A successful business is one that gives you freedom

And, I justified a pretty convincing argument to myself why I should build an agency but something felt off.

The idea of a typical agency didn't excite me. I enjoy the work I do but to do it at scale felt awfully meh to me.

Luckily I try to follow a framework for decision making that gave me permission to sit on this for a while.

If a decision is reversible, the biggest risk is moving too slow.  If a decision is irreversible, the biggest risk is moving too fast. - James Clear

A couple of days later I had an aha moment where everything clicked. It happened whilst reading an article  "The definition of success is autonomy" by Ryan Holiday.

This passage, in particular, was the one that changed my perspective completely on how I was viewing the business I'm going to build.

"Today, I don’t define success the way that I did when I was younger. I don’t measure it in copies sold or dollars earned. I measure it in what my days look like and the quality of my creative expression: Do I have time to write? Can I say what I think? Do I direct my schedule or does my schedule direct me? Is my life enjoyable or is it a chore?  In a word: autonomy. Do I have autonomy over what I do and think? Am I free?

That aha moment led me to realise the reason for not wanting to build a typical agency was two fold.

~ 1. I don't want to be responsible for full-time employees.

~ 2. Scaling an agency wouldn't give me the autonomy in my life to focus on what's important to me [learning skills, creating & people].

I still want to build a business [an operation that runs without me] just not solely a service-based business [more on that later].

When I started freelancing I viewed a successful business as one that made lots of money.

But as I started to make some money freelancing I quickly realised that how I spent my days determined my happiness much more than how much I earnt.

The days I had meeting after meeting and worked in fragmented blocks of time between other peoples schedules were draining. Whereas the days I made time for deep work on client projects and my own projects [without any calls] were the ones that energised me.

Personally I've found creating autonomy in a freelance business to be difficult.

You technically run a business, but in reality you've created your own job [with lots of bosses in the form of clients]. A business runs without you, a freelance business does not.

When a client asks you to do something it can feel like you have no choice. But really this comes down to having defined boundaries and structures to give you freedom and control.

The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away – it can only be forgotten. - Greg McKewon | Esentialism

For me those boundaries are set in how I position myself and interact with clients. When people hire me to work on designing + developing their Webflow site they hire me as an expert in the field. I try to make sure clients are looking for an outside consultant [someone who offers their expertise and insight bringing extra value to the project] rather than a technician [some being paid to do exactly as the client says].

Positioning things in this way has been by far the best move I've made to ensure I have autonomy in my freelance business. But with freelancing being more of a job than a business it's not always possible to have that freedom.

With MakerLabs [my new business] I'm going to focus heavily on activities I want to spend my time on but that also give me autonomy in my day to day life. Things like writing articles, recording videos and building digital products that serve people. These activities will not instantly yield income but offer the foundations for a more productised approach to business.

This doesn't mean I'm stopping service work [I'll still be taking on projects and working with outside contractors to produce great work]. But more focusing on building up a business over the long haul that doesn't rely solely on client work.

No scaling a crazy agency or building a startup. Instead focusing on creating a profitable internet business that lets me decide how I spend my time, money and attention.

There's still a lot for me and my partner to figure out with MakerLabs but I know a few things. I want to help people solve problems and I want to build a business that gives me freedom.

I don't want to build a business that dictates how I spend my time and I don't aspire to run a 100 person + business. Instead I want to run an efficient, lean business that does great work.

This article from Ryan Holiday made me realise that the moves I'd made in my freelance business were really in pursuit of autonomy and freedom.

This lead me to revaluate how I viewed the business I'm about to build and create a business model that optimises for the most important thing in my work life - the ability to choose how I spend my time, money, and attention.

I now define the success of businesses in freedom not money.