We were lucky to catch up with Stephen Martin recently and have shared our conversation below.
Stephen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is simply asking for your worth from your clients and understanding when a client doesn’t get it and to move on. The joke of “what’s your rate vs what’s your budget” and the first to answer loses can be all too true as a creative freelancer. But by undermining the industry standards you don’t just hurt your end dollar, but you hurt the culture and process for everyone else along the way. A hard challenge here is still demanding that worth when you are working with a middle man or woman to connect with a client. If that agency or marketing department is offering photography in a package to a client but is expecting you to take a cut on your cost so they can retain their profit margins isn’t fair across the board and is too common a practice that can wear you down.
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