First month++

It all goes too fast. Trust me.

Last time I wrote here, was when I got my first satisfied client and since then so much stuff happened. I often read about startups and freelancer, they all say that there's a lot of surprises to be discovered, a lot of problems and a lot of joy. They're all right, but there's a nuance.

That nuance is that you really have no clue of all the new responsibilities you'll get. In the last month I had to teach one of my clients everything about Git and GitHub, I had to fire somebody from a team I work in because I was "more aware of the reasons", I also had to learn a lot of accounting basics to stay safe in the future of my startup, and so much more. Those are all little things that I was sure to know but, at the end I was so freaking clueless.

Talking about accounting and freelancers, I read a very good article that gave me a lot of insights about how other does that freelancing thing. I'm not sure but, I think I found the article on Hacker News. That article is a lengthy 6 months retrospective about Mike Rooney's freelancing adventure.

Some very good advice is given in the article. One very good thing I learnt was the fact that we only need enough money to live comfortably, and we do not have to work 40+ hours a week. It's totally about the opposite: it's all about yourself.

Yourself

In the last years of my life I learnt that it was very important to focus on your personal development first and then focus on your professional development. Simply because if the last takes over the first, you'll get burnt-out and you'll do nothing useful anymore. Give yourself some personal goals, keep your time for yourself, try hard, persevere towards these goals. It all comes down to the fact that you need this personal time to stay productive when you're on your professional time.

The Cash

Another great lesson was how to manage all the money I receive every week. Frankly, I never had such an amount of money to manage in my life, ever. It's easy to go on a buying spree every week with it. You always need something better and beautiful for your office. But such things can often wait a bit. One great thing that the article thought me was to have two bank accounts: one for the business and one personal. Give yourself a constant-and-not-superfluous amount of money every week. That way you'll be able to maintain a healthy and predictable budget and save money for when you'll need to or if you get sick, etc.

Conclusion

The last month and a half has been more than joyful. I learn a whole lot of things every week, I develop Brainpad's projects without going crazy working at nights and everything is really going great. Yes it's hard, but not the kind of hard that makes life suck more. It's more about the kind of hard that kicks you in the butt to keep on going towards your goals.

I really love what I do, I really love the shape my life is taking and I really suggest anyone with a sucky job to do the same. Life is about making great things, making a change in other's lives, to be creative and learn about yourself so you can show others how good it is to be free.

Stay tuned, an article about a web development framework built on Node.js I'm working on is to be released soon. Until then you can check it out on GitHub here.

Thanks for reading.

/tommy