Category: Solopreneur Journey

Once you have been working as a client service Freelancer for some time, you reach a point where you have a full roster of clients and things are rolling along nicely.

A byproduct of your success is that you get less and less time to work on your own internal projects.  In this post I want to suggest that sometimes you should be setting aside time for your internal projects as if you were your own client.

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” – Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law says work expands to fit the time, if you don’t add your own work into that pile, your client work will expand to fill ALL of your time.

You can tell when I have a lot on, blog posts don’t come out, and I don’t get to work on my own stuff.  This post explains how I’m planning to combat this.

Have A Deadline

Step one to being your own client is a deadline.  Set a deadline and keep to it.

This week I have half a day on Thursday to work on my own projects.  It’s booked out in my Weekly plan and my daily plan for today.

Have Deliverables

It’s tempting to say, I’ll do my marketing automation project (see below) in this “me as a client slot”, but that is too vague. Create real actionable items so the work gets done in the time you have available.

I have three entries this morning

1. Write “Sometimes YOU Need To Be YOUR Own Client” blog post, publish and promote.
2. Create module 6 of Diary Mapping – write script, record, publish in Teachable
3. Create module 7 of Diary Mapping – write script, record, publish in Teachable

If I don’t get all of those done, I can roll them forward to “me as a client” slot next week.

If I try to cram too many items into my project time I need to learn to drop some times.

Keep To It

The easiest thing in the world is to cancel your own project work, if client work runs over or you are running behind on tasks.

Treat yourself as an annoying squeaky wheel client that is checking in and demanding work gets done.  Don’t put it off, get it done!

“You” Projects Are Valuable & Important

You’ve identified this work because it’s important to your business in the long term.

Don’t teat that new client request that has just come in as a higher priority than you, schedule the new client project appropriately but don’t give it a higher priority than yourself.

Me As A Client

I have three things I want to do in Q1 2019 and I’m booking out time for them each week.  I’m doing it on a Thursday.

Sometimes it may be half a day, sometimes a full day.  I want to do the following three things this quarter:

1. Write a blog post each week
2. Complete my Diary Mapping premium course
3. Setup marketing automation for my WordPress consulting work.

These are all action items from my annual planning session I did back in November.

I’ve been setting up out of office notifications on my email to let people know I’m unavailable, and I will be slow to reply to them.

Internal Guilt Trip

I’ve been doing Thursday, with me as a client, throughout December and I have experience some internal resistance and guilt about this.

My monkey brain is shouting “You should be working on client X’s project they are paying you!”.

My rational mind needs to learn to quiet the monkey brain and tell it, “This is for the long term good, it’s only a few hours of your time, you can get to client X after lunch, you are beautiful, you are loved.”.

Well perhaps not the last two, but you should not feel bad about working on your internal projects in parallel with client projects.

That’s What Weekends & Evenings Are For Dude!

.. I hear you cry, but I’m too exhausted by client work (which already pushes into my evenings) and my weekends are a time to recharge and do fun things.

Why should my own projects be scheduled at sub-optimal times?

Wrap Up

I’m going to be using this technique to get my internal projects done this year.  Thursday is Neil time and it’s none negotiable :).

Does anyone else have any particular techniques they use to ensure their own non-client facing work gets done, discussion in the comments please.

Photo Credit: willbuckner Flickr via Compfight cc

It’s a metaphor Dude! You create a parking slot in your weekly plan and you say No Parking to client projects in that slot.

Back in 2012 I was spinning lots of plates and a number of them were crashing down around my ankles.

I was suffering from to-do overload and I realised I needed a new way to manage my to do list.

I was and still am a huge fan of mind maps and I was wondering if I could merge that with the to-do list in my diary.

2013 came around and I implemented a system I have come to call Diary Mapping.

It’s a simple visual method of managing my to-do list. It;s analogue and manual and requires a thoughtful approach to task management.

I’ve created a free overview course to give you an insight into my system, with a premium course to come.

The free version is the what  and the premium version is the how to.

Checkout out the introductory course at DiaryMapping.com

Several years back, I had an amazing idea.  If I could find a clone of myself, I could double the income coming into my business.  This was when my business suffered the attack of the clone.

How hard could it be ..

The Back Story

I was booked solid.  I had a full roster of stand alone projects.  I had about 50 maintenance clients demanding my attention.

I realised it was time for me to move from being a freelancer to running a firm.  If I could find someone with my skill set I could bring in even more projects, load up my maintenance plans and roll naked in pound notes.

Recruiting Locally

I started my search locally looking for a clone of myself to help in my business.

I’m not cheap (you need to buy me a beer and a steak dinner first) and I found recruiting a clone of me is even more expensive. On top of salary  I would have to incorporate (UK sole traders cannot employ staff), I would need to make pension contributions, national insurance employer payments and bring a whole pile of grief and accountant bullshit (sorry my accountancy clients but your forms and terms make my head spin) into my life, hell no!

The few people I know with my level of WordPress skills laughed when I tried to recruit them, why would they join a startup agency when they could work at big agencies or run their own very successful freelance businesses.

I Had To Go Offshore

I looked offshore to recruit remote contractors.

I tried India, Tim Ferris tells us India is the way, I’ll not go into details here, but there is a cultural norm with Indian techies that makes them hard to work with, in my experience.

I went to South East Asia and the Philippines. I very quickly had a team of three people working with me.

I was bringing in more money, more clients and more stress for myself with a full client workload and a new unexpected job managing a team and ensuring sales were at a level to cover my additional costs.

Then the sh1t hit the fan and cash flow dried up and I was not earning enough cash to pay my team and myself so they were all let go.

Time goes by, rinse and repeat I recruited another team.

Then the sh1t hit the fan and an unexpectedly large tax bill forced me to let go of my team.  I did not have the cash flow in place to cover this unexpected expense and pay their invoices.

Time goes by, rinse and repeat I recruited another team ….

I had three failed attempts at building an agency. The attack of the clone became the attack of the clone x3.

Back To the drawing board

I went back to being the solopreneur.

It was fine for a while but I had more maintenance clients and just as much project work. Very quickly I was full fit to bust with work again.

I knew I needed help but I also knew I could not clone myself and try to build an agency again.

I took myself off and had some deep thinking time, that’s where I formulated the idea of a µAgency.

I Now Run A µAgency

I wrote a post outlining my ideas about a µAgency last year I’ll wait while you check that post out.

I’ve built a micro agency where I concentrate on the one off projects and have a single team member to run my maintenance plan.

It works really well, I have a recurring income steam that takes very little of my personal time to run and I have a lot more time to take care of my one off projects.

I can take time off my business and still earn an income.

I have a µAgency business that is resilient because it has lots of small µRetainers bringing in income each month.

I’ve decided to share how to build a micro agency with other freelancers.

Who Is A µAgency For?

It’s for solo freelancers looking to make the leap from freelancer to firm.

It’s for freelancers taking the first step (or even their only step) to building a firm.

I want to show freelancers how to take baby steps and build an agency that will work and not break due to cash flow issue or other unexpected issues.

I want to show freelancers how to build a tiny agency that will not consume them with management time.

I want to show freelancers how to build a recurring income that does not take their time.

I want to show freelancers how that can take time off from work and still have money coming in.

From Freelancer To Firm

I’ve built a new site called MicroAgencySchool.com where there are courses to teach you how to build a µAgency.

There is a free introduction course which teaches you what a µAgency is and a premium course launching later this year to show you how to build that agency step by step.

From freelancer to firm is the tag line I’m using with my courses.  That’s the transformation I’m trying to help you make.  I want to show you how to move from being a solopreneur to a tiny agency owner without making the mistakes I did.

I’m Not A Guru

In the post I talk about not being a guru but I’m passionate about helping people grow their online business so I’ve created a these courses to help people understand what a µAgency is.

Wrap Up – Attack Of The Clone

Let me be Yoda to your Luke Skywalker and show you how to build a micro agency.  Check out my free course over at the MicroAgencySchool.com

If you like what you see, you can check out the premium course which will step you though building your own µAgency coming later this year.

Photo Credit: Zellaby Flickr via Compfight cc

doing the seo dance – attack of the clone

I’ve got a bit of an issue, I’m always keeping up with the eJoneses.

What do I mean by that?  I’m always looking at other peoples online business and comparing it to mine and trying to compete or copy what they are doing.

Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen this is a route to ruin and unhappiness.  I say sod the eJoneses and build a business you love!

Other Peoples Businesses

We peek over the virtual white picket fence and see other people with X employees, product Y, Service Z and think we need to do that to keep up with them.

We never stop to think are X, Y and Z a good fit for me? We never stop to think is this just the latest shiny object?

Derek Sivers said in his excellent little book Anything You Want .

When you make a company, you make a utopia,  It’s where you design your perfect world.

I highlight your because when you are a solopreneur, you are building something that is great for you, not someone else, not a board of directors or share holders and it’s definitely not for Mr Jones down the .com street.

Build A Business YOU Love

I’ve talked about this in the past but we are in a unique period in history where we don’t had to grimly plod down to the dark satanic mills and work for the landed gentry anymore.  We don’t need oppressive jobs, we can strike out on our own.

If you have a little chutzpah we can build our own online freelance business that is a perfect  fit for you.

Some Examples Of Keeping Up With The eJonses

Here are some examples of my trying to keep up with other peoples business ideals.

wpcurve – I saw this amazing business boom and eventually exit to Godaddy, I can build a business like that at wpdude.com I thought, but I don’t like managment, managing people sucks, I want the right sized business a µAgency of me plus another person to cover maintenance work. I don’t want to build a big team.  I tried but hated it, and wpdude.com has been sunset and NeilMatthews.co has risen.

dropshipping – this is the new kid on the block, find products that can be sourced from manufactures in China, set up an Amazon of shopify store and sell those good. Have the manufacturer deliver them and make money while you sleep, gave it a go, made a few quid, boring as hell, why would I want to spend time on that?

App Development – I still think this has legs, but I was losing focus on my key WordPress consulting business to focus on building apps as well, it had to go (for now anyway).

Not To Do List

I have a way to combat trying to keep up with the eJoneses, and that is my not to do list.

I have a highly coloured mind map on my wall right in my eye-line and is has my not to do items on it, here’s the list.

• App development
• Build an agency (I’ve spent a lot of time building a multi person agency that I hated working in )
• Buy any new domain names (sound familiar to anyone 🙂 )
• Focus on selling my business
• Jump between ideas
• Go off plan (I make a plan each November)
• Spend time on tools (I can spend a lot of time messing with new tools / software)
• Low end productized services (I was trying to create something like wpfixit.com)

If I’m going off piste I look at my not to do list and bring myself back on course.

Wrap Up – Keeping Up With the eJoneses

Build the business you want, not the one you think you need because someone else is doing it that way.

Have fun building your business and don’t be afraid to pivot away from a product or service that you don’t enjoy delivering or creating.

Just because Ms Jones has 100 clients does not mean you need 100 clients, 20 of them may be douche nozzles and need to be sacked.

Build a business YOU love.

I’ll be writing a lot more about small business in the lead up to the launch of my new course Micro Agency School.

How have you been guilty of keeping up with the eJoneses, comments below please.

Photo Credit: kuyabic Flickr via Compfight cc

Doing the seo dance – Keeping Up With The eJoneses

For the past three months or so, I’ve been using a new tool to manage my projects, this one seems to fit all my needs.  It’s called Sortd.

I’ve written in the past about the project management methodology Kanban in my post – Kanban Saved My Sanity,

Sortd uses this methodology and mixes it with my prime communication medium; email.

What Is Sortd

Sortd is a Google chrome extension that works with Gmail.

It turns your inbox into a manageable Kanban board of tasks to be derived from your emails.  Rather than having a huge list of email, that is constantly growing, Sortd turns your inbox into something much more sane, a calmed inbox.

How It Works

Once the extension is installed, you can drag and drop emails out of your inbox into a Kanban board, if the email needs to be actioned and scheduled as a project.  If the email is a standard notification or does not need action it can be archived, all emails requiring work are put into the Kanban boards.

My Kanban setup is to have a board and in the board are lists Quote Sent, To Do, In Progress and Blocked.  Emails become cards or tasks and are moved through the various project management stages.

The benefits of this approach is that I can reply to my clients without leaving my inbox.  You will see in the accompanying video what I mean but you can also do the following

• Rename email subjects so they mean more to you in your project management
• Snooze messages so you can get inbox zero
• Add private notes to an email that are not see by your client, fo example I save passwords against an email as a note
• Set due dates for a project and see all work in a date view.

Add to that the power of Gmail such as canned responses and I have a complete project management system in my inbox.

Where Other Systems Break Down

I don’t like to try and force clients to use project management systems.  Any friction in the project process will break things down.  All of the ones I have seen require a client to register.

I love Trello, but you need to create new boards and register clients.

I love Basecamp too but the effort to setup a project outweighs a lot of my smaller

Sortd is a friction less system, you take your clients emails and organise them

Pricing

Sortd has a freemium pricing model, the single private board version (which was more than enough for a solo freelancer) is free.

When you start sharing boards and assigning tasks to a team you need one of their premium levels. They costs from $2 per user/month to $5 per user /month which is amazing value compared to project management systems which typically start at $20 per user per month.

https://www.sortd.com/pricing

I’m Early in the team adoption and it seems to be working well.

Video Sortd In Action

Here’s a video of me showing how I use Sortd on a test email account.

What Worries Me About Sortd

I’m not sure about whether or not it is still being actively developed, I don’t get many updates from the development team so this is a real worry.

Wrap Up – Sorted With Sortd

I’m in control of my projects with the same tool I use to communicate with my clients (Gmail) and IM my team (Google handouts).

Sortd is a winner in my book, I just hope they keep up development, fingers crossed.

Photo Credit: shauspan Flickr via Compfight cc

I hinted at a rebranding of my business last week, in my post about Thanksgiving Business Planning.

I’ve gone through with my rebrand and I wanted to explain why I’ve done this.

So drum roll, WPDude has become bada-bada-bada-bada-bada-bada-bada NeilMatthews.co, the crowd erupts into spontaneous applauds 🙂

Dooooood!

I cannot even say the word dude without wincing.  It’s not a word I ever use in normal day to day conversation.  Why would I brand my business as that?

Well, back in 2008 when I started this journey, a 6 letter domain name was hard to find, so I leapt at the chance for this domain. WPDude was born without too much thought.  Let that be a lesson to you kids out there, choose your domain name wisely.

I’m 46 years old for flip sake, I’m not a dude I’m a grown ass adult. The dude had to go.

I’m going to paraphrase a comment from a client.

I thought I was hiring a kid to fix my website, much to my pleasure I found out it was a middle aged man, I felt much better knowing that

Tagline

My tagline has changed to, from “Your WordPress Help” to “I Fix WordPress Sites”, you cannot be any clearer than that.

The majority of my work is stepping in when a site breaks or needs complex work.

Clients Want My Skills

My clients pay me for my particular set of skills, people hire Neil Matthews, not some comic book character called WPDude.

Working under a personal brand

I still have a backend team looking after maintenance work, but I am their client, not you.  I act as a middleman on all communication

I’m not building a business to Sell

I wrote about building a business you love, in it I talk about how difficult it will be for me to sell my business.  Who wants to buy a job.

I’ve embraced this and I now know I probably won’t sell this business, so why brand it as something other than me that can be sold.

What Does WP Mean Anyway

There is a dance you have to dance when you work in the WordPress arena, you cannot use the trademarked term WordPress in your domain name you have to use WP instead.

You will see a lot of people using WP in their domain name, but does anyone know what that means outside of the WordPress community, I doubt it.

Here is the memo just in case you missed it https://wordpress.org/about/domains/.

Flexibility

Moving to NeilMatthews.co allows me more flexibility in the work I do, for example, I’m interested in writing more about building a µAgency I’ve got a book in me on this subject. Not branding myself as a WordPress only grants me more flexibility to do this type of work.

Apps are rising, my ability to sell app development services is also something I am interested in you don’t hire a WordPress dude to develop your app.

I cannot see this happening, but WordPress could drop out of favour for a new tool, rebranding NeilMatthews.co gives me redundancy against that.

I want to write about topics outside of WordPress on my blog, some of my most well-received posts are about building online business.  Not having a WordPress moniker allows me to do this.

It’s Scary

I flipped the switch yesterday, and I’m anxiously watching my stats and signups

Guess what, nothing has changed, requests for work have dropped in everything is fine. All the stress and worry about a change like this has dissolved.

Wrap Up – The Rebranding of WPDude

My primary business is still WordPress support and development, I’m not changing that, I just want to step out from the WPDude brand and work as myself, Neil Matthews.

So I’m a card-carrying solopreneur now, thanks for your attention, announcement over.

 

Each year on the US Thanksgiving holiday I take a day out to plan for the coming year.

I’m based in the UK, and I don’t celebrate the holiday, but most of my clients are US based so it’s a very quiet day and the ideal opportunity to plan 2018.

A lot of you may be getting into planning mode for next year so I thought I would share my process.

The Run Up To Thanksgiving

At the start of November, I begin to get excited about my planning day, it’s something I really look forward to for some bizarre reason.

I start scribbling lots of notes about how I would like next year to be, and throw them into a folder, this is a kind of planning brain dump which I will read through and use to set my plan.  As I go into my planning session I have a rough idea of how 2018 will look, the planning day will set that in concrete with a formal plan and actionable items will come from that.

This pre-planning phase takes place over a couple of weeks in November. I have a stack of notes about 50 pages high with ideas.

Some hints, a re-brand is in the planning, I’m looking into the way I do my quotes and my blogging next year will have a new theme.

Business & Personal Planning

My planning day is not just about how I want to see my business in 2018 but also personal goals.

I’ll not talk much about my personal goals in these posts because, erm, they are personal, but I’ll share my business plans on my next blog post.

The tools I use for my planning session are pretty basic, a pad of A4 paper, pens and coloured pencils and Evernote to write up my formal plan.  Nothing fancy.

Re-read my 2016 / 2017 Diaries

On the morning of my planning day, I skim over my late 2016 & 2017 diary to date over breakfast, to see what went well, and what went wrong during the past year.  I’ll look at the work I’m doing and issues I have had.

I re-read my previous years planning from the same process to see how on target I am (erm did you see any info prods from me this year? I’m not on target for that part of my previous plan).

Get Out Of The Office

This is a hugely important part of the process, I get out of my home office and do the planning offsite.

The change of scenery makes the process like a holiday for me, almost a day off from client work.

I don’t answer any emails on my planning day.  I don’t do any client work other than to ensure my ongoing maintenance clients are all okay and their updates were done and backups have worked and nothing has crashed.

I have two locations for my planning day, the first is a coffee shop within walking distance of my home and the other is my local pub, where I have lunch, and a celebratory pint once I’m done planning, it’s thirsty work after all.

Being in a new location really does create a divide between the planning process and normal day to day client activities, so I heartily recommend getting out of your normal working environment to do this process.

Morning Routine

My morning routine starts at the coffee shop or rather two coffee shops.  It’s not very glamorous, but the nearest coffee place is in Washington motorway services.  So I have a coffee shop on the northbound side and another on the southbound side.  I’ll spend a couple of hours in each shop.  I do my business planning on one side of the motorway (freeway for my US chums) and personal planning on the other.

For the history buffs Washington is the family home of the famous George Washington, here’s a picture of his ancestral home.

What Went Well & Wrong in The Last Year

This is the first part of my day, I do a retrospective on what worked and what failed last year.  I make notes on doing more of the stuff that went well and creating controls on how to stop messing up again next year.

If you are not making mistakes you are not trying new things, so I don’t beat myself up on mistakes, I learn from them.

It’s also a chance to look at things that went well but I’m not that keen on doing any more.

Business Planning

Next, I move onto how my business will look next year.  Next year’s focus is how my business can serve me, not creating some mythical business from an e-book with someones else’s vision of a great business.

I look at major projects I want to start, hint I want to write a book.

I look at changes in how my business works, my marketing, the services I deliver and how they are delivered and my µAgency to deliver those services.

I set income goals and other targets.

I look at how to automate and streamline my business.  I think about any new tools I need.

I look at any legislative changes required.

Personal

The second part of the morning is all about my personal goals for next year.

I like to do both these planning sessions at the same time so my business can facilitate the lifestyle I want, not be an all-consuming thing with a personal life stuffed in at the end of the day.

Lunch & Afternoon

As lunchtime approaches, I take the mile or so walk from the coffee shops up to my local pub the Mill House.  This again is part of my routine, I can mull on my plan created in the morning during the 30 or so minute walk to my lunch destination.  Does it sit well with me and will it serve me well during the next year?

The walking/thinking/meditative state really helps to make my mind up about the plan I created in the morning.  I get to think it through and see any problems.

For the history buffs, the Mill house started life as a water-powered grain mill in the 18th century, became an Inn in the late nineteenth century.  It’s reputedly haunted and it is my local pub, I love it.

The Action Plan

The afternoon is spent creating an actionable plan to implement what I have planned on paper during the morning session.

I document this in Evernote.  I set deliverables timescales and targets.

Targets

I like to create a series of targets from my planning so I can judge how well I performed against my plan, some are hard targets such as a £income goal, others are soft targets such as how I want my business to look and service me, here are some of my planned targets.

• Income goal
• Maintenance clients signed up
• Team size and formation
• Take time off an maintain income level
• Sabbatical next summer

Not To Do List

This is a new thing for me for 2018, I’m also creating a not to do list, things I have done by habit over the years and need to stop doing.

Things like impulsively buying domain names for projects I might, and usually do not, end up starting is definitely going on the not to so list,  wpzaps.com for example?

2018 Theme

I like to boil everything down into a yearly theme.  This year is all about reducing stress so working in wpdude (or whatever it will be called next year ????) is a pleasurable thing for me.

Congratutorial Pint

It would be rude not to have a pint or two of beer after all that thirsty work planning my year, now the hard work begins to implement my plan. The Deuchars IPA is especially fine at the Mill House.

Wrap Up – Thanksgiving Business Planning

Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, I’m thankful you have given your most precious and finite resource; your time, to reading this post from across the pond.

I hope you have enjoyed the rich history lessons from my part of the world :).

I’ll update you on my plans in my next blog post.