This year’s tax time, I must admit, was a little stressful. In between interrupted cross-border moving plans, quarantine, and navigating a few months with very little by way of income I put off taxes until the last minute. Mostly because I was wanting to hold onto every penny I had instead of paying it away in income tax & HST/GST. But, the inevitable due dates came and I gathered my wits about me for this final year of individual tax return. Next year will be a corporate tax return, which actually fills me with more dread than probably necessary.

I decided to update the infographic charts from 2018 income streams based on the billing data from my accounting software, Freshbooks.

Areas of Growth

SO MUCH VISUALIZATION. Thank you, Meadoway, for providing me with more than 1/2 my yearly income in 2019. That project paid well and kept me high and dry from April - October. I feel like the financial security earned from that project allowed me to become more experimental and go for new projects that I might have been afraid to take on before. I am also super excited that we won the CSLA Award of Excellence for our contributions!

I got to travel to both Toronto and San Francisco a few times each for business & aerial photography. My evening helicopter ride over San Francisco for Office of Cheryl Barton will not be forgotten! I delved into filming & animation, which I foresee being another really important part of my business going forward.

Finally, I made contact with a prof at UBC in the summertime and after a little back-and-forth, was asked to become an adjunct professor beginning in 2020. To get a taste of teaching I came and did a presentation workshop for the first-year MLA’s and attended midterm & final reviews as a guest critic. That was a direct result of the online course I put out at the beginning of 2019, which I’m happy to say has also taken off! Teaching represented a small percentage of my income in 2019, but that’s going to look a lot different in 2020.

Areas of Contraction

Web & Graphic Design took another near-to-last place finish. I did a few smaller jobs for non-profits & charities, but nothing big came along until I got a new website client through a recommendation in June! I launched Dr. Shivaune Wright’s branding & website early in 2020, but the majority of the work was done in 2019. Again, I don’t really push web design & branding as a main part of my business, though I do enjoy it a lot so I am going to give it a bit of buzz over this summer on my instagram.

Photography appears as a tiny percentage, but it should actually be counted together with the USD side since I did a great deal of Airbnb and Airbnb+ photography locally, which gets paid out in USD. As mentioned I did 2 aerial photography jobs (one of which was wrapped into my visualization budget for The Meadoway). Near the end of the year I took on some private interior photography for my great client, Suki Creative Studio.

The Moolah

In the spirit of openness and because I believe that transparency for freelancers—especially WOMEN freelancers—is of utmost importance, when you hover over the sections of the graph you’ll see the actual earned income from each portion. The total for 2019 was $151,000 CAD (gross before tax & expenses, all currencies converted), a significant jump from 2018 and 2.7x my previous salary as an employee.

Of course with increased income come increased expenses. This year was another big one for software upgrades, computer & camera equipment, with the largest purchases including buying out my Alienware Laptop from TLS (USD $1850), upgrading my Lumion Pro license ($1430), purchasing Rhino 6 ($1350) and investing in some new photography equipment (gimbal, drone, softbox, external flash, ~$2500).

See how it all breaks down below!

I *still* prefer being the only woman in the room.

Not much to report for employee growth: I’m pretty attached to my Company of One and have decided not to grow to the point where I would need regular employees. I see potential for hiring interns on a project basis however, drawn from a pool of the MLA’s I’m teaching.

2020 Forecast

Clients & Projects:

2019 brought some exciting client partnerships and projects. In July of last year, I was informed that my proposal with PWL Partnerhip for the Arbutus Greenway was awarded and work began in November. While February and March showed every sign of being intense months for me on this project to prepare presentation materials, it’s been delayed and put on hold by COVID-19 until community consultation can resume. I’m hoping that this late summer and early autumn sees this project back on the boards.

Jed and I planned to move to Maine, USA this spring to follow his dream to work at an organic urban farm supplying a high-end restaurant. He was hired and we had our visas all set to go when lockdown began in mid-March. I had informed many of my clients that I would be unavailable for work between April - May due to the move, so I had almost literally zero business whatsoever during those months, despite staying put in Vancouver. One bright spot there was that I had gained a new website client - Suki Creative Studio - and we also did a bunch of photography, taking advantage of the empty businesses to shoot them for her website. Through Robin, I met the wonderful people at Elevation, who have hired me for their commercial photography too. Those website, branding & photography jobs pulled me through May!

June has turned things around. Beginning the second week of June I received 2 major visualization projects, a new website & branding client, and a bunch of smaller graphic projects that I’ll be working on over the next few weeks. I’ve also joined several major RFPs and hope to hear some positive news about those projects before September.

Teaching:

I got my first semester of teaching at UBC under my belt. I co-taught MLA Design Studio from January to April with Associate Professor Fionn Byrne. We had to cancel our students’ final presentation but came out with a superb studio publication. You can check it out here! I am just finalizing my teaching contract for the autumn, but so far I’m slotted to be adjunct professor for MLA Design Studio again, and lead instruct the first ever landscape-focused Design Media course! In the meantime, I’m working on launching my second visualization instructional course online: Rhino for Landscape Architects.

Other Fun Things:

• In 2019 we took an epic trip to Italy with Jed’s family. We learned to cook pasta from scratch in a castle in Puglia, stayed in a gorgeous Trulli villa in the countryside, and hiked amongst lemon trees on the Amalfi coast.

• Back in the PNW, we hiked the Mt. Baker Triple Crown (Chain Lakes, Skyline Divide & Yellow Aster Butte) and Jed ran the Backcountry Rise 50K at Mount St. Helens.

• We also farm sat - twice - and loved every second of it.

• In October/November, we took a much needed break and flew to visit our friend Anne in London, UK. While there we did a whirlwind tour of the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, and Wales. I forced Jed to get up at 4:30am every day so we could hike up and be ready to capture the sunrise with our new drone.

Future:

New plans are being set in motion for a spring move to Europe, should COVID-19 relent or a vaccine become available. If that fails we may try for Maine round 2, provided Joe Biden has fixed America by then. If both of those fail I honestly don’t know what we’ll do cause it’s no secret that Vancouver holds a special place in the hall of infamy for Places We Strongly Dislike.

So - that’s it for this report! I hope that any lurking potential freelancers have found this useful and as always, feel free to send a message my way if you have questions.