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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

#131

Post by atum47 »

Back when I was a 3d artist I was making good money as a freelancer. I would also work with a archviz studio as an "employee". Time went by and I leaned towards the "secure" job with the studio (instead of opening my own), cause from time to time I would have a hard time with my clients as a freelancer (sometimes they did not pay, sometimes they would ask for changes that would be a entire new work...). Making a long story short: the studio went bankrupt and let me go without any compensation whatsoever. Maybe I've should kept a few clients and not rely entirely on the studio.

Don't know if my experience adds to the discussion, but I thought about sharing it.

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

#132

Post by gumballindie »

Aurornis wrote: post #82
gumballindie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. We are trying this but have you seen the constant media siege bombarding us with “studies” show remote work is bad for you? In the uk there are now articles saying that even hybrid is bad. We want to be more independent but we are not always allowed to. Tech is meant to be the easiest path to independence…

Remote work is different from pace of work. Going remote shouldn’t change the pace of worn. For some people, going remote causes their productivity to collapse (distractions, loneliness, feeling disconnected, less oversight) but those people should be managed individually. But being remote or in office shouldn’t determine your pace of work.

It does change the pace of work, because suddenly there are fewer distractions so you can focus on doing actual work.

As opposed to wasting time chatting or in useless meeting. That means you dont have to rush getting the actual work done.

So yeah, it’s a better, slower, calmer, well thought out, pace.

It’s you, the code, and the environment that makes you happy. Thats why working less results in more output, paradoxically.

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

#133

Post by mettamage »

> Realizing that I don’t have to work 8 hours every day was pretty groundbreaking. I still get work done, and have lots of personal time. I do occasionally take on an ambitious project and work overtime for a few weeks, but then I try to balance it with more rest so I don’t burn out.

Wait, how do you get to not working 8 hours per day?

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

#134

Post by Kaibeezy »

ilamont wrote: post #51

For years I’ve felt “weird” and “wrong” for working this way. I still feel guilty when telling people that I am only open for meetings from 11 am to 5 pm. The only exceptions are people in distant time zones. It can also feel wrong if your SO is on a regular 9 to 5 and you are getting up without an alarm clock, going shopping and making appointments in the middle of the day, and generally setting your own work habits…

“Tiny unicorn” is what I call this kind of business. I’ve been working like that for 30+ years. Avoid failure to the left of you, greed to the right. It’s a strait, narrow, rocky and easy-to-lose path. A constant onslaught of people and chaos trying to push, pull, trick, trip, invest and otherwise knock you off it. Stay on target and you get to be… yourself.

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

#135

Post by j45 »

matthewcford wrote: post #122
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…

I’ve run a 15-person agency for 14 years (bootstrapping), and the stress can’t be underestimated. I know plenty of agencies who have either switched to products or just sold up / closed. Using associates is a good option if you have a good network, however, it can be just as stressful if they don’t deliver.

Paying wages can be a less well known side of wage slavery.

An associate model is great, allows everyone flexibility and participate in killing what they eat along and together

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

#136

Post by system2 »

pictur wrote: post #28
SCUSKU wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, it is her livelihood, so it has a meaningful impact on her life. Also, you can just not read it if you dislike it.

I found it funny that the situation was romanticized.

She might be a beginner and excited about proving herself to the world by writing and feeling serious about it. Who knows. Some people write, some people don't. She just discovered what 99% of the freelancers feel already but 99% didn't write about it. Just another blog post.

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

#137

Post by itsoktocry »

tuukkah wrote: post #124
93po wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe the premise is having minimums per day so you can’t be called on a weekend and only bill half an hour for it

It would suck if I was called in on a weekend (without having agreed to be on call). It would suck even more if I was called in for a whole day just because I'd demanded that to be my minimum. Instead, weekend hours could be priced 16 times higher. There could be a quantity discount so that a full day would be somewhat less expensive.

>It would suck even more if I was called in for a whole day just because I'd demanded that to be my minimum

This isn't really how it works though. If you find "getting called in" (what does this mean?) to be terrible, you should be charging more for that service. You should be in control.

The whole point is to generate enough surplus value that your client signs the cheque, no questions asked, and is happy to do it. You shouldn't squabbling over hours.

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

#138

Post by arrowsmith »

makk wrote: post #116
arrowsmith wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but how big can the expenses have been? I've worked as a freelance solo dev (sadly for far less than $500k/year) and the difference between my revenue and profit was close to zero. Expenses included accountancy costs and the occasional new laptop or whatever bit of hardware I could justifiably call a business expense, but it was a tiny fraction of my revenue.

That assumes your time costs zero. But if you assume as I do that your time is the most valuable thing you have, then there’s no way to generate profits when all you sell is your time. You can generate cash, sure. But profits as in selling something for more than it cost you, never. You can never get that time back, and it’s worth more than anything. I would guess many will disagree with this perspective.

Maybe, but that's completely irrelevant to the original question of whether the quoted $500k was OP's gross cash revenue or net financial income.

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

#139

Post by itsoktocry »

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…

Do you enjoy the work and feel fairly compensated? If so, carry on. Who cares what others are doing?

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

#140

Post by itsoktocry »

tuukkah wrote: post #108
pxue wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.

I assume you're a software developer? There's your skill.

I think you're overthinking this. How is it less agile? You have a project, a price and a timeline. Everything between then and the end is on your schedule.

The only "unintuitive" skill you need to hone is assessing value and pricing based on that. But there is endless analysis and analogies out there to help.

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