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This episode I have been excited to discuss for some time – and have shared a lot with my discussion with Todd Sheridan Perry in Episode 9 about his experiences on working from home in Seattle. I have had so much personal experience both launching my own visual effects studio of 30+ people and working on many feature films, as well as working remotely for myself from my home both in Australia and in Los Angeles.
With technology and many tools and the internet booming more each day, there is no excuse for many of us to break free and set up our own visual effects services, or renegotiate our lives to work from our own environments we choose. Whether it be leaving to set up our own studios, or working remotely from home – or going the more adventurous and taking our services on the road – working from beaches or other remote locations! Anything is possible!
I urge you to sign up to the VIP list this week as I am starting to send out a lot of goldmines of information pertaining to these subjects, such as email scripts I’ve personally used to get work as well as many tools and other great and vital information to help you. I want to reward those who are serious about taking the next step with these tools so they’re exclusive to those of us taking action!
Leave a comment or a review, I’d love to hear you thoughts – December is our big month so dive in and let me know how you go in the comments section, I promise to read every comment and reply as much as I can! I’d love to hear from you!
Over the weekend I will start sending emails occasionally related to these episodes – for instance I will be sending a few exclusive email scripts – showing actual emails I use to reach out to studios for work. For those of you who do sign up for all this exclusive free content: I just ask that you keep it to yourself, as your private bag of tricks, and for example with the email scripts don’t just copy and paste these emails and reword them a little – that’s not what these are for and they will benefit noone doing this if everyone starts sending word for word identical emails. Learn the general concept of strong communication and positioning – and apply it to your own emails, deconstruct what I’ve written and learn from it. That’s all I ask! Enjoy guys!
Always great content!
Allan, great iniciative, thanks a lot for all the free content. I need to leave a critique because I already know some people that got turned off the podcast by it. I think you ramble too much sometimes. For example the first 11 minutes of this episode are pretty tough to hear since they don’t give any information at all, just the information that you will be giving a lot of information. The episodes with guests are much better for me because you know they’re smart and you move quickly through subjects. A thing to keep in mind I guess. Thank you, success!
Amazing episode, very valuable! I have been working for games industry for a while, I think one can apply those principles wherever.
I would love to learn as well how to work remotely with real-time work, revision control, developer kits etc. instead of pre-rendered shots.
Would it be possible to touch a bit more on that ?
Great episode (as usual) and incredibly interesting topic!
Great pointers on the use and importance of communication as a key to remote work. Having done this once or twice, I completely agree that without prior knowledge from actual inhouse productions, this would be impossible to pull off.
Would you say, perhaps a bit simplified, that to do this in the realm of asset work, is easier than with shot work?
Hi Allan.
Great stuff dude! I specially liked the bit about getting more experience before take on a big studio. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a comper in Brazil but I’m trying to specialize as well in particles and dynamics. I’m studying a lot Fume and Krakatoa as well as Maya nDyamics. I’m a married guy and I’d like to manage my own time. Do my schedule. I’d like to work as many ours as I want and also get lazy as I’d like.
Thanks Allan.
Hi Allan,
I am glad I cam across your podcast! I will be writing a review on itunes later today this is great stuff! I have been working freelance from home for the last 7 years and LOVE working from home. As discussed in this episode I have had several California opportunities but, once the studios realized I wasn’t local put me on a list and I ultimately didn’t get the gig. Do you have any tips on staying busy with client work remotely? I would love to have the headache of more work then I can handle instead of the up and down cycles I seem to go through. Thanks Allan!
Hi Allan,
I’m several years out from being able to work from home because I’m just graduating, but I definitely think you should do a follow-up podcast that goes into the details of how to work from home. Sounds really interesting, and I definitely think it’s the way of the future.
Thanks!
Hi Allan,
Another fantastic podcast,I’m currently just starting out after graduating in media production so I’m looking to build up a career remotely to run concurrently with my learning.
great episode Allan
I’m particularly interested in working remotely as I’ve worked internationally for quite a few years, but as I get older and my priorities shift, I’m thinking more and more of going back to live in my home tow, but would still like to be involved in the industry and doing shot production.
Anthing you can tell us about specific aspects of approaching studios for remote work, any specific e-mail scripts you use, how to break down objections, etc, that you can approach on future episodes would be great. Also, how do you deal with currency fluctuations? I am in Europe, so if I moved back I’d be charging Euros, but possibly getting paid in dolllars or pounds. Would you adjust your rate to reflect that, or just take it? do you advise having one main client or diversifying to a few clients? Anything you can speak about the business side, I’m very interested in.
Thanks for a great podcast, glad to see someone spreading the knowledge.
Great Podcast, thank you!
I personally have been caught out on a few things you mentioned – internet speed was a huge pain on one job! luckily all sorted now!
I thought it was only me that has gone through this – great to hear I am not alone !
Thanks again!
Iskander
This podcast was great, thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Hi Allan, great episode, thanks for it. Absolutely agree with you about getting experience as an employe and then start working form home. In my case i was forced to do that – worked 6 years as a stuff and fired because of the tensions with boss and this pushes me to open my own business, so I;m freelancer for 9 years now mainly work from home.
At the beginning of freelancing it’s was really scary me not to get payment each month at the same day … I mainly do small projects directly with the client, currently one man band so i didn’t have that luxurious option to have VPN with a big studio. Several times i didn’t paid, so i want to know how you deal with that (you said that you lucky and always paid but you have some fiends who experienced that). Do you deliver watermarked materials until last payment or milestone payment ?
Some tip from me for anyone who work directly with clients – if you don’t have email or chat line about something accepted between you and the client – you don’t have it! Always ask for approval email or ask in chat (i use Skype) about approval, i learned this hard way. Also deliver the materials with something like “wetransfer” or similar which send you an email about download of your file by the recipient – hard proof that the file delivered.
I running through all episodes, can’t wait to get to the bidding and other stuff.
Keep it up man ! And thanks for effort of making this podcast !
Allan,
Thanks for all your help and sharing your career knowledge, currently i am doing the draining 8-5pm daily strain working for the man in a small town IT department. My passion has always been in 3D creations, so i have finally decided to change my career, thanks to your podcasts.
Obviously i cannot change this overnight as i have a family and normal living financial commitments that i am responsible for. So i am starting slow and creating monthly goals to achieve my 3year self-employed plan.
Thanks for all your time creating these podcasts man!!
When are you coming back to aussie-land bro?, i am up in the Whitsundays at the moment. If you need a holiday at one of our 74 beautiful islands, give us a yell, will throw you on one of our wicked fishing charter boats and shout you a beer.
cheers,