Category: clients

It has been a successful year for Schildbach Design. I reached some personal goals for the business in 2015. And, while data continues to perfect the answers to our business questions, I’d like to credit my personal success to welcoming a touch of Dada (not data) into my business plan.

For those of you who don’t know what Dada (or Dadaism) is, it is many things, but is summed up on Art Factory as a “form of artistic anarchy born out of disgust for the social, political and cultural values of the time. It embraced elements of art, music, poetry, theatre, dance and politics. Dada was not so much a style of art like Cubism or Fauvism; it was more a protest movement with an anti-establishment manifesto.”

Adding Dada to large companies would probably take that company down, but the beauty of working for oneself is you can write some of your own rules, and have flexibility to use more unconventional tactics to find your personal successes. Below are 12 tips I’d like to share.

12 Dada Business Tactics: How To Get Web Design Work, Graphic Design Work, and The Secret To One Freelancer’s Success

1. Eat honey instead of sugar. Let’s face it, sugar is crack. Switch to honey and you will feel your body chemistry change, and suddenly honey businesses like Urban Bee will need you for your specialties. Even businesses that have a bee in their logo will need you, including orthodontists. These orthodontists will also be attracted to the fact that you have gotten off the sugar drug, and ask you to help design the collateral for their Halloween Candy Buy Back Program.
2. Reminisce often about how much you enjoyed college. Dada has shown that 937% of people who went to collage were happier overall than they were in their 40’s while doing dishes, filing their taxes, or changing diapers. Sentimentalism about your 20’s and collage will guarantee some college or university will contact you. In my case, it was repeated calls from the Pathology Department at the University of Washington. Although, with this opportunity to relive your college years, be prepared to have to remember acronyms like MMTP, CPDx and PANUC, and be required to memorize and understand them.
3. Become fascinated with your clients psychologically. Clients are not good clients or bad clients, their minds are simply fascinating! Once you see it this way, psychologists and therapists will now trust that you can do their business identities, as Solstice NYC and CBT Westport requested I do theirs.
4. Do yoga regularly. Yoga not only flexes the muscles, it flexes the mind. After one hundred sun salutations, yoga studios like Richmond Beach Yoga and yoga practitioners like Cosetta Romani will call you for your specialty.
5. Thank your mother. My mother is entering her last years of her life. Panorama Library, Speaking of Dying and others, know how difficult this can be, and want to make the last years of our mother’s life as pleasant as possible.
6. Talk to the crows and raccoons. Stop criticizing animals that eat your trash. They are smarter and more like you than you think. Once I started talking to them, they agreed to get me website work with Bird Ally X.
7. Raise a child or act like one. Children take up a lot of our personal time, but schools and PTA associations will thank you with web design work, for the time you spend with your child, just as Broadview Thomson K-8 PTA did for me.
8. Meditate regularly. Then, the Northwest Dharma Association will ask you to rebuild their site, and produce quarterly newsletters. Also, more Buddhist non-profits like Dongyu Gatsal Ling Initiatives will ask you to work with them in 2016.
9. Curse the companies and nations that disregard the environment due to their greed and apathy. While your thoughts are stewing, the ghost of Seattle’s past (or a ghost from your home town) will come to you to show you how much worse it was at the turn of the 20th century. At the same time, this ghost will lead you to people who are working on projects like The Lake Washington Ship Canal Centennial and Miles Lost Miles Gained to bring awareness to the past, and in turn, our environmental future.
10. Marry a harpist. One harpist is a doorway to the whole Seattle music scene. A foolproof tactic to getting web design work with music schools, music organizations, and musicians.
11. Obsess about traveling to other countries. As the character and ethics of our nation unravel, dream about the countries you want to travel to and possibly live in. For me it is Italy, India and Poland (among others). In return, you will start working for clients who where born in those countries. Don’t be disappointed if they tell you they left your dream country for good reason.
12. Read a book that takes place in Africa. While reading the novel, “What is the What“, Seattle City of Literature thanked me with web maintenance work for expanding my horizons beyond the western world and my rides to the airport conveniently provided by Hayat Town Car Service.

Now that I have given you my secrets to freelance business success, this hopefully inspires you to create your own. Have a successful and prosperous 2016! But, be careful what you think about, and who you talk to. Because, your thoughts may come back to you in the form of a mustache on the Mona Lisa or a murdering airplane.