One of the few advantages to lying around feeling like your face has been punched, with the edge smoothed by anti-inflammatories and pain killers with codeine is that one has time to think. About the big questions.  With the PhD experiment behind me, and the dental surgery over except the pain and healing, I had the opportunity to turn my focus: to grow or not to grow? That is the question.

The contract magnetism described elsewhere shows no sign of abating.  How do we decide whether to make this our raison-d'être?  Clearly some of it has to be "by the numbers". We need cash flow projections, a calendar of expenses, a sense of who wants to work how many hours and how much money they want to make.  We need a list of existing clients, clients who've expressed an interest, and others we could reasonably go after.  We need to have a marketing plan.  We need to know what our niche is.  Only the last of these seems to be relatively decided. 

We have historically worked with non-goverment organizations at the national level and small firms, generally of self-employed people, who also work with government.  There seems to be imminent potential for more local groups and government itself, which seem like logical extensions to me.  So, the target clientele is identified, and its demand for Internet services is only going to grow over the next decade or two.  But how much? How fast? And can we stay afloat?

And then there is the Scottish connection.  As one of our colleagues is in Scotland, there is the potential of getting Scottish business.   Another works for an international organizaiton, and that might lead to some of those possibilities.  Again, what are the expenses involved, once one considers the added expenses associated with holding clients hands over such long distances?  And how much of that business is actually going to go to a small Canadian firm?

And, can we answer these questions with enough certainty for anyone to make the leap to this company as a sole or major source of income?  I think of that question, and I want to blurt out "no growth'.  I never intended to be an entrepreneur.  I never even intended to own a computer, for heaven's sake!   Now I am considering being an employer, as well as marketer and hand-holder, and advisor, and internet architect.  And, let us not forget, I need to continue the work in the policy sector, government relations, and the voluntary sector at large. 

But in spite of it all, I think we'd have fun. I think we can make a living.  And I think we'd be good at what we do.  Does life get a lot better than that?  Not if I'm right.

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