Freelancing for life

by Loren Johnson on Saturday, October 27, 2007

Since the first day I decided to seriously pursue freelance web development I’ve always had a nagging thought in the back of my head telling me that I needed to get on with building a business before being forever relegated to chasing my own tail, fretting if there was enough work to pay the bills each month. Conventional business practice also dictates loudly “grow or die”. That’s a heavy premise for a craftsman trying to maintain a career as an independent contractor. In fact it reveals pretty clearly exactly the bias I felt against getting “stuck” as a freelancer.

I am starting to think that’s all wrong. That freelancing isn’t such a trap after all. That to “grow” a freelancing career is as necessary but a different thing entirely to “growing” a business. In the context of this new sort of enlightened freelancing I’ll attempt to describe growing the business doesn’t mean adding staff, taking on more work at one time or opening more than one location. It means growing learning and refining your skills, building a network of working relationships and generally focusing on quality results over quantity of business.

This seems somewhat obvious to me now, but like many things in my life currently, didn’t seem so possible before Web 2.0 and the focus on the social web.

I’m now reconsidering my business and working relationships within this new perspective. I don’t yet know where this all ends-up, but I do think that the meaning of Venado as a company will change in subtle but important ways in the coming months.

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