Figart Consulting

I don’t often post about anything particularly personal in this blog, what with it being my business blog and all.  Today, I’m making an exception.

A client emailed me this morning asking me if I was free to teach some classes this month.  It’s a Sunday, and I was still in my PJs, drinking coffee and wading through my mail.  Most of us who are self-employed and carry our offices in our computer bags know the deal.  Get up, do a little working out, then get some coffee and fire up our laptops to see what’s happening in the wild worlds of our professions.

My husband, upon hearing that I’d have some more classes to teach, took a picture of me working and posted it to his Facebook account.  (Hey, he’s proud of me.  This is no bad thing in a husband!)  But it was what he asked me before he posted the picture that got me to thinking:

“Honey, are you worried this might come across as unprofessional?”

Yes, this is my writin' chair. Students? This is where I tend to prep those wonderful handouts I give you, too!

Well, no…

I wouldn’t go teach in my jammies, but c’mon…  Not everyone who works from home has a dedicated home office that’s the sole place they work.  I think this is pretty common knowledge.

Oh sure, I could get one of those stock photographs of a pretty smiling woman leaning over someone’s shoulder and pointing to a computer screen as part of the teaching image for my website.  And sure, I could imply that I work from an office, and keep quiet about the fact I haul my laptop to coffee shops, on trains, on planes and even on balconies watching the sun come up on the beach.  I could imply a staff, but I’m a hired gun.  Have laptop, will travel; that’s me!

While I still get an enormous kick out of doing this, it’s not unusual.  Lots of people live this way.  I think putting the reality of contracting out there (yes, we can work in our jammies, but yes, we also tend to work seven days a week) is a good thing, though.  Being self-employed isn’t the rock star lifestyle some like to make it out to be, but neither is it without some nice perks.

When you’re a freelancer and get a really big client, probably the first thing you do is cheer.  Money!  Lots of work!  You can slack off marketing for awhile, wheeee!!!!!

If that client is now providing more than about 20% of your business, stop cheering right now and start panicking.  No, seriously.

There’s an expression for this sort of client – the Gorilla Client.  Sure, that big client seems great, and yes, big projects with lots of work/pay really are.  But like having a big, powerful gorilla in your office, it can be a problem that becomes bigger and stronger than you are.  Any problem with that client is now a potential threat to your entire business.  You’ll find yourself structuring your business around the needs of that single client. You’ll find yourself tempted to leave off working for other clients and concentrate on that one[1].   Sure, you want to provide good service.  Good service should be at the heart of your business.  But you do not want to rise and fall at the whim of a single client.

So, why do we accept Gorilla Clients?  It’s mostly laziness and greed, from what I can see.  If you don’t love marketing (and plenty of freelance writers don’t), any excuse to be able to write and not market sounds like a lot of fun.  If you’re getting plenty of work, it’s hard to be motivated to do something you don’t like.

A good way to avoid this is to budget your time carefully.  Since you’re in charge of your work day, make sure you dedicate a certain percentage of that day to marketing no matter how busy you get.   Yeah, I know.  If you’re swamped with work from one client, it’s hard to make yourself go looking for more work.  Suck it up and do it.

Remember that as a freelancer, you can choose how much work you’re willing to accept as well.  How many hours a month are you willing to work?  I go monthly rather than weekly, because there will be plenty of weeks that you’ll be hammer and tongs at a deadline for one particular client.  That’s okay as long as you’ve got more work on deck, and are keeping up on your marketing. What you don’t want to do is let any one client suck up your professional time over a significant period of time.

I actually consider myself a client for purposes of time management.  As a writer, there’s a certain amount of non-commercial “sharpening the saw” that’s necessary to stay fit, stay alert and stay skilled in my profession[2].  Now I don’t dedicate anywhere near to 20 hours a month on it, but I do make sure that I leave time to write, to work on projects with no direct result and to make sure that I’m exploring avenues that might be useful in the long run.

This article is meant for the one-man shop.  If you’re finding that you need at least 40 hours a week specifically to spend on client work, chances are good that what you really need is at least a part-time admin assistant or sales person.  If you’re in love with being a one-man shop, raise your rates.  That’ll take care of the problem well enough and you’ll bring your time management back into balance.

I recently had technical issues with my netbook, had to reimage it and did not have time to hunt up an optical drive to reinstall Office 2007, my usual productivity suite.

So, for a couple of weeks, I used OpenOffice and Google Docs instead. Now, I was familiar with both programs. By the nature of my work, it’s useful to be familiar with as many computer applications as possible.

Open Office’s interface is more or less like Office 2003 or lower. You have a menu bar, and a customizable toolbar with buttons. Unless you memorize the steps you need to do something rather than read menus and popups, you’re simply not going to have any trouble. For minor differences, the help files are clear. I’ve already accessed them about three times writing this and always found my answer pretty quickly.

Writer works well and plays okay with documents created in Word. Calc can handle the most complex spreadsheets I work with in Excel, and the Impress presentation application could handle the presentation I created in PowerPoint for an SEO talk I give, though would require some minor cosmetic tweaking were I to use it to give the presentation. I have no idea how Base and Access play with each other. I have little occasion to use database software other than when I am teaching.

Microsoft Office or Open Office: What Do I Use When I Have the Choice?

I prefer Office 2007. Here’s why. I’m used to it[1]. Once I got used to it, I did find that I liked the intuitiveness of the ribbon interface. It’s as simple as that. There’s nothing I do in an Office program that OpenOffice can’t. (Well, other than study to teach Office 2007, mind!) If you’re looking into a productivity suite and are short on cash, I can’t urge you enough to check out OpenOffice. The features are great and the price can’t be beat.

What about Google Docs?

I’ve used Google Docs professionally. No, seriously. I’ve had clients who wanted me to write the documents in Google Docs and share them. I also use it when I’m collaborating with other authors. It’s not as robust a word processor as either Open Office Writer or Microsoft Word, but it gets the job done for basic tasks.

Its spreadsheet capabilities are pretty limited, though. If you’re doing charting, use named ranges or perform complex 3-D calculations, you really want to use either Calc or Excel.

As far as its presentation capabilities? Eh… Animations don’t seem to work on it[2], but other than that, it’ll play static slides okay. Some might consider this a feature rather than a bug, and I don’t blame them. There are people who overdo the animations!

Still, the takeaway for all of this is that you’re not limited to buying a very expensive productivity suite for most of your computing needs. Sure, I like and use Office 2007, but you really don’t have to.

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[1] And I teach most of its applications, so it’s a suite I know very well, indeed!

[2] At least, how to add animation is not immediately obvious and is not susceptible of a right click!