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.
