The first month of self-employment is in the books and thus far, the adventure has been a blast. My initial business plan was simple: help New Hampshire small businesses with their online presence. In the announcement video I quipped: “Let’s build something amazing”. Over the last month, I’ve kept that in mind when meeting with potential clients. Understand client goals, business plans, initiatives, and then helping translate those into a website that helps grow their business, is what I do on a daily basis.
It’s Good To Have Goals
Starting the month off, personal targets were set for:
- Clients Contacted
- Lead List Growth
- Booked Revenue Amount
- Booked Client Count
At the start of the month, for an hour each day, I reached out to potential clients and also added to a list of leads to follow up with next month. February wasn’t going to be a month where the Zimventures bank account would see positive growth, but it certainly would see some invoices written.
The only missed goal was the total client count, although I could argue that target was hit if you consider one client has multiple sites that need to be done. The booked revenue number wasn’t invoiced, but client commitments. Invoices will be written after their project has been completed.
Next month things will start to get more challenging as the workload transitions from purely lead generation to a combination of lead generation and client work – a nice challenge to have. To help with the sales piece, I’ve reached out to a good friend who’s no stranger to Zimventures and our past venture: 3 Up Golf.
Workin’ On The Weekend
Coming from a standard “nine to five” gig, it was an interesting adjustment to have such a flexible schedule. On most days, I didn’t have the opportunity to block off the entire day to do a single task. Instead, each day was filled with smaller blocks of tasks. In addition, I also have been taking the opportunity to work the weekend.
Wait – what?
I haven’t found myself in the mindset of “working for the weekend”. If there’s something interesting that’s happening on a Wednesday, say a 75 degree day, working on a Saturday just isn’t a big deal.
Needs Improvement
Not everything was sunshine and rainbows during the last month. The sticker-shock of enrolling in a health care plan, failing to keep up with social media, and lack of receiving invoices were all not in the play-book for February.