Freelance Lighting Designer Business

[ligonnp]

Hello all,

I am about to graduate from college next month and will be looking for work as a freelancer in the lighting field; primarily wanting to design. To keep track of expenses related to work and money I make, I thought about starting a business such as a sole proprietorship or LLC.

The issue I'm having is creating a name for it. I have heard multiple opinions on the topic. Some say I should use my own name and some say I should come up with a unique company name. I don't want to scare off potential employers by presenting them with my company name instead of them hiring me as an individual.

My second question would then be, should I even start a business? Just separating personal and business expenses and income.

Thank you for your time and help!

 

[DuckJordan]

Do you have clients lined up? Ate you making more right now with free lance gigs over $1500 a month? If not wait on it. You can still write of those items on personal taxes as work expense.

 

[Amiers]

I agree with Duck but securing a name and or figuring one out is fun and frustrating at the same time. It took me a good month to figure one out for myself. The best thing to do is to figure out what you want for the future and buy the .com or .net and wait til you can make the transfer to it. a few names I googled in the last ten minutes are ; Highside LD, Farside, Manic, Stage Left/Right LD. The list could go on but I digress. Really just be creative and think of something off the wall yet classy.

 

[derekleffew]

1. Names. Some live lighting design companies off the top of my head (you'll have to do your own Googling): Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design (UVLD), Lightswitch, David Hersey Associates (DHA), Full Flood, Inc., Steve Cohen Productions, Moody Ravitz Hollingsworth (I think they've disbanded), Ugly American Services (Butch Allen), Performance Environment Design Group (Spike Bryant), Leroy Bennett, Peter Morse, Ken Billington, Jules Fisher.
My advice: if you think you might one day ever sell the company (more for equipment and service than design) don't use your name. If it's always just going to be you (you'll never take on a partner), "ligonnp designs" is fine. Having no person's name in the company makes it easier to take on partner(s) or associate(s), if and when the time comes.

2. Should you incorporate/LLC/dba? Obtain and read the book The Business of Theatrical Design by James Moody (same Moody as above). He gives reasons for, and for not to, incorporate. The choice is yours, but you need some way to protect yourself, both from liability, omissions and errors, as well as to insure getting paid. Also, will you be working toward being eligible to join USAA? In any case, you're going to want to make friends with both an attorney and an accountant.

See also this post, as well as the entire thread I want to be a lighting designer.

 

[bishopthomas]

I started out as an sole proprietor doing freelance work and I'm still a sole proprietor doing my own jobs with my gear. I really should switch to an LLC soon but I'm just too lazy to do it. I started out doing location recording and wanting to pursue that so the name I came up with was Nomadic Productions. A lot of people use the word "Productions" in order to incorporate many aspects under one word. I think that using "Sound" or "Lighting" in your name is a mistake if you are eventually going to offer multiple services (and you should, IMO). I also didn't want to use my name, partly because everyone else I knew used theirs, and also because I just thought it should be more creative than that. Other reasons are that if I wanted to, as Derek mentioned, take on a partner it would still be appropriate; and it sounds a little more like a medium to large business rather than just some dude who does something. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter, but some clients want to feel secure that they're hiring someone capable of their job.

Now, none of this is important if you're never going to do anything with the business other than freelance. Your name will just be something that employers print on checks and you file taxes for every year. It won't really matter what it is. No one will be looking up "freelancers" on Google and find your company. The work you get will be from using your personal name when you shake their hand.

Also, add your location here. You never know where a gig can come from. The first thing I did when I realized you are just starting out as a freelancer was I looked under your name to see where you live. I sometimes need crew, especially last minute, and I know where most of those kinds of guys are on here. And since I sometimes work several hours away, I know who's in the entire Northeast so that I can reach out to them for labor and gear help.