← The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
How to Bulletproof Your Graphic Design Career Before Disaster Strikes & It’s Too Late
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If your team needs you there and needs you for every single question, okay. And can't operate without you, you're the problem, not the team. You are. You're listening to the Angry Designer podcast, where we help frustrated graphic designers crush the industry. Bull. And share what it takes to charge what you're worth and build badass, rewarding careers. Life isn't always rainbows and butterflies. Life's gonna throw you unlike anything that you've ever expected, and it's not gonna care if you're prepared for it or not. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the unfortunate parts of life and how to protect your business, yourself, your livelihood, against whatever it throws at you. Heads up. This episode might be a little sucky at times, but for those of you who know us, you'll understand. Life frickin sucks. It sucks. It's shit. Life is often both shit and good, equal parts and often at the same frickin time. For those of you who, who've been following us and, and who know a little bit of my life story, you know that my dad unfortunately has been going through quite a struggle. He, you know, obviously lost my mom, had to go through fucking Covid by himself. We were still there, you know. Then he got fucking blood cancer. Beat that shit, you know. Then his kidneys gave out, his heart was declining, you know, ended up on dialysis recently, stroke, and unfortunately it finally happened. It sucks. Life totally fucking sucks. And, and it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's hard if you're not prepared to take care of shit when life happens. I mean, my father used to always say, you know, you got to do what you got to do and you got to take care of stuff when it's your responsibility. And, and I'm sure he meant that in, in, you know, when it comes to yourself and your family. But, you know, he was also so hard work driven that I know he meant that for work and for taking care of, you know, the bigger picture, of course. And, and you know, he was so proud of this business that I built and he was even proud of this podcast. Okay, and here is a guy, an old Italian guy, and of course my mother too. No idea what the hell graphic design was. They had no idea what, what it was that I wanted to do. And, and when I was young and I told him I was going to do this, he went and he, he got me that, that the best freaking portfolio in the world. He just dropped everything. Let's go get that portfolio. And when the time Came for me to get a computer. He took me to get that computer. And even it was the most expensive fricking computer because Macs were like four times more expensive than a piece of shit candy. He still bought it. He shook his head, but he trusted. He bought it. He nurtured us. He built this. And he was proud of what we created. And he would have been heartbroken if what I created fell apart, because shit happens. And, and, and that's in some sort of weird way why I feel like I have to do this. I have to have this. This conversation with you guys because happens. Life doesn't give a. Okay? It doesn't. Life doesn't give a. You know, if, If, If. If somebody's sick. Life doesn't give a. If if you have a job that's due or, or, you know, you have clients or you have projects or. Or you got awards that you're thinking about. Life doesn't give a shit. And if you're not set up for when life. Because again, this isn't if. This is when, okay? This is when it happens. And if you're not set up for when life hits and life gets sucked, then, Then. Then you don't have a business, you don't have a job, you don't have clients. You. You're babysitting a ticking time bomb, okay? Because, I mean, let's face it, it's all there. And, and, and we're all going to go through, you know, at different points, and hopefully you never will, but the reality is life does. And if you can't take that hit and if your business you didn't set up, you know, again, you're not. You're not running that business. You're not. You're not prepared for when that time comes. Because you know what? As hard as shit is right now for me, and it is. It's. It sucks. I look forward to being able to come back to a safe place, to my business, to. To the business that I love, right? To. To this podcast that you guys, you know, listen to and return to week after week. You know, if. If I didn't have this, and if this fell apart after all this, man, life would be ten times worse than. Than. Than it is right now. This. These are the things that I'm looking forward to once I'm able to grieve and once I'm able to. I'm ever going to be able to really move forward to this. So today I just. I wanted to come and. And just let you guys know, as weird as it is because this will help me through this as well. But I mean, I want to let you know how this place is set up so it can handle if I'm not here. I mean, I've got a business, you know, we've got 15 employees, we've got millions of dollars in sales, we've got big clients. And they are awesome. They've all reached out, they're all cool, they're all sympathetic, they've all sent their condolences, you know, because they know that have been going through this. But at the same time, they still need their done and they can only wait so long, you know, before it affects their business and they have their own responsibilities. And while they may give a shit about me and my personal life, shit, their bosses may not give a shit because they're not connected and so on and so on, and deadlines get missed and this is not what you want to build. So I am very fortunate because when shit hit the fan for me, I sent one text and I got a don't worry, we'll take care of it. So when shit hit the fan, okay, I, I, my team was able to move forward and not drop a dime. Nothing got missed, no deadlines that happened. And so I'm going to share how as a business, you know, you can, you can protect yourself from this shit. I'm going to talk about as a freelancer as much as I can about how to actually, you know, take this hit and then as an employee, because you're not absolved of anything but how you can take a hit and keep moving forward. So the first thing here above anything else is I finally, after 25 years, maybe after that, the 2021, 22 year mark, I finally built the perfect team. I have a perfect team of people that I trust. Okay? And, and I mean, they're not like all going to be rock stars. They're rock stars to me, you know, but they're not like, you know, oh, we got to get this guy in our team, he's going to change the business. Oh, we need this girl. She's awesome. You know, She' gonna change everything. No, no, no, these are my rock stars. These are like my bandmates, okay? These are people I built a team of people who I can rely on, who I can trust and who actually are empowered to get shit done even if I'm not here. And I mean, they don't need me breathing down their neck, that's for sure. Okay. If anything, I give them shit. I politely, of course, but I'm like Don't. You don't have to ask me every question. You know, figure this out on your own and what's the worst that'll happen? We'll learn a lesson and then we'll keep moving forward. Right? Okay, Granted, you know, that might not work for everybody, but at the same time, I'm empowering my team to, to work without me, okay? It doesn't mean that I'm removing myself from the picture, but let's face it, 90% of the time, your team should know what to do, how to proceed. You know, how to get shit done without you there, okay? If your team needs you there and needs you for every single question, okay, and can't operate without you, you're the problem, not the team. You are. So you need to, to get off your ass and, and have people that, that can help, you know, grow and help grow you, and then you can rely on, okay? And again, in all fairness, if you're doing this right, it's because with this team, you've created, you know, bulletproof systems, okay? You've got tasks in place, you've got processes, you've got hand, you know, handoffs, right? I'm been gone for a week, I've been gone for two weeks. Okay? Whatever it takes, right? We have our process in place. We might be a little different than everybody, but we, we have daily 20 minute scrums every single day. We have a production meeting. Just like if you're a print shop. Well, we're a design shop and we have daily production meetings, okay? We have two people leading the meetings. We talk about everybody. We move projects around. We know what's coming in, we know it's critical, we know what's not. We know what stage everything is, and I mean everything. We got a shit ton of jobs happening at the same time every single day, but everybody's in that meeting. Everybody hears other people's tasks, and everybody is prepared to step in if they need to get help. Other people with their, with their shit. All right? Process is hard for designers and it's hard for business. And it was something that I used to cringe at when I heard it. But process allows things to happen when, when I'm not around. And it happens without skipping a beat. A beat, okay? It's not sexy. Process doesn't sound that sexy. But it's how I can grieve right now and go through the shit that I'm going through without, you know, also grinding and hustling and burning the candles at both ends and ultimately killing myself. Number Number three is I have already prepared my clients to understand, you know, they're not expecting me to be the hero every single time. I have a place. I have a place here. I have a place with my customers, and they know what I rock at, right? But I've made my customers understand that they are able to trust the team, not just me. All right? The big joke is I keep telling them, you know, you want me for strategy, you want me for creative, you don't want me handling details, you don't want me handling production. There's people here that are much better at that shit than I am, and it's to their advantage not to have me do that stuff. So, you know, I let my customers know that, you know, I'm not the hero 24 7. I'm just there when I'm needed. My team is the hero. All right? That's. That's what actual creative and business leadership is. It's. It's not being the loudest person in the room, which still I sometimes am, but for other reasons, of course. Okay. It's not. It's. It's being. It's being the one that can step back and watch the rest of your team have a. Have a go at. Have a great time. And one thing for sure, which would really have effed up a lot of things this past week, is we don't chase chaos work. Okay. And I can't stress this enough, okay. You know, if you've got the kind of business and you've got, you know, customers that you've trained to be able to call you when something's hit the roof, and you're the only person who's able to handle this, and it's chaotic, right? It's. It's not how we operate here. And I've turned. I just had a meeting with procurement from some of, you know, that. That new giant customer that we have. And, okay, procurement was like, well, let's. Let's try do this and let's, you know, procurement's job and bless them, they're good at this. But their job is to try to, you know, weasel you down into, like, the best possible price. And they wanted to. To. To build. They wanted to build a business, you know, or a. A building method of per project. And I was like, listen, I've worked with your team. I know your team, and you know, that's not going to work because when they need stuff, stuff has to happen. And I warned them, we're not the chaos Agency. So although you might want to just use Us when you need us. That's not how we work and that's not how your team needs us to work. Because that would require us to drop other customers and we're not prepared to do that. We're not prepared to drop the other customers that understand that there is no marketing emergency, there is no creative emergency that you have to take care at the 11th hour. That's usually shit on their end that gets effed up. So we will turn away customers and I told them we'll turn away work if it doesn't fit in our system. We have our production meetings, we daily know what we're doing and, and we will not accept panic projects within reason, obviously. But for the bigger picture, there's no expectation that they can call us at 11:00 at night and we'll drop them. You know, they know that basically we were done Friday, 5, 6 o'clock. We need that weekend during the week. We'll give a little extra if it's needed, but we cannot function as, as a panic type agency. So we just don't do that. Okay? We built this business to be sustainable and that was my conversation with them. You know, we, we built it for the long term relationship of the customer and their existing customers. We don't want to be that hero who comes in, swoops, saves the day and then is just kind of miserable, you know, kind of like the series, the Boys or whatever where they all got some pretty serious issues on the side. We want to build a business that's a legacy, okay. And that just keeps going, you know, even when, you know, we're not around or when I'm not around, which is kind of the case lately, actually feeling better about this. So thank you for listening to me throughout all this. But, but this is what's, what's, what's happening here. And, and my team is able to function without me. So I'm not the bottleneck in this situation. I'm not saying that they can, you know, by any means continue to grow and I have no picture at all. I could be gone next week. But they're able to maintain status quo. They know the quality that's expected. You know, they know the standards that, you know, we've set into place. We build our own internal customer docs where it's like not only these are their colors and these are their fonts, but this is the look, this is the feel, this is, this is what people. And so if I'm not there to tell them, they know where to go with this. And they can function, obviously, for a week with me being completely out of the picture with two weeks probably, you know, and heaven forbid, if I had to push it to three, I would trust this team. They surprised me with some really amazing shit that they took care of last week that I thought I was going to have to do on my shoulders, but they took care of it and they fucking rock. I love them. And you need to learn to love your team too, as freelancers, because some of you are freelancers out there. While again, I can't speak full and give you every advice about freelance, I can honestly say that if you don't have systems in place, you are literally one week, one bad week away from having a total shit show on your shoulders on top of everything else that you'll have going on in your life. Okay, if you're like running solo, that's fine, right? That's it. But you're everything. You're your sales, your design, your, Your strategy. And then on the flip side, you're also therapy. And you're also, you know, in some cases, you know, you could be the one taking care of everybody, right? You're literally one family emergency or one hospital visit and your whole business and that what you've created is, is, is literally going to go to shit if you think burnout is like a badge of honor and that, you know, you could be a total hustler and this and that. The reality is that is the beginning of the end for what you built. And you don't want that. You need to build, you need to build these systems just as, just as importantly, as a full agency. It's a little more tricky though. So I thought through how to possibly do this. You know, obviously you've got to get your processes tight, okay? Tight. This, this is going to help your overall business. Not just when an emergency happens, but if you have your processes, you know, type, you're not winging it. You're not like deciding one week you're going to do things like this. You, another week you can do like that, right? For your own sake, create templates that you can use for a lot of the, the repeatable things that you've got, you know, on a week, by week, on a bi weekly, on a monthly basis, right? Get your workflows in place, get some canned responses ready to go in case, you know, an email comes in and you don't have to write a bird, something canned and solid that you can send back if you have to. Okay. You need to make sure that you can disappear for at least a week without nuking your entire fricking business. Okay? So automate what you can. Okay? And what I mean by this is, you know, this, this comes to scheduling certain jobs, scheduling certain parts of jobs, invoicing, even follow ups, okay? All this is, is automated. You can automate almost everything on this side of the work, right? And in all fairness, it's, it's the boring stuff like this that actually helps you recover on the other end. And it's also the stuff that you actually don't want to deal with in time of crisis. In all fairness, you know, in the time of crisis, if you needed to unload, you might be able to get away by doing some creativity, some creative stuff, some design stuff. This might be an outlet for you, but you don't want to be doing proposals, you don't want to be doing follow up emails. You don't want to have to take care of this shit. All right? So try to automate whatever parts of your business that you can. Okay? You need to set boundaries with your customers. And I know that sounds ridiculous because as a freelancer you never want to say no to customers. But that's not true. If you've trained your clients to expect things 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if you've trained them to be able that you'll take their call when they need it and you are always with them, well then you know what, like it's, you need to retrain that shit. You can't survive. You can't have a business if you are hustling 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If not for an emergency like this, you're just going to be burnt out at any point, okay? You're causing this shit. So you need to take a step back and train your customers that you can get shit done at your will, at your time, whenever. It doesn't mean you need to stop at 5. If you want to go till 7 or 8, that's fine. But you can't have them expect to that you'll be waiting on them 24, 7. Okay? So set boundaries with those customers, okay? And I don't even know if this is possible or not to do as a freelancer, but you need to have a in case of emergency break glass plan. Okay? And the reason why I think this is possible is I have two freelancers who have us Zed Factor as their in case of emergency break glass plan. Okay? One doc, one, one trusted person has all your client contacts in there, has project status, potentially even has your Email password. Somebody you got to trust. Of course. Right? But again, if you can't work for whatever reason, you need to be able to reach out to somebody and be like, I need help. Please help. And this is somebody who can step in. They'll know what the hell to do because you've already outlined it all for them. Okay? You know, make sure that if they don't have an agency like us, okay, make sure you have one or two solid designers that will help you out in case of an emergency. Offer that to them as well. Fucking show them this video, for fuck's sakes, so they understand the importance of something like this, all right? And then this way, it's people that will be able to jump in if you need them. Okay? This is nothing to fricking do about competition. And nor should you be worried. This is about community. It's not about competition. So again, if your business as a freelancer, your whole business is writing on just your health, your focus, your ability, then honestly, that's not a business. That's a gamble. And let me tell you, man, shit happens. And. And that gamble, you could just totally go against you, you know, at the time. Because again, you know, just the casino, just like life give a shit if your bank is full and that's the last dollars in place, okay? It will scoop what you've got. So the last part to this is you might be thinking, yeah, cool, I appreciate this. I'm listening to you because I like you. But I'm an employee. I work for a company. I don't need a plan. I'm safe. Okay? Yeah, cool. So, you know, you've outsourced your entire career. You've left your entire career insecurity and your family security up to your boss. That just scares the living hell out of me. Like, if you still think that you're untouchable when life comes at you, when life, something shit happens like this, the reality is, everything that we've said about, you know, life doesn't give a shit is true. And so is the business that you work for. Just because something bad happens to you, they can't pause what they've got going on just because life has hit you hard. They can be sympathetic, they can try to jump in and help, but. But the reality is, if you haven't set yourself up for being, you know, replaceable in a short time, then you have a bigger problem at hand. Okay? So, I mean, again, it doesn't make you replaceable in a situation like this, okay? Like, you know, you need to be Able, you know, my second in charge. I probably couldn't run this business without her, okay? But she took off to Korea for three weeks. Three fucking weeks. I. Seems like a hell of a long time because that's three weeks. And, and that was three weeks of being untouchable, unreachable, you know, and again, she worked ahead. She labeled her files, she. She got all of her projects caught up. She put out schedules in place, and she had created such a good system that while she was gone, everything kept going and 80% of her job still kept happening. She reached out to these people to, to make sure if I'm gone, this is what happens. Reach out to those people. This is what happens if I'm not around. And I barely had to step in only when needed while she was gone. This doesn't mean that by any means, I was like, well, we don't need her at all. Because, look, we, We. We function fine without her. This was like, holy, I can't run this business without her. Because she did such a good job labeling her files, leaving notes on a regular basis. She was so detail oriented that this is somebody who's going to help me grow this business, not somebody who I can replace and replace it at a whims need. So again, don't think that by creating systems for yourself, labeling your design, labeling your layer of files, you know, uploading from your computer to the cloud so everybody has access to it. Right? Don't think that by doing all that makes you disposable in any way. This is what makes her indisposable to me. She's indispensable. I can't do this without her. And, and by her being able to step away comfortably for three solid weeks, that just means that this is somebody I want at my side in this business for as long as our future is and as long as she has. And she will have a place with us as long as she wants. So, you know, number two, in a situation like this, you know, if you've got, if you have some sort of foresight of what's going on, it's to your benefit to, you know, inform your bosses, have that conversation. She with her. We were able to plan a little bit more. That's fine. But of course, have that talk. You know, that shit's going down and hopefully never anything we have to worry about. But if it does, I just need you to do right and you let them know, okay? Create a plan with your manager that, heaven forbid if you were to unexpectedly leave for a week due to Emergency. Okay, what happens? What do they need to do or need from you in order to keep going? This is not a sign of weakness, okay? This is a sign of strength. This is. This is professional, okay? This is if I have team members who come to me and be like, dude, you know, have. Even if nothing's bad was happening with them, even if they were, you know, they were healthy and everybody was healthy and their family was healthy and there was nothing bad in the horizon, they were to be like, what would happen if I disappeared for a week? Is there anything that you would need from me that I could start today putting in place? Heaven forbid something happens, because you know what? It opens up that conversation, and it feels more like a partnership versus a boss employee relationship, okay? And then, heaven forbid, if, as an employee shit happens, take that time off. I can't tell you much how. How much I. How important this grieving process is. You know, I'm not doing anything. I. It kills me not to be productive. It kills me to sit there, but I don't want to be here if those weird thoughts happen. I don't want to, you know, have to try to adjust this and deal with this. This. This grief, you know, in. In the wrong environment. It's important to take that time off so, you know, stop hoarding all those vacation days if you need them. You know, use them if you. If you need to during a time like this, but take that time off at all expenses, all right? You need to unload. You. You need that break for yourself to deal with that. Okay? You. This isn't a situation where I'm telling employees to act like a boss and. And. And take over their job, but you do need to think like one. And if you genuinely value your job right now, have those conversations, have that plan in place, and find out what they need from you to be able to handle a week or two without you. Because let me tell you, if that shit happens, they will happily let you go, and there will be no begrudging feelings that you don't know about. They won't be badmouthing you. That happens sometimes, unfortunately. You know? You know my favorite Rocky quote that. That we've talked about many times about. Life is. Is. Is so true in a situation like this. It's. It's not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can get hit and keep getting hit and keep moving forward. That's how you win in the past. Man, adulting sucks. Being an adult sucks, plain and simple, because you've got to deal with Shit that, that you never had to deal with in your 20s, 30s, 40s, most of us, unfortunately. And so as you get older, you're dealing with all this other shit. And again, my past five years have been dealt with, you know, cancer from one parent, cancer with another parent. Passing of one, passing of a second. You know, I've had friends unexpectedly pass away. I've had other friends get sick. Life just will keep heating you. And I love this career. I love what I've built. I love the life that I have right now and everything in it. And part of being an adult and part of being a really good business person, you know, or even as a really good professional, is to make sure you've got shit in place. And so when life does hit you like this, you can keep moving forward and, And. And look forward to, you know, getting back. I. I look forward to coming back in this office with the whole team. I. I actually came here on Friday for lunch, for a team lunch. And so good being around this amazing team. That. That is like a second family to me, okay? Life doesn't ask you, you know, if it's time for shit to happen. It will just fucking come at you, okay? Just. Just sometimes really, really hard and really mean and really unfair, okay? And the thing is, your business, you know, your freelance business, your job, okay, it's only as strong as you've built it to take that hit, okay? So you need to ask yourself, if I vanish tomorrow, if I disappear for a week, a week and a half, can I come back to, you know, to a place that I love? Can I come back to a business, you know, or does everything I have right now rely on me to survive? And if it does, you need to get off your fucking high horse and start putting some of these plans in place. This isn't about fear mongering, okay? This is about freedom. There is this entirely. I don't. I don't have to worry about my business while I'm going through the. That I'm going through, okay? I am. I built something that supports my life. And that doesn't just mean financially. That means emotionally, you know, that means mentally. Okay? And of course, course, yeah, monetarily too, okay? So when. Happens when life collapses, okay? I built something that can help me sustain my life moving forward, okay? And you need to do this too. You need to do this for yourself. You need to do this for your family. You need to do this for your legacy, because you want to be able to come back, back to something when the time is right and when you're able to do so. So my father used to always say, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. And these are some of the things that it might be kind of hard to think about, you know, at this time in your life right now when. When, you know, you're young and you have your whole future ahead of you. But the reality is sending this shit up will help you. You help your business, it'll help you out, and. And it'll give you this new sense of freedom that you'll be able to enjoy and design you free liberty, you know, at your will that you'll just love this experience that much more. All right, Bop. I love you, buddy. Say hi to mom for me. All right, guys, I love you all, and I want you all to have the best journey and. And design is what got me through all the. That I'm going through right now. And I want it to be like that for you guys. So with that being said, guys, stay angry. Sa.