Designing Logos & Content Marketing

Ian Paget: Jeremy, I think we should go back to the beginning. I think it's always good to hear people's origin story. I think that's a good starting point for this. How did your journey into graphic design or logo design first begin?

Jeremy Mura: I think it all started when I was a little kid. My dad was into IT, so I was into computers, and my mom was very creative into art and music. When I was in high school I ended up choosing multimedia and, in that class, I actually got to use Photoshop for the first time. And so, my love for art and computers was combined, and I fell in love with Photoshop, and I think that was all the way back in 2009 or 2010 when I was still in school. So yeah that's when I sort of got into design, and then I graduated in 2011 and I went to university, and my first two years I actually failed. I tried to get into a prestigious university called University of Sydney. I'm in the city in Australia which is pretty cool. But that part of my life I wasn't really focused, and I was lazy, and partying and stuff.

Ian Paget: Had to be.

Jeremy Mura: And then in 2014 I ended up doing a course. I'm at SA institute also known as Quantum College. It's a global college which is cool and I did a two-year bachelor of graphic design as my major, and we learned all the stuff about Photoshop, Illustrator, in-design, did some print work, did magazines, and posters, and logos, and learning all the basics, and that's how I sort of got started in design and eventually got into freelancing and all that other stuff. So that was the origin man, and yeah, I've been doing it ever since.

Ian Paget: Sure. And in terms of freelancing so I know you now work for yourself. Has that always been the case from the very beginning? So you went straight into working for yourself basically?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, I did work part time as a checkout person. So working at a grocery store. I did quit… I think I quit in 2016 in July. So yeah, I started freelancing around 2013 and because I sort of learned design, consuming YouTube tutorials and stuff like that, and started learning about how to make money on the side. You know my parents were divorced so I just lived… my mom was a single mom at the time so had to make extra money to help pay electricity and internet and stuff. I was just hustling on the side and going on like freelance websites. One of the sites I used was like Air Tasker it was like an Australian based site. It's sort of like Fiverr or Upwork but you work one on one with the clients. Yeah, I just did that on the side and tried to get work with friends and family basically. Nothing major, just small budgets, really small budget projects, a couple 100 bucks here and there.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think it's good that you mentioned actually that while you're at university you did any job that you could basically just to get some money coming in, and then on the side you could then start building up your own client base and stuff like that which I think is really cool. And I think that's how a lot of people start out, that's how I began doing freelancing stuff. I was quite lucky, I was able to find a job that included graphic design and I was doing a few bits on the side. But yeah when you first start out, when you want jobs you pretty much take what you can really, don’t you?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, take everything.

Ian Paget: Well yeah, if you need money. I find it a big thing now like you're probably in the same place now, you're charging what you're worth now, right? And when you begin in terms of like working out prices I think it's a different position now because when you go online to try and find out how much you should be charging and stuff there's a lot of advice. When I started out there wasn't any of that so I didn't really know what I should be doing. How did you find working out prices and stuff like that when you began? Was it just like picking a number out of a hat basically and going from there?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, I guess you're right. It was kind of like that I was just throwing out numbers really. For me the goal was to keep growing and improving myself, and so each new client I tried to ask for a little bit more, so the first one would be like 100 bucks, and I was asking like 250, and then I went to like 500, and so each time I kept trying to grow higher and higher, and I tried to find ways of how to package up my services and add more value, and then obviously when you add more value the scope increases and you can increase the pricing, and so that's what I was really trying to do. But obviously as I said I had that part time job so that was like providing me with most of my money to go out and buy books, buy courses, and invest in myself. But yeah typically that's how I did it. Now it's more, you know you have a formula, and you understand design, and the value ring so you can charge more. Yeah that's sort of how I did it.

Ian Paget: And I read in an interview that you did, one of your biggest hurdles at the beginning was actually having a process. Do you want to talk a little bit about that as well, like maybe the challenges that you were facing and how you figured out that you actually needed a process and maybe we can go into what that process is now as well?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, 100%. For me, we've all heard about the magic reveal, that was my cool thing I did back in the day, I didn't really have a cool process, I didn't used to do discovery workshops or brand workshops and get on a call with a client, I'd always just do stuff over email, I knew how to do a pretty good logos, but basically that's it, I didn’t know how to do much else. And so yeah, I was just like trying to do the best I could and then deliver everything but there would always be clients that want so many revisions and I'll be on like fifth revision, and then I'm like this is… I started getting frustrated and I'm like not making much money, and you start resenting the client, and a lot of the times it was like that, I wasn't in control, and I wasn't guiding the project because the client would just tell me what to do and so yeah, that's what happened when I didn't have a process. But now it looks totally different because I learned… I started listening to Chris Doe and Sean Wes and all these people and stuff, and I started learning how to actually be more strategic and be more practical.

Ian Paget: Okay. I think there's a few things that we can go into detail with this. So I think we'll save process for a little bit unless it's relevant to this. But you mentioned about the client coming back to you, wanting changes basically, and I think that's going to be a common thing for graphic designers at some point in their career. I've gone through that myself, and I do agree that having process it does ion out, and I think with experience, you learn how to handle it. So what did you do to combat that? To figure out how you could avoid clients coming back to you so many times and to get that control back.

Jeremy Mura: Yes. So once I started implementing different parts of my credit process, now my process has about 7-8 steps in it. And so, what I started doing was actually doing discovery workshops instead of just going, hey you all can do a logo, here's an invoice and just start designing. I started jumping on a call first. First thing nowadays I get on initial call to see for a right fit, if we're not the right fit either because of the budget or because I don't like the personality of the person, or the industry, and then once it's all good, we do an invoice take 50%. Then we do a discovery call, another discovery call. We talk a little about the uses, the goals, the brand personality, the voice and tone of the brand. Everything that relates to the business and the brand we nail that down. And then so from that, then we jump into mood boarding or stylescapes.

Ian Paget: You said that first step that you mentioned where you on the phone with the client, understanding who they are, what they are about, all that sort of stuff prior to implementing a process. So when you first started out, am I understanding right? That’s part of the process that you didn't do.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, basically I didn't have that upfronting.

Ian Paget: And I mean in terms of significance, I'm sure you noticed the massive difference understanding that actually made right?

Jeremy Mura: Oh yeah, it made a tremendous difference. Not only does it change the perception of the client, they see you as more valuable, they see you as a professional, they see you as like a consultant that's helping them guiding them, and you're asking these high value questions, you seem like you're trying to actually help them solve the problem instead of just designed for the sake of designing, and so that was the shift was all about the mindset and just taking control.

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly. I mean through this podcast I do talk quite a lot about brand strategy, and there's a lot that can go into that. I think as logo designers we don't necessarily need to be brand strategist. I don't think that's needed, but you do need to be able to at least understand what that strategy is. At least have an understanding of who they are, what they're aiming to do and like that. I think what's good with this is that you don't need to be a brand strategist, and you don't need to do like strategy workshops and all this sort of stuff that I do obviously talk about on the podcast, but in terms of making that big difference and sharing to clients that you're more valuable, and getting around the issue of clients wanting lots of changes, and taking charge and all that sort of stuff. Just asking questions and understanding who they are. If you don't do that in your process then you're going to get a whole lot of issues like you did and just implementing that telephone call made a massive difference. So anyone listening that isn't currently doing that, please start doing that now because that's just going to make a massive difference to your process. You're going to be able to up your prices and the end result is going to be a lot better because you just know what you're trying to achieve.

Jeremy Mura: Exactly, you're more objective and it's less subjectivity in it.

Ian Paget: Absolutely. I'll let you carry on talking through your process because I interrupted that.

Jeremy Mura: That's cool man. I love it. So yeah, initial call, then we get an invoice and then we do the discovery workshop, and then from that we do stylescapes, and then stylescapes help us refine the direction before we spend so much time design the logo, and designing the identity and the assets. We can just focus on getting like a direction. So usually I'll do like two concepts sometimes three. I know a lot of designers these days do the one concept approach, but I don't know maybe we can talk about that, but from that stylescapes… and then once you pick a stylescape, I then go into the logo design portion of it. So I love doing sketches, looking at my books, Logo Lounge, or Aaron Draplin book, or made by James book, James Martin.

I'll check my books first, do some sketches, go online, Pinterest, Behance, Dribble, the usual type of sites we go on and just start… after all that research and then sketching and then just drop into illustrator and start… I try and pick the best solution, the best design. And so, I find that a lot of designers don't sketch enough. And so, from that sketching in that research process, it really helps me refine and pick the best design. And so yeah from that logo design and then we start designing the rest, we design the presentation, do nice mock ups, add patterns or icons if the brand needs that, and we're sort of designing that colours, typography, all the main parts, and then any assets like if there's a business card or a poster or a fly or whatever will throw that in and show that in the presentation to show what's possible.

And then yeah after the presentation, revisions, then we go through after revisions, then we package it up and then basically to end it off, I usually send a link with a recording. It’s sort of like a little training video. I use loom and I say here's all the files, here's how you can use it in Canva or whatever app they're going to use, and I drag and drop it and show them how they can use it. And then I send my google review link in the email, and the link to a drop box that has the package of all the files, and so it helps me get a review and it helps me just be professional and sort of that's basically the rundown of my process really.

Ian Paget: I love some of the later steps of your process because in terms of creating a logo, I think a lot of graphic designers run through similar process, but things that stick out for me, what you spoke about is the recording. I think that's a great idea. It's not something that I currently do and actually on occasion there are questions like common questions I personally get. So I use Logo Package Express to create files. I do modify it slightly in general. The system for that was pretty similar to what I was doing anyway and obviously it's at the click of a button. So for anyone that's not using Logo Package Express, please go and look at that. It will save you weeks of work per month. But yeah, on occasion, a question I do get is that people will say, oh the white versions doesn't contain anything, you know, things like that. There's always these recurring questions and actually creating a video that shows okay, this is what's what, this is how you can use it here, this is the file type that you need for this, this and that. I think that's a really great idea. And I'm going to assume is that tailored to each individual customer as well?

Jeremy Mura: Yes, it is.

Ian Paget: That's really great. And how long does that take you to do?

Jeremy Mura: I try and keep it short and sweet, probably like 10 minutes. Yeah, because it depends how many files and how many… if it's just a one person, if it's a solopreneur, they're probably using Canva, they don't have a design team. If they have a design team, they probably know how to use all the stuff, so usually 10-20 minutes. I'll do a quick video, nothing too major.

Ian Paget: Sure. And I think that's absolutely fantastic that you do that. It’s is a really great idea, and I think it's utilising one of your really strong skill sets which is video and that's something that I do want to go into a little bit later on in this conversation. I think that's a great idea. You mentioned that you present more than one option and I think this is good to talk about because you're obviously aware of the one concept approach, something I'm aware of. You don't present just one option, I also don't. I mean I've put a lot of thought into this, but it would be good to hear your take on this. Why do you present two rather than just the one direction?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, it's a great question. I just feel like it's good to give clients choice. And obviously like when we design a logo, there's so much stuff like options and other designs we have on our art board and other concepts we come up with. So it seems a bit of a waste in a way sort of because like you can show two different variations. I feel like it's good to… it makes the client feel that they're part of the process. If you just say here's the best solution for you. Obviously, most clients want… like they're paying for the results, right? Because you're the expert. But I feel like when you add a choice, it allows the client to own that design more because it's like I picked it in a way, and I feel like that's why I like doing multiple directions. Yeah, I think that's the core reason why. But yeah, it's obviously fun designing other mock ups and stuff, but sometimes it does add on the time that it takes a lot longer.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah, absolutely. I've put a lot of thought into this because I've considered going down the one concept approach and there has been the occasional client where I have done one…

Jeremy Mura: Okay. How did it go? 

Ian Paget: Well, if I was to present one solution, I wouldn't just go in and present one logo. When I did that, I presented a story. So it wasn't just a case of going, Tada! here’s the logo, it was more of looking at this is the challenge that we had, this is the exploration I did. These are some of the directions that I was looking at. This is the reason why I feel this direction is stronger. So it's basically telling a story and it's still showing the work, it's still showing lots of different options and directions, and I do appreciate that there's a risk in showing lots of ideas, especially ones that don’t potentially work, but in cases where I feel really sure and it does happen, most of the time I show, I like to show options, because my argument is if you created a brief and gave it to 1000 logo designers, you're going to get 1000 different solutions.

I mean there could be similar personalities and similar themes, but you're going to get different directions. So in general with logo design, I feel that you can have more than one solution for a company, but the key thing is like the aesthetics, the styling and stuff like that. And I'm sure that there might be people listening that will argue that, and I do agree that generally a single graphic designer can come up with the best solution but in order to actually know exactly if that is the best solution, there's a whole lot of more stuff that you need to go through, like testing and all that sort of stuff, and I don't offer that as a service because if I was going to offer that as a service, I would have to substantially increase my prices.

Like if a client wants less options in order for me to be 100% certain that one option is the right solution, then my process needs to drastically change. Like in fact I would argue that I need to charge like hundreds of times more because I would want to do like really in-depth strategy, I'd want to do proper testing with the user base and be able to have physical evidence and prove the backup, what I've done. I think if I was going to do the one concept approach, I would still present lots of options. Maybe even more so than I do now, but I would have all these additional steps so that I can say to my client this is the solution, this is the data to back that up. And literally there would be no room for argument because the client wouldn't have any input. If they want a solution, this is the solution and this is all the data to back it up. Like I said, if I was going to do that, I would offer that.

Jeremy Mura: But you would charge way more.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I'd have to charge significantly more.

Jeremy Mura: More time, more research.

Ian Paget: So based on my target audience and based on the price point that I'm aiming at, it's just unreasonable to present one. I personally want to present options and involve the client in that process. If they want to do their own testing, then I'll advise on how they can do that, which I have done with clients. But in general, I will always present more than one, and in the occasions where I am that confident, I would tell a story. So that's how I personally approached it.

Jeremy Mura: That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I think that's really cool and everyone's got different opinions. I think just do what works for you, what's right for you, and whatever makes your clients happy and I think that's the key thing, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think what's really important with process… so something I found really useful doing this podcast is speaking to lots of graphic designers generally people work in slightly different ways. They might have found something, taken it, adapted it and made it their own which you've done and we can all learn from that. But is any one particular person, right? What you need to do if someone is listening to this and they're just starting out. Take something and start with it, start using that framework or that process and see how it works for you. And with the one concept approach, I've done episodes on that, there's really strong arguments for presenting one to be fair, and I do agree this is a good process, but like with both of us we've acknowledged that information, we're aware of that, but we've made the choice that we want to present more than one option. So there is no right or wrong, do what's right for you.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, that's it, man, that's the thing. I will say if you're going to go for the one concept approach, you've got to make sure that one concept is amazing in the work and the mock-ups looks great.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I mean, like I said, I think if you're going to present one, present a story, so that you can explain how you came to that solution, and it's not just a case of going this is what I think is right, it's more like based on this and this, this is what I believe is the best solution for this situation. But yeah, I've done the whole episodes on that with people that have specialised in that. And there's a really strong argument. So I'll link to some of those episodes in the show notes for anyone that wants to maybe consider the one concept approach and go into that direction. But yeah, I don't think we need to go into that in any more detail on this. I think we should talk about content marketing because I know you're really big on content marketing. I believe the content marketing is really important for anyone that wants to make a living as a logo designer. So I think prior to going into the video stuff with content marketing, what's worked well for you?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah. So for me of the biggest things is doing a YouTube channel, and I've gotten clients from YouTube because they saw me do a logo for a certain type of business. I remember I did like a logo for a beauty brand and then I ended up getting a client from Florida to do some packaging in a logo just from one video. And the funny thing is once you create a video on YouTube, it's evergreen. So that means it stays on your channel forever unless your channel gets taken down or you take it down. So you got to think long term the longevity of having content, it works while you sleep because while you're sleeping your social media pages are always up. So people are always on the other side of the world that are watching your content.

So for me, I like to teach everything I know that's what I learned from Sean Wes and Nathan Berry. They said teach everything you know, and that was one of the key concepts that really made me just push content so much because not only are you building your personal brand, you're building a reputation, your authority in an industry by teaching it, you're also solidifying that knowledge in your mind. So when I'm teaching how to do a logo or teaching how to use a tool Illustrator it helps me remember the shortcuts, and helps me remember the tools and the concepts a lot better in my mind.

And so it's like a win-win situation and that's why I believe it's one of the best ways to get clients. And then now, like I expanded to Skillshare Instagram, and TikTok, and yeah it's got me clients, it's got me brand sponsorships, brand deals and I have multiple income streams now from content. So I don't just do like design work, I actually do more than that now, which I'm very grateful for. But yeah, but that's what got me to do content. And I used to listen to Gary Viyella and so he was a big influence back in 2016.

Ian Paget: I think it's funny a lot of people follow the same people and I think people like Sean Wes, you mentioned his name, big fan of him, big fan of Gary V, big fan of Pat Flynn. Like a lot of people seem to know the same people, and they all do this same thing where they are sharing everything that you know, and I've been doing that and it's been phenomenal, like literally the result of sharing everything that you know online, I can't even stress how valuable it is. I don't know, it's just a gut fill, but the internet is young still, like 20 years ago, it didn't really exist. It's really young. It's still very much in its infancy and we are a generation where we are learning from these people that were experimenting with that and playing with that. So taking those things that marketeers and experts do and applying it to graphic design, we're the first generation to do that. And there's so few of us that it's literally making a massive impact. So if you're listening and doing that, then you're going to naturally just get known within the industry because there's not many of us really.

Jeremy Mura: I think a lot of us look at Chris Doe and obviously him and his team dominate the industry.

Ian Paget: Oh, absolutely.

Jeremy Mura: I think it's good because he encouraged a lot more creatives to step out of their shell and actually put stuff out there because I feel like a lot of creatives and designers are a bit introverted. I'm not sure why. I think we all start off like that. But yeah, encourage more people to get out, step out there, put out content, do videos, and put your design work out. I think that's encouraging. It's good.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I wonder with the whole introverted thing. It's just a personal opinion but I think it's because… and I don't know if this is the same view but more outgoing people don't stay at home in front of their computer all day long. But when you are more introverted you're spending time… so as a kid I used to draw a lot, and I think that's probably quite common with kids, and you're more likely to sit down on your computer and play with the tools. So I think naturally being less outgoing, you're just naturally just drawn to some of these things. I think that's why most graphic designers are not that outgoing, but then it's a real advantage if you're more confident and more outgoing or your if you're just not a confident person but you're willing to step outside your comfort zone and do things like podcasts or videos and stuff like that. So have you always been fairly comfortable on camera because you're really great on video, you seem like a natural, you’ve always been like that or was you uncomfortable at the beginning?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah. If you look back at my old, my first YouTube videos, I was all over the place. I wasn't talking properly, I would stumble over my words, I would say “Um” and “Uh” a lot, and I wasn't the best. So for me, I feel like… I was always like a outgoing person in school, I did sports, I was very loud because I'm a vogue, I'm Italian speaking and my family is very loud, and it's normal for us. So I grew up in that type of family environment and at school I was a bit of a people pleaser and class clown, so you know, I didn't care what people think. So that sort of helped me…

Ian Paget: So you was naturally drawn towards the camera.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, basically. But obviously I got better with time even sitting down and hearing a record. Yeah, I got better from just doing YouTube videos and then short form videos, and now I can constantly jump out of podcast, get on a video, do a live stream without any trouble. I just can go with the flow because I’ve practiced and done it so much now and that's why I seem so natural, but it was a journey and a process.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think that's important again for listeners, for anyone that's not doing this, you need to start, and you're not going to be very good at the beginning. Like in my podcast, if you go back to the first season, it's awful. I mean the contents good thankfully. But like my whole presentation style, the quality of the audio, there's lots of pops in the audio. But now if you listen through or you skip 50 episodes or whatever from the beginning, you hear that immediate jump in quality and that's the same with your stuff. So if you go back to your first thing and… you have to start somewhere, and it's very much a case of just gradually improving. So I think that's good. 

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, agreed.

Ian Paget: I want to ask you about TikTok, so I don't really use TikTok. It's probably a generation thing. I don't know. So are you getting clients from TikTok?

Jeremy Mura: For TikTok, no, because I just started using it actually because I was sort of against it, but I started using it probably like three months ago properly. I started uploading my…

Ian Paget: I'm seeing more and more graphic designers starting to create TikTok style content for everything. Because I remember when TikTok came out, obviously short form video kind of done before, but done in a different way. That's kind of cool. Like I can see the appeal, and everything else has copied it. So if you scroll through like Instagram now, it's got like the video thing, it's the same sort of short format video content. So you mentioned that you're experimenting with, have you learned any lessons from creating TikTok style short video content?

Jeremy Mura: Well, for me personally, what I do, my strategy is that I mainly focus on Instagram shorts and reels. And so, I upload that same video on TikTok and YouTube shorts. And then obviously for YouTube, I do one video a week where it's more of a targeted specific topic. But so, I just upload the same videos at the moment. With TikTok… I'm not that big on TikTok to be honest, compared to my other platforms. But what I've learned is that people love watching before and after shots and videos of tutorials, like how to create this in Photoshop or Illustrator. People love seeing the result of something creative like, oh, how did you do that? And I don't even know if it's all designers watching that type of content because some of these people get a lot of views and stuff. So it's all about being fast paced, showing the result of something that you made, making it very easy to digest. And yeah, just make it engaging really and that's really it.

Ian Paget: I find like Instagram what are they called? The short videos? I don't even know what they're called.

Jeremy Mura: Reels.

Ian Paget: Yeah, reels. I find it really engaging and you can just sit there and scroll through and it's like a form of entertainment. And it's like, if you got like 30 seconds, you can just sit down and flick through it. Like it's really engaging, which is really surprising and it's no surprise that pretty much every single platform has taken this approach and done their own thing. But you know, I do feel that TikTok was the beginning of that sort of trend going through. So it will be interesting to see how that pans out for you. Like if you do end up getting clients, or if it does end up bringing in people to your courses and your YouTube channel and anything else that you're doing because it's… In a long form content, you can obviously do a lot more with it. You can have sponsors and you can do two minutes sort of sales picture, I guess within your content, you can't do that with these short format things. So, it'd be good to see how it sort of takes shape.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah. Did you hear recently to add on to that? I think it was Vidcon, one of these conferences recently happened, these TikTok people with like millions of followers and stuff, none of the audience showed up to the event, but for the Youtubers, they had heaps of the audience actually show up at the physical event.

Ian Paget: Interesting.

Jeremy Mura: So they were saying like people on YouTube, their audience is a lot more loyal and they actually connect with the person more, whereas TikTok, I think people are just flicking through and they don't actually care about the person behind the creation, and so there's a bit of disconnection there, which is kind of interesting.

Ian Paget: It's interesting. I guess from focusing as a business point of view, you could use it as kind of a way of attracting people towards your main content.

Jeremy Mura: Yup.

Ian Paget: And not necessarily focusing on growing that particular audience, but dragging them into something… That is really interesting.

Jeremy Mura: Bring them off platform. And I think for me, I'm trying to use it to get more subscribers on my YouTube channel or bring them to my Instagram so I can grow those platforms because they're more better for monetisation and my building my personal brand, I think. 

Ian Paget: Yeah, so it's more about… Man, I'm making assumptions here because to be entirely transparent, I haven't really spoken to anyone about the short form video content, and I'm not really sure how people are using it. I've obviously seen some things like James Martin made by James, he's doing some cool stuff now that seems to be appropriate. I do see it being a trend that's obviously going to ripple through the industry. But it's interesting to see how it's going to take shape and I think it will end up being like Twitter, because remember when twitter came out, I mean that's really old now but when that came out people were having the same arguments like how is this actually impacting your business? But it's all it's more focused on growing your brand and your reputations and drawing them into the other content and that sounds like… that's how you're using it and I assume other people are. But yeah, I can definitely see the value. Do you find it takes very long creating a short version versus a longer video?

Jeremy Mura: I'm not going to lie creating content takes time. Like it takes a couple of days of my week. That's why I can only take on a limited amount of like design projects or brand identity projects. You can only take on probably a few months because I dedicate a lot of time to creating content. Even though I'm very fast at it. I've got to templates and a fast system. I use Premiere Pro and obviously Illustrator Photoshop to create my stuff my covers and all that. So yeah it takes at least a day of like writing and researching and then another day of like editing designing, so at least two days a week like I'm spending towards content.

Ian Paget: Sure. I think we should talk about that as well because you clearly have a routine. I think it was in one of the interviews that you did that you wrote that you do content writing in the morning. I think having structure in your day like that is really important. So do you mind talking through how… I mean you briefly explained it then about having two days for your video content, but how are you structuring your week or your day to make sure that you are getting all your content done and putting it all out there and doing client work on the top of that because it's a lot to do.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, 100%. And I think for me, one of my strong suits is I have a good strong mind set, so I don't get stressed and stuff even though some days like apps are not working or things are crashing, but my week goes basically on Mondays I focus on doing riding so and researching and stuff so for content so Monday is more of my chill day because a lot of my clients are overseas and a lot of people… because I'm in Australia I'm ahead so on Mondays it's a chill day, just focus on like you're riding and doing like this development, I typically wake up at around like 8:30 9:00 o'clock. Then my day gets started and typically I take breaks like at lunch and then I go to the gym in the afternoon in my garage and then sometimes I go play basketball in the afternoon and I work till like 06:00 o'clock sometimes a bit later, depending on the projects. But yeah, Mondays that Tuesdays and Wednesday’s and Thursdays I do like client work.

So if it's a design project, I work on that and so in the meantime, I don't spend the whole day I'll spend like maybe half a day doing a star scape or design and then I'll switch to content. So typically, on a Wednesday or Thursday I feel my YouTube stuff so my videos if I don't have a client work, and then I'm editing on those days and then on typically on Friday it's more of a quiet day, so Friday I focus on like upgrading and updating my templates or updating my website or working on like Behance, like updating work for my portfolio. Yeah, typically that's how my week goes. Some it's pretty structured but I don't go crazy with my calendar and stuff like… these days, what I do is try and set one day to have cause that nowadays because I've had some times I set calls and then clients don't show up to the calls, it sort of ruins my flow. So now, yeah, I set my times on one certain day, so that's sort of how my week is.

Ian Paget: Sure. Having a structure like that, fantastic. One question I do have, so you allocate like three days per week for client work, the other two days is time around client work is creating content. So content is a real focus for you and it's a significant amount of your time and I think that's a good lesson that everybody can learn from. In terms of booking in clients, I think it was prior to the core you mentioned that that you had like four client calls yesterday. In terms of like booking them in and knowing when you're going to have something ready for them, how are you booking that into your calendar? Do you just cue it up? So like you just block out like a week for a client project. How do you go about allocating time for client work?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, that's good. So basically, for typically like a logo or brand identity project, typically it'll take like a month. If it's a long… it's a bigger project will take maybe two months.

Ian Paget: For one project, right?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah. For like one project, one client.

Ian Paget: Would you would you allocate that entire month for that one particular project or do you book multiple clients in at once and hop between several projects over that month?

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, that's what I do. I do the hopping things so I'll book them in and then I'll tell them sort of how my schedule is and if we have to like push it back a bit some. Most of the times the clients are not urgent projects so I can spend a little bit of extra time to be honest, because they're like start-ups and stuff. So yeah, I'll book in, you know, say I would say like four clients for a month, two of them might be a content client and the other two might be will probably be like a logo design client. And so I'll just bounce between them because I'm very fast. Like I'm pretty quick at what I do because I've done it so many times. I can typically smash out like a good portion of the work in like one day if its content, I can get it done within a day. Like if it's recording a couple of reels or designing couple of carousels that's easy. But yeah that's basically what I'll do, man. I think I've mentioned before, I'm very selective on who I take on. I don't like taking on low budget clients unless it's for like a family friend or something. So I'm very selective. 

Ian Paget: Sure. And with such a structured system and the need to continually create content, do you ever have the problem where a client project takes longer than you expect? And do you ever need to push your content out the way or do you always prioritise content and just push the client work back? What takes the priority in that situation?

Jeremy Mura: I feel like I've actually been dealing with that recently, like struggling with that.

Ian Paget: I mean I think there are certain jobs as a graphic designer that you can just kind of pretty much do anything. So I used to work for a web design agency and with a website you can kind of take a formula and throw it together, being completely honest. So if I needed to get a website done in an hour, I could, because I would take, I guess almost like templated layout, swap out a few images put in the text. You can systematise it and you don't really need to think too much about it, but I think the logo design and brand identity, we're creating something new and it's really hard because there's no system that we… I mean you can take… you can create a system but it doesn't always result in the solution. Yeah, you're having to create something that doesn't exist and it's quite challenging, so there's always going to be times where you might think, oh yeah, I get that done in two hours, two hours later.

Jeremy Mura: Yeah, I agree with you man. That's the thing. Like sometimes the research might take longer. Like today I've been working on a stylescape two of them, and I was trying to get it done within now, but it took me like, you know, 2 to 3 hours, so it took me extra. And so for me, I think clients… I want to make sure that my clients are happy. From Tuesday to Thursday, I prioritise my clients as much as possible, because at the end of the day I want to get a five-star review on google and I want them to refer me.

Ian Paget: Absolutely.

Jeremy Mura: Because they're going to get me will work in the future. So for me, I think client satisfaction and then enjoying the experience and making sure that they're not felt like neglected. I feel like that's more important to me, but I will admit, I do have days where I'm like, oh no, I haven't done my YouTube video yet because other things came up on that day or I've got a meeting or whatever, so every day is different you know, even though I have a bit of structure, you have to be adaptable so that's what I've learned really.

Ian Paget: Absolutely. And I'm glad that you said that because I do think it can be quite in intimidating when… like if you don't have your day week so structured it can be quite intimidating if you do start working in that way and things sometimes take longer. It's just good to know that you do need to have that little bit of flexibility in there so that if things do take longer then so be it, and it sounds like in your case you will always prioritise your clients over your own stuff but you still make sure that you get your stuff done which is.

Jeremy Mura: I’ll save it for later. But I'll stay up to like 10-11 and finish it off.

Ian Paget: It's good that you're doing that. Cool, we've got maybe like 10 minutes or so left. So I think another thing that that's good to talk about. So we've spoken about how you got clients, we briefly spoke about how you are doing like Skillshare courses and stuff like that. But the key thing that I want to get at is that you're diversifying your income, you're not just relying on clients coming in, you're also building I guess assets and stuff like that that have value to you that will bring in a passive income or an ongoing income. Can we talk a little bit about that? So what are you doing to like beyond just client work? And I think it's good to make it relevant to logo design because you're someone that is doing that. How are you diversifying your income? So you're not totally 100% reliant on clients continually coming in?

Jeremy Mura: Yes. So I have around seven streams. I did have a couple more because I was running an academy like a membership, but I put that on pause because I was just doing too many things. I've got my design work, I've got my YouTube AdSense. So money I make from ads from my videos, I do brand sponsorships. So that includes like content for Instagram and YouTube. I also have affiliate deals. So for example logo package express. I'm going to affiliate with them. I make sure I get a kickback when someone buys a product. I have my own products and templates. So I sell like logo packs, brand identity kits, Instagram, carousel templates, stuff like that. Number six is I have like my skill share courses, so classes on design and logos and all that stuff. So that brings in a good chunk of money, actually brings in 50% of my income actually.

Ian Paget: Wow, that's amazing. That's all through your training material. 

Jeremy Mura: I've been doing it since 2016 YouTube and Skillshare, I've done it since 2016. So like seven years now and so I built it up and then the last few months I do coaching. But it's more like, I don't promote it as much, it's more on the side like one on one coaching and then I invest in crypto and stocks, so that's like all my revenue streams. More than others, but it all trickles in. So I'm a big believer in wealth and by building wealth you have to have multiple income streams. You can't just have a day job you know.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah.

Jeremy Mura: That's sort of… it makes it harder to build wealth long term.

Ian Paget: I mean, I think it's important when you're building a business to not be completely reliant on one income stream, because there's going to be times where I guess the state of the world could impact whether clients are going to want to invest in identity and I mean being completely honest, probably one of the first areas where companies will  part of course is on branding, which is absolutely terrifying for people in branding. But if you are diversifying your income and having these different income streams and spending time creating other content that's bringing in a passive income.

In my case like this podcast, I have a sponsor for it. I also do affiliate promotion and stuff like that. So you know what we're doing now is creating content, I feel that you need to as a business owner…  and I would say if you're freelance, you're a business owner, even if you're working for yourself. You need to consider these different income streams. I think it's absolutely amazing that like 50% of your income is from Training material and I'm going to be straight with you. I'm really surprised that you're only allocating two days of your week to creating stuff that's bringing in 50% of your income. You need to be like slowly pushing those clients to maybe two days a week.

Jeremy Mura: I’ve thought about this many times. One of my things I was thinking about Ian is that if I stop client work completely because that's one of the thoughts I had like just be just teach and do educational stuff. But I thought like how can I be relevant to design as if I'm not doing actually.

Ian Paget: I agree, I agree. That's right. I really admire that actually because there is a lot of people out there creating content and they do become less relevant to the actual industry because they're just not familiar with what's being put out there and it's commendable that you are wanting to do that. And I guess also if you enjoy graphic design, you need clients in order to have a proper problem to solve and figure out. But yeah, I mean just hearing what you're saying, 50% of your income, you probably need to have a think about like can you step that up in some way, maybe you can take that even further and make it like 75% of your income and just do like still do client work but just less of it.

Jeremy Mura: And like charges charge more and like just do specific clients.

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Jeremy Mura: That's what I want to do. Like just maybe one client every few months, but it's like a big project.

Ian Paget: Yeah, so you're still relevant, you're still working clients still getting that creative. You could also consider… I think it's Ian Barnard, he does lettering. He doesn't… as far as I'm aware, I mean it might have changed since I last spoke to him, he doesn't take on client work unless that client can be worked in content. So literally people are paying him to create things that is content, which I just find absolutely amazing that as a creator, which you know everyone listening to this is probably a crater in some way. If you're lucky enough to get to get to the point where you have a large audience and you're creating content like you are, you can actually have people that will pay you to create the content for those videos which is something that you could consider like you could take on client work but that client work… the agreement needs to be that that whole process is your content. So your client work is your content creation and that would have a domino effect.

Jeremy Mura: Actually, sorry to cut you off. I actually added into my terms and conditions now that I'm allowed to record and use any of the content on my channel social channels. So now clients are aware like I can use it for educational purposes, so I record like all my… all the discovery cause and all that and so I can put it in a YouTube video, so I'm definitely trying to implement it a bit more these days.

Ian Paget: That's amazing and you know, knowing that they're happy to have the cause and stuff recording so you can document it. That is really cool. That's a good place to be in. And I think, as a for anyone that just wants to specialise solely in Logo Design and they are a content creator. That is cool that your clients are basically paying you to create the content, which is a good place to be in. Well, I think that's a really good point to bring the interview to a close. I think this has been really good, it's been really great hearing your story and learning how… things that you're doing, I think your big thing is obviously the video and how you're implementing that into your process, your client communication and ultimately, it's going to be the thing that's going to take you to that next level, because you're great on video, you're creating these training materials, you're turning your client work into content. And yeah, it's a good place to be in man. You're doing very well. So thank you so much for Jeremy for doing this podcast has been really great.

Jeremy Mura: Thanks Ian. Thanks for having me on, really appreciate the opportunity, man. And it was great talking to you.

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