I'm out on my own now, and I want to write down what I decided before I took a single client, because those decisions get much harder to make once the invoices start.
The first is that I don't take work I can't be proud of. Everybody says that. The test is whether you'll turn down money in a slow month, because that's the only month where the principle means anything.
The second is that the person you speak to is the person who does the work. No account manager, no junior, no handoff, no team you'll never meet. I answer the phone and I build the thing, and if that limits how much I can take on, then it limits how much I take on.
The third is that clients own what I build. Outright, on the day it ships. No hostage files, no dependency dressed up as a retainer.
The fourth is that I'll tell people what they don't need, even when it costs me. That last part is the hard one, and I've come to think it's what separates someone you trust from someone you just hire.
Twenty years to get to those four sentences. A concrete crew, then a racetrack, then the Grey Nuns, then a classroom, then the City of Edmonton's brand, then a company on another continent, and now a desk that's my own.
It's the most exposed I've ever been and the least anxious I've ever felt.