Tomisin was 23 when she got laid off from her first job. No severance, no warning — just a Slack message at 9pm on a Friday telling her the company was "restructuring."
"I cried for two days," she says. "Then I remembered I had a laptop and Wi-Fi."
The First ?50,000
She taught herself Canva, then Figma, then Photoshop — in that order, because that's the order the YouTube algorithm fed her. Her first client was a friend's small chops business that needed a logo. She charged ?5,000. "I almost didn't charge anything," she admits.
Within six months, word of mouth in her university WhatsApp groups had her booked two weeks out. She raised her rates three times that first year.
What Changed Everything
The real shift came when she stopped taking one-off logo gigs and started offering monthly retainer packages to small businesses — social media templates, flyer designs, and brand refreshes bundled together. "Nobody told me retainers existed. I just got tired of chasing invoices every single time."
"I make more now than the job that let me go ever paid me. The difference is I'm never one bad month away from disaster — because I built five income streams, not one."
Today she runs a two-person micro-studio from her bedroom, with a part-time intern she pays to handle client admin. Her advice for anyone starting out? "Charge what scares you a little. If a client doesn't flinch, you're underpricing yourself."
