Increasing your Luck Surface Area

Really unpopular opinion for designers: it's easier, more joyful and beneficial to do free work for someone you like, than design and release your perfect portfolio with case studies. The only rule for free work is that you should be the one to offer it, and not asked to do it.

It's a simple way to sustain an ongoing always-on outreach to nurture your network. This is the lifeblood of generating consulting work.

Clients usually find me directly through something I've written, rather than through a referral.

There’s an activity that the Barrel partners have been doing for a while: reaching out to a couple of contacts per week. These have typically been former clients, industry acquaintances, other agency operators, investor types, old friends and classmates, etc. It’s been a practice we’ve kept up weekly since 2017.

two ways people grow their online presence: 🔚 assuming your audience a priori and building it 🔜 being authentic online and finding out who your audience is mechanical/engineering vs. organic/emergent

In the last five years they have released more than 100 products.

In a moment of randomness, I've came across this newsletter issue by @tomcritchlow on getting more client work. Now that I'm refocusing on indie-ness, I realize this is something I do whenever I seek work: posting on socials, emailing former colleagues, and texting friends. https://t.co/JjwBEFGI3G

"The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated." https://t.co/KfFpouh7Dm