It’s great to be in a groove. Just be careful that groove doesn’t turn into a rut.

That’s the message free agents need to heed if they’re enjoying some success in their professional practices and are wondering where next to set their sights. There’s no way to keep a good thing going unless you try to make it better all the time.

Fine, but where should you look to make improvements? It’s not always easy to obtain a healthy perspective on your business when you work on your own or with a few associates. Try these four strategies for continuous improvement: network intelligently, choose cutting-edge clients, use technology to constantly increase your effectiveness, and mind your markets.

Kelly, who specializes in creating names for technology companies and their products, also employs tried-and-true methods for networking and keeping up with the state-of-the-art: reading widely and giving speeches that push her envelope. "You damn well better read the key journals and business books" in your field, she says. "I speak to a lot of groups and I often write speeches that are a stretch for me. It forces me to go out and do research."

"I really like to work with exceptionally demanding, smart clients," says Kelly. She’s also found that the image and reputation of her current customers directly affects whom she can sell her services to in the future. "You can get sucked up doing a lot of work for clients who aren’t well-known, but their names won’t get you the type of business that you want."

Poretz, who at one time worked out of his house, believes that keeping ahead of the technology curve enables him to please clients and cut overhead. "You can replace a lot of administrative people with technology," he says bluntly. His home-based communications infrastructure includes two fax lines, four voice lines, ISDN and a dedicated line for his Bloomberg terminal, which provides sophisticated data on equities.

If you’re like the average independent professional, several examples of trailing edge technology are within arm’s reach. Are you surfing via a 28K modem when you could save hours per week with a cable or DSL Internet connection? Do you annoy clients with a busy signal when you could be picking up their call on another line, or at least giving them the option to leave voicemail? The boost to your professional image should be well worth the cost of additional communications and computing resources.

If you don’t keep your head up, you may miss the fact that technology isn’t just enabling better productivity, it may even be moving your market.

"We see an enormous number of companies out there figuring out how to use Web technology to get the story out to investors," says Poretz. To carve a distinctive niche, "we reposition ourselves on the other part of the relationship, providing very high value services." For example, Poretz sometimes helps corporate executives craft a story for stock market analysts about why earnings won’t meet expectations for the quarter.

In the three years that Kelly has been in the naming business, the domain name arena has changed drastically. Even as the domain name land grab has shrunk the inventory of monikers available for dotcoms, the supply of naming consultants has multiplied. "There are so many naming consultants and so many of them are so damn bad," says Kelly. "But it is difficult because a lot of good names are gone. It stretches you – you have to be even better." With a title like Name Chick, she’s got to be good.