Support networks

To stay sane as a self-employed consultant I need two quite different support networks.

Firstly, there are the people who understand the work I do.  They work in and around the pharmaceutical industry, either client-side or or as consultancy, advertising or training vendors.  We keep in semi-regular informal contact to swap tips, contacts and industry gossip.

Secondly, I keep up a network of friendships with other self-employed people: actors, freelance writers, graphic and web designers, PR professionals, events organisers and the like.  Most have very little idea as to what my business actually does, and to be honest, they don't really care.  What we do have is the shared need to believe that we can make a decent living being self-employed in our chosen fields.

We talk about 'only being as good as your last job'.  We talk about the freelancer's need to never turn down work; which follows the same logic as the old actors' axiom of never letting your understudy on stage.  We bemoan the irony of never being able to take that holiday when you need it most.  In other words, we talk about always being present in the eyes of your client.

Best of all, we get to celebrate each other's successes and cushion each other's disappointments without the envy or schadenfreude that professional rivals experience in the same circumstances.

Work out when you work best

Working alone gives you the luxury of working when you work best, especially if you work from home like me.

Personally I do my best thinking alone and between the hours of 530am and 10am.  I get up at 5am, make coffee and then spend about 30 minutes checking emails from other parts of the world, reviewing my To Do List and so on.  So around 530am I can get a clear run at my most important tasks; ie. the ones requiring the clearest thinking.  By my calculations, by lunchtime I've achieved more than most of my office-bound competitors will in the entire day.

Whenever I can I also schedule any meetings (phone or face-to-face) after lunch.  Personally, I've never had a problem with getting focused for client interactions so I'd rather not 'expend' my best thinking time in that way which is why I have them later in the day.  Not that I could convince many clients to meet me at 530am anyway...

I'm not suggesting that early rising is the only successful work pattern, its just the one that works for me.  However, understanding when your brain works best and making every effort to protect that time for your most important tasks is vital.

In the consultancy game what you're actually being paid for is the thinking you do before you get in front of the client.

Write a book

I'm not joking.

If you're a serious, self-employed consultant, which means you're 100% passionate about whatever it is you consult in then get yourself in print.

It is one of the more painful, most protracted experiences you'll ever have but well worth it.  The cache that goes with being an author is unlike any other.  If you've sat down and thought through 30,000 words of an idea then you are, by definition, an expert.

My caveat is this: do it properly.  Invest the time to write at least three drafts and then invest the money to employ a professional editor to ask all sorts of hard questions, large and small, before your final draft.  Then self-publish.  The hidden wisdom behind self-publication is that you retain total control over your product, you get to say whatever it is you want to say in your own words and you'll still be out there on amazon.com  with everyone else.

My approach is to treat the book as a a high-value calling card rather than an income stream per se.  I've sold thousands of copies, mostly in multi-book orders from clients, so the editor's fees and typesetting costs were recovered long ago.  But I've done even better out of the business generated by the hundreds more I've given away.

Best of all: it's mine.  I wrote it and no one can ever take that away from me.

If you're interested...

Lead Times

My business operates on extremely long lead times.  I have worked out that the average time between first contact with a client and project delivery is just over sixteen months.  In Good to Great Jim Collins talks about reducing an organisation's focus to a small number of readily meaningful metrics to drive performance.  'Time-to-job' is certainly meaningful to my business.

In the past I've tried any number of initiatives to reduce this sixteen-month lag but of late I've come to accept that it's an immutable part of the industry I work in.  Understanding (and accepting) 'time-to-job' has empowered me in a lot of different ways.

• It has a relaxing effect when I mention it to clients - I'm not going to pester individuals to force the pace on decision cycles
  
• It gives me a very clear link between client list and cash flow
• It forces me to face up to the fact that the only way for me to force the pace of growth is to have as many clients as possible - all at different stages of that sixteen-month cycle

Another positive effect is that it stops me from fretting (too much) over unreturned emails.  It helps if you can accept that that unreturned emails from a potential client and unsolicited approaches from unknown ones are two sides of the same karmic coin.

Feedback loops

One of the unsung advantages of employment is that the workplace has a socialising effect.  Sooner or later we are all made to face the consequences of our words and actions (and inactions).  It can be as subtle as feeling vaguely excluded around the coffee machine or as blatant as someone sitting you down and telling you a 'few home truths'.  When newly self-employed people talk about things like 'missing the team environment' this is mostly what they mean - an absence of those million little signs to be read and adjusted to on a minute-by-minute basis.

The lack of socialisation - of feedback loops - is one of the hidden drawbacks of working for yourself.  You finish the document and email it off or you shake hands then leave the meeting room or you hand over the final blueprint.  The job is done and you're out of the loop.

Apart from the truly radical (and awful) feedback of having someone dispute a fee after project completion - something that has happened to me only once in almost twenty years of consultancy - I find it really hard to get an honest assessment of how a job went.  Maybe it's just me but post-project follow-up mostly feels like a transparent exercise in fishing for compliments.

The only feedback that I really value is further work from the same client.  Apart from having an actual monetary value it's the only thing that's 100% honest.  In any business you really are only as good as your last job.  A cliche, I know, but never truer than when you're working alone.

So what happens when I don't get follow-up work?  I worry. I worry and fret and analyse my performance.  Then I redouble my efforts and stoke that small-bore paranoia that's better known as perfectionism.

Sidebar: when my suppliers (who are mostly self-employed themselves) do a great job then I make a point of sending a token of appreciation like flowers or a book.  We're all in this together.

Hold your nerve

Things have been a little slow for me of late.  Dispiritingly so.  Looking down my list of 'active' clients a month ago I luxuriated in the notion that I'd be battling to stay afloat amongst a tidal wave of work, that I'd spend springtime wishing there were more hours in the day.

Four weeks later the picture is dull, approaching gloomy.

There's enough work on for me to know that the bills will be paid and that life will go on as planned (no small feat in a city as expensive as London) but that tidal wave of work that the freelancer in me prays for stays away.

From experience I know that there isn't much little rhyme or reason that can be attributed to a drop-off in enthusiasm across a range of clients, especially when they operate in different time zones.  And whilst its often tempting to look at my ever-shortening 'WIP' file, read about the impending global economic meltdown and use that to explain the dearth of work, I know this is lazy thinking.

Each client, so enthusiastic in February, will have a different reason for pulling back in April.  The key supporter with a change in roles.  The product launch postponed.  The announcement, unanticipated, of a global restructuring.  The boss who simply had to be at the next meeting taking maternity leave.  Good reasons all, and none to do with me, my product, or anything I can even remotely influence.

Because I work in a world where I charge a considerable amount for a relatively small number of projects, the temptation to read to much in the entrails of another 'thanks-but-not-until-Q3-at-soonest' email is always there.  The trick is to hold my nerve.  That and keep broadening my client base.

An email hits my in-box: one of the aforementioned clients wants to meet on Friday.  I feel validated again.