Episode #4 | Is it the industry or is it you??
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In this episode, I'm digging into whether the challenges in business are about the industry or about you.
Sure, the economy and tools like Canva play a role, but let's get real—sometimes it's about looking inward and figuring out where your energy and passions lie.
We'll also chat about the importance of educating your clients on your process and the value of your work instead of just blaming them when things go south. The industry is always changing, and we've got to keep up and evolve with it.
Episode Transcript —
Hello and welcome back to the pod. So for this episode, let me just open my notes to see what I wrote about this. This isn't a topic. I don't know if I've talked about it much over the years, but it's always on my mind. And I was like, you know what? I think I can actually talk about this. So I want to talk about like, is it the industry or is it you? Because I think a lot of the time when it feels like things are really hard in business and stuff. Like I can absolutely understand and know from experience that sometimes shit is just really hard.
Blaming the Industry
Sometimes I think it's really easy to blame it on like the industry as a whole, or you just blame it on clients. Like every client you get is just like really hard to deal with. And it takes a lot out of you and just everything feels hard and it's really easy to just put all of that on some kind of external reasoning. And sometimes it's absolutely valid. Like I'm not denying that sometimes it is other things at play like the economy, access to apps, and stuff like that. But I think there's more to it than that and I wanted to talk about it a little bit.
I mean, I'm a graphic designer, so I'm talking about this in terms of my experience and the design industry. A lot of it might actually go across multiple industries because I feel like, yeah, it probably can, but I'm talking about graphic design, design clients, and that world.
So yeah, is it the industry or is it you? Like I said, I think sometimes it's really hard to distinguish whether, like, when you're getting multiple clients in multiple jobs that feel like you're pushing shit uphill, it's really easy to start to wonder, why are all these clients being so difficult? And what is wrong with the industry, why has so much changed?
Post-COVID Changes
I think there is a very valid reason for that, at least in the design industry. Over the last few years, I feel like it has changed a lot. A lot of that has to do with post-COVID. During COVID, I personally had the best years in terms of revenue, in terms of client design work revenue. They were the best years in my business, the first two years of COVID.
And then slowly, I've been kind of pivoting my business towards focusing more on products and templates and stuff and doing design work on the side. But I've heard from a lot of people that it's changed how people have been hiring designers, and a lot of people are DIYing a lot more shit with Canva. Could be because of money, could be because of access to these tools that are a lot more accessible.
Like back in the day, InDesign and Adobe programs were the only way you could do shit, right? So now that has changed a lot. And there's just a lot of things that have changed. At the end of the day, things are always changing. And I'm acknowledging all of these things before I get to the main point, which is that sometimes you have to have a hard conversation with yourself about where your energy is at and what you actually want to be doing.
Tough Conversations with Yourself
Because sometimes when you start to feel like everything is really hard and shit is just going wrong left, right, and center, clients are really hard to deal with, it's so easy to make everything else the problem. And I've done this. I'm literally speaking from experience when I say this.
Sometimes it's not the industry. Sometimes you have to have a super hard conversation with yourself and ask, are you actually enjoying or do you actually want to be doing the work that you kind of hate doing anyway? It's not easy, and there's no yes or no answer to this. There's no easy way to do this, especially if you've been doing something for a really long time.
It might even be just one kind of service within your business. Maybe there's one type of service or project you're offering. And every time you do it, it just goes sideways. And you're trying to make it work, but it's just not working. Maybe that just isn't the right fit for you. It doesn't mean you need to throw everything out the window. It's just like, maybe that isn't right.
I feel like maybe this is why we avoid it. It's like the big scary questions that you don't want to sit with. Like, is your heart still in this kind of work, or these kinds of projects, or these kinds of clients? Another piece to this is when I feel like I'm struggling with anything or trying to figure out if a service or offering is working or if something feels like a struggle, I ask myself, how would it feel if this wasn't on my plate? Would it feel lighter if I just let this go?
That question usually gives a lot of answers. Sometimes the answer is actually no, I don't want to let it go, I just need to adjust how I do it. That is always an option, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur and you have the option to do that and kind of pivot as you need to.
Ragging on Clients
I've seen a little bit of this and talked about it in a previous episode. I'm not super in the world of graphic design; I don't follow a lot of other designers because it's just not that helpful to me. But sometimes I see it quite a lot and hear it from other people, just like the amount of ragging on clients. Not specifically, like people aren't calling out clients by name, but just generally ragging on clients.
Talking about that publicly on social media, just kind of bitching about clients or the process or whatever. Again, sometimes it's extremely valid, but for the most part, I don't think there's any part of that that's actually a good idea because it's not a good look for you to be trying to book clients while also kind of begging clients who are being hard to deal with.
One thing that I think is really important and I've always thought this is that I believe as a service provider, whether it's design or other industries, a lot of the clients that come to you haven't worked with a creative or a designer before, or maybe they've worked with someone who works very differently from you. I really believe it's part of our job to help educate our clients on the process and the creativity of what we do.
It's not our job to convince them or justify it, but it's part of our job to explain our process and how things work and our expectations so we can avoid the shit show that sometimes happens with clients. I don't think it's good to blame everything on the client and then go and post about it on social media. That isn't taking any accountability for your part in whatever is going sideways.
Clients Need to Understand
To do your job well, the client needs to understand your process and where you're coming from and feel a part of what you're doing. Yes, they're paying you, it's your job to finish the pieces and bring it to life and go through the process and do all the things. But it's also our job to help educate clients instead of just expecting them to know everything and then getting pissed off at them and posting about it online when they did something wrong because you didn't explain it to them. That just seems kind of crazy to me.
This is just a bigger conversation that I've always had various thoughts on and some of this I've done. I may have done some of these things and I regret it and I've learned from it. This is stuff that I'm like, okay, I feel like I can talk about this now. But at the end of the day, things are always changing. The industry is always changing and you always have to adapt to it.
There's a quote, I don't know who said it or what it's from, but it's like "evolve or die." You've got to keep up. I know it's exhausting sometimes. I've experienced burnout and maybe I can do a separate episode on that. It gets really fucking exhausting sometimes trying to do all these things and keep up with all the stuff that's always changing. I'm not just talking about Instagram algorithms. I mean the bigger picture of how people are hiring service providers like you. It's always changing and we always have to be taking notice of that and adapting to it.
Not Everyone's Cut Out for This
I think that's also part of why not everyone is cut out to be a business owner or an entrepreneur because it does get exhausting. But I think overall, the main point I wanted to get at with this is if you feel like you're at a point where you're just like, why does everything feel so hard? Why am I dealing with all these consistent problems or clients and everything? Is there a bigger question you need to be asking instead of just, why is everyone so annoying to work with? Because most of the time they're not.
Maybe there's a vision for you and your business that's waiting to come to life, but it can't because you're stuck in the shit of staying where you are. I don't know if that was a good way of putting that. But that is something big that has definitely happened to me multiple times over the years in terms of maybe a certain kind of client or offering that I was doing and realizing that certain things were just really hard because I made them hard for myself and it wasn't the client.
Learn and Evolve
Either I didn't do my job explaining something well enough, or I said yes to something I shouldn't have that I wasn't totally into at the time. You can do that. It's not a bad thing to do. You can say yes, do jobs for the money and fucking kill it. Whatever, that's a different conversation. But I think you get where I'm going with all of this. It's okay if things feel sticky and scary and you're not sure where to go. Sometimes you have to get to that point where it's reality check time.
Final Thoughts
Maybe it's not the industry. Maybe it's not you. I don't mean you're the problem because I don't buy into that. It's just, what can you learn from all of these situations that your business is teaching you? How can you evolve with them? Does it feel like you're meant to be doing something else, but you keep getting distracted by what you've always been doing?
I think that's a good place to leave this because if I keep going, I'm just going to keep rambling about the same thing. That's pretty much what I have to say about that. If you're vibing with that, if you have your own thoughts about this, I would love to know. Send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear it and I will see you on the next episode.
