A lot has happened in the past month or so.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. School of Motion - Virtual Workshop

2. Camp Mograph - In-Person Workshop

3. Upcoming Guest Speakers for $200k Pro
   
   ↓ FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ↓

4. NYC Networking trip details

5. October Launch Numbers

6. Coaching a $450k Freelancer

1. School of Motion - $200k Networking Workshop

After a conversation with School of Motion’s Creative Director, EJ Hassenfratz, at Making Midwest this June, he invited me to do a guest workshop for their All-Access members.

So on Sep. 10, I got to have this session, that really ended up being more of an interview with Joey to a live audience of 100+ members. Had a blast sharing everything I could for an hour and answering lots of questions about networking, increasing your freelance income, and my philosophy for growth.

In the past, I’ve had a decent amount of people find me because Joey mentioned me in a podcast episode or from the SOM Client Code course where Joey interviewed me for it. So I suspect this will be another helpful source of more motion designers discovering me and building interest in my program(s).

So far, I think I’ve gotten about 70 new subscribers and several LinkedIn connections from this.

2. Camp Mograph

First off, I almost didn’t go.

I was sick and really not starting to feel better yet. But I knew I would regret not going, so I took all the meds and got myself out to Elbert, CO. Luckily after a day or so, I was feeling perfectly back to normal… enough to play several hours of soccer over 2 days.

The best way to describe Camp is that it’s about 150 motion designers going to summer camp for 5 days. It’s kind of an anti-conference event. There are speakers and workshops, but it’s more about having fun, being creative, playing (soccer, game room stuff, basketball, skateboarding, archery, etc.) and partying into the night with secret raves and karaoke.

Julie and Dave tapped me to do a networking workshop. So for Friday and Saturday, I ran my “Powerful Networking Made Fun” workshop 5 times for a total of about 80 participants.

I’ve hosted hundreds of Zoom workshops… but doing these irl workshops was something special. I feel hooked and want to do more!

Piggyback on conferences?

It did give me the idea to run an accelerated version of $200k Program for a day or two before conferences.

This is very much a WIP idea, but I think we could make this happen. I very much want to do this.

Dani Donovan

I chatted with Dani (a fellow workshop giver) the last full day and it was a highlight for me. Neither of us do creative service work anymore and we’re both running a business that formed out of the work we were doing.

It was great to have a long conversation about the unique struggles of running a business. We both work with our spouses, feel like we don’t know what we’re doing even though some things seem to be working pretty well.

Anyway, stoked to have many future conversations with her.

Pennant Team

In the final 30 minutes of camp, I had a conversation with Tim, Shaw, and Ben of Pennant studio about the power of writing. Artists are very familiar with sketching ideas… but not so used to writing as a linguistic “sketch.”

We talked copywriting, LinkedIn posting, DMs, journaling, getting teams on board with writing and sharing online.

And then I looked at my watch and realized I had 30 minutes to pack up on the opposite end of camp and get my bags to the bus or I would get left behind!

Can’t wait to catch up with them as well.

They also seem quite keen to run a workshop or at least a guest speaker event for $200k Pro.

Networking King? NetworKING?

My wife calls me the Networking King. But to give you an idea of the kind of networking I did at Camp Mograph, they made a physical yearbook with everyone’s face, name, handle, and website. This is genius, btw… all small conferences should do this.

I went through the yearbook at the end and put a check next to everyone I met and had at least a bit of a conversation with. Out of 150 people, I connected with like 122 people. And I wasn’t trying to do this. This isn’t a brag, nor do I think this is what everyone should be doing. It’s just what comes naturally to me.

As an introvert who has learned to LOVE meeting people and seeing how we can help each other grow, this is my favorite thing in the world to do now.

3. Guest Speakers for $200k Pro

Both of these guest speaker events came from conversations at Camp Mograph.

Kyle Hamrick overheard me talking about my goals for Full Harbor and sent me a text after Camp offering to help however he could. What a guy 🤘

And Ryan Hoog and I set a time to chat after playing soccer with each other at Camp. I love what he’s doing and want more eye balls on his BKKD tool he’s building + I think my $200k Pro members will get a ton out of a chat with him.

We will be chatting with the one and only Kyle Hamrick about:

• Building relationships in the industry

• Creating educational content

• Creating, spotting, or taking advantage of opportunities

And after being annoyed with the tools he was using to run his freelance business, he decided to build a tool that fit the motion designers world.

It’s called BKKD.

He’s going to show us how BKKD works… and he’s going to give everyone access to the beta.

Q&A will be around anything… his work, how he built BKKD, what the plan is for BKKD in the future, etc.

Oct Launch Numbers

We’ve got a good group in the Oct cohort of $200k Program. However, I had loftier goals than what turned out. Big learning: I’ve seen a negative pattern that I am working on fixing for next launch.

Read more

Here I was, thinking Project $2M was the same thing as *Project 200k… just a little bigger goal. But there are a couple differences that I wasn’t really considering.

*Project 200k was my goal to make $200k from freelance motion design. Started in 2021 and I achieved this goal 3x.

In most ways, Project 200k and $2M are similar

• Big public goals

• Forcing functions for me to step into a new identity

• Meant to push me out of my comfort zone

• If I put all of my effort into this singular goal, I can do it

The Differences

Read more

Why am I broken like this?

Yeah, a bummer of a thought. But sometimes it’s the valleys that catapult us up to the peaks.

The beginning of 2026 was the worst. We said goodbye to our soul dog, Mr. Willoughby on Jan 2… followed by grief, major depression, and crippling self doubt. It was ugly. But I found myself talking to a psychiatrist which lead to me getting some much needed support and fast forward a bit and I am feeling back to myself again.

But this unkind question kept bumming me out all summer. “Why am I broken like this?”

Why do I need a ridiculously large, public goal to have the motivation to make the moves I already know I want to make? I can struggle immensely to do so many basic things like, send a weekly newsletter, reply to a simple email, or take out the trash.

Some evidence that big, public goals are something that work for me:

1. Project 200k
   I set out to see if I could make $200,000 from freelance motion design client work. All of the details were shared publicly on LinkedIn and in my newsletter. This type of transparency is not normal in the industry, especially when I announced my goal.
   Spoiler alert: I had three $200k years as a freelancer (no coaching income).

   

   The tweet that kicked if off

   

   The tweet announcing it was a success

2. 36,500 Pushups
   In 2018, I set out to do an average of 100 push-ups every day for the year. On December 31st at a New Year’s Eve party dressed up as Clark Kent, I did my final 25 push-ups to the applause of Wolverine, Poison Ivy, Joker and more (it was a superheroes versus villains theme).
   
   I felt like a super hero in that moment!

   

   

   

Spreadsheet charting my progress throughout the year.

The kind voice now says…

I have learned to be kinder to myself and embrace the way I am.

So now I say to myself, “Hell yeah, brother. You figured out something that works for you! Don’t beat yourself up for this… lean into it!” We sure have a way of being a real dickhead to ourselves sometimes, right? Jeez… what’s with that?

What’s in it for anybody else?

A valid question… especially for my potential customers.

To my current/future customers

1. I always aim to provide 10X more value than I charge.

2. One of my values is to make money by adding value, not by tricking people into buying things they don’t need.

3. Scaling my business to $2M, will enabled bigger initiatives with more impact like:

   1. Hiring amazing coaches with niche specialties

   2. Hosting in-person events

   3. Sponsoring conferences

   4. And if I succeed it’s because I’m helping people at scale in a meaningful way

To other ambitious people

1. Scaling my business to $2M was not on anyone’s bingo card. haha. This was not an inevitable next step by any means. So If I can do it, you can do it. I’m no more special than anyone else.

2. You can learn from me. In this sub stack, I’m sharing everything:

   • wins

   • losses

   • excitements

   • setbacks

   • new connections

   • financial updates

Subscribe: Free vs Paid vs Founder

I will be sharing regularly. This Substack is a place for me to stay accountable to myself (and you) to making continuous strides towards my goal.

Free subscription

General updates will be free. But the main reason I’m starting this Substack is to have a safe place to share all the details. And that’s where the paid section comes in.

Paid subscription

All of the juicy details will live here.

• Financials

• Stats

• Strategies I’ve tried and how they’ve worked or failed

• Deeper insights I discover along the way

I have set Substack to the lowest $ amount possible. I’m not trying to make money on this… I just don’t want to share all my data and strategeis with the whole internet.

Founder subscription

The Founder tier is for those who want a little more.

You get everything in the Paid area + a quarterly Zoom call with me and fellow Founder tier folks where I will share updates and answer any questions you have!

Recommend amount: $300/yr… but if you don’t have that, you can name your own price at anything above $30 (the lowers amount I can put the annual amount at).

I’m trying to make this as accessible as possible while giving myself a little bit of privacy so that I feel more at ease “telling all.”

Subscribe now

P.S.

Thanks for reading Scaling to $2M in Two Years! Subscribe to receive new updates as I try to hit this impossible feeling goal.

P.P.S.

I’m new to Substack, so if you see me making n00b mistakes… let a brother know 😘