New goals, new territory

For the first 8 years of my career I worked at Morsekode, a modern ad agency. I loved my time there, but after having my first kid I decided to leave and start freelancing to provide a better work life balance. Freelancing has been an amazing journey so far and I’ve been so thankful that I keep getting new clients. After doing that for four years now, I’m slowly starting to turn a corner where I have started to set some new goals. While I will still be freelancing for the foreseeable future, it may start to look a bit different over the next year.

I have learned over the past few years that I especially love two things:

1. Designing User Interfaces for Software – Figuring out how a user comes into an application, what they click on, how they navigate, what functionality they need, is some of my favorite work. It is half design and half intuition. It’s not just about putting a pretty face on some data, but rather figuring out how the user will think as they use the application and work to accomplish their tasks. It is really challenging work, but also extremely fun.
2. Developing Web Based Software – Coding web applications is hugely challenging, but also really rewarding. Working on the front end, back end and everything in between gives me a great degree of satisfaction in the product. I love that users become really invested in the application and have strong opinions about how it should work. Since learning Laravel and Vue.js and developing client applications over the last few years I finally feel confident enough to actually call myself a web application developer.

Having both of these loves is a bit unique, most people would choose one or the other, and not both. But I have come to believe that I can provide great value by doing both of these. I can rapidly prototype an application and get something off the ground in weeks rather than months or years. (even if there is a lot left to be done after that)

So knowing that these are my proficiencies, I am going to be focusing most of my business on these goals over the coming year:

1. Designing and Developing Web Applications for Clients – It is so fun to hear about a client’s challenges and how software can help their company run in a more efficient manner. I love working with clients and figuring out their priorities and how we can accomplish their goals and collaborating every step of the way.
2. Taking my Side Projects More Seriously – I have always had side projects. They are fun and challenge me to learn new things or take new risks. But I traditionally haven’t put much thought into building a business. I’m terrible at marketing, and I often don’t push a product enough to make it succeed. I’ve been learning a ton about this thanks to the online community as well as podcasts like Indie Hackers. I’m hoping that my next project could be the one that starts to become more of a business and less of a side project.

I’ve been thankful for a group of guys (our mastermind group) that I’ve been getting together with that have helped to clarify this vision and push me on my goals as I work to accomplish them. I’ll try to write an update in 6 months or so to see how I’m doing!