Second part of Live from Design
During college my friends and I wanted to set up our design office. Cherish the idea of having our business cards with our name and the position of managing Director it seemed to be a preview of a successful life. Out of nowhere, our office It was already made up of 3 general managers, 3, area managers, 3 designers, 3 screen printers, 3 administrators. We were only 3 we did all the functions, but at the same time there were no secretaries, receptionists, messengers, cleaning or maintenance personnel.
The future that was built in that small room with a tin roof, a restirador and a serigraphy equipment did not last long. It could not be classified as a failure, because the amount of lessons we learned from that effectively resulted not in an advance, but in a preseason that would prepare us for the next step.
One more attempt, now alone, was the second game in which I was able to test my strength and measure my abilities to start my own business. With independent projects I ended up enslaved by my client and working within his facilities as freelance. There I met my partner, who voluntarily invited me to try my luck together. He was a publicist, a public relations expert, which would end up offsetting all my shortcomings: my inability to relate, to promote myself, to get paid, to overcome the shyness that had often been such a strong obstacle that I had closed doors where I did not I didn’t even know they existed.
Already in a new office and with renewed airs we began this adventure, having acquired our most powerful weapon: experience. Now we not only knew how to design, but we knew how to collect And better yet, we understood how the company-supplier relationship worked, what the market had, and the recipe from how to make the first approaches, to whom we should contact to offer our services. Still we continue learning. This process of relating in business is too great and surely we will never end up knowing him to the bone.
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Nowadays, a large part of the universities offer within their study plans not only the exclusive knowledge of the degree, but also administration, accounting and legal knowledge in order to – although they are not usually so practical for this stage – draw a much more contextualized panorama of what is required to start our working life directly as entrepreneurs.
However, if you ask me, I think it is much more fruitful get started first in the realm of employee to understand our industry. Work for a company, a boss, and understand the ladder, decision making, labor relations, the management of complementary services such as dealing with suppliers, and if you are hungry enough, dealing with customers, doing negotiations from a safer environment such as a job where the investment is not ours, it is safer.
It can be a much slower and more tortuous route for some, especially for those whose free soul feels more hobbled in their environment, who has the personality and innate qualities of an entrepreneur, of someone who surely did not even bother to finish reading these lines because it was a waste of time while you might be planning your entry through the front door.
But it is in this area, perhaps the most difficult moment, because it tests our ability to self-criticize. Usually when one finishes university comes from a series of disappointments and fear of changing environment. More than 20 years as a student, one finally drops out of school and must gather all the poise to tackle the task of finding a job or starting a business.
The focus then is on the good things, on our advantages. So much so, that we blind ourselves to our weaknesses, which hardly have a direct relationship with design. We don’t see ourselves as marketers, as advertisers, as administrators, as entrepreneurs. That is why it is difficult to pass the brand of self-employment to that of forming a company, that of paying taxes, our work team, licenses for programs and even cell phones.
Mastering the business is beyond our abilities with Illustrator Or to be able to design a website, is to know everything that involves starting a solo adventure to live from design. To live well from design.
