The Summer of 2010 I spent working out of my home office, with a steady stream of work from my ex-employer. It's not uncommon for those striking off on their own to be contacted by the last employer to perform some emergency work. It's a short term win-win situation. If you have a huge depth of experience and knowledge on a product, your former employer can hire you temporarily (for a larger sum) while they try to staff and train a replacement or two. They key word there is: temporarily. Naturally, you should be charging more for your services as you no longer enjoy any benefits. The employer wins by getting the job done quicker than hiring and training a new staff.
While contracting, I continued with the sales and marketing process for my new firm. Primarily, this involved seeking out connections I made from my last job on LinkedIn and attending and speaking at trade shows. I can't imagined how well I would fare in a pre-Internet world where I would have to locate business cards and cold call people. I received a lot of encouragement over LinkedIn and other means, but to find a committed client remained elusive. I dabbled in developing a product, but wanted to refrain from all out coding without a proven market for it. I started to learn that no matter how good a lead felt, the odds of it leading to a paying gig was about 1 in 100. I also had one eye on my "Non-compete" contract, even thought I wasn't violating a thing.
Being based in Massachussets, my state heavily favors corporations when it comes to Intellectual Property (IP). I'm stunned when I read about how people in California will freely walk between Google and Facebook with little fear. Here in MA, the going timeframe is 1 year: Don't talk to our clients/employees, stay away from our competitors, and don't work on what you worked on here. What a way to stifle innovation and entrepreneurship!! I don't condone the outright theft of ideas, but there are already laws protecting that. In no way was I looking to infringe on my ex-employer, but those documents are design to make you so scared you won't attempt a thing.
So I kept working on contracts. Then I got some welcomed and life changing news. My wife was pregnant with our first child! We were both happy and typically nervous as to how our lives would change. He was to be born in March 2011. I had better start planning on the personal budget being increased. Oh yeah, my wife's healthcare from her teaching job would expire too. Hmm. I better look for a family plan that ...OH MY GOD IT'S HOW MUCH PER MONTH?!?!. Ok. We'll ride that train when the insurance actually runs out.
Contracting treated me well, and then it suddenly stopped. In reality it wasn't "suddenly" or a surprise, but when it happens....it's still a shock. No more work was need by me. By October I was back to full time searching for the next big thing. Lots and lots of leads, but no income. Not so fun to see months of bank transactions all going one way with expenses soon to be on the rise.
With a little one on the way, and no sure jobs on the horizon, I started to get nervous. But somehow I tried to remain optimistic. In order to survive in this game, you need a heart of steel.
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