ROLE: Co-founder/CEO
As a freelance creative the main struggles are maintaining a stream of client leads, streamlining the process from lead to final deliverables, and staying connected with a creative community. Dark Matter Collective was founded to solve these problems by facilitating and creating a platform for creative freelance collaboration.
I led it's growth to over 30 members, managed client acquisition and relationships, onboarded freelancers, organized and hosted events and workshops, and secured communal office space.
It was important to Dark Matter Members to have a workspace for collaboration as well as a place to hold client meetings. Instead of investing in the overhead of a space, we partnered with local coworking spaces like The LAB Miami and Moonlighter. These spaces have diverse uses such as flexible desk space, conference rooms, phone booths, tools for making, and regular networking events. These spaces also served as venue space for workshops and events we organized. It was truly an ideal space for fostering a creative community.
Dark Matter had the awesome opportunity to visit Aaron Draplin’s studio in Portland. A group of us flew out and spent the afternoon taking in his wisdom and having lots of laughs. Draplin is a design leader and it was an honor to spend time learning from him. I believe, especially as creatives, we are lifelong learners and investing in these types of educational trips is important for me.
