No degree, no worries: How to become a business owner instead

The necessity of tertiary education to establish a rewarding career is a datable topic amongst young Australians, particularly those who have enrolled in it. There are certainly strong points from both sides of the argument, however, what most people agree on is that the concept of ‘the workplace’ is changing, and that change was largely accelerated during the pandemic.

I was raised in a household that instilled a belief in me that my future would be shaped solely by my degree, a common fallacy that many of us were taught. This belief followed me as I started studying to become a lawyer, then a chemist, and finally a geophysicist. My HECs debt grew larger, and my mental health diminished. Like some kind of university Goldilocks, I told myself that if I didn’t find the right degree I would never succeed.

With all the fragmented education I was gaining, I never once imagined using it in a personal capacity and always envisaged working for someone else. While I sat in class doodling on my notebook, waiting for my friends to confirm our U-Bar meet up, I never thought those drawings would amount to anything other than a hobby. It wasn’t until 8 years later, that I would put aside my idea of a traditional career path and start thinking about building my own business and personal brand.

Moving away from the traditional career path

Graphic design freelancing is often thought of as a ‘side hustle’, something you can do for a little bit of extra cash if you have the time. Alternatively, you imagine someone that would sleep in all day accepting or declining projects whenever they felt like it. These are both far from the truth. For a lot of people, freelancing is a full-time or part-time job. If a freelancer does not receive a high volume of projects, they usually need to return to their alternative job and try to balance both schedules.

My platform of choice was Instagram and Upwork. I tried to balance this while studying and working as a casual in my corporate job. Suffice to say, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about how I could optimise my skillset. It would take me a solid week to put together a good quality logo design for a client. During this time, I had meetings with my other job, assignments that were due and an overall sense of uncertainty about how I should be investing my time.

One morning I woke up to a ‘Fail’ score for my latest assignment. This assignment weighed 55% and I had accidentally missed the deadline. The unit had a zero-tolerance policy for late submissions, and I received an automatic ‘Fail’ for the entire class. This meant that I would have to re-attempt the class the following Semester and would therefore have to pay for it twice. This was the moment that I decided my future would not be dictated by an impersonal grading system which did not reflect my value.

Investing in my own personal brand

I was now out on my own. No more casual job and no more studying. I spent my time trying to generate new leads and working hard to engage with my community. While I was enjoying my newfound freedom, I soon discovered that as ‘free’ as it may appear, I was still limited by my own skills and time.

I had to turn down a lot of jobs since I could only take on a certain number of clients and only had 24 hours in a day. If a client requested social media management or website development on top of their branding design project, I had to refer them to someone else. Sometimes clients would not follow through after our consultation phase since I didn’t have the necessary skills or time to set up their business from start to finish. They would gently let me down and tell me that they decided to go with an agency that could accommodate all their needs.

The next logical step was to start building a team and working on my own personal brand.

In an age of TikTok videos and selfies, we have exposed ourselves more than ever before. So why was I so nervous to put my face and name on a business? It was because I felt an overwhelming feeling of ‘imposter syndrome’. The old belief of needing a degree or qualification to succeed was still clouding my judgement. Despite this, nothing I learnt during my years of high school or tertiary education prepared me for the daunting task of setting up my own business.

I put together a budget, timeline and compartmentalised everything into monthly goals. For example, I knew the most important skill I needed on my team was a developer. Many of my clients wanted website development after their website design and they wanted this done within the same team so that nothing would be missed during the implementation of bringing their brand to life. At the same time, I worked on my own website, moving away from freelancer platforms, and explored other digital marketing techniques.

Slowly, after 8 years of searching for success, I ended up becoming a ‘studio director’ for my own branding agency. This was never the ‘traditional’ career path I or my parents imagined. I have no ‘official’ qualifications or university degree. Instead, and most importantly, I have 8 years of trial and error.

I still get nervous before posting any promotional content online for my agency. I also still get nervous investing in advertising with the fear that it may not work, but I can sleep easily at night knowing that my success is completely in my control.

Kate Manks and Callum Humphreys

Kate Manks, owner, BrandVillage.