After giving my talk at XOXO last year I’ve been dedicating a lot of thought to transparency and finances. While I was up on stage I managed to articulate what it feels like to live in the emotional landscape of perceived success, but I also wanted to give practical figures that might help other creators. Fortunately, David Rees gave a talk the day after me that covered fifteen years of freelancing in hard numbers. Had I had more time I would’ve done the same, but he was in a better position because he’s been at this longer. You can really see the dramatic ups and downs over the course of his career.
I find this stuff ridiculously helpful, so why not share it from my end, too? It seems like a great idea until the survival instinct that kicks in and says “They’ll eviscerate you. You don’t know how to run a business. People will misunderstand and decide that you’re taking advantage. If you’d paid attention this year rather than living moment-to-moment you’d have made a real profit. Your lack of resources is your own fault. If you’d managed this correctly you wouldn’t need help. Everyone will see that you don’t know what you’re doing.”
But I think that’s bunk. Or if people do think any of those things, the number of other people who find it useful or demystifying or reassuring instead will make it worthwhile.
Reblogging with some additional context, because this turned into a two-parter!
I realized that sharing 2016’s income and expenses in isolation isn’t very helpful, since day job thinking encourages the idea that every year looks the same. To contextualize what I’m saying about freelancing, here’s the numbers on all the years I’ve been doing full-time* freelance work.
(*2012 is technically only six months of freelance, since I didn’t graduate college till May, but I was also taking jobs during the first part of that year, and I ran my first Kickstarter in April—figured it was useful to have more data rather than less.)
I also answered everyone’s biggest questions about taxes, living expenses, and deducting the cost of merchandise in this post.
It’s good to keep in mind that creative careers have seasons. Sometimes you’re holed up, saving every penny and drawing every day. Other times you’re throwing it all out there trying to make something, build something, and share your hard work with the world.
We’re engaged in a cyclical process, and while the income may be totally variable in either season, a little planning and intention can go a long way towards fostering stability in the long term.
Here’s to oiling that machine in 2017.
People put the most intimate things on this site , but for some reason something like this that much more rare, so it is refreshing to see.
I ask myself if I could do it, and I don’t know if I could!!
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