🎥 Workshopping to Freelance Success [Miro board included]


Dear Reader,

Today's advice letter comes from Géro Sauerwein, a freelance product designer in Berlin and alumni of the Fountain Institute's workshop course.

Two years ago, Géro set a goal to make as much money freelancing as she did at her old agency job.

Well, she hit her goal! And in this month's meetup, she shares her secret weapon: ✨The Collaboration Kickoff Workshop✨

Last night, she gave a talk for our monthly meetup on how to communicate with clients right from the beginning of projects.

The talk was clear and highly actionable for anyone that wants to freelance or lead projects.

Géro covers:

  • How to set expectations with clients
  • How to run a kickoff workshop
  • Lessons learned from doing it the wrong way

​Check out Géro’s Collaboration Kickoff Workshop board in Miro here.​

Until next week!

Jeff Humble
​
Designer & Co-Founder
​
The Fountain Institute

P.S. We just launched Experiment Cards 2.0! Download the cards and get the instructions in this blog post. Start testing your team's assumptions!

And if you want to get serious about testing and UX metrics, sign up for the FREE 5-day short course on designing product experiments.

The Fountain Institute

The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.

Read more from The Fountain Institute
Fountain Institute Vision

How the Fountain Institute Started and Where It's Going by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, In case you missed it, Hannah dropped a pretty big announcement in the last newsletter. I wanted to tell the story of how the Fountain Institute started, why we’ve never had an “About Us” page, and where I think we’re headed next. How it started The Fountain Institute started when two friends decided to grab a beer and work...then kept doing it for 7 years. There were many false starts along the way. Starting...

A goodbye and the story that goes with it By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, There's an idea I've been chasing for most of my working life, and I didn't know it. I want to tell you about it, and about something that happened a few years ago that I haven't talked about much publicly, but that belongs in this story. Some of you might already know this about me, but I used to work in education departments at museums. The thing that grabbed me in the museums was a shift that happened, away from the...

7 Ways Hiring is Evolving for Senior Designers by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, 2026 has been a wild ride for product designers, so we thought it might be worth checking in to see what's changing about design hiring. There has never been a better time to think outside the box with your career strategies. In this article, we give you a playbook from various experts where every piece of advice is from this year. Get comfortable with live problem-solving. Shipped, traceable work beats case studies....