2020 Mentor


Yvonne Hangsterfer

Design Lead & Founder at Flowspoke

Entrepreneurship

Uncover the Journey of a Self-Employed Designer

Many 9-to-5 workers dream of self-employment, but it remains a dream for most of them. As designers, there’s a good chance you’ve already worked as a freelancer—you might have built a website for a family member, designed a logo for a friend’s business, or picked up odd jobs on Upwork and/or Fiverr—but the prospect of founding your own design studio or agency, however appealing, might seem simply too daunting.

Yvonne has been self-employed for most of her career and has learned all kinds of lessons the hard way. In the last five years, she’s dealt with legal issues, struggled with business development and self-discipline, and weathered financial downturns. All the same, she can’t imagine working any other way. Whether you’re interested in taking on more freelance work or building a full-fledged studio, Yvonne would love to help prepare you for the wonderful, frightening journey into self-employment.

All Levels:
  • Must have: a curiosity for freelancing full-time or starting your own agency
  • Should have a basic understanding of what it’s like to work full-time as a designer (whether in-house, at an agency or freelance)
Session Topics:
  • Getting Started with Entrepreneurship
  • Freelancing 101
  • Legal and Financials
  • Business Development
  • Starting your own studio and building your team
Takeaways:
  • List of best practices and resources from each session
  • Sample General Services Agreement
  • Sample Statement of Work
  • Sample projections spreadsheet

Yvonne Hangsterfer is an entrepreneur, digital designer and web developer with a diverse background spanning tech and business. After years of noticing common technical gaps on teams of all sizes, she was inspired to start Flowspoke. As marketing tools continue to evolve, Flowspoke’s full suite of design, web and digital marketing services bridge the gap between idea and reality. Yvonne is a strong believer that technology should be transparent and user-friendly, and she embraces this mindset as the design and development lead across all of Flowspoke’s projects.

Linkedin: Yvonne Hangsterfer

Talk to Yvonne about:

Dumplings and Female Entrepreneurship