Do you remember when you moved from a 9-to-5 job into the world of freelancing? You knew you could only achieve your dreams by taking the plunge!

 

Now you’re ready to level up your business, and we’re here to tell you how to move from freelancing to being a graphic design studio owner.

 

The process is easy, but the work is hard — we know, because we have done it ourselves! We’ll show you how to take the next step. (And, if you are still stuck in the 9-and-5 grind, keep reading and we’ll show you how freelancing is achievable for you….it isn’t too late!)

 

At Aventive Academy, we talk to freelance graphic designers all the time. They’re asking the same questions you are:

“Now that I’m successfully freelancing, what’s next if I want to scale? I have too many clients sometimes and I’m thinking about building a design studio instead of being a solo freelancer. But maybe it’s too hard to do?”

 

The answers you’re looking for are here. We’ve helped so many graphic design freelancers like you realize their dreams through our actionable steps for starting a graphic design agency. It’s amazing what your dream and the right tools can produce. And it doesn’t need to take months or years to prepare once you know the steps to take!

 

Let us walk you through our easy-to-follow process and best-in-industry tools. Let’s get started and see your potential realized!

Making a Plan to Scale

When you went from having a 9-to-5 paycheck to being a solo freelancer, it took two things: a dream and a plan. Now, scaling up and moving from freelancing to owning your own design studio needs exactly the same things.

 

You already have the dream. Now, let’s talk about the plan.

 

Your plan doesn’t have to be sophisticated. You’ve heard of the KIS Principle, I’m sure: Keep It Simple!

 

But the reality is that without a plan, you’ll be trying this and that, googling endlessly and you won’t know how to tell if something is working or not. It’s the difference between driving in a new city with Google Maps working…or having no signal. A simple plan is the map you need.

 

The easiest way to begin creating your plan is to ask yourself:

Where do I see my business in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? What role will I have in my business? What will the team around me being doing? Who will our clients be?

 

Write your plan down (or type it up!). Design your future, but don’t sweat the details right now. Keep your plan simple and short.

 

Your plan, when executed, is what will help you manage the growth that is required to move from freelancer to agency owner. And, you might not have heard this before, but scaling itself is the hardest part. To put it another way, getting bigger is the most difficult part of getting bigger.

 

(Don’t worry, we’ll let you know the steps to follow and the tools to use for successful scaling, so keep reading!)

Have a Vision for Your Graphic Design Agency

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit.

 

Do you know what your vision is? Is your dream clear? If answering questions about what you want your future to look like is difficult, then let’s pause right here for a minute.

 

A vision is essential. A plan gets you where you want to go, but without vision, you don’t know why you’re traveling in the first place!

• Do you want a big studio?
• A boutique agency?
• A large, in-person office?
• Or fully remote contractors?
• Start-up clients?
• Small business clients?
• Multi-national brands?
• How much more revenue?
• How many more clients?
• How many hours do you want to work?

 

The answers to these questions are up to you. You know what gives you that shot of enthusiasm and excitement. You know you!

 

The sky is the limit, but you need to see the sky before you can fly. Write down the elements of your vision. Design your future by thinking about what you really want.

 

Pause for a moment and think about these questions:

• Why do you even want to scale? What is your motivation for changing your business?
• Do you want to build your business revenue? Earn more money? Have more free time? Work remotely? Travel?
• Do you like to think about managing others?
• Do you know what you definitely don’t want to do (and, when you scale, could outsource to others)?
• Which current clients and projects do you wish you had more of? What elements of your freelancing thrill you?

If defining your vision is difficult and thinking of the simple elements of a plan made you sweat earlier, don’t despair. At Aventive, we know that not everyone can google a blog and get the job done (even if the article is great 😊).

 

If you know at your core that it’s time to scale to the agency level, we have a practical and inspiring online course to help you progress, one step at a time.

 

You’ll join our many Aventive Academy graduates who have taken our easy-to-follow, actionable steps and created thriving design businesses. They are living their dreams! We know our course works, because it’s what we did to build our design studio as well.

 

You can find more about our Level Up Kit, a course for freelance graphic designers ready to grow their business, here.

Everybody Has a Role in Your Studio

Now that you’ve thought about a brief plan and your vision, it’s time to have a bit of fun thinking about the roles inside your soon-to-be-scaled business. This is your chance to design your organizational structure to match where you want to be.

 

Start by putting yourself in the role of CEO. As you move from freelancing to agency ownership, you’ll likely need to be the point-person for new clients.

 

But who will be making the graphic designs? Will you have a COO? Do you want to be managing clients and project timelines/staffing, or do you want to focus on getting more clients, feeding your studio’s pipeline, and pushing your scaling plan forward?

 

Before talking about adding more people to your team, let’s figure out the main reason why you need to think about your teams — and why you should do it now.

 

Knowing exactly who will be on your team will help you figure out how much money your agency needs to make. That number will be more than you are making now, but you need to think about how much more!

This will help you determine if you need more clients so you can cover bigger expenses, or you’ll need better and bigger clients (not necessarily more). We’ll talk about financials in this blog post too, but for now, put the tiles of your future team members on a piece of paper.

 

Consider the following roles and whether you see yourself handling them, or if you want to have other team members (think about your 1-year, 5-year and 10-year projections):

• COO
• Creative Director
• Graphic Designer
• Specialized Service Fulfillment (web services, illustrations, Adobe InDesign, branding, etc.)
• Marketing Manager (including social media, blogs, YouTube, etc.)
• Content Developer (writing, editing, proofing)

 

How many of these roles do you currently handle by yourself? Which do you enjoy? Which do you want to build out as part of your professional team? By defining the roles, your emerging design studio will begin to take shape.

Your Design Studio Financials

Is this feeling overwhelming? Be encouraged. We remember the angst. We’ve been there ourselves. We are freelancers who have scaled successfully. We know what to do and in which order…and we’ll tell you how. The most important advice we received along the way was to stay in the game.

 

Now, let’s briefly mention the topic that’s a mistake to avoid: It’s numbers, your business’ financials. The don’t lie. They can be trusted as your friends.

 

Your financials are going to become very important as you scale up. You’ll need to pay attention to key metrics, and it’s important to know what to measure and how. Managing the data and dollars, and reading the messages they’re sending you, is essential to your studio’s operations.

 

So let’s just leave it that, for now. How much revenue you collect, how many social media followers you have, how many email addresses you gather, and how you spend your money is important. Paying attention to the financials is critical to success.

 

Earning way more money than you are now is definitely possible! And to keep your COO, designers, and specialists paid, it will be necessary, too. (Thankfully, you’ll onboard your team one-by-one and a well-executed scaling plan doesn’t happen all at once!)

How to Get More (and Bigger!) Clients for Your Graphic Design Business

Scaling your freelance business, having staff working for you, earning more money…all of this hinges on knowing how to get more clients, or how to get bigger clients that will pay more per project. We have good news for you: this isn’t hard to do!

 

In your new role as an agency owner, you will need to focus on marketing. Even if you don’t do it (maybe you see a Marketing Manager handling this for you), you need to be on top of it.

As you level up, it is obvious that you’ll need to find more and/or bigger clients. You can’t scale without them. You’ll need to have a great portfolio and a website that shows how good you are. (We have a free workshop on how to improve your graphic design portfolio — if you want to watch it, click here.)

 

You’ll need to know who your ideal client is and where they hang out (Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc.). If you don’t know where to start with getting new clients, we’ve created a free online workshop 3 Proven Steps to Attract Clients.

 

You can sign up for it here and we’ll show you exactly what to do, step-by-step. We’ll also show you how to raise your rates and then how to market to the new clients you’ll be attracting. You may have always focused on Pinterest, but what if your ideal clients are actually on LinkedIn?! You’ll need to up your game and be where they are.

Build a plan. Make a list of people you want on your team. Then focus on marketing to get more clients, or better clients – or both! 

 

We scaled just like this — going from charging $65 for a logo (as a freelancer) to booking $15k clients (as a design studio). You can do it too!

 

Let’s talk about a few more actionable items you’ll need to consider.

 

You’ll need to think about your sales funnel. Knowing how to close a sale is essential, and having your own agency will mean that you need to say good-bye to nervous meetings and a lack of confidence.

 

Some of this is a mindset issue, but you’ll also need to have effective processes for how to handle incoming contacts, how to assess client needs, how to gather project parameters, how to fulfill presentation requests, and how to secure the sale.

 

Once you have increasing sales, you need to be on top of how each project is executed. You’ll need to consider a predictable pipeline, team communication tools, quality checks, and delivery systems.

 

Does all of this feel overwhelming? Go back to your vision…you want a design studio because you know you can earn more, accomplish more, have more freedom, and thrive! Remember that achieving your dream is just a matter of taking step-by-step actions and using the right tools.

Learning How to Scale

We hope you’re feeling inspired! (Maybe it’s late at night and you’ve been searching for graphic design business hope yet again? You’ve found your tribe now!)

 

We know you can do it. Really. And we have the tools ready to show you the way. We sweated for years, but we took notes. After we succeeded, we made it our mission to help others to succeed too.

 

You aren’t alone. We know how to help you take your graphic design business to the next level. Using our proven steps, the information in this article, our online courses, and our free workshops, you can implement everything you need to succeed and achieve your graphic design business dreams.

 

Say “heck, yes!” to your scaling success and start with the simple steps we’ve suggested to move from freelancing to owning your own design studio:

• Make a plan
• Define your vision
• Figure out roles
• Focus on financials
• Get more or bigger clients

It’s time to scale beyond solo freelancing. Your design agency studio is ready and waiting for you to start.