🎙Career Shift Stories: M&A Lawyer ➡ Freelance UX/UI designer

"An extremely rewarding self-destruction and re-building journey, like an urban renewal thing."

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

🔓UNLOCKING: DIGINTERVIEWS

Here we are with the second issue of Diginterviews with Ex-corps.

This week I talked to Basak Feyzioglu, who left a lucrative and promising career as an M&A lawyer and rebuilt her life as a freelancer UX&UI designer by learning everything about this new profession on her own.

Be ready to get impressed by her self-awareness, wisdom despite her young age and courage to destruct her pre-defined path to build a new one.

She transparently shared her experiences about:

• changing a career path

• learning UX/UI from scratch

• working as a solopreneur

• freelancing on Upwork

• challenges along this transformative journey and her recipe to deal with them

Enjoy!

🎙 EX-CORP INTERVIEW

Hello Basak. Let’s get to know you better.

Hi there, thanks for having me! I’m 28, I was born in Istanbul and still living here. I studied law and practiced as an M&A lawyer at a corporate/big law firm and a boutique one for around 2.5 years combined.

I quit doing law around October 2020 and started learning UX/UI around December 2020. Since then, I’ve been working as a freelance UX/UI designer, mostly via Upwork.

For the readers who are not familiar with this area;

UX/UI focuses on understanding the user’s needs and pain points when using a SaaS product through qualitative and quantitative research, defining solutions, and finding the right balance between addressing users' needs, business goals, and functionality. Then, we move on to designing and testing the product. It’s a messy but fun process.

How did you decide to leave being a lawyer? What is your motivation to work for yourself?

My parents are successful lawyers, and I always had a knack for it. I was always around when they discussed case strategies since I was 8 or 9. I chose a profession that I thought I wanted, but now I realize that I chose it because I was familiar with it.

Additionally, since college I have had an entrepreneurial spirit and was involved in projects such as AMENDS, a social enterprise in collaboration with Stanford University, I was selected to the Entrepreneurship Foundation which is a medium to learn more about the scene, and many other small projects.

As I discovered myself, I realized I wanted to be on the scene, not in the background and doing the paperwork. Being an M&A lawyer can be lucrative, but money was never my primary goal.

I wanted to be more global, have a profession that could give me greater independence, and be a player in the digital realm.

From a more personal angle, when I was contemplating and researching the career transition possibilities, I had to deal with a serious health problem in my immediate family, and I lost a close friend of mine in a car accident in a very short time span.

These experiences were extremely painful, yet were very eye-opening for me to see that life is too short to stick to one pre-defined path, which wasn’t even purposefully crafted by me. I really didn’t want to die without giving myself the space to live an authentic life.

What were the initial challenges you faced while leaving your life as an M&A lawyer behind?

When I quit my first job, everybody was asking “what I was going to do”, and I had no idea. As an M&A lawyer, who graduated from a reputable college and studied with a partial scholarship, my primary barrier was the idea of sunk cost and the loss of status. I didn’t know how to define myself or where I belonged as a person without the title. The title implies a certain amount of money you make and gives you a place in the world. I even didn’t spend so much time with my college friends to avoid this feeling. It was especially hard if you’re a really ambitious person like me. I moved to a basement floor that didn’t really let in sunlight to cut my cost and was relying on a financial safety net for one year. Thanks to my ambitious side, friends, and colleagues, I only had to exploit that safety net for 4-5 months.

In the end, this whole process turned into a brutal yet very authentic and extremely rewarding self-destruction and re-building journey, like an urban renewal thing.

Let’s go back to your ground zero. Why did you decide on UX/UI as your new profession?

I didn’t start off with UX/UI design. I knew that I wanted to be able to work as a freelancer, and I didn’t want to be bound to an office space. This gave me a list of possible professions I could engage with. I tried them out. I took basic courses, talked with people who were experts in the fields, and practiced.

After trying 4-5 different specialties, I decided that UX/UI was the profession that suited me the best: has great potential and need, and my transferrable skills are very applicable, slightly creative yet analytical, and scalable. I really enjoyed it too. You can work in all kinds of industries, never gets boring.

How did you learn UX/UI on your own? Any resources to recommend?

I enrolled in diploma programs, UX Design Institute, and Udacity. But to be honest, it all boils down to Googling, Youtube and practice.

Also, my favorite resource during this process was adplist.org. It’s a free mentorship program filled with amazing and top-notch mentors from around the world. I had amazing mentors from China, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy, the USA, the UK, and Germany who helped me during this “re-construction” process. They are amazing and I think everyone would check them out. I was even offered jobs.

How did your previous experience of corporate life contribute to your new journey?

Although I highlighted the idea of “sunk cost”, I understood that this is not true. The negotiation and project management skills I acquired as a lawyer had really given me an edge to be better at UX/UI Design. Anyone can learn to use software to a certain extent, but being creative yet profitable, understanding a user's needs, and running a smooth project requires a greater skill set.

I think this is the reason why I started to make money earlier than I anticipated.

How did you earn your first 1 dollar?

I wasn’t feeling ready to start doing an actual project. My friend, who also is an ex-lawyer and a self-taught software engineer, believed in me more than I did in myself, and he offered me my first project. It was a dashboard, and it was the beginning of it all. :)

Why did you choose to work on Upwork? What are the positive and negative sides of it?

It takes away the burden of finding the client, and there is hourly protection of your work, in which your money is put into escrow and sent by Upwork where you avoid non-payment issues as much as possible.

The negative sides are valid, especially at the beginning. Building your profile and attracting good clients until a certain threshold is hard, you need to be active and send proposals constantly to beat the algorithm, and there is an issue of luck as well to get started with the right client. The commission rates are higher for projects that have smaller price tags.

The positive sides especially increase as you make more money: the escrow and the customer success service work impeccably. As you make more money, receive positive feedback and reach a higher job success score, you are awarded a top-rated talent badge, which helps the customers to reach out to you rather than you reaching out to them. Upwork awards you and helps you grow exponentially after you surpass a certain threshold because you help them to make more money.

Can you make a living with your earning?

Yes! Very proud to say so.

What is your tool stack?

• Figma

• Adobe Creative Cloud

• Asana

• Notion

• Discord

• Google Drive

• Upwork

What are the greatest and most difficult parts of working alone?

The great parts are the fact that you choose who you work with. When you learn to choose the right clients, it gets very fun to work with. You can decide where and when you’ll work, you can take care of yourself, your family, and your friends better because you learn to prioritize and juggle it all.

The biggest negative side is the fact that you need to motivate yourself when you feel down. You deal with everything on your own, such as taxes, project management, client relations, business development, sales, grants, etc. There isn’t anyone else on the team to ask a question or brainstorm with. But there are tools to help you navigate these, so this is not a dealbreaker.

What would you wish to know before you start working as a freelancer?

I thought I knew that going full-time freelancer is actually building a business but apparently I didn’t fully understand the extent.

The administrative stuff takes more time than I anticipated. So, at the end of the day, my billable hours might not be as much as I thought they would be.

What is your recipe for coping with all these challenging parts of working alone?

Working in a co-working space helped me very much. I get to meet new people and have my own space at the same time. I’ve been going to therapy for almost six months, this also helped me with my personal and business growth. I recently started jogging while listening to Turkish rap music.

I’m learning to delegate more work and learning to quit being a perfectionist.

A mentor I met through ADPlist told me to ask myself this question when I get stuck: “Is it good enough to move forward with?”. This helps me a lot as well.

I’m learning to go at a slower pace. I’m trying to avoid creating a rat race of my own making.

Lastly, small things like taking a break, friends and family are the best cure. There was a time when I didn’t even allow myself to take a small break because the to-do list wasn’t completely cleared. This is what I avoid and I give myself regular breaks.

After you experience all challenges, are you still satisfied with your career change decision?

Yes, for sure! I’m so satisfied with the person I’ve become and the money I make. Although there is still a lot to learn and discover, I enjoy it and feel much more fulfilled.

What is the next milestone you hope to achieve? Do you have a dream for the long term?

I want to achieve certain financial goals (OKRs) every quarter. Once I reach them and have this chaos settled a bit more, I intend to become a digital agency where I can give this service end-to-end to the customers that address the UN's sustainable development goals. I want to be part of the SaaS products that intend to make the world a better place.

The long-term goal is to create an academy and teach young girls and underrepresented communities UX/UI, graphic design, and animation, as well as how to run a business, do your taxes, etc. so that they can achieve their financial independence as I did. I was a scholarship kid and I want to extend the same kindness and generosity.

What would you recommend for anyone who wants to leave the corporate world?

If you have a financial safety net at bay, you will panic less when you explore your options. If your financial safety net wouldn’t hold you afloat for long, that is also OK. The digital realm is filled with opportunities, start with the professions that are growing exponentially, and figure out your niche as you work and make money.

It is very OK to feel down or it feels hard. Reach out to friends, family, and mentors. Please feel free to reach out to me as well through Linkedin if you have any questions!

Thank you so much Basak and good luck on this re-building journey 🚀

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🔗 Reach out to Basak:

👉 Behance

👉 LinkedIn

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