Welcome to 2025! I'm glad you've made it.  I'm here too (by the skin of my teeth it seems).  I'm not going to sugarcoat my experiences from last year;  I've gone from a young (yeah... I said it), ambitious, eager startup freelancer to a slightly older, disappointed, concerned freelancer.  I've had 0% growth in an industry that I thought for sure could benefit from my services in graphic and web design.  It turns out: if I can't sell myself and what I strive to accomplish, who in their right mind would expect me to sell theirs for them?

In my defense: I'm not a sales guy.  I never have been.  I do marketing, and marketing strategy.  I do front-end web design, and I like to think that I'm pretty handy at graphic design.  Despite my confidence in these areas, I don't have clients and I hardly have any portfolio to prove otherwise.

Do I throw in the towel?

From an outside readers perspective, I could go and say something positive or popular about "never giving up" and "keep going, it'll get better!"  But honestly, there's a lot of personal things that are complicating an otherwise great business plan of blitzing my local market to build my own client-base.

In spite of my own personal conundrum, one of my favorite "in-between-tasks" moments is going through local creative services and there social media profiles and watching the successes of them (even my competitors).  That's one of the reasons I'm working hard to crack into this field full-time still.  No matter who I see winning in their craft, I'm rooting for them.  I've never met most of them and there's certainly no reason for me to go out of my way to support them, but I would.  I love this industry and the genuine people behind it.

Marketing can certainly seem disingenuous with us posting memes and "buy our stuff" images all day, every day.  But behind the machines and the well curated branding strategies, are people who are simply good at what they do.  Sometimes they're just punching through the numbers, hitting deadlines and getting through their task lists.  Other times though, if you watch closely enough, you'll see people trying to be creative, and push through the muck of whatever is popular today.

I applaud all of us creative marketers out there! Whether you're a seasoned veteran or cutting your teeth in the industry;  keep creating!  No matter whether I can keep on myself or not: I'll be watching your successes with keen enthusiasm.

Here's to all your successes in 2025!

Kyle Zentmeyer