After two very real years, we say farewell (for now) to Freelance Therapy! Join your host, Kennedy, as she talks about the evolution of her career and her reflections on being a freelancer and now being a business owner. Want to keep in touch? Follow us @karcreative on Instagram! Looking to work with a social agency in the near future? Shoot us an email at hi@kar-creative.com
You've heard the old adage you have to spend money to make money - but determining what you want to spend money on can be a scary and difficult thing. This week a listener asks what should I invest in to level up my business? And your host, Kennedy Roberts spends some time talking through her philosophy around making investments into your business.
Once you've been with a client for a long time you might find yourself struggling to justify the project from a profit perspective. It's honestly a tale as old as time especially if your business is growing quickly. But the real question is HOW do you ask for more money from a long term client. Honestly, the answer isn't that easy, but today we take you through some ways of thinking about and approaching this conversation that might be helpful.
After you've been in business for a while, it is important to start to consider how you can niche down, find your footing as a business owner and create efficiencies that lead to more profit. But how do you figure out what is the most lucrative and what your footing looks like for you and your business? I take you through the three things you need to determine to effectively niche down in a way that is effective and doesn't leave revenue on the table.
Have a question? Call the FT hotline at 619-929-0296
Get that butterfly feeling when you're on zoom? You're not alone...I've been there and it was...well awkward to say the least. Here's my perspective on what to do when you have a crush on a client and spoiler alert - it's all about the power dynamics, okay. And PSA this is NOT dating advice.
Have you ever gotten that terrible email? The one with the client feedback that makes you cringe, where they seem to hate everything you've done and want their money back? Well, same. But I'm here to tell you - you and your career actually CAN survive this terrible, terrible moment and listen to find out how!
PS. Have a question or need a little bit of freelance therapy? Call us or text us at 619-929-0296.
Podcast is created by Kennedy Roberts in collaboration with KAR Creative Studios. Intro and Outro music is written and produced by Aaron Lund.
Okay, so my laptop was stolen and the events that came after were less than savory. But I got through it and so will you - well hopefully this doesn't happen to you - but something bad will and here is a step by step guide of how to get through it. Also a little bit of complaining on my end because..it's therapy after all.
This podcast is created by Kennedy Roberts in collaboration with KAR Creative Studio. Music is written and produced by Aaron Lund.
So your a creative...a designer, a copywriter, a photographer and you've never found yourself in the situation where you need to talk to clients. But now you're a freelancer and you're the sole person on the hook for negotiating contracts, discussing scope and talking timelines. How do you even get started? What are you supposed to say? How much slang can you use. Your host and founder of KAR Creative, Kennedy Roberts, talks all of this and more in this weeks episode.
Got a burning freelance question you want answered on an episode of Freelance Therapy? Give us a shout at 619-929-0296.
We're bacccckkk (yet again) and this time we're chatting about taxes. You're in for 20 minutes of pure financial fun while I review what a tax write off is, how to organize your freelance finances and what NOT to do when you're writing things off. Curious? Get to listening! We'll be back next Tuesday and for the next 10 Tuesday's after that.
Today we're chatting with our good friend, Charlee Black of Good Friends Studio out of Indianapolis, Indiana. Charlee is the founder and lead photographer of her own studio and currently in the process of building her physical space, BLOT Creative Studios. On today's episode we chat about being a female photographer working in a geographical location not generally regarded as creative. We also discuss pop-tart gate, supporting others in the creative community and all of the projects Charlee has going on.
Keep up with Charlee and her projects on instagram @charleeblk @goodfriends.studio @blotcreativestudio and look out for her crowdfunding campaign coming in April via iFundWomen.
As freelancers (or just humans working from home during a pandemic) boundaries are hard to create. When do you shut your laptop? When do you open it? How many times a day is is acceptable to check your email during the day? Over the last year we have all had to navigate how to create and hold these boundaries for ourselves in order to have any kind of personal life. Soooo in this episode we go over how to create boundaries that actually work for you in your REAL life and how to continue to hold those boundaries even when they're difficult.
We want to know how you're finding work life integration while staying home. Message us on Instagram! @freelancetherapy or @karcreative. xx
Last year as Kimmy was preparing for her wedding and her honeymoon she had to make the difficult decision to leave a full-time job she really enjoyed in order to manager her chronic illness and still have the time off she would need to celebrate her big day. While it wasn't a part of her career plan - Kimmy used this opportunity to start her own business working as a virtual assistant and branded content creator. In her spare time Kimmy takes on create pursuits ranging from cooking her way through Taylor Swift's Folklore to thrifting amazing home decor to DIYing a dream backyard which she documents on her Instagram account @wovenandwicker. Today I sit down with Kimmy to chat everything from:
- How Kimmy Started working as a Virtual Assistant and Content Creator
- Kimmy's creative pursuits and how she documents them via her instagram account @wovenandwicker
- The Magic of TikTok and using it as a content creator for brands
- And how to manage freelancing with a Chronic Illness
Connect with Kimmy on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/wovenandwicker
We're back this week with another solo episode and this time we're talking about positivity. And we're not talking about the toxic bubblegum positivity that we've all become accustomed to on Instagram - the kind of positivity we're talking about is more about creating a life and a career we are proud of despite challenges. Here's what we chat about:
- What to do when we encounter hard things including giving yourself time to feel bad and complain, figuring out what about the feeling feels bad to you, creating strategies to change that feeling, and actioning on those things to move forward.
-Toxic positivity rhetoric and how to reframe that kind of positivity
- Using the same principles of creation we use in our work to create things we are proud of outside our work
- And my own experience employing this positivity throughout pandemic times
Check out our website for more opportunities to get involved with Freelance Therapy including supporting the show in exchange for a shoutout! www.freelance-therapy.com
See you real soon, like Tuesday soon.
Basically exactly what it sounds like. This week @avalillie takes the reigns and interviews me for a change. A business major at SDSU, Ava had a lot of questions about how marketing and business work in the ~real world~! Honestly...I have questions too.
But regardless we sat down so I could answer them to the best of my ability. We chatted everything from:
-The 'legality' of starting your own business
- When and how you hire employees
- What the hell I actually do all day
And a whole bunch more.
ok, honest moment - I didn't record this until twenty minutes before I released it. But you know what! times are weird - with America being a dumpster fire, daily fear about COVID and the future of our country and our rights and then also having to be active members in a capitalist society things are starting to feel a little bit frantic.
So this week I just wanted to check in with you and give yourself a minute to check in with yourself. And I also rap a bit about Seth Godin's email today on getting better clients - I think this is so important to being happier at work and also being more able to take on these moments that feel frantic and terrifying.
AND! then we talk about www.freelance-therapy.com (you should check it out) and how you can support the show.
Here's all the links and details we chatted about:
Subscribe to Seth Godin's email newsletter here.
Subscribe to Extra Hours email list A Little Something Extra and nab the resource on cold emailing brands here.
Support Freelance Therapy and grab a 10 dollar shout out here.
2 years ago - almost to the day I put in my 2-ish week (it ended up being a lot longer than that) notice to leave my full-time job. It came on the back of being unhappy and job searching for a while and also never really feeling fulfilled or happy at any of the full-time or internship roles I had ever worked at. It was a decision that took some courage but quite honestly just felt right to me - so as I've mentioned on plenty of other episodes - I didn't really think about it that much and just took the leap into being my own boss.
The last two years have been filled with great wins that I never really took a moment to celebrate, and mourning a lot of painful losses. They have brought me some of my most fulfilling creative collaborations and some of my most difficult projects. And through it all I've made a lot of stuff I'm really proud of and quite honestly - a lot of stuff I'm not that proud of.
On today's episode I drink a little too much rose and overshare the history of my first tow years of freelancing. We talk everything from
- my greatest wins
- greatest losses
- best memories of the last two years
-and biggest learnings
My hope is that where ever you are at in this journey you also take a moment to raise a toast to yourself and your freelance journey and maybe learn a little something from my missteps.
Valeria and I met 7 years ago (holy shit- we are old) in our Freshman Seminar at Loyola Marymount University. In the Western pocket of Los Angeles I think we were drawn to each other because of our out of place energy. Eventually that first semester ended and we both would announce over the phone to our loved ones that it was indeed time for us to get the fuck out of LMU. Only difference is she would actually leave and I would end up staying and changing my major 6 times.
Fast forward 7 years and while our paths were completely different we've ended up in kind of the same place : trying to figure out maybe the same problem we were trying to figure out back then, how to use our creative energy in a world that might just continue to tell us that it's going to be hard and not worthwhile.
So in this episode Valeria and I sat down to talk about:
- How she decided to leave the traditional route of a 4 year school and go to design school instead.
- How that altered her career path and what she did after we parted ways after that first year at LMU.
- Our obsession with New Girl
- How to set rates and find work
- How we look at our decisions from back then 7 years ago and how they've helped our hindered us now
- And a lot more ranting.
Follow Valeria on Instagram @valeriaponcej and listen to her podcast ' Tired and Emotional Podcast' here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tiredandemotionalpod/id1488275130.
Shawn is a visual storyteller and community curator. His full-time gig is at ilovecreatives putting together partnerships and making connections. But on the side he creates music videos and tells stories through visuals. This week we jumped on the airwaves to chat with Shawn about how he even got here and how he expanded his creative tool-belt so that he would be able to explore telling stories through many different avenues.
To start from the beginning, Shawn went to school at FSU and got a degree in ‘writing for the internet’. His first job was in NYC working for the National Inquirer and he was feelin’ pretty good.
But like most of us at the beginning of our career, he got knocked on his butt and ended up moving back to Florida and started writing his butt off - wrote a memoir, really focused on writing and never thought he would do visual arts. Visual storyteller - just a storyteller in a lot of different formats. And eventually he landed himself in LA, where he is now.
In this episode we talk about:
-hits to our confidence during the early part of our career and when relocating and recollecting ourselves during career changes.
-the best way to add tools to your creative tool belt and get over the intimidation of starting new creative skills (SPOILER: it involves trusting your vision and leaning on a community of creatives).
- building your creative network and keeping up with the creatives in your life.
-and how to talk about your work with clients and value yourself in those conversations.
To follow along with Shawn follow him @thatbinderdude or check out his website www.shawnbinder.com. Oh! and he has a podcast Casual Talk with Bronze Avery.
Long story short, Mckenna taught me to teach yoga (yes, I teach yoga or did if you missed it during the first episode) and we quickly realized we had a lot more in common than just teaching yoga. So maybe long story long after spending plenty of hours deep cleaning the yoga studio together and hanging clothes - we realized that what we really had in common was a desire to create something and an entrepreneurial mindset.
And now we spend a lot of time chatting about things like how to figure out what we’re going to do with our lives and how we’re going to make time to pursue the things that we love.
So today Mckenna and I kind of just shoot the shit about her journey teaching yoga and managing a yoga studio. We talk about doing what we love for work and how to manage our time and our priorities so we actually get something done that matters.
Oh and we talk about just starting the damn thing. There are also some mentions of the Weeknd and the Weekend and retirement.
If you wanna check in on Mckenna and what she’s just started check her out right here on Instagram.
And give it a listen - you know where.
Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Ayana Campbell Smith the founder of Millennial Money Guide and full-time Creative Director / UI Designer. We chatted everything from her new found hobby, long boarding and how she has used Millennial Money Guide as a creative outlet to explore new opportunities and passions and then of course we talked about 💸 GUAP 💸. Here are the highlights 👇🏽
I obviously asked what Ayana thinks are the top ~ mistakes ~ that millennials are making with their money. You’ll be glad to hear that she actually didn’t say eating out too much 😉. She actually said that most of us are missing out on habitual saving habits. And she’s right - if you’re anything like me you’re probably throwing a lil’ bit of money away once you’ve paid for everything else and bought that Lisa Says Gah! set that you’ve been wanting forever. But Ayana says pay yourself first send some money to your debt or savings - whatever you’re working on. PRIORITIES BABY.
She also says that we don’t need to be afraid of budgeting (hands up if you needed to hear that). And actually having a budget is about empowering yourself when it comes to your money - NOT restricting yourself. It’s more about deciding where you want your money to go and keeping yourself accountable to that.
And finally we talked about pricing (which yes we could do an entire episode on) but we chatted about starting at the beginning - breaking things down to the basics and determining what you need to cover your basis. And think about how much time you’re spending on things even if you aren’t communicating that with your client - just so you know what you’re actually making per hour.
Sooooo if you want to work with Ayana on getting your mind on your money and your money on your mind… check her out here https://www.instagram.com/millennialmoney.guide/.