Developing A Freelancer Association | July 2019

Diary of a budding freelance association in Colorado

Change is the only constant. My life has been changing quite a bit lately. The owner of the house I was renting wanted to move back in so I found another place across town. While moving out my parents came for a visit all while I prepared for a trip out east to visit a sweetheart. It’s shocking that while all this was happening I not only lifted out of the stress fog that I was in but also got a lot done. June felt like a very, very long month. Much of it was colored by feelings of the blues and stress but now I sit on the other side and things feel pretty darn good.

In Brief Better Together:

• I’ve got some branding mood boards to show off
• Someone in Boulder is hosting a Better Together event on July 20th
• The June 25th event (recap here)was a great success and is moving the business development of Better Together forward
• I’ve got an idea for the July 23rd event (plus food sponsorship)
• There are already a few August events taking shape
• Freelance Business Week is moving along!

If you’d like to join in the conversation come over to our Slack group.

Better Together Branding

Sarah Neighbor is working on our branding efforts and has created some brand strategy copy along with some visual mood boards.

I’m very fond of the last one. We discussed using an aesthetic of standardized form fields along with hand written text. I imagine Better Together as a framework or platform that is light and versatile which we fill with our creativity and passion. The brand ties different chapters and initiatives together but allows each to really be its own thing. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

Got feedback? Join us on Slack to share.

Business Development

I’ve been plugging away at a Conscious Business Canvas that aims to describe Better Together but have felt stuck.

The June 25th event brought about 15 people together in a conference room where we started to unstick my thinking. There were a load of bright minds there and we had some great discussions (some notes here)

From that meeting I’ve started working with Tom Fellner and Justin MacLean on a business plan for launching Better Together this October during Freelance Business Week.

Justin shared a practice called “Working Backwards” which Amazon uses when start developing a new product.

You start from the customer, work to understand their problem(s), and define a solution from there (rather than starting with a product, and trying to figure out how to convince customers that they need it).

We’ve started working towards that, first Justin (who is new to the community, so has a fresh perspective) wrote up this 5 questions document which answers:

• Who is the customer?
• What is the customer problem or opportunity?
• What is the most important customer benefit?
• How do you know what customers need or want?
• What does the customer experience look like?

I’d love to get more feedback on the 5 questions document from you, the freelancer.

Upcoming events

I’m trying to bring more events into the Better Together meetup group to increase our exposure to people in the lead up to FBW and launch. Here’s some of those events:

• July 20th — Boulder Freelancers Meetup, which is being hosted by someone in Boulder who reached out to me a few months back. I think it’s important to find partners in other parts of the Front Range to start hosting events under the umbrella of Better Together, so this will be a test run of that.
• July 23rd — Make your Elevator Pitch Better, Together, This is the regular monthly event, I’ll be trying out a technique of peer feedback at the event. This also fits in with Monica Stockbridge’s recent blog post So what do you do?
• August — Design Thinking: Developing Personas, this event is being put on by two members and will serve the dual purpose of developing personas of independent workers in our group and educating people how and why to do this. For the business development work we need to better understand the needs of this community and it’s a useful process to learn, so we get to learn by doing!
• August —How to Negotiate a Six-Figure Freelancing Salary, The main event in August will be a workshop hosted by Maddy Osman based on her SkillShare class by the same name.

I am also going to start posting co-working sessions on the meetup group. Simply choosing a place and going there to work separately together. I figure this will give our community some grounding in the real world and provide a way to connect with other freelancers that might simply be at the cafe or co-working space we meet at. Further, I will try and negotiate with the spaces and see if they can offer freelancers discounts or something like that for bringing a gaggle of people in. We’ll see…

What’s next?

Coming up this month will be the closing of Freelance Business Week’s call for speakers and a big push to nail down sponsorships and spaces.

Running the events and keeping on top of following up will certainly be a thing.

Getting the steps for launch in place for Better Together will also be a top priority.

What do you think? If you want to support this project in anyway feel free to reach out to me at hello@dhornbein.com or join us on Slack