The admin

Make sure to define tools and ways of working. Believe me, do this sooner rather than later. If you are like me and you like documenting things (i.e. hours spent on tasks or projects, notes during calls, etc) try to do that in a centralised place.

I use Notion.so for that. There I built our Design Studio Digital Workspace. With resources, kits, and documentation useful to me, my co-founder, and our clients and partners.

The boring but essential

Speaking for the UK, setting up a limited company takes 15 minutes. It’s so easy that it is almost a catch. They don’t warn you of all the admin involved in order to keep the gears running smoothly. For some people this may seem an exaggeration. Especially for freelancers already used to do their own accounts. Good for you. But for the rest of us, who were moving from 9–5, with pension schemes and bonuses nicely set up for you, all this admin is a nightmare.

I use Ember.co to keep track of my finances. The ins, the outs, tagging the expenses correctly and linking them to receipt. But in all honesty, Ember is worth using even just to remind me the right documents to submit and each deadlines for all of them.

It’s not your baby

It’s someone else’s baby. No, I'm not talking about the Studio. I’m talking about the design projects you will work on.

Founders especially have very strong opinions on what and how the product should be. As they should. They are founders. It’s their role to set the vision and have the drive to achieve that. You are just a medium to get there. Your role is to leverage your expertise to design and build something awesome for them. Just keep in mind that, as much as you want to put your heart and soul into your work, your baby will also be the studio, not its deliverables.

Clients will be entitled to take what you did and tear it apart, trash it, or love it. Obviously, your…