Hunting v. Farming

It intrigues me how a quickly potential job that I first file under 'nice to get' becomes a 'must have'; an off-hand remark from a client that gets blithely entered onto my contacts database as a 'maybe' is transformed into a Great White Whale, the capturing of which my livelihood depends.

This is a consequence of my high-cost low-incidence business model; I price aggressively but don't expect to work every day. I didn't purposely adopt this approach, it just aligns with an industry where demand for my stuff is really driven by R&D pipelines, sales team 'time off road' and so on. A parallel might be made with salespeople in an industry like real estate or high-end high tech where a lot of energy is spent pursuing a smallish number of leads in the expectation of a large commission. NBD is thus a matter of hunting (whales) not cultivating a larger number of lower yielding clients.

Fitting then that I've just landed some work in Norway in February.