I spent years thinking unpredictable income was just the nature of running a design business. It’s not. Everyone wants consistent income, but few do consistent actions to get consistent income. Consistent action gets you consistent output. Inconsistent action gets you inconsistent output. The consistent action you have to put in to get consistent income is outreach. Send 5 outreach messages every day. You will have consistent income in 1 year, if not sooner. Almost no one does this. Most quit after a few weeks. The reason no one does outreach is because you didn’t need to before. For the last few decades, demand has been so much greater than supply that you could run an amazing agency just on luck. Clients would find their way to you. That is no longer true. Doing good work isn’t enough, because so many more people do good work than in 2017. There’s so much great work out there. Clients have their pick. So good work doesn’t stand out in the way that it used to. You have to find a different way to stand out. Right now, that way is to get into their inbox, regularly, with better things to offer them than they can find elsewhere. (That‘s always been the way; we just haven’t needed to resort to it as much as we do right now.) Save clients the time and headache of shopping around, and go to them with something amazing. Don’t let your pride get in the way of having a lucrative and fulfilling design business. If you want predictable income, go do the actions that allow you to predict it.