Mark Poppen

This post is part 2 in a series of 3 posts of starting your design business.
Starting your design business – Part 1: Prepare
Starting your design business – Part 2: Get started
Starting your design business – Part 3: Keep it up

Get started

So, you’ve done all your preparation, you’re sure you can handle the stress that comes with starting a business; you’re ready… now what?
I think the most common question for a starting designer is: “How do I get people to hire me?”, which is a tough one, although pretty easy to solve: network!

I got lucky with my business advisor, I guess. Like I said earlier, he carries around my business cards to all the new clients he meets. When he asks if they planned a website, he hands over my business card. These clients are now the base of most of my referred clients.
It’s not my only networking-source though. Parties, meetings, seminars, trade shows… everywhere I go, I don’t go without my business cards. Again, I have to mention Twitter. I have had a few projects coming through Twitter. People who found my profile and apparently liked my work.
It’s all about talking to people. If you can’t do this, go work for an agency.

This is the time you should check out project management software (if you’re planning on collaborating with teams a lot), Time management and accounting software. The reason why I didn’t put this in the preparation is because you can’t check out if you like the software without having an actual client. Sure, you can puts around in it, but usually the software only shines when you’re really using it on a live client. My suggestions for these applications:

Project management: 5pmweb – I chose this web-app because of many reasons. The main ones are that you can add a project, add tasks in that projects, and the tasks can be relative to another task. So, if you have a task “design site” and the deadline is being pushed back a week, all the tasks after that will be pushed back automatically. A real time-saver!
You can duplicate projects. Since most of my projects have the same workflow, I thought it’s a time-waster if you have to re-type all the tasks for every project.
Another cool feature is that you can share the projects with your clients. This way your clients don’t have to send you an email, or call you to find out in which stage their project is.

An alternative to 5pmweb could be Verb. It’s a very lightweight and FREE project manager. If you don’t want to dish out $18 per month, this is a great option.

Time tracking: Office time (Mac OS X/Windows) – I’ve tried a lot of these, and most of them fail me on 1 thing: my forgetfulness. Usually I remember to turn on the timer, but when I get side-tracked or distracted, the timers just keep running, which make the final time for a project very inaccurate. Office time detects when you’re idle and gives you an option to subtract the idle minutes, add it to another project (so, let’s say a phone call from another client interrupts your design process), or keep the minutes (if you’re working out wireframes on paper). I haven’t been using Office time that long yet, but I’m sure it’s a keeper.

Accounting/invoicing: FreeAgent Central – This is a little gem! I was really debating if I should use desktop software like Billings, or go for something online. I’ve decided to go for the online option, mainly because FreeAgent has really amazing and powerful options. There are too many to mention in a post like this, but a few things that amaze me are the ability to upload your bank statement. FreeAgent will recognise all transactions and can link them to invoices you’ve sent. It also keeps track of all your expenses. It does this all for $ 20 per month, unless you sign up through my referral link, which will give you 10% discount, and for every person you refer to FreeAgent, you’ll receive another 10% discount (for as long the referred person stays signed up!).

This is also the time you can work on your workflow. Although this evolves overtime, write down the steps you take with your client to get to the end result. After you made this list, start working on how the process felt, and where you’d like to do things different. My workflow for a regular web design project looks like this:

1. 1st Client contact. This is either by email, phone or face to face. I ask for an email address where I can send some information to regarding the project. I have a worksheet in PDF I send to potential clients with questions like “What do you expect from a website”, “Do you have a logo”, “Do you have a domain name/hosting” etc.
2. Send previously mentioned worksheet by email, requesting to make an appointment for a sit-down meeting. I like face-to-face conversations, rather than phone-meetings. I’m a visual guy, and I worked in sales a lot. Body language is an important factor to me.
3. Have the actual meeting. Getting to know the business I’m designing for. Understanding what the business is all about is half the inspiration for whatever I have to design. Don’t ask standard questions, make an actual conversation.
4. Set up a quote/estimate. With the information I gathered from the meeting, I set up a quote. For everyone, this is a different process. A good series of articles about pricing is “Pricing bootcamp” by Buildinternet.
5. Assuming the quote got approved, I ask for a 25% down payment.
6. Design a moodboard. This is a sketch with pencil and paper, to outline what I have visualized as the layout for the site. I got the idea to do so from David Perel. Although he does it digital, I like to add the pencil and paper first.
7. Assuming the moodboard gets approved by the client: Design a mock up of the site in Photoshop. Depending on what you agreed on with your client, you might have to make 1, 2 or more of these.
8. Assuming the design gets approved, I ask for another 25% deposit.
9. Code the site. I usually outsource my psd2html. I have 3 awesome people that can take this on for me.
10. When I wait for the site to get back to me, I install a CMS, set up email addresses and set up the domain name.
11. When the site gets back to me, I implement the design on the CMS and…
12. …the troubleshooting starts. We iron out little things, like CSS that goes bad, a database that’s not playing nice etc.
13. I show the site to the client in a test environment where they can start filling their site with content. Usually I guide them through this process. Teaching the CMS and advising on proper content. I also ask for the final 50% payment.
14. Site goes live. Client is happy.
15. Aftercare (this one is important!). Don’t let your client hanging after they paid the final payment. After a week or so (depending on how often you communicate with the client) ask him/her how the website is doing, if there’s anything you can help them with or (and this is the magic part) ask if they need anything else. I also design business cards, so that’s always a nice pitch if I haven’t mentioned it in the initial meeting.

After you landed your first client, I would do almost anything to make him/her happy, even if it costs you money, because the best advertising you can get is a referral. They’re free and work 100x better than an ad in the paper. So get your first client(s) as happy as you can. Remember, you’re investing in your business.
Put this project in your portfolio, and have this client write a raving review/testimonial about your services.

From here on, be prepared (but don’t expect) a roller coaster ride.

Part 3 of this series will be posted next week.

Please, leave a comment with how you got started, or if you have links to useful websites for starting up a design business.

Tags: Business, startup, Tips

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.