I know I’ve been very quiet on the blog recently but I’ve been working really hard behind the scenes. I’m excited to announce that I quit my day job and I’m going to be working on Jules Design full time! Yay! I’m so excited that this is finally happening after all of my hard work and dedication to making this dream a reality. I still have a long way to go but its so liberating to take that first step into entrepreneurship.

I should probably mention that this actually isn’t my first time taking the leap into full-time freelancing. A couple of years ago, in 2011, I started Jules Design and worked on my business full time until 2014. I loved working with my clients and had some really amazing design projects but, I was pricing myself WAY too low for the services that I was offering. Ultimately, this caught up with me and I realized that I wasn’t making enough income to sustain my husband and me’s lifestyle. I eventually took a job as a graphic designer at a local boutique agency. I’m grateful for my time in this position because it taught me how to work with a team and I also learned a lot of valuable design & development skills that I can bring back to Jules Design.

This time around, my services are a little bit more focused than they were the last time that I branched out on my own. I exclusively work with clients who are interested in establishing or re-establishing their brand identity. I offer band build-out packages such as website design & print collateral only to clients who have worked with me on their brand identity. I love working with clients on all phases of the design process but without a solid brand identity, the other steps weren’t giving my clients the results that they wanted. I realized that to really do my best work, I need to start working with companies from the ground up. Ensuring that my clients see a greater return on their investment and that I’m working on projects that inspire me.

The next step for my own brand is to start building a brand spanking new website. I’m so happy with the feminine look of my new rebrand and can’t wait to carry this through to all other elements of my brand identity. I’m also going to be working on some print collateral, including, business cards.

Monday was my first day in my new office as an official full-time entrepreneur and I couldn’t be happier about it. I spent the week rearranging my office space, working on client projects, and planning for the future. I’m so excited to dive right into freelancing but at the same time, don’t want to rush things. I want to make sure that I set myself and my clients up for success by setting up project management processes to keep things on track. So far, I’ve been using (and loving) Asana for this part of the process. But, I’ll go over all of this in more detail next week when I talk about the 5 things that I did before taking the leap into full-time freelancing. Until then, I’m going to reveling in my new-found freedom and enjoying my first weeks of freelancing!