The worst part about having your own company is all the work that is not your core work. I really just want to coach, train, do talks and workshops, mentor – well I want to help individuals and organisations become better versions of themselves.
But it is not enough to run a company…
Potential clients need to know that I exist and what I can do – how else can they find me and get my help?
I have been spoiled with a really good market in most of the years that I have been self-employed, so I have not had to do much besides speaking at conferences and tweeting to get work. And of course network network network.
Well Musk killed twitter and the market is very different now for me as well as for my network… I need to make an effort (gasp).
So I am updating my webpage, which is not my favorite thing to do. Right now I am trying to write about my speaking; things like where I will speak this year, and what I normally speak about in case someone wants to hire me. Eventually I plan to have links to former talks there as well.
On the side I am working on describing what I do in more words than “work on whatever is the most important thing with frequent feedback and collaboration with the client”. I have a variety of skills and knowledge in my toolbox, and since each context is different, different tools apply in each situation. I have worked on creating better planning, on going from vision to something applicable in daily lives, communication, OKRs, psychological safety, conflicts, collaboration, retrospective etc – and that is just for the organisations…
I am collecting testimonials for my webpage as well. But then I have to ask for them, which is probably one of the hardest things for me. Asking people to say nice things about me, if I helped them, feels wrong somehow; I have learned to receive nice statements about me, and even appreciating them and take them in for the most part. Asking for them is a whole other ballgame. That is the hard part. My logic knows that people will often like to help, or they will tell me if not. People also say yes to writing one and then they don’t; they forget, they become busy, they don’t know what to write or maybe they didn’t like to say no to writing something for me. I am practicing asking and have even made a list of people to ask. I haven’t asked that many yet… working on it 🙂
If I helped you somehow whether it was as an individual or as an organisation, please consider writing a nice testimonial to me that I can put on my webpage 🙂
Gitte
Doing marketing and promoting myself is another non-favorite. Things like writing regular blog posts, when I am used to doing my writing, when I am inspired and only then; or writing about some of my successes. I have been brought up to not talk about the good stuff that I do; if I worked hard and did well, people around me would notice. Which is sometimes true, but people are not always around me, my best work is not noticed as it elevates others; and besides promoting yourself is mostly to people, who do not know you yet. Even though I have learned to be proud of my achievements, it is still hard to speak up about it 🙂
There is writing on linked-in and then doing the right things to be seen. Ask friends to comment and share, post at the right time.. So many things to think about.
And don’t get me started on design – because I really don’t know much about it 😉
If you follow me anywhere, you will also know that I dislike accounting. I have been doing the stuff myself the last three years – and messed up two years. So I now found an accountant, who will start with figuring out what I messed up, and try to fix it. I guess it is a bit like debugging 🙂
I think that all these other parts of running a company are super important. I am just not very good at them and I don’t like to do them. Some things you can pay others to do and some things you can’t. Plus you need to make money before you buy services, and you need to promote yourself before you get money… darn I guess I need to get to work on it 😉
The good thing about being self-employed is that you get to decide for yourself; which jobs you take, which conferences you go to, which things you want to work on – all the things. You also face the consequences of your choices and that is how it should be. With freedom comes responsibility 🙂
I like my core work and I really like my freedom. So I guess there is no other way. At least I got some of my frustration out now 😉