After several years doing part-time freelancing the time has come to rewrite my business plan as it is coming to the end of its projections. Now a lot of the milestones in the initial business plan have been achieved, but not all. Some of them were so out of range that it felt almost silly putting them in. But, having an impossible goal to strive for has made me aim higher than I would have otherwise and no one should be happy with mediocrity for themselves.

So I can admit some were fanciful in nature (like a Ferrari for me and early retirement) most were more sensible of get registered business name, design stationery and have it printed, build and deploy website for business, generate client leads, attain a steady income stream, build the exposure of the business, revisit website for SEO and SEM, achieve a first page ranking, implement a job tracking and invoicing system. Switching to full time and getting the tax offset for working from home and the tax offset for purchasing business materials.

New projections can be adjusted turnover target, higher profit margins achieved, further business expansion, a detailed goal/reward system, lower running costs, run a carbon offset system to counter the business produced carbon emissions. Build scalability into the business model in case of multiple big clients coming on board at a similar time. Also have flexibility in the business structure to adapt to the changing requirements of a design business (in case every client suddenly needs iPad apps or broadcast graphics for their online video)

In addition to the five year plan a rough ten year plan would be a big help in revising the business plans further down the line.

Forward planning like this will enable me to take advantage of any opportunities as and when they present themselves. Being in a position to act quickly can be the difference in getting a big client on the books or missing lout because you were too slow.

Also it easily let’s you see if you should buy into another business or sell yours to another bigger agency if the option arises.

Sometimes the simplest thing can change your entire thinking and design process. A while back I started building designs for cafepress and after discovering their payments to people external to the US leaves a lot to be desired I switched over to zazzle who at least makes payments via paypal (amongst a long list of other reasons including ease of setting up a product and being able to make template designs). What this has meant is that I am thinking more and more about the sorts of things I want on a badge or t-shirt along with how to market them online and offline. So how has this really changed my thinking process and how I work?

As a web designer and print designer a large amount of my work is done through Photoshop touching up photos recolouring and adjusting files to work on the web or for printing. Now I am working on designs for apparel I am spending a lot more time with illustrator than ever before and discovering quite a few things about it which is changing my thoughts for different designs. Having the option to include a different treatment to my designs has visibly changed how they look.

That would always be the case of vector over pixel design, but switching from a truly grunge dirty textured treatment for my designs to something much cleaner has changed the way I market my products.

Using vector programs like illustrator has allowed for greater scalability with my designs, meaning a pin badge concept can easily be scaled to fit on a large format poster. So I am now freed from the constraints of the product I initially designed the piece for.

Developing my skills in illustrator (or at least getting significantly faster with it) has the flow on to my normal design job, making me more employable. Funny to think that doing work to build a passive income for myself increases my employability and in turn my pay.

There are many alternate vector programs out there, and I have even taken to carrying a USB memory stick with me which has a free vector program designed for that particular use, so I can hop on any computer and be able to put designs together when inspiration strikes. Not being tied to a particular computer has allowed me to get designs built when I would have otherwise forgotten about them by the time I had made it home to put it together.

Do you have any examples of this sort of thing yourself? I would love to hear them.

It would be cool to one day be interviewed by someone wearing one of my designs. Regardless of wether they knew of the connection between myself and the design.

Now I am loving the change that the iPhone has wrought on communication. But seeing as a decent percentage of the population now has a phone which is capable of photograph and video tasks to a reasonable degree, why haven’t we seen a marked increase in UFO evidence? I know, I probably watched all too much x-files when it first came out and I am the biggest devils advocate when it comes to these things, but are we seeing the death of the blurry camera shot of UFOs due to the fact we can’t fake a timestamp and GPS location of photographs? Have the aliens finally given up on us as a viable race capable of peaceful existence with other creatures? Or is it in fact the military is no longer testing various stealth technologies so we don’t see the strange lights in the sky anymore. I just felt I would be seeing more and more captured evidence rather than less and less.

Even if it was of hurled hubcaps past a window at night… Well, it’s something for you to think about now!