04: Freelance vs Building a Brand Studio // Nikita Walia (Founder & CEO of BLANK)

In this episode of 5to9, I had a chat with Nikita Walia, founder & CEO of BLANK - a strategy-first creative company, internet culture aficionado, obsessed with her Spanish greyhound, and an advocate for logging out.

With an educational background in media theory, Nikita started her career as a social strategist in the agency world, she then realized that she did not quite love the environments that she was in and decided to freelance, which led her to build her own brand studio.

We talked about what led her to freelance, and then build an independent brand studio, how her idea of a “dream client” has shifted throughout the years, her process of finding clients, creating an operating system for your life, and more!

I also want to give you a trigger warning that this episode contains a bit of content about self-harm that may be alarming to some listeners.

This is Nikita Walia for 5to9.