No-one who is self-employed is allowed to complain about having too much work.  And I'm not complaining. Really, I'm not.  But I am baffled, to some extent. 

When I was working entirely on my own, I always had enough work.   Well, almost always.  (Other than during my on-line courting days. But more about that another day.)  And I very rarely had too much. I found that most clients were able to wait, and I could schedule my time so that I could work steadily, but not like a crazy woman.  And then, I got partners and a web business. 

havidave.com was intended to be a part-time venture for me, my life partner (aka the resident technowizard), and a graphic artist with whom I've worked forever.  Originally, it started because they were working together on a project, and had no idea who they were billing or how much or how often.  I thought they needed an administrator. Next thing I knew, I was the president and we were incorporated.  That was about four years ago.

At the time, we were hastened into overdrive by the large contract the two of them were working on.  Having invested hundreds of dollars monthly into a relatively fast Internet connection to meet the demands of the client, we fired the client, about six months later.  But we still had the overhead costs.   And we discussed whether to try to compete with the 18-year-olds who could undercharge us at every turn for HTML coding and bleeding-edge technology.  I argued for niche marketing, and I won.  Only because the other two weren't really going to do any marketing.  And I was the one who was expected to have the contacts, and draw in the clients.

Okay, so it took three years. But it's happening.  In a big way.  In the meantime, the resident technowizard has taken on a "day job" that occupies him outside the office for eight hours a day (although only till the end of December), and our graphic designer partner has other clients independent of havidave.com.   And I still have some clients who have no interest in the web.  But fewer and fewer.

It might be because I'm increasingly convinced that non-goverment organizations need to be using the web to accomplish their missions.  Maybe it's because they've figured that out on their own.  (They do have children, after all, who must show them this regularly, those who run these organizations.)  Whatever it is, more and more of my work includes research, policy analysis, and web development.   A happy marriage, undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to have multiple clients and only part-time staff, including in the presidency/manager position!

Everywhere I go, I get contracts. Family reunion.   Baby-naming ceremonies.  Drinks with casual acquaintances.  Heck, sometimes I get contracts just because others go to meetings or parties and get asked if they know anyone who could do X or Y.  My life partner has taken to calling me the contract magnet, and giving truth to every new-agey assertion that to affirm something is to make it come true, it's coming true. 

As I noted, this isn't really a complaint.  After all, it was clear months ago that this business had to either grow or shrink. It had to take a bigger part of the working income of many individuals involved, or a lesser part.   And it's not entirely clear, yet, which that would be.

Our Edinburgh friends, however, are keen to grow such a business with us, from opposite sides of the Atlantic. (We're already working with one of them on a couple of projects.  The other is a contract magnet by profession.  We could be in deep trouble.)  Making a decision on busines growth was on my list for this fall.  

Now it's becoming more pressing, and unless we take some action, the decision will be made for us.  We're all excited about the work, and the work seems to be abundant.  Is it abundant enough? That's the president's job to figure out.  But when one is a contract magnet, it's hard to do more than get the work, manage the work, deliver the work, and bill for the work.

In the interim, I have yet to do my follow-up oral on my comps (the profs are trying to find a team they can all get into one room together.  Ha! It was their idea!).  And the one course I was supposed to take this fall starts tomorrow.  Can I make a business plan and decide whether to grow a business while doing a growing volume or work and still take a doctoral level course?  I think not, but without time for thinking, I'll never know. 

So, I'll attend the first class.  Try to get a sense of the scope of the work: it's to be a one-semester course spread over two, and to conclude with the defence of our dissertation proposals.  It sounds like too much to me, for this coming year.  But more thought (and words) will be dedicated to this subject tomorrow.

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