20: Turning Creative Talent Into Real Money With Illustrator Yoel Judowitz

My Guest: Yoel Judowitz

• Starting in elementary school, Yoel was singled out, praised and rewarded for his creative talent, winning contests as early as 5th grade and having his grandmother (a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design) frame his ill-designed portrait as a teenager.
• In high school Yoel fell into illustrating and realized that the details in illustration are his speciality.
• Worked for a design agency and left after only 3 weeks after realizing that this work was totally not for him.
• Taught art classes to a super niche market: Jewish ultra-orthodox hassidic kids in yiddish.
• Expanded his skill set by learning online children’s illustration,  books, magazines, editorials and product packaging.
• Turned illustration into an assembly line by working on the idea and creative pieces, then hiring individuals to work on each element for the illustration – such as one person on line work and another on color.
• Instead of competing with other freelancers as the online marketplace grew, Yoel hired his competitors to join his team.
• Did a lot of commenting on NY Times articles and noticed that comments were getting great feedback. Yoel realized he had a talent for writing then transferred that to LinkedIn.
• Mastered social media marketing on LinkedIn through storytelling.

The Advice

Use every part of your business journey as leverage for your next step. Business grows step by step as long as you look at everything you’re doing as something you can step up on.

Do what you have to until you can do what you want to. (Estie’s advice)

The method to madness on LinkedIn:

Level 1:

1. Establish authority: talk about what you’re good at
2. Become familiar: post and comment so people start to recognize you
3. Develop trust: reach out though direct messages and phone

Level 2:

1. Tell your story: let your brand become your story until you become like a novelty show. Make yourself vulnerable – and be prepared for lots of trial and error!

Social media marketing takes 6-9 months to gain real traction. If you are in the right place and you let it build up enough steam, you’ll get back what you put in. The magic takes time to brew

The Breakthrough

Estie recommends finding a work/work balance. There are 3 components to work on:

1. Delegation & Systems – so that your processes are more streamlined with the work you’re already doing and you can increase your capacity. This includes hiring and delegating more efficiently to your staff as well as a systematic approach to your processes including both tech and non-tech changes.
2. Strategic Marketing Plan – once you have the capacity, you need to attract a steady flow of clients to fill that capacity. Each business owner has pre-set amount of time, energy and budget to generate stable client flow that you set up the capacity to accommodate so that you can bring more customers in.
3. Focus – stop being all over the place and do the things you’re most effective in. Leave everything else out.

Quotes

“Find your story, learn how to tell it, make a boatload of money.”

Resources and Links