When I was in my early 20s and someone told me to prioritize freedom and flexibility, I’d cringe and think, “Yes but how?”
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve asked this question to people I’ve met. Through trial and error, I’ve learned to incorporate or tweak parts of their how to fit my needs. As a result, I’ve learned there is more than one how, and to be wary of those who claim there is only one!
One approach we explored earlier this year was building a Company of One. Paul Jarvis and I explored how he went from being a freelancer and providing a service to scaling his business to create products. In the Build episode, we shared some of the common themes. If you missed the episode, you can check it out here.
This month, I want to rewind and explore the first part, becoming a freelancer.
Becoming a freelancer is one approach to gaining more freedom and flexibility. And while it’s easy to glamorize being your own boss, it can take time (many years) to get a business off the ground.
You have to figure out how to market yourself, manage clients, price your service, and still have enough hours left in the day to do the work!
All of these tasks can leave you feeling overwhelmed. To help you think about the transition, gain some perspective, and most importantly, work through the overwhelm, I’ve invited Gregg Goldner, who is a freelance developer and President of Two Sun Traders, LLC to share his experience.
Whether you are a freelancer, want to be one, or are just curious, I’d highly recommend tuning into this week’s episode to learn the following from Gregg:
I loved this quote from Gregg because it showcases how you need to focus as a freelancer:
“Putting on every single hat and then realizing I don’t like half those hats. Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to do those things? What are my strengths and weaknesses, and how can I find people who have different strengths and weaknesses?” — Gregg Goldner, President of Two Sun Traders, LLC
In the episode, Gregg mentions a number of resources, here are links to them:
If you’ve been following Build for a while, you may recall I did an episode with Jessica Hische who is a letter, illustrator, and type designer a few years ago on a similar topic: How To Prepare To Strike Out On Your Own And Pursue Your Creative Calling. Listen to the episode here. I always find it helpful to revisit a topic and compare notes, plus some people’s voice resonates more than others, so I’d highly recommend you check out that episode too!
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Build is produced by Femgineer.
I am the self-appointed family travel agent. Though if you ask my partner and the rest of my family members they’d agree that I am the best person for the job.
Why?
Because over the years I have become adept at making sure I don’t overlook the details when planning a vacation—you know where the devil hides! And who wants the devil to turn up on their vacation?!
Unless of course, it’s a blue devil ;) #marchmadness #goduke
I take the time to read through ALL the descriptions and fine print, talk to customer support agents to find out if there are any additional fees, and make sure that family members who have accessibility needs like my 10-month-old baby and 82-year-old grandma will be taken care of.
Once I’ve done all this planning, I know I have truly earned my vacation ;)
Despite all my effort, there have been times when things didn’t turn out as planned. Like the time I booked a home in India only to find out that the address was incorrect. The host mixed the street name with the city name. We would have had to drive 3 hours after 24+ hours of travel, but I called customer support and they resolved the issue for us quickly.
It was a positive customer support experience: responsive, seamless, and efficient. As a result, I continued using that service to book my travel, knowing that if something screwy happened I could count on them next time.
But there are other companies whose customer support agents place me on hold—for more than a few minutes. When the agent returns, they tell me that I’ve reached the wrong department. Then they transfer me to the “correct” department. Once the transfer is complete, I have to repeat what I told the first support person to the second support person, all the while hoping that they can help me resolve the issue. They can’t. When I look at how much time I’ve spent, and the exorbitant fee or unreconcilable charge, I am frustrated and vow to never do business with them again!
I know I’m not alone.
No one likes being at the receiving end of a bad customer support experience. It’s easy to place blame on customer support, but it’s not their fault because the problem originated somewhere else—when the product or service’s feature was being created.
Someone designed the experience in a way that wasn’t particularly customer friendly, and then it became a challenge to change the experience because of the silos that formed in the company between teams: sales, marketing, product, engineering, and customer support.
At the start of a company, teams are usually flat and highly collaborative, but over time, silos start to form, slowing things down, making it hard to innovate, and distancing teams from their customers.
Is it even possible to slow or stop them from forming? And to enable everyone across teams a chance to interact with customers?
Well in today’s episode of Build we’re going to answer these questions and more, We’ll show how silos form of overtime, some best practices for keeping silos at bay, and what to do once they have formed to break them down.
To help us out I’ve invited Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré who is a B2B SaaS Consultant with 20+ years of experience in online marketing, and a champion for customer success.
As you tune into today’s episode you’ll learn the following from Nichole Elizabeth:
“When everyone on the team is aware of the voice of the customer, everyone is super excited about what is going on (with the product).
If you really want to stand out right now it isn’t pricing, it’s team alignment and customer experience.” — Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré
In the episode, Nichole Elizabeth mentions a number of resources, here are links to them:
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Build is produced by Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/).