Why a Creative Industry Veteran Is Thriving as a Freelancer

When Yacco Vijn made his first viral video in 1998, creating animations was only a hobby for him. Vijn was flying around the world as a professional DJ and the term “going viral” had yet to enter the mainstream.

But the ability to connect with people online both captured his interest and generated new opportunities. Vijn quickly channeled his enthusiasm for interactive media into a career that has generated a portfolio of work that’s earned more than 75 awards, including Cannes Lions and Webbys. He’s worked with leading global agencies and launched several of his own, working with brands like Adidas, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Google, Meta, and Snap along the way.

When COVID-19 brought society to a standstill in London, where Vijn currently lives, he took the pause as a reality check. Despite the accolades, he realized he’d lost touch with some of the work that most excited him.

“Through years of putting things out there and seeing them gain traction, I’d become part of an apparatus of project managers and strategists and creative professionals,” he said. “I was less immersed in the creative groundwork than I wanted to be.”

Vijn decided to hit reset, to work with clients one-on-one and see what was possible.

Fortune 500 creative thinking for small businesses

As a multidisciplinary creative, Vijn helps brands, services, and startups around the world find a unique voice that differentiates them in a competitive marketplace and connects with their audience. Small businesses are often so focused on figuring out how to get bigger that Vijn said they overlook the advantages they have.

“Small businesses can be agile in a way larger organizations can never be.”

Vijn often tells clients they’re a speed boat while their big competitors are tankers—and it’s important for smaller brands to play to their strengths.

“One client in the hospitality sector once said that I bring Fortune 500 creative thinking to small businesses,” he said. “Small businesses can be quick, do things on a smaller scale, be more experimental—even disruptive—in the things they do. That phase is a strength rather than a limitation.”

Why small business projects don’t always have the right focus

Through more than 20 years in the creative industry, Vijn learned that pain points are often different than what a client has assumed. “Clients go to an agency because they’re trying to figure out what they should do, but they often start in the wrong direction,” he said.

For example, a company might ask an agency to redesign its website. Asked why, they might say it’s because sales are down—they aren’t connecting with their target audience. They think the lack of engagement is a problem with messaging and they want a new website.

“If you zoom in on alternative pain points, you might come to a completely different conclusion,” Vijn said. “In this example, what if the website isn’t the problem? By looking at things from a different angle, you may discover that the real issue is that the audience is buying from a competitor’s ads on Facebook while you’re not doing any social media marketing.”

Three tips for a professional reboot on Upwork

Vijn relished the challenge of starting an independent business from scratch on Upwork. “I know I have a great track record but I felt that that history—and the expectations tied to it—got in my way,” he said. “I decided to try new things, make my mark, and see how far I could get.”

Barely a year later, Vijn doesn’t do anything else. He has a solid income, a growing base of repeat clients, and a regular stream of work that interests him.

Make room to experiment

“If I underpromise and overdeliver, get the work to the client on time, and do a fantastic job, a five-star review is sure to come out at the end of it,” Vijn said.

“I set a high bar for myself. For the client, how I get to the final product is less relevant—they just want results. So I tend to try a lot of new things.”

To give himself a level of security to fall back on, Vijn commits to projects he’s confident he has previous experience to draw on. This helps him feel more comfortable trying to do things in different ways, to see whether one approach nets better results than another. “The only way to explore ideas is to find a headspace where there’s no stress or pressure—like an artist getting into the zone,” he said.

Leverage personal strengths

The essence of what Vijn does is to help businesses understand and articulate what makes them stand out. How that message takes shape, however, can change by project: white papers, blog articles, landing pages, web content, scripts, press releases, email campaigns, social media content, and more.

“I’m very good at cutting complicated things back to just a few words, at finding the right tone of voice while communicating in a minimal and concise way,” Vijn said. “Once I’ve found the right approach and really understand the client, I find my client relationships naturally expand.”

Opt for the most engaging work

There’s an adage Vijn appreciates: If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Vijn’s initial motivation was to get back to hands-on creative work, but pursuing a range of clients is also a good way to keep educating himself.

Vijn works with a balanced mix of:

• Startups in the early stages of bringing their idea to life, wondering about the best way to get the word out
• Mid-stage businesses that have a marketing strategy that’s up-and-running but want to move it to the next level, such as more engagement or better return on investment (ROI)
• Established businesses that leverage Vijn’s creative expertise for interesting new projects

“One of the things I like about Upwork is that I connect with people I’ve never met before on the other side of the world,” he said. “They’re excited about an idea and that enthusiasm is infectious—I listen to them and I’m in. By working with different clients, I tap into that energy on multiple levels.”

One business Vijn worked with, LQA, assesses and improves service quality in luxury hotels globally through detailed evaluations and analytics.

"I started writing a few hooks and headlines for the LQA mobile app back in September,” Vijn said. “Since then, I've written copy for their new app, marketing collateral, ad campaigns, and two websites.”

“We are going through a significant digital transformation and wanted to work with the best to ensure our highest leverage public touch-points communicate effectively. Yacco has been a critical partner in this transformation.” — Chris Ball, LQA

Build a community on Upwork

Professionals on Upwork who’ve earned a Talent Badge of Top Rated or higher can build a network with other members of the Upwork community—you never know who you’re going to meet.

An app developer once engaged Vijn to design the user experience (UX) for an app he was building. He’s become Vijn’s go-to coder for troubleshooting and the developer turns to Vijn when his own clients need help.

“Forming a community of people you like to work with on the platform gives you extra resources to draw on when a client needs it,” Vijn explained.

As AI levels the playing field, companies still need to stand out

“Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t going to go away,” Vijn said. Human creativity—the ability to come up with something new, clever, smart, and short—also isn’t going anywhere. If anything, Vijn said, as more businesses integrate AI into their systems and processes, the human touch might become even more important.

“Here’s the thing: If everybody uses AI, you still need a differentiator. What makes one company more interesting than the next?” he asked. “The baseline of work is getting better and that’s probably a good thing. But to create a campaign that hits a 10/10, or even a 8/10? You still need someone to craft it—and it is a craft, it takes experience and expertise. AI might get what you want to say, more or less, but it takes a professional to make it great.”

To find out how AI can affect the quality of his own work, Vijn incorporates AI tools into his workflow in a number of different ways, using it as an assistant for his day-to-day work. For example:

• Image inspiration. “I can quickly create an image that may not be good enough to use, but I can share it with someone else to guide the search for a photo or image that can be used,” Vijn explained.
• Cooperative writing. “If a sentence doesn’t sound right, I can ask for 10 different versions then pick the best one or use those to inspire something totally different,” Vijn said.
• A shortcut for brainstorming. “I tend to generate ideas quite quickly, but AI can iterate on that and often comes up with stuff I’ve never thought about.”

Vijn finds it interesting to experiment with different ways to use AI. “It’s exciting to have a new way of working, to play with this new technology and see how it can make my work better,” he said.

Upwork makes space to do outstanding work

Asked whether a new agency might be in his future, Vijn doesn’t know—but he said he may have grown too used to the luxury Upwork’s platform offers.

“One of the things I appreciate is that the administrative information is crystal clear,” he said. For example, he knows an invoice will be paid with no need to send reminders, do a bunch of follow-ups, or negotiate the price once it’s already been decided. “The thought of having to do that all manually again, it gives me stress just to think about it,” he said.

Instead, he’s invested in helping his clients achieve remarkable things and growing his independent business. He’s excited to see how this new way of working will continue to change for the better.

“On the one hand, there’s AI to add to the quality of my work,” he said. “On the other hand, I have a community that’s become my own talent pool on Upwork. Both of these things lift the quality of the output, and I think that’s fantastic.”

Looking for creative talent to help achieve your business goals? Connect with Yacco Vijn or have a look at other business writers on Upwork.