Building an independent design practice

I recently crossed more than 10,000 hours working independently. Malcolm Gladwell would be proud. I’m not sure I’ve mastered it quite yet, but I’ve spent enough time doing it to understand what works for me. Here’s 5 lessons I wish I knew when I started:

Start with what gives you energy

Before thinking about rates, clients, or whether you can make a living independently, start with a more basic question: are you happy with the way you work today? If the answer is yes, great. If it isn’t, try to understand the source of that discontent. Pay attention to what gives you energy, what drains it, and which parts of the job you find yourself wanting more of.

After spending a couple of decades across big tech companies and early-stage startups, I started to feel stuck. I had all this energy, but trying to direct it within a single team often led to friction. As an IC, my scope was limited and I had to move at the pace of the team. The other option was management, but that meant stepping further away from the work itself, which never felt satisfying. I felt undervalued, like I had more to give than what I was being asked to do. Over time, the disconnect grew. I was still doing the work, but I wasn’t really connected to it anymore.

The real turning point came when I had my first child. I didn’t want him growing up seeing a dad who clocked in mindlessly to work every day. I wanted him to grow up with a dad that was passionate about the reason he got up and went to work every day. I wanted him to feel inspired by seeing me spending my time on something that energized me, so that he could find what energizes him and pursue it.

For a while, I thought the answer might be starting my own company. After doing a lot of digging, I couldn't find a problem I felt willing to dedicate a decade of my life to. When I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t the problem that drew me in, it was the stage. That early stretch when it’s just a few people in a room trying to make sense of something new, shaping it from rough insight into form. That’s the part I loved. So instead of repeating the cycle of starting something new only to grow disillusioned as it scaled, I started to wonder: what if the company I built focused only on the early stage? What if that magic didn’t have to be a stepping stone, but the whole point?

Test it before you leap

Once I had a clearer idea of the kind of work I wanted, the next question was whether I could actually make a living doing it.

The rule of thumb I kept hearing was that independent work should earn roughly twice what you’d make in-house, accounting for the instability and benefits you now have to cover yourself. That number felt daunting, but it gave me something concrete to test against.

So I started small.

I eased into it by moonlighting. I took on contract work during nights and weekends, saving money, and treating “boring” projects as a way to hone my process. That gave me the confidence to take on more work, experiment with pricing, and find my rhythm.

My first client came from a former hiring manager who reached out asking if I knew anyone available for a contract role. Others followed through referrals, especially from other designers who knew I was exploring contract work. 

Once I had saved about three months of expenses, roughly the amount of time I figured it would take me to find another full-time job, I redesigned my website around my new direction, gave my two weeks’ notice, and announced the new venture publicly. That put me on the radar of founders and friends of founders looking for design help

By the time I quit, going independent felt less like a leap of faith and more like following the evidence. I knew there was demand, I had some idea of what people would pay me, and I had enough savings to give myself time to figure out the rest.

Say yes before you learn to say no

In the beginning, my goal was to take on as much work as possible. I wanted to understand how much demand was out there and develop a design offering that matched it. That meant taking on plenty of unsexy work, the kind of projects I probably wouldn’t take today.

It also gave me something I had been craving: exposure to a huge range of problems and opportunities to stretch creatively. I designed for an insurance company, a healthcare startup, a VC firm, and many more. I worked across desktop, mobile, and custom hardware. I designed business dashboards, consumer feeds, booking systems, software products, and brands. I facilitated design sprints. It was an incredibly stimulating period that helped me understand where my skills and interests were most valuable.

When it comes to saying no, the truth is simple: if you need the money, you say yes. That’s how you build stability. As that stability grows, so does your ability to be selective. You can start evaluating work based on the team, the problem, the stage, or the kind of relationship you want to have with a client.

Over time, all those yeses helped me find the intersection between what I was good at, what I enjoyed doing, and what people were willing to pay me for. That’s when saying no became useful.

Let the clients you want shape your pricing

I spent a lot of time trying to find the “right” way to price design work. The conventional wisdom is to avoid charging for time, but beyond that I experimented with weekly retainers, project fees, and different rates. Some were too low. Some were probably too high.

Eventually I realized there was a client for almost every pricing model. So I stopped asking what I should charge and started asking a more useful question: what kind of client did I want my pricing to attract?

I prefer some flexibility in how I structure compensation. I typically start with an all-cash rate, with the option to trade some cash for equity when it makes sense for both sides. This gives us room to align incentives around the long-term success of the product while structuring each engagement around the partnership.

Make it easy to start

I start most engagements with a couple of weeks dedicated to a well-scoped project. It’s enough time for both sides to experience the relationship rather than speculate about it. Does the client get what they need from me? Do I enjoy working with them? Are we excited about where the product is going?

A short initial engagement also makes a high weekly rate easier to evaluate. Rather than asking a client to make a long-term commitment upfront, they can see the work, experience the pace, and decide whether the value makes sense for them. I like the pressure that creates. It keeps me sharp and gives the relationship something concrete to build from. So far, every client I’ve started this way has chosen to continue working together.

Ten thousand hours in, my practice looks very different from the one I started with. Every client, project, and experiment has helped me understand what I’m good at, what gives me energy, and where those things are valuable to others.

That’s ultimately the opportunity of working independently. You get to keep shaping the practice as you learn. There’s no template to follow. There’s just the version that works for you.