How To Generate 1000 Inquiries Per Year As A Logo Designer | With James Martin

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 321 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. Welcome back to another episode of the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood, and I am here with another special guest interview today. From somebody who's kind of a legend, I guess, in the logo space, in the design space, a guy that goes by, I guess his brand is, Made By James, and his name is James Martin. And for anyone who hasn't heard of this guy, this interview is one of my favorites that I've had in a while, because we get to go really deep into any sort of freelance business work. This is not just for designers. If you're a designer, great, you're going to have a lot of things that are specifically caters to you. But for all of our other freelancers that listen, here's what we dive into for this interview. We talk through him being in one of the most oversaturated niches that I think exists in the design world. I could be wrong, but from my perspective, a logo designer, like logo designers are everywhere. This is a hard place to stand out. And James has done such a great job of building a client acquisition machine for his freelance business that we talked up to this on the interview. He gets 800 to 1000 quote requests or inquiries per year. That's like 75 to 80 per month. So if you're interested in figuring out how to get more quote requests, even if you're in a saturated market, this interview is absolutely going to be for you. We also go through some of the processes and things he's built out as a freelancer to really make his business run like a machine. And I say that in a really good way, meaning like the parts that are not creative all run like a machine, like any good freelancer should do. You should be building your business up to be a machine so that you're freed up as the creative to be creative. And James has done a really good job of that. So we talked through systems he's built out for himself. We talked through how he's worked his way up to bigger and better clients, the smaller Nickel & Dime projects, all the way up to now charging $3,000 to $5,000 to $10,000 to $20,000, $40,000, $50,000 for a project now. And how he used to do like $60,000 to $80,000 to $100,000 projects a year. Now he's actually brought it back down to $20,000 to $30,000 a year with much higher price per project. So for anyone listening right now, there's going to be something in this interview for you. So I'm going to end this long intro here and go straight into my conversation with James Martin.

So James, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, my dude.

James Martin (2:20)

Yeah, no, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, a pleasure.

Brian Hood (2:26)

Yeah, we were joking about this earlier before we even started recording that, like, it's end of day Friday for you, like, this is the last thing you're doing. And I'm like, man, if you have any energy left at this point for anything to give our audience at this point, I consider that a win and a victory for creatives around the world. Cause like, in our world, there's so much that gets drained out of us when we're doing creative work at a high level. I don't know about you, but like, at the end of a day, especially a Friday, I just want to turn on the TV and let the TV talk to me. I don't want to do anything.

James Martin (2:51)

Yeah, yeah, I get that. I mean, to be honest, like I'm pretty up from when I wake up to when I go to sleep, but I also sleep for a long time. So anything in between that, even Friday afternoon, I'm pretty banging. So, and also sunny today in the UK, and it's Friday.

Brian Hood (3:08)

Which is rare.

James Martin (3:10)

Oh, very rare. So yeah, it's a win, win, win.

Brian Hood (3:13)

Well, let's dive into this, man. Cause I think there's a lot that you can bring our audience of building a successful freelance business. And specifically, I've already mentioned all this in the intro, that you are a logo designer and you do a bunch of other stuff. You've kind of like evolved over the years. You've been in business for 17 years now, I think you said. And to me, logo design has to be, I don't know the design world that well, cause that's not my background, but logo design has to be one of the most oversaturated industries for a designer. Would you agree or disagree or like, what's your thoughts on how saturated that world is?