Hey there.
My name is Rob, and really quickly I want to highlight a couple of myths about the Design industry.
In fact, I’d go so far as to call them lies. Unfortunately, these myths are to designers what Santa was to little kids – a feel good lie that just makes them feel good…
- You need to be exceptionally talented at design to make good money. This is a lie, as I’ll show you in just a second.
- Being a talented designer is the best way to get more work. It helps, but it definitely isn’t the most important quality.
- It’s better to be employed by someone else than to work on your own. If you want to learn, then yes – it’s great. If you really want to earn, you need to set up a business.
The truth is, this happens more than you realise – every day, designers with average skill sets manage to make more money than their peers with more talent.
I should know – I was one of them.
You see to be a truly successful designer, both talent wise and financially, you need to do two things:
- Develop your design skills to a level of high proficiency
- Be able to get known and get paid.
And this brings us to the big mistake that most designers make.
If I had a dollar for every talented person I’ve been able to all a colleague or friend, I’d be able to buy every person who read this page a shot of Vodka to take the edge of this harsh reality…
If you’re a designer, you’re probably a sh*tty business person. In fact, most designers are sh*tty business people.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t necessarily their fault. In fact the reality is that they’d be great business people – it’s just that nobody ever told them how important it was to be good at business as a designer. They were never even taught it.
It’s true. Most places that offer a design course have some focus on Professional Practice and Development… but all the really teach you is how to get employed by someone else and make $20 an hour.
This is boring and ineffecient.
Having been both employed and self-employed as a designer, I can tell you the following three truths are universal:
- You will have more fun working for yourself. You can fire the bad customers, work your own hours and develop the skill sets that you enjoy. The freedom is unmatchable.
- You will get more work done outside of an office. Two things slow down the creative process – office politics and bureaucracy. When you work for yourself you don’t have to hear about the office power plays (or be pulled into them), nor go through six tiers of management to get an approval. You just get stuff done.
- You will make more money when you’re self employed. The last job I did whilst employed, I was paid just over $25 per hour. The last job I did off my own back? $250 per hour. The difference? How my time and project was packaged – something I could never do while working for someone else.
Did the claim of $250 per hour throw you? That’s fair enough.
Being able to pocket that much didn’t happen over night, but it happened over time. So let me tell you a little secret that I’ve been using for ages to make more money in less time.
Don’t charge by the hour.
That’s it.
That’s all it took to literally improve my income from design tenfold. A simple business technique of charging per product instead of per hour, but highly under utilised by the Design community… but nobody can denies it gets results.
So why do keep people making the mistake of charging by the hour? Because they don’t know any better.
Do you?
Put your details down below and I’ll send you a copy of the most common mistakes and myths of the design industry – and how you can overcome them to build your own sustainable income.