Guest Speaker | Design Bootcamp

With 33 years of freelancing experience, Peter Mickleright's knowledge and tips on entrepreneurship provided an insight into the life of  freelancer. The session touched on do's and don'ts, putting a price on how much your time is worth, branding and maintaining your own business. Design Bootcamp was created to combat how ill prepared aspiring creatives are in the beginning stages of their careers. Peter described his career choice as being a lifestyle rather than a job and felt that it was his duty to pass on his knowledge and experience.

The 2 in 1 session was very informative and helped me put into perspective the value of my work and how this should be reflected in the rates I charge. After applying his formula to myself and my current earnings, I learned that the rates I have been billing clients were nowhere near as much as I should have been earning. After speaking to professionals and ex-students, this seems to be is a common mistake among creatives starting out. Its as if we are blinded by our lack of experience and therefore forget to consider the quality we produce and the investment in time, learning our disciplines and in equipment/tools we have already brought. Despite realising this tremendous loss, it has was beneficial for me to have gone through that period  in order for me to work on producing content of a standard where clients were willing to pay for it and generally conducting business in a professional manner.

I have learnt that the foundations for a good working relationship is to make a good first impression,  the location of an office/workspace is crucial. Having a clean and tranquil environment to work in and a place to conduct business with clients is essential. As a creative, networking and forming connections with other creatives who specialise in different areas to you does not only benefit both you and your contact but also the client. This integration within the creative community is so valuable and essential in order to stimulate growth. A support system within this competitive industry is imperative, a number of online companies some of which include salt, purple and creative recruiters; act as a catalogue for freelance opportunities makes getting into the freelance realm that bit easier.

The only aspect of taking the freelance route is the lack of respect for his intellectual  property rights and the risk of clients not paying for the service requested. Although Petes horror stories are real occurrences within this field, this alone would not discourage me from exploring this option. Being self-employed has always appealed to me, having the freedom of working smart rather than working hard, knowing that my client base will be built on the quality and standard of my work and my passion for my disciplines are reasons that would motivate me to start my own creative business.