Expanding my role

Week 11


Sometimes it’s difficult to place yourself in this new economy. My email signature says “Chief Coaster Officer”, but I’ve never said that at a party. This week, I updated tashwong.com and opened myself up to freelance work again. This gives me a new identity to figure out how to stitch in when I talk about who I am and what I’m doing.

  • Can I be an entrepreneur and a consultant at the same time?
  • Do I just say “I’m I working on a variety of awesome projects”?
  • Does the word “project” undermine how important Coastermatic is to me?
  • Do words even matter, so long as I’m working towards a goal I fiercely believe in?

My friend Gary Chou gets around this by referring to himself as a “fun guy”. Pretty clever! Eventually I’ll find something like this for myself. For now, I’m going with “Interaction Design Consultant, and Chief Coaster Officer, Coastermatic”.

I’m not gonna lie, deciding to work for others again was a hard pill to swallow for a couple of days. It felt like admitting defeat. But, after looking at my options, it actually makes perfect sense.

Freelance work gives me the opportunity not only to earn the money I need to keep working on Coastermatic, but also to work with others again, and to see how other organizations are put together. I’ve been working alone for the majority of the last 18 months, and I’ve been out of a formal work environment since September 2011. Now that I’m building my own organization, I’m excited to see how others operate. Over the next few months, I look forward to working with a variety of companies and teams teams, both large and small.

Also, I’m a lot better at interaction design than I am at my current Coastermatic roles (marketing and sales). Doing work you’re good at for people who need it always feels good.

As I fold consulting back into my life, time management is going to be a prime focus. I’ve fallen down a slippery slope of client work before, to the detriment of Coastermatic, and I don’t want that to happen again. This time around, my goal is to find work that is well defined and will take up about 25% of my time. That’s 10h a week, or 1 week a month.

Know someone who needs help on a project?
Take a look at tashwong.com and drop me a line. I’m booking out my calendar through to the end of the year.