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Freelancing Secrets— w/ Jamie Brindle & Paul Mikhay
Chris Do argues that to achieve financial stability and creative freedom, you must stop acting like a freelancer and start thinking like a business owner.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · March 26, 2023
Art vs. Commerce: The First Conflict
There is a dangerous and romantic myth that saddles creative people. It’s the idea that to be a true artist, you must struggle. That commerce is the enemy of craft, and a client is an obstacle to self-expression.
This belief is a trap. It pits two necessary forces, art and money, against each other as oil and water. It is the reason so many talented creatives find themselves on a path to financial ruin, barely able to make a living.
During a live conversation with fellow creator Jamie Brindle, education entrepreneur Chris Do dismantled this false dichotomy. The tension isn't between art and making a living. The tension is in the confusion of roles.
Do you self-identify as an artist? A decade ago, Chris Do would have said no. “I’m a graphic designer,” he would insist. The distinction is critical.
“One of the greatest downfalls of graphic designers or people who are in the service industry is they think of themselves as artists,” Do explains. “Because what they see is the client is an inconvenience to them creating and self-expressing.”
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of your role. “The person who gives you a means to make a living to provide for you and your family and your loved ones is not a person that gets in your way,” Do states. “They enable you to live your life.”
To resolve this conflict, you must first accept two precise definitions.
First, art. The best definition Do has ever heard came from filmmaker Lana Wachowski. On a panel for her film Cloud Atlas, she defined it with elegant simplicity. “Art is an invitation to look at the world from a different perspective.” It is pure, it is personal, and it must be done on your own terms. Sometimes, there is no financial reward for it.
Second, design. For this, Do turns to a definition from Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, popularized by Marty Neumeier in his book The Brand Gap. A designer is one who devises a course of action to go from an existing condition to an improved one.
This definition welcomes everyone. If you help a client improve their business, their operations, or their communication, you are a designer. You are providing a service. Art can have a job, but that job is not your own.
When you are commissioned, you step away from pure artistry. Your agenda is no longer just self-expression; it is to solve a problem for someone else. Many creatives, particularly photographers and designers, view their commercial work as a stepping stone to gallery shows and pure artistic recognition. They try to inject their artistic self-expression into client work, only to be met with frustration when the client, understandably, has other goals. They don't want your unfiltered expression. They want their problem solved.
The solution is not to abandon your artistic impulse. It is to stabilize your life first. As entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu has advised, you need a foundation. Create a reliable income stream, perhaps one that becomes passive over time, and use that stability to fund your true art. Do not confuse the two roles.
The stakes are not just professional. They are deeply personal. Do tells a harrowing story of an artist friend whose wife’s father fell gravely ill overseas. The artist looked at his finances and realized he couldn’t afford a last-minute plane ticket for his wife to say goodbye. She never saw her father again, and the tragedy broke their marriage.
“Money doesn't solve a lot of things,” Do says, his voice tight with emotion. “But it does buy a ticket for your wife to go see her parent before she dies. And that's really important to me.”
You cannot think about self-actualization when you cannot pay your rent. The artistic impulse must be served, but not at the expense of your basic ability to function and care for the people you love.
The Power of a Label: Freelancer or Business Owner?
Words are not just labels. They are the code for our reality. They shape our self-story, our actions, and how others perceive us.
As author Ronald J. Baker writes, “All transformation is linguistic. If we want to change the culture, we have to change the conversation.”
Do applies this principle directly to the world of independent work. The word most people use, “freelancer,” comes with baggage. For many, it evokes an image of poverty, of someone just scraping by between “real” jobs. It feels transient and unserious. The term itself is a linguistic trap.
The origin of the word is even more telling. As pricing expert Jonathan Stark points out, the term “freelance” comes from the Middle Ages. It described a mercenary, a “free lance” or sell-sword, hired to fight a war they didn’t believe in. The connotation is one of a hired gun with no stake in the outcome beyond a paycheck.
For Do, the definition is precise and has significant implications for how you operate. A lack of clarity around this term is causing widespread confusion and limiting the potential of millions of independent creatives.
A freelancer is one who sells their time. This is the fundamental distinction. When you are a freelancer, you are paid for the hours you work, not the work you get done. The business model is rooted in time as the unit of value.
Here are the defining characteristics of a true freelancer:
- You are selling time. Your rate is typically hourly, daily, or weekly. The client is buying your presence and your labor for a set period.
- You cannot delegate fulfillment. The client hired you. If you brought in an assistant to do your work while you drank coffee, the client would be justifiably upset. The expectation is that your hands are on the tools.
- You often work on-site. While remote work has blurred this line, the traditional freelance model involves showing up at the client’s office and working like a temporary employee.
- You are not responsible for the business functions. Sales, marketing, contracts, and project management are largely handled by the client. You show up, do the work, and submit a time sheet.
There is nothing wrong with being a freelancer. It is a valid way to work, and large agencies are built on the backs of talented freelance labor. The problem arises when you are operating as something else but still calling yourself a freelancer.
The next stage of evolution is the Independent Business Owner. This is not a freelancer. This is an employee of one. You are a business, and you must act like one.
The shift is primarily psychological before it becomes operational. You are no longer a hired hand. You are a strategic partner. Here are the traits of an independent business owner:
- You are selling value. Your price is based on deliverables, outcomes, or the value created for the client, not the hours it takes you. This is a core principle in value-based pricing.
- You are free to delegate. The client does not care who does the work, how it gets done, or how long it takes. They care that it meets the promised standard. You are a business, and businesses have teams and processes.
- You are responsible for all business functions. You manage marketing, sales, proposals, contracts, invoicing, project management, and customer service. You are the CEO, CFO, and COO.
- You are an equal partner. Author and designer Kevin Finn refuses to call the people who hire him “clients.” He sees it as a business-to-business relationship. He is not a vendor; he is a partner. This reframes the power dynamic entirely.
When you approach a lead from the perspective of a strategic partner, you immediately stand out. You start asking different questions. “How are you measuring success for this project?” “Where are the goal posts?” These are not questions a typical freelancer asks. These are the questions of a business owner invested in the outcome.
The Ghost in the Machine: How to Let Go of the Work
For many creatives, the biggest hurdle in transitioning from freelancer to business owner is letting go of the work itself. The identity of a “maker” is strong. The idea of becoming a “telephone designer,” as one of Paul Rand’s critiques of Kyle Cooper put it, who just phones it in and tells others what to do, feels like a betrayal of the craft.
This is another limiting belief. We do not expect Phil Knight to stitch Nike shoes. We do not expect Elon Musk to build our Tesla. We do not expect Gordon Ramsay to flip our burgers. Why do creatives hold themselves to a different standard?
Do’s own career provides a powerful lesson in making this transition early. Just a few months out of school, after a brief stint freelancing, he realized two things about himself: “I’m really lazy and I don’t like to work by myself.” So, he started hiring his friends from school to help him with the work.
He was working for the legendary design firm R/GA, led by Kyle Cooper, which had just changed the industry with its groundbreaking title sequence for the film Seven. The demand for talent was immense. Do began working remotely, and soon he had a small team of three people working with him.
He didn’t tell the agency. He just delivered the work of three people at the rate of one. Project after project, he built trust and a reputation for incredible speed and quality. The day rate kept increasing with each new project, to the annoyance of one producer.
Finally, Do walked into the office one night to show Cooper the latest work. After getting approvals, he took a breath. “I just want to let you know something,” he said. “I didn’t do all this work.” Cooper was initially offended, accusing him of ghostwriting. Do’s response was simple and direct. “Did it ever occur to you how I was able to do the work of three people in a day?”
Cooper paused. And he understood. The conversation was over. Do was not being paid for his time. He was being paid for the output, for the result. His ability to build a team and a process was a feature, not a bug. He had stopped being a freelancer and had become a business.
The key, as Jamie Brindle points out, is maintaining the standard. “You go to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, you’re not pissed that Gordon’s not back there flipping the burgers,” Brindle says. “You assume that Gordon has hired the right people to do it to his standards.”
If you delegate work and the quality drops, that is not a failure of delegation. It is a failure of leadership and management. You made a promise to the client to deliver a certain level of quality. It is your responsibility as the business owner to ensure that promise is kept, regardless of whose hands are on the keyboard. Fail to do that, and your brand is tainted. You cannot build a business on broken promises, a lesson crucial for anyone interested in growing a creative agency.
The Soloist's Scale: Growing Without a Team
But what if you don’t want to be a manager? What if you genuinely love doing the work and have no desire to run a team or an agency?
This does not mean you are doomed to a capped income. It simply requires a different strategy for scale. You can remain a party of one and still dramatically increase your earnings and freedom.
The first and most powerful lever is your price. The only way a solo practitioner can make more money is to increase their rate. As Brindle explains, a rate increase is not just about making more money; it’s about buying back your time.
When you are too busy with client work, you have no time for business development. This leads to the dreaded feast-or-famine cycle. You work frantically on three or four projects, they all end at once, and you spend the next few months desperately trying to find your next meal. A rate raise is designed to strategically lose your lowest-paying clients, freeing up your calendar to consistently find better ones.
As Do puts it, price is a function of supply and demand. Your job is to increase demand while simultaneously decreasing the available supply of you. This involves two non-negotiable actions.
First, get good at your craft. “The premise is always you got to put time into your craft,” Do insists. Too many people hear “charge more” and think it’s a magic trick for the unskilled. It’s not. You must be able to deliver on the promises your high price makes. Put in the hours, develop your skills, and have proof of your ability.
Second, specialize. The entire point of positioning is to reduce or eliminate competition. When you are one of one, you are non-fungible. You have no competition. There is only one person who can do the work the way you do it, and that person is you. Your rate is your rate. The market does not get to dictate it. This focus on uniqueness is a key component of building a powerful personal brand.
Beyond raising your rates for one-on-one services, solo practitioners can scale in other ways:
- Productized Services. Create a version of your service with a defined scope, process, and price. You build an assembly line for a specific offering, allowing you to deliver it more efficiently and at scale without custom proposals for every client.
- Digital Products. Monetize your expertise. If you’re a colorist, you can sell LUTs. If you’re a designer, you can sell templates or courses. This allows you to decouple your time from your income entirely, creating a new revenue stream that complements your client work. This is how you can truly begin to build wealth.
Hunter, Farmer, or Fisherman? Your Lead Generation Identity
Once you’ve defined your role and your offering, you need a system for attracting clients. Not all methods of lead generation are created equal, and choosing the wrong one for your personality is a recipe for burnout.
Do breaks down the approaches into two primary archetypes: the hunter and the farmer.
The Hunter operates on outbound sales. This is the world of direct outreach, cold calls, and networking. The hunter stalks their prey, follows tracks, and hopes for a big kill. It can be incredibly exciting, an adrenaline rush that comes with landing a massive whale of a client. But it’s also dangerous and unpredictable. You feast for a while, but then you enter a long period of starvation, living off the last kill while you hunt for the next.
The Farmer operates on inbound marketing. This is the world of content, community, and reputation. The farmer tills the soil, plants seeds, and nurtures them over time. It is not sexy. It is not instantaneous. A farmer who fails to water their plants will starve. But it is steady and predictable. Fruit will come, not right away, but in season. This long-term mindset is at the heart of effective content strategy.
The key is brutal self-honesty. “I’m an introvert,” Do admits. “I don’t like sales. I’m not built for that.” He knows he is a farmer. Trying to be a hunter would be a struggle against his own nature, competing against people biologically wired for the chase.
Your purpose is to understand your unique set of skills, your personality, and your strengths, and to maximize them. If you’re a four-foot-five basketball player, you can play the game, but you will likely get destroyed by someone who is seven feet tall. They have a physical advantage. Play the game you are built to win.
Jamie Brindle adds a third archetype to the mix: the fisherman.
The Fisherman operates in defined marketplaces. This is the world of platforms like Upwork or other job boards. It gets a bad rap, but it can be a highly effective strategy if approached correctly. These platforms are a pond full of people who are actively looking to do business. The key is to know which fish you’re trying to catch and how to bait the hook. Brindle’s agency found a lucrative niche doing animation for other agencies on Upwork, landing clients worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over time.
You can pursue all three strategies, but you must understand which one is your primary driver and align it with who you are.
The Final Distinction: Content vs. Collateral
For many creatives today, the “farmer” model of inbound marketing means one thing: creating content. They see successful YouTubers and Instagrammers and think, “I can do that. I already do this for my clients, why not for myself?”
This leads to another critical confusion: the difference between creating content and creating advertising collateral.
In his seminal book Permission Marketing, Seth Godin writes that the internet was the first mass communication medium not originally designed to sell ads. Radio and television were built for that purpose. But now, we have taken this incredible platform for connection and turned it into another channel for disruptive advertising.
Many creatives who think they are “doing content” are just making ads for their services in disguise. This is not content. This is collateral.
The hunter uses social media to find and close leads. The farmer uses social media to build an audience and a brand over time. It’s a completely different mindset. One is transactional; the other is relational. One is about short-term sales; the other is about long-term trust.
Brindle notes that when he and his wife started their social media presence, they made a conscious decision. They were not talking to potential clients. They were talking to their fellow practitioners. They were building a community, not a sales funnel for their agency. The byproduct of that expertise could then be used to create digital products and scale their business in a new direction.
This is the ultimate evolution. It begins with a choice. Define your role: artist or designer. Define your business: freelancer or owner. Define your strategy: hunter, farmer, or fisherman.
Be honest about who you are and what you want. The words you choose will create your world.
Choose them wisely.
TRANSCRIPT
um okay well without further ado um ladies and gentlemen this is Chris and Jamie thank you so much for being here uh it's a real privilege to have this conversation to Stage it um and just in case I know everyone in this room knows the both of you but anyone listening at some
point if they're not already familiar if you could introduce yourselves in a few sentences we'll start with You Chris did I look at that camera uh he was talking to you yeah all right hi everybody my name is Christo I'm a loud introvert I'm a recovering graphic designer sewer entrepreneur middle child an
above average student at a first-class troublemaker wow take notes ladies and gentlemen I'm I'm Jamie brindle I'm a middle child too so actually same here it begins all right look at that oh boy this is gonna be three hours yeah uh I'm a freelancer I I run a production agency with my wife
Courtney here in Los Angeles and and recently I've been talking about it on social media so and that is how we met yeah that's where all good conversations start and nobody said that anyways um well okay so what unites us is um probably a lot of things but one of them being um
we would probably self-identify to some extent as being creative people or creatives which is this um I don't know umbrella term that can mean a lot of things we're not going to try to Define it today and one other term that's related to it is you know the idea of artistry and being
an artist that is something I wanted to start with because uh it is near and dear to my own part personally I for some reason I I feel like whenever I meet other creative people and artists I just I have a heart for them I like get them and and I see the
struggle that many of them face when they're trying to be an artist and self-express in this world but also needing somehow to make a living and those two they just don't really mesh it's like oil and water a lot of the times and uh it's at least it's not very intuitive so what
I want to talk about is how how do we resolve that tension and I want to start with what it means to be an artist and that artistic impulse so I'm curious to hear from you do you self-identify as an artist you want me to take that one first yeah I'd say yeah
I I would I'm a recovering artist no yeah I self-identify as an artist most certainly I think I think you know not to get too existential with it I think I could make a strong case for anybody I I encounter for Artistry you know in in one component or another of their life
so I don't think it's necessarily a uh you know there's a group of people over there and those are artists I think I think we've all got it in us it's like a it's like a an element of The Human Condition more so than a uh a personality trait right right so it's
not like some habit some don't yeah some artistic I don't know yeah yeah I don't know if that's a if that's a cheat answer but a little bit a little bit because at the same time I mean Chris what do you think like aren't there people that are just I mean like Andre
Andrea or you know others where like you're just like you like there's something there that's different like I don't know what is it is it is it this need to self-express that is overwhelming um how would you how would you characterize this thing that's an artist oh try to answer the first question
I'd love to try to take on some of the definitions and see if we can have some common ground and definitions than maybe do a little deeper dive if you ask me that question am I an artist 10 years ago I would have told you no I'm a graphic designer and I make
that distinction there's a big difference between getting paid to do something providing a service to someone else and one of the greatest downfalls of graphic designers or people who are in the service industry have is they think of themselves as artists because what they see is the client is an inconvenience to them
creating and self-expressing and I see this with my students I see this in Freelancers an independent business owner so the person who gives you a means to make a living to provide for you and your family and your loved ones is not a person that gets in your way they enable you to
live your life it's a very big difference and I was asked this question many many times I keep saying I'm not an artist I'm a graphic designer an artist does something very different to me and the best definition I've ever heard was on a stage it was a panel discussion with the wachowskis
they just released Cloud Atlas and Lana Wachowski had said art is an invitation to look at the world from a different perspective and it's very pure it's very encompassing and if you do that if you have an emotion and you want you or someone else to look at the world in a different
way I think you're an artist but you have to do it on your own terms yes and sometimes there's not a financial award to that and when we mix up our roles and have these blurry lines I think we run into a lot of trouble and I think that's why a lot of
creatives run and run into this financial ruin barely able to to make a living so design is a service and everyone is a designer and I'll use Herbert Simon the Nobel laureates definition of design which I saw in Marty newmar's book The Brand Gap the designer is one who devises a course of
action to go from an existing condition or situation to improved one so this welcomes everybody into that definition I think so if you're helping your client run their business and operations better and improve condition you are a designer you are a creative person so that means that you can do technical things you
can do left brain things all we're trying to do is make the world a little bit better for one person or groups of people so that's that's the distinction I would put in there so for the purposes of this evening design is art with a job to do I accept that yeah but
I I you know my my definition I don't really know what you're saying I think that's so important because that job is not your own and that's the key difference where where it like an artist their only agenda in pure art is to self-express as soon as there's any agenda outside of that
you're not doing pure art anymore you're compromised in some way or another and you're not in a way in a technical way you're not being an artist no more yeah so anytime you're commissioned to do something for a client you're stepping aside from that Artistry and that's why I think so many people
who are self-identify as an artist and want to self-express like an artist they want their work maybe maybe ultimately they see this trajectory like today I'm doing graphic design but My ultimate trajectory is to like have work in a gallery especially with photographers this is true you know and and they want to
self-express to the point of getting to the gallery and they think that this is the this is the way you climb it when that's that's not entirely the case and it gets very frustrating because your clients don't really want you to self-express do they yeah I mean in or or do they well
that's so how do we what's what's the line let's talk about that I think and just I can only speak somewhat eloquently to my own experience but I like I I Envision it as a Venn diagram with two circles where you've got you know art in one and Commerce in the other and
I think that I I think that art can exist without Commerce because the artist can't exist without Commerce right you need money to somehow exist and I think that Commerce can't exist without art because you I mean I would I would deem a product art I would deem you know a t-shirt art
a hat art you know so like I think that I guess the the line I'm trying to draw is there are extremes of on either side of that Circle so there's the artist and like you know the Wall Street businessman but the you know the the point of intersection is is like it
subsidizes those two extremes you know so I I think that it's less of a you know which pool are you in and it's it's more of a okay I'm gonna go over to that point of intersection for a second and then come back over to the extreme right does that make sense so
am I out on a limb here well what would be your I'm thinking like specific advice to somebody who's maybe struggling with this I know I struggle with this where um like I've always seen myself as an artist like I yeah I want to move people I want to create things that are
beautiful you know I aspire to that kind of work but I'm not going to get paid for it potentially for a long time if ever so um do you have ways that you've taught people to help kind of reconcile that tension I would ask them what is more important your self-expression or your
ability to make a living I think when we have conflicting Masters that we have to serve sometimes it could be very difficult now the ultimate thing is what Jamie was talking about which is can your art be the way that you make a living and oftentimes that's a very difficult thing to do
especially if you're in the beginning of your journey and the first thing that I think you need to do as a creative human is to find someone who sees what you do is valuable and be able to transact with them and then that builds skill repetition self-confidence and a body of work that
you can then use to do other things and Jamie was super strategic about his decision to be a producer that was how he was going to transact and within that space he could decide which way he wants to go once his primary needs are taken care of it's hard to think about self-actualization
when you don't have food you can't pay rent you're in debt and you have zero leeway when bad things happen and bad things happen to us all the time I'd love to share just a really quick story a friend of mine I can't tell you who he is he's an artist he is
an artist and his wife's father became ill and he's overseas and he's looking at his finances and he can't afford to buy a last minute ticket for his wife to go see her dying father and he can't do it so the wife isn't able to see her father before he passes and she's
broken and it breaks their marriage I'm talking about some basic things so in that moment my friend wants to be an artist and it hurts me to see a person who's hurting and he can't do that money doesn't solve a lot of things but it does buy a ticket for your wife to
go see her parent before she dies and that's really important to me so I know for some people they're going to bristle at the kinds of things I say because the Recently I read this comment online oh you talk about is money when you have no money I'm gonna talk about money when
you have all the money you won't need me God bless you yeah so yeah I'm I'm a little fired up about that yeah no I love it yeah I love it um one thing that I've also um advised people and I think I heard this first from Tom bilyeu um where he says
if you want to if you want to be an artist you want to do art you need a foundation first and so that could be a strategy you play where you say okay how do I develop enough income where I can have you know the lifestyle I need and maybe it's part time
maybe it becomes completely passive and that could be a strategy that you pursue up first yeah to lock in that you know opportunity than to do true art but not to confuse the two and I think that's what's so important is that when you start to confuse the two and you think you
know I'm being a designer that's why I love how you you separated that from the beginning like I'm being a designer I'm being an artist kind of a thing and then and then then it ends up in Burnout oftentimes because you feel like oh my client doesn't like my work I want to
self-express or whatnot and and it leads to that tension remind me did you freelance as a as a designer or did you start working like what was yours I'm trying to remember your story from the beginning I love Chris's story I had a job quit that job I got another job I quit
that job and then I freelance for I think maybe a couple of months yeah and in the freelancing process I realized something I'm really lazy and I don't like to work by myself so I'm not even a year out of school I just started hiring my friends from school to help me do
the work and so I'm quickly transitioning into freelancing out of freelancing into owning my own business but I was in in a very very privileged situation where I got to go to a great school graduated top my class and my friends knew people that were at the top of the industry who introduced
me so there was a lot of privilege I want to acknowledge that and from the get-go I didn't have to go to an office and work at a machine I only did that for like two weeks I think and then I just did the rest at home and for a while I felt
like I was being deceptive because I'll just name the names I was working for rgala now known as imaginary forces with Kyle Cooper and his team that had a very small team they had just finished the seven main titles and they had all kinds of crazy Buzz I mean that film title changed
the game for people in that space and so he could not find enough talented people to work so it was very easy to say I'm just going to work at home and that was cool by him didn't have to spend money on a computer immediately I had three friends let's go and work
on this stuff and I didn't tell them that three people were working on it until one day many projects in I felt pretty confident that day it was a night I went into their office showed them to work he's like I love this don't like this I love this great so I just
want to let you know something I didn't do all this work and he was like you've been ghost writing this whole time and he was offended and I said yes did it ever occur to you how I was able to do the work of three people in a day and he stopped he
paused and he's like okay and that was that and there's another little story that goes with this one of his producers that called me up because we were literally changing our day rate every project and it was getting annoying for them because I was like wait we just agreed to pay you that
now you're telling me you're 850 a day and I said to them I know this sounds crazy because maybe I'm a cocky bastard I don't know I said to her take it up with Kyle if he has a problem with the output that we've done then we should have a conversation never heard
back from her again because we were literally doing three people's work with one rate and as you start to do that you build trust and now I'm going to project rates so the whole freelance term it's it's a very fast move I think less than three months time of like when I'm showing
up in office and being paid for time versus being paid for output so you have to learn really fast like how you transition okay so let's talk about this term okay um Jamie what do you think of the term freelancer what does the term freelancer mean so what do you think of it
as a as like a as a as a label I you know to Chris's point I it's it has changed over time and it's becoming a little more ubiquitous um or you know a little more all-encompassing uh but yeah I I think I think in common parlance today it's it's probably can be
conflated with solopreneur you know maybe maybe more maybe solopreneur Falls more into the product category and freelancer Falls more into the service category but it's it's an independent operator you know um but then you know I've plenty of Freelancers that I speak with on a regular basis that are subcontracting and working with
other Freelancers and you know so it's it's it's a little you know it's a little all over the place at the moment but I I think that you know um if I had to pin it down to a definition it would be it would be somebody who's who's working for themselves uh likely
in a service based business do you kind of jump in yeah please please I I there's a um I'm gonna forget who said this uh I was reading in um Ronald J Baker's book implementing value pricing there's a quote at the beginning that I just love so much and it says something like
all transformation is linguistic if we want to change the culture we have to change the conversation and words do matter words absolutely matter it matter because it tells us how we feel about ourselves our self-story and how we feel about other people every life experience that you have every emotion that you have
is coded with words when I talk to my therapist she asked me this question he's like what is your earliest memory and how old were you I said blah blah blah around three and she goes I've asked all my clients this and they or patients and they've all said right around two or
three and it coincides with your ability to speak to learn words and it's not that we don't have memories it's just we have no way to code them you know it's real fuzzy right like you may have pre-language memories but it's real fuzzy and blurry and so to Jamie's point I agree with
them the word freelance has been misused for many different things and unfortunately it's the word that's most convenient that we all use but for me it's very clear I draw the line in the sand here a freelancer is one who shows up at a place of work typically to perform a service they're
selling their time they have zero ability to control how they spend that time they're paid for the hours that they work not for the amount of work they get done and they're not allowed to hire other people so when I hired Freelancers and in my time of running a service company we've hired
many Freelancers hundreds of Freelancers you cannot come into work as a freelancer and said this is my assistant they'll be doing the work while I drink coffee while you pay me my rate it doesn't work that way and so one of the things is we can all freelance and it's okay there's nothing
wrong with freelancing but what we're trying to do is help people who are really independent business owners create a business one that involves marketing invoicing contracts terms of service delegation of work project management those are things that Freelancers typically do not do so when you hire a general contractor they're a contractor they're
not called a freelancer and they hire subcontractors also independent workers they might bill you hourly but they're not Freelancers they're also independent contractors and that's a legal definition because you know why because I had to pay back taxes on evading paying independent contractors who they labeled as employees temporary employees so there's a
legal definition there too that we kind of need to just navigate around what about the baggage that comes with the term freelancer because I think it comes with baggage of poverty where somebody's just making ends meet like if you're sitting you know your Thanksgiving table and you know on Jane is asking you
know so what are you doing you know whatever and well I'm just you know I'm freelancing you know good on you might you know there's not like a I'm so proud of you kind of what accent is that by the way is that Australia yeah um you know what I'm saying why do
we have to pin it down it's not it's not a it's not something that like wow I'm so proud of you you're a freelancer you know what I'm saying like it's just there's something in it uh while I love the idea of it that right there's Freedom there's there's much that we talk
about that but like conceptually or like the word itself I've I've kind of struggled with it as you know what I want to self-identify if I was freelancing as a freelancer I'll have to do something and is that like maybe limiting potentially to well I was just gonna say because I said I'll
have to do some introspection on that because I've been proudly calling myself a freelancer for for many many years you know and and I and I I regularly speak with folks who who do so as well I think that like the definition I I had the same definition of freelancer as what you
describe because it's a very like like from a journalism School let's say it's like freelance journalist you know I I fanboyed Over The Martin Agency when I lived in Richmond so it's like freelance you know agency worker but I think that I do think I think that the the marker is moving or
the definition is is evolving uh to date when you hear the stat that you know like more than 50 of America is going to be freelance by the end of what 2027 or something like that 2025 like you know like that's I I just think that it's broadened it's not necessarily so you
know you go to a place to where I think most Freelancers I talk to you know a couple a day on the on the phone with with uh the thing that we just we just launched I don't want to name drop it here to oh tell everybody yeah you can Google it but
but you know I talked to uh you know several Freelancers a day and they all they all self-identify as Freelancers and and you know none of them have have set foot in an office or none of them have you know and they're all charging by by the hour by the by the project
um you know and if they're not they hear it from me you know it's I just think that the you know I think the term the the definition might be evolving at this point and even the perception yeah because I think it's it's maybe our our parents generation for in their world at
least when they were maybe younger it would just mean somebody who's just finding going project to project making ends meet probably is not saving money you know it's just somebody who's getting by before they get a real job because what's your I mean what you describe when you know the good one you
made you know like if you say you're a freelancer it's like I being a 22 year old telling your family you're an entrepreneur gets the same reaction you know like it's it's there are lots of ports that people go oh well he's giving it a shot you know we'll see so maybe it's
more more that than anything yeah I think the problem with English it's it's if you misuse a term enough and enough people misuse the term then there will be two definitions of that term like for example if you are looking at a magazine and you're like what are you doing I'm perusing the
magazine the original definition of peruse is to read carefully not to browse but it's been butchered so many times that now there's two definitions that are exact opposite ends of the spectrum yeah I'm not perfect but I like to be precise with the choice of words and I would love to educate our
community our audience our friends and our fans to use the proper words when they mean certain things you know it's another word that's been butchered what's that twerking oh God how do you want to go there do you know the original meaning of twerking is it drug related no it's when you take
your mustache and you roll it on the edges you twerk your muscles they have to they have the same effect it's working of Laura and the twerking of today both get the job done yeah but yeah I forget also somebody who said someone set out anytime you you say anything you're actually saying
three things one is what you think you're saying one is what you're being what's being heard and three is what you're actually saying and they can actually be three completely different things um and so I think something like that is true in the world of freelancing there aren't very clear definitions when we're
kind of in this new you know wild west of what is the future going to bring I heard recently that something like 40 no it's over 50 now of Google employees are quote unquote you know contractors freelancing yeah um so certainly this is this is going to keep accelerating and it's it's cool
to see you guys educating on the front lines of this and I think you know these I'm sure you have to think through these topics a lot um do okay so when I had something before we move on oh please please at any time um Jonathan Stark and I were having this conversation
he talks about a lot about hourly billing is nuts and he's like do you know where the root word freelance comes from it comes from the Middle Ages there's a Lancer like a hired sell sword who's a mercenary and they call them Freelancers because of a lance The Sword and you know the
mercenary does not have a great connotation it's because you're paid to fight a war that you don't believe in to kill people that you don't hate it's there's all kinds of problems around that I would love for it before we slip into this land where a term like this is used broadly is
for us to pull it back and put some boundaries around around it and try to just educate people I have no problems with the term freelance at all zero I just want it to be used when it's appropriate I hire Freelancers my company was built on Freelancers we love Freelancers and we want
to hire you as a freelancer please don't send three employees in to do the work for me when I hire a company I don't care how you do it I don't care where you do it I don't care when you do it there's a different terms and I expect you to have insurance
and and payroll uh workers comp and the things you're supposed to have as a business and they're very different and I think words do matter I don't have any judgment like if you're a freelancer I'm a freelancer I go into an agency as a freelance copywriter art director done that pay me hourly
it's all good here's my time sheet I'm good with that and there's like if we're at the dinner table on Thanksgiving my son's is dead I'm a freelance illustrator I'm a good on you boy that's it you're making money you know no longer a draining are you speaking in an Australian accent you
know what I mean and I'm good with that yeah so I don't I don't think there's a problem but I think what's Happening Here is there's a lot of funny Shenanigans going on in Corporate America okay it's the capitalist you know society and there are ways to save money to protect yourself from
lawsuits because of wrongful dismissals and so what they do now they make everyone an independent contractor and they hire companies that are companies of record that then bring in these independent contractors but then just show up every single day like you work at a company so it's it's getting very blurry and also
yeah all of us having gone through covid working remotely all of a sudden I think this is where you're getting at this term is like bubbling up like you're no longer at the office you're an independent contractor or you're a freelancer it gets it's now something that we're all talking about because of
independent remote work yeah so maybe we can quickly come to a consensus here of stages of independent work if you will so stage one would probably okay let's call it freelancing and then if I can reiterate some of the boundaries that you've set so this is you're working by yourself ultimately you must
do the work you do you do the Fulfillment work but maybe like billing and answering emails could be done by an assistant yes but the actual fulfillment is you should your hands are in it yep that's that's you okay as soon as you bring in a second person it gets a little tricky
now so like an assistant doing underpainting you just say you're you're an independent I I think you shift but the boundaries I would put is this and there's some tests that you can do if the person who hired you is upset that someone else is doing the work more likely you're a freelancer
if you're charging based on time not always of course you're more likely a freelancer than you're an independent contractor if you don't have to deal with things like sales marketing legal the things that come with the business you're probably a freelancer a freelancer says I'm going to show up you're going to pay
me for my time I could do remotely I could do it in person but you're going to pay me for my time and this is my rate it could be hourly daily weekly monthly it doesn't matter you're mostly selling time nothing wrong with that I just want to reiterate so it doesn't have
to do with how you build like a freelancer can still build by the project technically right or I think you're slipping into independent business owner now should we let that pass maybe what do you think Jamie how would you draw lines I mean I actually would like whatever Chris says yeah I mean
because because I think this is important because even like you know if if all of us agree and then maybe this becomes a movement where like there's some boundaries of how we call something that's freelancing I think yeah that's an interesting the the distinction you made earlier or just now with um the
client is upset that somebody else is doing it that's that's an interesting distinction and that's just like I was trying to when you said I was like I wonder like I was trying to think of an example of when that would be because if ever like I've advised people when they say that
I'm like well you know it's like well did they want to get from A to B or did they want you to get like there should be what is a scenario where a client would be upset that that you weren't doing the work like because when they brought it up to you when
when you were doing it you kind of said well it's getting done right and they go well yeah and that kind of shut up shut down the conversation pretty quickly what would be like a an example of a time when you wouldn't have that like kind of like easy you know well I
I can share an example actually I've I've hired Freelancers that I thought were going to do the work and we've had this with developers as well yeah we'll do a test they'll they'll write an initial piece of content or they'll do an initial piece of code we're like wow this is great work
you know now we can sign a contract we sign a contract and from then on the quality is like half yeah it's like a quarter so that's being dishonest then yeah because you're you're selling something that you're not actually providing and I think that's what I'm seeing happen more than not that's definitely
yeah it's just like that's just it's like at that point it's bad management and you know to me it's like it's like a like you go to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant you're not pissed that that Gordon's not back they're flipping the burgers you assume that Gordon has hired the right people to do
it to his standards you know so it's like you know if that maybe if it's presented it's it's a presentation and a management issue but you know if that person had passed it on to people that that did a good job would you have been upset no not at all I wouldn't care
at all yeah at all yeah I'm with Jamie on that I think that's less than issue of dishonesty and lack of leadership and management skills of having a staff that yeah because let's look at it I make a promise to you to do something at a certain standard and that's what is important
not the people that are doing it maybe not even how it's done what is important that it lives to that standard and it must meet that threshold otherwise you don't have a right to be in business because what you're doing is you're breaking promises all the time and then we know about Brands
and promises you break promises enough time your brand is Tainted it's very hard to recover no you can't ever get Word of Mouth recommendations off of those it's gonna be tough yeah it's gonna be a little tricky so so once you start you know if we talk about any kind of scaling from
obviously just trading money for time um obviously I mean what do you call the next stage agency small business do you have like a go-to yes label on this independent business owner independent employee of one okay yeah so now you have to act like a business you just happen to have one employee
that wears many hats right so now we get into all businesses have certain functions regardless of what business that you're in you have marketing you have sales you have production and you have customer service or after follow-up whatever that might be and so now you're entering into all different kinds of things I've
never or maybe I shouldn't say never I've rarely had a freelancer who's then after the job thanks me for the work and buys me a gift and makes sure to do all the kinds of things that businesses do and I I had an interview with Kevin Finn and he said I don't refer
to the people that hire me as clients and he and he has a very specific reason I love how he says this I think it's extreme but I love the concept behind it he says there's a client and then therefore when am I I'm a vendor I'm a service provider The Leverage is
not equal their business I'm a business it's business to business so I don't refer to the people that pay me money as clients and I'm not ready to see that ground he says I'm like okay that's pretty cool so it's a business to business and this is the transition I think that happens
first psychologically that you believe this to be true and then it manifests itself in the words and the actions that you take yeah and it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy where you've set yourself up now I'm running a business it's a strategic partnership rather than anything it's it's two humans or two
entities trying to achieve a common goal you know and it's at that stage at that transition point where you self-fulfilling prophecy it's like I guarantee you if you're just starting as a freelancer or you're you're an independent you know what was what was the word we used independent company of one that's the
yeah Independent Business independent business owner um you know if if you approach a lead from the perspective of a strategic partner you're going to stand out immediately if if you're if you're thinking okay how do I advocate for this the success of this project in a way that is is you know utilizes
uh is helpful to both of us you know if you if you lead the discussion with it I know Chris could do this until the cows come home if you lead the discussion with you know how are you measuring success for this project where are the goal posts sorry you know you Freelancers
aren't asking those types of questions you know how are we how am I being measured for it's they're they're in a mo for the most part they're getting in and getting out and it's something that you kind of need to coach yourself on but if you come in as a strategic partner you're
advocating for the project you know you know you you know from from from square one oh well this guy's this guy's clearly you know a little different than the other folks we're talking to here's another way you can tell if you're a freelancer or an independent business owner what is the unit in
which you're using to determine price or value Freelancers typically sell units of time to measure their work product in units of time whereas and business owners usually measure either deliverables or value created or something else and this is a very important distinction we're talking about hiring an illustrator who's going to illustrate a
series of posters for me nowhere in our discussion is uh well I think it's going to take 17 and 0.3 hours if there's a price I can afford it or I cannot we we either come to an agreement or we do not how many fairies work on it how long or quickly it
gets done what kind of machines that are being used to craft it I don't care and I do not even want to know yep I had a very um educating conversation with one of my clients many many years ago he's a business person and we're starting to do client direct work prior to
that we're working mostly with ad agencies I was sitting in his office his company was growing like about a thousand percent every year so it was just crazy Mayhem and Bedlam inside his office and he says Chris I want to give you a retainer so we can do work together I like what
you guys do and he he just went on to tell me what he needs and then I went on to do something very foolish which was to tell him the kind of team I'm building in this and that and he just put his hand up he said I don't need to know who's
working on this as long as it meets your standard I'm good so he just saved me for myself I was like I'm trying to rationalize and explain he's like I don't care you do the work the price at the time in which we say and this is a pure Thoroughbred entrepreneur business person
and so when we hang around with artists and creative types self-identify or not what we tend to talk about is the work that we do the things that we make and it becomes um very incestuous in the language in which we use and we measure our worth in the things that we get
our hands into Kyle Cooper would say how Paul ran used to critique him was Kyle you've become a telephone designer my telephone designer yeah you phone it in you tell people what to do and and they look at that with judging eyes and language like well who cares if the work gets done
and the client's happy yeah why do we care we don't expect Phil Knight to make their shoes we don't expect Elon to build our cars we do not expect Gordon Ramsay to flip our Burgers to use your language why is it that artists and creative people think you got to do the work
so we can break free from that lots of beautiful things can happen and then maybe you actually go and do the art that you want to do nobody's stopping you from doing art yeah they never have even if you're doing a nine-to-five job there's still more hours left yes um so when I
think about these two categories not everybody wants to be a business owner right because now now you're changing your role you're changing your responsibilities um your your most likely thinking about scale you're talking about management you're kind of the guy who's selling I mean it's just your responsibilities completely shift I think I
mean I meet a lot of Freelancers who they actually like doing the work and they don't really want all the other stuff right so is it possible I mean at that point is it just increasing your hourly rate is that the only way to make more money I made it that's that is
a great way to make more money yeah yeah it's like you know I mean that's yeah well that's the thing a lot of people don't realize the mechanics of a rate increase you know they think it's it's make more money and and that's it well it's actually make more money and free up
time right so it's like you increase you rate the point of a rate raise in my opinion is to lose is to lose some clients because you're you're too busy implementing that you're not finding the next job so what what ends up happening is you're working on your you know three or four
projects or whatever then they all end and then you spend three four months freaking out trying to find your next three or four projects versus being able to kind of spend you know a consistent amount of Business Development time uh daily or weekly or what have you so a rate a rate raise
is to buy that time basically you know and then with that you know the the folks that leave will subsidize the folks that or the folks that stay will subsidize the folks that leave um and then you know you do it again when when you hit that threshold again where you're not you
can't spend half your time developing new business um but you know because I mean there there is going to have to be some element of Business Development if you're working for yourself you've got to go out and you know hunt what you eat so yeah there's no getting away from it essentially if
you if you want to be completely implementation then then maybe this ain't the racket for you but um I don't know what do you think it's um price is the functional supply and demand so what you're trying to do as a freelancer or as an independent business owner is to increase demand while
simultaneously decrease the supply and there's a number of things that you can do the first thing and I have to say this because people get really upset at me about which is you got to be good the premise is always you got to put time into your crap because what people hear and
through their Twisted Brain is I just tell people who have no skill charge more I am not telling people that the first part of this that the thing that's usually unspoken and implied is put your time in to get good at what it is that you do please yeah if you're a 17
year old kid and you barely have any skills and you're like well I heard this Chris said Valley base price I'm gonna go out there and like good luck to you friend you might do it but more likely you're going to create a set of expectations that you're not going to be able
to live up to and you're going to hurt the person the most is yourself that's who you hurt clients are upset you're stressed out and then all the clients relationships with you and their friends are just completely torched at this point so first part is get good at your craft I don't care
what you do if you play music if you if you write direct response emails that's what you do get good at that first so when you get good at it you have proof and you can speak about it so that's going to then help you to spread your reputation and your brand creating
increase in demand and what you do is if you specialize you create less competition the whole point of positioning is to ultimately reduce or eliminate competition when you're one of one non-fungible sorry throw that in there is then you have no competition so the thing that I like about what the three of
us do is I don't care who you hire I don't care if you think my rates are reasonable I really don't and my rates are my rate because there's only one person who can do this work the way I do it right and that person's me and that's why you want to work
towards that so freelancer independent contract it doesn't matter specialize get a lot of skill do what you do therefore reducing the amount of competition that you have and then therefore hopefully with the reputation that you've developed there's greater there's greater demand than there is supply of you yeah for folks that are not
wanting to because I I know we were talking about how does an individual scale that doesn't want to hire right was that kind of the premise of which it's like there are options available where you yes it's client work and you play the rate raise game so that's option A but the end
this is and not or by the way for the folks at home is there are productized Services which is a version of your service that you've built an assembly line for um there are digital products which is different for every industry but you know if if you're uh you know if you're if
you into color grading you can produce some Luts for your fellow practitioners you know it's just uh so like there there are definitely plays to be to be made you don't like the you know scaling for for an independent contractor isn't solely uh hiring other independent contractors right there's right yeah you can
diversify you can keep you can keep this party you know you can keep this a one-person party if if need be yeah well I think that's where many um creatives go into content creation at least from what I see yeah um which is a topic I want to talk about for a minute
um I mean obviously it's cool you know to have Fame so cool because you guys are totally cool and I actually mean that but not everybody uh is at school it's not what he was saying before you got here Chris yeah I figured I saw you're gonna post on Instagram um but but
you know I see this a lot I think somebody who is has creative abilities um things well I can do content um because it there's this like intuitive like hey I I can do this this is not that hard and and you see you know these YouTubers and these instagramers who are just
you know Mr Beast or whatnot and they're like wow they can make so much money and this looks like so much fun and I could totally do this I'm already doing this for my clients why shouldn't I just do it for myself right and I see a lot of Freelancers and small independent
business owners who who are providing creators yeah who who have this like internal dilemma where they're like well now now like I need to be doing content and and I think they confuse um social media as a funnel of like outbound lead generation versus um actually being a content creator and so um
both of you are content creators um and I I wanna I want to give you a very open-ended question but I want you to talk to me and talk to us about the difference between the two if that's a clear enough question so it's not just something you use to get leads you
know specifically for your craft but to actually be a content creator because to me those are different businesses do you want to go first Jamie I feel like I've been going first all night okay yeah so don't jump in there um in his his uh book I think it's this is marketing or
no it's permission marketing you guys don't see it but he's got all these books written on his hand over here he actually has neural link already that's right I'm gonna take this um you see the microchips don't reveal the secret everybody um in in permission marketing South Godin writes about this he says
the internet was the first mass communication medium that wasn't designed to sell ads he goes radio was created to sell ads television was created to sell ads then here we are on the internet and now we're trying to sell more ads and Those ads are disruptive whereas marketing it doesn't need to be
like that and there's a difference between advertising and marketing advertising is within the larger umbrella marketing and so what do we do we see the patterns that have been thrusted upon us that have interrupted our lives and so what do we do we hate that and then we go out and do the
exact same thing again so we we use this beautiful platform to share information with the world as as some veiled concept of advertising disguised as content I think what we have to do just like with freelance and independent business owner is to be honest with what we're doing whether whether you're a commercial
artist or you're an artist there's a difference and we have to be clear all of it can be effective you're using a term some people might not know outbound direct Outreach sales what that is saying is I'm going to look for clients I'm going to take the initiative I'm I'm going to enter
into the mindset of a hunter there's a prey that I'm going to stock I follow its tracks there will be days and weeks and months I might not eat but eventually I'm hopefully going to catch what it is that I need to catch and then I get to Feast for a while it's
super exciting right because it's like this amount and you get that Adrenaline Rush it's like wow I just took down a big whale client it's 400 000 flush with money and then you go through this long period of high definition you go into the starvation mode and you have to live off that
kill that's the hunting method and that's really outbound approach inbound says you know what hunting is not for me it's dangerous it's unpredictable I'm going to enter the mindset of being a farmer and a farmer it's not sexy at all but it works you you uh till the soil is it till the
soil I'm not a farmer here but you prepare the soil you plant the seeds and you feed it and you nurture it at any one point in time if you fail to water your plants and make sure that it's not protected from the elements it dies you starve you die it's totally different
that is more of an inbound approach that's what we would consider as content marketing you know it's not instantaneous it could be Seasons before you actually literally bear fruit yeah it's different mindset I'm an introvert I don't like sales I'm not like that I'm not built for that I know that about myself
and we have to be honest with ourselves a lot of people say I want to do content marketing I want to do outbound sales because I see the results I see the flashy cars and the big homes you're not wired to do that and you're going to struggle through that and people are
going to sell you a plan to do that and it probably will not work for you we have to be in touch with who we are because you'll be competing against those who are maybe biologically even more wired too so they'll destroy you yeah it's like if you're four foot five you want
to play basketball you could do it but guys who are six seven seven two they're going to destroy you most likely because they have physical advantages so one of the things I I want to help people do is to realize you have a unique set of skills Outlook personality voice history body type
strengths and weaknesses to understand what those are and to maximize those that's your purpose in life is to figure out what those things are and to maximize that so for me I like to think I like to write being here is uncomfortable for me earlier my job was starting to feel something like
chill out dude it's just people we can deal with this right um so I feel like I'm getting tense and so I'm trying to work through that right now so what works for me is I'm gonna put out stuff I'm gonna plan I'm gonna put the seeds in the soil and somebody might
see it and there will be fruit that will come it won't come right away it will come long term but what I don't want to do is I don't want to plant chicken bones like I'm not trying to be a hunter being a farmer because it doesn't work and I'm not going to
go out there and hunt with blunt instruments that's not going to work either so you have to figure out who you are play to your strengths and they both can work I've got no problem with either and you could be successful at either but you have to make that determination hmm so are
you a hunter or I gather yes [Laughter] I think I mean I yeah I I mean theater kid here so I you know playing to my strengths is I I definitely got The Gift of Gab but I think that um I'd add a third I'd add fishing to the analogy which is and
I we've you know we try to do all um you know actively pursue leads um are interestingly enough our social media content uh was never designed to grow our agency like like Courtney and I had that conversation for weeks where it was like who are we talking to like before we started like
are we going to be talking and we we landed on our fellow practitioners and you know we were using the byproduct of our expertise which I'm pretty sure I took from you from a video this is like uh to you know to to create a digital product to create how are we going
to scale our agency Beyond even what we're doing you know with our current clients um and then fishing for me would be the the dreaded job markets right it's like I know job markets get a bad rap but um we found some I mean we've we've found some clients on upwork that are
worth to this date like quarter of a million 300 Grand to us you know over time and this just because folks it's agencies go to upwork to hit the oh button because we don't have an animation department so we got to go to upwork and find an animation you know most of us
they have they'll have a video team in-house but they don't have somebody who can do you know a character animation or something so it's like that was kind of our sweet spot on upwork so you know the the phishing analogy would be that that is a a pond of people that are there
to do business and if you kind of know how to work it you know if you know if you know which fish you're you're you to bait the hook for you know um but yeah we we try to pay attention to all three um I I will see like because I think we
started this discussion talking um content creator versus what was the it was versus like a funnel yeah where you use well but essentially if I understand your analogy right those would be like the Gathering right so you're creating some kind of Evergreen content people come to you and so and so right so
you can use that you can use Instagram to get clients for like your local photography business or absolutely and I vote yeah I mean they're probably even better ways to do it for a local business but um you know this is very recent for for me Courtney and I we were chatting and
I was like we like the influencer like business or business model um which I don't think either of us are necessarily that business like the influencer business model is essentially a marketing department for rent right so it's like you're renting you've built this audience and you're renting it to other brands and so
we realized okay we've got this we've built the marketing department we don't have the the engine we don't have the the business right so it's like I'd rather be using this marketing department for our products sorry blue obviously I want to help Bloom out as much as possible it's a great product but
you know what I'm saying like I do I do well it makes me wonder how you got into the content game as you play it now you know with being a content creator because it like the people who watch your Instagram aren't necessarily the clients who are booking you correct yeah the vast
is it the vast majority aren't so that's so how'd you get into that like it's because we were we were solving for the stuff we talked about earlier it's like you know I've you know this is maybe we were I was eight years into eight or ten years somewhere around there into my
journey Courtney had been you know we we partnered up maybe like a year or two into it and and we were like okay how do we how does this thing get bigger than what it is now um and you know what's and you know there are only two of us how can we
how can we you know build something that that we can sell to the multitudes and and so that's where we started talking about content and and you know you mean Jamie was talking to himself yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah got down to business but it was like it was you know
we said okay let's you know because we didn't have a lot of time we're working so it's like it's very easy for me to write content for for me 10 years ago like I remember that guy you know so it's like I can sit down and crank out 32 of these this afternoon
you know um so we went we went with that um and the interesting uh result there was it was you know maybe seven months into the uh into the journey you know we get on a sales call with a major um a major brand uh you know not through social media or anything
just through our agency even on a sales call we're talking to the EVP of communications you know over in Sweden and I turn on my zoom and the first thing is Jamie they go I follow you on Tick Tock I go what you know this that's not my target market at all and
I always it's like anytime a sales call starts you know with that it's no longer a sales call now you guys are just talking about budget and schedule and and it happened again it like maybe the third one after that another like very big you know like you know top five brands in
the world brand you know they they answer the zoom go oh my cousins send me your tick tocks all the time you know all right that's interesting you know and that's not something that was planned for but you know I guess there's more crossover than than we thought is there is is there
like really surprising things about being content creators that you didn't expect yeah sitting next to Christo shut up yeah I don't want to make it weird for Chris but yeah let's get real Jamie no why don't we take turns what is one surprising thing that you didn't expect and we'll we'll kind of
maybe share trade War Stories all right um that was that was real by the way this is that I'm not blowing smoke um but let's see here what's the um I got recognized by a barista once as the mustache guy on Tick Tock and that was that was that was the first time
Courtney and I both went what what I didn't know how to react it's so am I supposed to talk to this guy about his business now or do I order my lemonade or whatever yeah but that's I'm sure that's that's par for the course for you at this point being being recognized in
public as a person is a byproduct with you creating content and connecting with an audience so I'd like to ask you this question where's the weirdest place you've been recognized um or the weirdest person yeah I mean nothing nothing um enough no great stories I was like I would I would say it's
it's when I get on the call with you know those are good a very you know big like it was a a sales call I've been sweating you know and it's they recognize you oh sweet all right cool you know and then it's usually restaurants or coffee shops or something I guess that's
where Freelancers hang out independent contractors how about you what's what's the strangest for you the weirdest one is not mine but I'll share it it was when we were in Vancouver and we're doing and not a meet up but like um some kind of talk local group we went to a bar afterwards
and Ben burns my Chief Operating Officer big guy bearded he comes out of bathroom he's like hey this guy wants to meet you I'm like Ben did you just meet a guy in the bathroom and they were at the urinal I was like hey are you Ben Burns and that's place I do
not want to have a conversation with you so that is that would be weird but it's not mine it's wild it's wild you don't want I don't want that kind of that's a good level yeah but my children especially my youngest Matthias he's not quite sure why strangers come up and talk to
me he's like dad because he assumes when somebody says hello to you you must know each other then he's curious like because we don't look like we know each other and so we start to play a game and the game is because we used to travel together for about a year and a
half when he was taken out of school and he was being homeschooled we would travel the world together it was an awesome time and we play a game and the game was what are my odds of being recognized here and this is years ago pre-pandemic obviously and my my son would be like
Dad 1.4 percent I'm like and he wasn't how old is he at this point he's probably 13. yeah or maybe younger and I'm like how did you come with 1.4 percent he said well I looked at every 100 people okay and I think and that's what he was literally doing he's like there's
like 400 people here and so this is where I put it and and I said you want to bet so he always loses by the way so it's kind of hilarious so we're at Yosemite there's not a lot of people and he's like Dad there's point zero one percent now I'm like you're
probably right it's not a lot of people here and it's outdoorsy like what kind of like design nerd is going to be out here right so my wife and I we went to go pick up some bicycles so we're gonna go cycling and we're waiting there and we're just like trying out bicycles
and this young man who's like 16 years comes over to me he's like do you make videos on YouTube I'm like well it depends who's asking who's asking and he goes I think I'll watch you on YouTube is there something about pricing and I just had the biggest grin on my face and
my wife's like what's going on with you I said because I can't wait to get back to the cabin and tell the boy he lost again and he's like no way Dad no way I said ask Mom and Mom's like yes rolling her eyes you know you guys play a silly game so
being recognized is one of those weird things and it's it has its benefits too sometimes it has its problems but mostly benefits what's another weird thing or a benefit of you creating content you know there's it's and this probably isn't the same for all types of content but there's a responsibility it's like
there was a moment last year where people were dming me like I just quit my job and I'm like oh like like because like like part of my process was very like I wanted like a frictionless production process you know idea write it down hit record on the phone get it out right
and when somebody's quitting their job because of what you're saying you're like oh boy okay like let me think about what I'm about to say now you know there's a and so it's like part of you wants to like keep it what it was and the other part wants to like maybe we
have an approval process between you know maybe we pass this to Courtney and see what she thinks you know like it's like what's the um so that's that's a new one for me is is is the is the responsibility of it you know and I I know that like I'm not he didn't
quit his job because of me you know like I know I'm I know that but it is like you are planting seeds you know and and you know you've got the gift of uh you know pre-written you can sound wiser than you are and you can light yourself well and see you know
since like you there is a power to that to you know to putting stuff out on on social media so um that's that's that's one that I wasn't counting on yeah it makes a lot of sense I think opportunities that you could not have imagined planned or hoped for happen I get to
talk to you I get to talk to Jamie and here we are you know and this is pretty cool and the more that you I I believe this the more value that you put out into the world on a consistent basis the greater and the cooler the opportunities become yes and and this
sucks for me to say but you know like when when you're like a famous person an actress an actor celebrity you go to these very expensive Galas and award shows and do you know what you get for going there you get these goodie bags full of like crazy expensive things and that used
to be one of those people like they don't need that they don't need that watch they can afford that [Music] hold for sound LA's fine let's go get them boys so like do rich famous people need more things and then I start getting free stuff I'm like that's pretty cool I can get
on with this program we got a situation going on that's that's a close one but there comes a responsibility with that so when people send me stuff I'm like oh you probably want me to share this on social right and if I didn't ask for it and if you send it I try
to reciprocate but at the same time my wife's like what are you trying to do what for for this it becomes a strange relationship so with I mean a Spider-Man line with great power comes great responsibility Jimmy so don't get people to quit their job yeah yeah so and imagine partnering with the
right Brands becomes pretty important because obviously you're it is it's like that's what we because I'm sure you get this too but like we you know we we partner with very few Brands and it's not like we act but we don't advertise that and maybe we should because you know somebody I posted
a piece of sponsored content and you know they go yeah but you really use this you know do you really do you really like this brand is this brand really good for Freelancers or are they just paying you enough money and it I said well we're we're blessed that we have a business
that like you know we don't need the money from a sponsorship so like we we can be very selective and I know you can too so like it's you know but it is um so maybe it's not so much of you know it's not like we're saying yes to anything because because we
need the money but it's it's more of a there's like a putting the audition process in place and then communicating that to the audience is key you know but yeah we it's that's that's part of the and also it goes back to earlier talking about the kind of influencer um model where it's
like we have you know the the marketing department is now serving our business you know so it's it's less and less about about sponsors so we get to work with people that we genuinely think are you know have independent contractors uh best uh you know best interest at heart see things already changing
if you see how both your languages are are the words that you choose it can happen yeah yeah the influence is real yeah well I want to ask one more question um we'll kind of wrap things up and let people ask some questions as well from the audience it's a question I love
to ask and all of these interviews is um what's something you really firmly believe that most everyone would disagree with you on do you have one at any time to process this one the the 90s live-action Ninja Turtles a masterpiece [Laughter] [Music] let me think it's the supposition that that people would disagree
but maybe a um it's going to be okay you know like it's not as complex as we make it out to be I think I think is is a is a firm belief of mine so I would say that it's just it's I think that a lot of Industries exist you know I
would point to for instance and I've got buddies in the fitness industry so forgive me but like you know the entire Fitness injuries industry exists to somehow make uh eating better and exercising rocket science you know it's to we got to make this thing complex so we can sell you the the manual
um and and business at the end of the day is really just you know the exchange of money for Solutions it's just it's just two people trying to solve a problem together you know um and if you just you just focus on that that's the meat and potatoes you know that's the that's
that's the that's the core of it you do that well you'll you'll be fine yeah I love the optimism yeah I think I think I I would argue it's just fact it's just don't you know don't let the other stuff distract you okay good why would people disagree with that it's like I
think a lot of people and that's why I say it's like you got to make you got to make the assumption but you know I do see a lot of people over complicating it almost out of a uh superstitions the wrong word out of a the assumption that it can't be that simple
you know it's like I don't I don't have it yet so it can't be that simple or like I I'm not satisfied with with where I'm at yet so I there must be a missing piece that somebody's keeping secret you know I think that that's where I would I would find folks that
would maybe argue the point but again I'm making assumptions here I think people maybe just word it differently but I I'm totally with you okay Chris I've been having a hard time figuring out what it is that I should say because I feel like a lot of things I think most people don't
agree with which is what I've been into so it was just a matter of prioritizing and stacking it and thinking also about like should I say something that's super controversial so that this video would get more views or do I just say something that we can talk about that's palatable here why don't
we do both and we'll a B test the reels let's get it let's get a reel out of this all right yeah let's put one on YouTube we'll see which one does better I'll ask you a question then in what zone do we want to talk about where then I could say something
that I think a lot of people don't agree on you can pull out your controversy as long as I'm talking about Bloom at the end of it okay land it there that's yeah I I mean even us slicing and dicing the word freelancer versus independent business owner for some people those are fighting
words um the concept of selling time for money is an Antiquated concept I think we need to get over that yeah and people are going to fight me on that I also feel I also believe that feelings aren't facts and too many people lean into this emotional part that actually clouds judgment it
changes the narrative it does not allow you to see things for the way they are but the way you want to see so if you want to achieve a higher self you have to get into this place of non-judgment and to be able to look at things objectively we can just go on
and on I've been sketching out ideas called the Paradox principles how everything you think is wrong and you must think the opposite if you want to be successful happy and healthier still haven't landed in bloom though and that's why yeah if I was really smart I would do things with the letter b
and then people like of I don't know what's that well I already got blo because little never mind yeah the one thing that I would say to try to tie your previous question maybe to this question and glue it all together is this is that if you want to create an online presence
to show up as a Brandon to build community the thing that you try not to do is the thing you must do we all try to pretend to be somebody we're not Carl Jung talks about this and that there's the the Persona in the shadow and the personas who you show up in
the world to be to be accepted to be loved and to be welcomed we dress a certain way we talk a certain way we act a certain way because those are the codes that we've learned and we've been conditioned to enter those worlds in those communities using that language now we carry that
same blueprint into the social world and we start to show up like the way we think other people want us to show up and then no one cares because you're just some poor facsimile of someone else and you're like two-dimensional paper characters yeah so the thing I try to tell people to do
because a lot of people do ask me how do I grow my brand how do I become a key person of influence online and I tell them the thing that you're most afraid to show is the thing you must show The Shadow is what we need to talk about Russell Brunson writes in
this book.com Secrets he's like there are four or five traits of an attractive character he doesn't mean physically attract active attractive is one who pulls people to them so you have to have an interesting backstory you have to have character flaws I'll stop it there character flaws that's what I'm talking about the
shadow right and the shadow oftentimes if you can understand it this way the shadow is the thing that you feel shame about that you wish were different about you and that the mere mention of it causes you some emotional pain but when we can own that when we can label that and present
it to the world it no longer haunts us and no longer has power over us and we reclaim our power we stand in it and that's what I try to help people to do and they said yes I am showing up as an authentic person and maybe I'm different but I could see
right through you quite literally in your post I could read between what you're writing and I know you're hiding and that's not going to do it and people keep telling me I'm doing it I'm like no you're not because in private you're a different person and let's try to bring those two people
together and that's why you need an accountant with Bloom yes that was very powerful thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much Jamie and Chris thank you I honestly thank you for this time thank you for your hearts and passions and you know of all the content creators that
I follow um you two are actually excellent examples of just what you talked about because you'll have Jamie getting on and just how he talks to himself usually people will be acting [Laughter] I tried it by the way it's very difficult but but he does it in a way that's so genuine to
him it actually like it doesn't it doesn't feel disconnected from now that I'm meeting you in person yeah um even though you're talking to yourself it's weird he's weird I'm trying to not say that but then you like go on and make stories you know and and you're just being your real self
yeah and you know and the same thing with Eucharist like I think you know the way the way what you're practicing What You Preach right I'd love to see that if anybody here um wants to join in on this conversation now we will give you that opportunity we'll switch it to the floor
was that a very nice way of saying you're a jerk online and you're a jerking person yeah I gotta tell you something you guys think talking to yourself is like easy it is not we've tried it and I'm like I can't do this I just I don't know how Jamie does it my
whole team before we should do it we should do one where I have some yeah you're terrible really they are yeah we should do one where where it's it's you and the pro talking to the the new freelancer we should we'll we'll team up okay no I couldn't even get that far I
did bring like a change of clothes but oh the wardrobe's key let me tell you the struggle yeah the struggle is real right because is Jamie scripting this because he's talking to himself so he has to do all the lines this way he switches his clothing he has to remember what the heck
he said yeah I don't work like that well the perfect Loop is not hard to do but it's a it's the function of like do you know how you're going to argue with yourself I only agree with myself so there's some weird guy next to me who argues with himself and can remember
his arguments and make him excuse me make him credible yeah I can't do that I'm like if a like a superior thought enters in my mind and then an inferior thought interests my mind disappear thought eats that and then we have no more other thought yeah so the only way that I do
what I do is I have to argue with real people who are idiots and then it works otherwise you can't do I'm like we would disagree the whole time we're just high-fiving each other the whole video just dunking on your softball video yeah it's like here's the video hey Chris yeah Chris and
that would be then it would get two views both by me so it's it's a skill it's a talent there for sure should we take a question yes we should take some questions [Applause] of course I don't how do you find connection and what oh disconnection relaxation oh okay great good question team
Dot good question Jamie I guess that's assuming that you want relaxation and disconnection no I'm just kidding yeah I I mean at first it was a mess like there we got to because we committed to posting daily and we were like all right we're gonna you know plan these things out and batch
record them and then inevitably a week into that journey I was you know writing filming editing and posting each reel the day of because I was busy with other work and you know it's just like it got bad quick but but eventually I got to the point where um you know I spent
a weekend and sat down and wrote out 150 reels and I spent the next weekend filming them and then I went okay now I've now I've got some time on my hands now I can think about you know I think it it's it was you know batching content and uh uh you know
just find finding ways to uh to take me out of the equation which we continue to do to this day um has allowed for time to you know read a book or something you know which I'm sure Chris has read nine for everyone that I've read this year but um yeah I think
it's it's a lot of that it's a lot of kind of trying trying to work smarter where you can so you can work harder where you need to but I do like I enjoy like that's the thing and and I know that some people some people don't like that's a personality types but
like I do enjoy like working like that's it like I enjoy working a lot so like I like that is kind of relaxing to me it's like just like methodically going at it so you know it's like people watching you know feel like hey I'm having a good time doing this like don't
feel like you have to stop because people are telling you to relax you know which might be controversial I don't know did my wife just clear her throat Shauna do you feel like there are multiple versions of you one that shows up for work one that shows up for your partner or if
you have kids so there's many versions of you right and I have this this theory that the more versions of you that exist the less happy you are the less fulfilled that you are and I have this dream when I was younger that I would be a world famous comic book artist and
then I realized I have a hard time drawing hands so I gave up on that dream oh but you know I think about professional athletes or musicians and performers and I think that's pretty close to living your ideal self that the thing that you're good at the thing that you're born with the
instrument in your mouth or your throat allows you to do something and you're rewarded for that for people who aren't on that level we have to live these different lives where we go to work and then we go home and we make our art and then we have to be there for our
partners and it gets kind of messy and then we talk about things like work life balance I have this belief that work-life balance is a misdirected concept it should be work life integration that your life should be work and your work should be your life and the more that those two things overlap
the more fulfilled you are like that it's not always healthy for everybody in your life and I think that's okay I think I was reading in the power of self-confidence by Brian Tracy about the story of finding your true self and I think it was a story I might be missing messing this
up but Gogan the artist and somebody correct me art historians please so gagan was a post worker in Paris yeah he was okay so thank you Harris thank you thank you so he would frequent the bars and the pubs where the great artists the time would would hang out and he fantasized and
he thought about this for a long period of time then he finally got up he left his wife and his kids they moved to Tahiti I believe and started to paint and there he found himself it was that great cost to his own personal life but then he became his real life self
and these sometimes happened in the history of the world where people of great accomplishment and people that we're still talking about today have figured that part out so in my previous life I would make commercials and music videos and then I would go and teach at a school and then I'd come home
and then my wife would be like where have you been I'm like been working and it was like you're not here with the kids it became problematic I was living three or four different lives being pulled kind of like via rope many directions and that's how it can feel sometimes luckily I found
this great opportunity in creating content where I could teach fulfilling my need and my identity as an educator about things about design and Entrepreneurship and I got to use the equipment that we had learned how to use in the creation of making videos and commercials and then my son travels with me and
I sit home and I study him he studies me and all I do is spend all my time at home and I am now the most fulfilled as I ever have ever been worth more than I've ever been worth doing the work that fills me with joy every single day and we were
touching on this topic earlier I think your sole mission in life is to be happy and happiness comes from you figuring out all those parts and pieces and it's a complex puzzle when you figure out one piece a new piece appears and so it's not a static puzzle it's a dynamic puzzle and
it's not always someone can find this nor are people even aware enough to search for it but I think that's a tragedy of life thank you that was great um we have a little bit of time left I want to take like two three questions um and maybe we'll keep them just a
little bit shorter not at all to say anything negative about anything Jamie keep it down okay thank you exactly you remember mine okay let's go uh second row and um I stopped posting on social media for a while just because I didn't feel like I was posting automatically I find that because I
actually helped my clients with their content funnily enough is that it kind of falls into three categories like you tee up like you guys and to become based with business coaches you're talking about the process and stuff like that or it's like always behind the scenes or it's like telling your client what
they should be doing which is like a t up to your services so I just feel like it's this endless movement I don't want to sound silly like hey tell me what to post I'm not I'm not asking that but do you feel like it's kind of like this this trap and it's
like you know I follow a lot of my peers and I look at it the content is amazing I'm not saying that like I just want to post authentically and like I just feel like it's so easy to just be like you know like I said to TF to business coaching or to
talk to your direct client or to show them behind the scenes my industry I feel like sort of literally the three options and it's like like I said I want to be authentic because in my business I answer it so that's why I stopped posting because I was like dude this is I'm
just doing it to like check the one post the real day you know what's preventing you from showing up authentically is who you are what I should be doing the reels it just it doesn't come off authentically because I just all those messages like it just doesn't it's not coming off authentically because
it isn't authentic and what's the cause of that do you know if you don't notice I don't know I I also I think very much so I don't necessarily want to teach like my clients you know the behind the scenes like I don't necessarily want to say hey here's how you should you
know add that extra move to a logo it's like no you're paying me to do it I'm just gonna do that for you you know what I mean what do you what do you want to do feel like that's so necessary like what do you if that's not what you want to do
what do you want to do and we can probably back into it from there yeah no yeah no you or just any philosophy you know my answer to that was like not posting because like I I do leave General like I have no problem with cold calling and going after people so like
is it almost like a I don't necessarily need to do that because I will be in authentic or should I really take the time to just like find the message but do I necessarily even need that just out of respect for time and maybe another question I'm just going to give you advice
I don't love to just give advice like this but I'm going to for uh constraints of time here which is you you have multiple agendas and that's the problem your only agenda online should just be show up to show up as yourself and to say it's not about client building it's not about
trying to look good to be virtuous it's just to be myself and use as a gate to keep people away and also to invite people in a gate has multiple function that protects what's inside and it keeps what is not meant to be from from coming in and that's very important so the
lesson I learned in 2014 when I started creating content is I don't give an f what anybody thinks I'm going to do what I want I don't really care and you can see it in the comments I'll we'll have a fight right now because I'm not going to do what you want me
to do to answer your first question about am I an artist I said I'm not an artist oddly enough I think when I make content on YouTube I'm an artist because nobody tells me what to do anymore and I will fight you online and elsewhere if you try to tell me what to
do I'm not okay with that you didn't pay me for this I'm gonna do on my terms and it's okay and I do piss off a lot of people and I'm okay with that too so I think that's the problem you're putting on your business hat marketing and sales hat instead of just
putting on the you hat just show up as you you're gonna piss off a few people and that's okay but the kinds of people you'll attract will be better for you in the long run amen yeah no it's like I yeah I think I think that's I think that's the the trouble of
trying to hit a few different targets at once you know so it's like I think I I do think like you're great at you're great at Legion you're great at hunting you know but like I said earlier it's it's and not or in my opinion I think you're you're yourself two years from
now is gonna thank yourself today for you know being consistent and showing up on on social for sure uh you know whether whether you can't quite you know draw that line yet um you know I'd I'd say just get to it and and you'll figure it out two years from now when you
got something you know but but just you know show up as you as the man said awesome okay we'll do we'll do one more and then we have to wrap things up um still front center yes that's fine um this person is the most wisest and kindness person who just went through anything
you're going or what advice what one advice you this 70 year old version oh jeez I like how you looked at you when he was thinking 70 year old so I think I was watching him the whole time directly looking at you Jimmy well I mean what's that three years for years oh
we're gonna start I want to see this Chris like I've heard so much about yeah the night is young oh gosh some someone have popcorn what would he say to me as hopefully he says hey good work kid you know they might yeah get on you mate yeah what advice would he give
me well I don't think they could know that right because they would have to live in the person yeah I would know what advice so it's no you would know it's a fair question because for the for their 10 year younger version of you so you were giving that person advice so he's
just asking you to go forward now he's trying to ask you to project where you're going to be and then it's an inside question right yeah it's not an easy one no so you're assuming who you'll become yeah you have to look into the future [Music] I'll let Chris go first okay I'd
love to but I want to leave you on the hook for a bit it's one of those coaching tactics I've heard about yeah I mean that's what I would tell my my younger self today right it's it's it's to just um I sometimes I think overthinking becomes a form of procrastination or over
plan planning becomes a form of procrastination um you know procrastination as many faces so it's just a you know learn them well and then learn to ignore them but well maybe I just interject while our guests are thinking I'm going to say a few words about Bloom if any of you are not
users of the platform because your 70 year old self would say why did you talk about Bloomberg we could have a great company but you didn't say yeah go ahead do your ad oh it was a joke oh that was a joke okay we were both so welcome yeah go ahead I mean
sure I guess wind down the clock but yeah this this night is sponsored by Bloom if you have not seen or heard of Bloom in his Bloom dot IO uh it is the all-in-one Suite that manages your business from freelancing to business owner to agency and all steps in between and we do
focus on creatives and we consolidate the entire free freelance stack in one platform making your business way more efficient so definitely sign up for a free trial and I am so honored to be working with these with these studs um I like that you went into your like sexy NPR voice for that
yeah you like that it's like okay okay we can wrap it up with your answers I got nothing you got nothing the thing I would tell my younger self is to be braver the things that you think you can't do not only do them but do them quicker and and give yourself Grace
when you fail because you will not always accomplish everything that you set out to do but you'll learn so much about yourself and that's the meaning of life anyways well on that note on that note the meaning thank you thank you thank you so much
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