This weekend has been a business weekend. I’ve done almost nothing but read business related books to get me in the mindset I need to have for some upcoming projects. The first book I started on is one that I had always heard was great, but had managed to put off reading until yesterday. It’s a very fast read, though, made up of a series of bite-sized, wisdom-packed essays.

“Getting Real” is a collection of business philosophies and lessons as applied and learned by 37signals. For those of you who don’t know, 37signals is the web developer and web business community’s equivalent of a critically-acclaimed indie rock band. They aren’t the biggest or the richest, but, by God, they are the greatest. 37signals has revolutionized the web as we know it. Not only because their products (Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise and Campfire) have changed business management to something more suited to the 21st century, but also for their willingness to release their Ruby on Rails application framework to the public free of charge and restrictions. (The awesomeness that is Twitter was built using Ruby on Rails.)

If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s available on their website and for purchase.

Even though the book is more specifically about web development, I’ve noticed that a lot of the advice in the book can easily be applied (and should be applied) to the professional decisions of aspiring freelancers, bloggers, writers, consultants, entrepreneurs, etc. Here are the most important lessons you can take away from the book…

Do Less

This is really the entire point of the book. Underdo your competition. Get a vision for the type of business or blog or freelance endeavor you want and stick to it. You’ll be tempted to move into this market or that market (or wherever you think the money is) and offer this service or that service, but don’t. Have a clearly defined goal of who you want to be, what you want to do, and who you want to work for.

Also, make sure to prioritize the work you do. We can work 80 hours a week and still accomplish nothing. Believe me I’ve done it many times. It’s better to effectively work 5 hours a week than to ineffectively work 80 hours a week. Figure out what will get you the most happiness and the most money and put all your energy toward doing that.

Say No First

After you have defined what it is you want to do, learn to say no to every other direction that comes along. I’ve had a lot of trouble with this in the past. I initially started as a web design business. It wasn’t two weeks before I saw the money some writers made and also jumped into writing. It was a mess. I lost money and I lost business.

When you get an idea that you think might be more profitable or might be a better direction, put it on the shelf. Just ignore it and focus on what you were doing. If you find this idea keeps coming up multiple times over the course of a few weeks, then it’s time to seriously consider it. Don’t take on more than you can handle and don’t try to be a multinational corporation. You’re just one person (or perhaps a small team) so make sure the amount of work you take on reflects that.

Launch It Today

Do you want to be a freelancer? Then right now I want you to go out and buy a .com, get some hosting, install WordPress, find a good theme and write an About page. This can be done in less than one hour. If you need help, contact me and I’ll do it for you at a reasonable price. The point is, that’s all it takes to get started freelancing. Once you have a site up telling people that you are a freelancer, you’re a freelancer. People will see you as a freelancer. That’s not to say that clients will start falling out of the air… they won’t. You’ll still have a lot to figure out like what services you’ll offer and how much you’ll charge. But the point is, you’ll have something physical to look at, something tangible that represents the life you want. Do it today. Start right now and I promise you when you have a website tonight, you’ll feel so much more accomplished.

Give Back

37signals is an example of what I like to call a more-than-profit company. After making Basecamp, they had internally developed this really useful framework for creating web apps based on the Ruby programming language. They called this framework Ruby on Rails. They could have kept this all to themselves and succeeded all the same, but they opted not to. The framework was released under an open source license so that anyone could use or contribute to it. This has meant a more powerful framework (thousands of contributors is better than one or two) and more respect from the community. Not only that, but without Ruby on Rails Twitter might have been an entirely different experience.

If Ruby on Rails wasn’t enough, they also put Getting Real out there for anyone to read (and it is a really magnificent book).

So what does this mean for you as a freelancer? What can you do to give back? If you are a designer, consider releasing some icons or illustrations or PSDs completely free. If you are a developer, dedicate yourself to using and contributing to open source projects. Writers, release manifestos. Not only will it get you attention, if you are doing it right then you’ll actually be a valuable voice to your community (take, for example, Chris Guillebeau and his World Domination manifesto).

There are tons of ideas for giving back. Be creative!

Conclusion

There’s plenty more to learn from 37signals and I’m really looking forward to their upcoming book, Rework, since it goes into detail about everything they know about business. Getting Real, if you haven’t read it, is a wonderful starting point for literally any entrepreneur, especially web entrepreneurs. It will give you a better perspective on what you need to be doing and how you should be doing it. I highly recommend it.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/turoczy/ / CC BY 2.0

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