You’ve probably heard that sad song, the one that goes, “Been down so long, it looks like up to me.” It seems to be the theme for our current economic news.

This theme has a close friend called “The Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression.” I’m skeptical about that line, because I’ve seen worse.

Back in 1980, I was just a year out of college, and I found myself unemployed. The grant that funded my job had run out, and I was living in the state of Michigan. Even then, Michigan was developing a reputation as the Unemployment State. Which meant that if you wanted to find work, you’d best go elsewhere.

Since I had some savings in the bank, I decided to indulge my passion for bicycling before settling back into the job world. I spent a good bit of the following two years exploring the United States by bike.

By June 1982, I’d had my fill of life on the road. Or so I thought. I’d decided to move back to the city where I was born, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From the old hometown, I’d launch my professional career.

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Photo by miyazakihiroshi.

Creative freelancers are, by nature, a rebellious lot. Just look at this FreelanceSwitch blog. The descriptions of our former jobs read like jail sentences. Now, far be it from me to say that we shouldn’t be happy in our work. After all, I’m writing this from the United States of America, where we have certain unalienable rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Note the wording of the third right – it’s the pursuit of happiness. You have to chase after it. And there’s nothing that says that happiness won’t be wearing its lucky socks. Which means that happiness breaks the finish line tape well ahead of you.

And there you are, gasping for breath while happiness basks in all the glory. I’m going to offer a tip that could improve the odds in the next You vs. Freelancing Happiness footrace. It’s a two-word tip:

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With the school year ending, I’ve found a subject that makes me jump on the soapbox.

Back when my mother was teaching high school, she’d frequently regale my father and me with classroom stories. One of the ongoing themes was Mom’s reaction to that perennial question, “Why do we have to learn this?”

Needless to say, this question did not bring a smile to Mom’s face. Nor did its evil twin, “Is this gonna be on the test?”

Truth be told, Mom and her fellow teachers had a tough time persuading students to develop their intellectual curiosity. Pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake isn’t on the agenda of the average high schooler.

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Creative freelancers suffer from a peculiar form of procrastination. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the “I must get all of my ducks in a row before I start promoting my business” syndrome.

We all know people who’ve spent weeks and months perfecting their marketing materials, searching for the right office space, poring over purchases large and small, while all sorts of business opportunities are flying by.

The solution is to become like Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company. Shortly after the company started, Koch was talking with a wealthy relative who also was one of his investors. Koch was waxing ecstatic about the computer system that would track the company’s sales. The relative stopped him short with a simple question: Do you have any sales yet?

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I live and run my studio in a house that’s 53 years old. Like most houses its age, it has issues. (Translation: It’s an emotionally needy house.)

Earlier this spring, I was repairing the plumbing in the shower. When I went outside to shut off the house water, I noticed that the water line was leaking.

Uh-oh.

However, I knew that this would eventually happen. My water line was rusting out when I bought this place five years ago. And, shortly after I moved in, a neighbor’s water line ruptured and caused quite a flood. Martha the rookie homeowner made a mental note to keep a cash stash handy for the replacement of her water line.

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In order to build a successful freelance business, you must do three things, and do them well. If you don’t, no amount of promotion will save your business from oblivion. Here are the Three Elements of Business Success:

1. Doing Business.

Provide the goods and services that people pay you for. Part of this process is providing customer service so good that people will want to do business with you again, and send referrals.

2. Getting Business.

This is where your marketing and selling activities fit in.

3. Running the Business.

Tasks that don’t directly make you money but must be done fall into this category. We’re talking about things like administrative tasks such as long-term planning, accounting and bookkeeping, handling legal matters, and office and business management. Employee hiring, training, and supervision are included in office and business management.

The following story illustrates what can happen when there’s an excessive focus on getting business at the expense of doing it and running it.

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The phone calls usually go like this:

Caller: “I want a website for my business.”

You: “What kind of business do you have?”

Caller states the nature of the business, launches into a list of pages that he or she wants on the site, and then asks you for a price quote.

Not a very satisfying encounter, is it?

The caller seems most interested in price, and you? Well, you’re interested in a relationship. As in, the kind that lasts for years.

It might not be possible to have a meaningful relationship with price shoppers, but it’s worth taking the time to learn what your potential clients want in a website. This article will help you create a prospect qualification questionnaire that can be used via telephone or Internet or in face-to-face meetings.

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A few years ago, articles of this sort were all about building one’s mailing list.

And we in the design field knew the drill quite well. We’d create a list of likely prospects, design something cool to send out, and then wait for the phone to ring. Sometimes it rang, sometimes it didn’t.

A-a-a-ah, the olden days.

Back then, those spinning business card files bearing the Rolodex brand were like gold. If you are of a certain age, you may remember that strict “Don’t Take the Rolodex with You” policy if you decided to leave Company X.

While you were at Company X, the cards in your Rolodex spent a great deal of time on your desk, waiting for you to give them a spin. Occasionally, they had to be spun into a mailing list, and you may be curious as to how that would happen.

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Permit me to start this article with a confession: It took me more than a decade to make friends with accounting.

Not that accounting didn’t try to become my friend. It kept coming around my freelance business saying that I needed to deal with it. After all, I did need to know how much profit or loss I was generating so that I file a tax return.

So, I hired a bookkeeper to generate quarterly financial reports. Then, when tax time rolled around, she generated a year-end report for me and my tax accountant.

When it came to accounting avoidance, this system was superb.  But there was a problem. The bookkeeper’s reports were seldom correct. I had to go through them, line by line, to see which income and expense items had been incorrectly logged or omitted. Little did I know, but my accounting education had begun.

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I know that some of you are going to get grumpy when I tell you that working for free can be good for your personal and professional development. But bear with me for a few minutes, and then you can return to your grumpiness.

Here are six reasons why you’d want to do pro bono work for non-profit organizations:

1. You’re just starting out as a freelancer and your portfolio is empty.

I mean, that portfolio is so empty, there’s an echo in there. The good news is that there are plenty of non-profits that need your professional touch. They may have a website that needs redesigning. Or they need your computer programming skills to build a better membership database. Or their brochure could use better written copy.

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If you’re a freelancer, you face the risk of burnout. How you handle it can make or break your career. Here’s how I recharged my freelancing batteries.

Late in the long, hot, and slow summer of 2006, I was ready to give up on my freelance graphic design career. I’d hit a wall in terms of bringing in new business, and my longtime clients weren’t calling the way they used to.

I’d just finished 14 months of construction courses at the local community college. Which may lead you to wonder what a gal like me was doing in a program like that. The answer was quite simple: I bought a 48-year-old house in November 2004, and I needed to learn how to fix it up.

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Photo by Michel Filion.

I’m one of those heretics who believes that selling is much more important than marketing. Why? Because, a few years ago, I fell into the marketing trap, and my business almost failed as a result.

What was I doing? Well, I spent a lot of time going to various networking groups, and just didn’t find that many viable clients. What I found were a lot of other people looking for (you guessed it) clients for their own businesses.

I also did a lot of direct mail marketing, and lookie-lookie! It worked wonderfully. For a while. Then I noticed that the people on my carefully crafted mailing list had become immune to my oh-so-stylishly designed and cleverly written postcards.

I might as well confess to all the time I spent on getting those postcards ju-u-ust right. Not just the Photoshop and Illustrator time, but the time spent in running them by other people. Carefully crafting that mailing list ate some hours too.

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