Working for Fame or Working for Fortune
We have to work for pay (fortune) most of the time to keep our businesses afloat. In this section, you can explore some examples of getting the word out about paid projects. One effective way to get the word out is to do some work for free (that’s work for fame and glory). You can explore examples of working for fame, too.
Working for Fortune
Imagine that your main project is writing software documentation for the data processing department of a large local company. Here are some suggestions for other paid projects with such a customer and for ways you might apply your skills to work for other companies:
- Is the documentation currently hard copy only? Might there be opportunities to develop online documentation?
- Do you enjoy being a teacher? Do you know how to train adults in the workplace? If so, you could be a trainer for new employees or groups of employees who need to use the software you are documenting.
- Do you have instructional design background? If so, you could develop the training guide or other training materials for the system.
- Do you always put together a style sheet or a style guide for each documentation project? Can you adapt these documents into a departmental style guide? Into the company style guide? Into a book about how and why to include style guides? (See, there’s an example of taking your skills into paid work in another arena.)
- Did you subcontract the work to several other independents to meet the customer’s deadline? If so, you were a project manager. Can you be the project manager for other projects for this customer?
- Have you inquired about which other departments develop documentation, do training, need style guides, etc.? Have you informally met the managers of other departments? Make an opportunity to have a more formal meeting with each of them to discuss their needs and ways you might help meet them. (See Educating Your Customer about Budget Busters in this chapter; also see Tapping Into the Network).
- Are you an expert on WordPerfect? Do people ask you questions about how to do certain tasks? Could you hold short training sessions to demonstrate how to do tasks with WordPerfect that they may not know how to do? The same goes for any application that you know and which the customer’s employees may need to learn.
- Are you interested in learning new applications? If you know a similar one, your learning curve will be pretty short. For example, if you know RoboHelp, you can learn to use Doc–To–Help fairly quickly. Tell the customer that you will take on a project that involves a new application at a discounted rate for a short time until you get up to speed; then resume work at your regular rate.
- If you enjoy training, you might even branch out into other areas such as sales training and management training.
- If you are talented with visual design and graphics, you may want to build that part of your business.
- Can you use your experience as the basis for a class at a local university, community college, or computer training center?
Working for Fame
Sometimes networking and adding value takes the form of volunteer work; that is, you don’t get paid for it. You need to control the amount of free work you perform, always remembering that billable work is what keeps your business going, but think about these good reasons for doing work for fame and glory:
- It enhances your reputation.
- It gets the word out to people who might not know about you and your talents.
- It lets you expand your horizons.
- It enables you to learn new skills.
Here are some examples of volunteer work. How many more can you add?
- When you write an article for the company magazine, people in other departments may read it and think of you when they have a project. You can add the article to your portfolio, publish it in the newsletter of an industry organization, enter it in an STC competition, or reprint it in your chapter newsletter, all of which make you better known to your colleagues, who may think of you for future projects.
- If you get paid to write hardware installation guides, you might write up an introduction to the new hardware or develop a job aid to publish in the departmental newsletter. You might not get paid for the newsletter work, but you are giving yourself personal professional growth that can lead to new skills you can sell later. The company might ask you to be the newsletter editor for the company, a chunk of hours each month that you get paid for.
- Are you interested in becoming a Webmaster? Rather than risk your business while you learn, you might volunteer to build the Web site for your church, neighborhood association, or hobby organization. Once you have the skills, you can market yourself as a paid Webmaster.
- Do you want to explore the possibilities of starting a seminar consulting business? Serving as the program manager for your local STC chapter is a great way to learn the ins and outs of planning meetings and programs.
- You might volunteer to do the graphic design for one issue of a customer’s newsletter. Let the editor know that you would consider paid work as the graphic designer for the company magazine or newsletter. Do the same for your chapter newsletter and use the materials in your portfolio.
- An acquaintance referred me to the editor of a small business newspaper here in St. Louis. The editor is looking for someone to write monthly articles on business issues. I’ll follow up because it may give me a chance to spread the word about my services to a new audience. Do you write, or design, or proofread, or edit, for your local business publishers? When you get a bit of experience under your belt, you can ask to be paid.
- You could copy edit a “messy” issue of a customer’s newsletter, magazine, brochure, or other business communications and tactfully give your improved results to the manager who you are working with. If you have a good relationship with the manager, he or she will be happy to forward it to the appropriate people or set up a meeting to discuss better communications and publications. I got a project by doing this. I’m revising a set of 100 form letters used by the Consumer Relations Department of my best customer. This project grew out of my work in the Training Department, where I saw one of these letters and made some suggestions about improving it to my manager. He passed the comments along, and now I have a project and another contact for work.
- Do you enjoy public speaking? You could volunteer to be a speaker on a topic of interest at a customer’s staff meeting or at a meeting of the customer’s professional organization. For example, I’ve talked about writing for a “lay audience” at a meeting of the Coalition of Technical Societies, a group made up of manufacturing and technical engineers. Maybe you also have a favorite charity. Does the charity have a speaker’s bureau? Do you make presentations at your STC chapter meetings? At regional conferences? Experience could lead to paid speaking engagements.
Put your creative mind to work thinking of other ways to get the word out about the width and depth of your services.
One of the responsibilities of being a successful independent is knowing how much unpaid work you can do and still keep your business viable. Believe me, any independent could be a full–time volunteer worker with no trouble at all!