"the computer can't tell you the emotional story. it can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows." — frank zappa
The scene: Graphics class with Mr. Michaels, Clyde A. Erwin High School. “Career Day,” or something. We had the brilliant idea of making free buttons for people, while they waited. I guess this was to demonstrate the glory of a career in graphic design.
After the 8 millionth button, Mr. Steve and I decided it would be cool and punk to make a button that says what the button says.
Oddly enough, we weren’t terribly popular in high school…
Brands of the World got a makeover – a much needed makeover.
What is it? Well – if you’re ever stuck laying out something as exciting as an ad sheet or t-shirt for a corporate event, a poster, or anything and you find that you need the latest logo for Coca-Cola, Brands of the World has it. And, it’s got it in vector format. Free. SWEEEEEEEEET…
(Plus, if you’re like me and you like to make fun of corporate logos and twist them into something horribly juvenile or punk rock, you’re covered!)
No need to register, no flaming hoops to jump through – just good quality, vector logos of the majority of the major brands and companies, plus a lot you’ve probably never heard of.
Check ‘em out – they’ve pulled my biscuits out of the fire many times. When a client say “Oh, yeah – we’ve got the Wachovia logo in high res!” and they send you a GIF from the website, turn to Brands of the World. They’ve got it.
You’re welcome!
Usually, I try to keep things platform independent (even though Macs are obviously superior in every way,) and if I mention software, I attempt to keep it neutral.
But – I’ve found an app that is so handy and simple and FREE, I just had to share.
I’ve always been one of those guys that just sort of ballparks time when billing or quoting, and old habits die hard. But, after my 4-hour-a-day epiphany, I decided I’d go for a few weeks and really track the amount of time I spend on projects. Do logos REALLY take me 8 hours? Does a WordPress website take 5? I had guesstimates, but that’s not going to cut it when you try to track every minute of the day.
Enter iClockr from Kedisoft. (and no, I’m not getting any kickbacks!)
It’s a free piece of software, and it’s quickly become indispensable to me.
Using iClockr is über-simple. You set up categories of work (design, communications, blogging, wasting time, etc) and then go in and add individual jobs or clients under those categories. Once that’s done, you’re ready to really start tracking your time. When you start working on a client’s job, before you open the client folder (you DO keep things organized, right?) you click on that client’s name or job, click “start timer” and work away.
iClockr sits in the background, being totally unobtrusive, and times your work. It doesn’t stop automatically, but it’s as easy to stop as it it to start. Get a phone call? Stop the timer and hit the communications tab and start the call. Need to go to the john? Stop/start.
It’s amazing how many projects I have that I spend 5 minutes on every day – but I spend 5 minutes 30 times a day. That can really add up. My brain can’t keep it all in order, but iClockr will.
You’ll be amazed at how little time you spend working on some projects and how much time you spend on others. It can help you change your pricing structure, and it can help you stay productive, especially if you have a daily nut of hours to meet.
It doesn’t print out invoices (you can tie it to Invoice 3 and do that, but Invoice 3 isn’t free) and it’s Mac only, so I’m sorry for all you Windows people out there. It has weekly/monthly/yearly reports by client, so it’s a snap to go back through and bill clients for ACTUAL time. Kinda cool.
The other thing that it does is help you be more realistic about how much time it takes you to do something. That helps in a couple of ways – it lets you restructure your rates, and it also allows you to see what projects are truly the most profitable. If you know what’s more profitable, you can gear your business towards that type of thing. If it’s a time-sucking black hole (we all have them,) you can steer clear of those things in the future.
iClockr also helps you see which of your clients are eating holes in your day and keeping you from being profitable. It also will show you how much time you’re wasting watching The Big Lebowski or playing around on Kongregate.
Knowing where your time goes is crucial to freelancing – not just for billing, but for efficiency and business planning.
iClockr – it’s got some downsides, but the upsides are HUGE, and the price is right.
So now you know. And knowing is half the battle… (sorry, getting giddy over the G.I. Joe movie. Sue me.)
My wife and I sat down a while back and added up our bills, dreams and goals for our family – from a financial standpoint. We added up the figures, including EVERYTHING that goes out monthly – hosting expenses, gym fees, the kid’s classes, insurance, gasoline, coffee, shoes, etc – and came up with a total amount that I must grab monthly. Then, we tacked on what we’d like to have for savings and extra money. Then, we took that total, divided it by 20 days (the work days in every month), then divided that by my hourly rate.
The cool thing – I only need 4 hours a day to live comfortably, put money in the bank, and have extra each and every month.
4 hours.
240 minutes.
Listening to Dark Side of the Moon 5.1 times.
Watching Spinal Tap twice.
Not bad, huh?
The uncool thing – I need 4 hours a day that I can bill.
Doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve found it kind of difficult to truly bill out 4 hours a day at my full rate. I won’t tell you what I charge per hour, but I can tell you that I’m neither the most expensive guy, nor the least.
There are a number of things that kill my time – and things that I need to start charging for:
*These are things I just need to eliminate during the work day. But – they help my sanity (or what’s left of it.)
Billable hours are the lifeblood of a freelancer, as well as the large agency. If you find yourself not making enough money, you need to examine a few things. They’re hard questions – but you MUST answer them in order to make your business liquid and profitable.
For me, it’s Yes, Yes, Sometimes, Too Many Places, Sometimes Yes – Sometimes No, Yes and No.
What are your answers?
Figure out your time – figure out how much you need to bill out EVERY SINGLE DAY. I suspect that a lot of you are like me, and you have plenty of projects – but you don’t spend enough time daily on BILLABLE work. If you know how much you need to bill out every day, that gives you an easily viewable finish line every day.
If you come up short, consider restructuring your day to meet your hourly billable need.
Doing the math was a real eye-opener for me. It made me realize that I didn’t need to raise my rates or drum up bigger and more projects – it made me see that I need buckle down and get a certain amount done every day – from an hours standpoint. It made me examine where the roadblocks were, where my productivity was going, and what I needed to change in order to meet my nut.
The formula: MONTHLY EXPENSES/20/HOURLY RATE = Hours Per Day Needed.
Now – if I can just figure out how to double my rate and halve my time, I’ll finally have all the time I need in order to actually learn to play the entire Jesus Lizard catalog on my acoustic guitar…
I’ve never been one to be totally truthful. I veil the majority of what I do in a little bit of secrecy. Smoke and mirrors, man behind the curtain – all that crap.
Very few people know who I really am (I can count them all on one hand) and I prefer it that way. I’m guarded and I feel out-of-place in crowds. Heck, I feel out of place in small groups of my friends.
So, over the years, I’ve built this online persona to keep myself comfortable in the business, art and professional world. I suspect a lot of you have. Mine is “Independent Studios.” I portray a corporate place. A studio where people work. I’ve done a lot of work (most of it for very little money,) and I’ve done it under a thin anonymity. And honestly, it’s attracted a clientele and work load that I’m not precisely comfortable with.
I’ve done a good job of keeping my client base small, working with a bunch of really nice people and decent organizations – but I’ve done it at the cost of doing what I really love to do – which is draw and dream and be weird and be funny and kind of out there.
If any of my clients read this – I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU. I LOVE YOU.
I like what I do, but at my advanced age (38) I’ve come to the realization that I’m ready to move more towards doing what I love. I’ll keep doing the graphics thing in the corporate world – but I’ll be doing it to support my other habits. Rapidographs, paper, gouache, pencils, paintbrushes.
When you put out a corporate face, or you put out a portfolio of things that you’re not really all that fond of doing, that’s precisely what you’re going to get for future work.
Don’t get me wrong – designing another logo is not the worst thing in the world. Designing another brochure isn’t going to kill me. There are certainly a LOT worse things to do with 9 hours of my waking day – but there are also better things to do.
So: Show what you love and what you want to do. If you want to do logos, show logos. If you want to doodle and make art out of lists you find in shopping carts (yes, that’s one of my current projects,) SHOW IT. Don’t just show what you know will make money.
If you’re in the freelance game to make money, you’re in for a long haul. If you do what you love, show what you love, you’ll attract what you love. You can pay the bills, you can find clients, but you’ll also start building towards your ultimate goal of doing strictly what it is you decide is your “art.” And that makes all the difference in the world.
When you’re broke and worried about the power bill, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it on your terms, doing what you want to do.
So – what do you want to attract? What sort of work do you want to do? What are you passionate about?
Start showing that off.
All this also brings up few interesting questions:
I’m certainly not saying that you don’t need to be professional. I’m not saying that there’s not value, both artistically and personally, in doing less-than-esoteric work. What I’m saying is doing what you do will always bring greater satisfaction than doing what people expect, what is safe or what is a known quantity.
To that end, I’ve decided that I’m going to be more myself. I’m going to pursue more of what I want. Independent Studios and AllAboutFreelance will continue, but they’ll be changed markedly. I want to do more of the things I feel I’ve been placed on Earth to do. Some days, it will be logos, other days it will be endlessly weird stuff with bits of paper and string and glue and Xacto knives.
So – it’s been real. Nice to have known you all.
Hey, I’m James…
My grandfather (Grandaddy) passed away last Tuesday. He was 90 years old and sharp as a tack up until the day he wandered off to go home. I admired him for a number of reasons – he was in a tank under Patton in World War 2, he was a strong man who raised a passel of good kids that turned into great people, he was a musician, he liked to cook beans and cabbage, and he liked to tell stories and laugh and carry on.
But I think the thing that sticks with me more than anything, and the thing I admired the most was that he was thankful. Always thankful.
He didn’t have money – he retired from being a mill worker.
He didn’t have a lot of possessions. He lived with family for the better part of the last 15 years. He had photos and memories and little things. But not much.
He knew that what he had was much better than being rich or being famous. He had a family that cared for and loved him. He had his faith (I won’t get into that here, but that was the most important thing to him,) and he had the joy of waking up every day and being happy and full of life. Each day, each moment was a gift.
He certainly wasn’t perfect – but he had an understanding that each and every day was a gift. He lived that, and he showed that, and he professed that. If things weren’t perfect around him, you’d never know it to talk to him. Life was wonderful, and it was wonderful all the time.
I hope to find and live in that thankfulness. Some days, I do. Many days I find myself sluggish and unhappy and unsatisfied. That can be a fuel – but I hope to one day be able to fuel myself on thankfulness.
I’m thankful that I have a wife who loves me and puts up with my dreaming. I’m thankful for my 14 year old, video-game obsessed, wise-cracking and soft-hearted son. I’m thankful for my second boy, with his swords and bugs and books and giant imagination. I’m thankful for my daughter, and her backpacks full of stuffed animals and shoes and books and her little brown shoulders peeking out of her sundress. I have wonderful parents who bend over backwards for me, time and again. Great friends, great colleagues. Heck, I even have a terrific dog. The cat – well, she’s a cat – but I guess I’m thankful for her, too.
I’m thankful that I get to sit and draw and dream and design and tell stories through my art and my work.
I am thankful that I knew Grandaddy, or “Shug,” as he was known in his band.
Today, I will just be thankful.
Thanks, Shug. You’ll be missed…
A little boy walks up to his father and says “When I grow up, I want to be a freelance designer!”
The father says, “Son, you can’t do both…”
I’ve got a problem.
I am constantly inspired.
I’m inspired from a great number of sources. Truth be told, my sources for inspiration are so diverse, and my pool of inspirations is so large, I could blog about nothing BUT inspiration and never run out of topics.
Nature, my kids, movies, paintings, books, magazines, conversations, dreams, depression, punk music, phone calls, pop culture, yadda yadda yadda…
While that inspiration is great (and crucial,) that inspiration can be fruitless, because I have a problem with motivation. Well – that, and there’s just not enough hours in the day to fully flesh out my ideas and inspiration.
Motivation is crucial in any field, but especially in the Freelance World (capitalized for effect.)
Without motivation, you get nothing done. All the best designs in the world, all the best thoughts and ideas are worthless without the desire to get them “on paper.” Without motivation, you can starve, go homeless, upset clients, make a bad name for yourself, etc…
So what do you do to get motivated?
Good question – and one that’s largely impossible to answer. Motivation, like inspiration, is so individual that it is hard to paint solutions with a large brush.
What do I do to get motivated? Well – a number of things. And maybe this will help you get motivated:
While motivation is not nearly as sexy as inspiration, it’s probably a little more important.
I’ve told my son (14!) that intelligence and talent are meaningless without followthrough. I’m guilty of the same problems of my teenager. I’m not a worker bee-kinda guy. I like thinking and noodling and idea-ing things up, but the actual work is not my favorite part.
Getting motivated is so important, and so often ignored in favor of inspiration. They’re intertwined, to be sure, but they’re also separate entities that need to be nurtured apart from each other.
Now – you’ve read this, I’ve written it, and now I’m inspired to be motivated. Hopefully, that inspiration will be transformed into motivation to be motivated. If you can be motivated to be motivated, motivation will be an inspiration to be inspired and you’ll wind up inspired and motivated and probably a little tired, because an inspired, motivated freelancer spends way too little time sleeping and too much time being motivated by inspiration, and inspired by that motivation.
(yes, I need to lay off that expensive coffee…)
I’m a father of 3, a husband of 1, master to one German Shepherd and servant to one cat. I run a business, tend a garden and I generally cook dinner 7 nights a week. I like to hike, I like to draw and I like to spend time drinking coffee on my deck, watching the world go by. I like to noodle on my guitars. I like to read magazines and books about sociology and World War 2. I lose track of all that from time to time.
We’ve got several computers (4, at last count) and many televisions (3, I think) a whole gang of cell phones, video games and electronic doo-dads. DVDs and little televisions for the minivan. iPods, headsets, Skype, Facebook, IM, blogs, radios, CD players, on and on and on…
Sometimes, I’ll find that the house is very quiet. I’m pecking away at a project, my wife is blogging, my son is texting, my other son is watching t.v., my daughter is listening to music and dancing around, waiting for her turn at the t.v. We’re all plugged in. We’re all in the same general vicinity, but we’re miles apart.
So, my wife and I decided that we’d try a little experiment. We’d unplug the family for 14 days. No TV. No computer. No videos or video games. Off the grid.
And you know what – it SUCKED. But it sucked for just a day.
I still had to work, so I had email and web stuff to do – but I didn’t blog, I didn’t Facebook, and I didn’t get to watch my beloved hockey or baseball or reruns of Seinfeld. I read. A LOT. I drew. A LOT. I hung out with the kids – a LOT. And suddenly, it became really, really cool. I found that I missed media, but it wasn’t a sharp pain – it was just a dull throb that got better every day.
The kids started reading and drawing more than usual. My oldest son (13) would actually hang out and we would laugh and carry on. We played board games and worked outside more. It was cool! I missed some good hockey games, I guess, and I didn’t keep up with the blogosphere, but I gained an awful lot:
We’re through with our 14 days, and we’ve corporately decided that we’re still going to do some things differently. 3 days a week, we’re going to do a 24 hour media fast. And we’re all actually EXCITED about doing that.
We started this solely as a family thing – but it’s turned into something that I think will have lasting effects.
It’s also something you might want to try. As I wrote before, there’s a lot of noise. And it can be totally silent – but there’s just so much going on…
Try unplugging the electronics and reconnecting with your thoughts. If you have a family, hang out with them a bit. If you’re a loner, unplug and get back to your roots. You might not be as “productive” in the traditional sense – but you’ll kick-start your brain.
For most of us, that’s a good thing. For me, kick-starting my brain is akin to starting an old Harley with no gasoline and a thousand pounds of rust. But – it feels good to get it going…
Well, Charter Communications comes through again…
Just when I am humming along, having a nice life and getting a lot done, Charter decides that it’s in my best interest to hose my internet connection and make things – um – interesting.
May 12, they told me. Just 8 days away! Sweet! I can take some time off, tend the garden a little, catch up on my reading and sleeping, hang out with the kids and wife – you know, all the little things I don’t get to do as much as I’d like.
Nevermind that I had deadlines, people depending on me and blog posts to write. Nevermind that I need to make money. I should just RELAX.
It came back on, no thanks to Charter. At least it came back on. While I was sitting in a café, feverishly typing away on an Ipod touch, it occurred to me – I need a better backup plan.
I’m not a laptop guy. I’m a desktop guy. I like to get in and swap out drives and blow out dust and add RAM and play around with the guts of my machine. I also like lots of big monitors and since I don’t leave the office all that much, I buy desktops. SO – not having a laptop, I have to figure out what to do when things go South, office-wise.
Thankfully, I have other colleagues that I can lean on when my connection goes kaput, when the electricity is out or when ice storms hose everything and squirrels chew through the cable – and this kind of thing happens at least a few times a year.
So – I ask you – what’s your backup plan? Where do you go when you’re out?
The moral of this story – make a plan. BEFORE something bad happens. And make a couple of plans…
Backing up your data is smart and important – but backing up the ability to work is crucial. If you go down, how far down do you go?
