Chapters 7-16 covers the topic of: SMALL BUSINESS

Chapter 7 – Becoming A Business:
This chapter is an introduction to the next couple of chapters about small business. Specifically, chapter 7 talks about how to transition from a freelancer to starting up your own small business. The idea of moving into small business sounds like the ultimate move for a successful freelancer, but seems just as difficult to set up as a successful freelancing career. The warnings about the transition seem funny, but the realities are you don’t want to piss anybody off in the process of the change, as you might be asking them for help down the road (more like you WILL ask for help from them, as they already have success and as the book says, no need to reinvent the wheel.) Reading through the different types of legal structures seems as if they are steps that a business can take as it grows in numbers, starting from the sole proprietor, to partnerships (which ever fits the company),to a C Corp or S, depending on growth or personal options. Seems like a lot of legal stuff in the chapter, which is always good to know on a basic level as a designer, but in reality, a lawyer is probably the best thing to have when setting up a business as you do not want the IRS coming after you. Just a blurb on being an employer with the note that later chapters will cover this in more detail, but as a small design business, it is a good idea to seek out experts and generalists for a good team.

Chapter 8 – Pricing Models:
How to get them to pay. Give me the money. How much? Well looking at TINE, the most common pricing formats are: TIME and MATERIALS, FIXED FEE, LICENSING: use-based or royalty, HYBRID, and FREE. (free seems the easiest, but than you aint eating breakfast…) The chapter goes through each of the types of pricing formats and explains them a little but, all of which I have heard of in class to some extent except the Licensing options, which are kind of in the legal rely of things as far as design goes. The rest of the chapter goes over some different terms that are usually associated with paid work from designers like estimates, quotes, bids, pitches and proposals of work. Most of them I understand, but as I have noted, having them in front of you with clear easy to read definitions is always good, especially fro future reference. One of the things they include in the chapter that I love is the “Cheap, Fast, Good Triangle.” This tends to come up a lot in design. You get to pick two of the three and one gets sacrificed. (Probably the reality in a lot of business decisions.)

Chapter 9 – Setting Rates for a Firm:
Firms bill a lot differently than freelancers, yet the idea of making money is the same. Lots of numbers and figures to consider for how you will do this depending on your team, what needs to be done, for who and blah blah blah. This seems like the type of thing a firm will want to figure out early when creating their business, so when it is time to create and bill, there is a standard way of doing it with multiple companies, and no body gets confused, or under-paid. The little math equation they give to determine the hourly rate seems simple but important. Again, it seems like this might be somebody sole job, or at least get an expert or lawyer to help out.

Till Next TINE – Figyure0ne out!