At the advice of my sister Lindsay, I read a little book called "The Hunger Games". I literally started reading it at 9:30pm on Monday night with the intention of getting through maybe a chapter or two before going to sleep. By the time I finally stopped reading to check the clock, it was almost midnight and I was about 35% of the way through the whole book... it was that freaking good!
Apperently there are two sequels that I will need to read now, but for anyone who wants a good read, I highly recommend this one!
And as though that weren't quite good enough - the inevitable movie is set to be released in March. Here is the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAWODq_dMFI
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
New Blog
As bad as I am with blogging about my own mundane personal life, I'll see if I can't do a better job of blogging about my design career and design in general. So with that, check out my new design blog at:
http://www.dlhdesign.blogspot.com
Love it. Savor it. Consume and enjoy.
http://www.dlhdesign.blogspot.com
Love it. Savor it. Consume and enjoy.
Self Employed
Well not quite as much time since my last update, so maybe I’m getting better at blogging???
After arriving back in KC in late July, I worked solidly for a week on my previous venture, Reflect-A Curb. I was very disciplined about getting up at a normal time, working on my computer, making phone calls, etc for a full day and then shutting down at around 5:30 or so. I was quite pleased with how focused I stayed and with the fact that apparently, I could be trusted to work without supervision.
But then the floor dropped out when my partner called to let me know that our investor was not happy with the financial outlook of things (namely how much the marketing and sales efforts were going to cost). In their original budgeting and estimating, there were a lot of things that hadn’t been taken into account and now the realities of just how much it was actually going to cost to get launched was cause for alarm. So the solution was to let me go as a junior partner, and to allow my partner to continue on alone for another month or two before all funding was cut.
I won’t go into the good or bad about the whole situation as I really am still not sure how I feel about it all. Maybe when I get my own thoughts sorted out on how things all shook out, I’ll post them. But for now I have a more immediate concern – WTF am I going to do for an income?
Having just taken a bit of a gamble with a startup business on the west coast, I wasn’t really too keen to try anything very exotic in terms of career changes. No, my best bet was to put back on my POP Design cap and see if there might be a spot available somewhere for me to land. Although I’m not terribly anxious to leave the KC area, at the end of the day I’ll do what I need to do. If that means schlepping my life and my gear to the other end of the world, so be it. In this economy I can’t afford to be too picky.
I started the very next day by contacting a couple of recruiters that I had worked with in the past to let them know that I was now actively on the market and hunting for a great opportunity. Although nothing was available at the current time, they assured me that things would be picking up as we headed into the fall… I can only hope!
Another phone call I made was to my buddy Dave up in Milwaukee. Dave and I had gone to school together and even lived together for a while before I moved to Des Moines (the first time). He happens to be a very good friend and also a very successful freelance designer in the industry. I reasoned that with as many contacts as he has, he may very well know of a company that is looking for a seasoned designer like myself. However what Dave told me only served to make me completely rethink my entire approach, and really reevaluate my end goal.
Daves immediate reaction to my news of looking for a job was “Why don’t you go into freelancing like I do?” Apparently he is on track to make some serious dough this year and that is largely due to the fact that in our industry, a lot of companies are downsizing and when that happens, designers are often among the first departments to take the hits. But just because they don’t have the designers on staff doesn’t mean that the work still doesn’t need to get done. That is why the good freelancers are making such a killing right now.
It’s really not a hard sell for a couple of reasons: First, designers getting laid off means a lot more competition for the few design job that are already out there, which then reduces the odds of me landing something and even if I do, it will be a substantially reduced salary (good old supply and demand). Second, if I were to land a job, it would very likely mean having to relocate to who-knows-where…something I am very keen to avoid. The third selling point, is that I effectively get to be my own boss. I have clients to answer to, but that’s it. I don’t have a lot of useless meeting to attend, people looking over my shoulder, internal politics, etc. I would be a one-man show and accountable only to myself… not a bad proposition.
So almost two months later here I am. A full-time freelance designer. A small business owner. A lone wolf.
It’s not easy work and nobody ever said it would be. I’ve got a spreadsheet that I work off of every day with the names of companies that I’ve contacted regarding freelance work and what needs to be done to keep bugging them. It’s cold-calling, but lucky for me I have a very easy-to-sell service to offer. I only need to convince them of using me for their design work instead of their other freelancers.
So far, I have a roster of three active clients, but if I want to really make it, I’ll need to build that up to about ten or so. If I can hit that mark, I should be doing pretty well.
After arriving back in KC in late July, I worked solidly for a week on my previous venture, Reflect-A Curb. I was very disciplined about getting up at a normal time, working on my computer, making phone calls, etc for a full day and then shutting down at around 5:30 or so. I was quite pleased with how focused I stayed and with the fact that apparently, I could be trusted to work without supervision.
But then the floor dropped out when my partner called to let me know that our investor was not happy with the financial outlook of things (namely how much the marketing and sales efforts were going to cost). In their original budgeting and estimating, there were a lot of things that hadn’t been taken into account and now the realities of just how much it was actually going to cost to get launched was cause for alarm. So the solution was to let me go as a junior partner, and to allow my partner to continue on alone for another month or two before all funding was cut.
I won’t go into the good or bad about the whole situation as I really am still not sure how I feel about it all. Maybe when I get my own thoughts sorted out on how things all shook out, I’ll post them. But for now I have a more immediate concern – WTF am I going to do for an income?
Having just taken a bit of a gamble with a startup business on the west coast, I wasn’t really too keen to try anything very exotic in terms of career changes. No, my best bet was to put back on my POP Design cap and see if there might be a spot available somewhere for me to land. Although I’m not terribly anxious to leave the KC area, at the end of the day I’ll do what I need to do. If that means schlepping my life and my gear to the other end of the world, so be it. In this economy I can’t afford to be too picky.
I started the very next day by contacting a couple of recruiters that I had worked with in the past to let them know that I was now actively on the market and hunting for a great opportunity. Although nothing was available at the current time, they assured me that things would be picking up as we headed into the fall… I can only hope!
Another phone call I made was to my buddy Dave up in Milwaukee. Dave and I had gone to school together and even lived together for a while before I moved to Des Moines (the first time). He happens to be a very good friend and also a very successful freelance designer in the industry. I reasoned that with as many contacts as he has, he may very well know of a company that is looking for a seasoned designer like myself. However what Dave told me only served to make me completely rethink my entire approach, and really reevaluate my end goal.
Daves immediate reaction to my news of looking for a job was “Why don’t you go into freelancing like I do?” Apparently he is on track to make some serious dough this year and that is largely due to the fact that in our industry, a lot of companies are downsizing and when that happens, designers are often among the first departments to take the hits. But just because they don’t have the designers on staff doesn’t mean that the work still doesn’t need to get done. That is why the good freelancers are making such a killing right now.
It’s really not a hard sell for a couple of reasons: First, designers getting laid off means a lot more competition for the few design job that are already out there, which then reduces the odds of me landing something and even if I do, it will be a substantially reduced salary (good old supply and demand). Second, if I were to land a job, it would very likely mean having to relocate to who-knows-where…something I am very keen to avoid. The third selling point, is that I effectively get to be my own boss. I have clients to answer to, but that’s it. I don’t have a lot of useless meeting to attend, people looking over my shoulder, internal politics, etc. I would be a one-man show and accountable only to myself… not a bad proposition.
So almost two months later here I am. A full-time freelance designer. A small business owner. A lone wolf.
It’s not easy work and nobody ever said it would be. I’ve got a spreadsheet that I work off of every day with the names of companies that I’ve contacted regarding freelance work and what needs to be done to keep bugging them. It’s cold-calling, but lucky for me I have a very easy-to-sell service to offer. I only need to convince them of using me for their design work instead of their other freelancers.
So far, I have a roster of three active clients, but if I want to really make it, I’ll need to build that up to about ten or so. If I can hit that mark, I should be doing pretty well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
