Happy 6th Birthday, Refining Workflow!

Six years ago, I nervously published Refining Workflow’s website that I had been building. I hired a lawyer to create the paperwork needed to make my LLC official. I filed my paperwork with the Secretary of State. I updated my LinkedIn profile to show that I was a small business owner now and looking for new opportunities. I had a vision and goal and I was ready to make it happen. 

I was fortunate that my first client just happened to be my former employer. It was a friendly and known environment to build my confidence as a new freelancer. The rest of the time, I looked for new opportunities and read all I could about being a small business owner. I didn’t pitch myself much to my contacts, but looked for short-term project work that I could use to build my experience as a freelancer. 

Not all opportunities were the right fit. While they looked good on paper, I found that expectations for the position were not aligned with what I wanted my workday to be like. I looked for new industries and company types for me to explore and learn more about. I started to volunteer with a local civic tech group to make more connections in my local network. I posted on LinkedIn to see if any connections had opportunities for me and found one or two. 

In the past years, I’ve started to sub-contract for other small business owners and even have my own sub-contractors. This setup was never something I thought I would do, six years ago when I started my business. Now I’m thinking about how to scale and broaden the opportunities that Refining Workflow can support and manage. 

Being a small business owner, an entrepreneur, has its ups and downs. The work can be challenging and rewarding at the same time. But the skills I have gained and shared to support different projects across clients are priceless. I’ve connected with other freelancers through formal networking in a professional association as well as informal networking through social media groups. 

Here’s to six years of timelines, requirements documents, testing and debugging, and meeting facilitation. The Refining Workflow team is looking forward to the next six years and what opportunities lay ahead.