That said, the first few years (for me, and others I've met) is an uphill battle of selling time, gaining experience working on a lot of different things, hoping for a break.
At a certain point you hit a ceiling. For me, around 5-6 freelance clients.
This is the breaking point.
You're at the ceiling of both your income and your time. You can chase bigger checks but bigger checks mean less time, less time means more stress.
Now your job is to start saying no.
Examining all of your projects, skills and relationships to identify the results that people are repeating back to you.
For me, that was:
"Jack, you explained this visually better than I can say it."
In a mess of web design, video, branding, product design, I started to cut.
At this point I'm working on one project, in one design program (keynote), cashing one check (painful in the short term, but necessary).
Then I start building process around this specific focus.
This new focus means we can take on 5x more business as a practitioner, publish content every day, build a brand, a community, and develop products that deliver results while I'm asleep.
When you're learning, anyone that'll pay you is a potential client. (and that's not a bad thing)
The pain of hitting the ceiling may be the only thing that gets you thinking differently.
The eventual goal is to make your business your only client, and let it work.
Everyone starts somewhere, for most people this is learning on the job or an extra curricular pursuit.
Your time is worthless.
2/ Result generation
As you get more competent, your skill set becomes more and more marketable. You can generate a result independently of the infrastructure you learned in.
The internet makes it possible to build projects in public to validate demand in real-time.
Visualize Value didn't begin with a very specific business plan, it was simply a curiosity (philosophy, business, mindset) combined with a set of competencies (branding, design, marketing)