EP - 16 Building a Design Business with Tahlia Benefield
In today’s episode, I share with you a chat that I had with a Gold Coast-based graphic designer, Tahlia Benefield. Tahlia is the owner of Tahlia Benefield Design. She is a self-confessed lover of creativity and is on a mission to help bring brands to life by providing, quality, affordable designs, and advice to a small to medium-sized business’ both in Australia and across the globe.
This episode was recorded about six months ago, and at the time Tahlia was in the middle of packing up her life and getting ready take off with her partner on a one-way ticket to Japan, where she is still currently living and running her business from.
“Being in business has its ups and downs, some days I feel like I am killing it and other day I won’t have an email until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. There is always moments of self-doubt.”
Tahlia was one of the very first guests that I interviewed for The Young Money Podcast, but after having trouble tracking down the recording of our interview, I am only able to share this with you now. Regardless of it being recording some time ago, Tahlia’s story is too interesting for me not to share with you.
In this episode, Tahlia shares her story about what it has been like to start her own design business. The challenges of working for yourself and the important lessons she has learned about understanding the financial side of running a business, having the right business structure in place and why it’s so necessary to get professional advice when starting a business. As well as, why she decided to move to Japan and how having a location independent business has given her the freedom to work from anywhere in the world and maintain her work-life balance.
Be sure to listen towards the end of the episode where Tahlia discusses what it was like to get an email from Snapchat asking her to with them, all the while she was still working as a freelance graphic designer and hadn’t even officially started her own company yet.
Who is on your Business / Design bucket list? I would like to work with Virgin, as I am a big fan of Richard Branson
What is your Favourite Quote? “It’s better to try and fail than not to try at all” – Nicole Krauss
What are your biggest achievements in your business?
I am proud of myself for completing my first full year of being self-employed and being able to support myself financially.
At the end of last year, I was contracted by Snapchat to design 50 Australian themed geofilters which were a considerable achievement and gave me a lot of confidence.
Links to resources shared in the episode
What software do you use to design? I use Adobe Creative Cloud, which has over 40 different programs and applications but I only use about 4 or 5 of the programs for my work. I use the following:
Photoshop – Manipulations of images and photos
Indesign – Layouts
Illustrator – Logos and infographics
Lightroom – Editing photos
Time tracking software I use Harvest for my time tracking software to accurately monitor and charge for my time.
Find out more about Tahlia Benefield
Read about why Tahlia took a creative sabbatical in Japan on her Blog
Website – tahliabenefield.com
Instagram – @tahliabenefieldcreative
Upwork – @tahliabenefield
