Freelancing in Real Life

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Working from home is usually great. It’s nice to simply walk upstairs to have lunch with my family. Having the flexibility to get some work done after-hours is awesome.  Having my kids knock on the door and tell me about their latest accomplishment is priceless.  Most days I can honestly say that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Today is not one of those days.

My wife and I returned from our trip to Florida earlier in the week and we were blessed to have family pitch in and watch the kids while we were gone. Everyone said the girls were pretty much angels. While I love to hear that, what it means is that they’ve actually stored up all their naughtyness for our return home.

Screaming.

Crying.

Fighting.

And more screaming.

It’s downright awful. I feel bad for my wife who has to deal with it the most, while I lock myself in my office in an attempt to get work done.  But my door can only block out so many decibels, and have moved to my favorite wifi hotspot for the afternoon. Now I’m trying to get some programming done and drinking a delicious Newcastle Brown Ale in an attempt to get back to the low level of stress I attained with a week away. Serenity now!

I really have no great profound advice to go along with this post, just that the flexibility we have to work from Anywhere (home) also gives us the flexibility to escape a temporary nightmare (aka hectic environment) with minimal consequences.  In other words, if you need to get away, have a beer, and get work done…do it!

While I was at BizConf last week, I ended up talking to a guy who was living a similar lifestyle to mine: husband and father of young kids who works from home running his own business. We got onto the topic of how our careers really give us the flexibility to work pretty much wherever we want. He said that his family recently spent a few weeks in the mountains and he was able to work remotely and keep up with his business duties, all while getting some vacation time in as well.  

He then told me about a site called LessCabinFever where you can actually swap houses with other folks who are looking to do the same thing.  Today I checked it out and thought it looked pretty cool even though there aren’t many listings on there at this point. I expect the listing quantity to grow as this is a great idea, especially for us Work Anywhere folks.  

You’ll now see my Grand Rapids home listed among the few listings they’ve got up.  Setting up an account and creating the listing was super easy and I’ll keep you posted on any swaps I make in the future.  After a week in Florida, I’m totally up for escaping to warmer areas in the future (especially in the winter!).

I posted a link to this app on Twitter today, but wanted to re-post here on AnywhereMan for anyone in the community that needs to send an occasional design or layout proof to clients.  I had to send a two-page flyer proof to a client today and wanted them to be able to make simple markups to it, such as “move this here”, “change this text”, “remove this”, etc.  

Enter FineTuna, a super easy way to send and comment on proofs.  You don’t even need an account.  Simply upload your image file or point to it’s location on the web and you’re all set. You’re proof will be assigned a unique URL that you can simply send to your client (or you can email them from the app itself).  Just bookmark that URL and you can get back to the working proof at any time.  

There’s nothing super complex about the functionality of FineTuna. Just add comments, draw lines, etc, but it works great for a simple review process.  They also offer a plugin for Firefox that allows you to create instant screenshots of the page you’re on and upload direct to FineTune (but it wasn’t working for my version of FF…bummer!).

I thought some of you Anywhere folks would find this useful for remote collaboration processes. Enjoy!

I’ve been having a blast at BizConf here on Amelia Island just outside of Jacksonville. The conference ended last night and the number of quality folks I met and the knowledge I gained are truly priceless. The accommodations at the Ritz Carlton aren’t too shabby either. Seriously, this place is incredible.

Many thanks go out to Obie Fernandez and the Hashrocket folks for putting on such a wonderful conference, and to Jason Sadler at IWearYourShirt.com for holding the contest that got me here in the first place. I had a chance to hang out with Jason and he’s super awesome.

Check out the BizConf Flickr feed for some photos from the conference.

As someone who spends a lot of his time working alone, it’s very important to get out and interact with people on a regular basis (social media interactions don’t count). It’s also important to take vacations (which can be a little tougher to do when you don’t get paid-time-off…ah the freelance life!).  

This week I’ll get to combine these two things as I fly down to the Jacksonville, FL area for a learning and networking conference called BizConf. As I mentioned earlier, I actually won this trip and am blessed to have my airfare, meals, and lodging all provided. It’s a two day conference put on by Jacksonville Rails firm Hashrocket.

Honestly, I’m totally pumped to meet a bunch of other web app developers and attend the wide variety of sessions being offered. Presenters will be covering everything from running your business to photography to productivity to communication…lots of great topics. The coolest thing is that there are only 75 attendees, so a great chance to really get to know not only the other attendees but the presenters as well. 

I’ll hopefully be tweeting from the conference, and if any topics covered are relevant to the Anywhere Lifestyle, I’ll try to highlight them here on AnywhereMan.  I’m guessing some of my fellow attendees are living the Anywhere Life like me, so maybe I’ll even meet some good folks to profile in a future post.

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He loves social media. He loves promoting other companies. He loves taking pictures and making videos.

He loves shirts.

Of all the discoveries I’ve made on Twitter in the past year, none have been as entertaining nor engaging as Jason Sadler. Jason wears shirts, just like you and me (or most of us). But the thing is, he actually gets paid to wear shirts, starting with $1 on January 1st steadily increasing by $1 each day until he hits $365 for December 31st.

If you do the math on that you’ll realize Jason will be making a nice $60,000+ salary this year.  And that doesn’t include monthly sponsorships which cost $1500/month. 

So what does the price for a day get you? Jason will Tweet about you (to his 15,000+ followers), talk about you on Facebook, write you up in his blog, do a live video on Ustream, put together a daily recap video (always entertaining!), and take pictures throughout the day and post them on Flickr…all while wearing whatever shirt you want to have him wear. 

Oh yeah, and don’t bother trying to book him to wear your company’s shirt this year because he’s all sold out. And so is almost half of 2010 already. (Act fast to get in on the action!)

Did I already mention he gets paid to wear shirts? Why did you or I not think of this?

The reason I’m introducing you to Jason here on AnywhereMan is that he is the perfect example of someone living the Anywhere Lifestyle. Since he is getting paid to wear shirts, and a person can (and generally should) wear shirts in all locations, Jason is able to take his “work” with him. Just this past week he was in New York City and was able to do his daily social media routine there. In the past he’s taken vacations and gone on other trips without missing a beat. All the guy needs is web access and a shirt and he’s good to go.

I encourage you to check out IWearYourShirt.com, get involved with Jason’s shirt-wearing antics, and even tune in for his daily Ustream show.  Plus, the guy gives a lot of stuff away…or at least his sponsors do.  You’ll have to check out the winner of the June contest.  That being said, I look forward to meeting Jason in person this coming week at BizConf! (as well as his buddy Evan who will be sharing shirt-wearing duties with Jason in 2010)

Jason’s business idea is something that inspires me, the AnywhereMan. Just think of the risk of selling a day of shirt-wearing for $1 on January 1st in hopes that doing it for cheap then would result in the reward of people being willing to pay $365 by the end of the year. That risk has paid off, Jason is able to really mold his work around his lifestyle, and his followers are getting an entertaining dose of super awesome antics…and shirts.

PS – Vote for Jason in the StartupNation Home Based 100 contest.

IWearYourShirt Sample Platter:
 

• IWYS interview on CNN LIVE
• The First Day (this kinda cracks me up – Jason’s come a long way)
• WineLibrary.TV day and Jason drinking all sorts of stuff
• The Tiny Shirt
• The 25 Shirts

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