From Free Trades to Paid Deals: A Creator's Playbook

And there’s a lot more where that came from 🥴 Story time 👇 📌 But first be sure to give me a follow to learn how to not repeat my mistakes So when I was fresh out of film school I thought I knew what good content was. Heck I had just won the best cinematography award for our senior thesis film festival 😎 So after a short stint working on movies and realizing it wasn’t for me I thought the switch would be easy. But no one told me that running a successful content company is a completely DIFFERENT skill set than being a good photographer. So when my first few hundred pitches were ghosted, my ego took a serious hit. Are you kidding me?!? I thought I was good, but no one wants to pay me for photos?!? So I kept pitching, had to take a part time job momentarily to make ends meet, and eventually I got an answer. A free trade. Not ideal, but at this point I’ll take anything to not feel like a failure. Over the next year or so I kept taking those free trade deals. I told myself it was to build connections or to build portfolio, but in reality, I already had the portfolio. Deep down I knew it was because I couldn’t stand the feeling of rejection, so something was better than nothing. I was tricking myself into thinking I was succeeding. I mean I was travelling the world and shooting cool properties. But the reality was, I was just watching my bank account dwindle knowing full well I was good enough to be paid for these trade “jobs” There was something missing. And that thing I came to find out, was the business side. You know finding clients, pitching, sales. It wasn’t until I really invested time energy and money into learning that stuff that I saw those free trades start turning into paid deals. And since then, not only have I been blessed to work with some of the top travel brands in the entire world, but I’ve also helped dozens of my creator clients do it as well! So if you’ve done a few shoots but you feel frustrated not knowing when your next paid gig is… Comment “PLAYBOOK” and I’ll send you my free step by step guide for how I built a predictable income flow in my content business. Be blessed and stay stoked 😎🤙