Posts Tagged ‘chocolate’

Have I men­tioned how much I love my cli­ents? I checked the mailbox yes­terday and found a box full of deli­cious chocolate muffins (thank good­ness cus­toms didn’t open the box!), accom­panied by this note:

Hi Sarah,

So sorry to hear that you lost a con­sid­er­able amount of work when water spilled on your com­puter. While chocolate zuc­chini muffins (no nuts–in case you’re allergic) won’t bring the material back (wouldn’t that be great), per­haps they can fuel the recre­ation pro­cess. Just want to let you know that we can be patient for an ulti­mately high-quality product.

Cheers!

ACT

How utterly sweet & lovely is that? I am an incred­ibly lucky girl to get to work with such fab­ulous clients.

Well, it’s been a long, long, long time in the making, but I’ve finally updated my port­folio a teeny little bit (not too much to be over­whelming, of course!) There’s this por­trait of my gor­geous little sister:

and a “new” web­site (that was com­pleted months ago). I really don’t like updating my own website!

But I’m determ­ined that it’s about time to do it, espe­cially given that I’m about to move again, and that means that my address as listed on the web­site will be even more wrong than it is cur­rently. (Sure, in theory it only takes two minutes to change it, but that’s not how I work…if I’m going to spend two minutes, I’m going to be there three hours trying to fix all the little things.) At any rate, all the little things have really added up, and it’s time for some major-ish rearran­ging. (more…)

It’s been offi­cially a year today. A year of no paycheques, no health bene­fits, no vaca­tion time. No nine a.m. starts, no staying indoors all day staring at a com­puter screen, no mon­strous amounts of unpaid over­time. (Okay, I lied, all of those things have happened, and worse.) I love that I can say that I’ve been run­ning my own busi­ness for a year and I’m still in love with it.

I’ve had the chance to work with a huge range of com­panies and people over the past year, pro­du­cing a range of dif­ferent pro­jects. I’ve done news­paper ads, illus­tra­tions, resumes, and a whole slew of web­sites, logos, busi­ness cards, and bro­chures. I’ve learned how to use Quick­books, I’ve stream­lined my pro­cesses, I’ve learned some AJAX tech­niques, I’ve rewritten my CMS code base, I’ve read about grids and typo­graphy and golden ratios. I’ve lost out on con­tracts, and I’ve taken on pro­jects that thrilled and chal­lenged me. I make an awful lot less money now than I used to, and I prob­ably work harder. But it’s just so much fun.

How­ever, my one-year-mark is a time for ser­ious con­sid­er­a­tion. What’s my goal here? Where am I going? How is my little busi­ness going to grow up? And, most import­antly, how can I keep doing what I love, stay sane, and make enough money to keep me in chocolate and red wine for the rest of my life?

I am coming to realize that:

1. Del­egate, del­egate, del­egate. I am a creature of many tal­ents, but I am not any of the fol­lowing: Salesman. Accountant. Pro­grammer. Mech­anic. Stop thinking you can do everything, and start spending more of your time doing what you are good at and do enjoy.
2. Nothing comes quickly. Pro­jects will take longer than you expected to reach com­ple­tion. A two-minute fix will turn into a two-hour ses­sion of slam­ming your head against the wall. Some­times you’ll put an inor­dinate amount of time into researching an estimate for a pro­ject you’re not awarded, only to be handed a bigger and better pro­ject a year down the line. A lot of what I do is investment.
3. It is great to be a work­aholic, but make sure you get at least three seconds of fresh air every day.
4. Stop taking things so per­son­ally. Not everyone can think you’re the next coming, and some days, you will just suck. This does not neces­sarily mean that you are a total failure in all areas of your life, and it is cer­tainly not cause for a mental breakdown.
5. Nancy Reagan was right, sort of. Some­times, you should “just say no”. As a small-business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping at any­thing that dangles a cheque in front of you, but that’s not really why you’re in this busi­ness, anyway, and it’s cer­tainly not the most important factor to consider.

These are my mon­sters. I’m hoping that, by this time next year, I’ll have mas­sacred at least half of them.