One year ago today, on a brisk yet sunny Wednesday afternoon, I left my office at Harvard University for the last time and began the wild ride of running a small business. I remember the day vividly, and the feeling of excitement (and a little bit of fear) of finally walking away from 9-to-5 cubicle life, and it felt great.

When I left my full-time position at Harvard, the design studio I had started a year before with my now fiancee Jenna Marino had only taken on a handful of client projects, all of which generated very little income for us. And while we had zero clients lined up on March 3rd, 2010, I was leaving to head to New York and then on to Austin to be a part of a 5 day intensive design project with some other fantastic folks, which paid well enough to give me a financial buffer for the moment.

After we returned from SXSW, it was time to get to work. Project requests began to trickle in from friends, a few directly and others were referrals. It seems I had done an excellent job of networking over the past 5 years of attending conferences. Word of mouth advertising does wonders when you’re a small company, and it’s all we relied on most of the time. Hanerino is no powerhouse of design studios, but we sponsored some small and local events and the work kept coming. My biggest fear, having a few months with no work and no income, has yet to happen (excuse me for a second while I find a piece of wood to knock on).

While working for our small company has been a great change of pace and comes with a lot of freedom, it’s not easy. Do you like getting paid? So do I, but I don’t always get a paycheck every two weeks. And sometimes I work through the weekend. But I do what I love, so most of the time I don’t mind. That said, here are some things I’ve learned over the past 12 months about generating your own income.

Become a Real Business

Even if you’re running a company of one, that doesn’t mean presenting yourself as a freelancer. This is your job, your company, and your way of life. Register your company as an LLC or incorporate. Get yourself a logo, whether that’s designing it yourself or hiring someone to do it for you (the former is more difficult than you think, especially if you’re a designer). Setup a business account at your bank, and consider a credit card as well. The more you can separate your personal spending from your business spending, the better. Find yourself an accountant. Doing your own taxes may not be that difficult, but a good accountant will tell you about deductions and other benefits that you may not know about.

And lastly, the most important of all, act like a professional business in front of clients.

Come across as professional, someone who takes their business seriously, and your clients will treat you as such. That doesn’t mean hiding behind a business name without mentioning that you’re a team of one or two people. If you’re doing it right, that won’t matter to the right clients for the right projects.

Over-communicate

To most clients, it doesn’t matter if you work from home in your pajamas or in a suit from an office, as long as the work is getting done correctly and on time. Jenna & I have done our fair share of working on the road, from airports, and in hotels. And most of the time, it doesn’t affect our productivity. In fact, clients rarely even notice.

Except when they do. If you’re traveling during the day but still planning on getting work done, let your clients know. What happens when the wifi at the airport stops working, or your flight gets delayed, and you hadn’t told anyone about your travel plans previously? It looks unprofessional, that’s what. Let your clients know ahead of time where you’ll be, and when you’re traveling, but assure them that you’re still working on their project.

Even if you’re not moving about the country, or the globe, that doesn’t mean communication isn’t important. If there’s a lull in discussion over Basecamp for a few days, be the one who reaches out and checks in, making sure everyone is still on the same page. Provide regular updates to your clients, don’t make them ask where things are. If you’re the proactive one, your clients will feel compelled to work quicker and provide feedback more often in order to not be the ones slowing down the project.

Under-promise, Over-deliver

One of my biggest downfalls is being able to estimate the time to complete a project. I’m terrible at it because I only think about the best case scenario. No distractions, no other projects, no hiccups. But in the real world, all of those things happen, and regularly. And when you work for yourself, you’ve got a lot more to do than spend your day in Photoshop or writing code in TextMate. There are administrative duties, financials to deal with, and getting new business is on your plate too.

Give yourself more time than you think you need. I had a boss at a previous job many years ago who would tell me “figure out how long you think it will take you, and then double it and add half of your original estimate.” While I’m not sure that’s the perfect recipe for project estimations, it did keep me more in tune with the distractions and problems that may come up in each project, and my estimation skills improved.

If you give yourself enough of a cushion, you may even be able to finish early or add in those few extra details that the client wasn’t expecting. You’ll look like a hero, and your client will appreciate your dedication to their timeline, even though you were the one that extended it in the first place.

Of course, this doesn’t always work, especially when the client already has a timeline, but be honest about how long it will actually take you to complete tasks and clients are usually willing to bend their schedules a bit to make sure things get done right the first time around.

So What’s Next?

Whatever it is, I’m ready. We’re currently in the planning stages of taking on a really fun, intensive design project for a web application/platform that we think has a lot of potential, and we’re talking to other folks about other projects as well. We just finalized our brand this past month, and now our design studio has a a logo of its own that Jenna & I are proud of. Next up: a website that we can say the same about.

And speaking of websites, this site may soon see some changes. In fact, this may very well be the last thing I ever write in WordPress. But we’ll leave that topic alone for now, and I’ll leave you guessing.

Thank You

Lastly, I’d like to thank some folks for helping me to get to this point in my life. First, to my wonderful fiancee, who supported my ridiculous-sounding decision to leave a stable job at a well-known university that offered great benefits to go out and take a risk on my own. I owe her big time, and I hope she realizes how much I appreciate her help.

To all the people who encouraged me to do my own thing for the past few years, either by example or through repeated suggestions that I quit my job and get out there. Thank you for the kick in the ass, I needed it.

And to Dan Rubin, for showing me than you really can go out on your own and enjoy life without the shackles of working for “The Man” as long as you’re passionate about what you do. Now if I could just figure out exactly how he manages to pull that off while still sleeping until noon, I’ll truly have life figured out.

Hire Us

We’re a two-person design studio based just outside Boston with experience in web design & development, interfaces for the web and mobile, and branding/print work too. Check out our website and grab the PDF of our sample work. If you like what you see, get in touch by sending us an email at hi@hanerino.com.

A few nights ago, Rogie King’s sister along with her husband and five children (with one more on the way) lost their home to a tragic fire. They lost everything except for a few photos and a computer, and while everyone got out safe, the house is gone. As they were building this home, they didn’t have insurance in case of a fire, and now they have to start all over again.

One of the great things about the internet is our ability as people to come together and support one another, through good times and bad. Rogie has always done things for the community and has given away some of his fantastic work (check out the Social Network Icon Pack for a good example), so it’s easy to want to help his family out this time around.

Rogie has started what he calls Project: Love Kristina, raising awareness of his sister’s loss. He’s looking for donations, whether that includes clothing, money or other items is completely up to you. And to generate more interest in helping, he’s also started a dribbble rebound contest centering around this tragedy.

Some other folks have made things even more interesting by offering up prizes to rebound contestants, including Drew Wilson’s excellent Pictos icons and Premium Pixel Patterns from Brian Benitez.

All that should be enough to get you to try your hand at Rogie’s dribbble rebound contest or skip right to helping Kristina’s family get back on their feet.

One of the goals I set for myself after 2009 was to get in shape and look good in a speedo. Since that didn’t work out, I’m working on the other goal of finding more speaking gigs. It’s more realistic and I don’t have to get a spray tan before I get up on stage.

After opening the first ever Interactive portion of NXNE with my talk on Design for Change in June, I’m proud to announce that I’ll be joining a stellar set of speakers at this year’s Web Design World in Las Vegas. I’ll be presenting Who are Your Stakeholders and How Do You Design for Them? on Day 1, and then a debate/discussion with the honorable Dan Rubin on Day 2.

Web Design World has been around since 1997, so I’m excited to be a part of such a well-established event. And of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s in Vegas. If you’re interested in attending, you can save $200 on your registration fee by registering by September 15th. So get on it.

And if you’re a conference organizer, I’m looking to book more speaking gigs all the way through March of next year. Jenna & I will be traveling a lot come September 1st, so event location isn’t a problem for me. If you’re interested, have a look at my previous and upcoming gigs, or take a look at my history and rating on SpeakerRate.

Some time ago I stumbled upon another Simplebits creation called Dribbble, before it was public. Thanks to Mr. Cederholm, I was given access to this excellent new resource for sharing snippets and sneak peeks of my design work, and for enjoying those of my peers.

The great thing about Dribbble is that it allows us to not only see a preview of what other designers are working on, but gives us a glimpse into their process and the progression of the design, as they post, make changes, and post again. It’s also a great source of inspiration, full of ideas and design styles you may not have considered.

A few weeks back Jonny Campbell created a Flickr group and a subsequent website to go with it called Dribbbbbbbble, with the idea being that anyone who hasn’t been invited to Dribbble yet could post what they would do (ie. how low they would stoop) for an invite. It wasn’t meant to be a clone of the service, nor attract serious design pieces.

Then there are some of you who don’t yet have an invite, but are serious about getting one, and so far you’ve read “blah blah blah blah Dribbble blah blah blah blah.” Well, here’s your chance to get in on the action. I have a handful of invites, and nearly every designer I’ve met is already on Dribbble, so I’m looking for new recruits. But in order to keep the league as professional as possible, I’m going to be picky with who I draft.

In order to find potential players, I’m holding try outs, and you’re going to have to run some Dribbble Drills. Join the Flickr group, upload up to 2 screenshots per day (400×300 pixels or less, just like Dribbble), and compete with other recruits for a spot on the team.

That’s all there is to it. I don’t have a formula for picking draftees, and I’m not looking for anything in particular, just some good work. All you need to do is get in the paint, post up, and give it your best shot.

Note: This Flickr group is in no way affiliated with Dribbble, Simplebits, or octopi (all of which are extremely awesome). It’s only associated with Flickr because it’s on Flickr, but you knew that already, didn’t you?

Just over 4 years ago I said goodbye to my home, my friends and my family in Upstate NY and moved here to Boston in search for something new, something challenging, something better. Harvard gave me that opportunity, and I am grateful for it. But all things must come to an end, and I’ve decided to leave my post as User Interface Designer at iCommons, in search of a new challenge.

Truth

In Roman mythology, Veritas was the goddess of truth, and the mother of Virtue. And of course it’s also the motto of a few universities, including Harvard. My truth is that I enjoyed being at Harvard, worked with many great people I will truly miss, and yet at the same time I’ve come to realize that it was time for me to move on.

Now What?

So while I announce my departure from Harvard, I’m also introducing myself as a full-time designer (and developer if you will) at Hanerino (that’s a combination of Haney & Marino, if you were wondering), the little design studio that Jenna & I had started nearly a year ago. I’ll be working to build our business into something bigger, and we’re looking for clients… starting now. Between the two of us, we’ve got experience designing (and developing) for websites, iPhone applications, and the mobile web.

If you’re planning on being in Austin next week for SXSW, Jenna & I will be there as well, so come say hi. We’ll have Moo cards to hand out, and we’re also sponsoring this little thing called BeerCamp. And who knows, I might be wearing a KERN sweatshirt.

The decision was difficult, though I do feel it was the right one. Now if I can just figure out a way to convince my parents that leaving the Harvard University to work from home was a good idea, I’m set.