Recently, a strange thing happened to my business: I started getting lots of leads, most of them good. I got all booked up. I had to turn down jobs. All exciting stuff.

Yet, I’ve also found myself growing more frazzled than I like to be—and not just because I have more work.

The real problem is not that I’m working hard; it’s the fact that every project is completely different, and requires a tailored approach. Which would be fine if I had three or ten people to help. But it’s just little ‘ole, coffee-spilling, finger-drumming me. And because I also run thingsthatarebrown with my beau, I don’t have time (or inclination) to manage another full-time employee.

The Problem With Problem-Solving

Like a design or development project, each new web writing (and especially content strategy) project requires in-depth conversations to estimate, a lot of vetting of the lead, and a ton of communication to nail down the basics of what I’ll be doing. If the project requirements are in flux (and they usually are), we spend even more time chewing through ideas. Often it takes getting to the end of this process to realize the client isn’t a good fit, or to get to the bottom of what I need to do. Welcome to biz dev.

Things get even more complicated in discovery, where I often find the client didn’t have X completed (even though she thought she did) or that really, Y needed to happen.

These are very common problems for businesses like mine. And most of the time, the changes are minor. Still, when you’re just one person, a couple hours extra hours dealing with common problems can be very disruptive. Even if you get paid for it.

And yet, a thorough problem-solving process is extremely important. Without it, I’d do half-baked worked on half-baked projects.

Taking Control

So how do I eliminate the chafe and reduce boot up time, while still solving the problem?

That’s what Matt and I are hoping to figure out in December and January. We’re going to take some time off to strategize, and make sure our businesses are headed down the path we want them to head down—so we can control them, not the other way around.

As for Second and Park, my plan is to narrow and define my services, and nail down a process that can work (as far as this is possible) for every project, every time. In other words, rather than being a web writing & content strategy “agency”, I will provide smaller, product-like offerings that are roughly consistent from project to project.

This will let me spend more time writing what I want to write and free me up to collaborate with Matt on thingsthatarebrown projects, marketing, art direction, and management. I hope.

Here’s to lean meat, cartwheels and restful evenings.