How did you start doing your own thing?

BTW, another way people do their own thing is as a manufacturer

I know of a few guys, like Rob Law of Trunki here in Bristol, who built solid skills as a consultant while developing his own product on the side. When he went for funding and got it, he quit and did it full time. The story and designer is impressive, check these videos if you’re interested link

Layoff forced me into it. Stoking the fires in my contacts got me through. Developed enough reputation to gain some good clients, one of which has recently approached me about exclusivity. That’s the market today. It works pretty well and gives you and your clients the chance to “kick the tires” to see if the relationship will blossom.

Thanks for your responses.

What’s an S-Corp?



Good points.

I had heard of the Dragons Den Trunki story. That show really pissed me off when I watched one episode where one of the ‘dragons’ threaten a contestant with stealing their work and knocking it off in a chinese factory, so I took great joy in his success in the face of the dragons shabby treatment of him.

There are different classifications of companies in the US, from “Sole Proprietorship” (easy) to 'Partnership" to “Limited Liability” to the different corps. My friends (and parents) recommended S-Corp for the tax reasons… my company pays me via dividends + a small salary, allowing for a smaller tax amount per year. It’s more work to manage however.

Trunki is a great design entrepreneurial story, and Rob is a good designer - I’ve dug up his work in KD’s archives.

related, there are examples of independant designers going rouge successfully: Yves Behar of FuseProjest was a frog designer at first, Scot Wilson of MMNL was at Nike & IDEO I believe, Hartmut of frog design, Jacques Gagné of Gecko Design in San Jose was a frog too, founders of inCase were ex IDEO, Whipsaw, etc etc… probably all the firms really.

I’ve been freelancing since graduating in 2009. I was really struggling to find any graduate design jobs, never mind get interviewed.

I chanced upon some technical drawing through an agency and went freelance because I could make more money. The drawing work led to a bit of furniture design, and even teaching design to inmates of a prison.

Unfortunately 2 years later this all dried up and I moved back home to Bristol where I eventually got a job at an engineering company and hated it. 6 months later, a company contacted me to work on a very big project that should last over a year, maybe into 2, and hopefully supply with more projects.

I’m always on the lookout for opportunities and new clients whilst I’ve got this big job. I’m not making lots of money but am generally enjoying the lifestyle. I think the one thing you need to freelance is patience as things don’t happen quickly, especially in this economy and if your young. It also helps to be opportunistic, determined, and driven.

Necro post GO!



Have any of you taken out small business loans to freelance? I need to update all my junk as my current setup isn’t cutting it at all. After looking into prices and whatnot about $10,000 is what I need for a new computer, software, and getting personal marketing things together (cards, website, photos for website, etc.). I don’t really know what I need to do to get a loan, or how a small business loan works.

This is a great question for a thread, hopefully we get a lot more responses. It looks like the biggest thing is connections and happenstance, which seems obvious, but it’s always nice to have it reiterated with the unique details of each situation. Also being determined, hardworking and reliable seem to help. Keep 'em coming inde-pros!

Just started a Limited Company in the UK… seems very similar to the US system with a couple of exceptions.

Accountants are MUCH more expensive here, and just as critical to have for filings, etc. Like double the US rates I pay.
There are not as many tax advantages (from what I understand now). The US gives more breaks to promote small business.
The government watches you much more closely here, monitoring your bank account even.
If you have a non-public company, any person can still get a look at your books - unlike the privacy of US companies.
Filings and working with the UK Government is MUCH easier than the US. very user friendly websites and modern ways to file.

One last thing - Wave Accounting has been a great find for doing the books. You can do you accounts in the cloud with a good software for FREE. Just like Quicken online, but no monthly fee. There’s even an OCR app for receipts that you can run from your phone. Downside, Cloud means you can’t use offline.

Small business loans can be hard to get unless you are an established business. Credit cards, however, are not. If you only need $10k, that’s usually the easiest way, unless you can get it from family and friends. Also, almost every business loan at this scale will require your personal guaranty and have pretty onerous repayment terms, so it’s basically a personal loan anyway. You can’t shut the business and walk away from repayment. Once you have existing cash flow there are better financing options.

That’s how my business was started- less than $10k credit card debt to start (materials, initial manufacturing run), fulfilled out of my garage. Then just bootstrapped it up with sales proceeds and small loans, until I could setup my own manufacturing facility. Takes a long time that way, and you’re constantly scraping by, but the risk of spectacular failure is much lower.

I agree with Scott, you will not get a sbl if your company does not have any income. The loans are not designed for startups.

About 2 weeks after I started my business, my computer crapped out an I needed to spend $2K on a workstation. Luckily for me I had just landed a large project where the 50% up front covered that expense.

Prioritize the required and desired and use the up front money to finance the startup costs and use the final payment for day to day costs. Granted, that is an over-simplified budgeting/accounting system, but my point it to manage all of the costs as you are building the business.

Good luck.

What is the best way to handle tools/equipment, etc?

Through curiosity, hobbies, etc. I have something like 70-80% of a small design studio in my living room. Much of which has been purchased used, or perhaps a long time ago and I have no receipts or records or anything. If I go forward with a product I’ve been working on and start a business (I’ve been advised an LLC would be optimal for a one-man show), am I best off leaving these as personally owned things or do you ‘sell’ them to yourself?

I just made the jump a month ago to freelance. I had been working at a design consultancy for 5 years and started to feel the itch to see what else was out there. I also wanted to free up more time for myself for side projects and personal interests such as brazing and building bicycle frames.

Being involved in the design community helps create a broad network. I had talked about freelancing for a while and it was other friends in design that encouraged me to take the leap. The final decision came when someone reached out and said their firm could use help. I’ve been working for them on a contract basis and love it.

Great post, being new to freelancing the advice and stories are much appreciated!

I use the equipment at the firm.
Working for myself I have a basic set up: desk top, lap top, wide printer (13x19), scanner.
For bike building I rent a bench at a collective.

I’ve never heard of “selling” yourself stuff? Unless you’re looking to write off taxes.

Well, sort of. My arsenal includes a laser cutter, 3D printer, stout desktop and a couple machine-running computers, Cintiq, tons of hand tools, materials, etc etc. that I’ve purchased over the years for personal use. Nothing crazy but a pretty solid “prosumer” setup that could feasibly be used to get something off the ground.

I just wasn’t sure if it would be worth while, or even possible, to transfer the ownership of these things to a business for tax purposes (thinking if not purchase price then depreciation?), or if it would even be worth it on a relatively small, yet not insignificant amount of capital. I’m not counting on making much if anything the first year so it may not even do me any good! Conversely, would there be any perks to leaving things privately owned?

I am no accountant and you should talk to an accountant for a definitive answer, but yes, your business can use those as an asset and get a deduction from your taxes as the asset depreciates. You can’t get full value for them as your business “acquired” used assets.

The questions for the accountant is how you assign a value to the assets and what depreciation schedule to use for each asset. Some assets you can write off entirely the first year, others, no.

iirc, all of this is handled through your schedule C.

As Iab said, definely check with your accountant (and get an accountant and a lawyer if you don’t have them).

That is a pretty fantastic set of tools. Personal laser cutter? Impressive… In the living room? My wife would not go for that!

I’ll be the first to admit being (usually, to some degree) single and having a mind numbing job with unlimited internet access helps these sort of efforts out quite a bit, haha. :wink:

I was laid off at a design studio together with other staff, mostly because of financial reasons. I got another offer for a job but it had to be fulltime and was not entirely within my field of interest so I started doing freelance assignments and have been working on a few of my own products together with a partner. Next to that I was lucky to get accepted as a student coach at the university, so that’s a bit of steady income I have. It is harder this way since my focus is more spread across a variety of different things, but for me this was the right thing to happen. I need to find my focus naturally and be less ‘played with’ by outside forces just because people like your design skills and want to work with you. I am finding designing simple items like housewares and toys to fit me quite well.

I would like to have more tools as well but I can only afford the simple apartment I’m living in now and just can’t do anything like woodworking here because of the noise it makes - thin walls. I have a Cintiq that I was lucky to be given by my old company. I also have a small 3d printer and just some hand tools, and a little photography setup to take decent photographs. I am considering buying a foam cutter to be able to more quickly explore forms in 3d. But I’m hesitant because of the fumes. I’ll probably need some installation to suck the fumes onto the balcony, or just do the work there on a non-windy day…

I’d say opening the window / door and using a fan should be enough. Im not sure how it would affect the paint on the walls, maybe it’d be a good idea to put some kind of fabric or something like that. Lucky you getting a Cintiq for free!

I pulled the Indiana Jones “Leap of Faith”.

I was fresh out of school at my first job, a small corporation, and I was one of three designers in-house, a graphic designer, myself, and the Design Director. I had been working for them for two years, and my husband got an amazing job offer in Costa Rica. We couldn’t pass it up, so I professionally requested to be a remote employee. Without hesitation, they said NO.

I put in my formal request of leave 3 months in advance and was ready to pack my bags. I did the recommendations from above, got a lawyer, accountant, opened an S-corp, and got together all of my software, computer gear, etc. Two days before I left, I was still working for “small corporation” and I was asked if I would continue working on one of the projects I was heavily involved in. I was offered 20 hours a week contract labor with them.

Now, 1 year later, I am contracted for 40 hours per week. It’s like I never left, but I get all the perks of owning my own company (minus taxes - that sucks).