How to scale your business: my journey from freelancing to owning a branding agency
Do you dream of building a business that allows you to do what you love, prioritize your mental health and spend less of your life working? Before Author Brand Studio existed, I did too.
It was 2018, and I was working as a project manager at an advertising agency. To say that it had been a rough year is an understatement. I lost my mom to cancer and my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer.
I was deep in grief, and I struggled to show up every day at the office with a smile on my face. I knew I needed to make a change. I vividly remember looking at Pinterest during a slow moment at work and seeing posts from entrepreneurs who were making good money working for themselves. The idea to start my own branding business had been on my mind for years, but I always envisioned working for ten years in branding before working for myself. That’s when I stumbled upon Nesha Woolery, an online business guru. Her work made me realize two things:
Building my own business was possible much sooner than I thought.
I could create a business that supported my mental health, rather than working against it.
“For so many of us, all it takes is stumbling across other people who can show us that it is a possibility and you don’t have to stay in a soul-sucking day job.”
-Nesha Woolery
As you probably already guessed, I dove into self-employment. After I put in my two weeks at the advertising agency, I started doing graphic design on a freelance basis. I had three years of design experience under my belt from working at Disney, so it felt like a natural step. Now, four years later, Nesha invited me to be a guest on her podcast to share how to scale your business. I talked about my journey from freelancing to building Author, a high-end branding studio, and it was the most amazing full-circle moment to get to be on her show!
You can listen to the full episode here, but I’m also going to the major takeaways from the episode on how I scaled my business. Let’s dive in!
1. I prioritized my mental health.
Lots of business coaches will tell you to build up a side hustle before relying on self-employment full-time, but I knew my mental health couldn’t wait. Working for myself allowed me to breathe for the first time in two years. I was finally able to focus on going to therapy and taking care of myself. After having sacrificed my mental health for years to perform in a full-time job, this was a huge relief.
Even as my business has grown, I’m still big on boundaries that protect my work/life balance. I hold on to this mantra:
“I’m not willing to sacrifice my mental and physical health to build a business.”
2. I weighed the pros and cons.
I will sing the praises of self-employment all day, but it’s not for everyone.
Here’s what I love about working for myself:
Working for myself allowed me to prioritize my mental health.
Having your own business provides more job security. Now, I have multiple clients and streams of income. Before, when I was laid off from a full-time job, all of my income disappeared.
Here’s what’s hard about working for myself:
Starting from zero and hustling for clients.
You don’t have a regular paycheck you can rely on every other Friday.
You’ll have to do things you may not love, like finances, sales, or project management.
Personally, I wouldn't trade owning my own business for anything. It’s made me more well-rounded! I now drive client relationships, project management and people management—in addition to brand strategy and design.
3. I embraced humble beginnings.
When I first started freelancing, my email inbox was crickets. I truly started from zero: I had no clients and no portfolio, except the things I had created at Disney that I couldn’t share. I was fortunate that my husband had full-time work while I was building my business, but money was tight. Budgets were our best friend and we counted every dollar we spent.
It took me about a year to find my footing, and I didn’t see immediate results. I made as much in my second year of freelancing as I had in my first, even though I worked twice as much. It didn’t go the way that the Instagram business gurus said it would go. I didn’t exceed my full-time salary in my first year of freelancing, and I certainly didn’t make six figures in my first six months.
About a year into my business, it clicked. When I started saying (and believing) “I’m glad I’m at where I am now,” that’s when things really exploded for me. If your business is slow, that doesn’t mean you have to work at a soul-sucking day job. It also doesn’t mean you’re a failure if you also get a part-time job at Starbucks to support you.
But now, as we round out Q2, we’re about to hit last year’s total gross revenue– and this is our third year of exponential growth! I wouldn't change how I started for anything. It’s humbling to take a look back!
4. I found community.
I joined a mastermind community of 2,000 people in my first year of business. It was a paid private Facebook group, and by sharing my story and what I do, I made connections that turned into clients.
5. I owned my niche.
There’s no shame in taking any work that comes your way at first, but I started to see real growth when I honed in on my niche.
Telling myself “I’m going to embrace that this is the path I’m meant to be on and own it,” was my turning point.
Today, my niche is brand strategy and design. If you’re looking for a quick logo, I’m not the right person. But if you’re looking for a brand strategist who will tell your story and align your messaging, Author is here for you.
And an amazing thing happened: People started coming to me for brand strategy! Even if I got paid less for a project than I ultimately wanted to charge, I tried to knock each branding project out of the park. As I did that, I got more referrals and slowly scaled bit by bit.
6. I repositioned my branding.
At first, my branding was very “Amy the Girlpreneur.” It was ultra-feminine, and while I loved it, it wasn’t getting me the kinds of clients I dreamed of. “Positioning” is the role you play in the mind of your clients, so I re-branded Author to be more trendy and gender-neutral. A personal brand overhaul was totally worth it: I wanted clients to perceive me as a studio that could handle high-end projects.
7. I added members to my team.
Before I felt like I was ready, I hired a junior designer part-time to assist me with client projects. It seemed like as soon as I did that and our capacity expanded, we started getting more clients. Now, I have a network of freelancers I work with who specialize in copywriting and web development so that I can focus solely on brand strategy.
8. I set boundaries with clients.
At Disney, I was taught to not say “No” to a client and instead say: “Here’s what we can do.” While that’s a great model for some clients, sometimes saying no is the best choice you can make. As your own boss, you have the privilege of choosing whether you want to work for a given client or terminate a relationship with an existing one.
You decide whether a client is worth the money they are paying and the stress they may be adding to your life. With a client in 2020, I politely and kindly pointed them in another direction—and it was one of the best decisions I made.
9. I invested in myself.
Investing in yourself and your business has a direct effect on your growth. Growth follows investment!
I wish I had invested more in my business and in myself sooner. Nesha’s class was the first I took, and I’m so glad I did. But investing in yourself is easier said than done. When you’re the one holding the purse strings, an investment can feel like a cost. Investing thousands of dollars in a coach was scary, but I knew it was going to be worth it.
And it was! In 2020, I invested in a coach and shared with him a big goal I wanted to accomplish in my business before I turned 30. He helped me believe it was possible. I just turned 30 at the end of 2021 and guess what—I hit that goal! Having a coach gave me the mindset I needed to achieve what I once thought was impossible.
A big mindset shift for me was that if I was asking clients to invest in my services, I needed to be willing to invest in myself and my services too.
10. I organized my processes.
Organize & Automate™, Nesha’s course, helped me get things in order when I first started. I knew that if I was going to run a business, I was going to run it right. Here’s something that Nesha said in our conversation that stuck with me:
“In a client’s mind, unorganized = unprofessional. It tarnishes the whole experience.”
When I prioritized project management and client experience, it elevated my business in the minds of my clients. I took managing the project off of their plate. It has paid off not only in my peace of mind but also in how much I can charge for the work I do.
Thanks to Nesha’s course, I learned to set agendas at the beginning of meetings and create a process in Asana for clients.
I’m so glad I did this when I did: My processes and systems haven’t changed that much in four years because I did the work early to set up systems. If you don’t organize now, disorganization will come back to haunt you when you’re really busy with clients or managing a team.
“You don’t get a great referral from an amazing end result—you pair that end result with an amazing client experience.”
-Nesha Woolery
11. I believed in myself.
This is the most important piece of how I was able to scale. If I hadn’t believed that I was capable of running this business or worthy of investing myself, I’d still be hustling for low-paying clients as a freelancer.
The best piece of advice I have for how to scale your business? Believe that you can! If you’re struggling to believe it, do the mindset work to get there. Then, just keep doing the next thing. It will pay off in beautiful ways, even if it’s not right away.
Looking back, it strikes me that some of the best things I’ve ever done for my business are the things that I help clients do: Hone in on the right branding, position yourself to appeal to dream clients and stay organized along the way. If you’re interested in branding that allows you to scale your business, let’s talk! The first consultation call is free.
