I ran a solo branding and web, product, etc. design shop, prematurely took it full-time and bet my livelihood on it, and effectively dead-ended my career.
The small number of clients I got were—according to them—happy with my work, but the only word-of-mouth inquiry that ever came in was a coke-addled soi-disant "tech visionary" with little money and no plan. Everything else came through exhaustive outreach and prospecting. After a couple years, the whole feast-or-famine freelancer thing went full-famine and sent me running back toward full-time/in-house work with my tail between my legs and—evidently—a stink of desperation that took a couple more years to dissipate enough for me to actually find a job. A job that paid significantly less, had worse benefits, and put me in a much lower, less respected position in a much less interesting company, doing much less interesting (and much harder) work than the one I left years earlier. An objective professional regress from which I've yet to recover.
If I've learned a lesson it's that there must be reasons I'm unable to find good work that are too close to me for me to identify myself, and therefor frequent and informative feedback should be sought in high priority.
I saw a number of my peers take the same leap I did and find enormous and continuing success despite having less experience and, in some cases, what I felt was much lesser work to show. Of course their success has since enabled them to eclipse me, as my development has been retarded by several years of bad or no work now.
I want to move toward self-employment again, but have virtually no professional network after so much failure (again, despite all of my few customers verbalizing that they enjoyed working with me and were happy with what I did for them), and have no reason to believe I'd have greater luck in another venture.
I'm commenting to share my story, but am really here to read about what others have learned that I might be overlooking.
This is going to be a weird suggestion but have you thought about your "aura"? You mentioned "stink of desperation" so I don't think this is too far off the mark--maybe you would benefit from doing things that look totally unrelated to your career development and get that "MOJO" (Magic Of Job Opportunities) flowing from your unconscious.
Thanks, I appreciate the suggestion. Aura/vibe really is the only thing I haven't been able to test and account for.
The irony is, I spend almost all of my 'free time' pursuing other things, as my design career has always been the rather practical backup plan to the long-shot stuff I'd really like to do and am more passionate about.
I've often wondered if it's /that/ attitude that's actually hurting my cause, despite my best intentions, efforts, and positive professional demeanor, as one consistent trait among most of my peers is that they seem to live and breathe the biz. Tech design now is a lot different from when I first got into it, and I'm not really on board with the current direction of the industry. I try to 'be the change', but …
Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts. Definitely something for me to think about.
Yeah, the confidence started strong and has definitely waned. I have to assume that comes through, and am always trying to coach myself into a better mindset. I know I'm good at what I do, I'm just not good at convincing people of that. Doesn't help to have a portfolio of mostly outdated work for companies no one's heard of.
I did what I could for product-market fit and sales efforts, but I'm sure there's a ton more I could learn. It's difficult to fight the impulse to roll over and try to be anything-for-anyone when the work I want isn't coming in, even if I know that makes my offering unclear at best, unappealing at worst.
The small number of clients I got were—according to them—happy with my work, but the only word-of-mouth inquiry that ever came in was a coke-addled soi-disant "tech visionary" with little money and no plan. Everything else came through exhaustive outreach and prospecting. After a couple years, the whole feast-or-famine freelancer thing went full-famine and sent me running back toward full-time/in-house work with my tail between my legs and—evidently—a stink of desperation that took a couple more years to dissipate enough for me to actually find a job. A job that paid significantly less, had worse benefits, and put me in a much lower, less respected position in a much less interesting company, doing much less interesting (and much harder) work than the one I left years earlier. An objective professional regress from which I've yet to recover.
If I've learned a lesson it's that there must be reasons I'm unable to find good work that are too close to me for me to identify myself, and therefor frequent and informative feedback should be sought in high priority.
I saw a number of my peers take the same leap I did and find enormous and continuing success despite having less experience and, in some cases, what I felt was much lesser work to show. Of course their success has since enabled them to eclipse me, as my development has been retarded by several years of bad or no work now.
I want to move toward self-employment again, but have virtually no professional network after so much failure (again, despite all of my few customers verbalizing that they enjoyed working with me and were happy with what I did for them), and have no reason to believe I'd have greater luck in another venture.
I'm commenting to share my story, but am really here to read about what others have learned that I might be overlooking.