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It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these (again), but I’m going to try out a new post-schedule for this blog so I can deliver content to you a bit more regularly. Quite a lot has happened over the last few months, thankfully the overwhelming majority of it has been positive – and the business is currently the strongest it’s ever been.
The Business
Once again, here are the headlines of what I’ve been up to since the last review post. Some of it you may already know from recent posts, some of it you may not.
- Completed about 8 client projects
- Won about 5 more clients
- Won 1 very big new client (under wraps for now)
- Smashed all my traffic records for this blog with this post (15,000+ visits in 3 days)
- Launched the new design for this site, with some great advertising space!
- Ordered new business cards from Moo
- Did a big FreeAgent review + competition on this blog
- Started writing a book about my first year of business
- Set up a Facebook Page to connect with more people
- Released my Moo’d Cards source files as an opensource project
- Replaced my RSS reader with a twitter account
- Picked up some new business books from Amazon (I’ll review the good ones later)
In Detail
I’ve been on the up and up since my last review here, which is a good thing because it got pretty hairy back there for a while! I can tell you now that the business came very close to going under a few months back when I had one particularly bad client who decided to screw me around for 2 months and then never pay me. It was a close call, but I’m very pleased to say that I’ve worked with nothing but really awesome clients since then.
The most interesting thing I’ve noticed in the last few months is a real pattern of motivation-swings. Just like mood-swings they come and go, sometimes I’ll be insanely motivated and work non-stop, other times I just can’t stop procrastinating. I can only imagine that this is normal after the start-up honeymoon period is over, but I’m keeping a close eye on it nonetheless.
In other news I’m still in the process of switching accountants, though it looks like all my financial data went missing en-route to my new accounting company during the postal strikes. Not good. Should’ve known better and dropped it off myself. I don’t think there’s anything in there that would be particularly valuable to anyone, but you never know!
(Firefox just crashed for the 6th time today and lost more than half this post, so I’m officially switching to Safari as my primary browser now – I’m sick of all the instability and the massive memory leak. If anyone from Mozilla happens to be reading this: You’re losing supporters fast, fix it.)
Reviewing Goals from August
This is traditionally the part of the post where I review the last list of goals which I set myself… so that’s exactly what I’ll do!
- Take home a salary equivalent to what I was making at my job before I went freelance. This is my number 1 most important goal for the month. – Success, I’m just about there now!
- Launch this blog with the new design – MUST do this month. – Success, you’re looking at it.
- Write two (high quality) guest posts for other blogs – Success
- Finally get around to reading and reviewing “How To Be a Rockstar Freelancer” – Fail :(
Reviewing Goals for 2009
As the year comes to a close I think it’s also appropriate to also review my goals for the whole year and see how I’m getting on from that perspective.
- Sustain myself comfortably between now and May 1st – Success
- Find and successfully acquire some finance for Lyrical Media – Success
- Release 8 WordPress themes – Can’t talk about it, but watch this space ;)
- Code a WordPress plugin – Fail (so far)
- Read 11 web/marketing related books – Fail (so far, I think I’m up to about 8)
- Get featured on Smashing Magazine – Success
- Get featured in a web design publication – Success
- Get featured (or mentioned) in a web design podcast – Success
- Take at least 1 big holiday (to see my best friends in Australia pls) – Fail, but they are coming here instead!
- Take at least 1 small holiday (inside Europe) – Success, weekend in Dublin
- Develop a web application and have it ready for Beta testing – Fail, it’s not ready for Beta
- Grow Lyrical Media to take on 1 full-time member of staff – Success
- (bonus goal) Quit smoking – Success, for about 2 weeks now
Goals for The Rest of 2009
This is a fairly big occasion – my final goals list for 2009!
- Code a WordPress plugin
- Read the last few web/marketing books for my 2009 goals
- Get my side-project ready for launch
- Dream up and release another cool Moo MiniCards project
- Write at least half of my book (this is going to be a tough one)
- Now I’ve stopped smoking – start doing some regular excercise (more on this another time)
What About You?
There’s not much left of 2009! I don’t know about you, but it seems to have gone incredibly fast for me – I can’t quite believe it. You’re looking at the words of someone who usually gets bored of a job within 6 months, so the fact that a year has gone by without me noticing is definitely a good thing.
What are you guys doing for the rest of 2009? Is anyone taking the jump into self-employment at the start of 2010? Give me an update in the comments below, or if you need anything please feel free to drop me an email via the contact page any time – if there’s any way I can help then I will!
Photo by Yos Wiranata
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First, congrats on being smoke-free for two weeks! Seems insignificant in comparison to your business goals but it’ll serve you much better in the long run.
It’s been four years since I (along with my business partner) made the leap to full-time self-employment in the same field as you. I love that you set goals for yourself and your business — we’ve done the same thing with our entire team and have the goals posted in the studio for all to see. I find it really helps centralize and focus our efforts if everything can be rooted in a series of common, visible objectives.
Anyway, keep up the great work and good luck in the next 10 months!
Thanks so much Jonathan – really appreciate the feedback and very glad to hear that you guys do something similar! Just checked out your site and it looks like you’re doing some amazing work too!
Congratulations, sounds like things are going very well indeed! I really like your site design by the way, it looks fantastic.
I myself have started my own business this year (8 months since I went self-employed full-time) doing web development, and am loving it. After reading your review posts, I think I’m going to follow suit and set myself some concrete goals – it’s easy to focus on simply working hard all the time, but sometimes setting more fine grain, defined goals can lead to better success, especially when it’s important not just to get work done, but also to continually improve how you promote and market your business, as well as broadening horizons with side projects and writing. Those are all things I want to do much more of, and just yesterday I launched a completely updated site (http://ejdraper.com) with those aims in mind.
Incidentally, what has been your experience of setting up the Facebook fan page? Has it been useful and worthwhile?
Oh, and I too switched from Firefox to Safari just this past week, for the exact same reason – I was having to restart it two to three times a day as it got really sluggish, presumably because of one or more memory leaks somewhere. Safari is like a breath of fresh air in comparison!
Good luck and hope your success continues throughout 2010!
What impresses me the most here is that you’re quitting smoking :D That’s great news.
haha – thank you (as always) Ash! :)
“How To Be a Rockstar Freelancer” – Have you read it and just need to review it? Or not read it yet? I’ve been hearing this book title pop up all over the show and wonder whether anyone has comments? Worth getting?
To be specific – I’ve read about half, and it’s good so far :)
If read it and loved it. Since I don’t really communicate with webdesigners in my own country it is great to read back and validate some of the methods that I’ve been using.
The book gave me some handy tips on design reviews and how to adjust the design to a budget.
Well done! Your business seems to be really doing well and I am so pleased for you – and then to quit smoking, that’s amazing :-)
I am now ashamed at how motivated you are compared to myself – off to give myself a good talking to.
Thanks Sharon! And don’t be ashamed, we all have our motivated-moments, but I can procrastinate just as much as the next person! :)
Hey John,
What a great read! Good to know that your business is improving and from the looks of things hitting most of your goals.
I have to say, and most will probably agree, it’s very motivational reading this and makes me want to push harder and progress. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and an insight into your business, not all companies/freelancers are as transparent.
Good luck in 2010 mate and I really hope Lyrical grows and produces more great work.
Cheers,
Garry
Thanks Gary, really appreciate all of your kind comments – always nice to know people are reading :)
Nice article. It’s nice to see what you’ve achieved this since starting up in February. I’m hoping to do the same.
Thanks Luke – I’m already looking forward to doing the “Year in Review” post in a couple of months!
Major congratulations on quitting smoking. All that hard work and $$ earned will amount to nothing if your lungs get all tarred up :)
You might wanna get a ‘quitmeter’ to keep you motivated and going. There’s plenty you can download or try out the Quit-o-meteR app on Facebook.
Maybe you’d like to share your book list? Would love to read them.
Well Done, what an inspiration, I am actually in Month 8 of owning my own website design business, from the looks of your achievements i need to try harder, thanks for the inspiration, website looks great.
Wow, you’ve definitely been busy! Sounds like you definitely have had a few good jobs and have some coming up too, which is always good. I’m freelancing (or trying to) at the moment, while I look for a full time job in design. It’s always hard as a young designer to try and get work or get a full time job at the minute, particularly with the economy but i’m pushing on. I’ve realised all I can do is just work hard to better myself even in the time between applying for jobs and searching for anyone that wants any freelance work doing. Congrats on the first year almost passing though! Seems like you’ve done very well for yourself, quite inspiring. :)
Keep up the good work John!
I also experience too many crashes with Firefox but I cannot live without it – mainly because of the del.icio.us extension.
Maybe you can give Lazarus a try: it’s a form recovery extension.