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

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.

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.

Scott Anthony has a piece on Harvard’s Discussion Leaders about the do’s and don’ts of innovation. And I believe this is a key point also in the field of the consulting that we as self-employed individuals tend to do:

Disrupting competitors—following approaches that competitors consider unattractive or uninteresting—is a great thing. Disrupting customers—asking them to put up with solutions that seem worse to them or require behavior changes—is not.

The only small reservation I have is that I do think there are cases where clients need to change their behaviour to succeed and prosper. And we should never be afraid to tell them so.

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.

In an upcoming issue of the Danish weekly magazine for women, ‘Femina’, a series of articles will focus on online social networking and its implications for women. And I will be features in this series as a commentator and expert on various social networks, pro’s and con’s, do’s and don’ts etc.

Its quite funny actually. Because this is the second time, I have been interviewed on this subject. The first time was in a live studio interview on Danish Broadcasting Corporations Radio 1, ‘Harddisken’. And this is the second time I have been interviewed on anything relating to new media.

I don’t know when the series of articles will be in, but it should be in one of the coming weeks.

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.

Even though you’re self-employed there’s no reason to dismiss the thought of ever wanting to be a part of something bigger again. It may be that you look towards returning to an ordinary job, or you may in fact be looking towards starting something thats just a little bit bigger than what you can manage on your own.

These days I’m thinking a great deal about the latter option. Yes, I’m thinking about starting a new, innovative and creative company together with some like-minded spirits. We have had the first couple of meetings, and we’re all basically agreeing on the idea, focus and overall strategy of the company. On top of that we have great chemistry and seem to intuitively know where we’re coming from, when we discuss issues.

I can not say anything about the company or its focus yet. And I don’t know if we will be moving the company along towards inception. But I do know that even though you’re self-employed, it always makes sense to keep your mind open towards opportunities that may present themselves. After all you can always say no.