Hello everyone!!
I figured I should start this post with the dual announcement that I also shared on Instagram….!
1) Check out the genius couple costume we did for Halloween! 🎃
2) OH ALSO I am about 6.5 months pregnant!!! 😆
That’s right, Davis and I are expecting a baby girl at the end of January 2027!!!! 🥹🍼💖 We’re so excited to welcome our daughter into our family and into the world, and we’re looking forward to beginning our journey into parenthood next year.
I’ve got much more to say about that, including answers to questions such as, Pouch 4?? Maternity leave?? Those are questions I’ll address before the end of the year, but for now, I just wanted to share the happy news and the costume 😎
(More on the costume by the way: This is from the manga/anime Sakamoto Days, which is about an elite assassin Sakamoto, who falls in love, abandons his assassin life, becomes a family man who works at a convenience store, and gets fat LOL. Assassins come after him again, and he still has all his skills, so when he does his super cool assassin moves, he gets skinny again and turns into Skinny Sakamoto. Then the next day he eats a lot and gets fat again lol.
Since I'm pregnant, I wanted to be Fat Sakamoto while Davis is Skinny Sakamoto 😆 I think it turned out so cute!! I'm most proud of the stick mustache... I feel like it really pulled everything together 🙂↕️)
Anyway!! Today’s newsletter has nothing to do with pregnancy, Halloween, OR assassins-turned-family-man-convenience-store-employees. Instead, I wanted to FINALLY publish a newsletter I’ve been slowly writing over the last few months: A roundup of ideas and tips for how to work with others when you’re a solo creator!
Now, even though it’s not the topic of today’s newsletter, I actually have a ton I want to say about new motherhood, pregnancy, how that intersects with a creative career, and how it intersects with my own Pouch journey specifically. But it’s a BIG challenging topic and I want to give myself plenty of time to write about it. So that’s all coming sometime, and hopefully before our baby arrives (but no guarantees lol). For now, let’s keep things simple and get this newsletter out of my drafts, finally 😂
Hope you’re having a lovely fall, and enjoy today’s newsletter!! 🍁
♡ vrk
PS: Also, apologies if I’m a little slower to respond to messages and fulfill orders during this time 🙏 I’m still running almost all of Pouch Studio by myself, and there are days when my body or my energy level just won’t let me do much more than the absolute necessities. I’m hanging in there though, and doing very well all things considering! 💞
I’ve been working independently for the last 3.5 years now, and while independent work feels like a dream, it can also be a bit isolating! I used to think I was doomed to work alone until I somehow earned enough money to hire full-time employees, which felt impossibly daunting… but then one day I realized, Oh wait, that’s not the only way to work with others 😆
Today I wanted to share with you some ideas and tips on how to work with others when you’re working solo and you can’t afford to hire full-time or significant part-time help yet.
I do want to point out that the ideas I’m sharing specifically help with:
✅ Having more fun!!
✅ Finding inspiration and energy from new ideas and people!!
✅ Making better things by collaborating with other creatives!!
✅ Learning lots!!
✅ Easing your mental and emotional load by sharing your thoughts and burdens with others!!
But these ideas DO NOT help with:
❌ Reducing your workload
❌ Getting more things done
❌ Making yourself redundant such that your business can run without you1
❌ Making more money
All of these are common motivations for why people expand their team, but in order to accomplish something like, “reducing your workload by working with others” I think you almost always need to hire someone. If you’re not hiring someone, you’re asking a person to work for you for free or cheap, which should only be done in small doses. If you’re only asking for small-ish favors, thennnn you’re probably not reducing your workload very much.
Anyway, I just wanted to clarify because I am not trying to say that the ideas I’m sharing replace the need for ANY hiring ever; I’m just trying to share some options if you can’t hire yet but still want some of the social, creative, and emotional benefits of working with others!
I explained in a previous newsletter that I assembled a team of very qualified women — all friends of mine — to work on Pouch Issue #3. It was a resounding success and such a fun and rewarding experience. I am so lucky that I got to work with all of them!!! (To get a rundown of what the team accomplished, check out my last newsletter!)
Now, it can be both wonderful AND risky to work with your friends on your passion project! Luckily by the end of this, we are all still friends, everyone NYC-based came to the Pouch party, and many are also coming to my baby shower 😂 I do think some careful preparation helps ensure your friendship and working relationship are both respected.
💞 Find friends who genuinely want what you can offer. I’m blessed to know a ton of amazing writers, editors, and illustrators in my personal life. However, rather than choosing one of them out of the blue and asking HEY do you want to help with my zine??, I reached out to friends who already offered to help with Pouch in the past.
Next — and I think this is the most crucial step, so take note: Before I told them what I was looking for, I first asked them what sort of creative opportunities they were seeking. Then I pitched a role based on their interests and my own needs.
OH MAN I cannot tell you how valuable it is to do this!! The answers are often different from what you might expect. For instance, based on conversations we had in the past, I thought Tami might be interested in photography or social media — but I was completely wrong! Turned out she wanted to write, and that was an even better fit for what I needed than what I had in mind. (Her article was SO GOOD, too!!) Similarly, I knew JM used to be an editor for a magazine, so I figured she wanted to be an “editor” — but I probably would have asked her to help with copyediting and proofreading, because I didn’t really know what an editor did. After talking with her, I learned JM was interested in being way more involved with the issue than I expected, and it was SO welcome and she was SUCH a superstar!! (I talk a lot more about this here!)
By asking your friends what they want first, and crafting a role for them based on that, your odds of creating a mutually beneficial working situation increase dramatically.
❌ Don’t ask friends to work with you purely as a favor. This is the flip side of the previous point: For example, if you’re friends with an incredible illustrator whom you would LOVE to work with, but they don’t have any real interest in your project beyond wanting to help their friend… then you’re the only one benefiting from arrangement. I think this is treacherous territory friendship-wise! It’s easy for a situation like this to become a burden for the helper, and for that to slowly cause tension or even resentment. Instead, if you can find someone genuinely looking for a creative opportunity that matches what you can provide, then you’re both gaining something on a more even footing.
Exceptions:
If you can pay them a proper rate for the work (but then it’s not a favor, it’s a job)
If it’s truly a tiny request and/or you’re 100% confident it’s not a burden
💼 Write out the “job description” explicitly. I’m not saying you need to make a formal job listing!! But I think in working with friends, or with anyone really, the more explicit your expectations, the better. Put your job description in writing and give them time to think it over before they agree.
Here was the “JD” for my Pouch writers:
🧾 Stick to your JD!! You should not expect your team to do more work beyond what’s listed in their job description! There is some nuance here, because your team might WANT to do more. For instance, I thought Pouch Team members might enjoy looking through submissions and having a say into what got published in Pouch, even though that was work beyond what the “writer” role required. In this case, I invited anyone to join in, but I made it EXTRA clear that it was 100% optional and it was totally fine if they didn’t have time or interest.
💵 Pay what you can, if you can. Even if you’re working with a friend, you should pay them for their work if you can. It’s okay if the rate isn’t great — maybe you’re just buying them a coffee! For my Pouch crew, I paid everyone $100 each + a free copy of Pouch, and that was stated in their “JD” so they could make that decision knowing the (lack of) compensation ahead of time.
🏁 Have clear deadlines but be lenient! Figure out reasonable deadlines for your friends’ work and commit to actual dates, not “get it to me when you can.” Decide the date with your friend; don’t impose it on them without their input. Be flexible and adjust as needed. I set deadlines for myself too, and I almost NEVER made them 😆 because I always needed way more time for design work than I anticipated, and that was okay! (Being late on your own deadlines is a great way to model that these dates are truly movable lol.) Still, I don’t think that means deadlines are meaningless — perhaps “estimated delivery date” is more accurate than “deadline” for what I mean here. Dates are an essential tool for communicating expectations, and I’ve always found having soft, flexible deadlines is much less stressful than leaving timelines totally open. It also ensures you keep momentum on the project!
📆 Plan a stopping point from the beginning. I asked my Pouch Team to only commit to Pouch Issue 3, rather than needing to commit to Pouch as an ongoing forever project. This makes it easy for both parties to exit smoothly without putting the onus on your friend to “quit.”2 It’s also less likely that you or your friend will stay on way past the point where you’re both having fun, because it will naturally end at some point, even if both parties are conflict-averse lol.
Of course, with all these tips, take ‘em or leave ‘em depending on the situation! For example, I also asked my friends Abi and editor JM to help me pack Pouch 3 preorders, and I did not write out a JD or set deadlines 😂 BUT, I did compensate them with lunch, snacks, and boba, and I made it clear what I was asking them to do, how long I was asking them to help for, etc! So tbh I think the tips still apply to more situations than not.
Throughout my creative journey, I’ve also occasionally helped out on my friends’ projects! Two notable ones: I’ve been the lead engineer for a children’s electronics company, and I’ve also been lending engineering help to some friends’ indie video game. This has been a very fun and fulfilling way to collaborate with others, and I’m always delighted and surprised by how much applicable learning I gain for it, no matter how different the work seems to be from my day-to-day.
All my tips are the same as what I said for working with friends, but with the roles reversed! (E.g. Only accept gigs that where you genuinely want what’s being offered, don’t do work for friends purely as a favor, set an end date, etc!)
Let’s get back to that scenario I said a few minutes ago: What if you need an illustration for your project, and you have an AWESOME illustrator friend, but you don’t want to ask them to do the work for you? You could ask them to mentor you as you do the work!
This was my exact situation with the Pouch #3 cover!! You may have seen this blurb I included in the end pages of Pouch #3:
My friend Aaron is a BRILLIANT illustrator and literal professor of illustration. Rather than asking Aaron to draw the Pouch 3 cover for me, I realized it’d make more sense to ask if we could meet occasionally so I could get his feedback as I worked.
This was SUCH A GIFT!! Illustrating the Pouch cover is one of the most stressful tasks of the entire magazine production process, so it made a huge difference to have expert support from beginning to end. The cover turned out beyond what I could have ever hoped for!!! Thank you again, Aaron!! 🥹🙏
🎯 Their experience should be DIRECTLY relevant to what you need, and you should like their work lol. This is because you want your mentor’s job to be as easy as possible.
So for instance, Aaron is an art professor who has illustrated several magazine covers in his career. Because he’s so experienced, it takes him roughly 1 brain cell to look at my sketch and tell me what’s wrong with it lol. Because our tastes are similar, he can also give suggestions on more subjective things, like colors or stylistic choices, and it’s just super easy to be on the same page.
Now as a counter-example: Aaron doesn’t particularly enjoy making sequential art, aka comics! So if I came to him for mentorship on specifically comics, Aaron probably wouldn’t be a good fit — not because he’d be incapable (I’m sure he would still offer a ton of wisdom I don’t have, simply from being an expert in the art field), but it’s not something he’s particularly passionate about or has a lot of experience doing, so it’d be a lot more work (and less fun) for him to mentor me on this. Make things easy on your mentor!
Also, don’t ask your artist friend to be your art mentor if you secretly don’t really like their art lol.
🧏🏼♀️ LISTEN TO THEM!!!! If your friend is going out of the way to be your mentor, you’ve got to follow their advice!! I mean, of course you should ask questions if you don’t understand something or speak up if you don’t agree. But if you’re fighting or rejecting every single suggestion, that’s a sign that you’re either being a bad mentee lol, OR your mentor isn’t a good fit for you. Either way, you’re wasting your mentor’s time, and you should end the arrangement unless you can resolve this quickly!
📖 Make sure you have enough time to do the homework. If you are getting mentorship on something, it will take you longer to complete than if you were just doing the task by yourself. That’s because you are now learning in addition to executing. If you don’t have time to make corrections based on your mentor’s advice, it might not be the right time for you to get mentorship.
With Aaron as my mentor, we went through LOTS of iterations on the Pouch 3 cover! For reference, Pouch 1’s cover took me 2 days to illustrate; Pouch 2’s cover took me 1 week to illustrate, and Pouch 3’s cover (under Aaron’s wing) took me at least 2 months LOL. But the time was truly well-spent and I learned so many lessons that I carry with me well beyond the Pouch 3 cover!
I’m not going to talk too much about this point because it’s pretty self-explanatory and I’ve talked a lot about how much classes have helped me in the past, but wanted to just mention it again here! If you’re a solo creator who is craving more opportunities to work with others, I’ve found taking a class sorta scratches that itch.
🌷 Attend in-person classes if you want to make friends: I’ve attended remote classes and I’ve gotten a lot of out of them educationally, but I’ve never made a friend from a remote class! The sort of casual, organic conversation that pops up among students is difficult-to-impossible to have over Zoom.
⏰ Make sure you have time for the class: Be realistic about how much time you have in your schedule and whether the class you’ve signed up for is something you can realistically do. This is a similar tip to the mentorship one: If your class assigns homework, and if you don’t have time to finish it, you’re probably not going to get much out of the class — plus this isn’t a good way to socialize or make friends, either!! When you’re a student, the easiest thing to talk about is the homework, so if you skip the homework, you’re not getting the educational benefit, nor are you likely to get the social benefits, either.
You can also consider signing up for classes where there is no homework! Figure drawing classes are good for this, as are other studio-style classes (pottery, sewing, etc).
Okay, I have saved the worst for last LOL.
If you’re a freelancer or solo creator and you miss the feeling of working in a “team,” probably the most common suggestion you hear is to co-work with others. Like, get a bunch of creatives together, meet at a coffee shop, and do your work together, independently.
I am not knocking this in general, but I AM PERSONALLY TERRIBLE AT THIS! 😂 At least when it comes to productivity.
When I meet up with my friends at a coffee shop, I want to hang out and talk with my friends! All desire and motivation to work goes out the window, and I spend >75% of the time distracting everyone else by chatting and not letting them open their laptop LOL.
Again, I am the problem here! 😆
That said, I still have some co-working buddies whom I adore and we meet up pretty regularly! Our “co-working sessions” are almost always a farce due of my bad influence, and we usually catch up with each other and maybe talk about work, but don’t get toooo much done work-wise, certainly not more than if we were working at home.
BUT I find this really valuable, too!! It’s nice to take a break and meet up with a regular crew of friends who are on a similar journey to yours.
🥸 If you actually really need to work that day, skip or say so explicitly: This should apply to everyone in the group! If you GOTTA work, just tell your friends ahead of time, something like, “Hey today I really gotta lock in after like 1 hour of chatting” and stick to that. Or, just skip that day! I think co-working works best when it’s a day you can be chill and chatty. You don’t want to get annoyed at your friend (me 😆) for interrupting you constantly.
Alrighty, those are all my tips for working with others when you work alone!! (Phew, it feels so good to get this newsletter finished after I’ve been prodding it along for forever 😆) I hope these tips are helpful to you, and thanks so much for reading!!
Holidays are coming up soon, and then OUR BABY IS HERE! 👶🍼 I will try to write to you all at least once more before our little one arrives (and then who knows what my schedule will look like after that) 😆 Talk to you then!!!