A few weeks ago, I attended a business networking meeting. There are many chapters of this specific business networking organization, and each chapter can have but one representative from a given field. One florist. One event planner. One car detailer. One CPA. One fitness coach. One doula.

And, of course, one “web person.”

That term makes me cringe and laugh and want to turn into the Incredible Hulk all at once. It ranks up there with people asking me to fix their computers and saying, “My best friend’s sister made a MySpace once, so I know all about web design.” (What are you supposed to say to that, anyway?)

This web gig? It’s a little-understood — or, in some cases, misunderstood — profession.

Unfortunately, for many people, technology is an amoebic blob that encompasses anything loosely connected to post-Industrial Revolution advancements. From the remote for the DVR to online banking, it’s all in there. And someone who can fix one thing can fix all the others. Right?

You also have the tech-savvy populace — the people who recognize the delineation between computer technicians and system administrators and “web people.” And God bless these people, because they won’t ever show up to a consultation and ask me to figure out why they’re getting virtual memory errors. But chances are that they still don’t have a firm grasp on the specializations that comprise each of those top-level groups.

Case in point: In said networking meeting, there were not one, not two, but four insurance agents. One does life insurance. Another does auto and home. A third does corporate insurance. At the end of the day, they’re all in the insurance field. But their specialties make their businesses distinct. They work in an industry where specialization is understood, accepted and appreciated.

Growing pains.

Insurance has been around for quite some time. Specialization became important as the needs of businesses and individuals expanded, gradually, over time. I’d guess that there was a time when customers expected every insurance agent to be a jack-of-all-trades — and when that agent tried to explain the difference between auto liability and homeowners insurance, their customer glazed over in a matter of seconds. Much like the glazing that happens when I talk about visual design, front-end markup, user experience, interaction design, application development… you get the idea.

In other words, growing pains are often resolved with time.

And with necessity. In the case of insurance, having some understanding of the types and terminology became essential to everyday life. Without car insurance, you could have your license and registration revoked. Without homeowners insurance, you could end up homeless because of a fire or flood.

I would argue that technology professions are becoming more important to daily life, and they will only become more so. But not knowing the difference between design and development isn’t likely to leave you destitute. At least not yet.

Responsibility.

As “web people,” we can’t sit back and wait for time and necessity to do the work for us. It might work out, but it’s likely to be painful (for our clients) and slow (for everyone).

Be brave.

Back to the networking meeting. Naturally, I sat down to chat with said sole web person, to find out what he actually does.

Like most “web people” out there, he started with a long list of things that he and his employees do. But after we talked for a few minutes, I found out that they really specialize in content management system development and hosting. In fact, they do those two things almost exclusively, despite feeling this obligation to offer a laundry list of services. Very narrow and specific, but extremely effective for the Right People.

We are fundamentally scared of saying “I don’t do that.” If it’s because we can’t do it, we’re afraid of looking incompetent. If it’s because we won’t do it, we’re scared of losing the client. In either case, it feels like admitting defeat.

But “web person” can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I may not want to be generalized, but when I force myself to do it all, I perpetuate the misconception.

I thought back to client consultations from months and years past and thought of the number of concessions I made because of fear — things I said I’d do because I can, not because I want to or because it’s my thing. This phenomenon goes way beyond web people. I’d be hard-pressed to find a solopreneur out there who never felt pressure to offer services beyond their target specialty.

We need to stop being scared and start being true to (or, for starters, finding) our thing. Specialization is scary, because specialization is a sign of growth and it requires us to say no. But when we’re true to our thing, we get to work with Right People and stop forcing the square peg into the round hole.

Now, that isn’t to say that jack-of-all-trades-ness is inherently bad. If you have a lot of different skills and services to offer, and all of them are true to you, you should absolutely pursue those. Your thing might even be a combination of seemingly dissimilar skills, and when you bring them together, ta-da! Brilliance! But in the same vein, just because two things are similar doesn’t mean you’re required to do both things. You just do your thing. Whatever that looks like. Period.

Each one of us teaches people how to treat us, our business and our industry. So “be brave” could also be translated as “teach by example.” Treat your business with respect and the others will follow.

We all love to talk about our most fabulous clients — the ones where everything clicked, where the stars aligned and the heavens opened and sun flooded down and everything was right with the world. Every time you propose an idea, they happen to email you at the exact same moment with the same idea! It’s like working with your muse, your best friend, your brother-from-another-profession. I call these the “happily ever after” clients. It’s likely that they’ll send you lots of referrals and talk you up to their clients and send you work on an ongoing basis. Awesome! The upper echelon of self-employment bliss.

If your business was a reality TV show, this client would be The Bachelor — except that he’d send all the other girls home after the first date and propose to you right then and there.

Chances are, you had a good feeling about this client from the get-go. You knew from your first meeting, call, email or retweet that this was one of your Right People. You spoke the same language, you had the same vision, and your gut (don’t undermine the gut!) said this was going to be great. If you’re a designer, maybe you and the client used the same style terminology to describe their future collateral. If you’re a writer, maybe you had the same sassy tone and style standards in your correspondence.

But what about those times when you’re wrong? When your seemingly-Right-Person is a Wrong Person in sheep’s clothing? I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not batting 1000 in weeding out right vs. wrong people. Sometimes it goes something like this. Sometimes it feels like crawling out of the flaming river of death. And sometimes, after both of those, I have to deep-clean the house and eat these cookies out of the bowl with a spoon.

Somewhere along the way, we all learned that romantic fairy tales — of the Cinderella variety — are, well, tales, and only marginally tied to reality. Even in the healthiest, most stable relationships, things like work and communication and reflection and understanding are required for success. And let’s face it: We’ve all (or most) had relationships with people where we worked really hard and communicated fully and reflected often and practiced empathetic understanding and it still didn’t work out.

Yet, in our relationships with clients, we seem to expect a “happily ever after” from every relationship. When we don’t get it, we feel like we did something wrong. Despite telling ourselves it’s not you, it’s them, there’s still that little voice inside that says, but if you’d just…

Seriously. It’s not you.

I can say this, honestly and sincerely, to every single person who has experienced a client break-up. Whether you’re the breaker-up-er or the break-up-ee, it’s all about fit. There isn’t something fundamentally wrong with you or your services or your craftsmanship or your work ethic or your approach. Is there something wrong with them? Wrong isn’t the word I’d use; not ready for what you’re doing seems more accurate.

As one of my friends wisely said to me once, “Sometimes, it’s like you’re trying to sell them a Super Bowl commercial, and all they want is a stick in a bucket.” Sound familiar? If it does, you’re dealing with poor fit.

Keep trusting your instincts.

It’s all too easy to draw everything into question after a bad break-up. If I was wrong about them, how can I be sure about the other prospects I’m talking to right now?

Think back to a bad break-up with a significant other. The feelings are similar, are they not? And yet, in life, you figured out how to rest in the complete amazing-ness of your true self and continue putting yourself out there.

Let’s say your ex was kind and intellectual, a fantastic cook, a triathlete, and took care of abandoned kittens in his free time. Are you going to go and date someone who’s cruel and hates books, whose culinary claim-to-fame is instant Jello, who can barely walk from the car to your house, and who kicks kittens for fun? (No kittens were harmed in the making of this description.)

Yet this is what we do (or think about doing) with our business. Don’t give in. You know what’s right for your business, and your instincts are rockin’. Soon, someone’s going to come along who desperately needs that package that Wrong-Person-so-and-so told you to trash. Vindication!

Is there anything worth gleaning?

One of my favorite (and by favorite, I mean most despised) phrases is, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…” In silver medal position is the ubiquitous, “Can I give you some constructive criticism?” In both cases, whatever follows needs to be handled with a hazmat suit and a strong cup of coffee.

Someone may approach something in the worst way possible. They might ambush you by mentioning it in passing, or they might sucker you by toting it as constructive, or they might just be rude and careless and coming from a Not-Your-Right-Person place. And experience tells me that 98% of what they said is complete rubbish. But there can be something to glean from that 2% if you can wade through and discard everything else. You may disagree that that section of your copy is poorly written or that your website sidebar is confusing or that your communication with clients is not timely or consistent. But maybe you could reach out to people you trust and ask for their input on that section of copy. Or maybe you could strategically rearrange your sidebar and see what happens.

Now, there’s a giant caveat: If that 98% is just going to ransack your hard-fought strongholds and pillage your creative spirit and and leave you without the energy or desire to reflect on the 2%, don’t bother. It isn’t worth it. Someday you can come back to it, or (if it’s really important) someone else will come along and give you the same advice in a loving, respectful, encouraging way. (If this is you, go read about having shoes thrown at you. I think you’ll like it.)

Maybe, just maybe, this is happy after all.

In other words, give yourself permission to cut your losses. You could’ve dragged out this relationship for weeks, months, years and been utterly miserable as they put you in a teeny tiny box and/or treated you like a monkey-puppet and/or took up space, time, energy and creativity that you could be using for real Right People.

Sanity check.

Do you run into trouble discriminating right people from wrong people? How do you improve your screening process while still listening to your heart/gut/intuition? Or maybe you don’t have trouble with this, in which case, please share your magic formula. (Does it involve a strange test in a temple by a samurai?)

These last few weeks, I’ve been working on some posts about some meatier stuff. (I know you’re thinking it isn’t difficult to get meatier than the dry cleaner and books, and I’d have to agree with you. But I digress.) Stuff like my codependent relationship with email and how I’m trying to fix it, and shoulds vs. wants for small businesses, and my get-things-done-without-feeling-like-a-productivity-robot secrets, and a certain occupational hazard that shall for now remain nameless. In the meantime, I should be writing about design stuff or client stuff or being-authentic stuff, but I haven’t because I’ve been in this hi, overwhelm, meet insecurity place where even writing that sentence is hard. Because I have a whole giant system for addressing overwhelm and I’m used to it working. But then insecurity has to swoop in and ruin everything. Thanks a lot.

All of that to say, it’s way past time to do a round-up of all the super awesome and wonderful stuff that’s been going on in the midst of stuff gone awry. Hopefully this round-up will become a regular habit.

The books! Oh, the books.

I am now on books four and five of twelve. I usually have this rule about reading multiple books at the same time (and it’s called I can’t stand the thought of my books resenting me for sitting there, bookmarked and lonely) but I quickly realized that I’d be in Gone with the Wind for quite some time and needed a second book that doesn’t require its own boarding pass when I get on an airplane. I’ve also concluded that any book about books is a quick sell with me. You could tell me that The Principles of Microeconomics was a book about books and I’d probably read it. Case in point:

“It was a paradise of learning, and I prayed for eventual admission… My fingers itched to take a few off the shelves, but I didn’t dare touch even a binding.” (The Historian)

Four-day work week? Yep. Check.

I can’t say it’s any easier, but I’m sticking with it. I’m fairly certain I imagined that hours would magically appear in the days I would be working and that would somehow compensate for the day off. With no one volunteering to switch from 24- to 32-hour days, I’m brainstorming other solutions.

The Oregon Coast makes me glad to be alive.

So do a lot of other things, like baking and my husband. But I got to spend not one but two weekends at the coast this month and it was pure bliss.

Ever wondered what to do with those 30 bone china teacups and saucers in your china cabinet?

Me neither. But apparently, my mom and Granny actually do ask themselves these kinds of questions. My mom and I planned and served (with the help of my generous husband) a seated four-course high tea dinner for my Granny and 25 of her closest friends. One of my colleagues pointed out how amazing it is to not only have an 80th birthday but to have that many dear people to share it with. I have to agree.

Bear in mind that all of those teacups, saucers and hand-painted china plates have to be washed. By hand. Along with the 25 wine glasses and everything you served from, cooked in, and baked on. Consider yourself warned.

I pitched my tent!

I had a Wilderness Concierge session this week, and oh. my. gosh. Kelly is brilliant and supportive and encouraging and makes you feel like everything you say and think is not only sane (whew!) but also meaningful, valuable and useful. I’m so stinkin’ excited I want to run around yelling LOOK AT ALL MY AWESOME NEW STUFF! Except that wouldn’t be a good idea, because all that new stuff is still in my head. And if people tried to look in there, well, a) things could get pretty messy, and b) it might look something like this. A whole world of weird in there? Yes, indeed.

…and I have to say it was a little rough.

I’m sure those of you who worked today are pretty short on sympathy. Oh, poor Allie *had* to take a day off… I have the world’s smallest violin for you. Yeah. That’s fair.

But the purpose behind this experiment is setting boundaries, right? Taking Monday off is more symbolic than anything else. I got to the point where I was doing some kind of work every day. Taking phone calls at obscene hours. Using an FTP client on my iPhone to fix minor stuff (usually because a client accidentally broke something) while I was driving. Sitting on a ferry in the beautiful Pacific northwest and feeling anxious because oh my gosh I can’t check my email what if someone needs me. This needed major action.

The boundary-setting is bigger than setting boundaries on my time; I have to set boundaries with the kind of work I do and how I allow people to treat me and how I treat my business as whole. But time was the most natural place to start — and I’m already finding that, when you set time boundaries, some of those other boundaries are naturally (by necessity) created for you. I’m excited to see how this progresses in the weeks to come. But for now, I’m pretty gosh darn excited.

Because I went to the dry cleaner!

This seems so beyond small, but I have been trying to get to the dry cleaner for more than four months. It was so out of hand that it was my new years resolution.

You see, the dry cleaner that I like isn’t close to anything else. Not that it’s very far, but it isn’t on the way to anything, adjacent to anything, or otherwise located so that I couldn’t help but stop by. I have to go there on purpose. And I was always too frantic during business hours on weekdays to get there. Either I was making the most of the hour I set aside for requisite errands (a dozen errands in an hour? no problem!) or it was 4:58 and there was no way even I could jet over there before 5.

Today, I didn’t have any excuses and I didn’t have all these things to see! emails to answer! people to meet! because I wasn’t on a minute-by-minute schedule. I could take 15 minutes to drive over, drop off my clothes, and drive home.

And because I’m a total Monica (oh, the dance of the clean clothes!), it totally made my day.

But it almost didn’t happen.

I picked up a couple of new client prospects on Friday. (Actually, I was inundated with new prospects last week (!) — not big corporations or high-paying gigs, but super-creative work for super-nice people [i.e. the best work] — which is extremely exciting and is part of the reason why this three-day weekend was killing me… but I digress.) One of them is on a tight timeline, and the person who referred me told me up front that this potential client was leaving on Monday and would be gone for two weeks. So I emailed right away and asked if we could set something up for Monday.

Yes, Monday. I knew I shouldn’t, but what’s one little meeting over coffee? (This is every addict’s reasoning, BTW.)

Well, he was leaving Monday morning, so he wanted to meet over the weekend. But I had to draw the line somewhere. (Conveniently for me and my inability to create boundaries, I had plans for both Saturday and Sunday, so it would’ve been a glaring red flag to squeeze in a meeting in an already-full calendar.) I suggested that we set something up for the week he returned and suggested dates and times.

He wrote back and said he was going with someone else. That I couldn’t meet the timeline he had in mind.

Now, in well-adjusted-person interpretation, this means, “He is not my right person and has no respect for my time and boundaries.” But in Allie interpretation, it means, “I am insufficient and failing my clients and no one will want to work with someone who (insert healthy boundary here).”

Fortunately, miraculously, I didn’t cave in and set up a Sunday meeting. I held my ground. And my reward was the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner! Man, that was great.

Hey, Friday? I’ll deal with you next.

Taking an honest-to-goodness weekend makes Friday into the day when everything must get done to a point where I can leave it for three days. And frankly, putting that much pressure on poor Friday makes her into a bit of a bitch.

But then I realized that Friday has always been a pain. I wasn’t working into the night (and still not feeling completely at peace about things) because of my four-day work week. It was par for the course with Friday. The usual. Not worse, not better.

So there may have been a little cheating.

I did take a client technical support call (their email was down!), and I answered a couple of emails (mostly personal emails! promise!). But overall, it was a success. Especially considering that this was the first day for another experiment (more on that later), so I was doubly “depriving myself” of things today.

And, bonus! My to-do list (for life things) is at a manageable place for the first time in months. I didn’t even feel busy today, but apparently it was just the amount of time I needed to get everything wrangled. Wait, I get this and the dry cleaner even though I cheated? I can’t wait to see what next Monday brings.

I’m always experimenting with new structures and systems to make me more effective in what I do. It’s a big part of my DTO, obsessive organization thing.

Sometime last year, I read this post and was inspired to experiment with a four-day work week. To say it was a miserable failure is an understatement. It failed for a number of reasons, big and small.

In setting business and personal goals for 2010, I found that whole four-day work week lingering around. Apparently I wasn’t done with my experiment. There was a goal statement (someone else’s goal statement, in fact) that kept coming back to me: One day off every week. One week off every month. One month off every year. And if that’s the end goal, it seems like the first baby step is the one day off every week part.

This person might’ve been talking about one literal day off every week, not one “work day” off every week. But I’ve been feeling a strong (overwhelming, unavoidable) need to set boundaries and find balance. Like many solopreneurs, I do some kind of work every day, and I take phone calls/requests/meetings/etc. from clients when I really shouldn’t and everything in me is telling me not to. (Like when I’m in a hotel room, at 2 a.m. on a holiday, on a road trip. But I digress.) Clearly, I need some boundaries.

First, I needed to identify the reasons this work plan failed last time and take conscious, deliberate action to address those issues.

Problem #1: Friday.

When I worked an 8-to-5 job for someone else, Friday was the day when productivity was at its lowest. I rarely had meetings. Emails were slow. There may have even been an occasional two-hour lunch. You could take Friday off without doing too much suffering the next work day.

But in my business, Friday is often my busiest, most productive day. I thrive on going into the weekend with to-dos checked and emails answered. And it seems to work the same way for many of my clients as well. Trying to take Friday off was setting myself up for failure.

Monday, on the other hand, tends to be a very administrative day — billing, proposals, correspondence, planning. And while that all has to get done, I can fit it into the administrative time that I set aside from every other day. So the first problem had an easy solution: change the day. (Duh.)

Problem #2: Email.

If I read an email, I can’t stop thinking about it until the issue is resolved or a response is provided. I blame this on the spaghetti brain phenomenon. But no matter the reason, I can’t try to take the day off when I’m on my laptop or iPhone checking email all day. In fact, this was how my four-day work week died the first time around. I would come online “just to answer a few emails,” and before I knew it, I was revising design mock-ups and troubleshooting technical issues and I couldn’t quite figure out how it all happened.

Solution #2: Put the email aside. Post an auto-responder on my email account so the sender knows that I’m out of the office, and then leave the email alone.

Problem #3: Guilt.

Honestly, this is the biggest hurdle. I feel guilty when I’m not working. When I worked for someone else, I celebrated the days when I could leave work at the office. Now, I feel this strange insufficiency and fear of neglect when my work doesn’t cross my mind 85 times each evening and 324 times every weekend.

The solution for this one isn’t as easy as the first two. But I think it involves embracing the guilt for what it represents: that my business is important to me and my client relationships are valuable. (There’s also this little issue of me needing to be the best at everything and never wanting to let anyone down for any reason, even if they’re being completely unreasonable. But that’s a big work in progress, and a story for another day.)

Problem #4: Catch-up.

We all need a day to catch up from time to time. But I found that even my “day off” wasn’t sufficient for me to catch up because I was mired in daily stuff. And then I would feel inadequate and un-entrepreneur-ey because I couldn’t catch up. And then I’d think of all the other entrepreneur-ey things I “should” be doing, and add those to the impossibly long to-do list that needs catching up on. And repeat.

Addressing this problem is a big lesson in boundaries. I’m giving myself permission to use my extra day off to catch up, but I’m not giving myself permission to tell anyone that I’m in the office. As far as the world is concerned, I’m unavailable until Tuesday. This means that I can’t do anything that won’t give me a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. In other words, using that day off for working has to feel worth it.

So, starting this Monday, I’m officially out of the office on Mondays. (I cheated a little since Monday is a national holiday, but we all have to start somewhere. I may be known for working holidays from time to time. Or regularly.)

New issues may arise this year, and they’ll need their own solutions. But for now, these are the ground rules, and I’m not making any excuses. (Okay, maybe one or two, but that’s it. Promise.)