The Freelance Artist’s Manifesto Boot Camp

I am a senior at Princeton, and took a two-​day FAM boot camp with the hopes of preparing myself for life as a freelance writer after I graduate. With Marlo’s advice, I feel so much more confident about venturing down a career path whose total independence can sometimes seem daunting. As a result of the boot camp, I now have a base knowledge of life practicalities like taxes, health insurance, etc — all of which were especially helpful to hear from an artist’s perspective.
Something I wasn’t expecting from the boot camp was how much I learned about MYSELF. Marlo’s take home drills encouraged me to have a good think about my life goals, and the types of environments that are most conducive for me to try and achieve them. I imagine I have shaved years off my career trajectory with her wise words!
A must-​take-​advantage-​of opportunity for anyone thinking about making ago of it as an artist — as Marlo says, you are never too old to try!

Attended a condensed version of the Boot Camp at Yale. Marlo did an excellent job of delivering a great deal of information in only a few hours.
The Boot Camp is a great way to evaluate your perspectives on career and art, and helped me to ensure that my own perspectives were aligned with my artistic goals. It was especially helpful in figuring out where one’s own ideas or preconceptions can in the way of getting where you want to be as an artist.
If you’re looking for practical advice from someone in the industry, this is also the place to look. Having multiple lines of income can be daunting from a personal and bookkeeping perspective, and Marlo has all the right advice to help you get everything in order and keep it that way. I highly recommend the program to anyone considering a career as an artist.

I found the FAM Boot Camp extremely valuable by inspiring me and most importantly providing focus. Before FAM, my own creative projects were always something I thought about but I lacked the direction to move forward in. FAM provided me with usable concepts I could use to start working towards my creative goals.

Being a senior in college, majoring in Musical Theater, is probably one of the most difficult transitional phases I will ever go through. My goal is to move to New York as soon as I can after graduation. There is always that question «Do I know everything I need to know? Is there something I haven’t been told? Are there questions I have not asked?» Turns out there was so much I hadn’t prepared for mentally and emotionally. I made huge discoveries in the FAM Boot Camp that I haven’t been able to make in school. There is something to what Marlo does and says, as well as how she says it that changed my perspective and have made me so much more confident and excited to move to NYC. I made some new friends in the Boot Camp and learned an immense amount that I have not been taught at my institution. Thanks again for all your help!

The FAM Boot Camp with Marlo was the best use of a weekend I’ve spent in a very long time. I took it right as I was finishing my MFA in Filmmaking from NYU and was about to launch very uncertainly into supporting myself as a freelance filmmaker for the first time. Before FAM and grad school I had always worked stable salaried jobs and I really didn’t know the first thing about where to go for insurance, or smart ways of generating money in NYC through temp work etc while I built a steady source of work for myself as a freelance editor etc. Marlo was SUCH an inspiration to meet in person. She was one of the first artists I met after college who has built a balanced life for herself that puts work in the service of her pursuit of art first and foremost. I think meeting her and learning how she made temp work serve her own pursuit of creative work was what inspired me to finally make the leap myself and begin freelancing around my work as a filmmaker. Since the workshop, she has also put me in touch with the person who has become my trusted financial advisor (who specializes in working with freelance artists), and connected me with temp work agencies I will use when my freelance editing work has a lull (it hasn’t since I started seven months ago so far, knock on wood).
So basically I couldn’t recommend Marlo’s workshop more highly if you are someone who is considering making the jump into freelance work, but you’re not sure exactly how to take care of all those practical details that will make the difference between you making the leap responsibly and doing so with no clue how to support yourself in the long run.