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I have a very small consulting firm. I spend 20 hours a week on a gig that I picked up 3 years ago, and I have two part-time people working for me about 10 hours a week each. I have a hands-off business partner who handles the billing. It's my mother, actually. She has her own consulting gigs, so about a year ago we just decided to combine our billing. It pays pretty well--even though I'm nowhere near charging what I've been told would be the going rate for my skill set--well enough that my wife and I took three camping trips and three international trips last year, and took the entire December holiday season off. I don't own a car anymore; we are a one-car household now. Well, I do own one, but it hasn't ran for three months now and I'm probably just going to donate it. I exclusively work remotely. I'll occasionally walk to a coffee shop or co-working space (I live just outside of DC in the Old Town district of Alexandria). It's kind of lonely, but it's a hell of a lot better than having a boss. The rest of the time, I (try to) make things that interest me and try to develop them into salable products. But, I'm having some issues with self-doubt. I've had tons of side projects over the years and none of them have led to anything, mostly because I've never managed to put any of them up for sale, because I believed they weren't good enough to sell, because I tend to focus on big chunks of interesting, technical work rather than the long-tail of chore issues, both technical and non-technical. But finally, after 10 years, I got one project up and running on its own site with a "buy" button. Nobody has bought it, and I still don't really feel like it's worth buying, but at least I've gotten over that one particular hangup. I'm hoping I can just keep whittling away at the hangups and skill deficiencies, one by one, until I've got something with all the right parts and all the right moves. I'd just like to know how close I am, though. |