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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

#151

Post by zdragnar »

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 was my experience as well- I started my career with an agency, and it grew from 80 to about 500 people in the course of 7 years. My last two there made it abundantly clear it was turning to the grifty side- every year, we were less profitable, and every year, they kept pushing for ways to get more hours (document more! Test more! Add more value!) despite the fact that the quality we delivered varied greatly from one team to the next.

It was really hard to watch what had been a committed group turn into a grubby machine.

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

#153

Post by motohagiography »

> When I’m only focused on work and don’t dedicate enough time to personal projects, I become unwell. Creative self-expression is not “just a hobby” for me, it’s a necessity.

As someone with the creative urge, I always found the word hobby itself was quite patronizing, as though your identity were just what you get paid for. But with some thought, I would say our identity becomes what we are appreciated for. Whether that's as a parent, a musician, an artist, a writer, a hacker, a promoter, performer, or another thing we do long and well enough that it's what people come to appreiciate about us.

If you don't do the things you are appreciated for, you will absolutely become unwell, and if you want debilitating mental health problems, do a job where you aren't appreciated. It's like a recipe.

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

#154

Post by AussieWog93 »

gochi wrote: post #126
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…

Whatever the choice, it has to be deliberate. So many are people pleasers in disguise. They grow not because they actively choose, but because they can't say no. It causes that desperately stressed life when you're not active about these choices and boundaries. They're always in survival mode, chasing more more more, without ever being deliberate and reflective about their actions. It winds up being the end of a lot…

Man, you've basically laid out in a paragraph what took me 3 years to work out.

Only started properly setting boundaries in the last year or so, no regrets.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #35

Warning: bit of a rant ahead. I’m currently on the path to a principal-level role at my company. I really don’t know what I think about it. The jump from lead to principal is a big one in terms of workload and stress, and I’ve been told the pay difference isn’t huge. Older I get, the less I care to ascend the ladder. Even at this point I’m doing it out of a sense of amassing status in case I need it, rather than bein…

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by movedx »

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…

> We could have grown at many points along the way but haven't wanted to. Instead we've stayed small, focused and profitable.

You're a "Small Giant": https://www.amazon.com.au/Small-Giants-Bo-Burlingham/dp/0143...

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

#157

Post by arrowsmith »

makk wrote: post #147
jonas21 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a solo freelancer, there's no difference between paying yourself for your time and paying yourself out of the profits. The money goes to you either way.

And either way, you’re not paying enough cash to cover the value of what you’re selling, so the net result is not profitable.

Good luck explaining that one to your accountant.

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

#158

Post by xwdv »

nickjj wrote: post #20
xwdv wrote: post #10

Can someone explain what the appeal of solo freelancing is in the age of bountiful remote work? My typical day as a remote worker is not that different from the one described: a couple hours of work per day and mostly leisure the rest of the time. And I probably still make more money than a freelancer. Consistently too. Is chasing down new clients all the time and working on multiple projects really that desirable to…

> Can someone explain what the appeal of solo freelancing is in the age of bountiful remote work? Income multipliers, flexibility and being treated like an adult are a few reasons that come to mind. For example, with salaried work your income is mostly fixed (minus a pre-defined'ish bonus or options, etc.). With contract work you might land a $30,000 contract that takes 2 weeks to do because the focus is on providing…

I’m still not sold.

How often are you getting $30k contracts that can be done in two weeks? Remote workers can still travel the world and work remotely if they can tolerate the timezone differences. I just got done with a rental in Costa Rica where I lived by the beach for 40 days this summer while working remote.

I don’t particularly care if I have to ask permission to get stuff done in a company. This is actually one of the reasons I spend a lot of time doing nothing: I’m blocked by other people and am waiting for them to resolve something or get their specs straightened out. By the time there is work for me to do, I’ve spent a lot of time idling. The actual work is done quickly, efficiently and I’m back to waiting for more work. The bottleneck is always other people, it’s not engineering taking too long.

I’m not going to push those people to hurry up either. They are under other pressures and it’s none of my business how long they take. As a remote worker, they are out of sight and out of mind until they have something useful for me.

Sometimes when we finish a big project, there’s a period of 2 or 3 months afterwards where we basically do very little except maintenance of the new deployment. Conveniently this year, we planned for those months to coincide with the summer.

Everything I’ve heard about freelancing has told me it’s not going to be this easy. It’s going to be a pain in the ass talking with clients all the time and stressing about keeping money coming in.

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

#159

Post by synergy20 »

freelance is not scalable, not good to have any passive income, and, you stop working your income stops, there is not even any PTO to take a break. I have been doing freelance on and off over the years, and I believe using all the free time before next project to build some sellable products is the only way to become more financial independent.

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

#160

Post by fsckboy »

idopmstuff wrote: post #109
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.

> if you've got it humming along making decent money with just the right amount of work, there's zero pressure to change it

what works now in the economy now with your skillset now etc. is not guaranteed to continue. I just think it's risky to feel zero pressure to change.

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