How A Videographer + Motion Designer Used The nuSchool To Create A Career

The first time we met, Sivan had a glowing grin. She was carrying two overstuffed XL bags of brand new camera equipment, in preparation for a full day shooting promo videos for a local education startup.

A year before, this was a dream — the equipment, the client, all of the clients. But, with some clever marketing and a lot of support from The nuSchool team, Sivan made it happen. And as she started telling me how, all I could think was,

I have to write this down.

This is how Sivan used The Pricing Class and a bit of nuSchool mentorship to avoid going corporate and make a high-paying career out of her passion, videography and motion design.

What do you do?

I’m a videographer and motion designer. I do all kinds of projects related to filming video, motion, and animation, including commercial videos for apps and startups, music videos, mastering after-effects, and am also very lucky to teach kids stop-motion animation.

Why did you decide to start freelancing?

Throughout design school, my dream was to go corporate — to finish school and go straight to being a web designer at a fancy agency. Towards the end of design school, however, I joined my class on a field trip to a number of these design agencies, and that dream vanished.

One look at the shiny cubicles, and I was out. Hearing about the long hours and (really, really) low pay completely dashed my dreams — it reminded me of the office jobs I had before school, and went to school to avoid.

This field trip made me realize that the world is unfair. I decided that instead of waiting for the economy to fix itself and my country doing something about our living expenses, I’ll just create my own playground, where I make the salary I actual deserve in order to maintain a happy normal lifestyle. It will be way harder, but this is the only chance for me to really live a happy fulfilling life.

What made you realize you needed help?

I could barely deal with taking criticism from my tough design teachers at the time.

Dealing with clients was terrifying! I found myself constantly asking the only two freelancers I knew for advice while relentlessly googling rates charts for freelance stop-motion animators and whining in Facebook groups filled with other freelancers whining about the same things.

I looked for business coaches, but everything else felt expensive and still not right for me. No one seemed to get how committed I was to my creative path — until I found Lior and Ran.

You’ve been around since the early days. How did you choose The nuSchool? What has the journey been like with us?

I’ve never found anyone like The nuSchool.

I had listened  to webinars and read a few articles here and there, but there was no place that provided genuine, honest, to-the-point content that answered all of my REAL questions.

And, even more importantly, there was no one else I trusted like Lior and Ran.
A few months into starting my freelancing business, I was following every post by The nuSchool, and I was inspired. I wanted to do something. I had all of these experiences that I wanted to share, but I didn’t want to start my own blog (ps. I did — but that happened later).

I secretly wanted The nuSchool to publish one of my stories, but I didn’t take that much beyond a secret want.

One day I was feeling brave and sent Lior an email introducing myself. I told him I had been dreaming of writing for The nuSchool, and he said, so, why not?

I sent over my first post, got a few tips about editing, and then, that was it – I was on the Internet.

What has The nuSchool changed for you? How do we help you on a day-to-day basis?

Wow.

I’ve interacted with amazing people from around the world through who I met online through the NuSchool community.
I was encouraged to start my own blog, and then built the blog from scratch with this guide by The nuSchool and help from an awesome community member who also happens to be a website guru, Simon Harper. The connections I made through the community have lead me to amazing client work this year.

As I grew more confident, I found myself shedding all of the irrelevant cheap offers — which lead me to seek out (and find!) the bigger, higher-quality offers. Even with clients that haven’t followed through, I’ve learned how to differentiate between good and bad clients, how to build a network that grows itself, and most importantly — how to charge exactly what I’m worth, and not a dollar less.

My pricing process has completely changed thanks to The nuSchool. Pricing a video production is extremely difficult, and depends on factors that are particular to each project on its own. In videography much more than design, clients expect champagne on a beer budget — so by taking The nuSchool’s advice and giving the client three options, the client can often see the value of the production cost without the sticker shock of one final price.

I tell everyone I speak to that they should read everything The nuSchool publishes and then go do everything they say.

That’s what I did and it worked like a charm. It’s not a quick charm, and it demands courage and effort to actually follow these instructions. You can watch/read Ran and Lior tell you how to charge more as much as you want but if you don’t gather the balls to actually start and do it for the first time and stay consistent about  it, you won’t see any results.

So, bottom line: Is it possible to charge what you need while doing what you love?

I hope Sivan’s story has inspired you and shown you that getting paid for what you love possible. She can do it — and you probably can too.

If you need help learning how to do it, we’re here to help with our Pricing Class. This class will not only teach you – step-by-step – how to understand your value, present it to your clients, and convince them to go for it. It will also – like Sivan found – give you the confidence to do just that.

Hundreds of designers have already taken it. We’re on a mission to make the designers of the world earn more. Don’t stay behind:

The Designer’s Pricing Class

(Oh, and taking our class is risk-free, because we have a 100% money-back guarantee policy.)

Sivan is an incredibly talented videographer/stop-motion animator based in Be’ersheva, Israel. Check out her website for more about her and how to hire her for all of your video needs.