The more you match up a service with a client correctly, the more successful you will be. Move from pawn to knight, specialize in the nearly impossible for your clients, not just the inconvenient.

Let’s take photography for an example. A client needs pictures of a building or an event. You offer photography services, you can do this job. The client could snap some pictures, it would be quick, but it’s just not convenient for them. Since it is just grabbing some shots, they could have someone in their office do it, in fact they could have any number of local photographers do it. You would do a great job, but it is hard to have any kind of leverage against others in this scenario. If you charge the going rate, they may come back and say, well we can just grab the shots this time, but we’ll keep you in mind.

Along the way you discover that what they really want is to create an on-line photo gallery for their company, that is constantly updated. They also would like the pictures to look professional and be updated with regular events. Oh and they want them to come up randomly, so a different one appears each time someone visits the website.

You discover all this as you talk more and more with them. You investigate and find out what the bigger picture (so to speak) is and how you can offer a solution. You have a friend who is a web guy, so he can do the back-end coding for the slideshow, you subcontract him to do it for you. You also work out a monthly agreement with the company to shoot a certain amount of images per month. You also promote to them your Photoshop skills, you will tweak and sharpen the images so they not only look fantastic and professional, but they are highly optimized for fast web delivery. You also work out a method where you upload the pictures via a server to the client, supplying them with web optimized versions as well as print versions, that they can use for their brochures and newsletters.

Through constant communication and talks with the client, you have gotten a grasp of the bigger project and taken a lot of the burden off the client to make the process happen. You moved from a pawn, who is utilized but not very valuable and quickly sacrificed, to a rook or a knight, who is pivotal to the bigger strategy, and who must be held on to longer for on-going success.

I love chess metaphors.

Start to think about expanding your scope, offering products and services that branch off in directions you enjoy. Move from being a small circular bush, with just a few services, to a large expanding tree, with a combination of client solutions.

Instead of focusing on a small group of services that can be found anywhere, with little to differentiate you, start to package up solutions that do more and more of what the client needs. You begin doing what is a huge task for them, instead of just saving them a bit of inconvenience.

It’s one thing to hope a client calls you, as they survey a sea of other candidates doing the same thing. It’s another matter entirely where they have to call you, you are the person who can make it happen, solve their problems and offer a range of services and solutions that the others cannot.

Can you offer services others cannot? Can you expand what you offer?

How valuable now are you to your clients and potential clients?

If you are completely stressed and worried all the time it can signal a few things. The main item is there needs to be changes that perhaps you are not making. Maybe you want more clients, but rather than focus on marketing, you loose yourself in busy work. Checking the web, chatting online, working on projects that are not on the path to your goals, anything you can do to take your mind off the real issues.

Or perhaps you have too much work, you are taking on an enormous amount yourself and not getting help. You are focused on deadlines and being overwhelmed, rather than the quality of the projects.

On the other side, things could be going great. Everything is in place, all systems are working fine. Your empire is sailing along, clients are happy, work is being produced. It sounds all well and good until boredom sets in.

You start to become apathetic because the challenges are not as great, the momentum you had is just not there anymore. You are doing the same thing as you did last year and feel like you will be doing the same thing next year.

Stressed out and overworked is not good. And often things going fine with no changes, challenges or momentum is not good either.

The middle ground is getting a little nervous. Just a touch of things not being completely perfect, an edge of uncertainty that keeps things spicy. It’s a delicate balance to be in the middle, but it’s often not a bad place to be. You are succeeding and confidently enjoying your success, but you have an eye towards what happens next, what will be the next big challenge, little slices of unknown that are mixed in to keep things interesting.

You will strive to have your empire working perfect but there will always be things that crop up, some of these items will be in your control and some will not be. But it’s OK to be in the middle ground, it’s a mix of accomplishment and challenge. That friction has launched many successful creative enterprises. Losing that friction could be running on an empty tank in either direction, stressed or serene.

Creative artists sometimes tend to hit the extremes. You may be overworked and totally slammed with clients and productions, stuff is being accomplished but the process is scattered, somewhat disorganized and not very satisfying. Or you may be smoothly coasting, not a lot of pressure but also pretty much flatlining without preparation or planning for the future. No ramping up.

Get nervous. Get more in the middle. Strike a balance between solid productive work with an eye towards advancing in the future. Media artists who are in the zone love what they do, embrace their market and the people they work with. They get a lot of satisfaction and look forward to new challenges. And they are growing. They are not stressed with work they don’t enjoy and they are not overly worried about scarcity or what may happen next. They have balance.

Where are you? Stressed? Flatlining? Nervous? Balanced?

1. Services

We all start out this way. When you first set up shop and provide services, you almost always list them in very basic terms. Web design, photography, music creation, graphic design, etc. You list just what you do. I take photos of your event. I will design a website for your needs. You have a need, I fill it. Simple and to the point.

2. Solutions

The next level is when you start to look at the big picture. Instead of just designing a website, you sit down with a client and figure out how this will fit into their marketing. You position it as a solution to many problems. Instead of just doing logo design, you begin to research how the logo will be used, where it will be shown and how it can extend the client’s brand. You move from providing just the mechanics of a service to being a partner in your client’s strategy.

3. Pleasure

This is when you tap into a client’s primal desires. People want to avoid pain and move towards pleasure. You take them there. Most modern advertising is based on this. Cosmetic companies like Revlon are not just selling a service (this will make your lips red) and not offering a solution (this and other elements will make you fashionable) they are selling the pleasure (this product will make you beautiful and desirable). This step is when the client is buying on emotions. From a floor cleaner to a frosty ice coffee to a new car to insurance coverage, thousands of products and services are positioned to appeal to people’s feelings, not their specific needs. 

Many media artists are around step two of the three steps. But start to think about how you can move to the third step. Years ago I was one of the first photographers to get a digital camera. It was an exciting time, shooting as much as I wanted and not worrying about film. I promoted it heavily on my website, in ads, everywhere that I was a full digital studio. Over time I realized, people did not care about megapixels and workflow, they just wanted to look amazing in great shots. I started focusing on the aura of the process, the feeling, as opposed to the mechanics of the craft.

You may be thinking, I code HTML, how sexy can that be? I do a print ads for a hardware store, I am not Revlon! But remember it’s all story telling, every creative artist is telling a story with their work and client projects. The key is to tell a story that is not mechanical and straight-forward, but one that is visually involving, has a dramatic narrative and taps into people’s emotion.

This goes for all your promotional materials as well as your paid projects. It is the difference between what a new freelancer may do and what a top agency produces. The agency works to create an emotion or reaction out of the viewer, it is where the standard mechanics stop and the compelling story begins.

Basic clients are looking for a basic task, bigger clients are looking for the solutions of the larger picture and huge clients are looking to tell an emotional and theatrical story that moves people. If you want bigger clients you often have to tell bigger stories as well as ones that provide pleasure and emotion.

Look at your client work, your website and your promotional materials, are you telling compelling and emotional stories?

What step are you at now? What step do you want to move to?

As your empire ramps up and you develop bigger clients, the current stable of clients, that have been a real feather in your cap, may unfortunately need to be let go. If a client has been with you since the beginning, there is often nothing more difficult than moving your creative career up to a higher level and having to leave existing clients behind. It’s a tough move, but needed for your career to grow.

It does not really matter what you do, it could be producing graphics, animation, music creation, video production, audio producing, web design, traditional arts, whatever you are doing to provide content or a service, as your career ramps up you’ll get bigger and potentially better clients. This is actually a good thing, as your skill set increases, so does your rates. You start to get the type of clients on your radar that would not have even been considered by you a few years back. Your business is growing and as you move up, you move towards a higher end client. They are ready and so are you, thanks to your body of work, years of experience and newly minted quest to achieve more in building your empire.

At least that is the plan. Some will work in the opposite direction. Jobs come a little less frequent, you hit a slow patch, you want more clients than you actually have. You start to drop your rates, you take on clients that now take up huge amounts of your time, clients that you would not normally take on if business was better. You are making less and working more than ever and you can’t really understand why.

The reason is you are scaling downward instead of upward. Keep in mind, if you do anything for say five years, at the end of that five years you usually have much more experience, lots more skills, you are just better in many different ways. Your rates and services should absolutely reflect that.

Some creative artists get stuck in a rut. They never can quite get out of their current client base, they strive to do more, charge more, and get higher end clients. But the quest to achieve that often does not materialize. Of course it takes drive and ambition, but it also may be something that is holding you back, it may be your current client base.

And the process of weeding out current clients need not be a difficult one. Be direct. Let them know that you need to raise your rates for your business to thrive, to remain competitive. Convey that you are no longer able to work with them on their projects and provide suggestions on other creative producers who may be able to help them out. Remember, the apprehension is often always worse than the implementation. In this case you will typically find out that clients will support you in your career move. They will miss working with you, but they will generally understand if you convey it properly.

Everyone wants their business to grow and a lot of times your client base has to grow with you. You can’t let it hold you back. Raising rates and moving on from some of your existing clients is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do as a creative professional. Believe me I know this is not easy. But you need to flex new creative muscles, you need to break into new client challenges, you need to ramp up and reach higher to keep your path of success constantly reaching upwards. Often it’s not enough to want it, you have to be around people, clients and contacts that will help pull you along and move you there.

Are you ready for the next level of clients? What can you do to move to that level?