A Studio of One

When I left my last job, I thought the difficult part would be finding clients. It wasn't. The difficult part was that nobody told me what to do on a Tuesday morning when no client needed anything. A studio of one has no manager, no roadmap, and no one to disagree with. That turns out to be both the whole point and the whole problem.[1]

For the first six months I filled every empty hour with small client requests, because they felt like work and work felt like safety. By summer I was busy, tired and doing none of the things I had left my job to do. I was a contractor with a nicer email signature.

The shape of a week

I split my weeks into two kinds of days: client days and studio days. Client days belong to other people. Studio days belong to the practice itself: writing, sketching, improving the tools I use, and doing nothing in particular. Without studio days, I become a contractor. With too many, I become a hobbyist.[2]

The rule that made this work was embarrassingly simple: studio days go into the calendar first, before any client work, and they get the same respect as a meeting with someone important. Because they are a meeting with someone important. They are the only time the studio gets to become better at what it does.

Saying no, gently

The most useful sentence I have learned is that's not something I do well. It is honest, it is kind, and it ends the conversation without closing the door. People almost always respond well to it, and some of them come back a year later with exactly the kind of project I do want.[3]

The harder no is to good work that arrives at the wrong time. A project I would love, from people I like, in a month that is already full. I still say yes to those too often. Part three of this series is about learning not to.

Money, briefly

Working alone makes money feel more personal than it should. Every invoice feels like a small judgement of your worth. What helped me was separating the studio's money from my own: the studio pays me a fixed salary every month, whatever came in, and keeps the rest as a buffer. Good months and bad months stopped feeling like good and bad versions of me.[4]

What I'd tell myself

Keep the studio small enough that you can still see all of it at once. The moment you need a spreadsheet to know what you are working on, you are running a company, and that is a different job. Protect the empty days. And write things down, because nobody else will remember what you learned.