Show Notes
This week, CJ and Jack unpack the reality of finding clients as a freelance designer. From saying yes to everything in the early days, to learning how to attract the right opportunities as your career grows. They share stories from their own journeys, including cold emails, awkward client experiences, social media, passion projects, and the uncomfortable truth about what it really takes to get noticed. We get into: 👉 How we both found our very first freelance clients 👉 Why most cold emails and DMs don't work (and what to focus on instead) 👉 The role social media played in building their design careers 👉 Why finding clients and finding the right clients are two completely different challenges 👉 How passion projects can lead to paid work in the industries you actually want to work in 👉 Why saying no to the wrong project can be harder than finding a new one 👉 The question every freelancer eventually has to answer: "How bad do you want this?"
More from Sticky Notes with CJ Cawley and Jack Chitty
This week, we’re asking each other the awkward questions others might not usually answer, from money and self-worth to creative process, client mistakes and whether either of us could actually be replaced on Sticky Notes.
Do you actually need a degree to become a good designer? Or can you teach yourself everything you need to know?
This week, we’re doing something a little different. No big topic or case study. Just an honest conversation about why running a creative business feels really hard sometimes. We’ve both had a few turbulent weeks recently, so we wanted to go properly behind the curtain and talk about the stuff that doesn’t normally make it onto Instagram: unpaid invoices, difficult client conversations, financial pressure, changing expectations around AI, slower leads and the constant pressure of having to go out and earn every single pound again next month.
This week, we’re going behind the scenes of one of CJ’s favourite brand identity projects to date: the complete rebrand of Mike Lane.
This week, we’re doing something a little different and playing a game of Would You Rather: graphic design edition. Some of the questions are stupid. Some get surprisingly deep. And a few reveal far more about how we think as designers than either of us probably expected.