Thread by @elizallen_

OK. SO. Nobody wants to do any actual work today, so here's a thread about what it was like to run my UX research consultancy (@brazenUX) in 2019.

I'll talk about...

1⃣ Funnel
2⃣ Hours
3⃣ Financials
4⃣ Goals

But first, some basics for context...

- 2019 was my 2nd full year in business (and 1st as a corporation)
- Services include user research, usability testing, research training, and speaking
- No employees except me; occasionally I hire subcontractors
- Selected clients below

1⃣Let’s talk about where work comes from.

Mostly referrals! It’s been very helpful that I’m active on Twitter, I speak a decent amount, and I’ve worked/built a network in 3 cities.

Also, I think I’m often the only UXR consultant that people in my network know😂

Another way is through agencies. The major pro is getting work essentially handed to me. The major con is having more people to deal with, & having less control over the end-client relationship.

Sometimes, someone just stumbles on my website and hires me. That's always v cool.

This year I got 59 serious (or serious-ish) inquiries for projects.

41 of those were serious enough that I made a proposal.

29 ultimately resulted in projects.

(Diagram from sankeymatic.com)

You’ll notice that I sometimes am the one declining the project. There are three main reasons:

- I don’t have time
- the project doesn’t interest me
- here’s something icky (to me) about the project (e.g., oil industry; firearms)

A proposal takes 1-3 hours to write. Sometimes I’ll just do a quick cost estimate instead (15-30min) and get their reaction before moving ahead with a formal proposal (esp for repeat clients). Oh, and usually I’ve put in 1-2 hrs of emails/meetings before it's proposal time.

I always, always have a contract for my work. I usually use my own contract template, but some clients (usually larger ones) prefer that I use theirs.

Advice: always read contracts carefully and don’t be scared to send over a list of changes you require before you’ll sign!

2⃣ Now, a bit about how much I work

One of my goals in starting this business was to actually work _less_ than when I was in-house (and make more money). Which sounds kind of backwards (hustle culture and all that), but it’s pretty much worked out.

This year I worked an average of 24hrs/wk. You might be thinking “Wow! Living the dream!”, but keep in mind that I only track my time when I’m seriously working! Other stuff I would do in a typical office doesn’t get tracked (chatting, taking breaks, having existential crises).

Sidenote: I worked almost the exact same number of hours in 2019 as I did in 2018, but made about 30% more money. I'm very proud of that ✨

One thing that’s really common for consulting/freelance is the fluctuations in hours. Here’s one way of looking at that.

The colours represent different clients (orange is internal Brazen biz stuff). Hrs/wk on the y-axis, and the dotted line represents 25 hrs (my desired max).

Another, more subjective way of looking at it. At the end of every week, I give myself a “colour” corresponding to how busy I _felt_

All the way from green (feels like I’m on vacation) to red (feels like I’m falling apart). Yellow & orange are varying degrees of pleasantly busy.

You may have noticed that Q2 was quite hard on me. Here’s a particularly “red-feeling” week.

(Remember, these are serious, focused working hours, so 8 hours here is probably equivalent to a 10-11 hour “workday”.)

Why was Q2 so bad?

- a lot of clients want to start projects during mid-to-late-Q1, which means the bulk of the work is often happening in Q2

- I had a few projects get delayed, resulting in a perfect storm where multiple things ended up landing at once.

One thing that really helped me reduce my stress and feelings of busy-ness this year was to not schedule meetings on Fridays, or on Monday mornings. This has been a huge realization for me ✨

Oh, and here’s a breakdown of the work I do to keep my business running (ie., non-billable work). It’s important to not take on so much client work that you can’t spend time investing in your business!

3⃣ Let’s talk a bit about financials.

My main financial goal has always been to make a comfortable salary and cover my biz expenses.

Essentially, I want to be able to justify leaving a nice in-house job to run a business, and thankfully I’ve hit this goal in 2/2 years so far.

I use @cushionapp to track both my time and my money, and I love it!

One thing you can do is set 3 levels of financial goals. I’ve cut off a lot for privacy, but basically: it's a graph of revenue, and different colours are different clients (note: this is not chronological).

My 3 goals were...

Minimum: comfortable salary + estimated business expenses

Target: last year’s revenue

Stretch: Target + 20%

I’m ecstatic that I went beyond my stretch goal. That’s nuts. And, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't work more than last year. Just charged more 💸

You may have noticed that 2 of my clients make up a big chunk of my $$. Yup, I’m mildly worried about that too. Let’s see what happens this year!

A last note about $$: Since I am bringing in more $ than my salary/expenses, the main benefit of moving from a sole prop to a corp this year was being able to keep that profit in the business rather than be forced immediately take it as income at a high tax rate.

4⃣ Aaaaand finally, what’s next?

People ask me all the time what my 1/5/10-year plan is, and honestly, I don’t have a good answer. I just want to keep doing this as long as I can and as long as I enjoy it 🙃

I’ll go back in-house when it feels right.

Okay but also:

- I would like to do some more paid speaking
- I would like to get a client in the travel industry
- I would like to keep mentoring
- I would like to figure out another good way of using more of my time and money to help nonprofits and/or underrepresented folks

I am very open to questions about all of this stuff.

I am also very open to talking about new projects for 2020 😉

brazen.io

✨THE END✨