Become a Successful Freelancer. Take your experience into your own hands and explore being your own boss, managing your clients and workload, and branding your own business.
About this Specialization
This specialization allows new and emerging freelancers to gain a deeper understanding of how to design their own freelancing business around their expertise. Learners who complete the specialization will obtain a full understanding of how to define their freelancer identity, develop a business strategy, structure their finances, and ultimately launch their career in a competitive business marketplace as a freelancer
Plan a Successful Freelancing Business
The first course in the Building Your Freelancing Career specialization is focused on freelancers looking to define and solidify their philosophy, values and goals within their future business. Coursework will discuss the importance of understanding their competition and market position in a competitive business landscape, help them define what their unique value is, and how that relates to possible business approaches.
Making Money as a Freelancer
The second course in the Building Your Freelancing Career specialization is aimed at freelancers looking to integrate financial analysis and strategy into their business. Learners will discover and apply accounting best practices through creating a budget and financial plan and using it to set financial goals with rates and prices backed up by their own research.
Launching Your Freelancing Business
The third course in the Building Your Freelancing Career specialization will help learners get their business plan ready to be public-facing and start finding work. The course will cover topics such as how to set boundaries with projects, how to build a public-facing portfolio and materials, and how to present one’s work.
Protect and Grow Your Freelancing Business
The fourth course in the Building Your Freelancing Career specialization includes an overview of laws surrounding freelance work and how to navigate them, how to prepare for taxes, intellectual property considerations, and how to protect one’s work through legally sound contracts and agreements.

Tatiana Mulry
Faculty, California Institute of the Arts
Tatiana Mulry has enjoyed the freedoms and overcome the frustrations of freelancing for over 10 years as a business growth strategy consultant. She currently serves as General Partner of Steamwork Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in companies with connected solutions that impact health, wealth, or the earth. She is a pioneer of mobile payments, mobile applications and digital marketing having worked for some of the largest brands in the world. In addition to serving on the faculty at CalArts, she teaches mobile application design at the University of Southern California, serves as the Co-Director for FoundersBoost LA, a pre-accelerator program for high potential startups companies.