Coffee with Independent Creatives
Featuring Michelle Schulp, Founder and Owner of Marktime Media
Coffee with Independent Creatives shares stories, best practices and tips from independent creatives who designed and built their own businesses. How did they innovate? How did they overcome business challenges and persevere? How did they find their niche? How did they build their brand reputations? Follow this series to find inspiration to advance your own creative business.
Michelle Schulp is founder and owner of Marktime Media, a visual communications design firm offering UI design, WordPress theme development, and digital design strategy. Schulp is also highly involved in the AIGA and WordPress communities. She holds several volunteer positions at AIGA Minnesota including serving as a board member and the current director of technology. She also travels around the country volunteering and speaking at WordCamp events. I met with her to hear her story about how getting involved and volunteering in creative and professional communities has enhanced her career as an independent creative.
What compelled you to freelance and become a creative solopreneur?
I’ve always been the kind of person who has a problem with “because I said so” or “because that’s the way it is” or “because that’s how we do things”. I’m not okay with those answers. I need to know the why. I need to be able to do something. I need to be able to solve the problem better. I realized as long as I’m working for someone else, I can always be stopped as opposed to trying to get to the bottom of things and change it.
The other part was I was working long hours at an agency and I kind of had this thought: If I’m going to work 80 hours it should be for me and not for someone else. I should be reaping the rewards of that. If I was going to work myself to death, I wanted it to be because I felt like it and not because someone else told me to. It’s about owning my own destiny.
Do you serve a niche industry? What type of clients do you seek to serve?
I’ve had clients all around the spectrum in terms of industry, but what they have had in common is the type of people that I find myself drawn to working with are the ones that are very passionate and enthusiastic and believe in what they do. And to me that transcends what the industry is.
If you are a toothpaste cap manufacturer into solving toothpaste problems, I’m going to be into that too. Because of your enthusiasm and your dedication to what you do comes out in your work. And I would be thrilled to present that to the rest of the world.
That’s the case, whether it’s an agency or a small business or a corporate client or a nonprofit or whatever. The people that really believe in what they do and can talk about it for hours are the ones that like to work with.
What helps you acquire clients? Is it referrals? Or your web presence and use of social media? Is it a combination of things?
My primary source is referrals based on my physical involvement in different communities. I’m an active member of the AIGA. I had been a chair of the Solopreneurs committee in the past and I’m now the Director of Technology. I help out at events. I’m on the design camp committee.
I’m also very active in the WordPress community. I’ve spoken at more than 40 technology and design events. I give webinars. I’m on podcasts. I travel. I meet people. A lot of my [client] work has come from all of that community work. It’s not a scalable system, right? Like it doesn’t grow beyond me. But I enjoy teaching and helping people. And so I just embraced that as my main marketing strategy.
I did make sure that my voice was kind of unified everywhere. So if you met me in person, and you went to my website, or you followed me on Twitter and then you heard me give a talk or whatever — all of that feels like me. And all of that leads back to being able to get in touch with me very easily. My favorite story is that I got a multi-project client from City Pages showing one of my Instagram photos of a pretty sunrise. Again because it linked back to who I am and I make it very clear what I do.
If volunteering in professional design and tech communities has evolved to become the focal point of your marketing strategy, what have you experienced and learned from implementing it?
I did not know volunteering would manifest itself the way that it did. At first I went to events to meet people that could help teach me. Right? And then as I got more and more involved in the community, I wound up being a person in a leadership role. That was the part I didn’t see. I didn’t know that I would wind up being a person who could give so much back.
At this point I go to things and I’m the one helping people. I’m paying it forward to the people that I used to be like and hopefully they’re going to become the people like me now. And then you know it snowballs. So it’s really cool.
I did not see that it would grow into this rich thing in my life. Now I travel everywhere and I have friends all over the country I met from becoming involved in communities like AIGA and WordPress. I’ve given presentations and even a keynote. It’s personally enriching and it does help to lend me some authority. I just love meeting the people after I give a talk. Like someone will approach me and say what I presented helped solve a problem. I love that.
How do you balance all of your time commitments to your business and to volunteering in your communities?
I could be taking on projects all the time that are volunteer based and it’s been a learning process to not overcommit. Nowadays I kind of try to approach it strategically.
I want to feel like whatever I’m doing I can make some kind of a difference, whether that’s helping people, growing a community or being able to influence the direction that an organization is going. I do also want it to be a strategic for my career. I want to enjoy it. I want to I enjoy the people I’m around. We can all help each other. It’s gotta to be a little fun, right?
Personal growth, community growth and career growth — all of these three things kind of have to be in balance overall for me to dedicate time to something.