Transcripts
1. Course Introduction: Creative business
off the ground, I think seems a lot scarier
than it actually is. If you have a natural passion to create and share your
art with the world, you could just be
one step away from building your dream
creative business. Hey, guys, my name
is Sean Dalton. Over the last nine
years, I've built a travel photography
business that has sent me to all corners of
the globe working on exciting projects
with brands like DJI, Anchor, Spotify, and Samson. During this time, I've
also helped thousands of other creatives start their
creative businesses as well. When I first started
my photography business nine years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but there was one
thing that I did have, and that was the
courage to start. I knew that if I started, I was going to learn as I went. And that's exactly
what happened. Fast forward to
today, and I've taken an art form that I truly love
that I'm passionate about, and I've turned it
into a business that allows me to do
what I love most. Travel and take photos. Now, in this course,
we're going to be covering an introduction to getting your creative business
off the ground as well. From starting your
brand and establishing your first few income
sources to building a portfolio and scoring
your first few clients. We are covering all the most
foundational things that you need to know to get your
business off the ground. You're a photographer
or a videographer looking to score more clients, an illustrator looking to
license their work online, or a graphic designer looking
to sell physical products. This course will give you the foundation that
you need to start monetizing your
creative business and the steps that you need
to take to get there. I'm super excited
about this class guys, and I really hope
that you'll join me, and if you do, then
I will see you in the very first lesson.
Let's get after it.
2. Class Project - Creative Moodboard!: Guys well, welcome to the class. I am so excited
that you're here, and we have a lot of content
to get into in this class. But before we do so, I want to talk about the class
project of this course. And one of the things I love
so much about Skillshare is the fact that these classes
have class projects. I think it's super
important for us to engage creatively with
the course content. And the class project for
this particular course, is to put together
a mood board of 15 to 20 images that massively
inspire you as a creative. I think this is important
for two different reasons. Number one, I've always said, and you'll hear me say this
to at this course is that your creativity as an artist and your ability to create and
make work that inspires you is the underlying
motor to your business. That is the foundation
to your business, and that's what's going to
drive business as well. Now, of course, there's a lot of other things that go
into running a business, which we're going to
discuss in this course. The underlying motor
of being creative and engaging with the
artistic process is super super important for us. So that's one of the
reasons why I want you guys to put
together a moodboard. And the other reason is because when we're
working with clients, moodboards are a
very natural thing. You're always going to be sharing moodboards with clients, or they're going to be
sharing them with you. So it's important to be
able to learn how to compile a bunch of
different images into a moodboard because
that's something that we do quite often in the
creative industries. Terms of what can go
into your moodboard, this can look any
way you want to. Now, for me personally, I have something called a vision vault. That's just a fancy
name for my mood board. But in my vision vult, I just have a bunch of
work that inspires me. There's certain artistic
elements in these photos that I just am really drawn to and that I want to
incorporate into my work. So when I take a look
at this vision vault, maybe before a shoot or before I go out and create something, I have a little bit more
of an idea of some of the stylistic elements that I want to combine into my work. This is a super fun activity, and I think it's very
important for us as creatives. And once you put together
those 15 to 20 images, go ahead and share them here in the class project
section of this class. You want to, you
can put a bunch of different images
together in Canva, and then just share us a photo of all those images on one page. You could share us a link to a Pinterest board that you used. I personally think it looks great when you put
it all on one page, so we can see on one page, all of the work that
massively inspires you, and that would be
my recommendation. But if you don't want
to do that, you could just post a link as well. But that is the class
project for this class, and I'm really
excited to see this because I think the mood
boards that people put together says a lot about their personality and
their creative direction. So I can't wait to see yours. Now let's move on
to the next lesson.
3. The Biggest Barrier Most Creatives Face: Before we jump into the
meats of this class, I want to talk about
something that I think is the biggest thing that holds creativis back from not only starting a
creative business, but also excelling in a
creative business as well. And that is impostor syndrome. Now, impostor syndrome is an incredibly natural
feeling that many of us encounter when we feel like we might be out of
our league a little bit. And I remember when I started
my photography business nine years ago, I kept
thinking to myself, Why are these people paying me? My photos are not that good. I am way out of my league. And I only gained
that confidence. Once I spoke to a
friend who said, Sean, your work is
absolutely incredible. You shouldn't be
feeling this way. You're not out of your league. You're so much better than
many other photographers. And even if you aren't the best, you are more than capable enough to charge what you're
charging for your work. Once I heard that from a
very close friend of mine, I was able to put
myself out there more and engage more
with my business. But up until that point,
I really struggled. And Plus syndrome is one of those things that's not just
going to flip overnight. Yes, I felt better after that
discussion with my friend, but it still continued to plague me throughout
my business. And one of the most important
things that I've learned as a creative business owner is that your mind will always
play tricks on you, and we'll always try and
tell you that you were not good enough to do this or you're not talented
enough to do that. But at the end of the day, this is just your mind
playing tricks on you. And I think that is
super important to remember throughout
your creative journey. Think it's also important
to remember that impost syndrome is
not a rare thing. It is incredibly common
amongst all of humanities. Some of the greatest
artists and politicians and businessmen have all felt these feelings of
impost syndrome. And the first step
to overcoming them, is just recognizing
that those feelings are there and realizing that those feelings are
irrational and that they're only going to hold you back from achieving your goals. But I really do think
that this is one of the biggest barriers that
a lot of creatives face. I have faced it massively
throughout my career, and it's still something that
I'm constantly battling, as well as many of
the other creatives in my creative community. But with that said, guys, let's move on to
the next lesson. We're going to get
into a little bit more of the meat of this class.
4. Introduction to the Creative Business Model: Does the creative business
model actually work? How do we earn an
income as creatives? And this is going to look
different depending on the specific creative endeavor
that you're engaging in, if you're an illustrator, if you're a photographer, or videographer, a web designer. There are a lot of
different creative careers out there that we can pursue. But in general, there
are three main buckets that many of us earn
an income from. And those three things
are client work or commissions and licensing, social media sponsorships and digital products or
physical products. The most successful creative
businesses are earning an income from all
three of these buckets. But when you're
just starting out, client work is really going to be the main income
generator for you. And the reason why client
work is such a great place to start is because there really isn't a huge barrier to entry. As long as you have somewhat
of a portfolio that you can show clients that you can do the work, then you can get jobs. You don't need a social
media following for this. You don't need to have
a robust online store. You just need a
simple portfolio to show clients that you can do the work that
they need you to do. There's two main
categories of client work. The first one is consumer, so we're creating
art or we're doing client work for the average
person or a consumer. And then the other side
of that is businesses. So we're working with actual businesses to create things for their marketing material or their social media, whatever
that might look like. And like most creatives, I started on the consumer level. I was selling to
the average person. I was shooting portraits,
I was shooting weddings, and that was a great way for me to learn how to actually engage with clients and how to deliver and navigate that whole
client work process. As you start to grow
your creative business, you're going to be able to start working with more businesses. Businesses are fantastic
to work with because typically they have much higher budgets
than the consumer, and things are a little
bit more organized, and the projects are a
little bit more fun as well. So like I said, when
I first started out, I was shooting a
lot of portraits, a lot of weddings, shooting for some small restaurants
and cafes. But as I grew my business as a photographer and I
got a better portfolio. Then I started to be
able to work with brands like DGI and Adobe and anchor and spotify and all of these bigger brands
that had much higher budgets and
were just a joy to So client work is
probably the easiest way for us to get into earning
an income as gratives, and we're going to talk a
little bit more about how to find specific clients a little bit later
on in this course. But before we do so,
I want to talk about the other two sources of income
that I mentioned as well. And the first one is
social media sponsorships. And when you're just
starting out, this isn't probably going to be a big driver in your business because you don't have a
large social media follow Once you do grow your
social media following, there's going to
be a lot of brands that approach you and ask you if they can advertise on your
social media platforms. So for me, personally, about
30% of my income now comes from social media sponsorships specifically through YouTube. I've been sharing on YouTube
for a few years now. And as I've grown, a lot of brands are reaching out and they want to pay me to market their product or market their service on my
YouTube channel. Has been great for me,
and we are going to talk about social media
a little bit later on in this course and
kind of how to play the social media game
in a healthy way, because I know it
can be a struggle for a lot of different
types of people, but social media
sponsorships can become a pretty big earner for us as creatives in our
creative business. Now the last bucket of
income is product sales, and these can be absolutely
massive for us as creatives. And they're kind of in
two different categories, physical products and
digital products. A digital product might be something like a light
room preset pack. I sell that on my websites. It could be an online course. It could be a brush pack, if you're using P creates, it could be an eBook. There's a lot of different
digital assets that we can create and sell online
both on our website, as well as other online
marketplaces as well. Now, in terms of
physical products, this has gotten a lot easier for us to do in
this day and age. Back in the day,
you'd have to go find a manufacturer and come up with your design and go
through that whole process, and there was a big
investment up front. Nowadays, we can just
license our work through websites like Society six or other print
on demand services, and somebody can go in and buy a physical product
with our design on it, and we earn a
commission from that. So for me as a photographer, I sell photography prints on a website called darkroom.com, and all I have to do
is upload my photo, set the price, and then when
somebody buys that print, the company will print it
and ship it out to them, and I will earn a sweet little
commission on top of that. Those are the three
main buckets of income that most creative
businesses follow. And I know you might be
thinking to yourself, Shawn, how am I supposed
to know what to do next? You just maybe even more
confused because there are so many different options for me to earn an income as a creative. And I know exactly
how you're feeling. That's how I felt when I
was just starting out. I wanted to introduce
some of the ways that we can earn an
income as artists. But now I want to kind of
take a step back and focus on the things that you can do right now to get your business
off the ground. That is what this
course is about. It's to get you started on your creative
business and give you a path forward for the future. So with that said, let's
move on to the next lesson. Talk about a switch that
you need to flip in your head right now before
you do anything else.
5. Defining Your Brand Identity: This lesson, I want to talk
about your identity as an artist and your identity
as a business owner. And I think a lot of creatives really struggle with this idea of thinking of themselves as a business or as
a business owner. But this is one of the most
important switches that you need to flip in your
brain is to stop thinking about yourself as a starving artist and start thinking of yourself
as a business. If you don't make
this switch over, you're going to have
a much harder time with the business
side of things, but if you embody this idea that you are a business owner
and that you can do this, to be setting yourself up
for business success as the longest time, I was totally okay with being this
starving artist. I thought it was cool, and I thought it kind of
fit my persona. But the older I got, the more I grew in my creative business, the more I realized
how important it is for me to identify as a business owner and really embody this identity that
I am running a business, so I can support
myself financially. Also want to talk about
the importance of running your business
as a personal brand. Now, when you're
starting your business, you can decide to create a
unique name for your business, or you can run your business as yourself as your
personal brand. So for me, I'm a photographer, and my brand name
is Sean Dalton, and I am the business.
I am the brand. And I think this is super
important for artists to do in this day and age
for one main reason, and that is AI. AI has really taken off in
the last few years and I think a lot of people are scared about it, but at
the end of the day, AI cannot replace what
it means to be human. And as an artist, you are that human
element behind your work. Your stories and your creative process bring your art meaning, and they give it more value. And I think it's never been more important to show the person, the artist, behind the work. Now, we are going to talk
about this idea a little bit more when we start talking
about social media, but I just wanted
to add this in here because I think having
a personal brand in this day and age is super super important for your
success as an artist, because not only does
it allow you to connect better with people around you that are
consuming your work. Also gives your work so much
meaning as well because your life and your
experiences and your stories give
that work meaning.
6. Establishing Your Artistic Identity: Earlier on in this
class, I said, your creativity and your work is the underlying motor
to your business, and I truly truly believe that. And in this lesson, I want to talk a
little bit more about your artistic identity or
your creative identity, or some people might call
this your unique style. So what is artistic identity? I think artistic
identity is what defines your work and what
makes your work unique. Not just a consistent visual
aesthetic in your work, but also and perhaps
more importantly, it's the emotions that
your work elicits. So, for example, you might use consistent color palette in your work or a certain type of subject matter or composition, or maybe you're using
unique techniques to achieve the look that
you want in your work. And when you use these
specific stylistic elements consistently throughout your
work to the point where they start to elicit
a very common theme or emotion or vibe or feeling, that ultimately is your
artistic identity. And the reason why
I want to talk about artistic identity is because this is what's
going to help you stand out amongst other artists. And as you grow as an artist, more unique your style can be, the less of a commodity you're
going to be as an artist. So, for example, if you're just starting out with photography, and your work isn't
all that unique, and a lot of different
photographers could probably achieve the same
look that you're shooting. Well, at that point,
you're just a commodity. Now, that doesn't
mean you're not good enough to get paid.
You certainly are. But as you grow and establish your own unique artistic
identity, well, now, if a business or a consumer
wants that specific look, they have to go
to you to get it. And when you do get to
that point where you have a really solid
artistic identity, you can also charge a
lot more money as well. Now, for me, personally,
my artistic identity is kind of these dark
and moodier photos with a very clear subject. My my images have a solemn, moody or isolated vibe to them. And I've gotten to this point by just building the habit of creating and chasing the stylistic elements
that appeal to me, pulling inspiration from
other photographers, other artists from different mediums and bridging them into Now, another example
of an artist with a very solid artistic
identity is Charlie Clements, another teacher
here on Skillshare. And Charlie uses bright
and whimsical colors, and her work is very
bold and happy. She's also a master
of color harmony and always seems to strike a
perfect balance between colors. And we can even look at one
of the greats as an example, as well, Vincent Van Gogh, who used these very rough and
expressive brush strokes, which expressed of movement
and dynamism in his work. And many of his works are
dramatic and fleeting, a little bit moody, as well. Might be thinking
to yourself, Shawn, I have no idea what my
artistic identity is. My work really isn't
all that unique, and I don't even know which direction my
work is going to go. And that is totally fine. That's a very natural place to be when you
first started out. And when it comes to finding your unique artistic identity, this is something that
happens very naturally over time through the
process of experimentation, curiosity, and
just engaging with the creative process
on a daily basis. As you're creating and consuming work from other artists
that inspire you, you're going to
notice that you're naturally starting to use certain stylistic elements
across all of your work. That might be a specific
color palette, composition, a specific type of
subject matter, or even a technique to
achieve a specific look. And over time, your work is
going to start to develop its own unique visual signature and start to elicit
similar emotions as well. Ultimately, that will become
your artistic identity, but this isn't something
that you can force. I really do think
that it happens very organically over time, just through the process of creating and engaging
creatively with your work. I think it's important for us as artists to get a little
bit obsessed with the creative process and get a little bit creatively drunk
as well, if that makes sense. I just to really fall
into the process of creating building that habit, staying curious, and experimenting
with new techniques. As long as you're doing this, you will start to develop a consistent artistic
identity as time goes on. This might not
seem like it's all that important from a
business perspective. It actually is because having
that unique, consistent, artistic identity
is what's going to help you stand out from
other artists and take you away from being
a commodity to offering something unique that businesses can't
find anywhere else.
7. The Age Old Question: Should You Niche Down?: Question that I get a lot
of time from photographers, as well as other artists looking to start their
creative businesses is, Shawn, should I ich down? Should I select a very specific
niche and focus on that? And I think this is a
fantastic question. And when you're online reading about establishing a
creative business, a lot of the time
you'll read that one of the first things you need
to do is Niche down. For a photographer, that might mean focusing specifically on wedding photography or for an illustrator that
might be focusing on portraits or for a
graphic designer, that might be focusing on logos. And it is true that when you do have a really solid niche, it's much easier for us to target specific
types of clients. However, we are artists,
and a lot of the time, it's not easy for us to know exactly what we want to
focus on on day one. Now, if you are the
type of person where you know exactly what
you want to focus on, you're super inspired to pursue a specific niche in your
art, that's totally fine. You can get after that.
But for most of us, I think a lot of
us aren't really sure which niche
we want to pursue. The beginning. We
just want to create. We want to go out and
create stuff that inspires us that's
beautiful to us, and we just want to engage
with the creative process, and we're really not sure which niche we are
supposed to pursue. And I think that is
totally fine and natural. And I don't think you should
niche down right away. If you aren't 100% sure which
niche you want to go down. If you do niche down too early, one of the things
that can happen is you start to get bored, and it starts to get state focusing on that specific thing, and then you're not
inspired anymore, and you don't want
to create work, and you kind of fall off creative wagon, which,
like I said before, is the underlying
motor to our business. And I have fallen
victim to this as well. When I first started
out, I niched myself down into shooting
food and coffee. And that's pretty much all
I shot in the beginning. But then I started to get a
little bit bored with it, and I wanted to
try something new. And then when I did, well, I had to start all over again. So, in the beginning,
I think it's important to be a
generalist experiment with a lot of different styles of your medium,
of your art form. And as you get a little bit more experience and awareness, then you can dive into
a specific niche. Lot of people will hit back
at this and say, well, if you're a generalist, it's so hard for you to get clients. But as we're going
to talk about in the portfolio section
of this course, you can create
multiple different portfolios for different niches. And then when you're going out
and advertising your work, you just make sure
that you're sharing the relevant portfolio
to that specific client. We're going to talk
about that a little bit more later on
in this course. But in this lesson, I
just wanted to di spell the myth that you need to
niche down right away. I really don't think that's something that you
should be doing. I think you should
be experimenting and finding what you love first, finding what works for you,
and then pursuing that niche. If that's been a
burning question in your mind and it's been
stressing you out a little bit, I understand how you feel, but it's not all that
important in the beginning.
8. Building the Habit of Daily Creation: I want to add this lesson to
talk about the importance of creating daily as
an artist, right? A lot of the time when we
start our creative businesses, we start to get a little bit too involved in the business
side of things. And I've seen a lot of creatives start to ignore the
creative side of things, which is, like I said before, kind of the underlying
motor to our businesses, and it can be really easy to get hung up on the business side of things and earning an income, and it starts to become
a job when originally, it was a hobby, and
it was a passion. So I think it's really important for us as we start to grow our creative businesses is to always come back to
that creative idea. Now, for me, personally, I'm
shooting a lot for work. But I also have a
separate little camera, a personal camera that
I take out with me on a daily basis to shoot projects that inspire
me personally. So for work, a lot of the time I am shooting coal projects, but a lot of the
time I'm shooting projects that aren't all
that interesting to me, and I'm just doing it to
pursue a means to an end. But having that
personal camera with me and going out and engaging in personal projects
keeps me creative and allows me to continue
to grow as a creative, and it keeps me sharp as well. And every time I do go out
and shoot a personal project, I'm always learning
something new as well. The beauty about art or about running a creative business
is there is always so much to learn. You're never going to master your medium. There's always a new technique. There's always a new
style you can pursue. And as long as
you're engaging with the creative process
on a daily basis, you're going to
continue to learn throughout the
course of your life. And I think that's super
important for us as creatives. And building off of
this, I think it's really important for
us to try and remain in a creative state as we go about running
our businesses. Part of that is creating, but part of that is
just approaching the world like an artist. And there's a few books that
I've read recently that I think must read for artists. The first one is the
creative act by Rick Rubin. And that book talks about how every aspect of our life
and our upbringing and the things around us
can influence our work creatively and how they play
a massive part in our art. That is a fantastic book that I artist should read because
it's super inspiring, and it's really
interesting as well. And the other one is stillness is the key by Matt Holiday. And in that book, there's
a quote that I think sums up the idea of being
an artist perfectly. So in this book, the
author goes on to say, we want to learn to see
the world like an artist. While other people are oblivious
to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. Their mind fully engaged, notices the way a bird
flies or the way a stranger holds their fork or a
mother looks at her child. They have no thoughts
of the morrow. All they are thinking
about is how to capture and communicate this experience. An artist is present, and from this stillness
comes brilliance. You might interpret this
as just a reframing of mindfulness in the
context of an artist. And I think that is what it is, but I also think it really
just does sum up this idea of every opportunity around us on a daily basis has the opportunity
to influence our work. And I just loved
this quote so much, and I had to include it
in this course because I think it ties
directly into this idea of creating on a daily basis and staying engaged
with your art form. So stay curious, stay creative. It's super important
for us as artists. Otherwise, we're
going to go crazy. But that said, let's move
on to the next lesson, we're going to start
talking about building a portfolio to attract
your dream clients.
9. Building a Portfolio to Attract Your Dream Clients: Earlier on in this
course, I talked about how our
portfolio is really one of the most
foundational pieces for our creative business. It's what's going to help
us get clients early on. And if you're running
a creative business, you want 100% need a portfolio. Now, portfolios can look
a lot of different ways. It can be a PDF document. But typically, these days, it is a website. And this might
sound scary to you, starting a website and setting
it up and organizing it. But trust me when I say, it's really not that difficult
to set up a website. And in this video,
I'm going to show you exactly how to do that
using square space. Before we jump on the
computer and do that. I want to talk
about a few things that your portfolio should have. Number one, it should have an About Me page that
says who you are. This is an opportunity
for you to express the person
behind your work. Like I said earlier, having that personal brand and having the stories behind your work is really important for helping
your work stand out. So take that opportunity
to build an About Me page, and I'll show you how
to do that and share your life experiences and how those experiences
have shaped Now, another thing that a
portfolio should have is several different sections for the different types
of work that you do. So, for example, for me, I have a section on
landscape photography, portrait photography, and
commercial photography. Now, when I'm reaching
out to clients, I will send them the
relevant portfolio to them. I cannot choose one specific
style of photography. I love so many of
them, and I want to continue to work in
those specific styles. So I have multiple
styles in my portfolio, and that is totally okay. For example, you're
a graphic designer, and you have a little bit of
experience working on logos. We can create a
section for logos, and then maybe you have a bit
of experience in branding, where you can create a
sectioning portfolio for that. Maybe there's another area of graphic design that you
have experience in, where you can create
that page as well. Now for illustrators,
this might be portraits, greeting cards and
another category as well. You don't need to
completely niche down. We can multiple sections
in our portfolio. And then when we go on to
reaching out to clients, which we're going to talk
about in a few lessons here, we can just send them
that specific portfolio. And one last thing, guys, this doesn't have to be perfect. We just need to get this off
the ground. This is V one. There can always be V two, V three, V four. The most important thing is getting it out there and
starting this process. You can always build it
and improve it as you go. And if you're anything like me, you are a perfectionist, and you need things to
be perfect before you publish or before you put
something out into the world, but that is one of
the things that's going to hold you back the most. We just need to get V one out, and we can always improve
it in the future. Let's jump onto the
computer, and I'm going to show you
guys how we can build a website portfolio in a very short amount
of time. Let's go. What's going on, guys?
Welcome to my computer. And in this lesson, I want
to show you how we can build a website portfolio
using square space. Now, in this example,
I'm going to be showing you how I would create a photography portfolio because that is my area of expertise, but the principles in
this lesson can be applied to pretty much
any creative career. I just want to show you guys
how to use square space in and out Square space
is absolutely amazing. It's really easy to use. The designs look amazing. And Square space 7.1, the newest release
of square space is even more
powerful for us with a really great Dragon
drop editor that we can basically customize any page
that we wanted to look. It works really well on mobile, and also Square space has some really great
commerce features, so we can sell our
product very easily. I'm just a massive Fania. There's a lot of other websites out there where you can build a visual portfolio and
even sell online products. But I find square
space to be the best. And it's also the most popular. A lot of travel photographers, a lot of photographers
in general are using square space because it's
such a great platform for us. But let's just jump into this. When you first open
up square space, you know, it's going to ask you to sign up and all that stuff. But eventually, you'll get to a place where it's going to ask you what
your site is about. Of course, we can
click photography. Then we can click next. What are your top goals? You can go ahead and
answer all of these. I'm just going to skip this. What it's trying to do is
recommend us a template. What stage are we at? We are currently growing
an existing business. Then it's going to ask us how we would like to get started. Do we want to build
our own custom? Um site with a square
space blueprint, or or do we want to choose a professionally designed
website template? I'm going to go with
website template because I think the
templates are awesome. And then it's just going
to recommend a bunch of great templates for us that we can just start
building off of. And there's so many
good ones here, especially if we just go up
here and click portfolio. These are all really great
portfolio based websites, and that's all we're
trying to do right now is just build
a collection of our images that we
can easily send out and share with other people. So recommend going
through all of these. There's so many good
ones on here, honestly. This one looks quite
interesting, actually. I don't think I've ever
played with this one. So why don't we
just go ahead and select, start with Matsuya? I've never seen
this temple before, so let's see what we can do. It's going to ask you
to name your sites. I'm going to put Sean
Dalton, my name there. Continue. It pages. It's basically
just going through a little tutorial and it's
bugging out pretty hard. I'm just going to
go ahead and close that because I kind of
know how to use it. Then I'm also going to
close the assistant here. Now, it's putting me
straight into the editor, but I'm going to go
back and just kind of quickly walk you through
kind of how this works. So on the left here, we have
pages, design commerce. This is kind of what
we're going to do, all of our editing. These are kind of like the
folders for our editing. So under pages, you can see this is our main
navigation here, overview people, things contact. Anything we put up here
is going to show up here on the top bar,
nice and simple. And then anything that is not linked is not going
to show up here, but the web page is still
going to be active. We can go ahead and just drag that down there, for example. Um, now, when you
open up the template, it's going to have a page, pretty much already
done for you. And if you click on it, then you can go ahead and edit that page by clicking edit up here in
the top left hand corner. As you can see, we can edit our site hitter here if we want. And then this is
a gallery block. So what's cool about that is, there's a bunch of
photos already in here. And this says overview. Now, I would change this
to maybe commercial. I love the fact that
the first page when you visit this website is just a bunch of awesome
photos. You know? Like, it's like, right away. This person's a photographer, and these are the images. So it's really easy to get into their portfolio,
and I love that. And that's one of
the things that I recommend when
first starting out is You can have a page where you have a bunch
of called actions, especially if you're
selling digital products. Maybe later down the line, when your digital
product business is a little bit more
robust, you can do that. But I think in the
beginning, having just a straight up
portfolio right off the bat is the best thing you
can do for your business. Here in this section, like
I said it's a gallery, we can just go right here
and click Edit Gallery. Now there's a bunch of
images in here already, and none of these are mine. What we can do is just go
ahead and delete all of these. I actually really
like these images, but we're going to
just to delete them. And then what we can
do is just click on this little plus sign
and upload images, and that will bring
us to our own images. So I just have a collection of photos here that I can add. And when you're building
your portfolio, one of the things that
I recommend is to keep a specific place
on your computer or on Google Drive or on Dropbox with all those photos
in your portfolio. So all your best photos
are easily accessed, and then you can easily just
upload them onto a gallery instead of just
going through all of your exports over the years
and adding them there. We want to make sure we
have a place where all of our portfolio images are
collected in one place. So let's just let this load in. Now that it's all loaded in. What we can do is drag around the photos to change the order, if we want to, which is
awesome. I love this feature. Then we can just go ahead
and close this and boom. All of our images are already
in there nice and clean. But I don't like that
this says overview. What I'm going to do
is click Exit here. It's already saved,
and then I'm going to click this little
icon next to Oview, and then I can change
the page title to Commercial because this
is my commercial portfolio. This is the portfolio
that I want people to see right away when
they enter my website, and then boom, click Save, and then that will change that
up there. Boom Commercial. We could do the same
thing for people. Let's click on this page
and check out people here. It's the same type of
thing. It's just portraits. What we can go ahead and do is sometimes when you click it, it moves it down
into not Linked. I'm not sure why. We can just
drag that back up there. Let's go ahead and edit this, change this to landscape, landscape, and landscape there. Click Save there. Then we'll do the same thing
with the gallery here. We can just go ahead
and click Edit up here. We can edit our gallery, and then we can change
out all those photos to include landscape photos. Let's just do that real quick. And we can also include
a description here, a collection of
landscape photos, photographed by Sean Dalton,
something like that. I think that might
show up on the top. I'm not sure. Now I'm not
sure where that shows up. I think it just shows up
in the page description. So now we have all of our
photos here that's awesome. We can also edit this section, and we can change the
spacing if you want to if we want to make the
spacing a little bit less. If we want it to just be two columns, we
can do that here. I think three
columns looks good. Maybe a little bit.
Less of spacing. I really like how big the
images are on this template. It just looks really good. So I think that looks pretty nice. We can even change the animation
here and the lightbox. So if we click that, then we can zoom in on each photo,
which is pretty cool. Might as well just save that. Okay, so there we
have two pages done. One thing I wanted to
edit on this P page, which I'm not sure what
happened. Oh, it's landscape. But one more thing
I wanted to edit on this P page actually is the fact that it
says P right there. So this is a good
opportunity to show you kind of how the
Dragon drop editor works. To add a section or
to remove a section, all you have to do is hover over it and then click remove. And then that will remove
that whole section there. But then you can
click Add section, and then we have a bunch of
awesome templates that we can add in that just look
really great, you know? Now, I think, like I said, it's just nice to
jump into the photos, but for like an about me page, for a product page, all of these things are
really, really awesome. We even have
different portfolios portfolio templates that
we can add in here. Some of them are pretty cool. Think some of them
are just a bit limiting like this one
has quite small images. Yet it's got a great design, but I'm not a huge fan. We could add
something like this. We could put one
photo here and leave the left side blank and then
just name this landscape, and that looks like
nice and clean. However, like I said, I
think it's best if you just jump into the photos,
show people what it's about. Instead, I'm just
going to remove that. Once we delete that,
now our photos are just boom right
there front and center, which I think looks
really great. I'm just going to go
ahead and save that, and you can do the same
thing for commercial and you can build multiple
of these pages. It's really easy to do, you can also just
duplicate the pages. You can just click here, and then you can scroll down
to the bottom and click duplicate page and then that
will duplicate that page, and then you can change
that to portraits, and then you can just plug
your portraits in there. But now let's talk
about site styles. Now, this is really
easy to edit. Let's go back to our
commercial page here. Click edit here. And then on
the top right hand corner, you can see site styles here, and this is a great
way to customize your specific websites. You can go to Fonts, and then you can just choose a font pack, which
I think is great. There's so many to choose from. It'll pop up right away and
display what it looks like. Let's just click
through a few here. I think look kind of
cool. Adonis looks nice. It's nice and clean, it's
modern, it's professional. Abel looks good. I think
that's the one that came on the site. Let's see. Poppins. This is actually
what I'm using on my website. Not with this sub font, but Poppins as the main font, Orpheus Pro, ITC Avent Guard. I think that one
looks pretty cool. So let's just leave
it at that. I think you guys get the idea there. And you can choose between
San Sera Sera or mixed. So Let's go back. One thing I don't like
is how big these are, like these navigation
buttons here, so I can just click that,
and that will move me straight into the site
navigation styling tools. Then I can choose how much
the site style that I want. If I go to custom, that will allow me to
change the size there. That looks a little bit better. I can go back, and then we can also do that
with the site title. We can change the size there. And this is basically our kind of master
style editor here, but you could also just
hover over elements, and then it'll select
that certain part of the style editor there. So you can go through and
play around with this. I think there's a way
to edit colors as well. So that is site styles. You can go ahead and play
around with this as well. You can change image blocks. You can do a lot with
this, and you can really customize
things to your liking, which is one of
the reasons why I really like square space. Then you can also go ahead
and edit your intersection. You can add a logo in there. You can add elements
like social links, so you can see I
have that enabled. And with social links, you can edit social icons. Boom Instagram will show up, and then you can just
change that to yours. So let's change
that to Sean Dalt. We can add one for YouTube. If you have a YouTube account, and it'll automatically give
you that little icon there. And then we can also
add our e mail. And when you add your email, then Boom, that just
shows up right there. So I think our site
design looks pretty good, but the other thing
we need to do is get rid of things because
we're not using things. Maybe you want to make a
portrait page for that, but we're just going to go ahead and delete that page there. But then of course, we need
to create a contact page. So I'm going to go
to contact here, and that is going to have this preset thing here.
But you know what? I don't like this template, so I'm just going to leave
that under not Linked. And I'm going to
create a new page here by clicking this
little plus sign. I'm going to say
use page layout, and then I'm going
to go down to A. And now we have a bunch of awesome things templates that we can use for our About page. I like this one. It's
clean. It's simple. I'm just going to
make that about. And now we have a
page that we can easily edit into
something our own. So we can go ahead
and just select this and say, Hey, I'm Shan. You can write something here. I'm a professional travel
photographer based in Bali, Indonesia, et cetera,
write what you want, and then you can go
here to the image. You can click edit,
delete this one. And then you can go ahead
and upload your own, and I recommend that you choose
one that shows your face. Just like we're going to be
talking about with Instagram, how we want to have our
face as our profile photo. We want to show our face on
our about M page as well. So Boom, that is pretty much good to go.
That looks great. We can edit this. We
can add sections here, say we wanted to add
a contact section. We can click section, we
can click contact here, and then you can have
a form, if you want. Maybe just a simple form. You could also just put
your links in there. So maybe something like this, a contact me form. Then you can just delete
contact us and say, interested in working with me, and then something
like that, and then people can fill out
this form here. You can customize
this if you want, give them a little bit
more instructions, and then you are pretty
much good to go. So we have our about me page, we have our portfolio here. So let's save that, Exit out, make sure commercials
at the top. And now we have pretty much
all of our pages here. We have our social
navigation, Now, if you wanted to
have people land on your landscape
page instead of your commercial page as when they type in
your website name, go ahead and click
landscape and then go ahead and set as
home page, confirm, and now whenever people
enter your website, whatever your domain is, they will land on
the landscape site. So you has a little
home icon there, so that's how you know
that's your home page. So, those are pretty much the only things that
we need to have in place when we're first
starting out. Look at this. We already have a
beautiful portfolio with several pages
that looks great. By the way, I apologize if you
can hear the construction, there's construction
next door going on nonstop and it is
driving me crazy, but I had to record this today. So it is what it is. Other thing I wanted
to talk about in this tutorial is
choosing a domain. Now, sometimes you
can choose a domain right when you first start
out on square space, but you can also
purchase them later. So to do that, all you have
to do is go to settings, go to domains, get a domain, and then you can go ahead
and purchase a new domain. Now, shed.com is unavailable. I think it's like $10,000, so I'm not going to be
getting that anytime soon. Wouldn't recommend
anything like.net or.org. I would definitely
recommend.com. If your name is taken, I always recommend going
for your name first, but if it's a popular name, you could try shortening it, or you could try adding
photo at the end. You could add photography, but I think that just creates
a really long domain. So I think it's best if we
keep things nice and short. So play around with it, see
if you can come up with a unique name for your
domain, nothing too long, but it also should at least
have your name in it, at least your first name, but I'd definitely recommend
both of your names. And ideally, it also matches your Instagram
handle as well. So Those are my tips
for getting a domain. Once you've done
that, I recommend also just exploring
this a little bit. There's so many cool
things on square space. One of the other
things I recommend checking out is all extensions. Square space has a bunch of great extensions
that we can use. Now, these are things
for finance and shipping and stuff,
sales and marketing. Some of these we can
definitely use later on, like mail chimp, and that's a great one for
building an e mail list. There's some cool ones
in here. There's things like print on demand, and I recommend just looking through and seeing if there's anything that's useful for you. Eventually, they probably will be as you build your
product business, but maybe not right
in the beginning. But basically, we just developed a portfolio website very
quickly using square space. And this is just one
of the templates. Like I said, there's so
many awesome templates, and I love how customizable
all of them are. Now, with square space
7.0 of the old version, you can easily switch your
template to a new one. With square space 7.1,
you cannot do that. However, square space 7.1 Dragon drop editor
is really great, and we can basically customize anything however we choose. So I do recommend choosing the right template
right off the bat, make sure it's a style
that you vibe with, preview with it, check it out. But if you choose
one and you want to change it later, it's okay. You can easily customize these square space
pages to your liking. So's the site, guys. I hope that was helpful for you. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of your portfolios. But just to recap,
we want something that's really easy to understand,
really easy to follow, clear, big images, beautiful, easy to navigate, and just a clear expression of
who we are and our value. So this is great. I can't wait to see
your portfolios, and I will chat with you
guys again very soon.
10. Who Can You Expect to Work With?: Now that we have a
portfolio in place. Now it's time to get down to business and
start talking about the different types
of clients that can hire you when you're
just starting out. So earlier on in the course, I mentioned that when
you're just starting out, a lot of the time, working with consumers
is going to be a lot easier than working
with businesses. However, if you do have a pretty robust
portfolio to begin with, you can start going out and reaching out to bigger brands or bigger businesses
already regardless of the social media
following that you have. But in this lesson, I want
to talk about how we start that process of finding
clients that we can work with, creating a list, and
then in the next lesson, we're going to talk
about how to outreach to them and score those
first few clients. Types of businesses
and consumers that you're going to
work with is going to be largely dependent on your
specific creative business. So for me as a photographer, like I said, when I started out, it was weddings and portraits
and cafes and restaurants. But if you're an illustrator, that might be creating
portraits of people's pets. That's always in high demand. People always want
to get memories of their pets or their animals. And if you're a
graphic designer, you're going to be more
in demand typically by businesses as opposed to a consumer because
businesses are much more in need of graphic designing
than the average consumer is. But I do want to list some
of the potential clients that we can work with in
our creative businesses. For example, we can work with small businesses
and startups. These clients often seek creative services like
logo design, branding, website development and
marketing materials to establish their brand
identity and their presence. And this is a big one for us. There are millions of different small
businesses around the planet that we can work for, and this is something that I
do quite a bit is creating marketing material
for small and medium sized businesses
that need photos, need visuals for
their social media or their marketing campaign. Can also get hired by entrepreneurs or other
fellow creatives. There's a lot of people
that are starting their own businesses or
their personal brands, and they require services
like local design, web development, content
creation, social media branding. They need portraits
of themselves. There's a lot that goes
into running a business, and that is where we
come in as creatives. Marketing and
advertising agencies is also an option for us. Agencies often hire
freelancers for specialized creative work
such as graphic design, copywriting, photography,
videography, and digital marketing campaigns
to serve their clients. Profits are also an option. I worked for non profits when
I was first starting out, and non profits are
often looking for creative services for
fundraising campaigns, event promotions,
branding, web design, and social media content. There's also been
a massive influx of e commerce businesses
over the last ten years, and there's a lot of
opportunity there for us. A lot of these business are in need of product photography, graphic design for their
marketing materials. They need work done
on their website, and they need content
creation as well. And that's one of the
things that you'll find throughout this list is content is massive for a
lot of businesses these days, and they turn to creatives
like us to get that job done. So I've created a lot of advertising and
marketing content for social media for
different businesses, both early on and now as well. It's still a big
part of my business, and this goes for pretty much all of the
creative arts as well. Now, these are just
broad examples of some of the potential clients
that we can work for, but your specific situation is going to depend on number one, what your creative
business focuses on and where you are
along in your journey. First things I recommend doing
is creating a Google Sheet with a bunch of
potential clients. Now, I have two of these. I have one for clients that I could realistically
work with now, and then I have one for
dream clients as well. And these are all the big brands that
I want to shoot for. Patagonia, Apple
Vans, the North Face. I have a bunch of
dream clients that I really want to shoot with
at some point in my career. And on the other
list, I have clients that I can realistically
work with. Some of them I already have, and I reference
that list when I'm going out and searching
for new jobs. Now, there's many
different ways that we can find these
potential clients. And the first one is community. I think it's really important
for us as artists to have a creative community
other artists that are doing similar things, running similar businesses. We can look at the type of clients that they're
working with, we can reference those clients, and then we can find new clients that are
similar to those. If those clients have
already shown that they like to work with
creatives like you, well, then they're
probably going to be open to working
with you as well. So when I first started out,
I would go on Instagram, and I would find
other photographers shooting something
similar to me, and I would look at some of
the jobs that they've done. I'd look at their portfolio, I'd look at their
Instagram page and check out who is tagged
in their posts. And then I would add
those clients to my list. Another great tool for
us to find and create a list of potential clients
is actually Chat GPT. Now, Cat GPT has become an incredible tool for
us in any business, but especially in
creative businesses, it helps us come up with ideas. It helps us write
responses to e mails, and it helps us navigate complex problems that happen when you're running a business. Makes Chat GPT so good is you can ask it a
ton of questions. So say you're an illustrator
and you're just not really sure what types of
clients that you can work with. Well you can ask Chat GPT. I will give you a
lot more insight into your specific situation, especially if you explain to it the situation that you're in
and what you specialize in. Now, you can take this one step further as well
and you could say something like I'm a
photographer based in San Jose, California, and I want to work with different coffee
shops in the city. Can you please create a list of 50 different coffee shops in the city and ignore all chains? And Chat GPT will
spit out a list of 50 different coffee shops that you could
potentially work with. You can add those
into your list. Really is an incredible
tool for us, and it can give us
a lot more clarity into the types of
clients that we can work with and specific clients
based on location as well. So, I'm a massive
massive fan of Chat EPT. And if you aren't using this, I highly recommend
checking it out, playing around with it, and if you're just
getting into this, start asking it some
questions as well, because it does have a
lot of great answers and insights for
us as creatives. But now that we have a list of potential clients that we
can realistically work with, let's move on to the next
lesson and talk about how we can actually
score those clients.
11. Scoring Your First Few Clients: Want to talk about
how we can actually score our first few clients. And I want to start this
lesson off with a story. So when I was 24-years-old, I was living in Chang Mai, Tailand, I was working
as a photographer. I started a travel
photography business abroad, and I was completely broke. And at that time, I really wanted to go home
and visit my family, but it's a very far trip flying
from Thailand to the US, and I didn't have the money
to pay for that trip, especially not a return ticket. So I scrounged up enough money from doing
a few shoots locally, and I flew back to the US. But while I was there, I knew I needed to get some work to not only sustain my travels,
while I was in America. Also to get my return ticket
to come back to Thailand. So what I did was, I hired a virtual assistant
on work.com to find and create a list of all the different coffee
shops in New York, San Francisco, and Portland. Those are the three cities that I was going to be visiting. And then I had that VA also find e mail addresses for
all of those businesses that I created a super
simple portfolio, and I just threw in a
bunch of coffee shop images that I had shot here
in Chang Mai Thailand. And then I created an e
mail template that I could send to all of these
different businesses in mass. And that's exactly what I did. I sent probably
two or 300 e mails to all of these
different coffee shops, and in each e mail, I
just changed the name of the coffee shop and I
tried to personalize it a little bit for each
specific coffee shop. But after I sent out
all those e mails e mail started
coming back to me. And a lot of these businesses were not interested
in working with me. They didn't need photos for their social media or for their marketing campaigns.
But a lot of them did. And I ended up walking away with $5,000 in that one month trip that I went back to the states, and this really
showed me the power of outreach and how this
can bring us clients, especially when we're
just starting out, and even with a small
social media following. I didn't rely on social media whatsoever to get these jobs. It was the portfolio, and it was putting
my work in front of somebody that could
potentially hire me. This is one thing that I highly recommend doing when
you're just starting out is reaching out directly
to potential clients, getting your name and getting your work in front of
that potential client. Because there are so many
different businesses out there that are in need of content creators or artists to come in and help
improve their businesses, but they don't have the time
to go out and look for them. So if you show up in their
inbox, you're right there, You're convenience,
you are much more likely to get hired if you
reach out to them directly In the last lesson,
we talked about creating that list of
potential clients, we now you already
have that list, and it's just a
matter of finding e mail addresses for those different clients
that you want to work with. We've already talked about
building a portfolio as well. So the last step is
just putting together that e mail template
that you can send out to all of these
different businesses. And I will put a sample for you guys. You
can download that. You can change it
out, personalize it, and send that out to
potential clients as well. You can download that
below this video. You're doing this,
don't reach out to five or ten
different clients. Reach out to at least 100. I promise if you do this, there are going to be people
that come back to you and they're going to be
interested in working with you. And you might not
nail this right away. You e mail might
not be that good. Portfolio might
not be that good, and you might be massively
undercharging for your work, but this is all a learning
experience, right? Like I said earlier,
nothing has to be perfect. We're going to start with V one, and we can always
improve later on. There are millions of
different businesses that we can work with
around the world. And if you fail on the
first 100, that's only 100. There are still so many
more potential clients So digital outreach
works really well, especially when we
apply it in mass, and we e mail hundreds of
different businesses out there. But we can also do this
in person as well. And when I was first starting
out as a photographer, I printed out a bunch of
different business cards, and I would go to events, free events in my city, and I would shoot
the event for free. So I'd participate, would
contact the event host and say, Hey, can I come and shoot some free pictures for you guys? And if it's okay, I
just want to pass out some business cards just
to market my services. And that's exactly what
I did. I would show up, I would shoot the
event for free, and I would hand out my
business cards after introducing myself, networking, letting people know who I was, and letting them know that
I was in the community, and I was available
for hire for work. And I scored so many jobs
early on doing that, portrait jobs, wedding jobs. I shot menus for restaurants. This was a really
great way for me to get involved in my community, get my name out there and start that process of finding clients. If you can do both
of these things, I promise you that
you're going to start scoring clients sooner
rather than later. And this is a really great
way to get your business off the ground and gain some
experience as well. I'd be thinking to yourself,
Sean, that all sounds great, but I have no idea what
to charge for my work. And I totally understand that. Pricing is a very
complicated thing, especially when you're
just starting out, and you're always going
to be learning more about pricing and how to
charge and things like that. Now, pricing is
something that is a little bit difficult to
talk about in this course, because we're talking
about many different types of creative businesses
in this course. Do have a resource
that can give you a better idea of how to price
your work as a creative. And that is the graphic
artists Guild handbook. It has pricing and
ethical guidelines for the modern
creative business. And this is a really
great resource to start out with so you can
have an idea of pricing, and it has a bunch of other
resources in there as well. But pricing is always one
of those things that can be very difficult to wrap your
head around at the beginning. When I first started
out, I was massively undercharging for my work.
I think I was charging We're $150-250 for each shot, which really wasn't a lot. But as I've grown
as a photographer, now I won't take a shot
for less than $2,000. I have several different
income streams to support me, and it's not worth my time or my energy to work with
smaller clients. And I'm very grateful to be
at this point in my business, but it has certainly been
a learning experience. And a lot of that
learning has just come through working
with different types of clients and getting a gauged for how much time I
actually have to put into these projects and just learning more about
running a creative business. Really do think that
these are some of the most effective
strategies that you can employ when
you're just starting out and scoring your
first few clients, as well as later
on in your career, when you're more
established artist, outreach and networking works. It still works for me now just as much as it
did in the beginning, and I credit a lot of my businesses success
to these strategies.
12. A Sustainable Approach to Social Media: L et's talk about social media. And I think many of us know
that social media can be incredibly important for our businesses in
this day and age, especially our
creative businesses. One reason for
that is because we can get sponsors that can pay us to advertise on our
social media channels, but social media is worth a lot more than
that to us as well. While you certainly don't
need a large social media following to start
scoring clients and to get your business
off the ground, having a larger social media
following can really bring all of our income
buckets in drastic ways. So, for example, the more social media followers you have, the better you're going
to get paid for sponsors, it's going to be easier
for you to find and attract different clients
that want to work with you. And also, it's going to make
it much easier for you to sell your digital or your
physical products as well, because you can use those social media platforms to
market your products. I really want to
come back to this idea that you do not need a large social media following to start out your
creative business, but it is something that
you should be working on and growing as
you go forward. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you
that you need to post five times a week,
four times a day. I think that is a strategy that probably works,
but most importantly, I think it's important
that you develop a good relationship with
social media going forward that will allow you
to consistently share your work in a very
organic and authentic way. You just go gung ho
into social media, you can get burned
out very quickly. I know, for me,
personally, I have a hard time sharing
five days a week. That's not something that
I can personally do. I love to create. I
love to take photos. I love to share my journey, but it's difficult
for me to just be sharing all the time I
do like my private life. And maybe you feel the same way. And that is totally okay. I think it's important
for us to find balance that works for us when
it comes to social media. So for me personally, I try
to share a few times a week, but I don't put too much
pressure on myself to do that. There are periods of time
seasons in my life where I am really motivated to share on social media. I
want to create content. I want to create posts to share on Instagram or create
videos for YouTube. And during those seasons, I really dive into it,
and I get after it. But then there's going
to be other seasons in my life where I'm just
really not drawn to it. It's not part of my creative journey at that
particular moment in time. And in those situations, I take time off and
I take a break, and I think that's
really important for us to understand as artists. But learning how to play
the social media game is incredibly important
for us as creatives, because like I said
before, it can really bring up all aspects
of our business. And I think the most
important thing is to treat it as a creative outlet. If you're treating it
like a creative outlet, you're going to be much
more inclined to share authentically and more
consistently as well. And if you're sitting
there thinking, San, I have no idea what to
share on my social media. There's only so
many posts that I can do showing my artwork, but I want to go
deeper than that. Well, the best tip I can give you is to share your journey. So every time you go and post, talk about your experience,
creating that artwork. Like I said earlier
on in this class, the artist behind the work gives the work
meeting, your stories, your life experiences all tie into the meaning
of that art. So I think it's
really important for us to share our ideas, share our thoughts, share our process for creating and just share our life
experiences in general. Use that caption space, share your thoughts
and your emotions and your experiences on
your stories and create reals that are interesting and inspiring
for you to create. I think it's really
important for us to treat our social media as a
personal authentic space. Because if we do so, not
only are we going to give much more meaning to our work that
we're sharing there, but also, it's going
to open up the door to create more connections
with other artists other creatives that
are out there as well. And that's never a bad thing
for us in this industry because our co workers in this industry, our
other creatives. It's relationships
that we make with other artists online
or in person. But if I had to give you
some concrete advice for social media, I would say, try and share at
least three or four times a week and use each one of those opportunities to share
your journey as an artist, your experiences, the process of you going about
creating your work, And also try and post on
your stories as well. And when you do so, try
and show your face, because, like I
mentioned earlier, having a personal brand is
what's going to help set you apart from AI and all of these content turns that are
going on right now where there's just so much content being put out into the Internet, authenticity is what's
really going to shine. And if you can show your face and be real and be authentic, that is what's going to help you stand out on social media. In terms of the specific social media platforms that
you should be using, Instagram is king
for us as creatives. It's still very, very important and we can reach a
lot of eyes and we can communicate ideas and
share very freely on there. So I'm a big proponent
of Instagram. And with that, if
you're creating reels, which I highly
recommend you doing, and if you do want to learn more about how to create
reels that can go viral, then I would recommend checking out my reels class
here on SkillShare. I'll put a link down
below this video. You guys can check that out. And that will give you much
more concrete examples as to how to create
reels that can go viral. And it's crazy how
one viral reel can completely transform your
business, so I highly recommend checking out that
class. But what's so great about creating reels, or short form videos is you can post those on Instagram Reels. You can also share
those on TikTok, and you can also share
those on YouTube shorts. So you create one
piece of content, you share it across
all three platforms. If that's too much for you,
you don't have to do that. I would recommend focusing on one or two social
media platforms. So for me, personally,
I do Instagram, and I do YouTube. YouTube is massive. I recently reached my
100,000 subscribers. You can see the
plaque back there. And while YouTube
is a lot of work, it's also probably the
best creative outlet for me because it expands
my creative mediums. I can now create videos
and tell stories and show my photos and my process and my journey
at the same time. So I'm a big fan of YouTube, and if that is something
that you want to get into, I would highly recommend it. It is a lot of work,
but it has a ton of potential for us as
business owners. Like I said before,
you do not have to nail the social media
game right away. As I've said throughout
this course, everything here is a
learning experience. The more you're sharing,
the more you're engaging, the more you're going to
learn what works for you, with your specific business, with your specific life
and your goals as well. So I would definitely recommend
being on social media, start an account, and share something if you don't
have anything out there. If you have a personal account
now, and you're thinking, Shawn, do I need to rebrand my account? Do I need
to create a new one? Just stick with one and start sharing your
artwork from there, I wouldn't even delete
your old posts, because ultimately, those
posts show you who you are, as a human being. And
like I said before, that's super important
for us as artists.
13. Getting Legal: What do you need to do?: Of course, we have to talk about the legal side of
things as well. Now, this is a
little bit difficult to talk about in a
course because we have people watching from all around the world in
this course right now, but there are a few
basic principles that I think are
important for us to follow when we're starting
our creative business. Now, the first thing I want
to say is a lot of people, a lot of students that
I work with who say, I'm not ready to
start charging for my work because I haven't
established a business yet. I'm not official. I don't have all of these things
set up and in place. I don't have contract templates. And my answer to
that is a lot of that stuff you do not need in place. You're
going to do that as you go, and I'm a big
proponent of starting lien, starting with as little as possible and then building
your business as you go. Now, for some of you,
that might mean not even registering a business and operating as a sole proprietor. For me, as an American, I didn't have to legally
register a business in order to start operating
as a business. Now, in some other countries,
you might have to do that. In Germany, for example, I know that you do
have to register a business in order to
start charging money. But in a lot of other countries, you aren't required to do that, and you can operate as a sole proprietor
for the time being. And then as you start
to get more clients and you start to become more
of an official business, you can go about registering your business and doing all the legal stuff
on top of that. So that is something
that you may or may not need to
do depending on your location and your
specific legal situation, depending on your country. Incredibly important for us when running a
creative business. A contract is going to stipulate all the conditions for the
job that you're doing. So for a photographer, that would be how many
photos are being delivered? When is the shot happening, how much the client
owes you for the shots, if the raw photos are going
to be delivered or not. It's basically going to
lay out all the terms for that project. No, I think a lot of people get
really hung up on this, and I think they need to
hire a lawyer to write these really fancy bulletproof contracts when you're
first starting out. And trust me when I say that
you do not need to do this. Even a really simple
contract that you write yourself
can be enough to make sure that you're
communicating properly with the client on
their needs and their wants and
their expectations for that particular project. Chat EBT is another really
awesome tool that we can use to write these
contracts early on. Now, of course,
when you're working on much bigger projects
later down the line, you might look at hiring
a lawyer and paying Amino 500 or $100 to write you a really concrete
bulletproof contract. But when you're first
starting out, trust me, when I say that you do
not need to do this, you just need to make sure that you're using that contract to just lay out the terms and communicate
properly with that. A lot of situations,
this is going to come from the client's
side anyways, and make sure when
the client does send you that contract that
you're reading over it, and you're making sure that it's in your best interest as well. Always take a close look at that contract if
they send it to you, and if you have any questions, you can run that by a lawyer to get a little
bit more clarity. But if you're just working with smaller clients and
it's nothing too crazy, you can easily write
your own contract, and that will be more
than enough for the job. Thing you should be
aware of is invoicing, a lot of the time when
you're working with clients, they're going to ask you for
an invoice for that project. Very easily create
these on CMVa. There's a bunch of different
templates that you can use. So if you're stressed out about invoicing, it's
really easy to do. You just fill in the
description for the job. Put the total there,
as well as provide your banking
information or your pay pal information so you
can get paid for that last thing I want
to mention here is banking and accounting. Now, when you're
running a business, all of the expenses
that you have for that business are
now tax deductible. So if I go out and
I buy a camera, well, that's a tax deductible
expense for my business. So at the end of
the year, if I owe $10,000 in taxes,
camera cost $3,000. Well, now I only owe
$7,000 in taxes. So always make sure that
you're keeping track of all of the expenses that
you have for your business. And ideally, you open up a separate business
bank account, so you can keep those
expenses separately, and then you pay yourself from that business bank account. Now, you might need to register
a business to do this. But like I said before, if you're just
starting out and you haven't worked with
any clients yet, I wouldn't even worry
about doing this. You can do this
later down the line. For me, it took me
about a year and a half to finally open up a separate business
bank account and start operating as an actual business instead of a sole proprietor. This is really just
going to depend, like I said, on your situation, how far along you are in your business and where
you're located as well. But I'm a big proponent
of starting lean, starting small, and getting everything else into
place as you go.
14. Next Steps: Have made it to the end
of this course guys, and we've discussed a
lot up until this point. But before you go, I
want to leave you with just a few key principles
moving forward. Now, running a creative
business is super exciting. It's really fun, but
there are going to be periods of time where you're
a little bit stressed out. Maybe you don't have
clients coming in, or you have that impostor
syndrome sneaking up on you, attacking you from behind, and you're not sure how
to deal with it. Those periods are going to come. It's not all roses and daisies, but I can tell you that
starting a creative business nine years ago was one of the best decisions that
I've ever made in my life. It's been incredibly
exciting and rewarding. Being able to engage
creatively with my artwork and build a business around that that
gives me freedom to travel is the best thing
I've ever done in my life. So I highly recommend
pursuing this. And I know this course was kind of a rough overview
of how to get going, but that's the purpose
of the course. It's just to get going. Like I said before,
you're going to continue to learn and build
your business as you go. This is not a comprehensive
course on how to scale a business from zero
all the way to $1 million. That is going to come through
individual experiences scoring clients,
learning about pricing, learning about how to level up your business and
scale your business. And it's going to be dependent
on many different factors, and there's no one size fits all for how
to get this done. So if you're inspired
to create a business and you love what you're doing from a creative standpoint, and you do think you can
build a business around this, please just get
the ball rolling. You're gonna figure
this out as you go. The first step is
the hardest step, and that's to get started
in the first place. Want to say thank
you so much for making it to the
end of this class. If you guys want to
learn more from me, I have a bunch of other
classes here on SkillShare. I also have a YouTube channel. If you're specifically
interested in photography. That's what that
channel is about. I talk about the business
side of photography. I talk about the creative
side of photography, and I just share my
creative journey on that platform, so you
can check me out there. You can also check me out
on Instagram as well. But thank you guys so
much for watching. I wish you all the
best going forward in your creative businesses. If you're here watching to
the end of this course, then I know you
have it in you, and I'm excited to see
where you go with it. So thanks again, and I will
catch you again very soon.