185: How to Build A Fashion Design Agency & Launch Your Fashion Brand On The Side

Want to know the ups and downs of building a fashion agency, navigating freelance work in fashion, and the incredible journey of transforming an inexperienced designer into a Clo 3D whiz?  Then this episode is just for you!

In this episode, you'll hear how Kristen Anderson, a freelance fashion designer turned agency founder, took on a mammoth project that left her feeling overwhelmed and in need of a break. With pressure to go at lightning speed and a desire for control, Kristen shares her experience of building her team, switching up her pricing model, and even jetting off to Sri Lanka to bring her lingerie brand to life. And if that's not intriguing enough, she spills the details on a remarkable success story of a newbie designer who left and came back transformed. Plus, Kristen dishes out invaluable tips on optimizing LinkedIn, managing client expectations, and the power of putting yourself out there. Trust us, this episode is a fashion-forward journey you don't want to miss!

Kristen Anderson has been designing lingerie + intimate apparel for over 9 years. Her most recent full-time design position was at SwimUSA, where she was a senior designer for Kona Sol, a contemporary women's swimwear line sold at Target. In late 2019, Kristen left SwimUSA to pursue full-time work with KRSTN NDRSN, her startup fashion design agency started in 2018.

Contact Kristen:
Visit her Website: www.kndrsn.com
Email: [e-mail]
Follow on Instagram
Connect on LinkedIn

Download my Freelance Price List just for fashion (it’s free!): sewheidi.com/price

Creators and Guests

Host

Heidi Weinberg {Sew Heidi}

Heidi (aka Sew Heidi) is a self-taught freelance fashion designer who built a six-figure business without a degree, portfolio, or industry connections. After years of burnout in the fashion industry, she went freelance—and never looked back. Now, she helps other designers ditch toxic jobs, land better clients, and build flexible careers they love. Through her podcast, courses, and resources, Heidi has helped thousands of designers take control of their fashion path and finally get paid what they’re worth.

What is Fashion Designers Get Paid: Build Your Fashion Career On Your Own Terms?

This is a show for burnt-out fashion designers (and TDs, PDs, patternmakers, textile designer and beyond) who want more flexibility in their career while still doing work they love.

You'll learn how to build a freelance fashion business, so you can do the work you love on your own terms. Freelancing in fashion is the only way to get freedom in your day (instead of being tied to a desk).

Whether you want to earn extra money on the side, fund your fashion brand, or replace your salary, the FDGP podcast will help you get there. Listen in for actionable tips and strategies to kickstart or grow your career as a freelance fashion designer, build your confidence, and create the life you want.

Hosted by $100k+ fashion freelancer Sew Heidi, the show features interviews and strategy sessions with successful freelance fashion designers from around the world who've ditched toxic fashion jobs and taken control of their own destinies. This is the only place to get REAL insights from REAL freelancers who have built REAL careers on their own terms. (Formerly the Successful Fashion Freelancer podcast.)

In this episode, I'm chatting with Kristen Anderson, a freelance fashion designer specializing

in lingerie and swim for startup brands. Over the last three years, Kristen's freelance

career has grown so much, it's transitioned in a big way. She actually wound

up turning her freelance career into a full fledged fashion design agency.

Our conversation took many interesting turns, but some of the key things we talked about

include how she built out her agency and started hiring other

freelancers to work for her. How she's optimized her LinkedIn

profile and website so clients can find her easily. How she

switched to a retainer only pricing model after hourly and project

based pricing were not working for her. And last, how she's building her own

intimates brand on the side, which includes spending five weeks in Sri

Lanka earlier this year. It is a super fun and inspiring

conversation. You're going to love it. Let's get to it. Kristen, welcome to the podcast

again. You and I were just chatting before I record. It's been about three years

since you were on the show and there are a lot of exciting updates

that I cannot wait to hear with you and your freelance career, your freelance

business. Let us know. First, we'll point everybody back to the original

episode where you came on so people can get the full backstory. But

first, please introduce yourself in a few sentences and let us know who you are

and what you do in the fashion industry. Sure. My name is Kristen Anderson and

I've been in the industry for about 14 years now. I work

with emerging and startup brands to help them build and

develop their collections from beginning concept through

production. And that's a little bit about me.

Yeah, and you're pretty niche because before,

as soon as we got on the call, I was nerding out on your

zoom handle, literally says lingerie and

swim expert. Yeah. You specialize in that

space. Yes, absolutely. I have been

pretty much dedicated to the swim and intimate space for my entire career.

So I decided to cancel any other projects

in ready to wear and or baby kids, anything like that,

because it doesn't light me up and I am not very experienced in

those realms. So anytime I feel like I have that kind of

job come up, it gives me a lot of stress. And also it's

not my zone of genius. So I feel like, why would I want to spend

my time doing the things that are really challenging and don't light me

up versus the things that I know I'm really talented at and what

I love doing? Yeah, totally. Okay, so

as you and I chatted about in your first interview, which I'm going to double

check here with episode 117, so we'll link

to that in the show. Notes, everybody, but just

double checking that now. I had it in my head, of course, yeah, 117,

you had a career in the industry. You worked in house, you dabbled in

freelancing. It was a little bit of a mess. You didn't totally know what you

were doing. Then you kind of figured things out. You started getting a lot of

traction. You quit your full time job. You leaned into

freelancing. That was when we chatted three years ago. So

three years ago, you had left your job. You were

freelancing exclusively. Now

you have a team. You work with other freelancers, get

us up to date on sort of what's happened over the past three years, and

then I'm going to dig into each of those things. I'm going to ask you

how you actually got that success. Yeah, absolutely. So last time we

met yeah, I was pretty much I had one intern

at the time that we had last spoke, so her name is

Jasmine. She's actually still part of my team. Yeah, she

went from being an intern and she was with me for her student

co op at Drexel, and then

she stayed on as a part time assistant. And when she graduated, she ended

up becoming my first full time employee. So that was really amazing.

But so I only had Jasmine that was helping me as an intern when we

last spoke. So over that course of time, I

had hired a virtual assistant. I think actually, no, I had a virtual

assistant at the time, but I think I went through some transition periods with

different virtual assistants and trying to figure out what did I actually need when it

comes to virtual assisting, it's. A serious learning

curve. Yeah, you just don't know

until you start dabbling into had. I had my virtual assistant

and I had Jasmine last time we spoke, but since then we've grown. We have

a few more people on our team. I traded off the virtual assistant for somebody

with more of a marketing background. Instead,

I found that I didn't really need the virtual assistant as it was

mostly doing things around my personal life schedule that I just

didn't have a whole lot of time for, like setting up doctors appointments and

making things that I would not make the time

for. Doing things that I would not make the time for. But yeah,

at the end of 2020, I feel like it wasn't

much different. But by 2021, I had met

Monica, who is a technical designer that is also part of my team now.

Okay. And Monica and I have been working together since early

2021. How'd you guys meet? So it was kind of

interesting. She replied to

a job feeler I kind of had put out on LinkedIn for a

CLO 3D designer. Okay. It was interesting because

at the time, she didn't have any experience in Clow 3D, but she was

really keen on technical design and wanted to learn it.

So she kind of just reached out and told me that she was

interested, wanted to learn, wanted to see what I thought about that,

and honestly, we kind of just started

trying each other out almost immediately. It was like two months

later, maybe. And she was like, okay, I'm thinking about leaving my full

time job. Can I have some project based work for

you at the moment? And we can see how that feels.

We clicked so immediately, so I just kind of gave her the shot,

and eventually she actually took some time off and went on

her own little sabbatical journey because I had done that previously.

And when Monica came back at the end of 2021, she had

really known figured out all of Chloe and how to

use it. And so she left and came back as a

transformed designer. So it was really cool. That's cool. Okay.

And I love that this is all happening, like peak Pandemic.

Okay, so you get Monica and

keep going. Yeah. So, I mean, Monica came on in March of

2021. I had also been working with

Riley, who is now the marketing side of my business.

She had reached out in October or November of

2020. People just reach out to me, and

if I vibe with them, I try to meet them. If I

feel like Synergy, then I'll tell them like, hey, I don't have anything for you

right now, but stay close by. Remind me. Don't

forget that. Tell me you exist every now and then so that I could come

back to you. And if I could give you a project, and if I could

throw you a project right away, I mean, I will, but if I can't,

just don't let me forget you. So Riley had reached out in

2020, and then she lost her job. At some point through the

Pandemic, there was like another period, and then it came back.

So Riley was trying to figure out what she was going to do. She actually

had taken one of your courses, I believe, which had made her reach out to

me, which is kind of like a funny full. Oh, is

she in Fast, my freelance program? I think it was

fast. Yeah. That's the only program we have that would

actually initiate someone to do Reach Out. Yeah.

Otherwise the programs are more technical, like Illustrator

and tech packs and stuff. I'm pretty sure that is what she

did. You launched that in the Pandemic at the beginning of it?

Kind of. I mean, it existed before the Pandemic, so

yeah, it would have been ongoing then. It would have been available then. Yeah, she

could have been in it. Okay, yeah. Then definitely that was the one she had

because she told me about you and how she had

heard about reaching out to people and all of your thoughts on

just try just put something out there and see what they say.

And so she did that, and then

her full time gig was not lighting her up, so she was working a full

time job and side hustling with me as much as she could. And she

was working at a uniform company, and she's a designer and she

lived in Ohio, so there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities for Riley

to go out and find new fashion jobs. So

once we started working together for a little while, a new opportunity kind of

arose where my virtual assistant at the time was leaving.

And I was like, I don't know if I actually need another virtual assistant or

if I need somebody else that actually knows more about fashion

and knows how to talk the lingo and speak about it

on social media, because that was kind of what I was struggling with at

the time. And social media was really important for the business, it seemed.

Anyways. Lots of different tangents there. Okay, yeah, I

want to talk about that. Let's just pause and talk

about that. Social media was really important for the business.

I mean, it seemed yeah.

Honestly, I think social media is already, like, going through this

really weird renaissance of things.

I don't know what to do with it. I feel like we put time and

energy into it and it kind of goes into the void. And

I also recognize that you have to have a presence because

there's this thought of, like, if I can't find you on social media,

you're not real. Right? Yeah. So you have to put

yourself out there. You have to be a content creator if you have a business

in this kind of space. And it still feels

very much like you have to do these things even if

they are sort of devoid of. Payoff,

even if you're directly not getting the clients through that, it's

like you feel this higher level obligation to just keep doing

it. Absolutely. Because if you die on social

media, are you dead in real life? You die in real

life. That's literally what I was thinking. Yeah. Are you specifically

talking instagram? I am semi specifically talking Instagram because

I think Instagram is like the pits right now, for sure. I mean, I

was looking at yours right before this call, and I noticed you took some kind

of breaks off of it too. It seems like six months

has been the best decision of my life. And guess what? It's not me posting

on there now. Yeah, I have someone on my team doing it.

It's a very toxic place for me. I do not

want to be there. It's not healthy. Yeah, I totally agree. And if it

was up to me, social media with

I don't think it's doing benefits for us at this point in a lot of

ways, and I think it's also not beneficial to brands at the

moment that much either. I don't feel like they're flourishing because

of social media. So are you guys still kind of

trying to actively, regularly post? Yeah. I mean, we have a

presence, and I think we post like it's our portfolio

and we show off our clients and we talk about the things we're working

on and relevant blog posts we have, but we're not.

Necessarily. There was a point in time where I was making a whole bunch of

reels and it was

like I don't think I ever once got business

from one of my instagram reels either. I think almost

nothing came back from it. Yeah, not in a

real fully tangible yes, that came from

Instagram. Yes, that was 100% from there.

It's always hard to tell where, but most of my inquiries and most people find

me on either LinkedIn or Google. Okay, so

yeah, let's talk about that because I think it's

easy to get sucked down this like, oh, I have to have this Instagram presence.

And I teach that you don't I very adamantly say,

forget it if you really want to be on there, because you

are going to be reaching out to brands there, or something like set up a

nine by nine grid or three by three nine square grid that just

feels like a portfolio. Like you don't need to be posting regularly. Just get that

presence up there that feels really cohesive and niche and then be done.

So let's talk about clients then. So clients are

finding you on LinkedIn and Google. What talk about this

because I hear the LinkedIn thing sometimes. I don't hear

a lot of people on Google unless they're super niche, which you

mean. I think that definitely helps. I think being hyper

niche is somewhat helpful. I think it's also tricky. I mean,

Google in general, it's hard when you have a service based

business and it's also

tangentially connected to the e commerce space because when

it is, it actually becomes hard to find people like us.

Because when you search for a lingerie designer, you

find designer lingerie, not a lingerie designer.

Oh, right, okay. I guess unless they're putting

the qualifier like freelancer in there. Yes,

you have to have either that word or something else. I did have the

word freelance in my web page for a long time, but I

also took it off more recently because it didn't feel

connected quite to what I am now. Because I'm your business.

Like an agency. Yeah, I don't know what you call. Yourself, but

yeah, I call it an agency at this point. But it's

just so weird because it's like people do find me on Google. I think part

of why they are able to find me on Google is because I've been building

a lot of educational content and blog posts over the I think, you

know, if you look for what are lab dip? That is

something that almost nobody ever covered on the internet. And that's something

that people find on my website and they go to it

and there's just weird little things kind of like those

that are just like, this is so freaking random. And nobody ever

talked about it. Totally. So that's so

interesting. Okay, so you've built out your blog, which sounds like is

mostly an educational platform. You work with smaller startup brands,

so you're specifically thinking, like, what types of things

might they be? Googling? And then you create that resource and then they Google it.

You come up because like you said, a lot of these topics are stuff that

a lot of people aren't really blogging. There's not a ton of content out there.

It's not super saturated. It's not like how to lose weight or how to get

a six pack that's super saturated. But in our niche, I think there's a lot

of interesting opportunity. So, okay, you've got these blog posts

and people are finding you that way, and then they've got some type of

contact form or something. And is that the funnel? That's part

of it, yes. We have a contact form for clients. We have a

contact form for newsletter, like people who just want to sign up and subscribe

for a newsletter. Sure. We also have a couple of different

courses available on our website, lead Generation things

as well, to help people find us and get

us. We have a checklist for fashion

founders who are just starting off the fundamentals that you kind of need

to have for building a brand. Another one we have is

like an entrepreneur quiz to tell you what kind of fashion entrepreneur

you are. And it gives you guidelines for if this is you, then

you might struggle here. And if you're struggling here, then get help

with somebody that has this experience or

yeah, okay. I have to throw out a disclaimer to everyone listening

because I know it could turn into very

shiny object syndrome or overwhelm of

like, oh, well, then I need to start doing all this blogging, and I need

to start like I need a lead magnet and a quit. It can get really

overwhelming really quickly. So I want to be mindful that this is not how you

started your freelance career. This is how

you've now strategically built it out once you were

established. Now you have a team, you have help. It takes

time to build out this type of a presence and platform.

Absolutely. This is not an overnight thing. I was

literally just on a call with my team earlier and we're building SOPs

for our whole business, basically, and just trying to streamline things.

And I'm telling them I'm like, guys, this is not something that I expect you

to finish in a day. It's going to be like a long process and that's

what it is like, creating content, creating anything. It's like

a long time before you see the churn of success that actually

comes from it. And you do not need all of this to get started.

Yeah, no, like, you got started as we talked about,

doing just basic outreach. Like some, I think cold some

through your network. But you didn't have this massive presence or anything?

No, I barely had a portfolio

website when I started. Barely. And you were able to build up enough

to quit your job and have this amazing

so, all right, so you're getting people through Google, and then you said

LinkedIn to talk to me about that. How's LinkedIn working for

you? Well, I've realized recently that I've become kind

of more influential on LinkedIn versus Instagram

especially. I cap myself getting a

lot more followers on LinkedIn versus Instagram.

I'm more interested in the content on LinkedIn personally because it's like

business related and I'm always interested in new books and finding

out what's going on in the industry and whatnot. So I just find myself on

there more. And when you're on a platform

and I have a very filled out portfolio

or not portfolio profile on LinkedIn, I tried to

get reviews and recommendations and as much as I could,

I tried to fill out the fullest profile on LinkedIn I

could so that I can be found. And I think at the end

of the day, it's just posting content and putting it out there and

repeatedly asking people, do you need

help? If you're looking for somebody, here's what our team does, and

you just have to put yourself out there again and again. And I know it

feels painful sometimes. Okay, what exactly does

that look like, though? Because you're like, okay, I am posting

content regularly and then saying, hey, if you need help, walk

us through exactly that process. What are you posting? Well,

most often I would say we are posting our blog

posts. That would be like, educational content we share. But

it also might be like, I read a news article and I thought it was

interesting, and I might not necessarily put a clear

call to action, and it might just be like me commenting on it, but people

still see me commenting on stuff about sustainable

fashion and how she in is

disgusting. It's all of the things.

So I think that's part of it. But another example is

a few weeks ago, it was a picture of my

face and it was just me, like, saying, hello. It's been a while since I

put my face out here. I usually am behind the scenes doing

the stuff that you don't ever see. And

if you're interested in learning more, we have

an opening in July or something. Like, I put a little thing at the end

of it. We have space available if you're

interested. It works sometimes, and sometimes

it's like a flop on LinkedIn. Your

posts don't always magically take off, but sometimes they're successful.

And usually I find that pictures of your face, people

like seeing faces. So I would definitely

suggest, if you're trying to get your face out there, trying to network, put your

face out there and say who you are and introduce yourself and tell

people what you like. To work on and what you're good at and sell

yourself right there. Yeah. And you're doing this

on your personal profile? This is not a business page.

Yeah, I do it on my personal profile because that's where I have the

following engagement. Yeah. I honestly don't think that a lot of people

interact very much with business pages on LinkedIn either.

They like them and they'll like a post, but they don't comment on things

as often. And I feel like those things end up in the dead zone.

I would comment do it as yourself, try to build

connections, get your face out there. Yeah. It's

really nice when you do it enough because if you are in a

niche and you niche down enough, people actually start

to know you. And they do. Totally. And

yeah, I think it's nice to think about doing a well

rounded having a well rounded type of presence there. Right. Like you said, sometimes

you're maybe commenting on an article or maybe you're sharing it to

begin with and you're sharing some of your opinion like an op ed type of

piece. Right. And then sometimes you're

sharing content of your own that you've created, which is like educational.

And arguably you could do that without having created that whole blog post in the

first place. So for people that to not get overwhelmed with creating a whole blog

is like, hey, here's a tip on, think

about what is your ideal customer, where they're stuck, right. Or

what's something, a question they ask a lot and then just post that as like

a little educational tip, right, directly in LinkedIn. Yeah,

absolutely. That's a great idea. I've also seen other people and I

just need to take up myself on this, but little image

carousels or galleries of instructions and tips and ideas that they made in

canva stuff that's simple, easy, not super

crazy wordy. Just like big step instructions.

Like do this if you want that. Totally.

And then the third type is being a little bit more

personable and then sharing about who you are, what you do with some type of

soft call to action. So it's a variety of all the different things.

Are you active on there regularly? Are you posting or

doing something every day? I would

say I don't always post things

on my own posts every day, but I would just generally

say I'm poking around there just about every day making

comments. Not always like

commenting though. Sometimes it's just liking things throughout the day.

It just depends on my mood too and how much time I have to do

that because I tend to do it in the morning and I also tend to

just post in the morning in general on LinkedIn because I feel like that's

when I actually think I learned something a long time ago. And

it's like something about CEOs are on LinkedIn early because that's when

they wake up and they're like and then the

people who are on LinkedIn at noon and lunchtime, and they're like the

slackers who don't care about oh, my gosh.

Wow. Okay, so you're that CEO

that's up there every morning. Well, I'm an early waker,

and I just find that I'm looking at it for news more

than fashion news and headlines in our space more than

anything. But yeah, I don't know. I think that

commentary got warped in my brain at some.

So then you're getting clients through that

various engagement on LinkedIn as well as Google.

Are you doing any more outreach, or is everything pretty much inbound these

days? A lot of it is inbound these days. Although I would have to say

that I probably should be doing more outbound because I

feel like I have totally slacked on that. And we're kind of

in a little bit of a lull where we're not super duper

busy. But I also kind of designed that by nature because I've

been crazy stressed lately, because on top of

this, I also have another business of my own brand that I've been working on

for two and a half years. And it's crazy,

and it's been so hard. Is it lingerie

or swim? Yes, it's lingerie. Well, not lingerie

necessarily, but, like, bras and underwear. Okay. Got you

underwear, dressy. Yeah. Okay. And so what are you

doing with that? Well, it's become this crazy

beast, but I have been trying to

make a more comfortable underwire alternative along

with me and my team, not just me, but I have a co

founder, and we've been working on this for quite some time. We've been

using 3D printing to reengineer what an underwire

bra essentially could be and give you the shape of

an underwire without the feeling of an underwire, because

underwires are like they're

garbage. They're garbage.

Also, at the same time, there's a large degree of women

who a can't not wear underwires because they

need just like, they want the

look that an underwire gives, you know, because it's

a squishy bralette. Yeah. Shape and round.

Barbie boobs is what we like to call them. Barbie boobs. Yeah.

Okay. I'm like, I don't care how they look. I just need

to be comfortable. I feel you. I

mean, some women are less care.

But I get what you mean. We all have different feelings about our bodies and

shapes and whatnot. Okay, cool. So where are you guys at

with. Actually, it's funny because

Bridget and I, my co founder, we went to Sri Lanka in

March for five. Yeah, it

was crazy pants. We worked directly with a manufacturer

there. We basically found out that the manufacturer that we were working with was not

going to work, which was very disappointing.

We also didn't get quite as far as we had expected,

which was also not the best. But we have

recently engaged with somebody locally that is helping us, and so

we're trying to wrap up what we have in our

roster right now in the next six weeks. By the end of

August, I am hoping that we have something that we can take as

a file and give it to an injection molder so that we can actually make

a physical mold of the thing. We've been 3D printing for two years

because basically we've never seen it in the real material.

We've only seen it in 3D printed materials. And we need to get to this

next step so that we can get there. Oh my gosh. Wow.

Five weeks in Sri Lanka. That's amazing. Were you doing other stuff

for their clients there or was that exclusively for your brand? I was

pretty much exclusively there for the brand iteration, our

brand. But at the same time, I mean, I met with other factories

and I didn't make a waste of the trip.

It's never a waste. Yeah. Okay. Wow.

Crazy. That is wild.

I'm sure the date is fluctuating, but when do you

hope to try to launch this? Are you going to do like a Kickstarter? How

are you going to launch this? Originally, a long time ago, we thought about doing

a Kickstarter, but we learned that Kickstarter is actually really fundamentally

difficult these days just because you need to have like $2

million basically in the bank for your advertising

of a Kickstarter to be monumentally successful. It does.

It takes a really big backing to actually have it be successful

on paper. And you're like, oh, but I spent all this money. Yeah,

it's very challenging. But no. As of right now,

I believe that we are probably on the path for

if our summer plans work out, we should be able to jump into

wear tests before the end of the year with our community

of users. We have around 1200 users right now in

the community that we created to help us build this product. That's

amazing to do. Bring them behind the scenes with you and

actually develop it collectively to get real input from a bunch of

different people. Wow. Creation. How did you get

1200 people? I mean, it's been working on the community

since last summer. I would say we launched it about a

year ago, maybe eleven months ago. Okay.

A lot of it's just been grit and heads down.

My co founder has done a lot of outreach and trying to get

people interested in this from other communities and different groups and

whatnot. We were also part of Everlane's next

collective last year. So that was part know,

something that helped get us some traction last year, I would say.

And that helped get us a few people in our community too.

But yeah, a lot of it's like. It'S hard work, it's

a mean and look at you're running an agency

and doing this really big undertaking. You're not like, oh, let

me not just but go cut and sew another

bra. It's like a really

massive technological. Undertaking. But that's really exciting.

It is. It's massive. It's exciting. It's also so

crazy. And I think that's part of why I've been like, I need to take

some chill, time, a break, and not

feel. So I don't know. I think the interesting

thing about it, having felt it as myself as a founder, and also having

seen it from other founders, is that there is this pressure and

this desire to go as fast as you

can no matter what. And why can't

I just keep going fast? You want to control the situation so much and you

want to be the one who says this is when it's going to happen and

this is when it's going to be done. And honestly, the reality of things is

when there's projects like this and you're trying to do something really different

and not just like the standard fabric cut

make into something. You never know when the end

is. I keep telling I use the analogy of

climbing the mountain all the time and I'm like, I feel like I'm

at the top. I'm near the top of the mountain. It's starting to get like

cloudy and not sure. False summit

again. No, it's not the one. But I feel like when I do get to

the top, eventually it will be okay and the sky will clear and I'll know

my way down. But

there's no other explanation other than you have this

idea that you want to bring into the world and

you know that you are the person that is meant to do it. And

the fact that you have it just sitting on the back of your brain, just

like, get it out there, get it out there. Do it, do it, do it.

It's just mind boggling. Okay, so I

have two questions leading off of that, and I know this conversation is taking a

whole different turn. I don't like to really prepare stuff in advance, and I know

you had sent me a few talking points in advance, but how are you funding

all this? I got to ask self.

Okay. Yeah. So I don't want to plant any

seeds, but one of the benefits of freelancing or

running your own business agency, however you have it structured,

is you have this foundation where you're able to still make

money, right? But then you have the freedom and flexibility to then also do this

project on the side. Like, could you do this if you were working full time

in house? I mean, how would you go to Sri Lanka for five weeks? I

don't think I would. Yeah, I don't think I would be able to do what

I had done if I had been working full time. Yeah, I'm a big proponent

of freelancing. And so what I'm trying to say here is

and I think for some people who want to do their own brand,

freelancing is a great companion to that. Right. Because you

have that income, but you also have all the flexibility to do

what you want. Oh, absolutely. I definitely

hear you on that. And I think that is exactly how I went into this

with that mindset. Because when I started my

very first business brand, I did everything by myself.

It sucked, it was hard. I tried so much

and I failed miserably. And then I realized that I do really good design

stuff. Why don't I just do that for people who need it? And

it was so clear that

that's what I should be doing. But also when I

had the idea for iteration, when I decided I wanted to work on this company

and I was like, well, I had

already tried my own brand at one point a few years back and I was

like, but I've now been doing this for other people. I have more confidence now

because I've been doing it again for more people again. And

I'm like, I don't actually have to do it quickly. I could do it at

the pace that it takes and I could do it on the side and I

can go whatever time it takes, it just takes and I don't

really need to make it go fast. That was my original

inclination when I had started it. So take it

for what it is. I also now have a co founder. I didn't have a

co founder when I started it and when I had told myself I could go

slow. And when you have another person that's also depending on you, things change.

But sure, at the end of the day, it creates

an amazing basis for you to do your

freelance and also build your brand because you've got some sort

of income coming in that helps you stabilize. And you

also have the idea that I can still work on something that lights

me up and is totally, fully mine at the end of the day.

Because I think we all want ownership

of something at the end of the day because it's how you

become wealthy and how you develop money or compensation

for yourself is like ownership. Everybody knows that

if you can own that and make something that you can own, that's

magical and even if it takes ten years, at least

it's yours and you've done it. And that's kind of how I have always

been thinking about both of my businesses in the sense just

like, it's never going to be somebody else's, so

it's going to be mine and I'm going to sit through the consequences of

it and any of the challenges and also

enjoy the benefits and the rewards. Totally.

Okay. So that whole conversation kind of leads me to something else that you had

brought up that you thought could be insightful for listeners was

like working with startup brands and people that are kind

of sew to the industry because that's a lot of the brands that you work

with. You said interestingly enough, and this is something I

talk about is like I don't want you to mislead your clients in any

way, but oftentimes working with a bunch of clients, you

can use that as a learning curve to then do your own

brand a little bit with a little bit more intelligence, right? You can

kind of see the mistakes that they're making firsthand and you can learn

while getting paid. You can't go into it completely blind, right? Obviously you have to

have some skills and some knowledge and a base. And again, don't

mislead your clients about what you are capable of, but it's always going to be

a learning opportunity. And so, like you said, you've worked with so

many startups and small brands over the past few years that

it's helped you in developing your own brand. So

can you talk a little bit about some of the lessons that

you've learned and maybe even challenges too of

working with these small brands

that haven't launched yet that maybe don't know much about the fashion industry?

What does that look like from a freelancer or like an

agency perspective? That whole process.

I think you have to realize that most people who are

coming into it, at least for me, most

people who are coming into it and are really interested in being

successful as a brand owner, they're going to

be somewhat curious about the whole

process. And we have to honor that

curiosity in some way and teach them

about what they're doing because

I don't want to help build the brand and put

something into the universe. And then at the end of the day, still not

have fully educated the person who's owning the brand on

what they're selling. At the end of the day, I'm not expecting to

give her or him my full set of experience because I can't

do that in the time we work together. But the idea that we

have to be people who can help

others to learn the lingo and to understand what they're doing so

that they don't look silly if they had an interview with a

magazine or something so that they can talk right about

it. You don't want them to be like, I don't know, we made

that. Yeah, it could just be

so bad for them if they don't know what they're saying. And so

I think understanding that, most of it comes from a curious

place and if you don't think it comes from a

curious place, try to remember it comes from a curious place. Because

sometimes I think that clients will like, I've done it so many times,

I've done this so many times and they'll be like, well, why are we doing

this and why are we doing that? And I'll be like, well, that's a good

question and I should absolutely be able to tell you why. But

initially, years ago, I would get sort of frustrated by those and I'm like, why

am I getting frustrated. It's like things they don't know,

they can't learn from thin air. So part of it

is just letting people be educated, giving them the

education when they need it, being open and honest and

transparent with your feedback so that you're not like if you're having issues with a

client or if a brand is not clear on what you're

doing and how you're helping them conversation. It's like talk to

them. Empathy. And just looking at people and

saying, this is what I'm thinking you're meaning by this? Is this what you

mean? That can go a long way. Just communication. Yeah. How

do you manage? Because I know this is where people

get stuck here, is like when you're working with these

smaller, independent brands and they do have a lot of questions, right.

And it's coming from a place of curiosity. And again, they just don't have the

knowledge, but building

time into the project to make

sure that you're getting compensated for.

Because and I don't know if you're doing any projects that

are quite this small, but let's say someone hires you to do one tech pack,

right? And so it's like hourly, maybe, or

like a set price, right? But then they have like 800 questions, and they want

to spend an hour on the phone. And that could arguably scale

up with a twelve tech pack project or I don't know, whatever it might look

like, right. But managing that balance between

here's kind of what I had originally quoted and

then Scope Creep, where we are now, getting sort of I

get that you're curious and stuff, but at the end of the day, it's taking

a lot of time. How do you manage all that? It's a good

question. I don't know that it's ever been in so much excess

that I felt like I couldn't answer the questions.

I'm also like, a super people pleaser, so

I don't know if that's part of that, too.

I would say that as far as requests

go,

this will probably be a different tangent that we go down. But I don't do

project based pricing, and I don't do hourly based pricing anymore. Oh, good.

Packages. I basically have a retainer based

pricing. Okay. It's really based on the number of styles

that you're developing and how many you're doing at once. Are you

working on different categories? Are you working on one category? Is it like one

delivery? Three? It just depends on the client.

But at the end of the day, Scope Creep is so hard.

Pricing by project is hard. Pricing by hour is hard because

it's a race to the bottom for pricing by hour because they want you to

be as fast as you possibly can be. And you're like, I need to put

time and energy and effort into this to make it good. And project

based pricing, you're hoping that you can get it done in the completed amount of

time. So that you make a decent bottom line on it. But it's also just

like a fairy wish right now. I don't know how much is and

it always ends up being bigger than it is. So for me, I found that

retainer based monthly project sort of linked

to projects is the best way for us to limit

that. And so we have our smallest package.

It still comes with unlimited questions, basically.

Okay. And that's never turned into a problem. It's never turned into a problem. And

honestly, I think part of it is just how I

manage my own systems, is I am very upfront with everybody. When

we start working together, we have rules of engagement. We explain that what

our communication is like in our rules of engagement, and you can

expect a reply from me within 24 to 48 business hours if you send

me an email. And I'm not going to race to send you a reply to

your question. So that's part of it. I will get to it as

soon as I can, but that might not be my top priority. The other you're

setting those expectations up front. Yes. And one of

my last one for my rules of engagement is that I don't work with

assholes. So if you are an asshole, I won't work with you. So

honestly, I think it's fun. I think it's cheeky.

Totally. People don't need to I don't need to pretend like I'm

somebody who's just going to be stomped around. I'm not going to work with you

if you're a jerk. No jerks, please. So

this is really interesting. When do you present

the rules of engagement? It's as part of a contract.

So once they want the contract and they're ready to sign,

I send it along with like a schedule of here's what you can expect

in month one, month two, month three. If we're doing the development

of something, it usually takes about a year. So we just kind of map out

all the things. Okay. And I've never had somebody not

sign it because they thought I'm an asshole.

I'm really curious about that. And I want to talk about the retainer model, too,

because I love retainer models, but they can be a little bit more advanced. I

don't think it's great when you're first starting, necessarily. There's a lot of nuances

to it. Yeah. But for sure, the rules of engagement,

so it's setting expectations for your

response time. Yeah. Don't be an asshole. What else you got in there? I'm going

to pull it up right now. Pull it up. I don't know what I have

in there right now. This is so interesting to me. I've never

heard this before. You're the first person. It's like one of my favorite

things. I also shared it with my team because I was like, I want you

guys to know what I request of our clients so

that you know what I am. The standards are of you

too. I love it so much because one

of the things I talk a lot about is communication and setting expectations. Because here's

the thing. If you are that freelancer that replies in like five minutes to

everything and then the next week or the next month, you're really

busy and you're not replying so quickly. Your client, you've trained

them to expect that you respond really

quickly, and as soon as you don't, they're feeling like

abandoned. Oh my gosh, she's letting the ball drop on

the project. Like she's not performing and stuff. So setting these

expectations, and I hate to say this way, but you're kind of our training people

that this is how it works. Totally. You say much more nightly rules of

engagement. Not like training, but okay. Did you get it pulled up? I want to

hear. Yes, I've got them. So number one is trust and

mutual respect. Pretty straightforward there. I outline these

a little detailed too. I'm not going to give you the whole thing. These are

just the headers. Okay. Yeah. Trust and mutual respect, shared values,

timeliness, communication, forward thinking and playing

nice. Okay. I like this. I also like the

timeliness one because it's not just about how quickly you respond, but we all

know how annoying it is to be nagging a client for the thing and you

can't get the thing. Yeah, I'll read you

these two because I do think they're good. Okay. For timeliness, I wrote, the design

and development process are incredibly deadline driven. We commit to

responding to questions and emails promptly within 24 to 48 business hours to

continue moving things forward. That's basically them

agreeing to it and. Us agreeing we commit too. Yeah. I love how you

totally position this as like a very team effort. Yeah. Okay. And

then the communication is communication. We believe in communicating well

is essential. If something isn't working, let's talk. Having partnerships where we can speak our

minds without worry is part of what makes us great at working together. We prefer

using email whenever possible to allow for easy searchability. Okay.

I don't want people to text me and stuff and that's why I put that

one. No. Yeah. Okay. Oh, this is beautiful.

I love this. I'm really nerding out on this right here.

Okay. So the rules of engagement set a really

get tone and expectation for the project. So everybody's on the same page.

That's fabulous. Talk to us a little bit more about the retainer

because you said it's typically a year. So

are you getting most brands to sign on to working with you for a full

year? I would say that no, it's not

necessarily that they sign up for a full year. I think it's something right

now where I think it's like a three month period of sign on. Okay. But

that's still great. Yeah. Because

we don't want to start a project and then stop or keep

that press stop. Generally speaking.

I've never had somebody come on and sign off halfway through, so

I've always retained a client when we start the process.

Unless I was the one to fire them. I've only done it once. But

you did do it just once. Do

you know who you are? I

hope you're not listening. Awkward. I'm just

kidding. They probably have no idea. They probably have no idea.

It was a project very early into it. Okay.

They got no clue. Okay, but three months?

And how do you structure these packages? You said it's kind of based on

a number of styles or something. Yeah. So we have our

baby package is like a bootstrapping package, and it's just like, one to three

styles. So it's like if you're working on a Hero product and

this is the thing you want, and that's it. But

basically, we kind of have a baby package, and then we have all the way

up four package levels, all the way up to Enterprise, which is, like, if

you're doing a lot of stuff, making stuff.

But basically we just kind of they're slightly different based

on roughly. I mean, I have a calculation of something

like around $1200 to $1,000 per

style per month, basically, if I'm being fully transparent, which I

clearly am. Okay, so roughly $1,000

per style per month to work with them? Roughly, yeah. I

mean, it changes based on how much volume you have. If you have more volume,

it's more or less. So then how do you

manage that workload wise? Because arguably, you

could certain parts of the process

go faster, and then others, like

design and tech packs, is totally in your control, and you can

perhaps bust those out pretty quickly. Then you send it off to the

factory, and you're just sitting there waiting for samples to come back. Right. And then

you send the proto and the comments back, and then you're waiting, and there's a

lot more downtime. But how do you really

think about how to manage that from a workload perspective from your

team? How much time are we actually putting into this for that? Let's

just say $1,000 per style per month. It's probably

not a good answer because I

don't really have a great way to fully manage it other than I've

been doing it for a while, and I kind of know what it's like to

have the push and pull of, like, okay, we've sent out samples. Okay. Now we're

waiting for them. And my team is

constantly developing their skill set as well. So I would say that in the

times that we're low or down or we're not as busy,

they're working on teaching themselves. Chloe and becoming more

useful and working on making block

patterns. And we try to use the space

in between to make it more helpful for the times that we're busy.

So even right now, one of the things that we're

sprinting on in the next month is that we're mapping out all those,

SOPs we're going to have a database of all the SOPs we

had somebody come on a new designer came on in February of this year. Her

name is Trudy Gardner and she's a 3D designer. She's a fast

student. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Wait, I think

you put this in the email and I totally forgot. Yeah.

Okay, hold on. Shut the front door because I'm interviewing

her on the podcast, like, tomorrow. Oh, my God. Amazing.

No, Thursday amazing. Thursday. Oh, my God.

Wild. So someone told me you guys were working

together. Either you told me or she told me, but she's one of my yeah.

Yeah, it was probably her that told you because you and I haven't talked

too much lately. I thought maybe you put it in one of the emails or

something and I read the email chain. Yeah. Anyways, that's fine. Okay. I don't know.

Yeah. Trudy, how'd you guys connect? Same story

as basically everyone else. Like, Trudy somehow found

me on the Internet okay. Emailed me, and she basically

well, she wanted to understand she emailed me like a

year and a half, almost two years ago now, and she was

just learning intimates design, and she was like, I

know you're in the intimates world. And she wanted to know what she should work

on because she's like an. Air pilot, like an Air Force

pilot or something. Like she comes from a whole different yeah.

Yeah. Canadian Air Force. Crazy. I know. And then got

into fashion, like totally DIY. Yeah. Okay. So she wanted

to learn about intimates. Okay. Yeah. And so she reached out.

We had like a zoom call. She explained what she know? Trying to

kind of I'm pretty sure at the time I told her, you should work

on Chloe if you're not working on it already, because I had already been working

in Chloe since 2021. And so I

was like, it's the thing or no, 2020. I started working in

it, not myself, but having things done in Chloe for me. And

I'm just like, this is crazy. You need to be working in

it if you're not already. And she did end up start she got

into really into Chloe after our conversation. She's been

basically Cloing up a storm. And

she's also part of the Intimate Apparel

Collective, and so she is part

of that, and I'm part of that as well. And so I've been seeing her

participating in that for the past year and a half. Okay.

And then recently at the beginning of this year, I was we one of

my clients was expanding their size range, and we were kind of

going deeper into grading and stuff. And I was like, Trudy might be somebody I

should think about having. Come on and see if she could help us with this.

And so she joined in February of this

year right before I went to Sri Lanka for five weeks. And

so it was a hot mess expressed. And

that's part of why we're making the SOPs now because when she get.

On okay to come.

It was a hot mess. This conversation makes me so happy.

I love hearing too, like the whole story and

evolution of like, she reached out,

you told her Chloe, then you saw her active. What is this? Intimate

collective? It's like a slack channel and

community that meets via zoom calls like once

a month. It's run by Nicola

now I'm like blanking on her last name

and I don't know where her name is on. My

have to I'm going to find out about this from you. I'll email you to

follow up. Okay, so okay. It's a slack community. Wow, that's the first time I've

ever heard someone say slack in the fashion industry. I love slack. Oh,

I love slack. I love

so you get so then you kind of saw her in there being engaged. You're

like, oh, look, she took this seriously. She's actually doing it. She's building her skills

out and now she's working with you guys. Yeah. How cool.

Honestly, I really do. I love

people who are motivated and want to really want something. I love

that. That is so inspiring to me and as somebody who has done that

in my life, when I see people who just go for

what they want, I'm going to try and help them get it. Because

if we're vibing and I can help you and I can get you to the

next level, I want to do that. I love that. If you are curious

about anything in the industry, I'm a good person to connect with because I'm very

friendly and I'm very happy to mentor and teach younger

designers. And it's not ever like a guarantee or

anything, but things lead from one thing to another.

Basically everyone was hired the same way. So if you

need something, if you want to learn about it, let's talk and we can figure

it out. Fabulous. I was just thinking another of my students,

Ashika, she does custom lace

design for lingerie. Is her last name

Chakrabarti? Yeah. She's in this community, actually. I

sew. She's amazing. She's like super.

She she lives in India, but she travels to the States periodically. I don't

know the exact logistics, but yeah. And she has

designed custom lace for lingerie for a really long

I don't I just thought of her because I was like, if any of your

clients ever like if you have any high end clients that want to do something

really special, that's her specialty. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Oh, what a small world she's in there. Of course she is. That's amazing.

Yeah. It's called the Intimate Apparel Technical Collective. As

a full name. I kind of janked that up earlier. Just.

Collective. Okay, I'm going to figure this out. I love that.

Amazing. Kristen, it's been so fun catching up with you and hearing all the

things so much going on, it's really exciting. What's the name of your

brand? I want to follow that. It's called iteration. Our

domain is iterationera.com. Iterationera.com,

okay. Building a new era of intimate. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, we'll link

to all this in the show notes. Where can people find you and your design

services? At my website,

Kndrsn.com. That's the best way,

because social media. Is it is the pitch. And

don't text her, guys. Don't text her. Not giving out your phone number, but don't

text her. This has been so wonderful. Thank you

so much. Yeah. I have one final question.

The question I always ask at the end. What is one thing people never ask

you about freelancing and fashion that you wish they would? Or

running an agency. When do you sleep?

Yeah. You're also, like, launching this whole brand,

but okay. No,

I wish people would ask me probably what makes

you motivated to keep going and doing this? Because I think

the answer is why I keep doing it. And that's because I love

making women and everyone feel good in their

skin. Everyone deserves to feel beautiful.

For so long of my life, I struggled with feeling good in my own

body, and I don't think people deserve that. So if I

can influence people and make a positive impact on how they feel about

themselves, then I'm doing my job. And

so I would like people to know what motivates us, actually, to

make beautiful clothes. Yeah. I love that. That's a fabulous answer. Thank you

so much, Kristen, for sharing and coming on the show. Again, thank you so much.

It was so wonderful. Heidi, have a great one.