Dear Yahoo:
Mar
6
2008
I am pretty much a constant bundle of stress. And while I realize your article is more of an advertorial than anything, I still have to disagree. (continue »)
Posts Tagged ‘business’
Dear Shawn:
Mar
6
2008
I have hated the blog thing for so long, despite having spent a good deal of my formative years keeping online journals. But if I buckled to Facebook for the pursuit of fame and fortune, I can buckle to the weblog world.
That is, if I can actually do it consistently.
My One-Year-Old Monsters
Jan
30
2008
It’s been officially a year today. A year of no paycheques, no health benefits, no vacation time. No nine a.m. starts, no staying indoors all day staring at a computer screen, no monstrous amounts of unpaid overtime. (Okay, I lied, all of those things have happened, and worse.) I love that I can say that I’ve been running my own business for a year and I’m still in love with it.
I’ve had the chance to work with a huge range of companies and people over the past year, producing a range of different projects. I’ve done newspaper ads, illustrations, resumes, and a whole slew of websites, logos, business cards, and brochures. I’ve learned how to use Quickbooks, I’ve streamlined my processes, I’ve learned some AJAX techniques, I’ve rewritten my CMS code base, I’ve read about grids and typography and golden ratios. I’ve lost out on contracts, and I’ve taken on projects that thrilled and challenged me. I make an awful lot less money now than I used to, and I probably work harder. But it’s just so much fun.
However, my one-year-mark is a time for serious consideration. What’s my goal here? Where am I going? How is my little business going to grow up? And, most importantly, how can I keep doing what I love, stay sane, and make enough money to keep me in chocolate and red wine for the rest of my life?
I am coming to realize that:
- Delegate, delegate, delegate. I am a creature of many talents, but I am not any of the following: Salesman. Accountant. Programmer. Mechanic. Stop thinking you can do everything, and start spending more of your time doing what you are good at and do enjoy.
- Nothing comes quickly. Projects will take longer than you expected to reach completion. A two-minute fix will turn into a two-hour session of slamming your head against the wall. Sometimes you’ll put an inordinate amount of time into researching an estimate for a project you’re not awarded, only to be handed a bigger and better project a year down the line. A lot of what I do is investment.
- It is great to be a workaholic, but make sure you get at least three seconds of fresh air every day.
- Stop taking things so personally. Not everyone can think you’re the next coming, and some days, you will just suck. This does not necessarily mean that you are a total failure in all areas of your life, and it is certainly not cause for a mental breakdown.
- Nancy Reagan was right, sort of. Sometimes, you should “just say no”. As a small-business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping at anything that dangles a cheque in front of you, but that’s not really why you’re in this business, anyway, and it’s certainly not the most important factor to consider.
These are my monsters. I’m hoping that, by this time next year, I’ll have massacred at least half of them.
Mid-Winter Jump-Start Special
Jan
23
2008
Start your car-related-metaphor engines! I’m offering a limited-time-only small-biz “jump-start” package: everything you need to get your marketing started for your small business, at a fraction (that fraction would be something akin to ½) of the cost! It may be totally insane of me to be offering this special, given that I already/always seem to be super-busy, so it may not last long! Grab it while it’s hot, and I’m still crazy!
For more details, read all about it.
No, Your Other Left
Nov
29
2007
So according to the Gospel That Is the Internet, I have an ambidextrous brain. (See: pretty balanced between the left and the right sides.) As with most self-evaluations, this came as a monster of a revelation to me. Suddenly, all my years of confusion and ambivalence seem less like a personal failure. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like I’ve been constantly fluctuating between two ends of a dichotomy, and it caused me a great deal of anxiety when I was a kid. (I still haven’t learned that I have better things to worry about than my self-identity.) I like math and art. I’m inherently chaotic, but always hyper-detail-oriented, and, every now and again, neurotically organized. I always assumed it had something to do with my bipolar nature. I’m a woman of extremes, and don’t often do the Middle Ground.
Antisocial Networking
Nov
19
2007
For someone who spends such an extensive amount of her day online, I ignored the “Social Networking Revolution” for a surprisingly long time, mostly for the same reasons that I never owned a television—I tend to be a little wary of things that suck up time without creating anything tangible.
Oh, and I’m not particularly social as it is. And networking? I’m starting to think I’m biologically incapable of doing it.
But hey, I own a television now. I’m no less productive (probably because it’s off almost all the time) than I was before. So the social networking thing? I could bite the bullet.
I’ve been making use of both Facebook and LinkedIn for a while now. I recently broke down and got on MySpace, which gives me headaches to look at, but lets me keep a list of bands I should check out on hand. I’ve been starting to take a look at Facebook’s developer tools—I’m interested in the prospect of being able to integrate the sites I build with such a widely-used site. And, as I was doing it, I came across Facebook Pages, a new feature that allows you to list your business. Neat!
In short: Triggers & Sparks is now on Facebook.
As everyone who knows me is aware, I am a complete feedback junky. I’m hoping that this will give me a venue to present some works-in-progress and get some other opinions…sort of like a focus group for designs, which is something I could really use.
Interested? Well, of course you are! Feel free to become a “fan” (the egomaniac in me likes that term) and shower me with thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Harsh criticism always welcomed—I like the idea of making design a more interactive sport. Get involved here!
Oh, and if you’re more interested in completed projects, I’ve added another logo redesign to my portfolio.
Note to Self: Update Portfolio More Often
Jul
2
2007
It seems like it’s been forever since I actually added new pieces to my portfolio—as it is, it’s getting overstuffed. (See the website thumbnail pull-down. Must fix that.) Leaving it all to do in bulk like this makes it a bit of a painful process.
So, in answer to the burning “so what exactly have you been doing all this time, Sarah?” question, I have the following: a logo for Bill Smith, novascotialobstercouncil.com, atlanticgatewayalliance.com, lunenburgframing.ca, an online quilt store, a volunteer project for a Senegalese non-profit, a business card and a brochure for Smuggler’s Cove Inn, and, just in case you’re interested, a look at my own branding efforts. As usual, there’s a boatload of other stuff in the works.
Happy Birthday
Jun
7
2007
I realized early this morning when accidentally entering the date wrongly on an estimate that it was T&S’s official first birthday yesterday. By sheer luck of the draw, my official date of business registration happened to be 06/06/06. Not that I’m a raging Satanist or anything, but the fifteen-year-old-boy who lives inside me thinks that’s cool. (I also like the trinity aspect that seems to be sneaking into my business—my door number is going to be 3, there are three rooms and three doors in my studio…)
Mind you, numbers confuse me so much sometimes, I needed to edit this post three times to make it factually accurate.
In celebration, I would like everyone to light a firework, sparkler, or a match at some point today. (Because I only just now realized that it is now the 7th, and no longer the 6th, and thus I actually have nothing to celebrate and am probably a bad parent for missing my firstborn’s first birthday.) And then go look at this website, because I really like it and had a lot of fun trying to make it work.
Launch Party
May
19
2007
My business has so many birthdays, it’s ridiculous. At any rate, my official “holy cow how long can you put that thing off, sarah?” launch party begins tonight at seven. 118 Lincoln Street (Lunenburg), and everyone’s welcome. There will be goody bags and maybe a door prize and some wine and cheese, plus good design-y talk with a sleep-deprived over-stressed sarah. There may or may not be fireworks.
So, How’s the Business?
Apr
24
2007
It’s only the most popular question asked by anyone who knows me over the past few months. And it’s always hard to answer—my stock response is “It’s too soon to tell”. And it really is, but I’m definitely keeping busy, and new projects keep coming through the door. Every now and again I sit back for a moment and think how lucky I am to be 23 years old and supporting myself doing what I love, being my own boss, keeping my own hours, and setting my own rules. I never thought this would be what I wanted to do, but I’m utterly thrilled that I get to do it. (continue »)
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