I wished I could have made it to 50 posts before the end of the year, but alas. In any case, I thought I’d do one more, before I plunge back into grant editing for the February NIH cycle.
I was thinking about growth today – my professional growth as an individual writer and the growth of my freelance business – and where I want to go with this in the next 5 years. Professionally, I will never stop looking out for opportunities to learn new things, and will likely continue taking workshops through AMWA and other groups. This coming year, I’m planning on attending the NIH Regional Seminar on grants in Indianapolis, and I’m considering taking a similar workshop from the NSF and a local course specifically for SBIR/STTR grants. I’m a career student, I suppose! I also joined NORDP, and will continue my memberships in AMWA, CSE, BELS, and EFA – these are all amazing resources for keeping up with what’s going on in the field, finding new business leads, and networking.
Business-wise, I’ve just had to decide I need to reign it in with the growth. At this point in my career, I’m not interested in expanding my business to include other writers, so I continue to be incredibly busy just doing the writing and billing, with very little time for doing things that would grow my business – marketing, blogging more regularly, etc. I definitely would love more time to check in with my LinkedIn groups, participate in Twitter conversations, and read others’ blogs.
But when I’m busy, I’m really busy, and I have to be careful that busy doesn’t turn into overwhelmed and exhausted, and definitely not into burned out. One thing I hope to be able to do in the next 5 years is to hire an assistant to help with the administrative stuff – that would be an enormous help. Whether or not to grow my business further is something that will just have to wait. I’m not quite there yet. In the meantime, I am keeping close track of the careers of a few of my successful colleagues and watching how they are expanding their businesses.
But reigned-in growth doesn’t mean no growth at all. I have done pretty well within the grantwriting/editing niche this year, and I’m looking to expand on that to include NSF (biological sciences directorate) and NIH small business and technology grant mechanisms. Which is why I’m considering taking the workshops that are being offered this year in the Chicago area.
So that’s where I’m at as we enter 2012. Next year, I’m going to focus on settling into the freelance life a little more (can we say sensible scheduling?!), continue pursuing grantwriting as my market niche, and basically stay the course.
I hope everyone has a fantastic new year! See you on the other side…