Weekly update - 15th July to 21st July

I’m getting a little tired, as I’m sure you are too, of starting every post with “Nothing much to write about this week” - well, I’m afraid, I’m going to have to do it again… although don’t worry too much, as past posts of that nature have shown, I can still manage to ramble on a little.

This past week I’ve been a very naughty boy… as I pointed out in my last entry, the missus was enjoying a well earned week off work - the perfect excuse for me to give myself an unofficial one too.  While I did manage to squeeze some work out, I ended up spending a large part of the last 7 days watching The West Wing (we’ve just “discovered” it on Virgin OnDemand and now we’re hooked) and playing on my Xbox 360.

The problem with this is that my conscience absolutely beat the living crap out of me, and I spent a large part of that wasted time fretting about how much time I was wasting!  It’s only natural, I suppose, when running your own business to feel guilty about not paying it attention 24/7.  I guess it’s fine if you’re flying high and making an absolute killing, but if like most freelancers you’ve not yet reached those dizzy heights then it’s a different story.

All this guilt has, however, forced me to give myself a much needed kick up the arse this week.  One of my biggest problems is procrastination, however usually all I need is a strict schedule and I’m okay.  Problem with this is that strict schedules are what many of us chose freelancing to get away from!  So, over the weekend I put together a basic yet flexible weekly schedule, which allocates time for me to not only work on projects, but also to work on areas of the business that I have neglected these past months, such as accounting.  While I’m under no illusions about my ability to stick to this to the minute, I’ve allocated “open slots” where I can move around blocks of time to - so if on a Tuesday afternoon I decide I can’t be bothered to balance the books, I can move that task to one of the open slots on Saturday.  It’s not rocket science really - I’m sure you all have your own little systems in place to try and instill some kind of discipline in your working lives; just have to hope this does the trick for me.

I’m once again beginning to fret a little about where my work is coming from over the next few months.  I do still have a couple of ongoing projects, but leads from BNI seemed to have dried up 6 weeks ago - and on top of that, there seems to be a lull in local networking events this month too.  This has pushed me to think even more about marketing and advertising ideas, however the finance for pursuing anything worthwhile in this area is non-existant… well… it is, but its tied up in my “safety net”.  If I had any balls, I’d take the risk of blowing all my backup cash on marketing - he who dares and all that - and if I were a single guy living with my parents or renting a cheap flat then yeah, maybe I would - but I’m not that guy, I have commitments that I need to take care of, and in my eyes, going it alone as a freelancer is risk enough.

That said, I have made enquiries about financing.  Business loans seem to be extremely expensive in the current economic climate; however there are still some half decent personal loan deals out there, so I’ve been dangling my feet in the water there.  Of course, with this, comes the dilemma of whether I want to get into more debt and be stuck making loan repayments for the next 7 years.

Whoever said this gig was easy?

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