Making great creative work is one thing. Getting the right eyes to see it and pay you to do it
for them is another challenge. So whether you're a freelancer a founder or a falconer if you use
these three methods you will vastly improve your chances and this video is sponsored by Hostinger
they are a fantastic and affordable web hosting platform so a little bit more about them and the
first method is to show the work that you want to make a client is really going to take a chance on
someone who can't show them similar work in their portfolio if you want the best tikka masala in
town are you gonna go with the restaurant that has amazing photography and array reviews or are
you gonna get it from a random email that you got saying they could make any curry you want they've
never made a curry but they're pretty sure they could do it if you paid them it's unlikely you're
gonna go for the random email curry if you want to make movie posters for your favorite movies
go make awesome movie posters you don't have to wait for permission or for a client to offer to
pay you make the most awesome thing you can and there's a good chance they're going to be
better portfolio pieces because you don't have a client's restrictions to worry about so when you
make personal projects in your downtime which you won't have after applying these techniques in your
downtime make the work that you're really excited about because that is the work that'll be the
most interesting and that will attract the most clients because there's just a shortage of that
out there i wanted to make humorous short textured animations so i made a bunch of them as personal
projects and i stuck my portfolio with those instead of the pretty boring corporate work that
i was doing and only then did i start to get hired for the more interesting textured humorous work
some more examples shmook made these incredible deep fakes so he got hired to make them for star
wars andrew kramer made amazing visual effects amazing holograms so he got hired by star wars
even george lucas made these fan edits of the original trilogy and they ended up getting an
official release i may have gone too far in a few places that wouldn't have happened if they didn't
show their awesome and relevant work and now we've reached a beautiful state where there are as many
people working on star wars projects as there are watching them it's this wonderful beautiful
self-sustained ecosystem of entertainment merchandise and outrage it's wonderful but
your clients still need to see this awesome work that you've made and that ties us nicely into this
video's sponsor hostinger which is a great place to host your portfolio site i've had some great
time using the behind the scenes to host a website for some potential side projects and there are a
few things that i want you to know about them high speed and affordability is what they do
best your website is hosted by them it will not be slow your prospective clients will click on your
site and before they even release their finger from the mouse your work is in front of them
in their eyeballs they are busy people they've got a lot of portfolios to get through you don't
want them angry and frustrated as your work slowly loads in front of them frustrated eyeballs on your
work is almost as bad as no eyeballs they have 24 hour tech support they have a multilingual team
that speaks over 20 languages that's even more than me so they have you covered if you need
help and their hpannel this is the portal where you manage your sites it's super easy to use i've
used services like this in the past that look like a spreadsheet and handle like a fax machine
but that's not the case with hosting it they also have wordpress integration so you can have
your site live within minutes you can use their premium shared hosting plan for multiple websites
which has more features than i can even fit on screen and the 30 day money back guarantee so
that alone is confidence in their service and the final cherry on top you can use the code ben for
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the next method is to be brief when emailing a potential client or employee or any human really
make the message brief be friendly but get to the point friendly and pointy the people looking to
hire you the producers the creative directors they have dozens perhaps dozens of hundreds of emails
to get through before they can get back to the rest of their work which they would much rather
be doing so they will be way more appreciative if they don't have to clear a whole afternoon to read
your email and be brief that goes for show reels and portfolios too a short show reel a condensed
curated portfolio is always better than a bloated one show only your best 10 or so projects that way
whoever looks at your work instantly sees the best stuff they've not had to trawl through an
ultra marathon of an email just to find a link to your work and then are greeted with a two
minute show reel that they have to skip through and end up just seeing some of your week of work
anyway keep it concise and keep it the best and a secret weapon for emailing that i found in joey
coroman's great book the freelance manifesto which also references issues in tim ferriss's
four hour work week which then sources its possible origin in the paleolithic cave paintings
of the dawn france and that secret weapon is to end your email with no reply necessary now this
is counter-intuitive you do in theory want them to reply but you must do the opposite
yes i will do the opposite and that is because nothing is worse than giving them the impression
that you think they owe you something especially not their most valuable resource their time now
i used to do this backwards i was a young man a naive man a young man and i read that you should
be trying to get the next meeting at any cost under the impression that this is what modern
academics would call a chad move and that's ending your email something along the lines of when is
your best time for a quick meeting next week with the expectation that they'd already somehow agreed
to it and even when this does work it's a bit sleazy and rubs people the wrong way now there's
absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a meeting or anything else in an email just don't expect it
and put the responsibility on them to decline make it available with no pressure and that makes it
much more inviting by using no reply necessary the implication is i know you're a busy person
i'm somewhat of a busy person myself respecting people's time that is the real chad move now
the specific wording of no reply necessary might have become a bit too widely used so the people
receiving those emails might see through your respectful disguise so here are some alternatives
that you can use that have just a little bit extra flavor you must get a hundred of these no need to
reply or no action required i just wanted to let you know i'm available for work in the coming
months or of course don't you dare reply to this email and some others and also please don't be
scared to email or message me if you watch the channel i absolutely appreciate read and reply
to eventually all the kind emails i get especially if they're questions about my course what a segue
look at that that's a that's how you do it like a pro if you don't know i have an advanced motion
design course and i just recently added student testimonials to the website so check them out if
you want to know a bit more about their results and their experience with the courts you might
be having an internal battle how do i show my portfolio in its most condensed concentrated state
of just the best quality work that i have but also show that it's relevant to a variety of clients
across many different industries and not miss out on those opportunities well the solution to that
is to show your process in your portfolio on your website give them an indication of how you make
what you make especially if you're going direct to a client who might not know the ins and outs
of your industry and how they work in that case assume that they have no imagination that you're
gonna have to be a little bit literal with everything and hold their hand a bit through
the process alongside your project add a short description yes you're gonna have to write it
out but just a short description maybe a bit of a brief what the goals of the project were
and then show your development what are some different ideas that you came up with maybe some
sketches and then you can show your final work if you don't want to go more levels into how that
was refined and that's enough then any client that sees that can imagine themselves within
that process and they can see what you've done to solve another client's problems and hopefully want
you to solve this that client won't be thinking oh this person only makes animations about the dairy
farming industry i am in a very slightly different area of agriculture where depictions of bovine
aren't relevant i'll take my business elsewhere i'll find a more appropriate non-bovine animator
they won't be thinking that they'll be thinking i need to get this animator to see what he can do
that isn't cows so if you use these three methods together you will give your existing work the best
possible chance to get you more and more work in the future and more importantly the work that you
want to get from the clients that you want to get it from if you want to know some more
technical skills to help complement these you might want to watch this next video but i know i
know you're busy today you've got lots of things to do so watching it's not necessary no need
thank you anyway