What seemed on the surface like a simple design project for one of our clients last year turned into quite a production project — and a larger-than-expected invoice for the client. The client wasn’t happy, and we all parted ways a little frustrated with one another. That’s not how we like to do business!

If you’ve ever hired a freelancer or outsourced a project to an agency with a similar result, we would like to share a few tips for avoiding the same situation in the future.

In the last 10 years...

• My husband and I have gone from caring for two little people (ages 4 and 1) and four animals (three cats and a dog), to caring for two animals (one cat, one dog) and three little people (ages 14, 11 and 2).
• I quit my full-time, well-paying job to take a huge risk with my career. My husband, thank God, has been supporting me the entire time—even through those first six months, when I had zero clients and zero income. (He deserves sainthood for that!)
• I have gone from working in a traditional office space with coworkers; to my dining room table, working alone; to my basement home office, first working alone, then with a coworker; then back to a traditional office space, now with two coworkers.

I often find myself daydreaming about the future of CorComm Creative, only to stop myself short as my mind wanders back to the familiar question, “But what if…?”