January 22, 2010
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For many years now, I’ve done the Holiday Grand Plan that gets you ready for Christmas without stress. I’ve done it with varying levels of dedication and thoroughness, but it’s always better to do it even a little bit than not to do it.
Some years I also do the Spring Cleaning Plan, and I think this will be one of those years. I think it’ll help me get more balanced and more connected with life in the physical world.
Used to be, this plan spent the month of January on self-discovery and thinking about health and goals and that kind of stuff. You’d make a collage about what you wanted and stuff like that. The idea was that having the first month of the year focused on yourself let you do a better job on the rest of it, and that makes sense to me.
However, this year they’ve stripped away that stuff and it’s just the housework parts. It began last week, and here it is already Living Room Week. I’m going to get my living room thoroughly done tomorrow, and move on along with the plan.
Today I’m teaching a class at the Global Business Center. This is the hybrid online/face to face class, a new idea. I’m excited about it. I also have a phone meeting with a new agency client. Last night I looked at my financial data from last year. My teaching job and oDesk were the biggest sources of income — oDesk of course being shorthand for a whole passel of different clients who work through it — providing 22 and 30% respectively. Then I have five regular clients — two the same, and three others who changed during the year — each of which was about 8%. The other 8% was random stuff, including building web sites and writing for the arts center.
As a freelance, I was able to rely on the steady paying half of my work (oDesk and teaching) to keep things from getting too rocky with the other stuff. But neither of those sources of income is necessarily good for my company. If my goal is to grow the company, then I probably need ten regular clients instead. Or the five regular clients at increased levels, and way more random stuff.
The Computer Guy has three big contracts this year, which circumstance has emboldened him to hire a full time person. His company is older than mine, of course, and he’s definitely going for growing a company, not working freelance. One of my other regular clients, a software developer, has just a couple of clients a year. Obviously, their prices are higher than mine. #1 daughter thinks that’s the way we should go — higher prices, less of the writing an article here and a press release there, more of the bigger projects. She thinks it harms our brand to work through oDesk and really can’t see why I’m teaching.
I am teaching, though, so I’d better go get ready.
I don’t know.
Comments (1)
I think the teaching gives you a feeling of security that’s important to you and to maintaining the rest of your business. That’s valuable in itself.