Break away from the freelance mould. Do what works, not what you’re told.

I think most programmers spend the first 5 years of their career mastering complexity and the rest of their lives learning simplicity — Buzz Andersen

As a freelance web developer, I constantly feel that I have to showcase my technical skills wherever the output, most critically in my personal blog and my business site. The idea is simple — the more technical I make myself look, the more money I will make.

The problem is that this thought-process can cause hangups trying to build the perfect SEO-friendly, fastest-loading blog built on the latest technologies, or a business site built responsively for every single device on the planet.

This approach to personal and business development makes it dangerously easy to spend your time on technical development instead of focusing on the most important aspects — you and your business.

I find it especially challenging being based in London. It might be the nature of the industry but I have this constant worry that there are thousands of more talented and more experienced developers just waiting for me to miss the latest trend. I feel the need to compete with every other developer on SEO, battling to be the number one result for “London web developer”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand these aspects are important, but they’re not the make or break for a business, nor the deciding factor for someone to hire you.

Looking back over the past few years, very rarely have quality business leads come from a search referral. The overwhelming majority of jobs come from personal recommendations, friend-of-a-friend “my mate needs a website” introductions and face-to-face networking. So the question is: Why do I spend so much time focusing on the things that get little to no business?

After reading the fantastic article “Why Sometimes I Hate Myself” by Tomasz Dziurko, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the reason I focus on these things is simply to give me the feeling of being “The Freelance Guy”. Of course I have a WordPress site with a SEO focused taxonomy and those sliding % skill levels that animate. Of course I have a MailChimp widget to capture emails because they have the highest conversion.

I have come to realise that these are pressures guided by the industry which I put on myself to fit into the “freelancer” mould.

This realisation of my misguided focus has inspired me.

I’ve begun to restructure how I present myself & my business online, focusing less on what I’m told I should be selling and focus more on what actually sells: me.

I’ve changed my complicated business website to a single page — provided by the fantastic site HTML5up — making maintaining it a task of simply editing and uploading. 99% of the time the old process took, now free to focus on creating quality products and meeting potential clients.

So take a step back from the “best ways to gain an audience” posts and industry leaders promoting their insider secrets. Realise what actually sells you to your clients and refine your personal and business practices to accommodate the way you work best.

I’m Andy Girvan, Freelancer and Founder of thirtydigital, a web and app innovation consultancy. Follow me on Twitter: @andygirvan

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