Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Another HOW Conference ses­sion I attended was “What it Takes to be Your Own Boss”, given by Ilise Benun of Marketing Mentor. I had pre­vi­ously attended one of their work­shops locally and it was extremely help­ful, so I was excited to see how the con­tent from this ses­sion would build upon that.

Ilise went through a pre­sen­ta­tion that dis­cussed the skills and traits you need to be your own boss, what you need to do to pre­pare, and what the rewards could poten­tially be once you get there. Two self-employed design­ers (Jonathan Cleveland, from Cleveland Design and Julie Vail, from Marquis Design) helped Ilise by con­tribut­ing their own per­sonal expe­ri­ences to the pre­sen­ta­tion. They are both at very dif­fer­ent stages of their careers — Cleveland was estab­lished in 1992, and Marquis less than 5 years ago — so it was really inter­est­ing to hear both of their per­spec­tives. Despite their dif­fer­ences though, they both seemed to agree on all of the big points. Here are a few high­lights to take away:

Preparation (what you need to have in place before you take the leap)

• Money in the bank, or some sort of steady income stream
• A place to work so you can focus
• Education: learn about what­ever you don’t know, book­keep­ing, account­ing etc.
• Marketing plan and tar­get market
• Support: both per­sonal and professional

5 Best Marketing Tools

• Cold Calls/Research calling
• Networking: choose a tar­get mar­ket and go where they go
• Email mar­ket­ing
• A marketing-smart web­site that iden­ti­ti­fies you as an expert (beyond portfolio)
• Printed mate­ri­als and samples

Marketing Mentor — oper­ated by both Ilise Benun and Peleg Top—con­ducts var­i­ous work­shops and sem­i­nars focused on mar­ket­ing your small busi­ness. Check their site for dates and loca­tions. They also main­tain a blog with lots of help­ful advice, dis­trib­ute an email newslet­ter with mar­ket­ing tips, and pro­duce var­i­ous books and pub­li­ca­tions on the topic. I highly rec­om­mend check­ing them out.