We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Connor Henkle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Connor below.

Connor, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I see generalist freelance creative services as somewhat ‘corporate’ in style.

I considered for a long time whether to be a generalist vs a specialist outlet to the clients I’d serve. My rational fear was if I were to go the specialist route, the Well of Work would run dry, and it would get stuck in a feedback loop of boring similar work.

I could not be more wrong.

Choosing to niche down among the freelance motion design industry has opened up more opportunities, more fine tuned systems, a higher earning AND learning potential, more clarity on what we are here to provide and in turn attracts the RIGHT kind of client that needs you for what YOU solely can provide.

Most importantly, it sets you ablaze to take ownership of your life and make it what you want it to be.

Another reason I love this decision is because it takes the ‘salesiness’ out of the lead generation. Simply sharing your process and creativity is more than enough to attract your ideal customer if you are doing it correctly and authentically.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hey! When I’m not moving pixels around on a screen, catch me on a long drive somewhere new, beasting a caffeinated gym session, or fantasizing about my Chipotle bowl order.

Currently, I build stadium motion graphic packages for sports teams and events, and I love it! It allows me to flex my design and animation muscles, and incorporate business principles that have a direct effect on the way I earn and live. A graphic package is essentially a large collection of video deliverables of crowd-energizing animation sequences rooted in the team or event’s brand and design.

I got my start in my college dorm room with my laptop and YouTube access. I found you can really do some damage with these two tools. At university, I did work a design job, a video and photo job as well as interned for the university’s Athletic Media Department. All the skills I now use were self taught, scraped together from corners of the internet, and combined to reverse engineer the life that I want to live, always leaving room to evolve.

I am most proud when I see other designers I respect greatly use some of our work as sources of inspiration or example of what good design and animation looks like.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Without a doubt, sharing as much free value as possible on social media that demonstrates your expertise on a subject is the best thing you can do to attract your ideal client. It’s like making little deposits of goodwill into your audience and building that trust, and validating you as a supplier of that good or service.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Since this is a service business, there was very low capital expenditure up front to get going and you can scale it up to suit your ideal lifestyle. The goal is either for growth and learning, or sustainability and retention, and I am currently growing and learning more about what I want out of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cjhfx.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cjh.fx/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorhenkle/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cjh_fx