously have more traffic which will ultimately increase the conversions. Because the more people slightly be better. You got to keep that in mind as well when it comes to affiliates or referral programs. Then lastly, we've got brand sponsorships. You can get a brand to sponsor your podcasts or sponsor some content for a month. Or maybe you want to have a long-term contract for example. For me, I did a recent one with Yellow Images. We had a three-month contract or whatever, and you can see one of the posts here. If people use my code, so they're paying me to post this content. Basically, if they use my code, the designers get 20 percent of their subscription. That's a tracking links so that will track the results and then I get paid for that. Sometimes they actually, some of the brands will give you the free subscription or free license to use their products as well. You do get some benefits to that as well. Another example, if I actually go to my YouTube channel, I'll scroll down and you can see I've actually did some other sponsorships. For example, how to make a UI design portfolio in minutes. This was sponsored by Boxmode. You can see in the description, I've got Jeremy use my code 15 percent off boxmode.com. If someone goes to the website, they use my code, they can track that. You can see this is the website. Basically what I did is I created a video using the website on and created a web page based on my design. As you can see here, so you can see the video there. That's just a few examples of doing a brand sponsorship. Obviously, you have to go reach out to brands if you want them to sponsor your content and you need to be creating content. I know some of you might not want to go the content creator route. That's fine, you can just focus on client work and products, that's cool too. It just depends what your goal, what do you want to do? Do you want to build an agency? Do you just want to freelance, figure out what you want to do. But these are my five ways of how to diversify your income as a graphic designer, brand designer, illustrator, that's the initial I focus on. But you can apply to any niche really. You just got to focus on the specific type of brands, etc. Hope that helps. 7. Contracts and Proposals: I want to talk about contracts and proposals. Now I think it's very important that you always try to get a contract out with every project. If you have a smaller project, even if it's just like $1,000 or a couple of thousand. I didn't think a contract is always necessary because it's probably a quick job. It's not a big client, it's sort like a small client, but it's better to get into the habit of creating a contract so you look more professional and you save your butt down the line in case some legal things go up or maybe your logo was copied or you accidentally didn't know there was already a same logo out there or design or whatever, so you just want to protect yourself. Having a contract, even if it's one or two pages, is the way to go. Now, it's a legal agreement between you and the client, and it also states all the scope and deliverables, the payment schedule, the timeline, any requests on additional changes, all those type of things is what you want to put into the contract. I have created a template for you that you can download in the project section so you can download that, it's an illustrator and obviously tweak it with your name and the client's name and you can always add it or adjust things to it. I'm not a lawyer, so I typically have used templates online and a few great places where you can get some other templates hellobonsai.com they have templates on in contracts. If you go to their website, you click on Design on the filter, on the left here, and you can see there's all these different type of contracts and you can adjust that AIGA, the Professional Association for Design. If you scroll down, if you've go the website and click and download the master agreement, you can see this is big document. Although it's very large, I don't recommend creating a contract that long, just keep it very short. When it comes to proposal, it's more like the overview of your business, your capabilities, case studies, and you're pitching to a client in that sense. I really don't recommend always sending proposals, try to always close the client on the video call and that's what I typically try and do. I tell them the timeline, the scope, and get the price of them on the call, the initial sales call and try to close them right then and there because I don't want to spend time crafting a proposal and then not getting picked. Because typically what happens, you'll get a big agency that are trying to get quotes from multiple agencies, maybe 4, 5, 6 of them that will ask for a proposal. Usually it's called the RFP, request for proposal. They'll get that off you and now look at all of them and then they'll choose which one has the best value and the price as well. Typically, I try and avoid sending proposals because I just feel like it's waste of time and usually get ghosted as well. Learn to communicate your value on the call and try and avoid proposals. You can make things like a capabilities deck, which just talks about what you offer on your services. I'll show you my proposals that I've used before. He's my InDesign file. You can see, this is what I currently use so I have a cover image and I've got the date, the client name, as you can see, project name, reference number. I'm just keeping it really simple. Then you've got a message. Maybe you had a call, it's just like an intro message saying, Hey, it was great chatting to you. This is the what's going to be in the proposal. Then you've got the contents like why me, case studies, project, and the terms. Then a little bit about me and we go through recent clients. You can put logos here, but I just put the text, it's really up to you. Then capabilities like what I offer, so I'm doing strategy, design, and then content as well, and also obviously websites. Obviously, you need to update this. Then a bit about my process, we have discovery workshop, then it goes into how the brand looks and sounds and feels and the messaging and the design, and then move on to the actual crafting of the visual identity, etc., and creating the touchpoints. Got testimonials here, so you can see some testimonials. Obviously, I can link into my Google as well, which is cool. Then you've got cost and timeline, so I've got the total investment here. This is just a generic first slide and then I've got the budget down here, so we break it down. In the contract we do mention just the generic deliverables. You can put that in there as well, so you can take some of these breakdowns and put it in there. Then you'll have a price and then basically you'll set the budget price as well here. We've got a schedule slide, so here's typically how I'll send it out, I'll put the dates and then put the bars and so I always just have to adjust that base on the timeline. It's pretty straightforward. Then about case studies so I just share some of my projects, recent ones and you can see the mockups there. I'll probably share about two to three and then I have a thank you slide and then my contact details at the bottom. That's a proposal deck that I would typically send. I didn't try and make it too big but you basically want to show your work case studies, what's your process, the budget, and stuff like that. So that's what you want to your project. 8. Leads and Prospects: I want to share with you how I actually capture my leads and prospects and bring them into my CRM to keep track of all the contacts. Because I might get a client from YouTube and one from email, one from LinkedIn. You got to keep track on everything in the conversations. What I actually use is Notion again, I'm going to show you how I use that. First off, I'm in my e-mail. For example, you can see a new one here from Casey Rock. I'm going to click that. It looks like it's a paid collab. If it's a brand identity client or whatever type of client he is, it doesn't matter, it works the same. You can see here, here's the email. He wants to do a collab. What I'll do is actually use the labels in Google. Up the top here, it says Label. I'm going to click that. You can see I've got one for affiliates, one for clients and sponsors, guest posts, the YouTube logo redesign or YouTube collab, social updates, etc, etc. I can create new labels and I can also manage labels. If I click Manage labels, it's going to open this menu and I can go down here. You can see I can create new label by clicking create. Then you can type in clients or whatever you want to do. Then you can click Create. I've got labels already here. I can hide them, I can move them. Another cool thing is on the left-hand side, you can see they'll pop up in your sidebar. I can actually click the three dots and I can choose the label color. I'll start to label different colors just so it's visually distinctive, so it's easier to quickly recognize. I can even add custom colors. If you want to add your brand colors, that's cool too. That's how I use labels. I'll just quickly go back here. I'll go back to there. I click on the label and this is a client slash sponsor. I'm going to click that. Now you can see if I click on the tab on the left, it should pop up, so now I can keep track of okay, who's the client, what's a spam e-mail, differentiating what's what in my email list. I'll click that and then from this, I'll basically go into my client CRM. I'm going to go into Notion, this is more of a lead capturing system. CRM is actually a customer relationship management system. You can see here I've got one that I've already built so I'm going to click on that. You can see it's got all these different properties and in Notion, you can create and customize these. For example, I've got the date , then it's got the status. As you can see I've created the selection types that I can choose. The company, you can see what project is it, is it affiliate sponsors or brand identity. I can change those really easily on the fly. Mobile, that's just the phone number their. Estimated value meetings, this connects to a meeting database. We've got estimated end date, as you can see there, and the sales channel so I can choose where it came from. For example, this is not LinkedIn or anything. I'm going to create a new one so I'll type in email. I can actually click the three dots here and I'll change the color to blue. That's cool. Then priority, let's just say we're going to keep it on medium and that's fine. That is basically my new prospect. For example, if I want to add a new one, I click New. I'll click in here and then I'll start to copy this guy's details, Casey Rock. Then we can go, added today, company Superpeer, project type, it's a sponsorship. Put the email here. I didn't have his phone number. Estimated value, I'm not sure yet. I'm just going to probably put 2000 for now. Then meetings, I haven't booked a meeting yet. Estimated end date, I don't have that because I haven't chatted to him yet. Put the email there. Priority, I'll put medium. Now I've got this guy inside here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to contact him and then get talking and then we're going to negotiate a deal and do some brand new content. As I build that relationship, all I'm going to do is drag the board across so I can drag the card to contacted, to meeting, to proposal sent then I can go through negotiation, won, etc. If I need to follow up with other brands that I lost, I can just put it in the last tab and when I'm finished with that, I can just drag it into the new stage. I can drag that into here. You can see that I can just chuck that as an archive. I can also rename this as well. I also got a Table view as well. In front of you as a table, I can just click on that in Notion and it's a separate view from the all records, board view, as you can see that. Then I'll go down and you can see I've got my Google Calendar embedded in here. Now all you have to do to do that is you can just press the forward slash and you can click Embed, as you can see. All you're going to do is get your calendar. I'm going to go to my Google. You can see on the left-hand side, I've got client calls, I'm going to click the three dots. I'm going to go to settings and sharing. Now what you want to do is you want to click make available to public. Click on that. Then you want to get shareable link. Basically, you copy this link and you paste it into here. Basically, it will embed this. Then you'll see your Google. You can see, I've got a call here. It says busy 10:00 AM. If I go back, I've got a call here. I just created that for the sake of this video. But you can see, he calls me for 30-minute consultation and that's the one on Thursday and it's showing up on my call here, which is really cool. I also have inbuilt meetings here, basically just like databases that connects to the cards at the top. If we book a meeting with one of the clients that came through, it should show up in the calendar view here. For example, I've got a discovery meeting with one of the other clients. As you can see I can click clients and select, for example, John Smith. It's all connected to that other database, which is above. I can keep track of that. Then you can see on the side, here's just a different view, it's like Table view. It just depends if what you like viewing. I just have it there in case. Basically, that's how I use my client CRM. Now I want to show you another version as well. Now the other way that I like to do it is when I'm reaching out to brands, I did talk about client outreach in the module where I'm talking about how to get clients. This is part of that. Basically what I do is I have a table. In this table, you can see I've got a whole contact list of some of the brands and you can look at some other brands I've reached out to. Some of them I have already worked with. But you can see these are all design brands that could sponsor some of my content or send me something for free, or we do a collab or whatever it is. What I do is I get the company name. I dropped the link or website in here. Then I've got the name. When I get the contact name, I will check that in there. Then the email, as so you can see the email there, what channel was it, did I message them on Twitter, IG, LinkedIn, or email. Then contacted, have I contacted them or not, that will see there. I've got no response. If I change that, for example, if I can change to no response yet. But I haven't even reached out to those clients at the bottom. I have a filter as well. You can see the sort, on the top-right, it says that anything that is responded to. That's going to show that. It shows it from the top-down, on all the yeses first, and then I'm just going to move across there. I got contacted and then it goes to responded. Have they responded to me yet or not? I think that's important because I need to know if I have to go back and follow up with an email. Then I've got next steps. For example, this top one, Delta Hub. I already did a collab with them. I did a YouTube video, they sent me some of their products and I did a sponsorship for them. Now, these other ones you can see I have to follow up. One hasn't responded and the other one, I got a follow-up. I got to go back on Twitter or Instagram and go to those messages. For example, let's go to Twitter real quick. Go to my messages. I reach out to Let's Enhance. I said, hey, I wanted to ask if you were open to doing a collab. I currently have an audience of 140k. Happy to chat more in detail. Go on a call. You said hey, sure. How about a quick call? Sure, happy too. I sent my Calendly link. It's really easy because I can click Calendly which is embedded into my Google. It's just a plug-in or an extension and then I just go copy the link here. Then make consultation and paste that in here and you can see it will book the call. I just press enter. I follow it up. Hey, following up, nothing happens. I've got to follow up again for the third time, and I'll probably follow up three, probably four times max. If they don't respond, then I'll just count it as a dead link. Then maybe in the future, I can reach back at a later date. That's that. Then once I've completed, I can just literally tick off this complete as you can see there. I know I have a visual reference on like what I'm up to. 9. Client Communication: [MUSIC] When it comes to communicating with the client, it's super important that you have a strong relationship with them. Obviously, this person is giving you their money, their time, their energy, and they want to make sure that they're using it wisely, that they're getting a return on investment, that they feel like it's an investment well spent. You need to make sure that communication is always clear that you're on the same page. Now, a few things that I do is I always set expectations and the agenda. If I'm going into a discovery workshop or a meeting or on the call, talking about feedback or whatever it is, I make sure that I set the expectations before we jump on that call. Whether I write it in an email or whatever it is, I make sure that we're clear on what we're doing for the day or for that thing. Remember, you are the guide, you're the captain of the ship. You need to guide the client and you need to obviously treat the client with respect because some parts of the process is collaborative. You need to say which parts are, when they should contribute, or whatever the part of the process is, how to give. One of the things I do is I have a little page on how to actually give feedback, so I tell them to be objective, constructive, be specific, elaborate on specific descriptive words that they use, things like that, I explain what they need to do so I can do my job better. That's all about communication. You got to build confidence and it only comes by experience. The more you work with clients, the more you know who you are and know what you do, etc. I always guide them on the process and guide them on each step. Number 2 is be direct and clear. I always like to clarify on things and I always ask them, do I need to clarify anything? Does that make sense to you? Then they might say something, what did you mean by brand strategy or what did you mean by minimal? Can you explain that a bit better? They give me feedback and they say, it's too sharp, maybe there's a shape or a design or whatever. Then I can say, what does sharp feel like to you or what should it look like? Do you have an example or can you clarify what you mean when you said dot, dot, dot? Get clarity. If you have to repeat a word or repeat a sentence, that's okay, that's fine. Make sure that it's better to gain clarity than walk away after the meeting or an email and then wondering, no, what do I do now because I didn't understand what they said. Always focus on getting on the same page. Overcommunicating. Don't be scared to ask lots of questions, even the client. Tell them, be free, be open, ask questions because then it's going to be a lot better in the long run. Remember to keep emails professional, always check your grammar punctuation whenever you are sending files, when you're writing emails, make sure things are clear. What I like to do is sometimes I put next steps and then I'll give actionable dot points. If I'm writing an email to the client, maybe we have to book a call, I'll put the link there. I have templates that I use that makes it super fast and super practical so that they can just skim, that they can understand it very easily, and so they don't have to overthink and use their brainpower too much to think about what are we doing now? What's the next step? How do you move forward? You'll always want to be two steps ahead and beyond the ball. Make sure that you're guiding the client and making the process smooth. It's all about delivering that experience, overdelivering and just making it enjoyable. Then lastly, I set boundaries, especially when it comes to contacting me. For example, I'm only open at 9:00 till 6:00 or 9:00 till 5:00, so don't message me or call me outside those hours, for example. Set boundaries whether it's calling or you use WhatsApp or sending emails, stuff like that. Just make sure that you set those boundaries and that you both honor them. Most likely that you're busy people and the client's busy working on their business, you're busy, you got other projects or other things you're working on. Are you going to communicate via phone, email, Zoom calls? Or maybe you have a CRM platform you use or maybe you just use Notion and you want them to comment on the board in that program. Make sure that you set boundaries and you're clear on how you're going to communicate, how you're going to take action, how you're going to move the project from each step-by-step. I'm always upfront, I'm always honest with my clients and I just be myself. I don't try and be weird or different. I always try and be professional. I try and be clear as much as possible and just make sure that they're enjoying the process, that they're satisfied, and that I'm guiding them the best way I can. 10. My Design HQ: Now I want to show you how I actually manage creating content and managing team members via outsourcing some work to a freelancer in my Design HQ. You can call it whatever you want but this is my dashboard to help me manage all areas of my business. Here's what it looks like, it's in Notion of course. The reason why I like Notion is because I can have one workspace with pages within pages and it's a lot easier to move around and have everything in one place. This is what it looks like, an onboarding section with a knowledge base, team onboarding and beliefs and mission, and the client portal. I like to save these templates in case I need to edit it. Sponsors and brands, so you can see the CRM and the sponsor I've showed before. I've got projects and content and other stuff I'm working on like Skillshare courses, products if I'm doing speaking and coaching and my email newsletter. For example, let's go into my knowledge base here. You can see these are tutorials or SOPs. Standards of procedures is what SOP stand for. If I hire a freelancer and I need them to create a thumbnail for YouTube or something, I have a tutorial on how to do that. For example, I've got how to save PDF files and it's just breaking down how to do that. I'll talk about the types of PDFs, how they do it. Also, I have a tutorial already on YouTube where they watch that and that it shows them how to do something. This is a knowledge base and these I'm still building out and constantly improving it. Content creation process, this is how I do it. It's six steps and it just gives you an idea on whoever comes onboard on how to use it. I've also got the Notion basics, which is a couple of tutorials to watch Thomas Frank and the Notion training basics and that should help them get started. That's a knowledge base. It's where you put all your knowledge and tutorials because all about efficiency and processes. Now we've got beliefs and mission. You can see I've got my goals, mission, vision, why, target, values, as you can see there, background pitch. If I need to use it or a team member needs to come in here, I can look at that so we're building that internal culture. But once you've got the client portal, I've showed you that before and these two I've shown before. Now onto projects and content. This is the main part I wanted to show you. I've got basically a few areas that I focus on, one being video content for mainly YouTube and Reels and then the other one being Instagram, design carousel, single post stories, and stuff like that because those are my two channels of distribution. For example, if I go to Instagram content, I have a board and this is basically where I create my content. For example, I'll go to, create new, I'll click on here and I'll say five logo tips. I'll sign myself to it. To type I'll put a carousel due date, we'll put it on Friday, doesn't have a sponsor. I can click Sponsorship and it will connect to my sponsor and affiliate list. If I click on that, you can see I've got all these sponsors that I've done and I've put the little logo. For example, maybe I'm sponsored by Skillshare for this one, you can put that there. Then I can click "IG Content", which is a template that I've already built. I'm going to click on that. It just basically got content caption and tags, it's super easy, it just basically helps me organize things. Then what I do is when I start working on that, I'll go to drag it to the right script section and I'll start writing. Maybe tip number one, always use white space a logo needs to breathe. Then I'll go 2, 3, 4, 5 and just write that and basically that's what I did. I'll just write up the content, caption all the tags or whatever it is, and then I'll drag this text and go into Illustrator and start building it. This is how I manage it and I drag it across like this, so when it's in design phase and then revision and then export and post and then when it's done I just drag it in the Done folder. For example, I did a post yesterday and I just drag it here and then drag it into the Archive their when I'm done with that. That's the Instagram content. Now, the video content is the same as well. I'll go back to Design HQ, I'll go to video content. This is the same as well. I've got different views as well. Same with the Instagram, I got bored view, work in progress so I can see what I'm working on, due date is like a calendar view, which I don't really use, by assignee so I can view if I assign a freelancer, I've got all tasks so I can see the table view and then the archive view as you can see there. It's basically a gallery of all the things archived videos I've already done. I'm going to get back to the board view. At the moment I'm finishing off this one video and we can see Bobby's Car Wash. Status is on filming, partly medium, it's a normal tutorial as you can see and I put my ideas here, screenshots, inspiration, even like a mood board. As you can see here, some logos. This is the cooling of motion. You can just have a page for each board or piece of content you are working on. You can add descriptions, you can add text images, whatever. It's so easy. I've got all these other ideas on the left-hand side. Here's some ideas that I haven't done yet but I've got to work through them. As you can see, I've done some other videos recently. Headline ideas, description, main points, thumbnail research. Then I've got a shot list. Several videos. I had this shot list template where I have a table. I've got B-roll, A-roll. Is it a string cost? What style is it? Then I put notes as well. This helps me think about what type of story I'm telling, what shots I have to film for the content. If I click "Open as a page" I'll just go full screen, I'll go all the way down. Then you can see, I can tick off films when they're all done. Then I can click in video or whatever it is. As you can see, these are shots already done so I should have already ticked them off but that's how I basically do it. I've also made a table that shows all the tasks of everything. It's basically just a related database, so it links to the other database really easily. I've got Instagram content, I've got video content, identity, etc. Then what I do is I add templates as well so I've got AI files here. I can mockups as well if someone works with me. You got other things here, just little extras. Then, for example, I've got products as well. Here's my product pipeline, for example, the brand identity template. I'll click inside there and the key description of that product. That was already complete as well. That's where I put my IDs. That's my dashboard and that's how I manage my content creation and manage all parts of my business. I'm always improving it, updating it, adding pages, adding things to make my business move smoothly because it's all about efficiency and systems. When you have systems and when it's easy to onboard people and to create your content in a fast way, then you're going to save your time. It's all about saving time especially with business so you can focus on getting clients or getting deals or focusing on design work instead of focusing on admin stuff because you've already worked it out in an efficient way. Hope that helps. 11. Project Management: [MUSIC] How do I actually manage client projects? I'm going to share with you my step process of how I do it. The best apps that I will recommend obviously is Notion, number 1. I just love Notion. But if you're someone that wants more of a template-base app that has a lot of features then I think blue is really cool. They actually offer a decent system, lead generation, lead capturing. It's a nice CRM, basically. You can even invoice through this. It's a cool site. I do have affiliate code. I think you get 15 percent off. I'll put a link somewhere. You've got Asana. Asana is really great. I know a lot of designers that use this as well. Great for managing projects and tasks, breaking down tasks as well. Then you've also got Monday. Monday is similar to Asana and then ClickUp as well. I've used this. This has a lot of features, it can get overwhelming a little bit. I'm going to give you some bonus tips before I share my process. When it comes to managing projects, you don't want to be overwhelmed, so I recommend taking on 1-2 clients a month. I just want you to picture this, if you get one $10,000 client instead of 10, $1000 clients, it's going to be a lot better because number 1, you can focus your energy, time, and effort on that one client and doing a really good job. You can create amazing mock-ups, good presentation, you can focus on the design and the research. That's going to be better, obviously. You're going to get paid more and you're not going to get overwhelmed, because if you have ten clients, you have to manage 10 projects. That's going to be10 different pages and workflows and you can get lost in all of that. So I do recommend try and get one high-paying client or two high-paying clients because you can handle that a month. But if you have lots of clients, it gets overwhelming, you get drained, you get burnt out, etc. For me, it's better to have one high-paying client. Obviously if you're starting out, it's okay, you might start at smaller clients and have lots, that's fine. Just say yes and just work your expertise level up. Personally for me, I typically only take around a few clients a month. Most of the time these days I am a full-time content creator so I actually take a lot of brand sponsored deals. I'm creating content for YouTube and Instagram, stuff like that. For me, I do like one brand identity project a month. If I don't do a brand identity project, then typically I'll focus more on sponsorships and products and courses. Because I don't purely focus just on design because I'm more versatile. Another tip is that have systems and build templates. For me, that's why I like Notion, I can have workspaces and pages that it will template it to save me time. Especially when it comes to brand and templates like your proposals and contracts and your presentations and logo presentations. All that needs to be templated so you can save time. That's how you're going to make projects move fast and move smoother. And always have a solid process. Don't mess with your process, because your credit process should have a step-by-step system that you take the client through. I talked about this in my brand identity course, you should check it out. I'll walk through the initial call, the discovery phase, stylescapes, logos, the identity, brand assets, packaging and all that, and then delivering the files but, I break down that process and you need to make sure that you take the client through that journey to have consistent results with each new client you get. My last tip is always have a buffer. If you feel like it's going to take you two days to create something, tell the client it's going to take five days. Having a two, three-day buffer is going to give you that extra time if something comes up. Obviously, I'm a new dad, I have a kid and sometimes I'll have to wash my kid because my wife has a meeting or she has to go somewhere or something like that, or maybe you have to go to the dentist or whatever it is. You might have things, family things pop up, so you always want to buffer time. Maybe some days you might not be creative, and so you need that extra time to think on ideas. Always give buffer and save yourself from running into issues. Here's my step-by-step process when I'm managing a project. The first thing I do is actually have an initial call. I'll get on a Zoom or a video call, whatever it is, and talk to the client, see if we're a right fit. The other day I had a call with the guy from the US, he wanted to create a clothing brand, a clothing label. I asked him his budget, the scope of work, it sounds like a cool project, but he actually didn't have the budget for it. I have initial call to see if we are right fit. If we are a right fit, what I actually do is sometimes I send a proposal. I don't send a proposal all the time because proposals don't always work. It's better just to get on a call and actually negotiate and talk on the phone and just solidify the deal right there on the phone. You just need good communication skills to do that and confidence. But sometimes I'll send a proposal. Once that proposal is done, I'll select a package out at the top or the low package, whatever it is. Then after I do that, I go into Adobe Acrobat. What I do in here is I send my terms and conditions. It's just a one-page PDF document as you can see here. I have the client signature at the bottom, I've got usage rights, I got current responsibilities, payment schedule, project schedule, etc. It's just one page, super simple, super easy. What I do here is go to the right-hand side, click on "Request E-signature". What I do is type the client's email. In this case, I might just type my own. I'll type Jeremymura1. Then you can rename this, terms and conditions brand identity project April. Then I can say, thanks or whatever. Then basically I'll say specify where to sign. This is a really good app for signatures by the way. You can use DocuSign or HelloSign, but I have the credit card, so this is just way easier. I'll go to the next page and then what you want to do is you want to specify what the sign say. If I click here, you can see "Click to mark this field for your recipient to sign." You can see it's added a field there and I can set as a text field or as a signature field, whatever you want to do. I can just put texts there and then I can actually click "Send" That's basically going to send an email to your client with the terms and conditions and then they have to sign it, so they're agreeing to it. You can see it says, "Has been successfully sent for signature. Now I'll quickly go to my email. It's says, "Signature requested, terms of conditions." Boom, there you go. From, it's from hello@jeremymura. I click "Review and Sign" "Please review and sign this document. Thanks." Save your message, easy. Scroll down, click here, type the name, let's just say John Smith. Then a click here to sign as well. Then you can just draw a signature. You can just do John Smith or whatever it is, and click "Apply". Then enter name, whatever I apply. That sign, that sign. Then you basically click the sign, and then that validates and solidifies that document. That's how I do with my clients, I send them. Before working on anything, any design, I send them that contract. Once I've done that, I actually go into my app that I use and it's called Rounded. What I do is actually make a new client. I'll click "New client". Then just say business name, put John Smith, phone number, a phone number there. I could address. If they have a business number, put that there. Currency, I can set the currency. It's US. Upon receipt, I can set the payment terms for 30 days, 20 days, whatever. Usually I'll do upon receipt. I didn't put the hourly rate. Then what I can do is actually save the client. I can also change the colors also. Maybe you want to go yellow, I'll click "Save client". There we go, John Smith right here. You can see nothing has been built yet, but that's the thing. I should remove that. Then "Save contact", "Save client". Beautiful. What I do is I go to my invoices and then I go to "Create New Invoice", I select the USD version, and then I find my client. I'll type in John Lawn Mowing King, boom. Click that. This is my invoice template that I use. I've got my terms and conditions. I can attach file. If I want to locate my PDF file, I'll go into here Terms and Conditions drop-down that in there. Super cool. If I need to add GST, I can turn that on as well. But basically what I'll do is like brand identity for lawn mowing services. Then description. What I can do is actually add items. I can type in brand identity. Then I can obviously copy and paste different templates. I always have templates inside of here, but for now I'll just type something. I'll just type discovery, logo design. Obviously, I've got typesetting things, so I can do that put the price, say 5000, and then I've got that. I can add a line if I want. But then what I'll do, I've got my bank details here. Also PayPal and Stripe is connected. All I have to do is literally send them deposits. All I'm going to do is click on the right corner, click "Request deposit", put it at 50 percent or usually I'll do 33, but let's go to 50 and then click "Done". Now you can see the request is there. I can click "Save" on this top-right corner. I'll also click "Preview" so I can see what it will look like. I can also go see the client view. This is what the client will see in the link. They can download the PDF. This is an Australian app, by the way, It's really cool. Attachment is there, it's super-easy. Once I'm done with that, all I got to do is click "Ready to send" and it's going to send to my client, and I'll get that payment. Once I receive that deposit, what I do is I might send the client a welcome guide. You can download a welcome guide. There's plenty of templates out there for free and also in Creative Market, you can buy some. I'm working on one at the moment that I'm going to package up and sell it on Creative Market, which is cool. But what I would do if I didn't send it or whatever, the next step is I go and set up my brand discovery workshop call. I send them this link to my Calendly, that's what I personally use. They can just go in here and they can click a booking and they can find a time, and then click "Confirm" and then book a time with me. It allots that into my Google Calendar. For example, if I click "12 PM", I'll "Schedule event." Cool. Then they can add it to the calendar. I'll go to my calendar and I'll go to next month. You can see that booking is booked in right there. You can see that. Then I'll talk with the client and organize it to get on the course. Super useful, Calendly is amazing, it's so easy to use. Once you do the brand discovery workshop, pretty straightforward, we can move on to style and then the logo design. Then in-between the design phases, basically, what I do is I post and present each round. We have Round 1, 2, and 3. Sometimes it's just two rounds of revisions. But I post, what I mean by post is that I send them an email and then we book a call. I don't do a recording, I do it live when I present. All I do is I send them a PDF as I will join the call, join on a Zoom or whatever app I use, and then we have a chat about it and go through the presentation. Then what I do from that is that I tell them to have for 2-3 days, and then I asked for feedback. Then I get feedback and then I do design. Then I go to Round 2. That's basically how I do that. Design revisions, it's pretty straightforward, I go through. Sometimes I might take a week to go through that and work on it and craft it. Then after we revise everything, everything's done and approved, I get approval from the client via email. Sometimes you can send a file if you want or you can just get written approval in the email, that's totally fine. Then we go into the master file delivery. I'll deliver the files, package it all up. I have a module about that, you can check that out. Then from that I get a Google review or testimony. I like getting Google reviews because it just looks professional and when someone looks me up, it's like, "You got reviews." When you go to my page, you can see Jeremy Mura Designs. I've got several reviews. I click on that. You can see some of the client reviews here, you can read that super cool, super good. Then all I do is click "Get more reviews" and I copy this link or an email and I'll send it to my client and say, "Hey, it'll be great if you can press review." Then when they do that, I get a Google review and then I'll also take that review and then I'll put it on my website or my Behance or whatever and I'll just use the text. Sometimes I tweak the text if it's not right or there's errors or whatever and just make it look professional. Then that's it. Once I'm done with that, I follow up with the client, usually 2-3 months, I'll do a big follow-up. But just depends on the process and how many deliverables and if we're doing other parts like a website or etc. But typically, I'll follow up, checking on them, see how the brand is going, and just make sure everything's working smoothly. That's how I manage my projects. I just keep the process really simple and nothing too complicated. But hopefully, it helps you. Just remember, you don't have to copy my process, you can adapt it, you can add things, you can do your own thing. But just make sure that it's simple for you and it works for you. 12. Notion client portal structure: [MUSIC] Now, I want to show to you my Notion client portal structure. I've been using Notion for years now, but I've only started recently using this portal that I created. I've been tweaking it and making it a bit better, but I'm always changing it and adapting it. But the reason why I personally use Notion, it's easy to manage multiple projects and databases all in one workspace. I can look at multiple client workspaces and portals at once. It's easy to keep everything succinct in one page. I can also share the link to my client very easily. It's just I copy the link and I can paste it in an email or post it on social media or whatever it is. For me other apps are complex and they have a lot of features that get overwhelming. I've used other apps, like ClickUp, Asana, Monday, and it can just be overwhelming. I think Notion is just simple for me. I've learned to use it well. Just creating templates has helped me save so much time. It's also easy to set up templates within databases. I can easily create sub-tasks or certain layouts that I want very easily. Once I set that template, I can customize it, I can change it, and I can move it around. That's why I like it. It's just super efficient. Then also Notion is free on a personal plan. If you do get the next plan out which is like $5 a month, it's super affordable, so cheap. Whereas other apps, you do get trials on them like 30-day trials, but at the end of the day you end up paying I don't know, $15 a month usually or $10 a month. It's still pretty cheap, but at the day if you want a free option, then Notion is your go-to app. This is what the portal looks like. I've got a little bit of a dashboard, a cover. You can design something really nice for your client there. Then you go down here and it just welcomes the client into the actual portal saying, hey, here's my email if you need help and also I just have my business hours there just to keep them informed. Now you can see the overall layout. I've got some sections. I've got the welcome section. I've got the project status, resources, files, then I've got the project phases, then I've got a timeline there as well of the phases. For me, this is what it looks like. I've got the welcome guide, I'll click here. It's basically got some pages showing the client the basics of Notions. If they're not familiar with it, how they can use it, how they can click on things and drop comments, etc. Then those are just linked YouTube videos. I've got my process here. This is explaining my process, very simple, not anything too crazy because I can talk about that in my welcome guide or my onboarding checklist, etc. That's basically it for the start there. Then I've got a welcome and onboard section. Anything I've designed in a PDF, I can just upload and embed that. You can upload files, embed links really well. Now, if I move to the right, you can see I've got the project status. This is currently updated, it's on the onboarding phase, so on the first one. I'll just go to that in a minute. But it just gives the client a quick glance so they don't have to click on any of the pages. They can just say, well, after this phase, it's just like a check-in thing. You want to tell your client to check in every few days or every three days or whatever it is. Now, on the left side I've got files, so I can place here the contract and proposal. These are just all embeds, so I can embed a PDF. What if you design something in InDesign or Illustrator or Figma, whatever it is and just export it, put the PDF in here. What you don't have to go into your folders in your computer, you can actually just jump on the Notion board and see everything's here. The client can view it so the client doesn't have to email you say, hey, I lost a file, can you send it to me? You just go, hey, check the Notion board, it's all there. I've got one for the brand guidelines as well. Some clients may be already established businesses that already have a guideline and maybe you need to use that. You just chuck it there. That's a little toggle things there. Super cool. Now I've got some bonus resources for the client that are useful. For example, I got a page how to give feedback and I explain what I expect when I want to receive feedback. It just gives an idea for the client because some people don't actually know how to give feedback. This is going to help me during those design phases. Then I've got file types. It's just a bonus in explaining what file types are. Obviously you can create your own file type guide in the style guide, that's fine as well. This is just a little extra. I've got favorite apps. I share some apps with my clients here that can help them out. That's the first section. Let me go into the project phases. This is basically like my Kanban board that I love using. We got the first phase, which is the strategy or discovery phase, design, and then handover. For this one, I've got the client on-boarding. I'm going to click on that. Now within this I've got the tag, so it's tagged in the phases. I've created these different tags here just for visual identification. Then I've got the status. We got to do, in progress, done, and in revision. This just helps me at a quick glance see what am I doing? What work needs to be done? Then I've got a complete checkbox. If I tick these, you can see on the outside I can actually tick these boxes here. Once I've finished with one part of the phase, I can just tick them off so I know that's completely done. I'm going to click back on the card. Let's go through and then you can see I've got to do. These are the things I need to do on the on-boarding for the first part of the client process. I need to share the Notion board with email, I've got to send the welcome guide, and I've got to book a discovery workshop in calendly. I can update that. I've got an embed here, so in case I need to upload any files and then any feedback at that part of the process. They all look pretty similar. It's similar as you can see here. I can always update this and change it. This is just a foundation that I build upon because each client project is different. If I go to the logo section, it starts to break down. What do I need to create? I need to create all these things. This is typical for identity, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3 for the PDFs. Because I usually design in Illustrator and export as a PDF. That's typically how I'll do that. Now what if I wanted to add a new card? For example, maybe this client needed a website. I can click on New and I can say website design. I'll click on that. You can see in sub-task, it's actually a template I've built. If I click that, it will autogenerate or autoload into the page. You can see here it autoloads the to-dos, the embed, and the feedback. Now I can customize this if I want. For example, I can go to the top right corner, click the little blue arrow, and you can see the templates for this page, the sub-tasks. Now I'll click the three dots. Then what I want to do is click Edit. Beautiful. Now I can edit any of these. If I change the layout of it and add something, whatever it is, it's going to update when I go to a new page and click the subtasks there. Really simple, but it's really easy to do. I'll go back there. I can delete, I can just fix it back up. You can delete templates, you can add new templates, so you can see New template button. I can create my own. Whatever you do you want to make it relevant to your process. This is how I use this portal to manage my projects. Now you can use something else like Bloom or stuff like that. [NOISE] Now, on to the timeline as well. Obviously I create a timeline in the proposal PDF. Just to show them the overview, but this is just good to make sure we keep track on what's happening. For example, you can see, I click on this, all it needs is a card that says the date and the date has a set start and an end. You can see you just click on the end date, as you can see. I can set that to the 19th to 20 and it's automatic. You can include the time if you want, but basically just keeps it really simple. Then obviously it's assigned, I can assign myself, etc. But basically that's all it is. The cool thing is with this I can actually drag this as well. That's helpful. You can't color any of these bars. I would like to color it, by Notion hasn't got that feature, I don't think. I can move this. It's like a horizontal bar and I can see the phases. For April, obviously, it's April, I don't know, 29 now. I can move things around so I can drag things. I can move it along the path. I can move things up and down. If I want to move these phases, like maybe the strategy phase or something, I don't know, I can move them up and down and move them. It's super easy to look at. The client can just come here and check it. Now one other thing as well in the project phase, I can actually click on In Progress. I've added a filter which only filters certain statuses on the page. I can click In Progress, so we're going to check what I have to do. If I have a team member, I can add them into this portal and then they can see what they have to do, I can assign them things. Then also I can click on the timeline as well and that will show there. I've created these multiple views. This is how I use the client portal at the moment. This is how it looks like, but I'm always tweaking it. It just helps me work with when I'm managing my projects and my design projects. 13. Design Presentation and mockups: [MUSIC] Now, I want to show you some of my design presentations. One is for a recent brand challenge that I did, and the others are from past clients. Some are from a few years ago. Obviously, my process have changed and adapted and are more extensive nowadays compared to a couple of years ago because I'm always learning, I'm always evolving. But usually, I'll present the strategy and discovery and then I'll have a logo file where it's like the identity presentation, etc. I'm just going to show you a few of those and then I'm going to show you some mockups and how I create that. I'll just show you some of the layers. I do have another Skillshare course, I have a brand identity course, and I also got a mockup design course as well. That one's a bit older, but you can learn how to create really good mockups. Let's jump in deep. This one is for electric car brand that I did. I actually came third on this challenge. There was more than 100 people in the participation and then it was shortlisted to 80 people, and then that was shortlisted to 20 and I came in the top three, which is super cool. I did win some money, which is awesome, but this is how I created it. I always present in Illustrator, I don't use InDesign. Illustrator is far better with [inaudible] You can see here, this what I created, went through the values, my explanation of my moodboard, my thinking on the brand name for this. Then I went through the moodboard here, it's explaining some rationale, tagline. Because this one is a brand challenge, it's more simple. It wasn't for a client. Then this was a little brochure slide thing. Then logo designs, you can see here, I usually show it on white. Then we've got black and white, and then show it like this with the color on the black. Explain a bit about the logo. Show the construction with some lines and the pixel width. As you can see there. Then we scroll out and then badge version. Then I showed it next to some competitors there, which is really dope. Then I showed the visual identity sides of things, so the brand color palette. Then some of the patterns that I created. Which is really cool. Then the typography, the font choices, Kallisto and then Space Grotesk showing some of the usage there in the corner. Obviously, you can do that in a separate slide. Then photography usage here. Each project varies. Then we've got mockups and application. I show how it will look on Instagram post. As you can see there, adding the pattern topography, playing around with texture. They're just going through some clean mockups that I created. As you can see there, showing it on digital, on our watch or a phone, on how it will look like if it was on a pin or a badge, on a vehicle, on a truck. Signage, maybe over a photo. Show on a car, here is also you can see I created that badge, did a little emboss effect in Photoshop. Then also this one I created an effect there for the wheel. How it'll look on a little ad. Then, thank you. That was that for that. Obviously, it's a short presentations, but it's just got the basics. I'll show you some other modes and I'll quickly just go through them. This one was for a client, Love2Help, it was for a logo design. It was a little brand identity for them. You can see how I break it down. You can see just recapping on the look and fill and the values. The core user and the style scape we picked. This was the style scape. I always like to show that so we can refer back to the discovery session. Logo concepts, so this is what I created. Black and white on white. Just the logo type, the icon, explaining the style, the heart, the lead 2, showing the color palette. Showing on a package, on the letterhead thing, pins, we've got stationary here. The topography choice, you can see there. Then we go to concept 2. If you have three concepts, basically you'll show you three in a similar format. There's this one, with some other different little mockups. How it'll look on printing a poster or something. Some more packaging and volunteer staff because it's for non-profit work. That's basically it, you just show you the concepts next to each other, and then have a thank you slide. This was another older one as well. Style scapes, typography, then the logos, look at the mockups as well. You can see how I can present it and I show it on Instagram, what it would look like, etc. Make little mockups. I everything really. We've got the JMac one. We recapped on the goal, to look, and feel. The person, obviously is missing images [LAUGHTER] because it was the old one. The moodboard there, fonts, icons, concept 1, concept 2, as you can see there. Trying some mockups because he was doing some packaging and products. Got the business cards, the webpage design. Then I had a mockpack for it, of course. That was that. That's how I present. As I said, if it's a full brand identity, a full project, then it'll be more extensive, more slides breaking down, going back on the discovery and strategy, might have more mockups. Just depends, but typically that's a basic presentation. On to mockups, if I go to Photoshop real quick, you can see I've got a whole bunch of stuff here. For the pin, for example, I put the badge logo there. Obviously, I've got this gold foil and stuff so I can change it. All I got to do is turn on the layout, the folder on the side. I like buying premium mockups. These are all premium mockups. It's worth the money. This one's from Mr.Mockup. You can see if I turn the design on, I double-click on it. Usually I'll design in Illustrator and just copy paste into Photoshop most of the time. You can see, I've just got the text. You can see the pattern there, and then we've got the text in the bottom. Just two layers, and then you save that and then it goes on top of the mockup there. You can see the background has two different textures. I've got a marble and then a concrete overlaid on top of it, which creates this nice effect, looks super dope. Then the concrete has an opacity decreased to 60 percent. That's for that. For the badge logo, I had to take out the Tesla logo from the wheel and then I put the logo here and then I added basically effects. Typically, when you double-click on Layer, you get Layer Styles. You can see what I did. I added a Bevel and Emboss, at the depth there, the textures, added a little bit of a pattern. It's very light, and then I've got a color overlay, which is gray. You can see that's how I made that. Obviously, I can bump up the depth here. It will change it up, but that's how I created that. The truck is basically a simple design. If I double-click here, just a rectangle. Illustrator dropped it in there. I just like to make things simple and highlight type usage or how they can use the logo, patterns, etc. Then typically, the backgrounds. I like to use the color of the brand. For example, this one like using the grays and the greens. If I go to the Apple watch, this one uses the black and then also customizing the greens there. For the Apple watch, if I go to, is it Effect? If I go to color band, it was like this and then I had to add the color there. You can see. All I did is add that green color and it basically changes it. If I change this up, there you go, it just changes like that. Super cool. Then the screen just looks like this. It's a smart object, double-click, and it's in there and you save it. Then when you go to the design it updates it. That's basically mockups, how I typically create them. Now, what I love to do is go into Adobe Bridge. I go to the left-hand side, I click View, and then I click Show Items from Subfolders, and that will just show all the images. Then I go down to the left to the filter and click on Photoshop document. It will only show me PSD files. When I want to use a mockup, I'll double-click and load it up. For example, this is a Mr.Mockup bundle I bought on special. It's got so many different mockups. Some already pre-made stuff, some I can build, customize, and stuff like that. For example, if I want to open one of these ones, I'll double-click on it. It should open the PSD like this. I will just create a new PSD, 1080 by 1920 whatever. I can grab any of these cards. For example, we've got business cards. Lets just grab one of these. I'll grab this one, drag and drop it into the other tab like this. I'll just scale it down like this. I'll start to build up my own custom scenes really. It's super fun to do. I'll just quickly whip up something for you just so you guys can get an idea of how I do it. Just close these other tabs. Cool. Now maybe I want to add lights and leaves or something. Let's grab these leaves here. I go and drag and drop it like this. I'll scale from the corners, hold Shift and Alt. I can do something like that. For the background, I'll just add a solid color. Maybe I want to go like green. Double-click on the layer. I'll select the green color of the leaves or something like that. As you can see. Then maybe I want to add some texture or something. What I'll do, I'll go to my other folders, mockup packs, I bought one terabyte. I'll go to mockup zone. This one I'll go to the showcase. I click on ground textures. Got a whole bunch of textures here. Maybe we want some wood or something or concrete. Let's grab one of these concrete textures. Drop it into the file, scale it up. Then I'll put multiply or overlay. Whatever feels best. Then I'll drop the opacity, maybe 50 percent. Now I've got some texture in the background. We've got this leaf and all I got to do is just go into the business card and drop a design. For example, let's just quickly drop this in here. Really fast. Scale that up, press Enter, Control S to save it. Go back and there you go. We've already got a design there, super cool. That's how I do my mockups and that's my process. Doing presentation, doing some mockups, and hopefully that helps and gives you some ideas. 14. Delivering Files and handover: [MUSIC] Now I want you to talk about delivering the files to the client and handing over them. This part of the process, you want to keep it as smooth and simple as possible. Remember, the client is not technical. They're not a designer. Most of the time, they don't understand those things. They might be an older person or they might not be into those things. You want to make sure that you keep everything simple. You don't want to over bombard your client with so many files and just jargon that they didn't understand. You just want to make it simple and break it down. Now the three apps that I would recommend is Dropbox, the Google Drive, and WeTransfer. Now I personally use Dropbox. What I actually do when I package everything up, I will put it in to my Dropbox. Now what I want to do is actually save that for about six months. I use it as a backup because you never know when the client might come back and need something. I also want to show you this trick as well. What I'll do is I'll create just a folder and call it the name of the brand and the identity, so for this client was from Mac Macleod. I just put MM Identity. If I go to the right section, I can click "Copy link." Now I'm going to copy and I'm still got the browser. When I send this to the client, I can paste it. You can see in the browser how it says dl equals 0. What you're going to do is change the zero at the very end to one. Now what this will do is actually auto-download the folder. As you can see on the bottom left, it's automatically downloading that folder for the client. When the client clicks on the link, it's going to auto-download into their folder. You can maintain that name. I'll say, hey, it's going to auto-download it or whatever. It just makes it faster. Then figure out how to use Dropbox and right-click and download it and blah-blah-blah. A bit of my process as I mentioned, I store the files for six months. Another important thing is to receive the final payment before sending the files, because sometimes what tends to happen is that the client might disappear. They might ghost you, they might run away with your money. [LAUGHTER] But you want to make sure that you take the money, the last payment before you deliver the files and make sure you stick with that rule because you need that money. You got to run your business. There's dodgy people out there you can't trust everyone, use wisdom. What I do is I send the link to the client usually via email. I'll put a nice email and I'll say here's the final package. I'm just very polite. Very simple. Explain to them what are these. I'll go from there. Then lastly, what I actually do is send a video training showing the files, the folders, what's actually in there. I do that via Loom or Camtasia. Camtasia is my screen recording program for PC and everyone knows Loom, it's a browser recording one. You can record something like that, five minutes long or an hour long. I recommend doing like 30 minutes to an hour. Walk your client through the brands, show them the files, and show them how to use it. For example, you can go into Canva and show them how they can drop the logo in if they're not really tech-savvy. Adding that extra value with the training is just going to wow your client and it's going to be a lot helpful in practical for them because if you send the files, they might be guessing like, Oh, what do I do now? Make sure you send a training video. Typically this is how my photo structure would look like for a client. I named the file or the folder Delivery and then I put all the folders numbered. I do 01 underscore. An underscore is just in case the programs or the PC or whatever they're using doesn't need a little space, it just looks neater. I put numbers. I want them to go one by one. For example, a logo design. I go in here, it's got digital files. Then I've got the logo, logo mark, logo with a tagline, logotype, etc. Then I have got full-color versions as you can see. Then usually I'll have a small resolution and then a large resolution, so you can see that logo there. Then I've got the color and the reverse would be like the white version. Say you want to keep it simple. I personally use Logo Package Express. I'll put a link in the project section. You can check it out. It's a great tool. It auto-generates your file, so I don't have to manually create logo files because that just takes too much time. That's what I typically use. You don't have to create tagline and logotype only, but it's good to have versatility depending on the client. That's logo design file, and then usually whatever you've created, whatever brand assets, whether it's Instagram templates, business card, signage, whatever you create different folders. For example for Instagram, I got a template in there. Then there's some designs in there as you can see that. Textures, for example, I got a gradient background they can use. Just basic stuff really. Then I've got the fonts in there. The free font that I've used for this project, I chuck it in there so the client can download it and install it. Then I've got the style guide as well. It's just a PDF, as you can see there. Super simple, super clean, really easy. That's just the basics of it. Just keep everything neat, tidy, name everything logically, and make everything separate. Separate each part of the assets and name it and number it. The file types that I deliver are the digital and print file. When it comes to digital, I send a PNG. Now, I do transparent PNG. For logos that they didn't have backgrounds, they should be without background. PNG allows me to transparent images. I also usually save PNGs for other images as well. You can do JPEGs for just general images like photography and stuff like that because the compression is a bit different. That's totally fine. When you want to do transparent, do PNG. I also send JPEGs as well, but sometimes I just sent PNGs for smaller clients. Then next I send an SVG. It is typically for logos or icons for a website. I will save SVGs because it's a scalable vector graphic. It doesn't pixelate on the logos on a website when I'm designing in WebFlow or creating or building website. Then lastly, I send the EPS or AI files. I sent an editable file of the logo files. Typically just the logo is not like any of the other stuff like the renders and stuff. Just typically the logos where if a designer wants to go in there and take it and change the color or whatever, I send them that is all. Just sending the files. But these are typically the four files that are used when it comes to digital. Now when it's print, I create a PDF file at 300 DPI minimum. That's going to be in CMYK. If it's a project that is using Pantone colors, maybe for a medium-size client and they want specific colors, then I'm going to save a Pantone color version, also known as PMS. That's the file types when I save for print, It's literally just mainly PDFs. If it's for a printout, sometimes I might have crop marks or bleed marks for the printing, so that when they crop it on the machine, then it's going to be clean cut. That's basically it. That's how I deliver my files to my clients. 15. Freelance tool list: [MUSIC] For this class, I want us to actually share my freelance tool list that I've created specifically for you that you can use. Now this a notion board, and it's basically a list of different tools that I recommend using for your freelance business. This is what it looks like in the notion board, but when you click the link in Skillshare, you'll get it like this, as you can see. What you can actually do is just click on the links. For example, if you click this link here on the card, it'll take you to the website as you can see there. You can try that tool out. Basically, those are the tools we got. In our project management, we've got invoicing and books, we've got banking, we've got video conferencing, we've got practice design briefs, branding design of some websites there. For example, if you click on the card, obviously you just open up the link, but you just want to click the link outside. You can do it outside of that. For example, could take you to the website. Really simple to use. It's just a tool list, nothing fancy. Pricing, calculators, printing, content research. If I do find some more, then I'll add them in there for you. But yeah, this totally free as part of the course, hope you use it. You can also open it in notion. You can go to the top right corner and click ''Open in Notion'' and the basically it will take you to your notion if you are a notion user, if not, it won't take you into that and then you can view it in there. That's totally fine as well.