TL;DR: 

Goals can be related to all sorts of things: 

For another, when things are busy, it’s hard to find the brain power to think deeply about the direction of my business, or if I’m actually enjoying my work. I love writing, and for the last decade the fact I’ve been able to make a living stringing words together into sentences has been the fulfillment of a dream. It really hasn’t ever mattered much to me what I’m writing about, as long as I’m getting to write for a living.

Over the course of the last year, that has started to change but I didn’t realize it at all until things slowed down a bit. Until mid-April or so, my calendar was full, then things started tapering down. No one has specifically said why, and I have reason to believe it’s largely due to the general economic atmosphere. People have been talking about a recession for a year or more now, and that seems to have affected how businesses are planning and budgeting. 

I still have several great anchor clients, and feel certain that I could undertake a marketing campaign and find new work relatively quickly. However, for the last two months, I’ve taken a different path, and that is to let things simmer as they are and try to figure out if what I’ve been doing is ideal, or if there might be ways to make my work life better.

Reaching a goal feels really good. When it happens, though, you have to make some decisions. You can choose to stay at whatever level you’ve reached, you can set a new goal, you can decide the whole situation isn’t what you thought it would be. 

The shape of the goal matters

Among freelancers, income is a fairly simple, and often necessary, measuring stick for goals. It’s also easy to get stuck in that groove, striving for a higher and higher income. In the earliest years, income is an excellent driver. Some people start out making a great living in the first year, but I wasn’t one of them. It took about five years before I could pay my bills, and then a few more before I could say I was earning a comfortable living. After a few years of being comfortable, income stopped being a motivator to work more hours. 

Because that’s the tradeoff: eventually, most people have to work more hours in order to earn more money. It didn’t take very long for me to realize I value time to do other things as much as I value money. Tracking my work hours forced me to acknowledge that realization, and once I did, my work life was more comfortable in some indefinable way. I stopped feeling “overworked” and started appreciating that I enjoy both work and time off. 

Being able to do things like help my family — watching children, going to doctor’s appointments, running errands, whatever — take care of household tasks without feeling pressed or rushed, go to the gym for classes I enjoy, or any of about a million other things, is as important as earning more money (as long as there’s enough money to pay the bills, of course). So, after income, having more time and flexibility is a key goal. 

An acquaintance in the freelance community, the wonderful Jennifer Gregory Goforth, wrote a post titled Why 2022 Was My Most Successful Year as a Freelance Content Marketing Writer last December. In it she discusses how she was able to very quickly ramp up her work hours and also reduce her working hours when needed. She discusses taking time off in January for a family trip, then working plenty of hours through late winter but enjoying a slow summer. For her, that flexibility equaled success. 

Another type of goal is professional development. As I mentioned earlier, for a long time, writing for pay was enough. Professional development was mostly focused around learning how to set up efficient systems, negotiate, market, and all of the business-related parts of being a freelancer. Now, I’m feeling a need to expand my skill set. Conferences, boot camps, courses, new types of projects, and new industries or topics all offer opportunities to learn and grow. 

One of the reasons I love running Smiling Tree Writing is that I get to learn new things all of the time. The research part of writing is fun, and talking to subject matter experts is one of my favorite things. It all appeals to the part of me that loved school. It makes sense that adding to my own skills and knowledge in order to expand my services and offerings would be an important goal. 

How do you set work-related goals? Have you noticed them changing as your career progresses? 

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It’s May and in May, I’m usually thinking about gardening. To be truthful, I usually start thinking about gardening in February, when it’s too cold and gloomy to really do any gardening. In March, I clean up my raised beds and plant a few cool weather things even though they never do well here because it generally goes from cool to HOT real quick and everything bolts. In April, I start getting more serious, pulling weeds and spreading mulch and starting seeds in little pots.

But May is magical. Some of the most beautiful flowers bloom in May—iris, peony, sometimes even the lilies are getting going by the end of May. It’s not too hot, the mosquitos aren’t usually so bad, and most years, I’m in the garden for at least a few minutes everyday.

This year has been different

I’m not sure why, but the garden is inspiring more guilt than joy. I look at it, make an enormous mental task list, feel entirely defeated, and walk away. The May flowers bloomed, but they were obscured by weeds. And that, my friends, feels like quite the metaphor.

Sometimes, joy is an active concept. You can’t just sit back and wait for it to waft by and envelop you. A bit of luck is required, but so is some work. To try and recapture some of my garden joy this year, I decided to do a couple of different things: I invited a sweet six year old to pull weeds with me and I spent some money on plants.

Eliza, the six year old, didn’t want to pull weeds and whined a little bit (but only very little because she’s not generally a whiner). Within about three minutes, though, she was getting enthusiastic. She got to use a garden tool and tools are exciting, and she really liked seeing the pile of pulled weeds get bigger as we worked: “Look! It’s taller than me now!”

We had three beds cleared in about 20 minutes, and I was feeling some of Eliza’s enthusiasm. She got bored and hungry, so went inside for a snack, and I spent 15 more minutes outside with my tiny tiller (it attaches to my electric weed eater and is perfect for raised beds) and got the soil ready for planting.

After that, Eliza and I went plant shopping. Most years, I start the vast majority of my veggies from seed. Seedlings are so much more expensive, and I really love seeing seeds sprout and get their true leaves—it’s one of my favorite parts of the process. But this year, I needed some instant gratification. We bought three varieties of tomato plants, two different kinds of peppers (red bell and poblano), a cucumber plant, and some herbs (rosemary, thyme, and basil), plus a few decorative things, like a red geranium and some succulents, for fun.

Just like that, in less than an hour and for about $100, my garden joy had returned. Each day since, I’ve found myself outside, doing just a couple of small tasks and remembering how much I enjoy my small garden, anticipating some super fresh salads, and thinking about what needs to be done with pleasure rather than guilt.

Back to the metaphor

The weeds get in the way and detract from the good view in all sorts of literal and metaphorical ways. Just as I couldn’t quite get in the gardening groove this year, sometimes I can’t quite get in the working groove either. I love Smiling Tree Writing and most everything that goes with it (except taxes, I can’t quite find any love for that chore!), but even so, sometimes marketing requires a monumental effort, or even completing an assignment I’m getting paid for demands serious self-discipline.

Of course, inviting Eliza to help write about protecting business data or research potential client companies isn’t really an option, but I’m finding equivalent ways to recapture my work joy.

Networking, both informally and through more structured means, like a conference, is pretty close to weeding with an enthusiastic friend. A marketing challenge can be fun, even if it’s only because I have an excuse to chat with others about work (a well-known pitfall of freelancing is not having co-workers around to talk to during the day). Usually, though, the idea of keeping up with others during the challenge helps, too. I’m taking part in a summer challenge this year for all these reasons.

Conferences are their own special thing. I love the fact that more conferences are virtual now, because travel is difficult for me (it’s called a comfort zone, for a reason!). I’ve signed up for the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference next month, and plan to attend sessions on journalism and book writing in addition to content marketing for a little extra variety.

Recently, I took a bootcamp style class on content strategy to add to my skill set. Most of the work I do is content writing and learning about strategy is exciting. I find myself looking for ways I can market this new offering, and directions it could take my business. It seems really similar to buying plants. I spent a little bit of money, felt more motivated to work than I have in a long time, and can’t wait to see how this new seedling grows.

What else can we do?

The other thing, the one I might be too stubborn to consider, is quitting. I’ve quit a bunch of hobbies over the years like cross stitch (I might try again now that I have reading glasses), jewelry making, baking bread, and countless others. Sometimes moving on is the right choice.

But I don’t like it. I’m not sure if it’s social conditioning, pure stubbornness, or what. I rarely consider quitting Smiling Tree Writing anymore, but it could be beneficial in some ways to have a traditional job. Getting rid of the garden might allow space for other hobbies to flourish, but it makes me terribly sad to think about it.

How do you handle it when things you normally love don’t bring you joy? Do you easily recognize when it’s time to move on? Do you have specific tactics to bring back the excitement? Are you a “just get it done” kind of person?

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I recently took on an assignment writing about institutional research (IR) in K-12 independent schools. IR in that setting is a type of data analysis, and can be used in many of the same ways businesses are now using data to inform decision-making. From admissions and fundraising to student life and student wellness to diversity equity and inclusion, IR can help schools measure the impact of programs, better understand trends and how to effect them, and even specific elements of teaching and learning.

One thing I didn’t expect in talking to a bunch of data scientists was to hear the word “emotional” mentioned several times. The experts talked about how sometimes, when you collect data and analyze it, it doesn’t say what you expect it to say and that can be upsetting. Or demoralizing.

As I conducted the interviews, I began to understand that I do IR in my business all the time, but it’s an institution of one. I measure the number of assignments I have, when they are assigned, how long they take from assigned to submitted, how I’m paid per project, word, and hour, how many hours I spend on each element of a project, and anything else I can think of to measure. And, I realized, it’s also sometimes an emotional exercise.

An Example

In 2018 or so, I decided it was time to “level up.” My business has changed and grown over the years, and at that time, I was looking to boost my income significantly. I set myself a course of professional development: I read a few books, started participating more in a couple of networking groups, joined a professional organization I’d considered before, and started tracking both my clients and my time a little more closely.

It was the result of the time tracking that caught me off-guard. I work from home and it often feels like I’m always working. Time is … well, it’s difficult for me. I struggle to understand how long it should take me to get places. I get lost in my work (or more often, in a book) and forget what time it is. In order to track my time, I put a piece of graph paper under my keyboard, and jotted down any time I changed activities. “8:45 email” then “8:50 coffee” and so on.

The result: I was at my keyboard, actively working, about 10 hours a week.

That counted checking and responding to email, administrative stuff like bookkeeping, marketing my services, participating in networking activities, and of course, writing. It did not count pulling weeds while thinking about writing, or going for a run and mulling the structure of an article. It also didn’t count random social media scrolling, chatting with friends, or paying household bills. I tried to keep it strictly to work.

This realization brought on a tangle of emotions. I was shocked. It really felt like I worked at least full time, but 10 hours? a WEEK? That’s not even part-time! It also made me ask a bunch of other questions, with the biggest one being what, exactly was I doing with my time? Going back to my graph paper, I found that I was doing a lot of laundry, handling TONS of tasks like dealing with insurance, utilities, and other household things, exercising more than I realized, and generally staying quite busy with stuff that needed to be done.

It’s hard to describe the emotional cascade that followed this data analysis. It seriously took me about a year to come to terms with it all.

Some of the feelings:
* I was proud of myself for earning a full-time income in so little time. Even by that point I was earning more than I ever had in any regular job.
* Looking back over my life, I was sad that I spent so many years beating myself up for being “lazy” when in reality I simply had not had time to do all the things. There’s no way I could do all of the things I do now if I had to work 40 hours a week and commute an hour a day. It’s no wonder I couldn’t maintain a regular exercise routine or do any creative writing when I worked a 9 to 5 and children to care for.
* My hourly rate was far higher than I thought it was before tracking, which gave me confidence to boost my rates a little.
* I wondered what would happen if I set up a schedule that was closer to 20-25 hours a week. Would my income double with more hours worked? What if I filled 10 hours a week with marketing activities?
* I wrestled with the idea of whether or not I work “full time.” Can I really say that I do?

During that year, I also thought a lot about “time wasted.” I felt like if I wasn’t earning money with all that “spare” time I was wasting it. I had to consider whether what I was dealing with was toxic productivity and whether or not I was doing tasks just for the sake of being busy?

Finally, the big question: do I spend my time doing what I want to do? If I knew I only had a year or two to live, what kinds of changes would I make to my daily schedule? If I won the lottery and money wasn’t an issue, what would I do with my time?

Did I make changes?

I did make changes, but they weren’t particularly drastic. I carried on with my professional development plan, and eventually stopped tracking hours so closely (for awhile). Now I’m working between 12 and 15 hours a week, and my income, as of last year, had doubled. I’m on track to increase by an additional 25% this year.

I still fall prey to feeling guilty about the amount of time I (don’t) work, but much more rarely. Mostly I’m very happy to be able to do other things that are important to me in addition to doing work that I enjoy. I’m grateful to have control of my time and understand more clearly now why I don’t clock tons of hours. The work I do requires deep thought and it’s nearly impossible to track that. Even when I’m not at my desk the work is happening in my brain—often in the background, without my conscious self realizing it’s going on. Sometimes I sit down at my keyboard and the words are simply there in my brain waiting to be typed out because they arranged themselves while I wasn’t paying attention. Other times, I write a sentence, scroll social media, come back and write another sentence.

One of the changes I made was to start working in timed blocks and attempting to extend those blocks. On the days the words are waiting to be typed, I can focus for about an hour or so at a time, but on the sentence-at-a-time days, my focus only lasts for about 10 minutes. My goal is to get to the point where I can focus for around 90 minutes at a stretch. Focused blocks of work are super efficient. I’m always amazed by how quickly projects come together when I can shut out everything else.

Another change was to expand my service offerings. Until about 2019, I described myself solely as an healthcare information technology content writer. Around that time, I started taking on more varied technology writing assignments, and that has been one of the biggest drivers of increasing my income. Many experts say that niching down more and more is the key to doing well as a freelancer. In my case, expanding a little was more helpful.

I also started feeling more comfortable accepting more projects and stopped worrying about taking on too much. Knowing that my schedule is relatively light most of the time makes me less worried about becoming burnt out. I know that as long as I stay under 25 hours a week most of the time, I’ll be fine. Two or three weeks in a row of 25 hours, though, pushes me dangerously near burnout. In other words, now I know my limits much better than I did before.

Have you done this type of data analysis to see where your time goes? How did you feel about it? Did it make you want to change things?

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One of the things about freelancing that people complain about is the “feast or famine cycle.” It seems like you’re either covered in work, getting up early and staying up late, struggling to meet all the deadlines or you’ve only got an hour or two of work to fill each day. There are plenty of strategies to beat the feast or famine cycle, but it’s still likely to happen now and again to everyone.

This morning, I got up, did a short yoga practice and came to my desk ready to get the work done. But there wasn’t really any work to do! Even after a dozen years of running this business, I encounter hills and valleys. Mostly, I don’t fret about them anymore. In this post, I discuss why I don’t fret and what I do instead.

Keep a list of tasks for slow times

There are always going to be things that you put to the side when it’s busy. Slow times are great for working on projects. Maybe you have a course you want to develop, or you’re building a database for marketing. Perhaps you have a personal project you often neglect. Have you always wanted to publish a series of e-books? Maybe you’re working on a novel.

I’ve started keeping a list of things to do when it’s slow. They are all things I want to get done, but usually feel like I don’t have time to do. Some of them are work-related, many are not. This week, I plan to do some business planning, research a couple of potential niche areas, and maybe start building my marketing spreadsheet for this year (yeah, I’m behind on that!). I also plan on doing some big work in my garden, making some progress on a decluttering project, and deep cleaning my bathroom.

Reach out to past clients

I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in the last few years, and am guilty of not staying in touch when my work-focus changes or I find new, higher-paying clients. That’s not good business for several reasons.

Editors change positions and staying in touch can mean better work from folks who know you and like you. Staying top-of-mind is important when people are busy or stressed, and really, who isn’t busy or stressed right now? Ultimately, marketing is about building solid relationships and staying in touch is how you build a relationship.

Work on administrative tasks

This year, I’m focusing on tracking my time and projects so that I can get a clear idea of how much I earn per hour on different projects and from different clients. I enlisted the help of the wonderful professional organizer Julie Bestry in building a spreadsheet to help with this, and am finding there are endless ways to use the information. But, the spreadsheet always needs tweaking and analyzing the data I collect takes time. I spent quite a bit of time on that today.

Email cleanup and filing is a never-ending task, and I tend to do it when I’m tired or when there’s not a ton of work. It usually doesn’t make my list of things to do when it’s slow, but probably should.

My colleague Jen Phillips uses scripts and pre-written forms in her business and that seems like an excellent approach. Slow times are great for putting things like that together.

Taming the Famine Anxiety

There’s feast anxiety—how am I going to get all of this done? why did I say yes to this? my work is going to suck and no one will ever hire me again! And there’s famine anxiety—I will never get more work, and my family will starve! this is the beginning of the end of my business! I’m going to have to start from scratch and rebuild my client roster. And the one that tends to get me: If I relax and enjoy this, I’ll be doomed! I didn’t plan this slow time so it’s most certainly a harbinger of disaster.

All of this seems a tad dramatic, doesn’t it? Always, looking back at either a time of feasting or a time of famine, I realize my fears were quite out of proportion to the situation. As soon as I recognize either thing is happening, I start taking steps to avert the worst mental drama.

What’s the money situation?
One of the first things I did this morning was check to see how many invoices I have outstanding. It is enough to pay my bills for two months. Not exactly the best savings plan, but good enough to help me feel calmer. I can pay my mortgage, and two months is plenty of time to hustle up more work.

The next thing I did was make a list of my current anchor clients and how much I earn from them on average each month. Right now, I have two very solid anchor clients and between them I earn enough to pay our bills. So, I’m not only counting on outstanding invoices.

Life wouldn’t be super comfortable if I was only working with my two anchors, though, and I wouldn’t be hitting my target for the year.

Is there work on the horizon?
The second thing I did this morning was take a look at potential work. I have two projects that editors have contacted me about but not yet assigned anything. I’ll email them both this week. Then there’s a much longer list of people I consider “warm” — we’ve talked, but not established anything definite or discussed specific projects. I’ll also be contacting them to say hi and ask how things are going.

Simply having those three items—outstanding invoices, anchor clients who assign regular work, and a list of prospects—usually eases the fears associated with famine. There are other things you can do, too:

Build an actual savings
I’m aiming to save enough to pay bills for 3 months, then 6, and hopefully eventually a year. I’m not there yet, but that’s the goal.

Do a marketing challenge
Set yourself a goal to send out a certain number of letters of introduction, or attend a certain number of in-person events. Jennifer Goforth Gregory has a fantastic list of marketing activities for January that work any time of the year. If you think your slow time is extended (it happens!) spend a couple of weeks or a month completing a marketing challenge.

Actually enjoy your time
This is going to be my approach for this week. Since I’ve already realized I’m not facing eviction or actual famine, I’m going to try to relax, enjoy the fact it’s spring time and my flowers are blooming, take extra walks with my pups, try a couple of new recipes, and maybe even find a shady spot to read.

If, next week, things are still slow, I’ll start actively searching for new work.

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One of my strengths as a writer is being able to think up lots of ideas—story ideas, ideas on how to tell a story, ideas on how to find new clients, ideas about running a business. Ideas are usually the easiest part of the process.

Even though I like brainstorming and coming up with ideas, I don’t usually enjoy pitching story ideas to publications. One reason is that it takes a ton of time, and it’s unpaid time. Another is that publications aren’t great about responding an uncomfortable percentage of the time.

The problem is that if I don’t spend time brainstorming on a fairly regular basis it’s much harder. Recently, an agency client asked me to put together a list of potential ideas for one of their clients. They were paying me to do the work, which was awesome, and since it’s one of my favorite things, I agreed. When I sat down to actually start the list, I felt that deer-in-the-headlights thing. Frozen. Unable to come up with anything. For one panicky moment, I thought I’d lost it; my idea well had run dry.

Of course, 10 minutes of reading and an hour or two of thinking (while doing other things—you can’t let ideas know you’re chasing them, you have to come at them sideways) I had a pretty good list. But it was a good reminder that even the things you’re good at require some practice.

I’m adding “participate in a pitch fest once a quarter” to my list of goals for 2022!

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Do you participate in business planning? Does your plan sit in an ignored folder all year? This post details my planning process and it’s long. I’d love to know if you have a similar planning process!

I’ve always been a planner. Usually, the urge to start making lists and considering goals and looking at the previous year starts in December, but this year it came a little early, and deserves a bit more thought. In 2020, I tossed the plan out in March and decided to simply concentrate on survival and self-care. At the end of 2020, I decided to carry through with the same in 2021. Like many others, I wanted some time to recover from living in the middle of a pandemic.

This year, though, I’m ready to return to my plan because without it, I feel a bit lost. I still have goals, but I don’t have a clearly mapped path to reaching them because my plan has always served as my map.

It came to my attention recently, during an excellent Thursday session of #FreelanceChat on Twitter, that not everyone plans in quite as much detail as I do. I’m sharing my planning process in case others may find it a useful jumping-off point for their own planning.

The basics

Everyone I’ve ever talked to about planning, calendaring, or tracking goals has a different set up, so what I’m describing is the mishmash of tools that works for me. There are several elements:

1. My notebook – I use a half-size, 3-ring binder with some dotted paper and some plain paper for the different sections, which include my daily task lists, my home-related goals, an area for jotting and journaling, and a budget area.
2. A Google Drive file – it’s officially called Notes, but within the folder, there’s a document titled “Marketing 2021” and that’s where I pretty much free-write what I want, how the previous year went, what I’m planning, and anything else remotely related to my business.
3. Wave Accounting – Although it may not seem like a planning tool, my accounting software is also my client list, and it shows how much I earned from each client, my monthly earnings, my previous years’ earnings, and any weird dips or spikes in my income.
4. Google Calendar/Calendly – These tools are for the day-to-day, nitty gritty but are also useful in planning my marketing efforts across the year.
5. A Google spreadsheet – I track potential clients using a spreadsheet. I note their name, title, company, LinkedIn profile, email address, date contacted, and the result. If I’m actively seeking work from them, I try to get in touch every three months either by email or through LinkedIn.

I told you it was a mishmash! It works for me though. Now, I’ll explain how I use the tools and end up with a clear map for running my business.

Using the tools to plan

When I begin planning, the first step is to dig into the plan from the year before. I can’t do that this year, but I can look at my statistics from the last few years. Did my earnings increase? (they did!) Did I have a more balanced client list? (in some ways) Were my earnings spread evenly across my client list? (more than in years past, but there’s room for improvement) Did I keep up with my marketing plan? (no plan meant nothing to keep up with) How many hours did I work, on average? (this number is ALWAYS lower than I expect it to be, which isn’t a bad thing)

And, because I can’t separate my professional life from my personal life, I also look at my household goals (like budgeting or saving, home improvements, and vacations) and my self-care goals (fitness, nutrition, health concerns, craft projects, books, and on and on – this is often the longest list!)

Once I’ve taken a hard look at what happened the previous year, I start thinking about what I want for the next year. I figure out how much money I want to make, then break that number down into quarterly, monthly, and weekly amounts. I decide if I want to actively seek new clients, and if so, how should I find them? I think about the industries I write for, and whether or not I’d like to add to that list and if so, what do I want to add? I consider personal projects that are related to work, like writing this blog, or working on a fiction project. I jot down pretty much all of my wildest dreams — for the next year — in this phase. This part is pretty fun.

I do the same kind of thing for household and self-care.

Next, I try to be realistic, and decide if anything on the “wildest dreams list” should be pushed out into a 5- or 10-year plan. I look at the gains made in the last few years and try to aim for similar improvements in my goals and also try to figure out what the “stretch” goal would look like. Then, I break it all down again into quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals.

The big plan is useless if that’s where it ends. I review it all each quarter, and make adjustments to the monthly goals if necessary. Each week, when I lay out the two-page daily task spread, I look back at the monthly plan and fill out a section titled “this week.” That section also includes things like due dates, bills to pay, and anything else important to remember.

(A note about the weekly and daily lists)
This is super nerdy, but I write the day/date in a different color pen. Monday might be blue, Tuesday, pink, and so on. I write the list itself in black, and cross items off in the color pen for that day. This helps me to see exactly what day I did the tasks on the “this week” list. It also gives me a decent overview of my productivity. I’m almost always most productive on Monday and it declines as the week goes on.

New additions

Another element of how I plan has to do with adding or taking away parts of the process. I used to treat my 3-ring binder like a bullet journal, with all the pretty spreads and such. Now I simply use my color-coding system and create the sections. I don’t find a lot of creative fulfillment in drawing pretty headers for each week or graphs for progress toward goals. I’d rather spend my time working on a quilt or reading or taking a walk.

One area that I’ve included in my plan each year and struggled with is that of professional development. One year I planned to read one business book per month and only finished one or two. Another year, I planned to do a couple of courses but didn’t. I want to give this area more thought, figure out exactly what the specific barriers are, and try again to get better at what I do.

I’m thinking more about the number of direct clients versus agency clients that I work with, which is another fairly new element to my planning process. I tend to prefer agency clients, but with worries about the PRO Act, I think it’s wise to balance things out a bit and add more direct clients to my roster. I’m also spending much more time analyzing how I found the best clients on my list. I’m hoping that can inform my marketing efforts. Sadly, I think most of the best ones came from sending LOIs (letters of introduction). LOI campaigns are an enormous amount of work.

(A note about LOI campaigns)
My ratio is usually somewhere around 1 good client for every 100 or so LOIs sent. Finding the companies, the correct contacts, their email addresses, sending the emails, following up, and tracking it all takes a ton of time and effort. Usually, if I’m doing an LOI campaign in a given year, I pay for LinkedIn Premium for a month or two, along with an email finder (it’s been Hunter.io in the past) then spend a set amount of time each day building a database. Once I have 200-500 potential contacts, I cancel the paid subscriptions and start working the list, sending LOIs, followups, following the people on LinkedIn and Twitter, and commenting on their stuff.

Accountability

I have several friends and colleagues who are my accountability partners. One exchanges emails with me at the end of each month, saying what we did and didn’t do and what we want to do in the next month. Another has become something of a planning partner and we’ve been doing Zoom calls where we discuss our client lists, our niches, our incomes, and so on. We’re doing a series of calls to help each other work through the planning process this year. I’m also part of a group of technology writers who casually chat and discuss issues we might be having or brag on ourselves, or whatever.

Each of my accountability partners has been crucial to my business journey. If you’re going to plan, it’s enormously helpful to have someone help you pay attention to whether or not you’re following it.

My Plan Is My Map

You can probably see why I felt a little bit lost the last year or so. Without the detailed plan to refer back to, I didn’t always feel like I was on the right track. Instead of following a defined and clear path through the forest of running a business, I was taking a leisurely stroll whichever way the wind blew me. For some people, strolling is the better way because there’s less pressure. But for me, the map can serve another purpose, and that is confirmation that I’m actually getting somewhere.



Plenty of times, I’ve gotten out my quarterly plan, and been able to see that I did exactly what I set out to do. Maybe minor adjustments are in order, but often, I’m trekking along the path I charted at the beginning of the year. That is as motivational as anything else I can think of.

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