Independent Information Architect Starter Kit

I’ve been “working for myself”1 for 5 years now. In all honesty, the past five years haven’t been that much different than the 5 before that where I was an employee. My professional employee experience was with tech start ups or small professional services firms. Frequently both.

I do the same work, the difference is I’m biz dev, finance, project manager, marketing, as well as lead IA.

    Business

  • Get an Accountant.
    They’ll help you understand the tax implications of different business entity types, set up payroll, and make tax season a pleasure. That’s what accountants are supposed to do, be sure to find one you like. I like Lottsa.
  • Define Your Rates
    What do you charge? I’ve found this to be a pretty easy answer. If you have no idea, there are 2 easy ways to get a ballpark on the market: if you’re in-house; find out what your vendors are charging you, if you’re not; ask around and don’t take ‘it depends’ for an answer – by unpacking ‘it depends’ you’ll get a better idea of actual vendor/client relationships.
  • Define Your Services
    What do you do?2. You’ve got to decide up front what kind of projects you want and more importantly the ones you don’t. Even more importantly – what it would take to work on a project you don’t really want. In any case, you have some idea of what you enjoy doing.
  • Define Your Space
    Where in your house will you work? Make your space comfortable, adjust and arrange everything just the way you like it – make it the perfect office for you. If you’re just starting to work independently and you have a family – you need to declare office hours and set boundaries, for you and them.
    Marketing

  • Domain/Email Address
    Buy the [YourBusinessName].com, set up email there. Stop giving out Gmail, Yahoo, or GeoCities addresses. That’s pure silliness.
  • Website
    Yes, you’ll need one of these – specifically a blog, to help people understand your approach and personality. Your resume, portfolio (images from past projects), bio, and current photo should go here. Being able to say “It’s on my website” when someone asks for any of those things relieves a great deal of stress.If you’re an IA in MN, feel free to make MNteractive.com that blog.
  • Comment Elsewhere
    You need to be involved in the conversation online and off. Online, find blogs that you enjoy reading and leave an intelligent comment with a link to your website.
  • Events Around Town
    Find all the local marketing, usability, product design organizations’ websites and put their monthly events and meetups on your calendar. Meet these people. Then, do the same for tangentially related groups like programming language user groups, and anything else that sounds interesting.
  • Do I Need Business Cards?
    That’s your call. I don’t have any. Maybe I’ll get some later, I dunno. Lately, I’ve found blank index cards more effective for jotting down information about the people I meet and what we talked about. Are they an effective replacement for business cards? You’ll have to ask someone I gave them to.
  • Follow Up with People You Talk To.
    It’s easy. Email or phone, pick the one you’re most comfortable with, but do it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard an independent lament about not getting a project and they admit to not following up.
    Hardware

  • Apple MacBook Pro 17″.
    No question. It gets noticed by clients and I like the big screen for working comfortably while on the road, and it will do whatever you ask it to. You’ll also need AppleCare, and a spare charger.
  • A backup plan.
    At minimum, you’ll want an external drive that stays in your home office. My external drive backs up to the cloud. This is great for providing fairly easy access to archived projects without having them on your work-a-day machine.
  • Noise-canceling headphones.
    I find them great in helping attain and maintain focus – especially on airplanes and if you have small children in your household.
  • A mobile phone that you like
    At minimum, it should have an easily accessible un/mute and speakerphone toggle. So many don’t. The rest of the stuff (email, web browsing, camera, Bluetooth, etc) all optional.
    Software

  • Apple’s iWork Suite & NeoOffice
    Used effectively together, you’ve got near-100% compatibility with MS Office for a small fraction of the price. Personally, I use spreadsheets and presentations far more than word processors (that’s what email is for).
  • Mail, Calendar
    Whatever works for you bestest.
  • What ever your clients want your work in.
    I’ve created wireframes in almost every application out there and I wouldn’t purchase any of them if not for that being the preferred application for a specific client.

After this, it comes down to your own organization, sales, and resource management skills.

Good luck.

1. Anyone that works for themselves knows this is a misnomer.
2. This is one of my least favorite questions. It assumes a singular perspective about work that doesn’t represent my reality. Currently, when I someone asks me this question, I pretend they asked, “Tell me about a cool project you’re working on?”