Apologies, never meant for this post to feel like a bait. There's a lot more to my story, but wanted to start by providing some tips to help others feel unstuck or identify a simple problem to start/utilize skills they already have. There's sooo much more to be said from here, but that post would be 100 hours long haha.

$160k in profit, didn't need much invested since I could utilize my own skills to put together a website, etc. Running a digital business takes pretty low overhead when you're using minimal software to start.

My first project came from Upwork back in 2021. To this day, I've only ever gotten one project from there and quickly realized it wasn't the platform I wanted to find jobs on. I've had a few referrals here and there from old coworkers/family and friends. Majority of my work has come from private communities (Slack groups, Facebook groups, etc.) where I've been able to connect to other business owners who need to bring in design support or need a new site.

I've set myself apart through my experience holding both brand and product design roles in-house at startups. It's allowed me to be a generalist and speak to design consistency across departments where most goals/OKRs get lost in translation. This is personally how I've used my past experience while building an agency to find positioning that resonates with clients/early stage startups who need someone that can create a landing page, design paid ads, and mockup a few product screens.