The week I went all in

Running this alongside other commitments had a ceiling, and I hit it in a way that was impossible to argue with.

A client needed me on a Tuesday morning. I could not be there. Somebody else could, and was.

What actually changed

Not the hours, oddly. I had been working plenty of hours. What changed was that I could say yes to things that needed a response inside a day rather than inside a week.

This industry moves at the speed of the reply. A prospect who asks a question on Monday and hears back on Thursday has spent three days quietly deciding you are not that bothered.

The part nobody warns you about

The isolation. Not the money — I had planned for the money, roughly. But going from having colleagues to having a laptop and a list is a genuine adjustment, and I underestimated it entirely.

What fixed it was building a bench of developers and partners I actually talk to, and being in rooms with other people doing the same thing. Not networking in the awkward sense. Just not being alone with the problem.

Would I do it earlier?

Yes, by a few months. Not by a year. I needed the period of doing it badly on the side, because it is where I learned what I did not know, at a cost I could absorb.

The mistake is not going too late. It is going before you have ever been paid by a stranger.