Arbenting

We recently came across a post on Inspired Mag, How to Fail at Your Design Business, that got us thinking about this whole freelancing gig we love so much, as it came from an approach we had never considered. The author of the post suggests that one sure fire way to fail in your design business, is to do everything yourself. The reason this stuck out to us, was because, well, we are freelancers. And as any lancer knows, we often do wear every business hat for our company. We often do not have choice.

With more support for this take in the comments, we really began scratching our heads. Is freelancing a certain recipe for failure? Are freelancers destined to experience no growth or success until they are bitter and broken by this business venture they believed in, and find themselves spectacularly failing? After leaving a comment which addressed and asked about this point, hoping for a bit of clarification from the author, and not getting a response, we thought we would address it on our own.

A Closer Look at the Recipe

The more we considered this idea, the more we began to wonder if we had all the information we needed to fully assess the circumstances and context that the author was trying to convey when he talked about this recipe for failure, so we returned to the post again to read for subtleties we may have missed before. But given that the discussion of each topic was brief, the article only had a few sentences to set up their assertion. This is what was said.

Excerpt from Jeff Archibald’s post on Inspired Mag: If you want to fail at your design business, then you should do everything yourself. I’m talking about developing a marketing plan; doing all the accounting; sales; project management; web design; print design; content-management-implementation; identity design and more.

Still the questions linger…

After looking at it again, we decided that there were still a few questions we had about this certain calamitous outcome for those who dive into the freelance arena that were left unexamined in this post. And by a few, we mean, like a lot. Like, how do you account for the number of successful freelancers who have taken on all of these roles themselves? And how do in fact measure that success? Is it by the freelancer’s own standard and measure of success?

Is there another measure that must be considered, beyond the freelancer’s own? And just who should be able to define success in such terms? Should it be on those who are running the business, or those outside the business that should be able to set these terms of success? Also, in the back of our minds, was a burning question…what about the aid and assist of business apps? (and of course…are we thinking about this too deeply? Because, hey, sometimes we do that. We overthink things, but we feel it is better than the alternative.).

And just like with our favorite show Lost, when looking to answer these questions, we would simply find more inquiries waiting for us. And when looking at the author’s background, we discovered that he too was part of a husband/wife design duo, which, just added to the list. Was this article from their personal perspective, relaying advice that they undertook as they began to grow their business? Are they excluded from this recipe because they are a pair tackling this together? (this question holds particular interest to us, given that we too, are just Angie and Rob on this end.)

Measuring Myth

Furthermore, the article, as do several others we might add, fail to address whether they are measuring success by the number of projects they are contacted about and receive (client volume and growth). Or measuring it by the amount of traffic, subscribers and followers they garner online (message and marketing reach). Or is it simple dollars and cents that matter when calculating business success in these posts (fiscal growth and stability). Perhaps it is a combination. This would make success such a fluid definition that the only people that would be able to actually define those terms for the business, would be those in the business who established the mission of the business in the beginning.

You see, however you come at the equation may vary from the business founders, therefore, your measure of what constitutes as a success may not apply in every case. The person who began the business always somewhere in their mind has these benchmarks in place for outlining their progress and relative success within their field, on their own terms and timetables. As long as they are hitting those benchmarks, then who are we to step in and tell them that they do not measure up to our definition of what and where they should be?

So is it possible to measure the success of a business beyond the scope and mission statement implemented by said business? In certain cases, yes. When businesses are operating openly in the public with some semblance of corporate transparency there is always a level of standard measurement for these types of businesses in relation to the market in which they compete. But outside of that, in an online realm, where businesses bloom in a smaller niche and are competing with each other for audience more than market shares, that transparency and measuring model no longer apply.

So in this sense, failure can be measured when and if a site disappears, just as we do in the public corporate arenas when a business closes, but beyond that, what do we measure? That is where the inside perspective and personal assessment of success is the only one we have to go off of. As long as the site (i.e. business) is active and present, then we have to assume some relative measure of success is occurring to sustain the site and those behind it. But are they doing it on their own?

The Forgotten Factors

In a way, yes. And in another very large way, no. Freelancers often have no choice but to take on all of the tasks themselves, and they manage to make it all work with two major aides. The app factor, like we mentioned earlier on, and the community factor. So in a sense, we are never truly alone when we work within an online community and the proof of that is in the acknowledgment pudding.

On countless design blogs and sites you see that the people behind it are blogging in particular, to give back to the communities that have done so much for their development and growth. From the blog you are reading now to the blog run by the author of the post that inspired this one. So the community plays a vital role in every sites success and growth, as well as, contributes to the site in countless ways. Be it through a more thorough discussion of topics and ideas through comments, to more financial means of support through donations and advertising. Not to mention the amount of knowledge the community has imparted that has helped shape and mold those now contributing their wisdom to the ranks.

The community takes an active part in this equation and that is why so many setup in those waters to return the favor. It is when we forget this and think that we alone are responsible for the measurable benchmarks that others see and equate or relate to ‘success’ (i.e. rise in readers, social media followers and post share penetration) that we not only do a disservice to the community, but we undervalue their contributions as well. So in that respect, we are not doing the hat donning without a little help from our friends.

Another invaluable communal contribution for freelancers to assist us on our business venture, especially in the accounting, project management, client contact, data storage and sharing areas, and more, is the score of programs designed to take the headache and guesswork out of the picture as much as possible for us. As for most of the other areas that Jeff listed like developing a marketing plan, identity design, and content-management-implementation the community has a backlog of resourceful material on effectively approaching these areas to help ensure that we can find our freelance business on sound shores far from failure.

Add These Ingredients To Your Recipe

Below are just a few of the helpful applications that we found beneficial to us on our freelancing path. And we wanted to point out, that we were not asked to promote any of the following apps or services, but rather they are favorites of ours that we feel comfortable in recommending to our readers. So if you haven’t already, check them out, and see if they might just be useful additions to your freelancing arsenal.

When it comes to the billing angle of your freelance work, Billings is a great invoicing app for Mac based freelancers. The Invoice Machine is a nice alternative for non Mac users, as well.

Speaking of accounting coverage, Mint is a fantastic web-based application for finances that takes a lot of the headache out of the problem for you.

Naturally, project management is very important to freelancers, and Remember the Milk is awesome for handling the simple things, and Basecamp for more in depth and collaborative project management tacklage.

Collecting money from your clients is beyond crucial, and Paypal makes this process a breeze. For easy online payments we highly recommend making Paypal a part of your business.

Administrative tasks, especially with the repetitive nature of forms, can prove daunting but not insurmountable. Definitely head over to Designer’s Toolbox and check out their large collection of business & legal forms for freelancers.

Given that you are working alone doesn’t mean that you don’t have access to other creative minds in the field to pick when it comes to your designs.Concept Feedback is a great place to turn for feedback from other designers to help you finalize your projects.

Keeping up with backups and file management can also be headache making, but Dropbox can help take some of the sting out of your file management processes.

One further admin task that can be time consuming and not necessarily the easiest to look after in an online life is client communication. Skype can assist in this arena.

A Wrap, and a Thanks

That does it from this end for now, but we are anxious to hear what you have to say on the ideas we discussed in the post. Also, though we may have seemed critical of Jeff’s post, we really do want to thank him for his work which challenged us to rethink and re-approach this topic in the way that we did. We always love posts that make us think, and Jeff’s contribution certainly got our wheels turning as you can see. We appreciate that, so we encourage you to check out the rest of his post on Inspired Mag, and also what his wife and he have got going on over at Paper Leaf Design.

A Final Word

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