We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Kleist a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

For the first year-ish of business, I was *not* charging industry standard rates. I was *severely* undercharging. In fact, I’d be working like 14 hours a day on people’s websites, and still not paying my bills. It was wild.

One day, I had the bright idea to go into an internet rabbit hole and see what other people charge. I was flabbergasted. It was like, 4-10x higher than what I charged at the time. And as someone who grew up lower middle class, with artist parents, who became an artist herself, my money mindset was absolute trash. So I automatically assumed “these people must have way more experience than me, blah blah blah.”

I ended up joining a few entrepreneurial Facebook groups and becoming friends with people who come from a different background / money perspective than me. Over the course of the next year, I raised my prices to the industry standard. All of a sudden, I was making a full-time income and working less than 14 hours/day.

The lesson here is this: don’t go a full year without understanding what the industry standard rate is. Looking back, I can’t believe I did that.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hi there! I’m Sarah Kleist—brand & website designer, performing artist, and content creator.

How I got started is kind of a crazy story. Long story short, I’m a New York City based stage actor, so when the pandemic shut down my entire industry *and* my restaurant job, I was bored out of my mind. So I started helping my friends with their websites just to pass the time. I realized I had a real knack for it when they’d post their new-and-improved websites to their socials, and I’d get so many inquiries asking “how much do you charge?!”. At the same time, I started posting content on TikTok (@skleist) and kinda blew up talking about personal development stuff, business, networking, etc.

Two years later, my design & content creation is a full-time business that supports my stage acting career, which I am blessed to still be able to do as well. (I just wrapped up a show out of town in the Boston area.) I’m truly living my dream life!

When I started all these things, I was nervous that design clients wouldn’t take me seriously because I’m also an actor. I also thought casting directors wouldn’t take me seriously because I don’t sleep-breathe-eat acting. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Everyone thinks it’s so cool! And I think the thing that makes me stand out in all these arenas is that I do have all this varied knowledge and experience.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I feel like I always had an entrepreneurial spirit, but I was always so confused on how to start. So when I accidentally started my business by offering free design help to friends, I was like “Ohhhhh, that’s it!? All I had to do this entire time was do something for free for a few people and have them post about it?”

I wrote this blog post about the exact process I used to start my biz. Hopefully it’s helpful! https://sarahkleist.com/how-to-start-a-service-based-business/

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

On the same note of offering friends free help in the beginning—I didn’t realize that was an option because so many people are always like “you should always get paid for your work”. And while I think that’s true (once you’ve uncovered that you’re actually good at something), it didn’t occur to me that you can offer an experimentation phase for free. If I hadn’t been so bored out of my mind from the pandemic (and financially supported by unemployment), I would have never thought to even give design a shot, much less charge for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sarahkleist.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kleistcreative
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@skleist?lang=en

Image Credits
Ruby Olivia Photography