Freelance Illustrator + Designer

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Posts tagged small business advice
The Guilt of Selling - And How to Work Around It

If you run a business, you know how important selling is. We have to sell in order to survive, and of course to pay for all the fun (and not so fun) stuff that comes along with being an adult (or one that is pretending to be). 

After all, only you can keep the proverbial lights on in your small indie empire.

For the vast majority of the year selling and selling tactics don't seem to be an issue - the odd discount code here and there, a sale, a promotion or an offer. They do wonders to bring in new customers and clients and, hopefully, boost sales. But then comes along Christmas and it's foreign cousin, Thanksgiving, who brought their unwanted and shamed twin brother, Black Friday.

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Let's keep making mistakes!

It's been one year since I proclaimed from the rooftops (well, my Tumblr page) that I was going to stop working on my business and to instead pursue designing and illustrating full time.

Reading through this post (which for some reason makes me cringe and want to delete it forever from the eyes of the internet) I can recall so vividly how burnt out, tired and quite dejected I was feeling about the whole thing. The 'tipping point' part of that whole post was true - something needed to change in order to for me to change how I felt.  

12 months on, what can I tell you?

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Be Brave, Not Perfect

Ever had a month where work feels like it just is a relentless battle of one chaotic failure after another? That was the entirety of my March. Frankly, when April 1st hit I was glad to be out of that month believing I had some curse hanging over me.

It's pretty easy to displace the blame to other people, and even easier to look inwards and start blaming yourself too when things go wrong.

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5 lies you shouldn't tell yourself as a freelancer...

Working for yourself is an absolute dream. It can be all of the stereotypes that people associate with it such as working in your PJ's, having your own schedule, being able to get up whenever you want but it can also have it's downsides like any good job. 

I've been freelancing for 6 years now and these tips are just my own observations and experiences, all of which I've learnt to work with in order to thrive. I hope they help you too! 

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Keeping that fear 'edge'

For the past week or so I've been working my way through my HUGE box of business cards which I've been collecting for 4 years, inputting each and every one of them into a new spreadsheet database. You might think I'm a little mad for doing this time consuming, and let's be honest, inanely tedious job but it's all part of the process I've started since reading Alex Mather's e-book How To Get Illustration Clients

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