why blog?
I decided to start a blog to share thoughts, ideas and have the occasional rant if it takes my fancy. I'll try to make them interesting or entertaining (or both) but if you have any questions or ideas please get in touch.
Where does time go?
Posted by iamemily on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Since setting up my own business 11 months ago I have been networking and getting myself known and to my delight work seems to have flooded in, but working for yourself means there is just you. I now seem to be working late nights and weekends as a rule and I could do with a clone to go to meetings, do admin and network so that I can get my head down and get the work done. But I have one problem – I am too precious to let go and outsource any of my work. In my view a client is paying for my experience and knowledge and has more than likely seen my design style and wants just that, not for me to hand it over to someone else who will no doubt have a different outlook on it.
I used to be an Art Director in an advertising agency and was used to using art workers in the studio to put my ideas into practice but even then, there were some jobs that I wanted to keep close and see through from start to finish – now it is my company I seem to be even worse. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, I just care about each piece of work I do and want to put my own ideas and my own stamp on it – that’s my passion and my reason for going down the route of self employment.
I guess the key is time management, which I think I am relatively good at but what puts it into a whirl is long phone calls, unexpected work and general daily distractions, I need to learn to keep things short and not be distracted by twitter and facebook so easily, even if they are business focussed.
The fear, for someone self employed is that whilst the work is rolling in you don’t want to say no to anything as you don’t know when the next lull will be when you’re sat at your desk tapping your fingers, so you take it all on and have to stretch yourself over nights and weekends so that the quality of work isn’t suffering.
In a nutshell, it’s all a learning curve of being a sole trader, I should thank my lucky stars that it is all going well and I am getting lots of work in!
Well, my blog was the last thing on my list for today, so I’ll go relax and might even look at booking a holiday : )
