Where Shirakaba Studios Clients Come From
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Happy Friday! Welcome back to Jimi Filipovski’s weekly newsletter where I give you high-quality insights and learnings on building a creative business.
There are no ads on this newsletter to make this an A+ experience for you. All I ask is that you enjoy and share. Sound reasonable?
Now let’s dive into this week’s post.
As Shirakaba Studio has officially been operating for over a year now I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how I got my clients and how we stayed busy throughout the year. I hope this will help you understand that working for yourself or running a freelance or solopreneur business can take many different forms.
Our first client came the first month we were in business and was a branding + website for a friend’s company. We spent about 8 weeks getting everything launched and we were super happy with the result. We also stayed on for a couple of months on retainer.
Next, my partner and I closed 2 additional retainers that ended up lasting most of the year. Mine was UX and digital product design consulting and hers was social media and email design/strategy.
Over the next few months we had a few friends refer some clients to us, most didn’t pan out due to budget, timelines, etc. but we were getting a steady stream of inbound leads from our network.
Vice had approached us a couple of times to clean up presentation pitch decks for them and this was a nice little project once in a while I was always interested in seeing what they were pitching and their strategy.
During my time in the agency world, I always enjoyed how we’d approach presentations and became fascinated by what strategy or angle a presentation would take to win a client or to choose a specific design, or logo. It’s an art of subtle manipulation and storytelling that must be threaded with a very fine twine. I think most agencies promise too much and make expectations way too high but when you’re pitching a new big client (and these were billion-dollar companies) you have to moonshot.
Anyway I love and enjoy putting these types of things together because it allows me to do what I like best which is high-level vision and ideation. I don’t get too caught up in the details, especially at the beginning of a project. But as I’ve gotten older I’m smart enough to know now that a failure at the end of the project was because of a decision or assumption you make at the beginning that turns out to be wrong.
As I’ve become a leader and a manager I’ve learned to be decisive in my decisions but I aim to be quick to admit I was wrong and quick to course correct. I have no issue or ego admitting I don’t know how to do something. This is a wonderful and freeing feeling for a business owner. As an employee however, I’ve learned that your managers don’t love to hear this (even if they say they do). It’s like being an actor and the director asks “Can you ride a horse?” the actor replies “yes, of course” and then he figures it out along the way.
All this is to say that no one knows what they are doing. We act like it. We say we can ride the horse and then we figure it out. I think that can be a good thing. It’s good to be curious and to want to learn how things work. To go and figure it out.
For our studio’s first project we built the website in Webflow, I had never actually used Webflow but I’d been wanting to because it’s become such a powerful tool. And so I figured it out. Better yet, I got paid to figure it out. It wasn’t an overcomplicated site and I didn’t need to bug any of my developer friends to rescue me so it became the perfect first project.
I think you just need to make sure you take small steps when you pretend you know something you don’t. Jumping straight to “I’m going to build the next Facebook” is almost guaranteed to fail. but saying “I’m going to learn javascript” is a much better option that you can then stack another win and another win on top of. Trust the timing of your life. Be patient and just focus on the next thing in front of you.
What’s your biggest frustration in finding clients right now? Hit reply and let me know.
👋 Want to work together?
Are you looking for a brand or website for your new idea? Shirakaba Studio partners with other ambitious brands to make magical things happen. Learn more about our studio here and reach out to book a call.
Have a great weekend,
-Jimi