Looking Back at 2009

As is becom­ing a tra­di­tion for me, I’m writ­ing a post to reflect on the last year as we’re jump­ing into the new. I will write another post later to talk about new tools and new tech­nolo­gies I dis­cov­ered or started using in 2009. In this one, I reflect on the past year, the things that went well, the things I learned and what I intend to do dif­fer­ent in 2010. If you run a small busi­ness or are a free­lancer your­self, you may learn a thing or two from my experience.

2009 was a big year for me in many respects but mostly because of the career change I had in mid 2008. The last year was my first com­plete year as a full time free­lancer. Even if I have worked in this field for almost 14 years (it often felt like I had 2 full time jobs), I made the jump to work­ing in my busi­ness full time in August 2008. So 2009 was my first full time year run­ning my own business.

I have made some mis­takes dur­ing the last year but learned a lot about myself in the process as well as about how to run a small busi­ness. I also con­nected with many incred­i­ble peo­ple in 2009 and many of these con­nec­tions will help me pro­pel my busi­ness fur­ther in 2010. In the mean­time, here’s a few lessons I learned in 2009 orga­nized in 4 dif­fer­ent categories:

Marketing

Marketing a free­lance busi­ness is an acquired skill and my only regret in the last year is not have devoted enough time to mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties sooner in the year when I was very busy with ongo­ing project work. It is easy to get lost in the tasks you have to do at any given moment, espe­cially when you have dead­lines loom­ing but mar­ket­ing your small busi­ness at all times is truly essen­tial. In 2010, I intend to devote a few hours to mar­ket­ing, mak­ing calls and nur­tur­ing my exist­ing pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships every week.

You can­not hope to get away with doing mar­ket­ing and sales only when you have “free time” and keep con­tracts com­ing in reg­u­larly. Don’t kid your­self here, you do need to *sell* your ser­vices and your busi­ness all the time. Word of mouth can only get you so far. If I had made more efforts mar­ket­ing myself and pur­su­ing new leads in the sum­mer when I was very busy, I would not have gone through a slow­down as I have in the last cou­ple of months of 2009. Marketing is an ongo­ing effort and you need to plan for it and put aside some time for it every week… and I do mean *every week*. Do not wait for a time when work starts to slow down to do it, it will be too late and you will suf­fer later.

Budgetting

This is some­thing I knew I needed to do going in but it became even more impor­tant for me in 2009 as money came in at irreg­u­lar inter­vals. Not hav­ing a steady weekly pay check is some­thing you need to get used to and plan for when you free­lance full time. The key is get­ting real about your liv­ing expenses, how much money you need each month to pay your rent or your mort­gage, your gro­ceries, util­ity bills, insur­ance, etc. If you do not have a clear idea of those num­bers going in, you will over­spend in other areas and jeop­ar­dize the health of your finances… and your rela­tion­ship with your sig­nif­i­cant other.

Isabelle and I have been using a fan­tas­tic lit­tle app (and sys­tem) called “You Need a Budget” http://​www​.youneed​abud​get​.com/ for a cou­ple years now and I couldn’t have sur­vived this year with­out it.

Learning

Learning is an ongo­ing process for free­lance Web design­ers and knowl­edge work­ers in gen­eral. New tech­nolo­gies and best prac­tices emerge so fast in our indus­try that it’s hard to keep updated at the best of times. When I dived into full time free­lanc­ing in 2008, I fig­ured I’d have more time to read and keep up to date with changes in our indus­try but I must admit that this has been harder than I thought. Between client work, fam­ily life, mar­ket­ing and net­work­ing activ­i­ties, it’s dif­fi­cult to find the time to read, exper­i­ment or just play with new tools, tech­nolo­gies or concepts.

What has helped me this year is client work. I needed to learn new con­cepts to serve my clients and that is the best incen­tive to learn new tricks. For me, 2009 has not been so much about learn­ing new tools or tech­nolo­gies as much as learn­ing more the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts as well as basic things like improved lis­ten­ing skills in order to respond to my clients’ needs bet­ter. Sometimes we focus so much on the tools of our crafts that we for­get that the basis of our process is about under­stand­ing human inter­ac­tions and needs.

I still have much to learn and I try to make it an inte­gral part of my work. This means I have to remain flex­i­ble and agile and not be afraid to change and revisit my own assump­tions if my work or my clients require it. Anyone work­ing in User Experience design or any field related to it needs to keep an open mind and con­tin­u­ally ques­tion their own atti­tudes and processes. It’s the way we can best serve our clients and avoid falling into habits that make us lazy.

Personal

More than ever, 2009 has been the year of Twitter for me. It evolved from being like my own lit­tle office water cooler where I’d get a bit of social inter­ac­tions into my day to becom­ing a full fledged tool for learn­ing, get­ting help, net­work­ing and mar­ket­ing my ser­vices to a grow­ing audi­ence. I could not be with­out it now. In addi­tion to the @pixelyzed account I’ve been using from the begin­ning, I opened @webfocusdesign for my busi­ness a cou­ple months ago and there, I tweet for my exist­ing and poten­tial clients so it’s a dif­fer­ent vibe from my per­sonal account.
I’ve also con­tin­ued my “face to face” mar­ket­ing efforts attend­ing events from my local Chamber of Commerce but also, events cre­ated by other Twitter users that live in Quebec. These efforts are start­ing to pay off as peo­ple get to know me and trust my exper­tise and I have sev­eral poten­tial clients who have showed inter­est in work­ing with me dur­ing the new year. That part of run­ning a busi­ness used to scare me as I was a shy per­son before. But now, I love it and have a lot of fun doing it so I make much bet­ter con­nec­tions with people.

Lastly, any­one who has been fol­low­ing me on Twitter for a while knows that my father has been fight­ing with lung can­cer for over a year now (he was diag­nosed in November 2008). I spent quite a bit of them with him and my mom last spring in Quebec City while he get­ting chemo and radio­ther­apy treat­ments. Now, I am pleased to say that, accord­ing to his doc­tors, the treat­ments have been even more effec­tive than antic­i­pated and there is no can­cer left in him that they can see. He is mon­i­tored reg­u­larly and will be for a while still but he’s feel­ing great, has regained all his energy (and hair…) I truly believe that his unwa­ver­ing pos­i­tive out­look on the sit­u­a­tion has greatly con­tributed to his cur­rent well being…

So every­one, thanks for read­ing and have a great and happy 2010!