Working the market and the opportunities as a self-employed individual

When you’re self-employed you learn to spot the tools that can really make a difference for what you’re trying to achieve. For me such a tool is WordPress, the free blogging software that runs this site as well as my companys site among others.

It’s now out in the 2.6 release, and it’s truly awsome. Not only is it out one month prior to expected release (please take a note of that, developers out there), but it also has some great new features including the ‘Press It’-feature, which allows a user to publish directly to his or her WordPress blog from any site around the web.

I have now updated my four main sites with the new release. Thanks to the One-Click Installs with my hosting provider, it took me less than 10 minutes total. Wow!

Its a time consuming struggle to keep a high degree of visibility. Yet, its essential when you’re self-employed. Because that - and the rumours flying around about the great work that you do - is what makes you stay in business.

In an effort to add yet another gun to my visibility artillery, I have started playing with video. During my last trip to the US I bought a Sony Handycam with the intention of using it as an extra media tool in my company. And today marks my first attempt at publishing video with this little bit about Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” and the implications of that same book for how media companies should handle usergenerated content.

The plan going forward is to use video whenever appropriate. For now it’s for my new Video Column, but lets see how that involves. Because as self-employed you can never get visibility enough.

The one thing you’re bound to have very little of, when you’re self-employed, is personal resources, aka time. You’re bound by the 24 hours a day - where you also have to set aside time for eating, sleeping, family etc - and by being on your own. There’s only so much you can do.

Now, wouldn’t it be great, if you could spend those hours on things, you thought were just plain fun. On exciting projects, great clients and on making a difference? I know, I think it would.

In order to get there, I think a plan is necessary. A plan of letting the world know of the scarcity of my resources, and how valuable they are to prospective clients.

Seth Godin has a great post about taking advantage of scarcity, which - even though its based on products - I think you could adapt to being self-employed and doing consulting.

I had a fun experience the other day that I thought I wanted to share as a grueling example of how many corporations are stuck in the past.

A good friend of mine forwarded me a job ad for a job, which he thought might be interesting to me. I’m not in the job market - the corporate one that is - as such, but I gave it a look, and it did seem somewhat interesting.

Not intend on becoming a part of corporate culture at this point in time, I decided to write an email to the hiring manager. I wrote that I did find the job interesting, but that I could only make myself available on a freelance basis, as my freedom as self-employed is rather important to me. I moved quickly to note that it shouldn’t cost the company any extra money (don’t want to be seen as a greedy consultant), and that I would bring my extensive experience to bear. Somewhat idealistic I sent the mail.

Today I got a mail back saying that they are indeed looking for a permanent position, so they don’t see themselves working with me. Period.

Of course its ok, and I wished them luck getting a great hire on board. And then I thought to myself how stuck they are in the past: It’s obviously still more important to get someone that fits into an ancient corporate architecture than getting someone with the right expertise (of course I know they will aim to combine the two, but really this is the message that they are sending).

It may be what we’re talking about changing times in the market place and jobs being a takers market. But some corporations obviously haven’t got that yet.

Corporate politics and BS. Just the thought of it make me relish the day, I decided to leave that behind and go on my own. Because it was a farewell to so many things that I just don’t get and which, frankly, I think is counterproductive towards achieving anything real and substantial in the end.

Take Yahoo! for instance. During the last 18 months, they have apparently lost 114 executives due to internal turmoil, lack of direction, tough competion and just plain better offers elsewhere. Execution and direction have suffered as a consequence. And now a bunch more of them is looking to leave when their stock options vest in a couple of weeks time. Does that sound like a fun place to be?

I’m thinking: Let these execs leave. If I was running the ship, the last thing I wanted my senior people to be motivated by was their stock options. I realize they might be necessary as part of an overall package. But when that becomes the primary reason for you to hold on to a position, its time to part ways.

Scott Smith over at Changeist suggests that Fedex Kingo should think about turning their business centers into places, where mobile workers could work instead of using gas and endless hours of transportation getting into the actual corporate offices of the companies, they work for.

I think the idea is brillant. In Denmark we don’t have Fedex Kingo (not really that way anyway), but we do have a lot of villages with long commutes to the city, where this idea would be brillant. Here’s a suggestion:

When the village school closes anyway, turn it into a hub for coworking. Make it a place for the community to come in, work, engage and bring life back to the village. The investment would be rather small, as property in these places are cheap, and municipalities are dying to get rid of the buildings they don’t use anymore. And I’m sure a lot of companies would fund reasonable rents for one or two long distance workers. Plus it would make people, ehhmm, happy…

You could of course ago that some companies would be uncomfortable with having their people work alongside others from other companies. However, I do think this is a dinosaur mentality destined for rapid decline. In other words, there should be no real hindrance for bringing this idea to life.

I myself would be a happy renter in such a place.

As self-employed one of the easiest things is to get caught up by all the interesting people with interesting ideas who want to meet up, discuss and then meet some more. Apart from the obvious risk of engaging in a lot of stuff where your brain is just being picked, there’s also the risk of never getting into real execution mode.

I’m not normally the person pushing for execution, but I have found that as self-employed I really have to. Because not only am I alone about this and responsible for the way I spend my time. It also kills me even more now (than when I was just a corporate guy) to see great ideas never materialize.

In a meeting with a potential client today they told about their difficulties with their CMS vendor. “They don’t ride the same day they saddle the horse”, “Nothing happens when we approach them”, “Their new system is only a teenager” etc etc.

Man, wonder what would happen if I put on that attitude towards my clients? Well, I know - or I’m pretty sure I do: I would get a boot the size of Mt Everest in my behind and fly out through the door head first. And rightly so.

Then why doesn’t this happen to bigger vendors? Why can they get away with crappy customer service?

Somehow it still seems strange that in this day and age of information technology, the web and an increasing amount of white collar work that we’re still stuck with the notion of work organized the way it would be organized on the factory floor. I mean punching in at certain times, staying in one place doing our thing and then punching out at the end of the day.

Of course things have softened a little, but we’re still nowhere near, where we potentially could be. Chris Brogan has a great post on this where he’s trying to put some of the trends together and create an overview of opportunity. Of couple of his points stand out for me:

It costs you more money to house a work staff than it does to manage them remotely…Shift measurements from “being there” to “what you’ve done.”…I think that employers are definitely in a spot where they might have to consider how their employees work.

I hope the latter is true. In fact I’m having the discussion right now with a potential client. They want to hire me for a role as a full-time employee - a role for which they say I’m the best in the country (I know they are trying to sweet talk me, but still). For many reasons this is right now not the optimal fit for me, so I have suggested a more soft approach with an interim employment. This is hard for them to come to terms with even though I’m willing to commit to specific goals for my tenure there. But they are still really considering it.

This just goes to show that there is a paradigm shift happening here, but that it’s a gradual proces. The future of the worker - at least the white collar kind - doesn’t change over night. But change it will. I’m sure of it.

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.