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Well here we are again, another month’s review, though admittedly this month is going to be looking back across both June and July as I totally missed the “5th month” review completely. Incidentally, while the numbering of months will stay the same, this is going to be the last “Starting A Business” post. Half a year in, I think that the business is well and truly ‘started’ – so from now on these posts will be called “Running A Business” – which seems more appropriate! (edit: I’ve decided to wait until after the 1-year mark to do this.)
The Business
So here’s a rough guide to what I’ve been doing for the last two months, which have been admittedly rather quiet on the blog-front.
- Completed about 5 client projects
- Won about 4 more client projects
- Won a small piece of design work for one very large client
- Wrote 2 book proposals for 2 publishers
- Got my typographic layout featured on Smashing Magazine
- Had my reader-mail featured in .NET Magazine
- Launched a couple of mini sites
- Learned some important lessons about communication, and finance
In Detail
To say that the last couple of months have been difficult would be the understatement of my year so far! A few good things happened, but generally it was a whole lot of very hard work and disappointing results.
The highlight of the last couple of months was definitely the feature in .NET Mag (one of my 2009 goals). There’s just something really satisfying about seeing your name in print for the first time, I was chuffed to bits! The other highlight was the book proposals which I’ve been working on. Both were web design related, and as of now I’ve turned down one offer from a London based publisher, and am waiting to hear back from another (fingers crossed).
My biggest failure has been still not launching the new design for this blog! The worst part is the the CSS and html is all done, and I had the whole thing almost completely integrated into a WordPress theme… then I overwrote the files, and didn’t have a backup. So I’m back to square one :( – hopefully this month I’ll find some time to get it done!
Reviewing Goals for June
Not a bad success rate this month really, though I suppose I did have a bit longer than usual to get them all done.
- Complete 3 client projects – Success!
- Relaunch this blog with the new design - Fail
- Win 3 client projects – Success!
- Grow twitter account to 4,500 followers – Success! 6,000
- Grow rss subscribers to 200 people – Success! 392
- Write a book proposal (more on this another time) – Success! x2!
- Design a WordPress theme for release on ThemeForest – Technically a Fail, but I’m going to give myself a half-success for designing and releasing the typographic layout for Smashing Magazine.
Goals for August
I’m going to go easy on myself this month, there seems to be so much going on at the moment, so I want to focus on really meaningful goals.
- 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.
- Launch this blog with the new design – MUST do this month.
- Write two (high quality) guest posts for other blogs
- Finally get around to reading and reviewing “How To Be a Rockstar Freelancer”
Not many goals for this month, but all of them are fairly significant and will take a fair amount of work. Quality of quantity and all that. No Twitter or RSS goals for this month either, I think 6 months of aggressively growing these numbers has been fantastic, but I’m now ready to scale back a little in favour of more organic growth.
What About You?
How’s all your work going? Are you being hit by the credit crunch at all? Keep me updated, I always love hearing what you guys are up to!
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Very interesting seeing how you’re getting on – I’m 6 months from starting on my own (assuming Dream Job A doesn’t come up), but am starting to see the work pile up already – everyone and their dog seems to want something designed/built, but I just don’t have the time outside of my 9-5. It’d be interesting to know how many hours you bill per month to get to your previous monthly salary – I assume it’s not 3 hours a day!
PS – Sorry for interrupting your CoD4 1v1 earlier!
The biggest learning curve for me so far has been discovering just how FEW hours are billable! I’ve had to raise my prices twice already to compensate, and I’m just about working my towards a good level now.
Oh and don’t worry it wasn’t a 1v1, we were just messing around trying out some glitches on that map :) you’re always welcome to join!
This just reminds me that I haven’t formed any official goals to meet. I told myself (and my wife) I’d review progress of things at 6 months and a year but I don’t know what I’d review now. You’ve convinced me I need to get off my ass and take things more seriously. :)
And I am seeing the same thing as far as billable hours. Feels like I work all night on things but I’m not seeing a lot of hours in the invoices I’ve sent.
It sure is a crazy life being a freelancer sometimes! But I like being in charge of my own destiny… it’s when being a freelancer starts to feel out of control that you’ve got to do something quickly to get back in control!
By the way, did you know there’s an error on this blog under “Most Popular Posts”?
I love when entrepreneur share their business progress :-)
You definitely had great 6 months.
To answer you question about me. Me and my studio is quite good, we are landing in 2 more big project, and it will be our main income :-)
And also will launch a new service.
My first comment here, I am from twitter BTW, using the same username as my name there.
Hi John,
Yeah its been a pretty busy period for me (well since December last year!) and it continues to go strong through the next quarter. As for yourself: man do ever have time to sleep? :-) Keep up the good work, it’s an inspiration to us all! :-)
Regards
Karl
Thanks for all the replies so far guys!
@Karl – You know that’s a question I get asked a LOT :) I do sleep, a fair amount actually! But I’m also working insanely hard to get this business off the ground, I guess the first 12 months are the hardest, and I’m only halfway though!
Congrats on hitting your six month mark! I’m in the same boat trying to get my business rolling, and you’re definitely motivating me to write out some clear-cut goals. I’d love to hear more about how you got featured in .NET Mag and how you went about preparing, contacting publishers, etc. for your book proposal.
Keep up the good work!
Hey John, nice to read an update. I seriously think you need to start squeezing some Audioboos into your monthly targets though!
Totally with you on your comment above about how many hours are NOT billable. I’ve been doing this 13 months now and still not quite on what I was earning when I left full-time employment – and I work like a bitch sometimes. I seriously think if I wanted to work a comfortable 9-5, Monday-Friday, no weekends, I’d only schedule in 2.5 days of work a week. Of course if I did that I’d have to charge a lot more, plus most project are too urgent to only throw a a day or two a week at. It’s tricky.
Anyway, keep it up mate.
Great job on your success. I started my 100% freelance business in June. I’ve done work for a number of clients, too, and have more on the horizon. But I find myself working morning until … well, morning. Here’s to hoping normal hours are somewhere in the future. Keep up the good work, d00d.
Are you working from home or have you found some space away from home to work from? I know when I was freelancing I found it incredibly difficult to be productive whilst working from our spare bedroom. Now we have the office I find it difficult to work from both home and the office!
Anyway congratulations on what sounds like a great first six months.
Hi Ash, currently I’m working from a home-office. It works ok for me really, I like not having the extra overheads! My eventual goal is too keep on not having an office so that I don’t tie myself down to any one location, but can move around and run the business from anywhere. But that’s a matter a that’s still a long way in the future for now :)
@Aaron – I should do a few more audioboo’s really, I’ve also been toying with the idea of maybe doing a video or two, but I’m still in two minds as to whether anyone would bother to watch them. Personally I barely ever bother to watch video blogs, so I’m not sure if it’s a wise thing to pursue really!
Always enjoy the month(s) in the review posts.
I hope to detail these in my blog soon, but here are some accomplishments / changes I have implemented in the last few months:
- opened a business bank account
- began a monthly cashflow analysis for my business + projections
- found partners for a new side business
- had my first skype conference call across the world
- signed my biggest client yet
- decided to hire my first employee (which has not officially begun yet)
Glad to hear things are going well for you. I did the freelancing thing for many years before taking a ‘normal’ job as a creative director – I angled for retainer type accounts with clients that had ongoing needs for half a designer, or a third of a designer. It helps with getting a consistent cash flow, and you can fit a lot more hours of actual billable work in when you aren’t always out fighting for new projects and getting to know new clients. Once you get into a rhythm you can be very efficient with those types of clients.
When twitter comes back I’ll follow you :)
@BrianCasel – That sounds really really good man :) going to have to get you in for a guest post soon!
@BrianScates – Thanks for the comment, good to hear different ways of going about these things :)
This is an amazing case study, very good information and really great to follow along.
Congrats on how well things are going. I started freelancing in 2005 when my former job situation went rapidly downhill. I work from a home office, but am thinking about renting an executive suite kind of office part time. I usually stay pretty motivated working from home, but sometimes I’d like to have a change of scenery, other than local coffeeshops…
It took me about 2 years to replace my former job’s annual salary. If you can do that this quickly, you’re doing quite nicely.
I agree, it’s amazing how few hours are actually billable some weeks.
John, I think you seriously need to add an extra goal to that blog post.
- Setup a version management system for my files & introduce working practices around that system.
These posts supposed to be here so you can review your progress & so that you and others can learn from your documented mistakes. Don’t document a mistake & not add a goal to learn from it!
I also want to play devils advocate on the idea that 6 months in you’ve finished “starting” your business. Most people don’t consider a company established til it’s about 5 years old! But you have done many of the things other companies might take 5 years to achieve. I think you should only change to “running a business” if you do manage to match your previous employement’s take-home pay!
Loving these posts as always though ;)
Keep it up John!
P.S. – Did you ever hear back from the small piece of design work for one very large client?
Looks like your working hard. I always enjoy reading people progress who have taken the jump. I’m a couple of months away from doing it myself. Fingers crossed!
As a seasoned freelancer :-), I have a question…
What are the things you wish you knew on day one that you know after 6 months? Things which might have made the transition smoother, and possibly helped any successes come sooner.
Keep up the good work!
John
Hi John, great question! (great name too btw)
The number 1 thing would be (ironically) never take on a client just for the money. If you ever find yourself thinking “I know this person is going to be a pain to work with, but it’s a lot of money” – then run a mile! I managed to take on a client like that about 3 months in, and they cost me £3,000 in staff an resources, and I never got a penny more than their initial 25% deposit. A bad client won’t just lose you potential income, they’ll cost you money too. Seriously, only take on the good ones. It’s better to have no income, than to be working with clients who will cause you to make a loss.
The number 2 thing would be to be all over your accounts, ALWAYS know how much money you have coming a month in advance and plan for it. If you need to line up more clients to fill some free time, make sure you do it early!
Hi John, I have never ever seen anything like this before and it’s amazing. Too many businesses have no definite (written?) goals and therefore no sense of direction. what is more people aren’t willing to be open about their plans and aspirations.
Looking forward to your review of FreeAgent.
Thanks Stuart, appreciate the kind words :)
Firstly, as all have mentioned before me (as i’ve read through the old monthly reviews), thanks for the insightful and informative process of your delves into self employment and the trials and tribulations along the way.
I’m not sure if this has been asked of before, but what were you doing previous to starting off on your own? Obviously another fulltime job, but was that web design related or something completely different, with web design being a ‘sparetime only’ process?
I’m currently working in IT, but not webdesign, but have started working on a few personal sites, and have run through a small number of affiliate marketing sites in the past, but the main issue is time. I’m always looking for ways in which to maintain the fulltime job but have the webstuff up to a feasible level to be financially stable (enough to not crash and burn) once moving into self employment. I’m wondering whether there’s any particular advice you can offer. Obviously with time being precious I need to maximise profit for time but being still within a learner position I’m looking for any advice where possible.
I really like the way you set yourself realistic targets. This is something I need to take on board and utilise to its potential, rather than creating lists of what I want to achieve, feeling overwhelmed with the shear quantity and actually gaining little. I think being realistic on what can be achieved is again something I need advice on and also to concentrate and get better at.
Apologies….that post got a wee bit longwinded, best end it there
Thanks for the comment Ben, always nice to see new faces :)
I started out working for a web design agency for a year, before being hired by an international extreme sports company as the lead designer, developer and head of internet marketing. That lasted just under a year again before I started doing this!
To answer your question – throughout the time I was full-time employed I was also working on freelance projects every single night from around 7pm to 2am. This helped me establish a client base, and gain a lot of valuable experience!
I’m actually writing up the next ‘monthly review’ post right now, it should be live in a few minutes.
Thanks for your reply John.
I’m trying the ‘evening slog’ work on projects but simply find that time’s too short or energy levels are low. Unfortunately a daily 2.5 hour commute into London and home in the evening so early morning, late evenings are taking it’s toll. I’ve attempted working on the train but the 5am getup normally requires me to sleep for the journey simply to catchup, and stop me from flaggin during the evening. I do however think I need to work smarter to achieve the results I require. Your inspirational monthly target system is something I need to adapt. As mentioned before it’s learning not to exceed my capabilities and then FAIL on everything due to there simply being too much on the list.
With regards to freelance projects, were you working as a registered business, contracts, formal agreements, the whole package, or working more on the fly? I’ve been asked by a couple of colleagues for a website simply to strengthen my portfolio but have yet to approach businesses. What level of setup would be required? How would you recommend approaching the freelance projects?
Thanks again for any advice you, or anyone else, can add.
Hi Ben,
While I was working full time I wasn’t any sort of business – I did have a contract etc but I simply took money into my personal account and declared it as additional income on a self-assessment tax return. You just have to remember that there’s NEVER a good time to start doing anything, so don’t wait – make a plan, and then put it into action right away :)