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I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

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Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#101

Post by jokethrowaway »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
pxue wrote: post #12

As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.

> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. This is great for people whose own pace is reasonable and matched to their compensation. If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out. Conversely, if you’re paying 90th…

How do you know that people are lazy by nature and not because their job sucks?

Of course they have zero incentive to get anything done, they get paid regardless of how well the project gets done.

Maybe if they had the guts to leave a paycheck for browsing Reddit and started their own business they would have success too.

When I work on my projects I have way more stamina than when I'm doing client work. I kind of have to resist the urge to kill myself all the time instead of doing that boring job and I keep reminding me I'll be able to build a villa with the money.

I don't think it's laziness or lack of accountability, I think it's the 20 years of indoctrination in the school system - which are just factories churning out employees afraid of stepping out of line.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#102

Post by abduhl »

beezlewax wrote: post #68
manicennui wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…

How many employees does your company have? Less than 50, ok maybe push the limit but honestly if it’s more than 25 people across the company your ability to get recognized is hamstrung by bureaucracy. Anything more than 25 people should honestly be met by “just good enough to be better than the other guys” and the realization that tenure and political pull, not talent, is rewarded.

If you want to stand out then you need to go somewhere that you can.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#103

Post by jokethrowaway »

beezlewax wrote: post #68
manicennui wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…

Put that energy in side hustles / side projects, my friend.

Or threaten to leave and get a real raise

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#104

Post by jokethrowaway »

freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #17
DeltaCoast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask how you find contracts? Are there that many contract roles posted in public or is it due to your network?

Upwork. Solely up work.

Upwork can work for very niche things as a extra channel. I've seen it work for people selling packages of "I'll fork bitcoin for you for 2k". For normal contracts it's terrible.

I started on freelancer websites when I was 15 and it was nice to bag 20$ per hour plus extra if I happened to be faster.

But the more experienced you get the more you can charge and use your network instead of cheap jobs on Upwork.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#105

Post by dmje »

12 years into running a tiny digital consultancy with my wife. We've used an "associate" model for all that time - a posh way of saying "a network of trusted freelancers".

We've deliberately chosen not to take on staff. We could have grown at many points along the way but haven't wanted to. Instead we've stayed small, focused and profitable.

The benefits to growing would have been being able to take on bigger gigs, but we have always aimed for family first. The business has always been a means to a sustainable, balanced and loving family - and not an end.

I have friends who have taken the growth route. Some are doing ok. Others are desperately stressed. One has split from his wife in part because of the financial burden of maintaining a 5-10 person team.

We've never regretted taking the route we have. We have been here for our kids and we've been able to be flexible with our time in large part because we're able to scale our own work up and down in response to changing times without having to worry about paying salaries.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#106

Post by [deleted] »

arrowsmith wrote: post #75
pxue wrote: post #12

As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.

You make $500k/year from freelance contracts as a solo developer? What kind of companies and tech stack do you work with?

[deleted]

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#107

Post by grecy »

Aurornis wrote: post #91

Respectable move. My primary complaint with solo-turned-agency people is how grifty they get. As a solo, the job is to add value and make the customer happy so you build your reputation. There are definitely solo contractor grifters out there but they usually struggle with the reputation issue. Agencies develop a grifty dynamic where they realize that their job is to sell themselves and as many headcount and hours as…

This resonates 100% with my experience.

Telco I worked at spent 6 months choosing an agency, end up spending 3 million for what turned out to be a new Color scheme on the public website. Mind blowing, but completely normal for them

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#108

Post by tuukkah »

pxue wrote: post #44
mylons wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you hired a sales person? can you elaborate on that?

Yeah. I have a dedicated outbound sales person who pings their network for referrals every few weeks. Their job is to weed out noise + educate + convert hourly to project based billing Went into a lot of detail on Reddit a couple years back here https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ommiww/commen...

> convert hourly to project based billing

I can see how that helps in increasing revenue, but it also makes the work less agile, requires longer negotiations and adds risks. So it's probably not for everyone.

Some others have found a way to bill similar amounts but on short projects billed by the day/week. That sounds preferable to me, but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#109

Post by idopmstuff »

dmje wrote: post #105

12 years into running a tiny digital consultancy with my wife. We've used an "associate" model for all that time - a posh way of saying "a network of trusted freelancers". We've deliberately chosen not to take on staff. We could have grown at many points along the way but haven't wanted to. Instead we've stayed small, focused and profitable. The benefits to growing would have been being able to take on bigger gigs, b…

The biggest advantage to owning your business is that you can optimize it solely for what's best for you. If growth is all you care about, go nuts, but if you've got it humming along making decent money with just the right amount of work, there's zero pressure to change it.

I think a lot of people forget that and think that they need to push to be more "successful" - kudos to you for doing in the right way for you.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#110

Post by 93po »

Aurornis wrote: post #91

Respectable move. My primary complaint with solo-turned-agency people is how grifty they get. As a solo, the job is to add value and make the customer happy so you build your reputation. There are definitely solo contractor grifters out there but they usually struggle with the reputation issue. Agencies develop a grifty dynamic where they realize that their job is to sell themselves and as many headcount and hours as…

I’ve unfortunately done studio/agency work my entire career and they’ve all been pretty small (around four devs) until my last employer, which was closer to 70 people and exactly what you described. It’s like you were describing them specifically. I left that job because it ran the capable people ragged and also generally felt dishonest to our clients despite financial transparency being one of the biggest public selling points
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