And you might be wondering can we get there? How can I work from home and

do something that I enjoy, well there's a lot of risks and opportunities

that I took to get to where I am today

and that's what I want to share with you: How I Became a Freelance Graphic Designer

About eight years ago in my junior year of high school, I h ad the opportunity to

attend a technical career center

for interactive media. This was when I really started to find my passion for design

I had done it for fun just at home on my own working on my own stuff but now I can

do it half the time I was in school

And it was in this career center whereI had the opportunity to work with some clients

pro bono doing poster's, websites, logos, and that sort of stuff.

And that's when it clicked for me, that I could do this for living and make money!

Jump ahead after graduating high school, I attended a two-year

college for the same thing – interactive media and business, and this is when I

really started to experiment with the idea of freelancing

but of course while in school, I also had to get a part-time job

I work in the print Department up in office supply store

so I went these two years in college experimenting with freelancing

aside from the part-time job and just doing my school work

so two years when by I graduated college and there I was

standing behind a Xerox printer

slaving over the start button while some customer was over there shopping

for a stapler.

And what bothered me the most was that I was spending most of my days

at my part-time job and there's client work piling up at home waiting for me

And I can be spending my time effectively growing something and doing

something that I actually enjoyed

So I did it! I put in my two weeks and I quit my part-time job.

There's never going to be a better opportunity for me to take such a risk

I still lived with my parents so expenses were low and I knew that I

wanted to make this happen

Now was the time to start freelancing full-time.

About a year passed and not much happened.

I wasn't making a livable income so I really needed to figure out how do I need to make

this work

or else I needed to find another job so I took a step back

and I rebranded everything I figured out a new business model

what I should focus on our redesigned website we design a logo

but then I start putting my blog to use I started posting design tutorials about

things I knew and

things I learned. And I started sharing my experience with freelancing

this helped bring in a little bit a traffic but I got the attention

other well-established blogs and this is when I had the opportunity

to guest post for the next six months every single week about freelancing and

this is what skyrocketed my freelance business

and what really brought in traffic. So I stuck with that

for the next couple years. I continued to write and continued to go outside my

comfort zone

and I I just showed up every single day but the biggest thing was stepping

outside my comfort zone

I wasn't a writer. I thought I suck at writing.

but I did it anyway because of that

it's what led to where I am today so if you're considering the idea of

starting a freelance business

My biggest piece of advice would have to be to just validate

the idea you might enjoy the thought of freelancing

but if you actually get a chance to work with the client one-on-one and you

hate it or if you don't like the idea of having to market your business and

put yourself out there

you're going to struggle a lot and you're just not going to enjoy it but

maybe you're already freelancing in you're kinda struggling, your income's

going up and down

you know client work is kinda sparse so my advice to you is to do what I did

take a step back – look at your business

and you need to pinpoint those hurdles that you need to jump

I break my freelance business down into four main principles

1. Identity 2. Focus 3. Marketing 4.Process

You need to first figure out who you are and you want to work with

and you need to build a brand around that

Which comes to the second thing "focus", which ties into identity. You need to

figure out what you're going to do specifically

You can't do everything to scrape by. You need to figure out what you love to do.

the one or two things that you can become great so your clients are like

this guy knows how to design a logo I wanna work with

him. And the third thing is marketing How are clients going to know you exist

just by putting a portfolio online and letting it stagnate isn't gonna do anything

You need to get your name out in front of the right people and you need to bring people into your website.

And you need to do that with marketing so figure out how you can get your name out.

And the fourth thing is "process", which is very important

You need to know how you're going to work with clients from start to finish.

You need to have some sort of structure

in place for how you're gonna operate as a freelancer. These are all things I share

on my blog "Your Freelance Career"

And these are things I'm going to dive into specifically here in these videos with you

so if you have any questions about graphic design, about how to run a freelance business

about my story, or me, just leave a comment and I'll respond, or

I'll even do a Q&A video series maybe. That's all I have for you so I

appreciate you taking time to let me share my story with you

hopefully you're able to pick up some insight from it, but I really wanna

thank you for watching and just today please do one thing

that'll help you get to where you'd like to be one day – just one thing.

Thanks! :)