As 2010 came to a close, I started cleaning out some old e-mails and notes to myself.

Most of it deserved to be deleted, but I ran across a note to myself to pass along a link that has some good advice. Definitely not for the “delete” button.

It’s from Jeremy Tuber, a friend I’ve pointed you to in the past. His book, Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks, is must-reading in my opinion.

His article, It’s Important to You, So Why Don’t Your Clients Give a Crap?, rings true with me, especially in the direct market design world.

Unfortunately, looking at the sites of beginning designers, quite a few spend more time talking about themselves and things clients couldn’t begin to care less about. Maybe that’s just normal if you don’t feel you have a track record to talk about.

If you feel yourself being pulled in that direction, resist. Talk about what’s important to the client. When you demonstrate that you understand what’s important to them and can deliver, you’ll land more clients.

On another note, this month marks the 5th anniversary of this blog which originally started on a whim over on Blogspot. I hope you’ve received some value from it over the years.

Thanks for reading!

Warning: I’m going to be very direct today. If you’ve been spinning your wheels trying to get your freelance design business running while making excuses along the way, you may not want to read this.

This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I am with my business and where I want to be. Overall, I’ve had a lot of success, but have been thinking it’s time to take it to a much higher level. When you start seriously focusing on that, an amazing thing happens: The right people and circumstances seem to appear out of nowhere. (You may have heard the old saying, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.)

But while this has been going on for me, I’ve also been running into a lot of hopeful copywriters and designers who are, as I phrased it a moment ago, spinning their wheels. Obviously I don’t know the details of everyone’s circumstances, but here’s what I can tell you based on people I’ve talked to since I started as a freelancer some years ago. About 5% of the folks who want to make a change in their career haven’t done so for valid reasons. For example, in addition to working a full-time job and managing a family, they’re also responsible for a seriously ailing family member.

The trouble is, the other 95% seems to think that they’re in that valid 5%. Those “95%” folks are certainly busy, but these days everyone is busy and probably struggling to some degree. Yet the ones who are serious about making a change find a way to do it, even if it means sacrificing what little free time and resources they have. In fact, I dare say it’s impossible to make a career change without some level of sacrifice. Unfortunately, these people won’t face the reality that they’re never going to get around to making a change. They fool themselves by reading and posting on blogs, or buying (and even reading) books that they’ll never put into practice.

Doing that gives you the illusion of making progress. But if you’re never taking what you’re reading and putting it into practice, the best you can say is that you’re becoming a professional reader or web surfer. Of course, if you’re not getting paid for that, strike the word professional from the previous sentence.

That brings us to Jeremy Tuber’s book, Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks. I’ve mentioned Tuber’s other book, Verbal Kung-Fu for Freelancers, here. As for BASAS, I just finished it. At just over 500 pages, this isn’t a glossing-over of how to succeed as a designer. This book covers so much, it’s simply easier for me to link to the book’s table of contents so you can see for yourself what it covers.

Pleasantly, this is an easy read. Tuber gets right to the point on each topic, so you’ll move through the book at a quick pace. If you’re a struggling designer and can’t find at least one action step from each section, you’re simply not paying attention.

But here’s where I want to tie things in to what I said earlier about the folks spinning their wheels. This book is filled with many, many ways to get off to a great start and begin notching some victories. Even if you’ve been freelancing for a bit, I think you’ll find helpful hints or new distinctions on certain topics just like I did. For example, if I had better known and appreciated the difference between a logo design and a concept design when I was starting out, I might not have developed such an intense distaste for logo design. (See page 47 in the book.) And the chapter, “Think Only Kids Tell Stories?” (page 267), should be required reading by every designer who thinks hanging a virtual OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign is good enough.

So, bottom line, I recommend this book without reservation for those who are serious about putting the advice and ideas to use.

Having said that, don’t bother buying this book (or any other for that matter) unless you intend to put it to use. You know if you’re one who has been making excuses about starting a freelance design career. As we approach the beginning of a new year, this is a natural time to start planning what you intend to do in 2010. Not what you would like to do, but what you intend to do. If you intend to make a design career happen, this book is going to help you. If you simply like the feeling that you’re making progress when you’re really not, save your money. In fact – and this may be harsh, but I’ll say it anyway – it may be time to get really honest with yourself and move on to something else. There’s no shame in giving up a “dream” if you’re never really going to move it from a dream in your head to real, measurable action.

I’m hoping you’re going to make it real and just need a kick in the rear-end.

By the way, if you do consider yourself serious, also look into Tuber’s iTunes album, From Zero to Graphic Design Hero. If quiet reading time is hard to come by, having something you can listen to during your commute or when you and your iPod can get away for a bit is a great use of your time. Tuber’s calm and friendly voice will walk you through some foundational items that will help you build a strong and successful graphic design business. From iTunes, you can see the topics and hear audio samples of each chapter.

I’m not very good at reviewing products. I know whether or not I like something, but my ability to really articulate why in a traditional “review” is a bit lacking.

But I never want that to stop me from passing along something that I think may help other freelancers, especially when the product is targeted toward freelance designers.

Not that long ago, I included an article from Jeremy Tuber here on the blog. He’s the keeper of the Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks website. Conveniently enough, that’s also the name of a book of his that I’m still working my way through.

When I bought my Kindle, one of the first books I downloaded was another book by Tuber, Verbal Kung-Fu For Freelancers. I finally finished it this past week.

If you click on that link, you’ll see all the topics he covers. Bottom line: this is a great resource for common client questions/issues and how you might deal with them.

Now I’ll be honest with you… I wouldn’t deal with some of these situations the way Tuber would, nor is he suggesting that you do. His responses are simply suggestions of how you could deal with similar situations when they come up. And believe me, they will come up.

In fact, I think one of the biggest values of the book is the simple matter of exposing you to the wide range of situations a client can throw at you. And by reading his suggestions on how to deal with them, you’ll start to form your own responses based on your experience, your personality and your situation at the time. Sometimes your responses might be similar to Tuber’s, other times you might take a totally different approach.

If you have no ideas of your own about how to respond, go with what Tuber suggests. The advice is coming from someone who is having success as a freelance designer. That’s the type of person you want to be taking advice from… the “been there, done that” type of person.

Not knowing what to expect is one of the biggest stress points of beginning designers. So when you have a book that lays out over 100 possible scenarios and how to deal with them… well, I trust you can see just how valuable that is.

With Christmas just around the corner, do yourself a favor and treat yourself to Tuber’s two books and his iTunes program. It will help lay a great foundation as your get ready to tackle 2010.

I want to introduce you to Jeremy Tuber. I found him through Twitter and glad I did. Jeremy is a freelance graphic designer and author. I’m going to talk a bit more about him after this article. Jeremy and I did a “blog exchange” where he used one of my articles and I’m using one of his. But after today, you’re going to want to bookmark his site and follow him closely.

So more on Jeremy in a moment. For now, here’s what he has to say about why you’re not making as much money as you could…

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From talking with designers over the years I’ve found a direct correlation between how much they make and several undeniable factors – many of them aren’t related to their design prowess. Recently I’d see a post on another blog that listed the “Top 10 Things They Don’t Teach In Design School“, it inspired me to put this together.

If you asked 10 designers if they aren’t making the money they want to be, 9 out of the 10, or in some cases 10 out of the 10 are going to say, “No”. This got me thinking, “If they’re not happy with the money they’re making why don’t they do something about it? Do they not have the talent? Are they just lazy, or are they uncertain what to do about it?“

In this post I’ll address the later: designers that want to bring in more money but aren’t sure why they aren’t. For those designers who really (I mean really) want to start to bring in more money, the process starts with looking at what’s going on now. Here are my non talent-based reasons why designers don’t bring in the money they want:

They:

1. Weren’t taught, don’t care about or are scared how to market and sell their services. Can’t market or sell? Better learn to do something else.
2. Don’t understand that being an expert in Photoshop won’t by itself bring in business. They don’t get that clients don’t care if you’re a Photoshop expert.
3. Mistakenly feel like everything they need to know about freelancing they learned in school, can learn online for free or will just be able to figure it out themselves.
4. Invest way too many resources in “fun” things: picking up the latest Adobe CS, checking out the latest free tutorials, IMing, Twittering, etc… instead of focusing on expanding their business. They are unwilling (not unable) to invest any time, money or energy in growing their business…but they’ll spend an extraordinary amount of resources if they are being entertained.
5. Don’t have a mentor or someone that is willing and able to provide sound advice for the specific situations, challenges the freelancer runs into (no, buddies and freelancers on the chat rooms don’t count…if the chat room freelancers were that good, why aren’t they working on projects instead of wasting time in the chat rooms?)
6. Weren’t taught and don’t know how to communicate with clients in an effective, compelling way, so they end up working with the wrong clients, spending way too much time on them, not getting fairly paid for their talent and giving away free services.
7. Have difficulty understanding what clients truly want from them (it’s not “good design”), so they end up talking about things clients don’t care about…and the client decides not to hire them.
8. Fool themselves into thinking someday “it’ll just happen”. Here’s an exact copy of a tweet I pasted directly from a designer on Twitter, “Being poor sucks, but… it… builds character????? I’m a “starving artist” myself. 1 of these days I’ll be tattooed & rich!“ What do you think his chances are?
9. Bonus one here that happened after I initially wrote this entry – on the 15th I had a user (both in the figurative and literal sense of the word) systematically went through every single page of this blog trolling for free information. Not only is this a snarky thing to do, it’s really not going to help him/her become successful. In doing my own research on what’s out there I’ve just found the free information I stumbled was stuff I already knew…and overly simplified as well. If freelancers really think they’re going to find the secret to their success by rummaging the Internet for free tidbits are just fooling themselves…I should know, I tried this approach early in my career. I went through a marketing expert’s blog and copied all of his entries, thinking I hit the jackpot…in the end, I didn’t spend a lot of time on them and they didn’t do a damn thing for me.

Pretty harsh stuff I know, almost like getting a cold bucket of water tossed on you. But for those of you out there that are thinking about freelancing, just starting out or in need of a boost, I would rather be honest with you rather than try to sugar-coat it, I hope that makes sense.

I know that most freelancers that read this will ignore it – that’s cool. Over 75% of freelancing businesses don’t make it after 2-3 years…and someone has to make up those statistics. But I also know there are a few of you who will see some wisdom in this and take action.

You can listen or you can ignore, the choice is all yours, my role is just to show you where the water is…your role is to decide to drink it or not.

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Thanks, Jeremy.

For the rest of you, head over to Jeremy’s site, Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks.

Once you’re there, bookmark the site. Next, do I like I did and spend a few hours pouring through all of the past articles. I like that Jeremy is brutally honest about things. I appreciate straight talk. But more important than reading the information is finding ways to apply it.

There are plenty of designers out there with blogs, but not so many have content that we as direct market design freelancers can relate to. Quite a number come from designers and artists who seem to be in the word of agency work and projects that are outside the realm of some of things followers of this blog are into.

After you’ve seen Jeremy’s blog, do what I did… buy his book, his iTunes “album” and any of the other items that you feel will help you at this point. I just started reading Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks which I ordered from Amazon.com. It’s 500 pages of good information, especially if you’re totally new or relatively new and not sure what to do next.

As soon as my Kindle arrives this week, the first purchase is going to be Jeremy’s book, Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers. (You can also buy a non-Kindle version.)

OK… it’s up to you now. If you’re serious about building your freelance graphic design business, you’re going to look into what Jeremy is offering and find ways to apply his advice to your own situation.