Creating a SWOT

Jan 19, 2009 Excerpts

This is an excerpt from the book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing. Sample chapters are available for downloading from this page.

The planning term SWOT first appeared in the 1960s. A SWOT analysis is really just a simple strategic planning method that helps evaluate projects and businesses. It’s based around a four-square grid, shown in Figure 1, “The SWOT grid explained”, which covers Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I’ve used it a number of times to help me make decisions around new products or service offerings under consideration, and it works just as well for business models.

Example 1. Business Planning Questions

summary

* What is the initial concept?
* What is your current situation?
* What will your key success factors be?
* What are your longer-term vision and goals?

market analysis

* What does the current market look like?
* What is your target market?
* What are the characteristics of your perfect client?
* What do your target clients require?

competitive overview

* What does your industry look like?
* Are there many competitors?
* Who are your five closest competitors?
* What products or services do they offer?
* What opportunities do you have to be unique? (Can you fill a niche or be different from your competitors in some way?)
* What are the risks and threats?

sales and marketing

* How will you attract clients?
* How can potential clients find you?
* What marketing activities would you consider?

plan of action

* What do you need to do in order to kick things off?
* What should you do in the medium term?
* What are some longer-term plans?

Figure 1. The SWOT grid explained

To start your own SWOT analysis, list all of your strengths and weaknesses—these can be thought of as the internal elements, over which which you have some degree of control. Continue by identifying all of the opportunities and threats that you can—these are generally external forces, such as competitors and the industry at large. Then, look for ways to use your strengths, improve on your weaknesses, exploit the opportunities available to you, and fend off the threats.

A SWOT analysis certainly doesn’t need to be as long-winded as it may sound; I have found some of the most useful SWOT analyses are those that fit onto a single page. By way of example, let’s look at our very own Jacob and Emily.

Jacob has put together the beginnings of a SWOT, which looks like this:

Emily, on the other hand, has put together a SWOT that is more like this:

These examples are only a few lines long, but you can easily extend them to a page or more. The concept is really a succinct and useful method of establishing your pros and cons.

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Tags: freelance book, freelance business, freelance planning, freelancing guide

Taking Time to Plan

Jan 12, 2009 Excerpts

This is an excerpt from the book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing. Sample chapters are available for downloading from this page.

“Failures don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan,” says best-selling author and business motivational speaker, Harvey MacKay.

If you are planning to start freelancing part-time, you should have the time to put together all of the plans and start saving for the just-in-case rainy-day money. On the other hand, if you plan to move straight into full-time freelancing, remember that you’ll have those looming deadlines as soon as you take on projects. Even so, it doesn’t mean that you should ignore planning or preparation.

For most people, the concept of business planning is likely to provoke a jaw-dislocating yawn. However, it’s much more productive to welcome this as an exciting time, where you start to understand where you really want to travel on this freelance path. The world really is your oyster—you’ve made the emotional commitment, perhaps you already have some prospective clients lined up, and you may have already done much of this planning work in the back of your mind. It’s invaluable to take a little time to write these thoughts and plans down, for future reference and as a way to refine and catalogue your thoughts.

Many freelancers and small businesses fail in their first few years, and it’s widely agreed by experts that the number-one reason for such failure is because those business had little or no form of planning. This planning document doesn’t need to be a huge tome of numbers and words; it really is the summation of what you have been thinking, committed to paper.

This document is where you start to list known and unknown areas of your plans, so you can elaborate on them over time. A good business plan is an evolving one, so don’t consider it a chore to be completed in an hour and then stuck in a desk drawer and forgotten about.

There is a myriad of web sites dedicated to sharing templates and ideas about what they consider a great business plan. Perhaps the most important element of a business plan is that you remain actively involved with it. Review it frequently, adjusting and editing it where required—especially during those first few months.

Your plan could be just a few pages, or it could be dozens, but unless you have grand plans to circulate it for investors or financial institutions to read, avoid using buzzwords and reams of useless blue-sky figures. The plan is for your eyes only, so keep it succinct and to the point, and an honest appraisal of the “who, what, when, and how” of your plans.

There are many elaborate methods for writing a solid business plan, but let’s start by creating a text document, and answering what questions we can from the list in Example 1, “Business Planning Questions”. For those questions to which you don’t know the answer yet, just write the question, reminding yourself to add that material as you go.

Remember, plans change, so at this stage your efforts are likely to be more crystal-ball gazing than actual fact. You’ll expand on the plan, filling it out in more detail as you work your way through this book and progress over the first weeks and months of freelancing. And it’s fine to add other notes besides the questions included here—even if they’re rough dot points, the more notes the better!

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Tags: freelance, freelance book, sitepoint, successful freelancing

Deciding How Far to Jump

Jan 5, 2009 Excerpts

This is an excerpt from the book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing. Sample chapters are available for downloading from this page.

Now that you’ve made the decision to become a freelancer, we’ve reached the point of short-, medium-, and long-term preparation. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to jump in running as fast as you can. However, it’s been proven time and again that to ensure the best chance of success, you should expend plenty of effort in planning and preparation. This raises the question of which work mode to begin your freelance life with: full-time or part-time.

If you’re a student nearing the end of your studies, you’ve got a distinct time to work towards. (That said, I recommend that unless you have run a business previously, don’t go freelance straight after graduating—spend some time in employment in your chosen field first, to get those skills polished.) This also applies if your current work is coming to a close—you may be on a fixed-term contract, or the company you’ve been working for is winding up. However, for many people, the entry to freelancing is a case of juggling full-time employment with preparations to exit the rat race.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both situations, and you’ll need to weigh these up carefully. Let’s take a moment to look at some of them.

Freelancing on the Side

There’s a lot to be said for freelancing “on the side,” at least in the beginning:

• This is a great way to test the waters without making that big jump.
• You can spend as much after-hours time as you need on planning your business.
• You can save just-in-case money for as long as it takes for you to feel comfortable before venturing into the unknown.
• You’re able to be choosier with the work you take on, as your salary is still coming in to help with costs.
• If you don’t have any good recent work to show, part-time freelancing allows you to build a great portfolio before you move to full-time.
• The clients you groom now are likely to be with you once you make that leap, helping with immediate cash flow.
• It allows you to take your time to fit out the home office, without blowing your starting budget.
• Freelancing part-time after hours, as well as holding down a full-time position, gives you the authentic taste of a busy week as a freelancer. This can help you determine your ability to cope with that amount of work at any given time.

There are a few disadvantages to this practice, though:

• Depending on your employment contract, you may be restricted from doing work that directly competes with services offered by your employer. It’s best to approach your boss to discuss this.
• Most clients will want to contact you during their workday hours, which tend to be when you’re busy at your full-time gig.
• You lose out on the all-important downtime hours of evenings and weekends. If you attract lots of work, you may end up exhausting yourself trying to work two jobs.
• You’ll be cautious of growing too fast, given you have restricted hours in which to work. It can become tricky trying to keep everyone happy, and you may have to turn down new work in order not to fail existing clients.

Freelancing Full-time

There are some compelling advantages to jumping in with both feet:

• You’ll have the freedom to set up your freelance life, instead of juggling it with a full-time job.
• Full-time start-up mode means that you have plenty of time in which to network, make important contacts, and meet prospects.
• There are no issues with your employer being aggrieved about you working freelance on the side, and you’ll have no hesitation in taking on as many new clients and projects as you can handle.

There are, however, some disadvantages to full-time freelancing straight away:

• Nothing feeds self-doubt more than work failing to come in during those first few weeks.
• The cash drain while you rush around making contacts and courting business can really hurt your back pocket.
• The all-important planning tends to be the first casualty when those projects come in—understandably, you’ll be more interested in taking an opportunity to earn some much-needed money than mapping out your legal business structure.

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Tags: excerpt, freelance guide, freelance tips, freelancer, freelancing, posf

Weekly Book Excerpts

Jan 2, 2009 Excerpts

To celebrate the start of the new year, from next Monday (Jan 5) I’ll post an excerpt from chapter one of The Principles of Successful Freelancing, every Monday for eight weeks. I hope you enjoy them!

I encourage you to comment on each of them, and let me know what you think - it’s a great opportunity to discuss the subjects I cover in the first chapter of the book, with each other.

You can get the entire first few chapters now, by clicking on the ‘Free Preview’ menu item on the SitePoint page for the book.

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Tags: Excerpts, posf, successful freelancing