Five-and-a-half years after joining Say Hello, I took on sole ownership of the company last summer. The past five months have been more successful than I’d even hoped.
I joined what is now my agency as a partner in 2019, after realising that I could do a far better job of running web projects than within the remit of the company I previously worked for. I proved myself right and it’s a bit of a shock to realise that my sixth anniversary of joining the company has arrived.
I had never planned to be entirely self-sufficient, but my former business partner and I divided projects between us: focusing on the clients and work which we wanted to do ourselves. My focus in all that time has been on web apps and websites using WordPress and, often, React. I have put a lot of effort into improving my skills and knowledge: both technically and in assisting and advising clients.
Both my sister and my Dad took their opportunities to be self-employed in their time and they were both successful. I’m very happy that, despite self-employment being unexpected, I have followed in their footsteps.
When my former business partner decided to go down a new path last year, I decided to take the leap and become entirely self-employed, rather than face a round of job-seeking and returning to reliance on other people for my projects. Technically speaking, self-employment has been how I’ve earned a living since 2019, but taking on the company to 100% was a serious change. It brought the freedom and ability to sail my own ship in the direction I’ve always wanted to.
In the first business quarter under my own steam, I billed around 110% of my salary (which remains comparatively generous). The second quarter, which has just come to a close, went even better, and the invoices for this past quarter’s work and for next year’s maintenance contracts are now out for payment. I can’t quite describe how validating that feels: to know that the hard work and occasional long hours I put in are working as I’d hoped. This all builds on the work my former business partner put in between founding the company and his departure, whilst (gratifyingly) confirming that I, too, know how to do this job largely unassisted 1.
The challenge for 2025 will be to reduce my hours by at least 10% whilst maintaining the same level of income. Thanks to maintenance clients and a more logical and expansive range of support I’ve begun offering, this is definitely feasible. I’ve also switched away from hourly billing for pre-planned work; I’ll write more about this next year. I want to spend more time building sites which I’ve conceived and designed myself from now on, instead of just coding other designers’ projects. I was always more creative than technical, although a high level of technical expertise comes with the territory after nearly thirty years in the business. I also have a new company website nearly ready to go, in both German and English, through which I’ll be blogging about technical topics, client work, and topics around web design and coding.
In a way, the path I took to where I am now was the steady route I needed to get here. My mantra for the last six years has been, “it shouldn’t be that hard”. It took me a career of a decent length to realise that and to be able to get to the stage where it’s now fulfilled. If I’d attempted self-employment when I was younger, as could have been possible when I left Brienz in 2007, I think I would have failed due to a lack of experience. I regret the possibility of being able to start afresh with a couple of dozen pre-delivered clients at that time, but other financial concerns and a certain amount of naivety would’ve probably led me to fail.
This job is often hard and usually requires a lot of concentration, effort and dedication to keep up with the latest and best practices. But the challenge is usually technical, which is as it should be. The admin and the decision-making processes and even little details like CSS naming conventions or the use of block themes or hybrid themes for a project are long-since established and proven through the successful completion and management of all the projects I’ve worked on. Repetition, flexibility and a solid base of technical and administrative resources are key.
I have massively enjoyed the fact that, as a self-employed person with no fixed office hours and no fixed requirement to sit in a specific office to do my work, I can take the odd day off because it’s sunny. Or hop on a train for the day and work with colleagues whilst travelling around the Alps. Or swap free time from Saturday and Sunday to Monday and Tuesday, because mountain destinations are a lot less busy away from traditional weekends.
All that is what taking the leap has brought to my life since 2019, and I’m incredibly lucky to have arrived where I’m supposed to be.
Happy new year.
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