Dang It!

The Become a Smart and Effective Freelancer course was due for launch on July 1st… But time ran out for me this month! It’s been a hectic mêlée of juggling several projects on the go so I decided to push the launch of this course out so that I can make sure I don’t rush it and deliver top quality content.

Become a Smart and Effective Freelancer will now launch on August 1st 2009!

The Become a Smart and Effective Freelancer Course Outline

When you complete the objectives of this course, you will have mastered…

• How To Use Learning to Enhance Your Freelance Business and Boost Profits
• How To Enjoy Quality Feedback
• How To Use Feedback to Optimize Your Business for Customer Satisfaction and Increase Profits
• How To Assess New Opportunities and Destroy Threats to Your Freelance Business
• How To Build a Customer-Centric Business Change Strategy

SPECIAL OFFER!

Receive a 50% Discount off Become a Smart and Effective Freelancer by pre-registering your request for the Free Course Overview! Just fill out the form below:

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

One of the hotly debated topics between freelancer and customer is the issue of rate escalation. Customers don’t want to pay more; they’re savvy enough to know that if you provide services year-on-year, you haven’t been subjected to marketing costs to land the gig. Nevertheless, your costs go up with inflation. What do you do?

If you’re not in the fixed-price project game (rather, you offer your knowledge and expertise as a service) then you’ll know that it is a tough game to increase your price in accordance with your costs. You want to achieve the same profit margin. You may also want to re-price the gig if you low-balled to start with (possibly to prove your capability and lower the risk to your customer). You inevitably have to raise the subject with your customer, and it’s often a nervous occasion that can also be explosive. It’s amazing, though, that 88% of freelancers I surveyed don’t include escalation rates into the pricing of the deal. In other words, the expectation that rates will increase, year-on-year, is never set. So no wonder it goes down like a sack of shit.

Firstly, it’s a Reasonable Request!

Customers should be used to paying escalating fuel bills. Wages go up most years (I say MOST, perhaps not during recession) and business rates (premises tax) go up too. So why should your customer expect you to provide services at the same rate every year? Fascinatingly, they often do. But who can blame them? If they can deter your rate increases, it saves their organization money. So it’s in their interest to use whatever levers they can to deter it (although not always resist it – they still need to buy your services, after all). Such levers might be a play on your relationship, or perhaps a reminder of ‘the prevailing economic conditions’, or maybe even quote some fictitious company policy (I’ve seen it done!) It is a negotiation, through and through. And often a heavy one.

You Might Avoid Such Heavy Negotiations…

The solution is to create that expectation, right up front. This may cause a stir in your customer, and may even put them off somewhat, but it’s much better to be totally transparent about it rather than wait until you stick another contract in front of your customer. Your relationship (I would expect) is to be based on trust, and with trust comes transparency.

And when it’s time to renew a contract, make it clear beforehand that your price is going up. I advise you to make this very explicit when conversations about your contract are under way, perhaps not to the point of obsession, but don’t leave any doubt that rates will be changing. The ‘Business Planning’ process in most companies involves lengthy discussions on budgets, and this process often happens annually around the same time. For one customer, the process begins in July where business plans and budget are set for the following calendar year (the fiscal year). Now, if I was to leave the conversation about rate increases once July is through, then my customer (if they were to accept my increase) will already be set to overspend before the fiscal year even begins!

So to avoid an angry (or reluctant) customer, make sure you a) find out the annual business planning cycle, and b) warn of your (agreed) rate escalation before the process begins.

What escalation rate should you use?

This largely depends on  your industry. The most common rate is the  inflation rate of your currency, but this doesn’t always work. Some industries are very sensitive to price fluctuations in raw materials such as metals and the cost of oil.

Alternatives to inflation may be suitable. Consider, instead, using your country’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is the average price increase of retail items such as food, clothing, household fuel bills, etc, which is probably the most appropriate if you work from home.

It’s really something to discuss with your client as your choice has implications for both of you. Inflation and CPI vary at different rates and at different values. In 2009, inflation went to below 1%, although negative inflation (‘deflation’) rarely happens due to government intervention. CPI, however, is a more ‘truthful’ view of how costs change, particularly for a freelancer, and can dip below 0% into negative – as indeed it has in 2009. So an escalation rate that mirrors or tracks CPI could mean that you actually lower your rates instead of increasing them.

What if your customer doesn’t like, or agree to, the increase?

Put simply, you have gained a choice. You can choose to not increase your rate and accept lower profit for the next year, or walk away. And your choice is at the right time – not moments before renewal. At least this way you have an opportunity to close the gig off on the right terms and not burn all your bridges. Besides, in about 50% of cases, customers eventually accept your increase before the gig is over because they can’t replace you.

The disasterous alternative is to leave it to last minute to attempt an increase in your rate – and I’ve seen it dozens of times – customers think you’re trying to ‘have them over a barrel’ and respond irrationally… they tell you to piss off.

In Summary…

One thing for sure is if you don’t set the expectation that rates will change as the economic conditions change, it will be a surprise to your customers (whether it’s genuine or an act of pretense). If you avoid the conversation because you fear a backlash, then you’re consigned to the said surprise, or instead you’ll be impacting your profit margin year-on-year as you keep your rates the same.

Only when you’re clear and upfront will you be able to negotiate and engage on the subject. If you don’t know your customer sufficiently well to gauge how they will react, then it really is time you found out!

In recognition of this quandry, I will soon be launching a course designed for freelancers that gives you the method and tools for obtaining and responding to customer conflict and feedback:

Become A Smart and Effective Freelancer

All I can say right now is that this course gives you all you need to engage your customers smarter and build transparency and trust. It will launch in August 2009 to a limited number of freelancers – only 50 places will be available at launch.

Pre-registration will be available soon, so subscribe to my RSS feed and find out when!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

All organizations have culture. Culture is intangible, and a description of the default behaviors, tendencies and styles of its workforce. Your freelance organization is no different, but what is your ‘culture’?

Many organizations have ‘strong’ cultures that set them apart from others. We can look to Dr. Fathi El-Nadi (who writes his article ‘Examples Of Strong Corporate Cultures’ ) for some examples:

• Wal-Mart. Founder Sam Walton’s concern and respect for staff from the foundation of the company creates an environment of trust that persists to this day. Walton met staff, calling them by their first name and encouraged change to maintain the competitive edge. To this day, staff think about “how Sam would have done it”.
• Southwest Airlines. Its relaxed culture can be traced back to unconventional CEO Herb Kelleher, who encourages informality and wants staff to have fun at their jobs. Employees are valued, with Kelleher acknowledging births, marriages and deaths by notes and cards. Staff are encouraged to pitch in and help out, especially at check-in, giving Southwest turnaround times less than half the industry average.
• Hewlett Packard. Problems several years ago encouraged HP to change its culture; staff are required to formulate three personal and three professional goals each year, and are encouraged to cheer those that meet them, such as getting away early to be with family. Two years into the program, HP reports no loss in productivity despite staff working shorter hours and there is an increased staff retention rate. The program has been marked by the extent to which managers bought in, and modeled it in their personal lives.

The first two are examples where the founders have a heavy influence on the culture. Their organizations are created in their image, if you like. The organizations’ cultures reflect the principles, behaviours and style of their leaders. This is true for your ‘organization’ too – your freelance business.

Let’s face it – it’s unlikely that you’re going to create a business that isn’t akin to how you like to behave, and work. Why would you intentionally create a workplace that doesn’t fit you? If you did, you’d be crazy! But have you considered that this is a truism? Does your organization reflect your personality as you see it? More importantly, what do your customers think about your business… and what (in turn) does this say about you?

Laura Spencer (who I think is a great writer at the excellent blog FreelanceFolder.com ) tells us that in her long experience as a freelancer, she has seen 10 different freelancer types that have a strong effect on how business is done.

Laura says:

It can be fun and helpful to examine these freelancing personality types. Often times your freelancing personality type can show what makes you act the way you do as a freelancer.

Laura takes a light-hearted view – this analysis gives us a general view of the effect of personality rather than being a rule – although consider the point I made above: what do your customers see, and then infer about you as a person?

Well I hope to help you answer that question soon so you can understand how your customers view you and your business with the principle benefits being:

• Increased Customer Satisfaction and Engagement
• Increased Profits
• Lower Operating Costs
• Lower Business Risk
• Your Satisfaction and Increased Confidence
• Services Tuned and Optimized for Your Market
• Less Work, More Play

As a freelancer, it’s YOUR personality and behaviors that define, to what extent, how you achieve the above. They’re in YOUR hands! If you don’t know how your customers or associates perceive you, then how will you be effective in realizing them? Only by understanding how the world sees you will you know, and have choices how to respond. In this case, ignorance is NOT bliss…

As I said, it’s in your hands. However, sometimes we don’t know where to start! In recognition of this dilimma, I will soon be launching a course designed for freelancers that gives you the method and tools for obtaining and responding to customer feedback:

Become A Smart and Effective Freelancer

All I can say right now is that this course gives you all you need to realize the benefits above by engaging your customers smarter. It will launch in August 2009 to a limited number of freelancers – only 50 places will be available at launch.

Pre-registration will be available soon, so subscribe to my RSS feed and find out when!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Creating a successful IT freelancer business is not an easy prospect, at least to start with, and the stress of keeping the business moving forward (and doing all the admin tasks) is compounded when you’re not sure when your next invoice will be paid or where your next gig comes from. Does it need to be a brown-trouser moment?

Heck, you got out of corporate-ville for a reason – you want to be in control and probably earn stacks of cash whilst you do, but your penalty is the uncertainty and effort you need to put in, often during unsociable hours.

However, it doesn’t need to be difficult if you follow some basic steps and your common sense which will keep you sane and your head level as a successful IT freelancer.

Be Upfront With Everyone Right From The Start – Be upfront with everyone you associate with (friends, family, customers and associates) that you’re a freelancer and your job is to earn revenue to keep the business moving. Spend as much time as you need to explain that you will focusing on your business, especially when you’re launching it, and that you will be devoting a lot of time to building it up. You’re making a commitment, and you need their support.

It’s important to be crystal clear that your intentions are to build a successful business – not line your pockets or act as a charity. Share your view of timeframes and key events which you are working to, and make sure that people understand that during those key events you won’t have time for anything else.

Keep Your Expenses As Low As You Can – Your income is going to be unpredictable! Some months will be bear with very little coming in, and then some will also feel like bumper months. It’s important to avoid spending too much during those bumper months, as your next one maybe arid! So don’t go and blow cash on a new iPod because your bank balance increased by more than the usual monthly amount.

It take discipline to view income as a long-term benefit and keep your costs low whilst you can predict how the money will be spent or pay your taxes.

Plan To Make Considerably More Than Your Target Income – You’ve got to aim high as in reality it’s rare to earn more money than you expected to. If you need $4,000 per month to cover business expenses and your personal income, then aim much higher – say $10,000. So your sales and prospecting activities need to target $10,000 in order to ensure that when reality bites, you can cover the bills and your income.

When you predict revenues that barely cover your expenses you will inevitably have to lower your expenses or take less income during bare months.

Look For ‘Cross-Sells’– Getting a foot in the door is a prized outcome for salespeople. Making an initial sale often leads to more sales of complimentary or higher value products. Why should you be any different? One you have built a stable relationship with a customer, begin to look for opportunities to cross-sell other services to your client. This could be anything from simply more of what you are currently contracted to delivery (OK, not strictly a cross-sell) to selling in the services of an associate, which you could take a small cut or fee from. Use the fact that you have already sold to your advantage.

Be A Savage Invoicer – As a permie, you wouldn’t take crap from your boss if your salary was late. Would you? So why accept excuses and breaking of your payment terms from your customers? As a freelancer, cashflow is king. You must be totally ruthless in holding your customers to their payment terms and chasing every invoice, even if you have to pay someone to help you do it for a while. Once a customer is allowed to slip once, then they’re much more likely to slip again. [See my other article on chasing invoices here.]

Plan Your Week, Ahead – There is an old proverb ‘He who fails to plan, plans to fail.’ Just because you’re an independent freelancer, it doesn’t mean this won’t apply to you! I’ve found it easier, in fact, to slip on projects if you don’t have a boss supervising you. The result: a disappointed customer, and no repeat business.

It’s a simple remedy: create a weekly schedule of activities where you’ll track your projects, report to customers, create and send invoices, etc. And stick to it! Without the discipline to stay on plan, you’re putting your business at risk.

Another side-effect of being more rigorous in your planning is that you have greater visibility of how much time administration activities take, giving you a choice to a) stay as you are, b) make them more efficient by improving your process or finding tools to help you, or c) outsource them entirely. Having the knowledge gives you the option.

Minimize Loafing – Permies have some leeway in how much non-productive time they can spend. You must have done it, or seen it: it’s the browsing the web during the lunch, or chatting about the game last night to your colleagues. Not all time in the work place is productive. As a freelancer, this time – loafing – is at your cost. Because you won’t be getting paid for it. The occasional ‘five minutes’ can add up to many hours during a week, and it’s these hours that are burnt income. This isn’t the same as taking a break – it’s important to factor in down-time during your day to recharge batteries – this is the wasted time you lose due to being distracted.

It’s much easier to be distracted at home due to your home comforts, TV, and the trappings of hobbies. Just as Drew Douglass says in ‘Mistakes I Made as a Freelance Web Developer and How To Avoid Them’ :

just because we work from home doesn’t mean that we should act like we are at home all the time

You have to monitor what distracts you – is it the TV? The Radio? Your favorite porn-site? Tweet alerts from TweetDeck? Whatever it is, if it’s causing you to loaf then quit it before it costs you dearly!

Important: make sure you record all the time you spend on projects so you can accurately bill your customers; you need to know how much time you’re really spending on different projects to manage your time properly. If this is a current nightmare for you, consider using a physical device which makes the whole things easier, like these from AlliedTime.com.

Choose The Right Projects at the Right Time – Once your business gets off the ground and, with good tidings, customers are coming to you (rather than you chasing work), you will have choices in which projects you do, and when. Often, you will be delivering more than one project at the same time. It’s real important to focus on the right project at the right time. It’s tempting to keep switching between projects on a whim, but the process of switching mode absorbs a lot more time than you might realize and the outcome is reduced productivity. So it’s an absolute must to choose projects that are ‘congruent’, that is, have common aspects that enable you to optimize your delivery. For example, two concurrent projects where one is based on the West Coast, and the other on the East Coast won’t allow you to travel between customer sites often and easily.

Complete and Finish – I am not a natural Completer-Finisher. This puts me at a disadvantage. As a Freelancer, you don’t get paid until the job is done (generally speaking). So not pushing a project to completion and starting another means that you won’t get your invoice honored. I have to really push myself to complete a project so I can get the bill out. Finish… and get paid!

Be Courageous in Calling Out a Bad Project, as a Bad Project – Sometimes, a project doesn’t go to plan. Maybe your customer has changed their minds too often, or you’re not equipped to deliver like you thought you were. Your heart might not be in it. For whatever reason, some projects just don’t happen in the way you expected, and it’s a courageous freelancer who puts a project on hold to rectify the problem.

Here’s the thing – not calling this out hurts you more in the long-run. Why? Well these projects tend to cost you more, they don’t deliver to customer’s requirements, they damage your reputation, they damage your confidence, and they’re NOT FUN. Mustering the courage to call this out in order to correct it is the best thing you can do. Sometimes, you just have to drop the project all together. Or a crisis talk with your customer is an opportunity to make essential changes. Better late, than never.

Do YOU Have Any More Tips?

Have you discovered an essential tip that enabled you to build your freelance business? Share it by telling us YOUR story…

“For the very best employee time clocks to help increase your business productivity, look to AlliedTime“

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Creating the right impression with a customer is something all freelancers worry about, especially if business is done long-distance. So much information is lost when we transact over the ether, which makes our communication skills that much more important and (even more nowadays) which tools we use to communicate with.

I recently wrote a piece on how to create a high impact on your customers by managing their expectations properly when doing business with them over a distance. If you didn’t see it, then you can read it right here: Freelancers: Get Client Wow-Factor By Managing Expectations.

Perfecting a *sustainable* and *repeatable* way of communicating with all your clients takes time, practice, and learning. It’s a long road, but well worth the effort. Once you’ve perfected it, it becomes easy and feels effortless, allowing you to be smug whilst all your freelancer friends still struggle to keep their clients uptodate!

Let me point you to a great article on the FreelanceFolder.com website – How To Successfully Work With People Long Distance, which discusses the intricacies of non-verbal communication as it relates to business at distance. Some great tips there!

It is because of these intricacies that I strongly believe in choosing the right tools to reduce the effect of lost communication. Choose the right tool for the right job! This is why web-based project-management tools work very well as they enable you to be very clear and specific about your project-based communication. Need to provide support to your client once you’ve gone live? Then choose a support ticket systems to automate your communication processes where appropriate!

There is always a tool out there to help you communicating with your customer, and manage their expectations effectively.

The challenge for freelancers is to find the best tool for the job. There are often countless options, so how do you know which to choose from? In my experience, trials are the most effective. Good news: A trial if often free (the software vendors want you to take a trial)! What I do is be explicit with my customers that I am trialing a new piece of kit – I bring them in on it. They’re often glad of it because they’re learning about new software too. Why I like to do this is if the tool doesn’t work out, we can agree to can it quickly with no loss of face. The aim is to improve our business relationship, and they know that, so being realistic and nipping it in the bud quickly only demonstrates that I have our mutual interests in mind. So don’t be afraid to try something, and then bin it if you and your customer both feel it’s adding no value.

Do you want to share your experiences of using tools to manage long-distance customers? Do you know of any new or unusual tools? Then please share them by leaving a comment!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

How do you know when you’re ready to quit your job and graze on pastures new?

This is a question asked by many IT Professionals right now. Maybe you’ve read the signs that layoffs are ahead, or you’re frustrated in your current role. You could even be considering joining the ranks of freelancers. It’s a risky move to leave a paid job. Especially if setting up by yourself.

It’s important that we understand the risk factors and take these into consideration when preparing yourself to quit.

Enter Mark McClure ‘s recent post on this very subject. I love Mark’s writing because he says it as it is. No fluff. But with a bit of humor thrown in.

Mark isn’t advising against quitting your job, but he does highlight the risks associated with it. It’s education which adds to the quality of such an important decision. In his post he shares a great free resource that I strongly suggest you read if you’re thinking about quitting. You won’t regret it!

Read Mark’s post ‘Drinking The Quit Your Job Kool-Aid ‘ now.

Read my review of Mark’s ‘IT Career Engineer‘ too…

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

So you’re a workaholic, and make yourself available (to yourself) 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Running a freelancing business is like breathing to you. Stop, and you believe you’ll die. Free lancing should be called slave lancing, shouldn’t it?

This is a follow-on to my previous article: The 24×7 Freelancer Trap .

If you recognized the symptoms, but not sure what to do, or even if you want to do anything, then that is understandable. Perhaps being a workaholic is harder to accept and cope with more than alcoholism. The tough thing about being a workaholic is that there isn’t a great deal of social pressure to stop, or stigma attached to it. And the upside is ‘great’ – more income, more productivity, more work from your clients. It’s not really hurting anybody, right? You’re not doing harm to your health, yes?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Being a workaholic is not good for YOU. Your body, your mental health, your social life, family life… the list can go on. But without the social pressure to stop, then it’s hard to accept as a problem.

Photo courtesy of gillespinault

What can be done?

In my last article, I started with two simple tactics to get you going.

Number One – talk to someone. A friend, your partner, your mom. Share the burden! You won’t believe how positive a chat with someone you trust can be.

Number Two – identify what you enjoy (outside of your freelancing) and do more. Do this by laying down some boundaries. Boundaries are good. Set yourself time for work, and set yourself time for fun. And stick to it. You might fail first time around, maybe second time too, and quite possibly the third, but keep trying!

The second one might have appeared trite and obvious at first. If you did feel like it is, then the effect of being a workaholic is likely to be in play and the fear of change has taken hold.

It’s like this though. The effect of the ‘trap’ needs to be reversed, not eliminated in one instant. The proces of reversal will take as long as it took to establish. It’s a case of chipping away at the problem and building on small successes.

I’m now going to make a confession. Until I experienced cancer, I was a workaholic. The impact of being yanked out of the workplace solved this problem for me. As I have said , I consider myself fortunate for this experience on many levels. Eliminating my addiction to work was one of them.

But I doubt you are that fortunate. I dearly hope you are not.

What can YOU do to reverse the process? Here are some suggestions:

Get physical – expend the energy you would plough into work doing something physical, like taking a run or visiting the gym. The effect of the exercise will stimulate other parts of your brain that have been neglected.

Plan recreate in locations you can’t work – get into the open countryside or up a mountain – anywhere you can’t take a laptop or your iPhone won’t have a signal.

Don’t talk shop – avoid talking about work, your projects and your clients with your spouse outside of normal office hours. When you talk about work, your mind starts to race and you’re back in the groove.

Refuse to feel guilty when you’re not working – This is probably the most important and difficult step of all. It takes guts and courage. But try it – rationalize downtime as well as you rationalize continued work. Deliberately (and it might seem falsely at first) tell yourself that fun and leisure are important activities.

Measure the effect of not working – once you’ve tried the above tactics, measure their effect. Are projects suffering? Are clients angry? Is your bank balance reducing? I suspect they’re not. Maybe the opposite. It’s important to assess and measure the implications of the changes you’re making to gain confidence that they’re effective.

Consider outsourcing some work – if you’re a one-person band then you’re doing everything from billable work to admin. Can you outsource your admin? Or subcontract some work? Some jobs you do are not a good use of your time – they are a cost (loss) against your profit. See this from a Profit & Loss (P&L) viewpoint, like the big companies do. Once you see the cost of doing the jobs that don’t bring in the cash, then you might see the benefit of outsourcing them!

Consult with a business expert – Business Process Re-engineering isn’t just for the top 10 of the NASDAQ. And it isn’t as grandiose as you might think. Consulting with a business expert may help you surface inefficiencies in your business and spot things you’re doing that are not effective.

I just want to close by saying this – I was lucky to escape the 24×7 trappings by a serious illness. I haven’t had to go through the journey of reversal. So I can’t speak from a position of experience – only awareness of the problem and sensitivities to how the reversal can be achieved.

Have you been through this journey….. or are you still on it?

Share your story!

UPDATE: Check out the great post on FreelancerFolder.com for some inspiring ways to create more free time.

http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-find-more-personal-time/

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

This is the question many freelancers are asking at this time.

We market for a simple reason. If our customers (existing and potential) don’t know we exist, what we do, and how we can benefit them, how will we get more work?

Savvy freelancers like you know that marketing is a core function of your business. Of course, you want to get the most from it – it can be expensive in terms of your time and cost. So how are you approaching marketing?

I’ve learned quite a lot about this, in fact, over the last few weeks whilst chatting to freelancers who are still making waves during the recession. I’ve pulled together their key tactics and share them below:

1. Keep spending if you have the money – as recession bites, prices drop, and that includes marketing services. If you have cash to spend on marketing, you’ll be getting some good deals. Marketing firms have much more spare inventory during a recession, as your competitors scale back. So spend now to gain the extra benefit. This will improve your brand and land higher quality clients. The return on investment will be high.
2. Communicate your value – focus your marketing messages on the business benefits you bring to your clients. Use benefits, rather than features. This should include case examples to demonstrate that you walk-the-walk with other clients. Use ‘econometrics’ where you can, i.e. describe the return on investment you provide to your clients
3. Focus on your top clients – your top clients give you your top dollar, or more guarantees of income, if there is such a thing. Market to your top clients to remind them about the value you have added to them and emphasize the benefits of your continued relationship. Make them feel important, and valued. Now is not the time to lose profitable clients. The other side to this is looking at unprofitable clients – is there business you do where you barely break even? Consider scaling back on marketing to these people.
4. Align to your market – being a one-trick pony in these times will be very tough. You might have already been forced to take on projects outside of your core focus. Your marketing energy should align to your market – are you addressing their top concerns? Are you showing affinity with their business challenges? The truth is, the expectations of your market have changed, and so will their decision-making practices, so don’t lose an opportunity to show how you’re adpating too!
5. Send the right message – right now, your clients want safety and security, both at home and at work. As well as aligning to their business challenges, set the right tone in terms of their individual needs.  This includes showing how you are a ‘safe bet’ rather than maverick. Humor and extremism won’t press the right buttons. Reassure instead. Show that you’re a friend with the future of your client’s at the core of your proposition.
   Here’s an interesting example on Chris Brogan’s blog when a marketing message might be a shot in the foot. Note the subtleties of the message and how if you don’t think it through it can have the opposite impact to what you intended.
   http://www.chrisbrogan.com/sending-the-wrong-message/
6. Switch channels – do you do online only? Or maybe you work through personal referrals? Consider adding marketing channels, or switching entirely. This doesn’t mean you’ll lose business in your existing channels, but if they’re drying up or stagnating then try a different direction for a while.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Just like permie employees, you rise from a long and restful sleep on a Sunday morning, put on some coffee, enjoy a long breakfast reading the newspaper, and then decide whether it’s the beach or the park for a day’s fun and relaxation with the kids. NO WAY JOSE!

Instead, you slide out of bed still half asleep, switch on your computer, check your emails, take a look at your online checking account balance, spent 30mins tweaking some code or whatever, reply to comments on your favorite forums,  you check who’s just followed you on Twitter, replied to your ‘friends’ on Facebook, and engaged in 5 concurrent conversations on IM.

Before you know it, it’s past noon and you haven’t even brushed your teeth or visited the bathroom for your morning constitutional. BANG! You’re a slave to the trappings of freelancing without boundaries.

If you recognize yourself here, welcome to the Guild of 24×7 Freelancers!

Sounds pretty drastic, eh?

If you still think that this describes ‘someone else’ then ask yourself these questions:

• Do you feel agitated if you haven’t checked your email or twitter account within 2 hours of waking up?
• Do you solve tricky problems in your head whilst watching a movie with your partner, and sneak onto your computer to test it out?
• Do you have more online friends than you do in the flesh?
• Do you begin work whilst still in your pjamas?
• Are invites to a friends place or a restaurant filtered in your mind to check that you’ll have time to work around it?
• Do you spend more time talking to online friends than your flesh-and-blood friends?
• If your kids disturb you whilst you’re working, do you get pissed off?

If you answer Yes to more than one or two of these, then you’re a fully fledged associate of the Guild of 24×7 Freelancers!

Feeling this trapped inside something YOU created is frustrating! You can’t blame your boss unless you blame yourself. The nature of this problem is that it starts small – one extra email here, one brief phone call there, but it escalates . Like the boiled frog , your behavior slowly shifts. It creeps further and further, biting deeper and deeper into your lifestyle and mindset, and you’re probably not aware it is happening, or quite possibly, you’re aware it is happening but you let it happen anyway.

Worse still, at points of epiphany (when you realize that your working hours are escalating) you might rationalize it into a hard-work ethic. You’re not a workaholic, right? You’ll have fun once you’ve finished your work . Guess what though, work never finishes!

Workaholics Anonymous say that the 7-signs of warning that you might be a workaholic are:

1. Instead of accepting yourself, you seek approval and justification for your existence in work.
2. You work to escape your feelings, shutting out your true needs and wants.
3. You use work to tamp down the uncertainties of life by over-organizing and refusing to give up control, losing your spontaneity and creativity.
4. You create crises and get adrenalin highs by overworking to resolve indigenous problems, then suffer withdrawals into anxiety and depression.
5. You hoard work to insure you will always be busy, seemingly important and never bored.
6. You fear free time.
7. You’re typically a perfectionist, unwilling to ask for help or delegate because no one can meet your standards.

How do you feel about this? Sad, mad… indifferent?

No matter. Realizing that you’ve slipped into this lifestyle is the first step towards deciding if it is good for you!

If you don’t like it, then what do you do?

Number One – talk to someone. A friend, your partner, your mom. Share the burden! You won’t believe how positive a chat with someone you trust can be.

Number Two – identify what you enjoy (outside of your freelancing) and do more. Do this by laying down some boundaries. Boundaries are good. Set yourself time for work, and set yourself time for fun. And stick to it. You might fail first time around, maybe second time too, and quite possibly the third, but keep trying!

There is more! I’ll be following up this article soon with more tips for getting yourself out of the trap, and leaving the Guild of 24×7 Freelancers behind! Want to know when? Then subscribe to my RSS feed .

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