5 Sets Of Skills Every Freelancer Should Be Improving | Full Stack Freelancer Pt. 2

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 236

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income.

If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

Hello, and welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood, and you are in the right place right now. If you are creative, trying to earn more money, maybe even six figures, maybe more, maybe less, whatever your number is, you're trying to earn that amount of money without selling your soul in the process, you're in the right place. Today's episode is actually a part two, but don't turn this off yet. If you are a brand new person, or maybe you missed last week's episode, which is part one, you don't need to go back and listen to that right now. You can listen to it after this episode's over, because part two, we're just kind of diving into the second half of this conversation that I'm having about something called a full stack freelancer. This is a crucial part of being a successful freelancer or creative in general in 2023 and beyond, there's millions of industries that have this sort of concept, but it's mainly from the development industry where you have a full stack developer, a full stack developer just has a wide set of skills and they can develop in a lot of different things and do front end development and back end development and all this nerdy stuff, and they're way more valuable because they can accomplish more than a very specialized narrow developer.

And this is where, if you were here last week, we talked about something called a T-shaped, I'm doing a T-shape on YouTube right now, if you're watching on YouTube, shout out to my YouTubers. Let me comment if you're a YouTube watcher. Are we kind of YouTubers here?

This T-shaped set of skills means that you're really wide and a lot of skills necessary to run a business as a freelancer. And then you're really deep. That's the narrow part of the T. You're really deep in one particular skill set. And as freelancers, we tend to focus on being an I freelancer, which has two meanings. I as in I am selfish, and I only want to focus on what I care about. And also I as in like, it's a very narrow band of skills. You got really deep into your photography nerdery. You got really deep into your videography gear. Everyone loves gear. Really deep in your mixing and mastering and audio into your copywriting skills. You got really deep into your development skills.

Whatever you're creating, whatever you're doing as a creator or a creative, you've really honed in on that one set of skills that has brought you to this podcast in some way, shape or form. And for some of you, it's provided some income. For some of you, it's provided a lot of income. For some of you, it's provided no income yet. No matter where you stand, the point remains that it takes a wide set of skills to build a career or a business around this. And whether or not you use your creative skills to have a business, or you just do it as a freelancer, which there's a difference between the two, or you have bigger aspirations one day and you want to do more things with your life than be a freelancer for the rest of your life, which is also great, although no shame if that's not your case.

No matter what, it takes more than just your creative skills to make a living as a freelancer. In 2023 and beyond, it's been true in the past. It is really true today, and it'll be even more true in the future. So if you grew in the nod of your head, I can't see you, but I'm just gonna assume that you agree with me because you're probably not listening to this episode if you don't agree with me. So last week, we had a part one. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to episode 235 And the title is something like Why You Don't Need to Be a Better Creative. And it is true. You don't need to be a better creative. You need to be a better business owner, at least in this season of your life. If you're trying to make more money and you're not able to do so, it's likely some of these skills. And last week, we talked about your creative skills, which is the thing we all start with. We talked about your marketing skills, which is the skill set that most creatives are allergic to. You have an allergy to marketing. Got to change that. Go back to listen to last week's episode, where I talk about the skills around marketing that you're going to need in order to get clients.