How Much Money Can Designers Make?

Key Takeaways

you guys have asked how much can a designer make so let's talk about [Music] that over the past two weeks I've been working so hard and so stressed out that I didn't have time to swim or do any physical activity or even cook healthy food so I'm starting to feel tired and uncreative so I'm taking a little walk to try to get the juices flowing and starting next week I'm back on active healthy regime [Music] so the other day I got a question in the email asking me so how much can a designer make now I thought it was actually quite a funny question because that depends on so many things such as where you live how much experience do you have what kind of clients do you work with but I still want to answer that now when I just started as a designer I also used to ask that question a lot and I would kind of Google average designer salary but these days I actually think that's the wrong approach and and that's actually a bit limiting and let me tell you why do you know there's this story I don't remember names and numbers but there was kind of like for years people could not break the Olympic record for running 100 m or something like that for years it has never been broken and then one year somebody broke the record and then the same year 16 other people broke the record because once people knew that it's possible to break the record then their minds changed they knew that it's possible and they wanted to achieve that as well and they did that and I think it's the same with with salaries so the question isn't like how much other people make it's how much do you want to make do you want to make like 100 thousands millions billions and then try to see if other people ever did that and if they did you you can try to kind of see how they did it or learn from them so for me kind of the thing that really changed how I see money thing was when I worked at a as a full-time employee and the guy working next to me Works only 2 days a week and he was making the same amount that I was making full-time he was making for only 2 days a week so that was like why do I need to work 5 days if other people can do that same amount of money in only 2 days and after I realized that it's possible it took me a little bit of time but right now that's what I'm doing I only do client work for 2 days a week and then it it's enough for me so that I can invest 3 days of my week without pay to work on prospr and the same thing with Prospero I have seen people who have created products and made millions of dollars from that and so I thought why don't I do that myself so now I make that investment to do that because I know that it's possible might take time might not succeed 100% but I'm trying to do that because I know that's possible so what I encourage you to do is try to find people who are making what you want to make or you know much more successful than where you are now and try to learn from them hang out with them you know I'm not saying mentored but you just realize that it's possible and there's this cliche like you're the average of the five people that you hang out with and it's true if you hang out with like kind of Broast designers who don't make any money you're probably going to stay around that area as well but if you hang out with people who make lots of money and you're friends with them they're going to teach you how they do it they're going to share their clients with you and you're probably going to step up to their level eventually so that's how I would think about that anyway 9:00 now time to do some client work so I've updated to iOS 10 and played with the widgets a little bit and I've already had to actually design a widget for my client's app so that was a cool experience I'm actually not sure how I feel about the iOS 10 yet and is heading out for a lunch with a friend right [Applause] [Music] now so that was a great lunch with dom he's a friend of mine who just got back from the MIT media lab in Boston and it was really interesting to hear about kind of new technologies and Manufacturing and stuff that's going on in the world and in China China is pretty crazy I'm really I really want to go to China to see what's up over there anyway heading back home to finalize some client work and then heading to my client to show them what I've done today [Music] [Applause] so the week is now over I like finishing the week at my client's office we always eat snacks drink beer so it's kind of fine way to end the week had another crazy week hope you had a good one have a great weekend and I'll catch you next week [Music]