One Year Into Being Full Time on Lost Creek Designs

This post is a follow-up on Going Full Time On My LLC Lost Creek Designs that I posted back in February. Now that I am over a year into being full time on my own business, Lost Creek Designs, I wanted to keep the reflections coming. The dominant emotions continue to be joy and gratitude. There is a mental lightness that comes with controlling my time that I have not been able to find working for someone else’s company.

Reflections on February 2024 Goals

In my February post, I set my next steps and objectives as follows:

1. Cap work at two clients at a time
2. Move towards a more even split of technical implementation and advising work
3. Fight my tendency to overplan and strategize

Here is a run down of how I did on those.

Cap work at two clients at a time (Achieved)

This one was the hardest to get myself stoked on. Knowing that I was leaving money on the table was hard to wrestle with. Additionally, I feared that I would not be able to fully support our family on two clients.

Ultimately, this ended up being the right move to make. We are not building up reserves as quickly as I would like, but the end result has been higher quality work for my two clients while supporting our family.

Move towards a more even split of technical implementation and advising work (Pivoted)

I made very little progress on this objective, but am not sweating it. The type of work that ended up falling on my plate over the past year has made much more sense for me to take an active role in implementing. Luckily, I have been loving the features I have needed to build.

Fight my tendency to over plan and strategize (Achieved)

This objective is the one I am most proud of. In the past I have had the need to plan every detail of a project out. It feels good to be organized. On the flip side, I am recognizing that it feels good to move through client objectives with velocity. Some projects require a lot of a strategy. Others do not. I am getting better at figuring out which camp a project falls into.

Next Steps

Perhaps pulling from my learnings in fighting my tendency to overplan, I am letting the current do more of the work for the next six months. There are some potentially big changes afoot for the nature of the work I am doing for one my clients, but I am taking that as it comes.

For the time being, I am loving the flexibility I have alongside the opportunity to do work I care about. The only area I am having heartburn about is that in my current setup, it is difficult to put more money in the piggy bank without taking on more clients, unfairly raising prices on my existing clients, or hiring others. We have more than enough as a family and most technical skills continue to be overpaid relative to the value they provide. It is something I have to remind myself of all the time.

One year in, the most important lesson has been the importance of network. Obviously for sourcing work, but even more importantly for having a circle of experts I can ask questions when I encounter a personal blind spot (there are a lot of them!). I used to think networking was cheesy, but not recognize how vital it is. I am always looking for others I can pass projects onto or collaborate with so please drop me a line if you are interested!.