Your Portfolio Looks Like a Cheesecake Factory Menu and It’s Embarrassing | The Portfolio Paradox

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 364

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. My wife and I have a guilty pleasure, and that is the Cheesecake Factory. And the reason is because pretty much anytime we go, we can always find something that we both want, whether it's like something healthy, which is where I've been the last couple of years, is like healthy food, or there's obviously unhealthy guilty pleasure there. The sub guilty pleasure within the guilty pleasure is the ultimate red velvet cheesecake, because I'm a red velvet fiend. And here's some stats on that. I looked this up ahead of time, just because I was curious what the stats on these are. So the macros, 1,580 calories for one slice of red velvet cheesecake, 116 grams of fat, 125 carbs, 104 grams of sugar. That's a half a cup of sugar in one slice of cheesecake. So that's my guilty pleasure. And we don't go there super often or order out there super often, but we go it often enough where it's become a regular thing that we do. But the first time you go, it's kind of crazy because if you've never been, I'll just explain. The menu is 21 pages long. So you go through it. It's like a thick book, 21 pages long. There's over 250 menu items to choose from, especially if you're there with other people who have never been there before. You end up wasting tons of time trying to decide on actually what you want to eat. And then when you order something, you never get the first thing right. You ordered one thing out of 250 So that one thing that you ordered is likely not the perfect thing for you specifically, because every restaurant that's good that you like has that one thing you go for. And you're probably not going to find it the first time you order at Cheesecake Factory. So you end up looking at what everyone else ordered and you regret what you got because everyone else's food looked better than yours. And that's the first time experience for pretty much anyone who's ever been to Cheesecake Factory. And despite that, they're wildly profitable. I love looking up stats. I love looking up numbers. They did over $900 million in revenue last quarter, so Q1 of 2025 And they did over $30 million of profit last quarter. So not high profit margins, but that's kind of the restaurant business.

But the reason they're this successful is because they truly have a menu that can cater to just about everyone. And that's what brings us to the problem for this episode, and why I'm bringing this up in the first place. Freelancers think that they can have their own Cheesecake Factory menu when it comes to their portfolios. You want to appeal to everyone because you're so afraid of losing potential gigs, so you end up creating this 25-page long menu of your work with over 250 pieces of your portfolio, like a Cheesecake Factory menu. But freelancers, you're not Cheesecake Factory. You're not serving 10,000 plus clients a week, which is how many people they're serving in a week on average, at a single location, by the way, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. That's what I could estimate, at least, by the numbers that they have publicly. They have 200 team members that are in a location. They have a franchise model that they're all following. But freelancers think that they can be the exception to the rule. And honestly, Cheesecake Factory is the only restaurant I could think of with a menu that large is actually successful, and that I actually eat at and I actually enjoy. But when it comes to solo-preneur freelancers, which is like 99% of the people who listen to this podcast, you are closer to a boutique chef, a small sit-down, 10, 12-seat restaurant where your clients want to see the specialty that you provide, the thing that they come there that you're known for, not some sort of buffet like Cheesecake Factory somehow actually make work. And ironically, with this 250-item portfolio that you have, like your Cheesecake Factory menu, you end up losing out on more clients because you're trying to appeal to more people. It's this weird effect where the more people you try to get to like you, the less people that actually like you. You've seen this in real life where you're trying to be such a likable person, and end up everyone hates you because you're inauthentic. And your bloated portfolio is just screaming, I'm desperate enough to work with pretty much anyone, and doesn't inspire trust, and potential clients don't see any sort of focus, they don't see any sort of expertise, they don't see any confidence behind what you're doing. They just see confusion, and confused clients do not buy. And to drive this point home, for all my married people, think about the time that you hired a wedding photographer. This is like one of the biggest days of your entire life, hopefully the only time you ever get married, so this would be hopefully the only wedding you ever have. And when you hired your wedding photographer, you didn't want someone whose portfolio showed weddings, dog portraits, product shots, car events, senior portraits, baby portraits, real estate listings. You don't want that. Look for that as not who you hired. You want someone who only does weddings, someone who has a handful of amazing weddings in their portfolio. Each of them feels intentional, feels curated, feels confident. That buffet portfolio of all those different types of work, it might be more impressive, I'll use that air quotes, impressive, than the wedding one, just by sheer variety. But that second one, the wedding portfolio was more hireable. Bottom line is remember, you're not trying to impress. You're trying to convert people, turn them into clients. And while they might say, yeah, this looks amazing, look at all these cool examples, they're not piecing it in their head of how it actually helps them. So instead of showing anything you've ever done for your entire life, what if you just created a Greatest Hits album, a tight focused portfolio that says something like, this is what I'm a world class at, this is what I'm amazing at, this is who I serve. If that's you, let's do it. If it's not you, no problem. That type of attitude is not only attractive, it's more effective. You're making the decision easier for clients. You're going to earn more trust. You're going to build more authority behind what you do because you put your stake in the ground and say, this is what I do. And you're going to end up attracting better fit clients because they already believe that you're the right choice for them. And so that's what I'm calling the portfolio paradox. If you've never listened to this podcast before, hello, I'm Brian Hood. This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. This is a podcast for creative freelancers who offer creative services and you want to make more money without selling your salt, bring a lot of influences from a lot of different outside industries, industries within our creative niche, outside of our creative niche, to help creatives run better businesses. I have hundreds of freelance clients that I work with that I can pull from inspiration and see what's working, what's not working, a whole wonderful test area to try a bunch of new stuff, see what works, see what doesn't work. And that one to two percent who are amazing at what they do, that we can all learn from within that. And then I have other businesses and other influences outside of the freelance world altogether that I can pull from to bring in here for this. And the goal here is to just bring some diversity and some new ideas to your business so that you're not stuck looking to your left, looking to your right, to the other photographers, the other videographers, the other music producers, right down the road, all doing the same thing, because no one has any idea on how to actually run or build or grow a real business. Freelancers are terrible at this. My goal is to change that for you. So back to the portfolio paradox. Why do we even overload our portfolios in the first place? Because if we can't figure out the root cause of what makes us do this, then we likely can't stop ourselves from doing it. You can even listen to this whole episode and be like, yeah, I get it. But then you never change anything. The first reason is just missing on opportunities. It's the FOMO. When you're broke, you get desperate. When you're desperate, you get massive FOMO. And when you have massive FOMO, you end up overloading your portfolio because you don't want to miss out on that 2% of clients you could get because you have this portfolio piece that could land, could maybe, just maybe land that one client three years from now. And so your portfolio has 30, 40, 50, 60 versions of that, just hail Mary hope that you're going to get the client type of portfolio piece. And then the paradox is, the more pieces you have, the less appealing it is to any real client. So you get fewer clients, thus making you more desperate. And you get in this horrible spiral. The second reason people overload their portfolios is they just don't have any sort of real clarity on their niche or the positioning. This is super common for newbies, no disrespect at all. If you're new with this and you're just trying to figure out where your place in the world is, no problem at all. Keep doing what you're doing. I'll have more for you later on in this episode about kind of what to do about portfolio to keep it from being cluttered even when you're new. But if you're experienced, there is usually some sort of niche that's screaming at you, but you're ignoring it. I see this all the time. We're working with freelancers, they'll come to us to work with them to help them with client acquisition. And they'll have 50, 60, 75,000 a year they're making. And on the surface, that sounds really good. But then when you dive into it, it's hectic, it's chaotic. You're trying to do too many different types of projects. All the projects look different. And then you have these big ups and downs and feasts and famines, because you're not really known at any niche. It's just, it's not pretty. And when we dive into it, the 80-20 principle is at play. That's why I'm saying there's a niche screaming at you. And the 80-20 principle is just basically saying, 20% of your income comes from 80% of the work. So you have a bunch of these one-off projects that add up to about 20% of your income. And you get 80% of your income from like 20% of your projects or project types or client types. And all you need to do is ignore that 80% that's bringing in that tiny amount of income and focus on the 20% of clients or projects or styles or types or niche that's bringing in 80% of your income. And the people who refuse to do that are the ones who continue to struggle. Of the people that we coach, it is not 100% success rate. Full transparency. It will never be 100% success rate because we're not dictators in your business. We can tell you all the right things to do, but you can just not do it. You can just choose to do your own thing, and then you're going to have the same results that you came to us for in the first place because you won't fix the things that you came to us to fix. You're going to trust the experts if you hire experts. But I digress. Going back to you, if you have a niche screaming at you, and you refuse to capitalize on it, you're going to continue to struggle. So you're going to stall out. You're going to have the same problems you've been having. Which brings me to number three here. This is the third reason people tend to overload their portfolios and refuse to niche down. It's a hand-in-hand kind of thing. It's just ego. You want to showcase your sheer talent, your range, how varied you can be with your skill sets. Basically, you just want to prove to the world that you're great. The reality is your client doesn't care how great you are. They only care how great you can make them. And when you have an overloaded portfolio, you're just saying, me, me, me, look at all these cool things that I can do. And it's not saying, you, you, you, look at all these cool things that I can do for you. And it sounds stupid, but really, the whole meaning behind it is, do you want your portfolio to be an ego piece or a piece that sells for you? And by the way, your desire for variety, this is the other thing we got, I don't want to niche down, I don't want to narrow my portfolio, because I'll get so bored doing the same type of work. And that desire for variety and change and not doing the same thing is still the same ego driven decision. You refuse to narrow down your portfolio. You refuse to niche down, because you don't want to do the same type of work over and over again. And what's funny about this is I usually only hear this from people who have these wide open calendars, these big gaps in their calendars, where they're just twiddling their thumbs doing nothing, which sounds horrible, it sounds boring as to me. Very rarely do I see people who are slammed with work with more projects than they can deal with, who are just doing a bunch of different stuff. It's almost always niche, they're known for something. When a piece of work needs to be done, this is the person we need to refer that way. And those people who refuse to narrow down are the ones who have the emptiest schedules, doing the least amount of work. And yet, weirdly, their excuse is, I would be bored. I'll tell you the same thing I tell any client. You can niche stack later. Niche stacking is basically saying, once you plant your flag, you dominate a niche, you build it up, you're booked solid, you have the option, if you want to take that same approach, the same thing that you just did with us, into a new niche, try stacking up multiple niches. I've done that myself over the years. But usually by the time you get to the point where you could do that, you don't really want to, because you're slammed with work, your clients love you. You actually find out that there is plenty of variety in niche work, and so you never niche stack. In the perfect world, you could just do whatever you wanted. You could just do whatever products you wanted, whatever you fancied, whatever you cared about. But the reality is there's two people involved with a transaction. There's you and there's the client. The client has the money. So you have to have a way to appeal to the person who has the money. And if you fail to do that, you essentially just have a hobby. And hobbies are wonderful. I have a lot of hobbies. There's some that I've specifically not allowed myself to monetize, because not only is it a distraction for my core business, it's also could taint the hobby itself. I just wanted to be a hobby. But if you decide to do this for a living, to make money from it, you have to understand that there's another person involved, and you have to appeal to that person because they're the ones paying you. And it's not selling your soul, it's not selling out. It is literally saying, I am willing to do what I need to do to make my skill set valuable to that person. So bottom line here, an overloaded portfolio does not mean more credibility. Doesn't mean you're more credible, doesn't mean you're going to appeal to more people. It is just a lack of clarity. It gives your potential clients more crap to sort through for them to find what they're actually looking for, which adds friction. And your job is not to add friction to the decision-making process. You want to be frictionless. You want to be easy, a simple yes. Wow, this portfolio is perfect for what we're looking for. Boom, hired. So we talked about what a portfolio shouldn't be. Shouldn't be overloaded. Talk about why it's overloaded in the first place, the psychology behind that. But what should the portfolio be? The best advice I can give you here is it should be a sales tool, not a trophy shelf, not a bin that you just shove all your shit into. It should be designed with a buyer in mind, the person with the money in mind. And the easiest way to think of it, for my marketing-minded freelancers, you'll get this reference. For my web designers, you'll definitely get this. But think of it like a landing page, a great landing page. A great landing page will have a specific promise, specific outcome, one specific call to action. It'll have one next step, easy navigation, great design, great UX, all these sorts of things that go into a great landing page, fast loading speed. But then there's also, you've seen the piss-poor landing pages. No clear promise, no clear outcome, no specific call to action, multiple calls to action even. Tons of links, tons of different things you could do on the page. Pop-ups, distractions, bad design, bad UX. That adds friction.