A Freelancer’s Journey: A Story to tell

We all want to be successful. We all want to have a meaning in our life. I think an important question to ask yourself is; How bad do you actually want it? No, I’m not here to quote poets and motivational speakers. What I do want to say  is that, if you work hard, you make it. When you make it, You’ve got yourself a story. What type of story? Let’s just call them a “back then” story. I think everybody heard it at least once in their lives. Maybe from a grandparent or one of your parents or any other grown up. The starting line is something like this: “Back then I used to …”.

I personally feel that if you are a entrepreneur and you have a “back then” story to tell, I’d say you are now successful in your life.

On Sunday, 24th of June was my promo filming day at my first client’s home office. Of course since Friday I have cleaned, charged and packed my equipment. To my surprise Saturday began raining cats and dogs and Sunday decided to follow in the footsteps of the day before. Sunday morning reached and I was prepared to go. Of course in Holland everybody has a bike and almost no young adult has a car. It should be about 30 minutes on the bike. From Leeuwarden to Gystsjerk.

Now here’s what my first “back then” story will be like: “Back then I used to ride my bicycle about 20 kilometers in the cold and windy rain, so I could film my first promotion video. I was with my camera bag on my back, wrapped in 2 garbage bags, my lights set were wrapped in even more garbage and plastic bags and hooked up to the rear part of my bicycle. But it did not matter to me because I want to become successful, and every opportunity I got, I took with great dedication and motivation.”

 This is my trusty transporter. When I reached by my client everything was dry and ready to use. Thanks pal!

A Freelancer’s Journey: The First Meeting

Happy thoughts, positive attitude, ego boosting music.. demotivating thoughts, negative feelings, being nervous.. more ego boosting confidence music… deep breath… and just go! These are some just some of the steps you go through before meeting your first client. All kinds of thoughts go through your mind a few hours before you have to meet your client. It all fades away once you are shaking your clients hands and the confident state of mind comes in play. Well naturally you shouldn’t forget everything! Presentation and Representation is everything. First encounters can determine the outcome of your project. If you give a positive, friendly and polite first encounter, the working relationship will be much much better than if you give the opposite.

My first client goes by the name of “Joke Lunsing” and she would like a promo video for her course: “Training voor HBO-Docenten”. This might sound a bit weird for you right now, but it’s not what you are imagining. The meeting went very well. We talked, shared our stories, ideas and made notes here and there. It was a very nice and easy environment to discuss our thoughts. Even though Douwe Egberts was pretty busy that day. After a delicious cup of cappuccino and an hour of conversation, the meeting finished and we both went our separate ways with a big smile on our face. The info I received will be taken into consideration while I create the first stuff for the promo video.

On another note, I’ve always thought business cards were overrated. Why should we still use business cards? Do they really help? After doing some research and talking some people. I got a surprising answer from: Yes! It does work. Giving a client your business card is an easy way for them to have your contact information in a quick and easy access place. Most business or people have a business card wallet or a box filled with business cards of potential business that they might want to use their service. (Waw, That’s a long sentence… Hope you understand what I meant 🙂 ) Once I received this information I started to design my business cards, they are now done… next step is to print them and actually start using them! Oh Look! It’s a concept image of my business card! Beautiful isn’t it?

A Freelancers Journey – First Steps….

It’s been a few weeks since I decided to search for small projects to work on.. and I’m slowly learning more and more everyday about networking and connections. Until now I manage to get 3 projects to work on. 2 of the projects are upcoming projects and the other I had done last week Saturday. So things are kinda looking good for the upcoming weeks. Doesn’t sound that bad but the weeks I want to make months and the months I want to make years. My journey has just started… and it might take a while, but I will reach my destination!

My first letter was send to CheeseCake Company in Den Haag. A small baking place that specializes in making cheesecakes. I was really motivated to send them my first letter because when I went to buy a cheesecake I kinda felt and noticed the passion the lady had for what she was doing. So i went straight to work, creating my project proposal to make a promo video, update my website portfolio, let a few people double check my letter and talk to other freelancers to gain more info on how to approach clients. A week after my letter was sent to the cheesecake Company, I passed by to show the friendly face that had send the letter and of course to ask for feedback about my letter, was it any good, how was the price and all that. My letter was very clear and straight forward, explaining everything from A to Z. So that was a plus point. But, they didn’t want or were not in need of a promo video for their company at the time. Which is quite understandable. Not everybody is in need of a promo video at all times. But but but not all was lost, I received a FREE banana cheesecake from them and IT WAS DELICIOUS! and of course now my name and face is out there. Networking… if she hears of friend or a friend of a friend whom need a promo video for their company. I might be mentioned in a conversation between them… just the thought of that makes me feel like I have accomplished something again.

Look here’s the cheesecake I received!

I do recommend any Cheesecake lovers to try their cheesecake!

They always have another flavor.

Even though one client didn’t need my service, doesn’t mean that I should give up. I’m still motivated to keep on searching for people/companies who love what they do, and offer them a promo video that brings forward their story… their passion.

I got a small (one day) job from a friend of mine. He was working on some motion graphics design for a Airplane Company and needed some help. So he hired me for a day to help him work on some stuff. I can’t really mention what it is yet, cause the video is not released yet. In a future post (hopefully next week) I will put the link to the video in my journal. Working for a real client was pretty nice. We get the information and just be creative with it. I like it! For this project I did a lot of photoshopping. A lot of image slicing. These sliced images would then be set in After Effects and they’ll get animated! This project/task was a success. They were happy with the job I did and I left my information with them. Hopefully in the near future I could work with them again. I’m looking forward to it! With the compensation I received with this project, I got myself a RODE VIDEO MIC PRO. Right now I need to grow as a “business”, the way I can do that is to work on projects and the compensation I get, put it in my “business” again. With the RODE Video Mic Pro I can record and film nicer interviews for my promo videos.

Look at it, ain’t it a beauty?

The other two projects I have pending are 1. a promo video for a lady’s entrepreneurship and 2. a promo video for of Leeuwarden made for Aruban students. But these projects are still in the planning and design phases. The funny thing is, both these projects I received unexpected. The entrepreneurship project I received because I have send the lady my letter to double check the info and the clarity of the letter. She like it so much that she replied on my email saying that she would like to use my offer. Now she’s a client. The promo video for Leeuwarden is from a Aruban guidance counselor who want to help and motivate new Aruban students to come to Leeuwarden. I got in touch with him easily because he is my guidance counselor in Leeuwarden. What I’m trying to say here is… Always be ready and available, you never know where your projects might come from. It’s good to always have contacts and a good network. Once I receive more info and an okay from my clients, I will post some more info here… and of course more about my journey to become a professional freelancer.

It’s been a pretty good start for me. I can’t complain!. I have already done 1 job, I am busy with 2 and I received positive feedback from the first company I’ve sent my letter. This weekend I’ll be searching for some new companies and also work on translating my letter into Dutch. I am still trying to balance my price for the service I provide. Professionals freelancers makes a living out of this and they receive a pretty nice amount of money for their work. But I am not a professional yet. I need clients.. and clients want to see portfolio and past projects. So right now, to gain more experience and to create a nice network, I offer my service and skills at a very low (affordable) price. I want to get paid with experience, and the money will come after.

Thank you for taking your time and reading my journey!

– Giordano Nunes

A step towards my destiny, a leap of faith

It’s already been 2 weeks since I posted something again. It’s not that I didn’t have time.. I’ve just been busy with various things… I have (finally) made the decision to start learning and growing in a (professional) field. I’ve been working as an intern for about 3 months now at RTL Nederland and I’m really enjoying every second I’m here. From all the projects I got to work on, none felt like a drag to do. And every one had a new learning curve for me. I am very grateful for this and decided to take a next step into my destiny. I took a leap of faith.

I started my own “business”, well actually I started to offer my services as a freelancer. I enjoy working on motion graphic designs everyday. I don’t even think of it as work, it’s what I like. I decided to mix my “talent” and passion for story telling into one. The idea is to start making Promo videos for small business at an affordable price. The promo video will be a mixture of film, photography, motion graphics, animation and storytelling. All done by me with some help of some friends. If I could summarize this, it’ll be pretty simple: I WANT TO CREATE MY STORY, BY TELLING YOUR STORY! That’s basically what it is. The objective I have is simply too create a beautiful promo video for the company.

I will operate under the name of GNunesPresents. Why this name? I’ve always dreamed of owning an “business empire” which has different sections and business under it. GNunesPresents is the name of the empire… and one day, with hard work and dedication… I will have a few branches under GNunesPresents. But for now we start with small steps.

I have contact 4 different clients already, 2 I will be creating a beautiful promo video for them and I am awaiting reply from the other two. Of course not every business need a promo video at the moment, no matter what the price is. When the time is right, they will know what to do. I am happy that I am getting my name out there.

You will be hearing more and more of me in the coming weeks with updates of my internship and my freelance work. Not to leave this page with only text (I personally don’t like a page that’s just pure text) here’s my company logo and my iconic logo 🙂 I am very proud of this and am happy to reveal it to all of you!

I have made different versions of my logo and find that this one says more about me. The a bit straight and square text symbolizes straight forward and power. The Alien design (my iconic logo) in the P represents me and my creativity side.

Izz, there’s a million reason I have chosen an Alien as my Iconic Logo. I’d have to make a separate blog to explain that. But to keep it short, I’d like to say that the Alien has been around me my whole life, in some way it represents my whole life in one design. The hands of the Alien are in “ready to work/touch/feel/create position” and that’s how I always am. I am ready… always.

This post isn’t like my regular post, but I find this important to share. Share my dreams with all of y’all.

I thank you for your time and patience while reading this blog post! 🙂

– Giordano Nunes