Tales of a Designer

The Business Side of Things

When I first started doing freelance work on the side, it was was all fun. I’d get small projects, with a verbal agreement stating how much would be paid, and then I’d have at it. Then only design was the name of the game. A young, naive, thought I had was, I could do this all day, no problem. If only it were that easy.

Now that I’m going through the motions of having my own company, I’ve come to realize that actual design work is a very small percentage in the overall scheme of things. To make it that much harder, I don’t have a business background at all, so all of the aspects of business that I’ve learned up to this point have been through trial and error.

But once things get professional, it’s almost all business, whether it’s chasing down leads for new projects, negotiating project budgets with clients, contracts/proposals, meetings, overall communicating through emails, etc., it never stops. After going through all of the business aspects to get the project rolling, design seems to be the easy, less exhausting part.

Not all of the business stuff is bad. I will always enjoy the designing, but I’ve also come to like some of business stuff and I’ve learned a ton within the last few months. I especially like chasing down leads. That is by far the most interesting aspect, to me, because you find out whether you’re a good fit with a client or not. I also take lots of pride in being able to explain to others what we and how someone would benefit from the services we provide.

Meeting new people is always interesting to me, so I guess that is why I enjoy chasing down leads and learning what other people do. Whether you get along with new client leads or not, you always learn something about them and/or how to do things differently for the next time.

The aspect that I’ve come to like the least is paper……….unless it’s a check! I just don’t deal well with the legal/paper stuff. It gives me a headache, and I always feel like I leave little loopholes for something to go wrong. It’s just a tedious process having to write up proposals and contracts and nothing really excites me about it, however, they are extremely important to every project, and I’d never start a project without one.

Since my company is so new, there is still tons to be learned about the business side of dealing with clients as well as running a small design shop. I am in the process of wrapping up a great book called The Business Side of Creativity, and I would highly recommend checking it out. It packed with useful information on how to get started, and running your own business.

A question for other freelancers/designers……..how do you cope with the business aspect of this industry?