From $0 - $300 A Day Doing What I Love -- Creating.

So making money as a creative is kind of a touchy subject, if I'm being honest. We all know that, you know, money is something that we need. You want to take over, Bud? Or you got this or what? I don't care, Bud. Put you down. We all know that we want to make money because it's just the thing that helps us, if nothing else, support our family, support more of our creativity, support opportunities for us to do the things that we love to do and to make work that really means something to us. While 10 years may seem like a long time to you, it does seem like that long to me. Ten years ago, I was still giving away a lot of my production skills, a lot of my skills as a drummer, a lot of my skills as a creative overall, for free. And today I want to tell you how I transitioned out of that, started valuing myself more, and how once I really started changing the way I looked at things, the things I looked at started to change and. Hey, friend, my name is Lennon, and I am a creative strategist. I am here to help artists and creatives like yourself stand out and make money doing meaningful work. Because I don't believe you have to have the biggest following. I think you just have to have the right1. Probably 10 years ago, I was working as a touring musician and I was making some money doing that. I would come home and end up giving away a lot of my time. I'd be doing a lot of production work for free. I'd be doing a lot of drumming for free. And there's just a culture of free in the creat community.

Whether that's like, musicians or artists or photographers. And we start to almost take advantage of each other. We start to really just ask, hey, could you do this thing for me, bud? You're gonna have to go, I'm sorry. And we just get used to saying yes. And we do it because we love the people that we're working with. We do it because, you know, you know, we think it's going to help build our portfolio. I knew that I wanted to make more money, but I started to feel like there was no more money to be made just because everybody was asking for everything for free. I mentioned it earlier, but I heard a quote, I think it was in some Wayne Dyer meditations that I was doing some guided meditations where he says, when you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change. There was a point in there where I realized if I continued to just do free work, I'd Only ever get free work. And so I knew I had to change the way I was seeing things. So I had this moment where I know it seems like a dumb sort of not novel idea, but, you know, I thought the only way I'm gonna make money is if I ask for money. So I thought maybe if I shift my perspective here and give some things away, but in the context of having to pay for something as well, so, you know, maybe I would offer, like, hey, I'll record for this amount of time, and then I' do this other thing for free kind of deal. So I kind of wrapped everything in that little bundle. And so I did this for a little while. And quite honestly, like, people were respectful of me asking to pay, but I was known as the free guy. Like, I'd just done all this free work. So a lot of the clients, if you want to call them that, that I had just didn't, you know, they didn't really know what to do. They're just. They don't have the money for it, and they definitely don't see the value in it because I've just done it for free. And so I lost a lot of those people. I had to go out and start looking for work. That was really difficult because I didn't feel very good about myself. You know, I hadn't done anything that paid me any money, so why am I going to feel like somebody else is going to be willing to pay me anything? But back to that phrase of, you know, the more you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. I just had to believe that there was work to be had. I knew that other people in town were making money doing it. I knew that other people in town were making a living as a musician, as a producer. So I just had to go and believe that I could do it, too. I mean, I was out touring most of the time. Like, why couldn't I do this right? But there was still that, like, gnawing thing inside me that kept me from feeling confident about it for some reason. So the next show that I was at.

A great band was there that I really liked. I'd seen him a couple times, local band, and I was like, I'm just gonna flip and beeline it to him and tell them what I do. And so that's what I did. I just started this conversation with them, said, hey, you know, great job. I thought you guys were awesome. I just wanted to let you know, they're like, oh, cool, what's your name? What do you do. And, you know, I'll be honest. I was like, well, I don't know if I should say it. Like, well, I do production work out of a recording studio around here, and, like, oh, cool. We're actually thinking about making a record. How much do you charge? I'd set a rate of 200. I think it was like $250 or $300 for the day, which was a lot for me, and actually not too far below the, like, standard market value for, like, studio time in the city. And so I just kind of said it, even though I didn't believe that I was worth it, which is, I know, weird to think about, but I knew that I just had to try. Like, what's the worst that happens? They say no, right? So they're like, okay, cool.

So, like, great. Well, we'll have to think about it. And I just knew that was it. Like, I was so frustrated because I thought, what? You know, what have I done? I've blown this whole thing. Sure enough, two days later, they contacted me again and said they want to do it. We ended up making a full EP together, and it was a blast. Even though I'd earned more money than that, like, playing. And when I was doing stuff on tour, this is the first time I'd done something for me. And that was, like, a special moment. It was really cool, and it felt really validating. I also gained a lot more experience in a different way, because what happened is I knew that I had to bring something to the table because they were valuing this differently. They expected something from this. They expected professional quality from this thing. And I realized that them just paying for it and expecting that quality automatically increased the value and the experience for them as well. And when I came in, it was just pumped about, like, doing the thing and doing it really well. I ended up doing the best work that I had ever done. And that was, like, this just a great. It was a great feeling. And, yeah, I had some of my old clients hit me up and say, like, you know, what are you working on? Would you be willing to work on this stuff? And this was the first time that I felt confident enough to say, you know, hey, I just want to let you know, I've raised my rates. No offense. I have to take care of my family. This is what I'm doing. What was cool is they respected that. They understood. Did they come work with me? Most of them, no. But, like, sure enough, when I changed the way I looked at things, the things I looked at started to change. So as a creative that's trying to come out of doing work for free, there's three takeaways from this story that I want you to think about here. I want you to stop believing that nobody's going to pay for your work or that you're not ready to charge. You may not have the portfolio yet, and that's okay. I'm going to talk about that in a second. But just because art in a lot of ways, like music art, it's been devalued. I'm going to talk a lot more about that on the channel in the coming weeks. But, you know, it's been devalued a lot, but not in every way. You have skill sets that are very valuable to people that other people don't have based on what you've learned doing those things. And those things are worth money? Absolutely. Hands down, 1,000%. So, yeah, like I said, you may not have the portfolio. But the second thing I want you to think about is just be honest with where you're at. If you're new to something, like, yeah, you may need to do some work for free, but don't do it just for free. Like, there are still ways to collect and bring more value and collect more value from somebody else. Don't be afraid to say, hey, would you be willing to trade some time for this? Like, you're a great photographer, I'm a great artist. Like, let's do this thing together. Maybe you could do some shots for me and I'll do some graphic design for you and we can both be building our portfolio. And if they say no, like, dead, dead set, like, I would tell you, just forget about them. Do not do the work. I don't care how cool you think they are. If they don't value you, I'm going to promise that that work will end up going nowhere and that experience will end up being something that you are not excited about, and it will not be good for you or anybody else. So even if the work ends up being cool, it's not going to be something you're excited about because you just hated the experience. And the third thing is, if you want to get paid, you got to ask. I mean, what a concept, right? But, like, that's something that I didn't learn for far too long, is that people aren't just going to offer to pay you something. You, nine times out of ten, you have to tell somebody that you are willing to do a project, here's what it's going to cost. You don't have to be pushy. But if someone says, hey, what do you do? Let them know. And then if they say hey, would you be willing to do this? Don't be afraid to say, absolutely, I'd love to work on that. I can send you an email with my rates or you know, I've got a document if that's cool. That's a great first step, right? You just need to let them know right away and be front with what the options are. If they say no, that's fine, right? That's not a big deal. But what happens if you continue to just do work for free? It's better to let a few clients go and have two or three that are willing to pay than to just continue to dabble in this free and cheap work forever. I'm telling you, just remember, you can always come down in price, but it's really hard to ask for more money once you've started a project and especially once you've been into it for a while. So listen, if you're trying to get more of your stuff out there on social media and not just this kind of in person thing like I was talking about, I think that's super smart. And I have a video here where I talk about three ways that you can authentically push your work on social media. Go check that video out. I think it'll be really valuable for you. And thanks for watching.