self_employed

I've recently had the honor of being included in some "top productivity blogs" listings, and I wanted to say thanks to you all for continuing to read, comment, and recommend my blog to others. Some of the listings include:

• The Best Productivity Related Blogs
• The Top 50 Blogs That Will Unleash Your Motivation
• The Top 50 Productivity Blogs (most of which you haven.t heard about)
• Top ten blogs on time management

Last week I wrote about my initial foray into LinkedIn's new Answers feature, and shared some of mine. Below I've included the answers I got to my (so far only) question How did you get clients when you started your consulting practice? Before that, let's briefly consider Answers' strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths?

• Opportunity to share knowledge and help others,
• Exposure to possible peers (increase connections) and clients,
• Increased repute

Weaknesses?

• Many answerers are writing pretty blatantly to self-promote,
• Ditto for questioners,

It's official - I've given my two week notice and I'm quitting my research programming job to put full effort into my workflow coaching practice. Joining the ranks of the self-employed is exciting and frightening, and I'm sure it'll increase my rate of lessons learned per day (see Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year).

After hearing the news, a friend asked me why in the world I'd risk leaving a stable job - with great people, fine pay, retirement, health insurance, etc. - for something with no guarantees, especially as I'm a parent and husband. The best answer I came up with: I want to know how the story's going to end, and I can't do that without a major commitment.