The first year of business? Don't starve. Check. (Well, with the help of selling my bicycle.)
But not starving sometimes meant writing ads for causes or products I wasn't really that into. So year two, stop selling out. I started focusing on ski resorts, sustainable products, local underdogs who deserved alpha status, and companies that gave back.
So it was time to give back. My resolution for year three? Give more work away.
Which is how I ended up taking almost an entire two months off to plan and market (with a ton of help from the BORN organization) a "Roll the Hiawatha" Train Day event, to bring back the Amtrak route which once rumbled through Bozeman (and beyond).
We planned a whole shebang with an agenda: get more letters written into local policymakers, in hopes of keeping the momentum up from a promising feasibility study. Jawbone Railroad played for free out of the back of a truck; my buddies ran a letter writing station complete with envelopes, stationary, pens, and salient points to press on policymakers; we had a few speakers (including the mayor); and we held a wicked raffle. Hundreds of letters were written that day, hundreds of questions were asked, hundreds pledged their support.
I felt like we had moved the world forward, made it better, just a tiny smidgen.
Plus it was fun. I had no idea how to arrange an event and I still probably don't, but the point is, we pulled it off, with both a lot of help and a lot of responsibility. Even being an inch closer to seeing a train rumble through Bozeman made 2 months of free work well worth it.
Next project given away: I made a free website for my mom, because she's my mom. Again, no experience with websites, which is why I brought in the big guns (Drew Schug, SEO extraordinaire) while I directed the project and co-wrote the copy (I got the writing gene from mom). We went from a 1995-esque yellow monstrosity to this: a site mom can edit whenever she likes, allowing her much more advanced communication with her customers.
Once that was wrapped, I had a chance to pay back BORN for all their help with the Train Day event. They were hosting a Harvest Dinner, which would feature the culinary skills of Montana Epicurean applied to crops and meats from local suppliers. The growers and farmers would be on site to speak about farming in Montana, and attendees could get a closer picture of where their food came from. My job? Posters, handbills, and the like, for a pro-bono rate and two tickets to the dinner.
The dining hall was packed, lots of hard questions asked and good food shared. Eating well, and even moreso sustainably, is a huge privilege, and I felt lucky to be in the top echelon of the world that has the financial power, at least some of the time, to choose between ethical eating and processed foods, instead of choosing between whatever is available and starving.I felt lucky because, not only can I work for myself and not starve (see year 1), I can work for myself, charge little or nothing for it when the time is right, and still not starve. This luxury I owe to my amazing non-non-profit clients, who have generously loaded me up with more and more paying work. While I gave away several projects last year, my bottom line stayed the same as the year before.
The goal is always to help my clients (both paid and not) get a large return from my efforts, but the truth is, I get a lot out of this gig too. Thank you to all of my clients, for helping me push my boundaries, for getting creative, and for fighting the good fights in 2010.
