Suzanne Hosie, Write on the Edge
Susan Witter, Puget Wordsmiths
When you work for yourself, you are writer, manager, and administrator. You may also be the janitor, systems administrator, and mail clerk. Now that you've gotten the business, you have to get the work done and manage the project. You also get to do all the administrative tasks such as billing and bill-paying, as well as the marketing. It can be a challenge to juggle all of these priorities and still maintain your sanity! This chapter describes the complexities involved in running a small technical writing business and focuses on how to solve the ever-present problem of how to manage it all.
If you think the benefit of working for yourself is that you get more free time, think
again. Running a successful consulting business usually means putting in some very long
hours--at least while you're getting started. Ideally, all this hard work will pay off as
you refine your processes, set your boundaries, and learn when to just say "no."
As an independent, you have full responsibility for your lifestyle. You choose when to
work, when to spend time with family and friends, and when to take time for yourself. It's
easy to get caught up in the day-to-day pressures of running a business and forget to take
time for your personal life. But if you can balance your priorities, you will find that
owning a small business is the only way to go!
If you get sick you can't work. If you can't work, you can't pay the bills. Don't
let this happen to you! Take time for yourself--exercise, eat right, and take "mental
health days" when you need them. Even just a few hours off on a mid-week afternoon
can make up for a stressful week of 12 hour days.
It's important to keep this in mind when you're working those inevitable long hours. If
something happens to you, be it mental or physical, and you can't come through on your
contractual obligations, your reputation suffers. You owe it to your clients to take care
of yourself--they're depending on you.
If you work at home, you will probably be sick much less often than if you work in an
office. You'll be much less likely to catch that "bug" that's traveling around
your client's office (unless, of course, you have children). Keep the health of your
client in mind when deciding whether to show up for a meeting. Maybe "I can't afford
to get sick right now so I'd like to skip that meeting" is the best answer if the
entire project team has been fighting the flu.
A common trap for independents is to base everything around work, to put work first. Early
on in your independent career, you'll probably live through the sleepless night syndrome,
wondering where the next job is going to come from. With luck you get that next job, but
you may tend to also acquire a "work first" attitude. It is important to keep in
mind that you are working for yourself in order to achieve more freedom. Be pretty
emphatic about using that freedom for something other than work once in a while.
If you work at a client site, you have all the distractions associated with working in an office--politics, meetings, hallway conversations, etc. If you work from home, you can spend your work time focusing on the project at hand. It's much more rare for a neighbor to drop by to chat, although it has been known to happen.
You're a one-person shop. What happens if you're in the middle of a crunch with a
client project and a new prospect calls to request a proposal? What if your client adds
scope to the project but doesn't extend the deadline? Do you say "no," or stress
yourself out getting the work done?
Your days aren't any longer now that you're self-employed, but sometimes you need them to
be. Because you're on your own, your resources may be more limited than if you worked for
a large corporation. You have a lot less flexibility because of this. You want to stay
busy but not overworked. It's important to communicate with your clients when you're
getting close to "full." Let them know that deadlines are tight. If you can't
bargain for more time, consider getting outside help--a subcontractor or collaborator
(more on this later).
You have a successful business--the phone is ringing and you have a project deadline, but your computer just crashed. The dog wants attention. Don't kick the dog! Let the phone ring over to voice mail, step back and take a deep breath, maybe several. If necessary, take a walk around the block, with the dog. Try to remember why you went into business for yourself, and appreciate the fact that you can spend this quality time with Rover, in the middle of a crisis. Then go back to work, check your messages, reboot your computer, and get that deadline out of the way.
What other life? When you're a one-person show, or even have a few people working for you, it's hard to get time to have a personal life. Sometimes you may have to set boundaries, or add structure. For example, you might work from 8-6 and after 6 you leave your business and become a "real person" again. This is hard to do if there's work to be done. It's a tradeoff between keeping your sanity and doing all you can for the customer.
Though the jobs for an independent might be small, you can clearly benefit from project
management concepts designed for large corporations. As your own resource, how well you
control your work and bring it to closure are critical.
I once overheard a client (the main contractor for a project) explain over the phone to his
client, "there's fast, there's good, there's cheap. Pick two; you can't have all
three." I was struck by the symmetry and candor of this statement, and later I saw
its direct application in the project management triangle.
[Figure].
"Fast" refers to the timeline of the job. "Good" refers, of course, to
quality; and "Cheap" refers to resources. Of course, we all want to excel in all
three areas. If you are in high demand, however, the most realistic goal you can strive
for may be an acceptable level of all three.
One very useful tool to manage projects is the Gantt chart. It is a chart showing tasks down the left-hand side and the project schedule along the top, as shown in Figure nn. To create and use a Gantt chart:
In creating the chart you'll see where you have slack time for you to perhaps spread
the steps out or get other work done; and where you'll be in a crunch so that you may need
to acquire other resources.
There are many other project management tools (work breakdown structure, critical path,
resource scheduling) that can give you more power over large, complex projects.
Keep a clear sense of what projects must be given priority over others, and know why: because you are using resources that may soon not be available? because this one is bigger, more visible, closer to your desired career path, pays better? If necessary, especially when you find yourself approaching panic, take a moment and make a priority list. Combining all your work into one big Gantt chart (see above) can be very helpful. When you do, develop realistic numbers for low, medium, and high (or at least low and high) hours to complete each task. Make sure you have that amount of time available: plan your work, then work your plan. Keep yourself honest by developing your own measure for the maximum number of projects you can handle at once. While some anticipated busy times can dissipate temporarily for one reason or another, just the sheer management time of multiple projects does not go away. Can you keep everyone informed of status, prod lagging team members, and do the work for three projects at once? Five? Seven? In one way, the size of projects doesn't matter as much because reporting status, communicating among team members, and working out problems can take the same amount of time for a small project as for a large project. Once you've discovered your level, don't exceed it!
No matter how well you plan and coordinate your projects, the client can throw in a monkey wrench that defeats all your efforts. A few common behaviors:
Now you're on your own with lots of work and a smoothly running office. Life couldn't be better--until your computer crashes, or you forget to send out invoices. You long for the days when you could just sit in your corner and write while the world revolved around you. Administrative tasks and technical concerns don't have to cause headaches. They just need to become part of your routine.
Don't forget to pay the bills! While tempting, it's not a good way to go. You also need
to remember to send out invoices, order supplies, back up your computers, and water the
plants.
A good way to handle this is to set aside a specific time each week, or day, for
administrative tasks. The amount of time you'll need depends on your business. It's a good
idea to do backups daily, requiring just a few minutes at the end of each day. The other
types of administrative tasks can probably be handled in a few hours, one afternoon a
week.
When your disk crashes, you can't just call the Help Desk and have them bring you a new one. You have to do all of the following, all by yourself:
This sort of event is much more traumatic when you have to handle it alone. But stuff happens. For this particular example, backups will help you recover from the panic much faster. Clients especially like to hear "all your work is backed up so nothing is lost" following "my hard drive just crashed." It's worth it to spend some time planning for disaster. This doesn't mean you need to become paranoid--just think a bit about what could happen (fire, earthquake, snow storm, your sister's toddler) to your office and do what you can to plan for a fast recovery. Some tips:
When you find yourself with an excess of work, you need to do something fast. There is nothing worse than losing your edge because you thought you could do it all yourself. Here are some ways to expand your abilities:
The best way to make sure you're meeting client expectations is to communicate often.
If you have email, use it. If you don't, call. If you're local, drop in to the office once
a week or so. Talk to other members of the project team--ask them what's changed recently.
Boldly cross the political lines between marketing and R&D and talk to members of both
groups, unless this will get you in trouble. If you don't know, take a chance.
Keep in constant contact with the person who hired you-- the documentation department
manager, the product manager, or the R&D manager. Let your contact know what you've
been doing recently and how the project is going. Ask for feedback about your work and let
everyone on the project team know that you're receptive to suggestions.
It's easier to meet or exceed client expectations if it's clear from the start what the
project entails. List out the project deliverables and deadlines. Show samples of your
work. Talk to the client about your ideas for the project. In some ways this comes back to
good communication. But it also means making sure you, and your client, have a good
understanding of the scope of the project.
Included in defining the scope is specifying what will NOT be part of the project. For
example, you might document the hardware, but not the accompanying software; put this in
writing.
Create a schedule at the start of the project, keep it current, and give the client a
copy of your schedule each time you update it. Consult members of the project team before
you do an update. For example, check with R&D to verify beta and release to
manufacturing dates, then update your dates based on those.
Be clear about deadlines for both yourself and your client. Specify that all interim
deadlines, including reviews, must be completed on time for the project to stay on
schedule.
Don't leave subcontractors and vendors out of the loop. If your scheduled time to go to print looks like it will shift, give the printer plenty of advance notice. Subcontractors can be a challenge-you don't want to burden a sub with information that isn't relevant, but changing circumstances can suddenly make information relevant. Also, don't just hand work off to a sub and assume you're done. Check that sub's progress too, or require that the sub inform you on a regular basis.
For projects involving several team members in different locations, weekly status reports are a godsend. Keep them simple and straightforward; they are not for in-depth analysis of difficult problems, but just to keep everyone aware of the major points. Include a few headings such as: work accomplished, work yet to be done, estimated date of completion of tasks, and bottlenecks.
When work is going well, life goes well too. When you run into a problem, it can infect
your whole mindset. Here are a few examples:
The schedule is going to hell in a handbasket. At this point, it doesn't matter whose
fault it is (yours or the client's). What matters is for both of you to admit it, regroup,
and agree on a new, realistic schedule. In doing so, look at what caused the schedule to
deteriorate and build in ways to overcome these obstacles.
The clients can't agree. One person's vision clashes with another's. And you are in the
middle, trying to reach consensus so you can finish the work and get paid. If you have the
skills, you can attempt to facilitate a conflict resolution session; or you can inform
them that you need to table the project and go on with other work while they reach
agreement themselves.
You don't agree with the client. This is more difficult. Client relationships have been
severed due to disagreements. Sometimes this is the best outcome, but you need to make a
judgment about whether there is room for compromise, you are willing to give in, or you
feel okay about losing the job (and possibly the client) over the issue.
Your method falls down. Ouch! Despite your best efforts, your plan isn't working. Spend a
minimum of time wearing the hair shirt over this, then move on. Do some research. Seek
advice from colleagues. Develop some alternatives. Then 'fess up to the client, putting as
positive a face as you can on the matter. A client will react much more positively to your
honesty in the middle of the project (combined with a well-thought-out discussion of what
you intend to do about it) than to your strong desire to pretend nothing is wrong. Even
so, you might need to make contractual or monetary allowances for your mistake.
The client doesn't pay. Sooner or later this problem rears its head to everyone. Of
course, make sure you have a standard line in every invoice, something like "Payment
is due on receipt. A 1.5% per month late fee is added to payments not received within 30
days." That is allowable by law. Then enforce it. If you don't receive timely payment
the first time, you might want to call about it. If it continues to happen, re-invoice the
client, adding the late fee. If you still don't get the money, you might need to go to
Small Claims court.
No matter what the problem is, it is crucial to begin by admitting that you have a
problem, then look for the solution. It's amazing how much effort you can employ trying to
avoid looking at a problem. It is always better to brainstorm some solutions, then
research them. Get help if needed. Using a trusted colleague as a sounding board is an
invaluable tactic; you may be so emotionally involved in the situation that your judgment
is clouded. Or you may just want to give a test run to an unusual solution before trying
it out on the client.
When you are in the middle of assessing a problem and working it out, practice your
compartmentalizing skills. It is extremely important that you be able to turn your mind
away from the dilemma when you are not at work. Not only is it better for your mental
health, but it will help you free your mind to see solutions.
Producing quality can be the most important aspect of being independent. Unless you're
a cost leader (the cheapest writer on the block), you need to have a reputation for high
quality work. If you skimp in this area, or rush to put out a poor product because you
took on too much work, your reputation will suffer. If this happens enough, you're back to
pounding the pavement.
Start by being honest about your capabilities. If you tell a prospective client that you
don't know how to do something but can learn it, and have reasonable justification for
your ability to learn, the client just may pay you to acquire the knowledge you need. This
is good for both you and your client. Most of us respect a professional who is confident
enough to admit to not knowing something.
Don't overbook your time. Easy to say, harder to do. If you have too much on your plate,
quality will inevitably suffer, so keep this in mind when you're deciding whether to take
on another project.
From here, your options change depending on whether you are a one-person shop or a small
group. Single-person operations face the greater challenge. It's rare that you can depend
on the client for adequate editing, yet many clients try to eliminate that portion of your
proposal by insisting that they can do that work. You can hire an editor for low-to-medium
levels of editing (grammar, punctuation, spelling, format, and even writing style), but
very few outsiders can do good substantive editing. A few tips:
As a small shop, you have more options. For example:
Both giving and getting feedback are essential to serving client needs well. Follow a
few simple practices:
During projects, build in systematic checkpoints. These might include a scheduled edit
pass, status meetings or reports, and the all-important review session. Use review
sessions to model processes, discover holes, resolve disputes, and get everyone aligned
behind the documentation effort. Don't forget to feed your clients (literally): it keeps
them coming.
If, during a talk with a client, a previously unknown problem with your product surfaces,
use this as a golden opportunity to improve your service right there. Be aggressive about
finding out all aspects of the problem-you really want to know everything about it. Assure
the client you will come up with a solution. If the atmosphere is not too tense, begin
looking for solutions in the same conversation. Above all, leave the client with the
impression that you want to get to the bottom of this, not gloss over their concerns.
At the end of a project, conduct a post mortem. It can be as simple as asking, "How'd
I do?" and then "Anything else?" until you've heard it all. Be sure to
follow that up by giving your opinions of how it went as well; if there are things the
client can do to make jobs go better, you may as well mention them. If it seems warranted,
you can produce a formal project report, but make sure to get client feedback too.
If you have a steady client, or on an occasional basis to all clients, you may want to
conduct client surveys. As with post mortems, these can be as formal or as informal as you
like. In addition to a few well-chosen "rating" questions, ask a few open-ended
ones to allow your client to express specific opinions.
Once you get a business going, pulling all of these factors together to keep it going in the direction you want is a never-ending challenge. It is the nature of your business now. It's what makes it so hard, so interesting, and so rewarding when you do occasionally get it right.