Starting my own business wasn’t completely intentional, but in hindsight it was inevitable.
I spent my post-college years working in a range of publications ranging from a regional newspaper in West Georgia to a regional lifestyle magazine in Athens, Georgia.
Later I adapted these technical and design sensibilities to web design and creating content for social media. This expansion of skills served me well in my next role as part of a small creative team serving a group of national music promoters.
This job eventually led to relocating my family to Madison, Wisconsin in 2018. Good times ensued in the lake-filled college town until early 2020 when covid uprooted the events industry. Sent to work remotely eventually quietly morphed into being laid off in a pandemic by July 2020.
I was caught off guard by the whole scenario. In my idealistic mind, I imagined would retire from this dream job, so I had not invested much in creating an online portfolio. Essentially I started from scratch by building this very site. I used it to compile a few projects and use them in my only job search. Eventually, I picked up a few freelance clients through Facebook shares. Still, I kind of expected to freelance a little and eventually settle into a standard job again.
I interviewed for a handful of the 200 jobs I applied for between July 2020 and July 2021, and none of them was a good fit because they typically wanted one of my skills, but rarely a role that would allow web and graphic design, but also illustration, video, and site performance enhancement.
The roster of freelance clients continued to grow and soon the voice in my head saying maybe I should just do this grew louder. By the end of 2021, I had started to formulate a plan to make my business official in 2022. I had bases covered on the creative end but had a lot of questions about the business side of things.
First of all, how should I classify this thing? What makes an LLC differ from a Corporation? I did some googling and found some business formation services. A few had price tags that made me consider staying un-legit. Luckily I stumbled upon ZenBusiness who caught me with their groovy name and friendly fees. The link is below if you are interested in forming your own business.
Create an LLCStabercombie Design, LLC was officially born in March 2022. This year brought many diverse and existing projects such as the art tour in Athens Greece, a major site overhaul of Audio-Video experts in Atlanta, GA, and the launching of 12 books and assorted merchandise with a children’s author in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Again much thanks to ZenBusiness for helping me get it off the ground! Visit them at the icon below.
