How I went from shop assistant to freelance web designer in 3 months

How I went from shop assistant to freelance web designer in 3 months

If you're going to read my blog posts every week, I want you to know who they're from. I want you to know about my past, my journey as a designer and how I can help you.

Basically, I want us to become friends!

So if you have a spare 10 minutes and you're curious about who these emails are from, read on. I'm getting brutally honest about my journey today.

The start of it all

In 2010 I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. One day I wanted to be a teacher, the next day I wanted to be a writer. So, I didn't do anything. I waitressed in Pizza Hut for a while so I could at least bring in a bit of cash, and I worked in telesales for day. (Six hours of cold calling and I was outta there.)

In 2011, I worked in as a shop assistant for Calvin Klein Jeans. It wasn't the most glamorous job but it paid the bills. My boss became seriously ill and had to leave for six months, so I took her place as manager and learned what it takes to manage a department, deal with angry customers, handle employees, work ridiculous hours and hustle towards sales goals (or suffer the wrath of Head Office if I didn't.)

I didn't know it at the time, I was learning what it took to be my own boss.

How To Create A Contract For Your Design Business

How To Create A Contract For Your Design Business

As all freelance designers and creative entrepreneurs know, contracts are a necessity when working with clients, no matter how big or small the project is. 

Why?

  1. Contracts provide you and the client with a description of responsibilities. It helps you both understand who is responsible for what. 
  2. Contracts secure payment. 
  3. Contracts protect you if you encounter problems with your clients.

Most designers do have a contract in place, but it's usually either (A) an unprofessional contract they wrote themselves (B) a contract they created from bits and pieces of other designers contracts, or (C) a template they found on some shady website they can't even remember.

5 ugly truths about becoming a freelance designer

5 ugly truths about becoming a freelance designer

When I first decided to become a freelance designer, I had big dreams about what it would be like. At the time, I worked a boring 9-5 job that didn't fulfill me creatively in the slightest, so the thought of being paid to design and do what I love filled me with SO much joy. 

I followed lots of design bloggers and I was always in awe of the pretty moodboards they had created, the beautiful Instagram profiles they had curated, and the wonderful testimonials from wonderful clients about how wonderful the design experience was. The life of a freelance designer looked beautiful. But that's probably because I was looking at it through rose-tinted glasses.

I know there are lot of people in my community who want to quit their jobs and become freelance designers (or start other kinds of businesses), so I wanted to take the opportunity today to share a few truths with you.

How to get clients from Twitter

How to get clients from Twitter

Twitter has recently become one of my favorite social media platforms. 

It’s the perfect place to connect with likeminded creatives, build friendships and share your work. 

The mistake a lot of business owners make when promoting their business on Twitter is only tweeting their content, services and products.

That’s not going to work on Twitter. 

Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? You can apply this rule to ANYTHING in life, but we're going to apply it to the wonderful world of Twitter. Here’s what it comes down to: 

Use 20% of your content to promote your brand, and dedicate 80% to content that really interests your audience and engages them in conversation.

Should you switch from freelancing to selling products?

Should you switch from freelancing to selling products?

One of my coaching clients recently asked me, ‘Should I switch from selling services to selling info products? I’ve seen you and a lot of other service-based entrepreneurs do this and I’m worried that services are dying out and that the real money is in infoproducts.’

I was so shocked by this that I asked if I could turn my answer into an email for my entire community to see. If you’ve ever asked yourself if you should start selling products instead of services, this email is for you.

First, I want to let you in on a little secret:

I haven’t stopped selling services.

Even though I sell ebooks and courses for brand & web designers, I’m still working one-on-one with clients and I still sell my design services- I’ve just temporarily removed them from my website because I’m booked for the rest of the year and my soonest availability is February 2017. There’s no point advertising design services that aren’t available at the moment, so I removed them from my site for now.

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