As a freelancer, I really appreciated this article. While I know what a startup is, in my actual working experience, a "startup" is often some variant of "the SaaS thing my best client's worst employee wanted us to switch to last month." Otherwise we'd be using the proper name of the business without any regard for whether they are a startup or a farming collective or a couple of floating brains in a sealed chamber.
I have also had experiences where I say "I'm a freelancer" and watch peoples' mouths drop open. They think I'm basically Peter Parker without the Spiderman, living on the cheap without a single concern for the future. The truth is a bit of an improvement on that. I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer, who helps my inner INTJ learn and grow into a better salesman, marketer, team leader, and negotiator. While most of my stuff is building web things for people, I get a variety of work from traditional illustration to music to 3D modeling. I support a wife and three kids, and we take vacations regularly. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but people who visit my rental say it's pretty big for NorCal and I get to work in a backyard office with a nice skylight. And every one of my big clients has an IT guy who actually trusts me with their web stuff. Having worked in IT in the past, that's a big deal to me.
Someday maybe I'll do something different, but I've been freelancing full-time for almost ten years now, and I've never had a bad year or even a hard year. I don't miss free bagels & juice or XM radio and I definitely don't miss anything that looks like it came from the food section of an office supply store. I don't distrust startups, but I have absolutely no reason to be interested in working for one.
> I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer
Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? That seems like a business idea - successful Myers-Briggs teach others of their same type how to handle their strength and weaknesses - which sounds like what this executive is already doing.
>Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you?
The most important one has been "tolerating others and, optimally, succeeding with them" since I can be pretty stubborn and defensive when I meet with, say, a big-E social media consultant. I will typically tell my consultant, "hey, I don't know what type of person this is but I need to figure out how to work with them better." The consultant asks me some questions and nails it pretty quick. The tough part is that he isn't easy on me--he is usually sympathetic to the person in question and tells me how I can get my act together. :-)
The next most important has been "homing in on others' needs" as I used to really put my tech blinders on and assume that everyone would want solution X. So, more listening, more following up with surveys, etc.
After that, I often ask him, "I need somebody to help me with X" so he'll point out that I'm looking for an ISTJ or whatever it may be. In fact we recently went over this for some troubles I was having, and it turned out the MBTI type I needed was my wife :-) So that problem disappeared pretty quickly.
Surprisingly I've told quite a few people about this guy's MBTI skillset, and the fact that he's certified, and they are extremely skeptical to the point of saying, "well I don't believe in that pseudo-scientific stuff, but thanks anyway." I think it's mostly awkward because this guy's an engineer; his dad was an expert on ceramic heat shields, and he's done a LOT of work & research to arrive at something that works. But some people who should know better just don't want to listen.
I have also had experiences where I say "I'm a freelancer" and watch peoples' mouths drop open. They think I'm basically Peter Parker without the Spiderman, living on the cheap without a single concern for the future. The truth is a bit of an improvement on that. I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer, who helps my inner INTJ learn and grow into a better salesman, marketer, team leader, and negotiator. While most of my stuff is building web things for people, I get a variety of work from traditional illustration to music to 3D modeling. I support a wife and three kids, and we take vacations regularly. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but people who visit my rental say it's pretty big for NorCal and I get to work in a backyard office with a nice skylight. And every one of my big clients has an IT guy who actually trusts me with their web stuff. Having worked in IT in the past, that's a big deal to me.
Someday maybe I'll do something different, but I've been freelancing full-time for almost ten years now, and I've never had a bad year or even a hard year. I don't miss free bagels & juice or XM radio and I definitely don't miss anything that looks like it came from the food section of an office supply store. I don't distrust startups, but I have absolutely no reason to be interested in working for one.