Category — Opinion

It’s a common problem known to all self-employed people: Dealing with clients that don’t pay. Or at least don’t pay on time and need reminder after reminder and almost threat of legal action before they cough up.

It’s a pain on more levels than one. It’s a pain itself not getting paid and thus not being able to pay all your bills. It’s a pain having to keep records of debitors and spend time on sending reminders etc.

But the biggest pain is perhaps the pain of seeing all the time wasted in trying to get paid. Time that could have been spent better on other things. And time which essentially only adds incremental cost to the already defunct relationship.

Sadly, there is no easy solution for this issue. Of course you could always ditch the client and hire someone to get the money home. But that’s not a pragmatic solution in my book. Instead I think the solution is to rigorously manage your client portfolio, so you can eventually manage the non-payers out.

Today I was supposed to have a meeting with my mentor, Hans. Unfortunately I had to cancel due to a project coming up that needed all the time, I have, in order to get prepared for a workshop next week. It bums me out, but its part of the game, when you are self-employed: The client wins.

Anyways, I’m very fortunate to have a mentor like Hans. Mentor/mentee relationships was something I learned the value of, while I was at Microsoft, and it has always been a huge inspiration to me. If you as a mentee is willing to invest what it takes to create a meaningful relationship, there’s just no end to what you can get out of it.

Hans is a great guy too. And personality is key here. I often hear that a mentor should be someone senior with a lot of experience etc. etc. That’s true. But if the chemistry isn’t there, it’s not worth your time.

Hans listens. But more importantly, Hans asks. He’s a seasoned veteran within the IT industry and also a great coach. He points out the mistakes I make and do so in very direct and honest terms. But he also demonstrates a fundamental belief in what I’m trying to achieve and as such he’s a huge booster of energy for me.

That’s why its killing me when I have to cancel a session with him. Because Hans and what he’s doing for me is the proof of the potential in having a great mentor.

When you’re self-employed you have to do everything yourself. And that’s fine. Because having to do everything yourself comes with the benefit of nobody telling you what to do and when to do it.

You’re in charge. And thats fantastic. But there are still some things that you need to pay attention to. Spare time and how to get a decent balance comes to mind. And this is where it catches my interest, when I read Tammy Erickson’s piece on the declining need for weekends.

Tammy’s point is that technology have made it possible for us to get together less psysically and thus provide for more flexibility in planning of work. But I think she fails to address one crucial point: Management.

It would be great if people in jobs could plan for themselves. But in reality what I think would happen would be an increase in pressure to work more in order to make your deadlines, your budgets and your promotion - not to mention your bonus.

If we allowed for total flexible planning and abondoned weekends it would be a free-for-all for managers looking to extort even more work out of the workforce. And it would lead to unhappy, burned out employees.

Some things are just so sacred that you need to have some basic rules for their governance. Weekends - and thus the protection of your spare time - is one of them, I think.

Having said all that I realize that for us self-employed the matter may be entirely different. But thats another story.

One of the first rules of business is that if you continually piss your customers off, you’ll soon be left without any and thus be out of business. This is especialy true for small businesses such as us self-employed, and sometimes one could only wish that the same would be true for bigger corporations.

Take the iPhone as a great example. It’s being rolled out in more countries - and in Denmark too. But here’s the problem: Apple has chosen what is in my humble opinion one of the worst carrieres, namely Telia, as their partner, and in return Telia has put together the most ridiculos subscription offering. Heck, it’s barely an offering.

What Telia is essentially doing is pissing their customers off. Instead of using the iPhone craze to build new customer relationships, they decide to go gready from day one. Instead of enthusiastic customers, would be customers are now talking about how Telia can be circumvented and how sending gazilions of emails to the company can hopefully make them change their mind.

If I adopted the same tactics as Telia, I would soon be out of business.

Funnily enough there continues to be debate about employees surfing the internet during office hours. And there are still a lot of companies out there actively blocking employees from using various services on the internet from the company network.

Some claim that having such policies in place have an adverse effect on recruitment. I don’t agree. I think the bigger problem here is that by blocking behaviourial patterns, companies send a signal to their employees saying to them that the latter are not to be trusted. And THAT to me is a big problem.

Furthermore I am missing the debate on the quid pro quo here. So if a company bans me using some sites while at work, can I ban them asking me to do a tele conf in the evening or refuse to bring my Blackberry on vacation? Just asking.

Funnily enough companies are all for invading our privacies and blur the lines between work and spare time. But the other way? Noooo.

It’s an ancient attitude. Let them surf!

What is key to success? Is it to have a great idea? Or is it to have a stellar team to execute on the idea? Or put another way: Can a great team succeed with a bad idea, or will the ordinary team with the great idea come out on top?

It’s a very good question, and to answer it you almost have to be religious. Because this is ultimately about belief as both models are being followed for start up’s.

However, recent events suggest that the team is the all important factor. At least this is the realization that Cambrian House - a crowdsourcing community - has come to. They have basically decided to throw out their existing model and focus their future on supporting teams rather than ideas.

I think this is the right approach for two reasons. First of all people won’t put their best ideas in the public domain (a few people will, but only a few). Hence crowdsourcing of ideas will always be biased by second rate ideas. Second, if the only thing you have is ideas and no power to execute, you won’t get anywhere with it.

Add to that that when the going gets tough, it’s the people that pull through - not the idea - and you have an understanding of why it is, that the team has to come before the idea, if you want to maximize your chance of success.

There are many funny things about being self-employed, but one of the not-so-funny-when-you-have-had-to-do-it-hundreds-of-times things is the people asking, why you are self-employed?

‘Did you get fired?’, they ask. Or ‘Did you jump ship before it capsized anyway?’. The answer to both for my part is a loud and resounding ‘No’. I choose for myself to become self-employed as it was something I had always dreamt of trying at one point of my career.

It seems sad that there’s such a perception around being self-employed, freelancer and/or consultant as to suggest that it’s just a means to and end on the back of a personal failure. Because there are really many bright people out there for whom being self-employed is a very positive and giving choice of lifestyle.

“I only have one or two emails to send. Then I’m all yours.”

I can’t count how many times I have said that to my wife over the years. Because with one-and-a-half hours of train commute to and from work, it’s obvious to spend time on the train working. And often work means emails. Emails that need a connection to be sent.

I know I could get a 3G modem and just work away, but I dont’ want to be dragging any more wires with me. That’s why I’m so happy with the wi-fi experiments, the Danish train operator, DSB, and telco TDC are conducting these days.

On select trains you can get access to wi-fi at a discounted price compared to the normal rate for TDC Hotspot. It works fine and being connected I can send my emails or - as now - update my blog.

At the time of writing this the time is 15.42 on a Friday afternoon, and I’m on the train. When I get home, I don’t need to sit down and do a couple of emails. I can relax, take my wife out dining (which I’m doing tonight) and enjoy the weekend.

God, I love the concept of wi-fi on trains.

Often people ask if it pays to be self-employed. I usually answer “Yes”, but not in the context in which they are asking. Because people ask from a financial perspective, where I happen to answer from a much more broad perspective.

So what is it about the money? How does it look? Well, some times the financial rewards are handsome, if there are loads of things to do. At other times there is almost no money at all. To use a rather tired metaphor, it’s a big roller coaster.

So what’s my perspective on the money? Am I in this for the money? No, not at all. I’m in this, because I enjoy the freedom and the opportunities for doing great things and develop myself personally that goes with it. As far as money is concerned, of course that bit is important too. Not to accumulate a lot of wealth but to generate the ability to choose that comes with having enough money for whatever you aspire to.

Last spring when I decided to embark on a new career as self employed, I did a lot of soul searching. Because making the decision to forego the regular paycheck and embark on something this unsure, is not a decision you make lightly. Especially not when you have mortgages and other expenses to pay regardless of your income.

The fundamental question was: Is this a good time to go self employed? I eventually reached the conclusion that the answer was ‘yes’ for a number of reasons, I won’t bother you with here. But one of the things playing with my mind and making it a tough decision to make was the other part of the fundamental question: Is there ever a good time? And how do you know. [Read more →]