On The Cusp of Something Big

Today marks the 3 year anniversary of me leaving my full-time job and becoming self-employed.  Yet it feels like today is the first day of something completely new.  Something big.

Things have been… different… since the start of 2011.

I think it began with a dip in my self-motivation.  For someone like me, to lack self-motivation is kind of a scary thing.  For most of my life, I excelled at things I’m passionate about, because passion drives my motivation to learn and produce.  For years, I leveraged my passion for music and songwriting and took the initiative to lead several working bands and even a short stint as a solo-artist.  It was my passion for technology and the web that led me to teach myself and pursue a career in web design (despite having a degree in a totally unrelated field).  And for the past three years, I’ve relied solely on my self-motivation to sustain my freelance web design business.

So during the holidays at the end of 2010, I decided to tone down my workload and give myself a much-needed breather.  My thinking was, my finances are healthy, and most of my clients wait until the new year to start new projects anyway, so I’ll pick things back up in 2011.  Well, here we in 2011 and for the first time in my 3 years of being self-employed, I’m finding it difficult to muster the energy to drum up new client work.  Let me clarify that- I am going through the motions and I’ve got paying projects coming in, but I’m lacking the same drive and passion for this game that I’ve had in years past.

Usually, what I do to stay balanced is start a personal project, as I did with ThemeJam.  I’m doing the same now, as I’m partnering with Dave Yankowiak to launch a new web show (details coming soon!).  But this year, my issue lies with my core business, my client work.  It’s figuring out what that issue is exactly that is the challenge.

The right wisdom at the right time.

Two weeks ago, I picked up the audio version of The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.  I was just looking for something to pass the time in between other books, blogs, and walking the dog.  But what I found was a life-changing book that speaks directly to the issues I’m facing at this very moment.  I’m so blown away by the advice in this book, and at the perfect timing at which I happened to discover it, that it has me re-thinking everything I’ve come to learn in the past 3 years of being self-employed.

In a good way, that is.

There is so much to take away from the lessons found in this book that if I tried to cover everything, I’d probably re-write the entire thing!  So instead, I’ll boil down the “ah-ha” moments that resonated with me:

1) What it means to embrace change.

What separates successful businesses from those that fail is their willingness to change and change again.  Change in business means taking a calculated risk, but you can’t just change once.  You have to change again and again.  When I made the decision to leave my steady, secure, full-time job and go freelance, that was a major change that I was willing to take on.  And since I’ve managed to find sustainable (temporary?) success as a freelancer, I’ve shied away from making such a big change again.  If it aint broke, don’t fix it, right?  Well, given my waning passion for my daily business, I’d say it’s time to re-think that habit, and start thinking big.

2) Creating a business the right way must happen from scratch.

Up until this point, I’ve been fooling myself.  My approach to growing my business has been this:  As more work comes in, I’ll hire more sub-contractors to help me handle the load.  If I keep on doing this, the business will grow itself.  To a limited extent, this approach has helped me take on more work simultaneously (and earn a little bit more).  But it isn’t growing my business.  Not in a scalable way, at least.

To position a business for true growth will require starting over.  It will involve re-thinking the primary aim, the business organization, the strategic objectives, and path to success, and implementing all of this right from day 1.

Am I ready?  Yes and No.

Yes, I see the path ahead of me and I’m formulating an idea of where I’d like this path to lead.  No, I’m not ready to drop everything and start over tomorrow.  I’m just now starting to clear through the many questions in my mind about what it means to start and grow a successful business—the right way.

As I continue to put the pieces together, here are my immediate goals for the coming year:

• Network. This will be the year I leave home and meet more people in person.  These connections will lead not only to potential clients, but also potential business partners.
• Meet and seek wisdom. As much as I love to read and learn things on my own, I must force myself to seek the wisdom of others who came before me.  My goal is to meet and pick the brains of those who have started successful and scalable businesses, particularly in the web design space.
• Get to work. Working on my business, not in my business.  It’s time to stop doing the work of a technician and start doing the work of an entrepreneur.  The first step in this process is to start planning the model of what I’d like to eventually build.

What say you?

Anybody read the E-Myth revisited?  I’m interested to hear your take-aways.  Or anyone else thinking about the same things I am (I know I’m not alone here).