Join us for ALT Episode 7 as we chat with creative director James Bruehl about his journey to monetize his creative talents. James dishes out his top tips and tricks for turning your side hustle into a money-making machine. So turn up the volume, it’s about to get fun and informative up in here!
Speakers:
Hillary, Valery, Joshua, James
Valery 00:01
Hey guys, welcome back to scaling side hustles. If you’re joining us for the first time, this is what we call an altar episode, we’re taking a break from our storytelling format so we can chat with hustlers like you who have taken the leap into monetizing their passions. You may remember from last episode, we got James brule, one of Joshua’s managers at the media group, and incredibly talented creative director, James now runs his own creative agency and has years of experience in building his company. We sit down with James to hash out some of the biggest struggles he has faced as an entrepreneur tips for our listeners. And of course, some behind the scenes of James and Joshua’s history. And if you’re listening on think, look simple sound like they know a thing or two, I need help starting my own business. Well, you’re in luck, we want to interview you, once you finish this episode, head on over to scaling side hustles.com and fill out a quick form so we can get in touch. All right, now get ready to take some notes and enjoy episode seven of scaling side hustles.
Joshua 00:57
Not only God, but you also taught me how to Google things. So I always remember like coming to you. And I would say I would say how do you do this? And you’d be like, Did you Google it first?
Valery 01:11
I remember that too. Because I would ask Josh about how to do XYZ. And he in turn started becoming you saying asking me that? And I’m like, Oh, just tell me you should know. You know, it’s easier than googling it. But it’s a good habit.
James 01:25
I mean, there’s a very good chance I didn’t know the answer.
Valery 01:30
But that was a perfect response. Did you Google it. Cuz I love how
Hillary 01:34
transparent you’re being also Josh, like, taught me these wise words of googling. And I was even conscious of doing.
James 01:41
This is one of the most humble people that you’ll ever meet. People ask me all the time, like a lot of my freelance clients will ask me questions. And I remember being in meetings with salespeople over the course of my career, and I always hated it when I knew that they didn’t know the answer. And they would try to fudge their way through it. It bothered me so much. Because if I was on the other end of that, even if I bought it right, I’m eventually going to figure out that you don’t know. And then you’ve hurt the relationship. Whereas if somebody is completely honest with you, upfront, in what they’re good at, what they know what they don’t know, what they intend to fix for you, even if they don’t know how yet. If they’re completely honest with you, and then they follow through, like they said they would, then you’re going to end up at the end of everything with an even stronger relationship than you’d ever imagine. With somebody that applies to more than just business. But certainly, when interacting with clients. I’ve seen some jaws drop when somebody asked me a question, and I tell them, I don’t know the answer to that question. I’d like to work with you and figure it out. But I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that that’s possible, or this is not possible. And so I found that when I am open, humble, and don’t try to you know, fake it till you make it that ultimately, my clients, like my other relationships tend to strengthen more than fall apart. And if somebody is gonna leave you over being honest, you didn’t want to be with them anyway.
Hillary 03:23
Yeah, I love that pushing back on the fake it till you make it thing, just to tell a little bit about yourself, like, what is your background in business? And what are you currently doing?
James 03:34
Sure. So I used to work at SeaWorld. I got hired there as a junior year in high school and I was working seasonal, right? I my first seasonal position was over spring break. And I immediately moved from spring break seasonal guy to full time employee while I was in high school. And then I moved to lead. And within two years, I was the associate manager of the biggest gift shop and a theme park. At that point, I looked at my managers paycheck. And I looked at mine and did the math and realize that my next move up to manager meant that I would be paid less per hour than they were getting paid because they were salaried. And at that point, I thought, No way, there’s not a chance I’m going to move into more hours for less pay at what is essentially mostly a dead end job for somebody who didn’t finish college. Like I’m never going to be an executive at SeaWorld or Anheuser Busch, which is who owned SeaWorld at the time without a college degree. So at that point, I started looking at schools and trying to figure out where I wanted to go at the time I was writing like hand programming, websites, stuff like that and really enjoyed technology and thought okay, I’ll find a tech school I found a tech school in town here in Orlando Full Sail University, which is like a 13 month program for Have a two year degree dove into that while working full time and getting my son every weekend. And that school is 40 hours a week, because it’s a truncated timeline for a two year degree. And so I started working at SeaWorld less and less, and eventually quit because I got a negative paycheck from them. And I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten a negative paycheck, but it’s literally a paycheck with a negative number next to $1 amount because you owe them money for working there. And the reason was, because I still had my full time benefits, including my insurance, and I wasn’t working enough to pay for the insurance they were buying for me. So I took that as a sign from above that it was time to move on, went to full sail, got a job with a guy who played guitar at my church, who had his own marketing, you know, media agency, and started working for him, the back half of school moved, work with him for a year or so when his company went bankrupt due to 911. So 911 happened in 2001. I graduated September of 2001. It killed a bunch of businesses, the guy I worked for held on for like a year and a half. And then eventually it just folded because everything advertising stopped during 911. And that happened to be right as I graduated. So from there, I got a job with another guy that went to my church and worked on ride, show, ride and show stuff. So like you know, there’s motion based simulators that you would ride in a Disney like Star Wars and stuff like that. And I didn’t work on that I worked on smaller ones that would hold like four to six people that they would put in children’s museums and science museums and stuff like that. So I did that for a while while also doing websites and general other stuff. Social media really wasn’t a thing at the time for the most part. So that wasn’t a part of the job, but did that for five or six years. And then my brother in law, the same one that passed away, was working in it at the dealership, he brought me in freelance, the rest of it, you guys generally know. Then around 2016, after working at the in 2016, after working for the advertising company. In 2016, after working for the advertising agency for almost 10 years, I was very burnt out. Like completely burnt out on the job in general. And just like my creative brain had been working on the same topics for so long that I kind of felt like it couldn’t do it anymore. Like I couldn’t do another car ad because it was going to be the same as I’ve been doing them for so long. And yeah, it was it was tough. On top of that my brother in law was having his health issues. My son was turning 18. And I was turning 40, all in the same year. So there was lots of transition going on. And I just decided that I was done with it. And luckily enough, I had a little bit of savings. And I quit without another job. And honestly planned on never doing what I do today again. I was over it, I would say. And for a year. I didn’t did 100% Nothing for a year. I shouldn’t say 100% If somebody dropped something in my lap, and it didn’t seem like it would take very long and I wanted to do it, I would do it. But for the most part I traveled I had never been to Europe, went to Europe for five weeks, went to LA LA area where I grew up. Pre High School, visited a bunch of people I hadn’t seen in a decade. We stayed out there for a month and just generally goofed around for a year. It was great. It was awesome. So the year was up and so was my nest egg and a year of taking a break turned into like a year and a half, which turned into two years and I slowly started intentionally taking the clients that came to me. You I mean, before I would turn something down, if it sounded too involved, I would just pass it to somebody else and not think about it or just tell them I’m not the right person. But about halfway through year two, I started taking freelance and then at the end of year two, I had maxed most of my credit cards out and decided okay, it’s time to go back into adult mode and kick this back into gear. And I did and just started slowly getting freelance clients eventually. I oddly enough, it wasn’t until COVID happened About a month or two after COVID happened that my freelance business went from barely squeaking by to making good money, I would say, I think a good I work marketing and advertising in lots of ways. Anything that I did at that marketing and advertising agency for 10 years, I do today, just more in a more personal way with my clients like in in the old environment, there was a salesperson between me and the client. There’s no salesperson, I am the salesperson in theory, I’m a bad salesperson, but I’m the salesperson in the middle. And so I I enjoy that environment so much more. It’s like a totally different job when you eliminate all the middlemen between you and your client, because you don’t have other people’s expectations or their motivations muddle, muddying up what your client is actually trying to accomplish, right? What is the salesperson trying to accomplish? One, they’re trying to get money out of whoever they’re in front of. And rightfully so that’s what they’re there for. In order to get continued doing that, they have to do a good job of number two, which is managing the client. I don’t know about you. But when somebody tells me they’re managing me, that’s not a good starting point. Especially if I’m the one who wants the service, right? You don’t manage people, you work with them, you find out what they need. And then you either give it to them, or find somebody else who can give it to them. But you, you don’t manage them anyway. And so the job that I was completely over, has transformed over the last four or five years into a job that I now enjoy again, in a way that I don’t think I ever enjoyed it before. It also helps that I get to pick and choose my clients. And so since I had the privilege of being able to slowly gain clients and turn down the ones that I was not interested in, it meant that I was able to set up a pattern of only working with people that I want to work with, right, if I’m going to spend an eight hour day working on somebody’s project, I want to know that not only is it satisfying their need, not only is it satisfying my creative and financial need, but also it’s doing a bigger good in the world. In general, like I decided, when I started taking clients, again, that’s just part of my criteria. If it’s not doing that, I’m not doing it, I’m not gonna spend my time on it, they can go find somebody else who’s probably going to do a better job on it to go work on it. Because I’m not going to take the right attitude and do it. So a good deal of my clients today are now nonprofits, not all of them. But even the ones that aren’t nonprofits have some kind of bigger societal good, ingrained in their marketing message and their day to day operations. And I’ve just found that when you look for people who are thinking in those terms, generally, this is probably an overgeneralization there’s a bigger hit to miss ratio. As far as like them being a good client or a client that’s difficult. Generally, I found that
James 13:28
when you’re when I’m working for just straight business, people who are trying to sell a single product, I’m not saying those people are bad. I just in my experience, they have one specific motive for making decisions. They rarely take multiple things in into account. And yet, I’ve found that if the business owner, or the nonprofit leader, or decision makers have other things in mind, other than the end goal, or making money, that they’re generally going to be more open for discussions. As far as like creative, they’re going to be more generous with their time. And in general, they’re just going to be easier to work with there. What I found with most business people is that they really do not know who they’re talking to. Not necessarily me. I mean, their audience, they just don’t know who like they they come the issue is they need more people in the net. And yet, they don’t even know who those people are. And even if they did, they wouldn’t know how to talk to them anyway, they wouldn’t know how to get their attention. And with people in nonprofits or people who evaluate their businesses in a bigger way than just dollars and cents. Those people tend to have thought this through more. Because they’re not only they’re not only trying to get you to transact once they’re trying to get you to buy into an idea and if you can buy into that idea, then you get in the circle, you support the nonprofit, or you or you do business with them for more than one reason. And those clients have just been far more successful for me, relationship wise, and honestly, financially, like long term. I have several clients now that are on year three, ending year three. And they’re perfectly happy, they listened to everything I recommend. I honestly, my biggest issue right now is an abundance of work. And I’ve been listening to your podcast, and a lot of the things that you guys say on the podcast are things that I’m already actively thinking about. And some things that I’m actively actively doing. This year will be the first year that I am an LLC, and have been business insurance and all kinds of other things that I never imagined I would ever even consider back when I was slowly creeping back into freelance. So I think it’s super important as a freelancer to have at least a hobby, if not hobbies, because it’s very easy to. And I know this from experience to go from a work environment where people are telling you to be here and there at this specific time to now you’re at home, you’re managing your own time. And you just kind of let work take over, right? Even if you’re not working 16 hours a day, you’re on call 16 hours a day, you’re checking email, you’re, you know, answering the phone, you’re texting clients, potential clients, you’re chasing down things, you’re watching videos to learn things, all great things, but at the same time, you need to just not do work release things for a little while. But the challenge is, you would like work, right? But you got to do something that doesn’t make money, I would say or that the ultimate goal is not to make money. The ultimate goal is not to enrich, at least I’ve found maybe other people can function that way. But I definitely have to have outlets that don’t have to do with being successful. It’s more about doing the thing then being perfect at it or being successful at it. And so my outlet for sure. Ever since 2006. Way before I knew Josh way before I knew either of you. Way before I even worked, where you guys came to know me. I did a podcast way before I knew Zack and I did the current podcast, I did another podcast with a friend of mine. And we talked about movies, I love movies. I’m a big movie fan. I’ve seen over 4000 movies that I know of. It’s probably much more than that. And when podcasting was first in its early days, I was like This sounds fun. Let’s do it. I did it. It was never very popular in the first iteration. The second iteration with Zack who worked with Josh and I was did better. But that podcast is now eight years in, and we continue to do it. And it’s just so much fun. It has had a certain level of success, it’s never going to be the most popular podcasts on the planet. And it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a way to get together and talk about something that I really love. With no other motivation than doing that with friends. And so I think it’s important, you don’t necessarily have to have podcasting as your hobby. But I think it’s important to have put things on your schedule, intentionally put things on your schedule that does not work, and try to set boundaries. Those are my two biggest pieces of advice for people who are starting to freelance or maybe deepen and need to hear that advice. Set boundaries. When I get new clients, they don’t get texted after business hours, because the moment you text back after business hours, the floodgates are open. Now you’re not answering them after hours. But if you never do it to begin with, they never know that it’s even possible.
Hillary 19:21
You taught me that, like freak out when a client would text and you don’t have to answer them.
James 19:26
I mean, unless it’s an obvious if somebody texts me and says their website is down. I’m gonna answer your phone. Yes, I’m going to act. You know what I mean? But if they’re texting me with pontificating about something that could happen tomorrow, then it will happen tomorrow.
Joshua 19:41
James, thank you. Thank you so much. That was very informative, and we’ll talk soon.
Valery 19:46
Till next time. See you guys.
Thanks for joining us on today’s episode. If you’re a freelancer, with insights to share or just getting started on your entrepreneurial journey, we’d love to have you on the podcast go to scaling side hustles.com to fill the form we can’t wait to meet you if you want to learn more about what James does, we linked his website in our show notes. I’ll see you back here in two weeks for another episode. Keep hustlin’