How to make more money as a creative (offers playbook)

Transcript

Today, we're going to talk about why creatives are so afraid of money and what you can do about it in your own creative career. We are at a very unique time in history where, if you do any type of creative work, from design to videography to copywriting, if you're in branding, if you've ever thought of yourself as an artist or artistically related, there is more demand for that work than literally ever before. But at the same time, something I notice constantly with all the creatives in my life is they feel bad about financial success, and they feel like doing the things, the actions that turn their creative work into a business, they feel almost guilty about it. In this video, we're going to talk a little bit about how you've been forced into that by the functions of your bosses and the psychology of capitalism over time. But also, I'm going to give you a direct blueprint. You're going to learn about offers. You're going to learn about funnels. We're going to talk about CRM and how to structure those to make the most out of your creative work in this unprecedented era. This video is in partnership with Framers. I'm actually going to walk through how to build websites around these as well. So you will have both theoretical and tactical application of stuff that will help you as a creative be able to make more money and also not feel bad about it. My goal for this video is to be the most tactical video on how to structure your creative business and get your creative work that you've ever watched. If you have questions about any of this, please let me know because I want to do some follow-up specifically about creative money and creative work. I can dive into it there. I'm excited for you to take advantage of it in this unprecedented time. Let's lock in. I don't usually start my videos with other people's videos, nor do I usually reference Mr. Wonderful, but Kevin O'Leary had this quote that was going viral that's really important to what we're going to talk about here. In this video, he talks about the transition from social media as an intern job or one-person job to what companies have increasingly realized: that people who understand the internet and can help acquire customers, whether for products, agencies, services, or personalities, and the teams that do it, have become some of the most valuable people inside of a company and command far more salary than ever. But more than ever, people don't know what to charge for that. They don't know how to ask for that much money. They're caught inside that barrier of what my last salary was. And this is a function, in large part, due to the big agency megaplex. Small agencies, you get less than 50 people, they're just trying to get by. Big agencies are structured like they are for a reason. You will see the Omnicoms, the Saatchis, the Havases. The large agencies of the world employ all these different creatives and put them into silos. You're an art director, but you don't really get to direct campaigns. You're a copywriter. You're a planner. You're a strategist. You operate inside these little bubbles. And those bubbles are worth really specific things by the number of accounts, with specific multiples for billable hours. They're designed for the infrastructure around you and the other jobs and the profits at the top to take that money, and not the creative. And they've held people down for a long time. Now, historically, if we want to date this back to the origin of arts and commerce, if you've ever looked at the book Capslock, it details a lot about how graphic design as a function, and a lot of the other artistic functions, really came about as supporting the financial infrastructure. Designs became necessary for currency, for banks, to help establish credibility inside monetary systems. Same thing with writing, holding records for the exchange of commerce. And even when artists became great, it was patronage from the rich that would allow people like famous artists of the past to even be able to operate, or scientists. The creative relationship with money is a complicated one for generations. And then we get to a societal shift. In the '70s, in the hippie era, all the way through the '90s and into Gen X and grunge, art was looked at as something that was anti-selling out. If you participated in this, you didn't need the man's money. You didn't want their support. You wouldn't take that McDonald's deal. Anyone of my generation remembers Reel Big Fish's song "Sell Out." It was a bit of a rallying cry about the willingness, or lack of willingness, to buy into the commercial infrastructure of music. But that changed. And it changed because, at the end of the day, a lot of artists want the ability to make a living off their art. And there's been more demand for it than ever because what sells commerce in our world now, a world of attention and undifferentiated goods, is increasingly art. Whether it's the cover art of an album, the music associated with the lifestyle, the design of a website, an ad that got created by a creator, all these are extensions of the creative field. And they're all involved in the business of making money. Meta ads allowed us to quantify this. Tracking and UTM systems to websites from social media content allow us to quantify this. The best thing that's ever happened for creatives in terms of their fiscal goals and alignment was TikTok Shop, being able to directly measure if your videos sold units of a product and assign that a level of value, and Meta ads, where you could say, I made this ad or I created this thing, and I can track how many dollars came back directly from it. So creatives who wanted to go within that mathematics-based infrastructure all of a sudden realized what they're worth. And it was way more than the agency infrastructure was paying. But all that is just background. What most people have never heard, what most creatives have never heard, that I'm going to tell you right now before we get into the actual tactical part of the video, is a message I want you to remember: your skills are in the highest demand. In the world that we operate in now, as long as you are willing to apply yourself, quantify the work, and actually lock in and don't be lazy, your creative abilities can give you fiscal and life success beyond what you can dream of. Act on it. Never feel bad asking for what you're worth. So with that, there is a gap. There's a gap in learning for creative people to apply this to business. Then there's a gap of actually doing that application and getting it done. And last, there's the willingness to sell. I'm going to tackle that last one first, and then we're going to get tactical. So first is the willingness to sell, the willingness to charge a lot of money. So first I will say, if you knew what these corporations have made off the backs of creative work over generations, you would be sick. If you knew what other people made in these companies versus what their work is worth, you would be upset. Hold on to that feeling. But second, creatives that charge a lot for their work enable other creatives to do it and fund other creatives. Let me give you an example. I've done a lot of shoots in my life. And if you advocate for a budget for a shoot, the difference between me getting $150,000 and $250,000 to put together a commercial shoot isn't money that goes in my pocket. It's my ability to hire more creatives to make a better product. And you will see actual creative operators, the majority of them look at it like that. They know what they're going to make roughly either way. Maybe they'll make a little more, but they get to employ more people to make better art. And if you are the kind of person that helps command that, that breaks out of the mold, that's able to negotiate in those factors, that brings that in, that brings up the creative ecosystem around you. Every creative who's been around for a while knows a few of those people. And those people are great. They get you the work when you need it. They help you. They facilitate things. Do everything you can, when you do get that power, to be one of those people. But to get tactical, first, you need what's known as an offer. And I want you to forget about if you've read any info product books or if you look down on the Hormozis or the Brunsons of the world. I am not going full "this is how you sell" guru. I'm breaking down the basics of how every business works, and you're going to find it valuable. So the idea of an offer is: what do you sell? So most people will say, I'm a designer, I'm a copywriter, I'm a video editor, I'm a marketer, I'm a brand strategist or creative director. I can do all kinds of things, right? That's how you approach your look on life. But if you are trying to get clientele, you need to be able to fill in this blank: I do X for Y at Z. I make landing pages for e-commerce businesses for $1,500 a landing page. I do brand identities for tech companies for $5,000 in two weeks. That is an offer. It is a singular thing at a set price for a niche. That is how you translate from I'm a designer, I do all sorts of I am not going full, this is how you sell guru. I'm breaking down the basics of how every business works, and you're going to find it valuable. So the idea of an offer is: what do you sell? Most people will say, I'm a designer, I'm a copywriter, I'm a video editor, I'm a marketer, I'm a brand strategist or creative director. I can do all kinds of things, right? That's how you approach your look on life. But if you are trying to get clientele, you need to be able to fill in this blank: I do X for Y at Z. I make landing pages for e-commerce businesses for $1,500 a landing page. I do brand identities for tech companies for $5,000 in two weeks. That is an offer. It is a singular thing at a set price for a niche. That is how you translate from, I'm a designer, I do all sorts of stuff, to, I can fit a consumer need. Let me play out a scenario for you of how this flow works. You post on social media, or you get a referral, or someone's looking at your work, and they need that service. They're looking for a specific thing, a brand identity, something for their brand. They go to your website, they see a bunch of work, but they don't see any pricing. So they don't know if you're expensive or if you're cheap. They'll see a list of services, but they don't really know what it looks like or what it does. Your job as a service provider is to communicate that to them and to make repeatable things that they know what to expect. This doesn't limit you from doing all kinds of other stuff once you're in conversation, but it makes it easy for someone to buy. It makes it easy for someone to go, I need a logo. It's going to take me two weeks. It's going to cost me X, and I don't have to get in any awkward scenario or try to book a call to find out. Eliminate that distraction. Productize just one core thing you do. And again, you can still offer a whole world around it. But the magic of the offer is you get to see if people care enough to buy it. You get to see if you can develop and refine it, what you can charge, et cetera. And this all goes down on your website. One of the most popular ones right now is the brand identity offer. And I'm just picking some from what I showed on X. It's a great landing page. Your product is sharp. Your brand is fuzzy. Let's fix that. This guy details himself here, the brands he's worked with. And here is his deal. I will give you a brand in four weeks for $15,000. I will give you a strategy for $5,000. You want to see an example of the file? It's there. You can literally click through and see an example of what one of the deliverables will look like, straight up in a Figma file. That is a straightforward offer. Another branding one: $10,000, three to four weeks, just for B2B SaaS. They niche down. We do design for this particular type of company. We will do your brand and your website. And they have this locked in. That is their offer. And I want to call out what differentiates a product, right? If you've built anything that you offer as a service, you've probably heard the adage that you are either better, faster, or cheaper. Those are your three options. You have to stand out on one, ideally two of them, and you can never have all three, right? So whatever you offer, are you significantly better than everyone else out there? Your designs, your edits, that good? You can then sit on your laurels. And I would tell you, look objectively at your work. Are you really that good? And if you are, leverage it. Don't give up your time. Don't undercharge. Sit on it. But you have to really acknowledge if you're that good or not. And frankly, most people aren't. I offered websites for a long time. It was a side hustle I had at design jobs. I offered corporate websites. I was not making the best websites in the world. But I had a six-week front-to-end process that included copywriting. And messaging was one of the biggest hiccups that people couldn't work through. And I would do the messaging with people, something I was good at. And my price was decently low. So they knew they could get something done in time from me that hit a pain point of messaging, even if it wasn't the best offer out there. And now it's swapped. I don't do much creative strategy anymore except for the biggest brands, and I do it at the highest premium. And they work basically on my terms. Because I've established, through internet credibility and all the campaigns, that it's hard to get anyone that good who understands the internet in the same way. And so I can leverage a different side of it. And that's how things translate over a career. And so, think about where you are and what it is you can offer. If you're new and you're starting out and you're not as good and you can't offer it as fast, but you're willing to work for the low to put those reps in, you have the cheapness. And time has become a big one. You will see this idea of brand sprints and the ability to book a sprint: 5k for 10 icons, five custom illustrations, two to three polished UI screens from this guy, Dimitri. There are brands that need a lot of this type of illustration work. You can get it at a set cost. You know what you're buying into within a set time. You know when it's going to be done. This is the way that people consume now, especially if they just go to your social media profile to look at your bio, then go to your website, and that may be the last time they interact with you. Give them the ability to purchase what they want. And I purchased from something like this. When I went to redo the landing pages, I had my website done in Framer. We got all of this from a landing page designer. What he does is landing pages. I cannot buy anything else from him. We tried to get him to do some maintenance, some other stuff. He does landing pages, one single page. He's done pages for me for webinars. He's done sales pages for products that I sell. He's done core websites. But that is the offer: one page. But I know anytime I need a landing page for anything, I want it done in Framer and I want it to look good, I can go to him. And there are others like him on Contra. They have different styles and skill sets and capabilities. But now we're going to talk about the funnel. A few key concepts for you to know as a creative. So the funnel is the idea of turning a visitor on your website into a customer. So if you look at all the Framer sites that I showed, you'll notice there are lots of calls to action to book a call or get a download or sign up for the wait list as getting people into a funnel where then they're sold through another page on your website or through emails over time. This is an important thing to understand. I'm going to break down several types of funnels and how they work for creative work here in a second. But just understand that concept first. You want to use your website to bring people on a journey. They may not buy off that first page. How do you get them into your world and then communicate with them until they close a sale? And to understand funnels, you also need to understand VSLs, or video sales letters. So let's go into the back end of my website here in Framer. You can see this is an example of a landing page I have in their back-end UI. So I can go here and I can click and I can edit anything. But you will see there is an 11-minute video, basically a YouTube video, in the middle of this page. And it's what's called a VSL. So when you put together a description for your offer, I'm going to help you do that here in a minute. One of the tools that you have, whether you're doing it for yourself or you're doing it for others, because putting these together is a really valuable skill that people have, is that there are people that read and there are people that watch. And if you're willing to sit down and do a thorough breakdown in a VSL of what you sell, it's going to help your conversion rate because some people will be like, I don't want to go read this whole page with all the examples and all the things on it. I just want to watch something. And so in your VSL, you go through, in a really specific format, you talk about the problems people are facing that they can't solve, you give your background, you walk through how you help them close the gap on those problems, and then what it looks like to buy from you. There are a million frameworks and formats for that that you can find online. tools that you have, whether you're doing it for yourself or you're doing it for others, because putting these together is a really valuable skill that people have, is that there are people that read and there are people that watch. And if you're willing to sit down and do a thorough breakdown in a VSL of what you sell, it's going to help your conversion rate because some people will be like, what, I don't want to go read this whole page with all the examples and all the things on it. I just want to watch something. And so in your VSL, you go through a really specific format, you talk about the problems people are facing that they can't solve, you give your background, you walk through how you help them close the gap on those problems, and then what it looks like to buy from you. There's a million frameworks and formats for that that you can find online. But as a creative, if you're ever going to sell a freelance thing, or if you're ever going to have an agency, or if you're going to work for creators or people that do, understanding the concept of a funnel, understanding the concept of an offer, and understanding of VSL are crucial parts to knowing how the internet works and how things sell on the internet. And then I'll introduce you to a concept called offer stacking. Some of you have probably heard me tell the story before of Eddie, who used to film my YouTube videos. He used to be behind this camera right here. He was a videographer, and he offered a videography service. And he did what's called offer stacking. So it turned into, hey, I can shoot the videos, but also I can run the Meta ads. He had learned that skill through a course or similar. And so you could get multiple things from him. But then it turned into what he does now, where he literally sells, he will create edited videos that are VSLs that are meant to work in Meta ads for clienteles and services businesses. You can click here to watch some of the ads he does, but he has these specific hooks, he has specific styles he does to run those ads, and he will help them actually get off the ground in the ad account and generate leads at specific costs. So he's been able to take his stack of skills, hey, I'm a videographer, I can run Meta, hey, I understand VSLs and scripting and putting together converting ad formats. Now I sell an offer where the sum of that offer allows you to get paid more than its individual parts. That's a great way to think about how you build up your creative toolkit over time. And this goes for the higher end as well. Because if you're already a brand strategist and you're at the top of your game, and you also become a really savvy media buyer or go down a level, become a creator, really begin thinking like a director of production, adding in that skill set makes you even more of a weapon throughout your career and what you're capable of, what you're going to be able to charge. I've noticed this with several people who were good creators who started as videographers, became great creators. Because they became great creators, they're able to script, to know what works on the internet, and now are able to pitch their small production studios. Instead of doing music videos, they're competing for ads for global brands where your budgets can start stretching from 50k to 500k. Offer stacking and skill stacking in general is worth thinking through. And the last concept, where we get into how to actually make some of this, is the CRM. I'm not going to dive deep into this in this video. I will hit it thoroughly in a future video. But the idea is that you need customer record management. So all those contacts that you have, people that sign up, people that didn't convert, leads and things you have, you store them somewhere, you communicate with them. If you combine all these concepts we had, the funnel that people are going to go through, websites, you're going to have to do more than just show them a page to get them to buy, the offer that you sell, a really particular thing, a VSL or a video that helps you sell doing that, a stack of these offers on top of each other to sell something that's worth more, and records of the customers and people that haven't bought from you that you're able to communicate to to sell new things, you now understand the services business. And so if you want to get started in making websites like this, actually putting some of this into action, I'm going to walk you through framework templates, which is the quickest way to stop procrastinating and actually build this. So first, a few of the templates that I absolutely love that you should be looking at versus this Extract template, just a good dark mode, simple template. Artemis is one of my favorite portfolio templates. If you're showing off a wide body of work, they have all these cool little ways you can actually see it. So you can see how all the cards are related to their various projects, you can see the designs in action. This Drillio theme, when we talk about landing pages and building landing pages, this is a great one. This is built for SaaS landing pages. And what I like in general is you can go to any of the categories on Framer. And so we were talking about funnels, we're talking about landing pages, and you're going to be able to see a ton that are either free, and all of those ones that I showed were also free, all the way up to 80 bucks, $129, that kind of thing. But this one here, this is one I actually chose on a previous project, and I'm going to show you what that looks like. So we bought this theme, the Swiss Style theme, awesome portfolio theme. So what happens then? If you've never been in Framer before, this is what it looks like. So when you install a theme, you get all the pages here on the left-hand side. You have pages, you have layers, you have assets, but the page will automatically show in its different responsive styles. So desktop, tablet, and if I change one and swap that file, it will swap them all. So I'm going to get all the different pages in this template it's going to outline for me. And so I can literally go, you'll see on this right side here, you have all your controls. So if I need to link this image, I can go link there. I want to add effects or styles. There's tons you can dive into, but honestly, I would just keep it super simple. You can see when I go put text in there, I'm just going to change this to my name as if I was doing my portfolio site. And you'll see it was going to move this responsibly across it. So literally, when you start working a template, you can just go and refill it with your content as the first easiest step. And you can get more advanced, you can apply more designs, but even just going in and swapping in your own images. Down here, you'll see styles, fill, swap the image, it will automatically make it responsive. And everything that I edit will edit across the styles and sizes. And you can see here some of the final results of me working with the template. I would highly recommend just pick one of the free themes, get it inside of one of these, and play around, swap your content in, work on some messaging, put together a portfolio. You will find as soon as you start, it is so much less intimidating. And so I know we dove deep into offers here, I want to get into funnels too. I'm going to do a whole separate video just on funnels. My goal is to help you structure your creative business and then build a toolkit to know how to sell it and to know what better to sell others, right? Because you get good at offers and landing pages for yourself. All of a sudden, you can begin to actually think in your client's shoes about how they should approach their business. You'll find this for a lot of savvy creatives. But as you do that, you're going to get more and more confidence to ask for the money that you deserve. If you have questions on building your creative practice, structuring your offers, things on the funnels, please drop them below. Like I mentioned, I'm going to do funnels. I will keep this series going, and I want to make sure I can tap all those questions, and you can feel free to ask them on the next community call. I have the details on that down below as well. So you'll be able to find links to go tap in with Framer or join the next group community meeting where I'll go through Q&A, and we can do some website building inside there if you want as well. Hope you found some value here, and as always, thank you so much for watching. take that McDonald's deal. Anyone of my generation remembers Real Big Fish's song, Sell Out. It was a bit of a rallying cry about the willingness or lack of willingness to buy into the commercial infrastructure of music. But that changed. And it changed because at the end of the day, a lot of artists want the ability to make a living off their art. And there's been more demand for it than ever because what sells commerce in our world now that is a world of attention of undifferentiated goods is increasingly art. Whether it's the cover art of an album, the music associated with the lifestyle, the design of a website, an ad that got created by a creator, all these are extensions of the creative field. And they're all involved in the business of making money. Meta ads allowed us to quantify this. Tracking and UTM systems to websites from social media content allows us to quantify this. The best thing that's ever happened for creatives in terms of their fiscal goals and alignment was TikTok shop, being able to directly measure if your videos sold units of a product and assign that a level of value. And meta ads where you could say, I made this ad or I created this thing and I can track how many dollars that came back directly from it. So creatives who wanted to go within that mathematics-based infrastructure all of a sudden realized what they're worth. And it was way more than the agency infrastructure was paying. But all that is just background. What most people have never heard, what most creatives have never heard that I'm going to tell you right now, before we get into the actual tactical part of the video, is a message I want you to remember. Your skills are in the highest of demand. In the world that we operate in now, as long as you are willing to apply yourself, quantify the work, and actually lock in and don't be lazy, your creative abilities can give you fiscal and life success beyond what you can dream of. Act on it. Never feel bad asking for what you're worth. So with that, there is a gap. There's a gap in learning for creative people to apply this to business. Then there's a gap of actually doing that application and getting it done. And last, there's the willingness to sell. I'm going to tackle that last one first and then we're going to get tactical. So first is the willingness to sell, the willingness to charge a lot of money. So first I will say, if you knew what these corporations have made off of the backs of creative work in generations, you would be sick. If you knew what other people made in these companies versus what their work is worth, you would be upset. Hold on to that feeling. But second, creatives that charge a lot for their work enable other creatives to do it and fund other creatives. Let me give you an example. I've done a lot of shoots in my life. And if you advocate for a budget for a shoot, the difference between me getting $150,000 and $250,000 to put together a commercial shoot isn't money that goes in my pocket. It's my ability to hire more creatives to make a better product. And you will see, actual creative operators, the majority of them look at it like that. They know what they're going to make roughly either way. Maybe they'll make a little more, but they get to employ more people to make better art. And if you are the kind of person that helps command that, that breaks out of the mold, that's able to negotiate in those factors, that brings that in, that brings up the creative ecosystem around you, every creative who's been around for a while knows a few of those people. And those people are great. They get you the work when you need it. They help you. They facilitate things. Do everything you can when you do get that power to be one of those people. But to get tactical, first, you need what's known as an offer. And I want you to forget about if you've read any info product books, or if you look down on the Hermoses or the Brunsons of the world, I am not going full, this is how you sell guru. I'm breaking down the basics of how every business works, and you're going to find it valuable. So the idea of an offer is what do you sell? So most people will say, I'm a designer, I'm a copywriter, I'm a video editor, I'm a marketer, I'm a brand strategist or creative director. I can do all kinds of things, right? That's how you approach your look on life. But if you are trying to get clientele, you need to be able to fill in this blank. I do X for Y at Z. I make landing pages for e-commerce businesses for $1,500 a landing page. I do brand identities for tech companies for $5,000 in two weeks. That is an offer. It is a singular thing at a set price for a niche. That is how you translate from, I'm a designer, I do all sorts of stuff to, I can fit a consumer need. Because let me play out a scenario for you of how this flow works. You post on social media, or you get a referral, or someone's looking at your work, and they need that service. They're looking for a specific thing, a brand identity, something for their brand. They go to their website, they see a bunch of work, but they don't see any pricing. So you don't know if you're expensive or if you're cheap. And they don't really, and you'll see a list of services, but they don't really know what it looks like or what it does. Your job as a service provider is to communicate that to them and to make repeatable things that you know and what to expect. This doesn't limit you from doing all kinds of other stuff once you're in conversation, but it makes it easy for someone to buy. It makes it easy for someone to go, I need a logo. It's going to take me two weeks. It's going to cost me X, and I don't have to get in any awkward scenario or try to book a call to find out. Eliminate that distraction. Productize just one core thing you do. And again, you can still offer a whole world around it. But the magic of the offer is you get to see if people care enough to buy it. You get to see if you can develop and refine it, what you can charge, et cetera. And this all goes down on your website. So one of the most popular ones right now is the brand identity offer. And I'm just picking some from what I showed on X. It's a great landing page. Your product is sharp. Your brand is fuzzy. Let's fix that. This guy details himself here, the brands he's worked with. And here is his deal. I will give you a brand in four weeks for $15,000. I will give you a strategy for $5,000. You want to see an example of the file? It's there. You can literally click through and see an example of what one of the deliverables will look like in straight up in a Figma file. That is a straightforward offer. Another branding one, $10,000, three to four weeks, just for B2B SaaS. They niche down. We do design for this particular type of company. We will do your brand and your website. And they have this locked in. That is their offer. And I want to call out what differentiates a product, right? If you've built anything that you offer as a service, you've probably heard the adage that you are either better, faster, or cheaper. But those are your three options. You have to stand out on one, ideally two of them, and you can never have all three, right? So whatever you offer, are you significantly better than everyone else out there? Your designs, your edits, that good. You can then sit on your laurels. And I would tell you, look objectively at your work. Are you really that good? And if you are, leverage it. Don't give up your time. Don't undercharge. Sit on it. But you have to really acknowledge if you're that good or not. And frankly, most people aren't. I offered websites for a long time. It was a side hustle I had at design jobs. I offered corporate websites. I was not making the best websites in the world. But I had a six-week front-to-end process that included copywriting. And messaging was one of the biggest hiccups that people had. They couldn't work through. And I would do the messaging with people, something I was good at. And my price was decently low. So they knew they could get something done in time from me that hit a pain point of messaging, even if it wasn't the best offer out there. And now it's swapped. I don't do much creative strategy anymore, except for the biggest brands. And I do it at the highest premium. And they work basically on my terms. Because I've established through internet credibility and all the campaigns that there's hard to get anyone that good who understands the internet in the same way. And so I can leverage a different side of it. And that's how things translate over a career. And so to think about where you are and what it is you can offer. And if you're new and you're starting out and you're not as good and you can't offer it as fast, but you're willing to work for the low to put those reps in, you have the cheapness. And time has become a big one. You will see this idea of brand sprints and the ability to book a sprint 5k for 10 icons, five custom illustrations, two to three polished UI screens from this guy, Dimitri. You can get there's brands that need a lot of this type of illustration work. You can get it at a set cost. You know what you're buying into within a set time, you know when it's going to be done. This is the way that people consume now, especially if they just go to your social media profile to look at your bio, go to your website. And then that may be the last time they interact with you, give them the ability to purchase what they want. And I purchased from something like this. When I went to redo the landing pages, so I have my website done in framer. We got all of this from a landing page designer. What he does is landing pages. I cannot buy anything else from him. We tried to get him to do some maintenance, some other stuff. He does landing pages, one single page. He's done pages for me for webinars. He's done sales pages for products that I sell. He's done core websites, but that is the offer one page. But I know anytime I need a landing page for anything, I want it done in framer and I want it to look good. I can go to him. And there's others like him on Contra. They have different styles and skill sets and capabilities. But now we're going to talk about the funnel. A few key concepts for you to know as a creative. So the funnel is the idea of turning a visitor on your website into a customer. So you look at all the framer sites that I showed, you'll notice there's lots of call to actions to book a call or get a download or sign up for the wait list as getting people into a funnel where then they're sold through another page on your website or through emails over time. This is an important thing to understand. I'm going to break down several types of funnels and how they work for creative work here in a second. But just understand that concept first. You want to use your website to bring people on a journey. They may not buy off that first page. How do you get them into your world and then communicate with them until they close a sale? And to understand funnels, you also need to understand VSLs or video sales letters. So let's go into the back end of my website here in framer. So you can see this is an example of a landing page I have in their back end UI. So I can go here and I can click and I can edit anything. But you will see there is an 11 minute video, basically a YouTube video in the middle of this page. And it's what's called a VSL. So when you put together a description for your offer, I'm gonna help you do that here in a minute. One of the tools that you have, whether you're doing it for yourself, or you're doing it for others, because putting these together is a really valuable skill that people have is that there's people that read and there's people that watch. And if you're willing to sit down and do a thorough breakdown in a VSL of what you sell, it's going to help your conversion rate because some people will be like, you know what, I don't want to go read this whole page with all the examples and all the things on it. I just want to watch something. And so in your VSL, you go through in a really specific format, you talk about the problems people are facing that they can't solve, you give your background, you walk through how you help them close the gap on those problems, and then what it looks like to buy from you. There's a million frameworks and formats for that that you can find online. But as a creative, if you're ever going to sell a freelance thing, or if you're ever going to have an agency, or if you're going to work for creators or people that do, understanding the concept of a funnel, understanding the concept of an offer, and understanding of VSL are crucial parts to knowing how the internet works and how things sell on the internet. And then I'll introduce you to a concept called offer stacking. So some of you've heard, you've probably heard me tell the story before of Eddie, who used to film my YouTube videos, he used to be behind this camera right here. He was a videographer and he offered a videography service. And he did what's called offer stacking. So it turned into, hey, I can shoot the videos, but also I can run the meta ads. He had learned that skill through a course or similar. And so you could get multiple things from him. But then it's turned into what he does now where he sells literally, he will create edited videos that are VSLs that are meant to work in meta ads for clienteles and services businesses. You can click here to watch some of the ads he does, but he has these specific hooks, he has a specific styles he does to run those ads, and he will help them actually get off the ground in the ad account and generate leads at specific costs. So he's been able to take his stack of skills, hey, I'm a videographer, I can run meta, hey, I understand VSLs and scripting and putting together converting ad formats. Now I sell an offer where the sum of that offer allows you to get paid more than its individual parts. That's a great way to think about how you build up your creative toolkit over time. And this goes for the higher end as well. Because if you're already a brand strategist, and you're at the top of your game, and you also become a really savvy media buyer or go down a level become a creator, really begin thinking like a director of production, adding in that skill set makes you even more of a weapon throughout your career and what you're capable of what you're going to be able to charge. I've noticed this with several people who were good creators who started as videographers became great creators, because they became great creators, they're able to script to know what works on the internet. And now are able to pitch their small production studios, instead of doing music videos, they're competing for ads for global brands where your budgets can start stretching from 50k to 500k. Offer stacking and skill stacking in general is worth thinking through. And the last concept where we get into how to actually make some of this is the CRM. I'm not going to dive deep into this in this video, I will hit it thoroughly in a future video. But the idea that you need customer record management. So all those contacts that you have, people that sign up, people that didn't convert, leads and things you have, you store them somewhere, you communicate with them. If you combine all these concepts we had, the funnel that people are going to go through websites, you're gonna have to do more than just show them a page to get them to buy, the offer that you sell a really particular thing, a VSL or a video that helps you sell doing that, a stack of these offers on top of each other to sell something that's worth more, and records of the customers and people that haven't bought from you that you're able to communicate to to sell new things, you now understand the services business. And so if you want to get started in making websites like this, actually putting some of this into action, I'm going to walk you through framework templates, which is the quickest way to stop procrastinating and actually build this. So first, a few of the templates that I absolutely love that you should be looking at versus this extract template, just a good dark mode, simple template. Artemis is one of my favorite portfolio templates. If you're showing off a wide body of work, they have all these cool little ways you can actually see it. So you can see how all the cards are related to their various projects, you can see the designs in action. This Drillio theme, when we talk about landing pages and building landing pages, this is a great one. This is built for SaaS landing pages. And what I like in general is you can go to any of the categories on Framer. And so we were talking about funnels, we're talking about landing pages, and you're gonna be able to see a ton that are either free, and all of those ones that I showed were also free, all the way up to 80 bucks, $129, that kind of thing. But this one here, this is one I actually chose on a previous project. And I'm going to show you what that looks like. So we bought this theme, the Swiss style theme, awesome portfolio theme. So what happens then? So if you've never been in Framer before, this is what it looks like. So when you install a theme, you get all the pages here on the left hand side, you have pages, you have layers, you have assets, but the page will automatically show in its different responsive styles. So desktop, tablet, and if I change one and swap that file, it will swap them all. So I'm going to get all the different pages in this template is going to outline for me. And so I can literally go, you'll see on this right side here, you have all your controls. So if I need to link this image, I can go link there. I want to add effects or styles. There's tons you can dive into, but honestly, I would just keep it super simple. You can see when I go put text in there, I'm just going to change this to my name as if I was doing my portfolio site. And you'll see it was going to move this responsibly across it. So literally, when you start working a template, you can just go and refill in with your content as the first easiest step. And you can get more advanced, you can apply more designs, but even just going in and swapping in your own images. Down here, you'll see styles, fill, swap the image, will automatically make it responsive. And everything that I edit will edit across the styles and sizes. And you can see here some of the final results of me working with the template. I would highly recommend just pick one of the free themes, get it inside of one of these and play around, swap your content in, work on some messaging, put together a portfolio, you will find as soon as you start, it is so much less intimidating anything. And so I know we dove deep into offers here, I want to get into funnels too. I'm going to do a whole separate video just on funnels. My goal is to help you structure your creative business and then build a toolkit to know how to sell it and to know what better to sell others, right? Because you get good at offers and landing pages for yourself. All of a sudden you can begin to actually think in your client's shoes about how they should approach their business. You'll find this for a lot of savvy creatives are like, but as you do that, you're going to get more and more confidence to ask for the money that you deserve. If you have questions on building your creative practice, structuring your offers, things on the funnels, please drop them below. Like I mentioned, I'm going to do funnels. I will keep this series going and I want to make sure I can tap all those questions and you can feel free to ask them on the next community call. I have the details on that down below as well. So you'll be able to find links to go tap in with Framer or join the next kind of group community meeting where I'll go through Q&A and we can do some website building inside there if you want as well. Hope you found some value here and as always, thank you so much for watching.