2014 (Half) Post-Mortem
Whenever I finish a project, I like to do a postmortem, and ask myself three questions about the previous work: What went well, what went wrong, and what can I do better? I did one of these for 2013, and I decided to do one for the first half of 2014.
What Went Well
Writing Standard Operating Procedures:
In his book The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman defines a business as a repeatable, sustainable, profitable process. Writing standard operating procedures has helped me build my freelancing into a business with repeatable processes. I've written out documents and checklists for each of the following activities:
Agile Project Workflow
Coding Standards
Initial Discovery Meeting
Lead Qualification
Starting a new Ruby on Rails Application
Project Delivery
Project Kickoff
Subcontractor On boarding
Version Control Best Practices
This has made each of these tasks a lot easier. Instead of going into a discovery meeting unprepared, I always have a plan in place. When I work with other people,I have a plan to bring them onboard. They also give me something that can be reviewed and improved. I plan on both expanding on my current operating procedures, in addition to writing new ones.
Working with Subcontractors
I brought on subcontractors to help with a few projects. It allowed me to make some passive income, take on a larger project, and added more time in my schedule to focus on more important work. I plan on working with subcontractors in the future, both to handle easier work and to fill in my weaker points, such as design. This will help increase revenue, and I will be able to deliver a better quality product to clients.
Building an email list
I wrote a small ebook and used it to start building an email list of freelancers. Email list subscribers are like the recurring revenue of marketing. It gives me a way to start conversations with a lot of other freelancers. I plan on doubling down on email marketing. You may notice that I have re-vamped the email system for this project. I have created a 30-day course based on a 'best of' of this blog which you can subscribe to in the sidebar, in order to increase engagement with my readers.
Monthly Retainers
I had one client on a monthly retainer, and I am working on landing a couple more. As a consultant, you start each month at $0. Having some guaranteed income each month can help stabilize income. It's also a fairly easy up-sell to make at the end of a project with a happy client.
Project Management
I have been a taking a more "agile" approach to products, and have set up a good weekly sprint system I use with clients. Each week, I have a meeting with clients to discuss what I've been working on, what I need from them, and if they have any issues or suggestions. Then we plan out the work for the following week. Clients have really enjoyed this process and it gives me a good to handle large projects while being flexible. I do hate the "agile" buzzword, and there is a lot of riffraff out there about the ideas, but I still feel the core principles of agile are sound.
Writing
I've invested more in writing this year. It has helped me reach out to more people and be seen as more of an authority. I've managed to get clients more interested in projects, and build a mailing list.
Investing In Education
I've put more time and money into educational products and courses. I've made sure to make time to read and research. A big part of consulting is having giving knowledge to other people. That means you have to constantly be learning in order to stay on top of your game. I also have a weekly mastermind with three other freelancers where we talk about our businesses and the challenges we've been facing. I've also found podcasts to be a valuable source of information. Here are a few I've really enjoyed:
The business of Freelancing, Brennan Dunn
Startups for the rest of Us, Mike Taber & Rob Walling
Chasing Product, Christopher Hawkins
Kalzuemeus Software, Patrick McKenzie
Putting myself on a salary
Previously, I was paying myself a fraction of every invoice I received. Now, I pay myself a fixed amount every week. This helps decouple my income from the cash flow of my business, and makes planning personal finances easier. More importantly, I have a some weeks of salary in the bank, so I'm not stressed about money anymore, which is huge.
What Went Wrong
Daily & Weekly Billing I did have two client projects where I billed by the day, and I almost put this in the "what went well" column. While these were a steady increase in revenue for myself and a more steady expense to the client, it made scheduling too rigid. If I had a couple of non-client hours on a day, I felt as though I couldn't deliver a full day's value, and ended up having a whole non-paying day on the schedule (The one good hold over from this is now I try to book all of my calls / meetings on one day of the week). I wanted to move to weekly billing to solve this problem, as I felt having a larger block of time to work with would help. However, I have yet to be able to sell a weekly billing contract. I have tried, and clients seem confused by it. They are usually okay with it once I explain it to them, but I get the feeling that it was a roadblock in my sales process. I've decided to go back to hourly billing for the time being, until I fix the approach.
Book Writing
I read an article by Amy Hoy that talked about building a tiny product first, and I decided to follow that advice. She recommended choosing a product that you could finish in 3 months. I thought I had chosen one by writing a book about starting your freelancing business. Then I booked too much client work and the book fell by the wayside. I originally wanted to launch the book on March 28th, but now it is July and I still haven't released anything.
Client focused content
Right now I have two distinct business channels: One is client work, which tends to be mostly development services for start ups and small tech companies. The other is writing content and working on products for other freelancers (The good ol' "selling tools to the miners" approach). While I have done a good job of building my audience of freelancers, I haven't done well with writing content and building and audience of potential clients.
Time management
I've struggled with this both on the micro and macro level. On the micro level, I have experimented a lot with different ways to schedule my time throughout the day, but I have yet to find a system that works. On the macro level, I have made the mistake of taking on too much client work, and over extending myself. This has also caused other business work, such as writing a book, to fall by the wayside.
What Can I do Better?
Know my limits
I've learned how dangerous booking too much client work can be. It's always tempting because you think that if you can"tough it out" you can produce a lot of work and make some good money. Instead, what usually happens is feeling stressed, burned out, and not delivering quality work. Also, taking on too much client work means that you don't have time to work on growing my business. It puts you in a position where you working in the business instead of on the business.
Writing a book (still)
While this original goal has fallen by the wayside, I haven't given up. I still plan on releasing a book by the end of the year, and I am making more strides to make time in my schedule to write.
Doubling down on long form content All of the content that I have written that has done well has been very valuable, very educational, long form content. The problem with this approach is that one good article can take several hours to write. However, these have been the ones that have brought me the most traffic and the most subscribers. I plan on taking the time to write longer copy over the next 6 months. Alex Turnbull over a GrooveHQ is FANTASTIC at this, and is a great example of great long form content.
Company Website
I have this site where I talk about my business openly, my personal site where I also talk about freelancing as well as nerdy programming stuff. Both have had some decent responses and get decent traffic. However, my company website, where I talk about my clients and write business related content, has been floundering. I'm not sure what to do about that (besides writing more quality, long form content), but it's something I hope to improve upon. Right now my site is a sales tool; I do have a lot of good pages that I send clients to directly that have helped me close sales. What I would like to do is turn it into more of a marketing tool, where I am bringing in enough qualified traffic that I can build a better client base.
Services as a product
I recently published a post on selling my services as product. So far, response has been good. I plan on refining these offerings, finding the best price points, and pushing forward with this in the future.
Direct marketing
This year I have built strong, lasting relationships with clients, and a good ecosystem of people that send me referrals fairly regularly. The problem is that this is all passive; I can't control how many referrals I get every month. I feel the one piece missing from my marketing strategy is a way to make contact with companies directly, so that I can have more control over my sales pipeline, and grow or shrink the amount of work I have coming in.