Freelancing in Real Life

Are you motivated today?

Living the Anywhere Lifestyle requires a lot of motivation. We don’t have managers literally looking over our shoulders to keep us on task like we did in days at a corporate office. 

As a freelancer, it’s basically just me and my clients. While client deadlines and payments on invoices are often incentive enough, it still takes motivation to put the time in on my in-house projects, bookkeeping, self-education, blogging, and planning out the direction of my business.  Nobody is there to do these things for me or cover for me if I take time off. It’s all my responsibility.

A few weeks ago I watched an excellent clip by one of my favorite personalities, Gary Vaynerchuk.  In the segment he discussed his belief that enourmous talent is not enough.  He believes that hard work and “hustle” can be  just as important as your talent level. In addition to having the talent, you need to have the attitude and drive of a winner.

I love hearing this stuff. It gets me pumped up. In fact, I’ve heard someone else say something very similar. Who else could it be but the original Gary V…

Ted Nugent.

(Please stay with me here)

Some of you know that I play guitar. I even played in a few bands back in the day. I taught myself how to play electric guitar by listening to classic rock albums, reading guitar magazines, and watching instructional videos. The best instructional video I’ve ever seen was by Ted Nugent. It contained a valuable piece of rock and roll guitar-playing advice I have never forgotten:

While skill, nice guitars, and loud amps are nice, it’s all about attitude.

(Really it is – if you’re a guitarist, go pick up that thing and pretend you’re a hyper-macho Ted Nugent clone. You’ll be an instantly better guitarist.)

In the video, Ted shreds through some mean riffs and then goes on to talk about just returning from 39 days in the swamp, not having touched a guitar that entire time.  He talks about “diversionary tactics” and escaping once in a while to “re-align the attitude.”  Basically, to Ted, attitude is every bit as important as skill and talent.

See, when you look at it that way, it sounds like Vaynerchuk, doesn’t it?  

I agree with both of these guys.  From a freelancer’s standpoint, I do my best work when I have a driving attitude.  If that starts to slip, sometimes you can just keep going with what you are doing and it’ll come back. But, like Ted says, sometimes it’s good to try some diversionary tactics.

If I’m working on multiple projects at once, I’ll step aside from my current project and go take a look at another.  If my schedule is dominated by one major project, a lot of times I’ll step back for an hour or two and just plan on putting in some time after my kids are in bed that night.  (and actually I find this is when I do my best work) Even music can be a good tactic. What pumps you up or gets you in the zone? Fire it up in iTunes!

Evaluate your attitude today. If you find it starting to slip, experiment with different ways to get re-charged.

Talent is important. Tools are important.

Attitude is essential.

PS – I did manage to find the most valuable five minutes of Ted’s video on YouTube. Entertainment, hustle, and motivation at it’s finest.

 

Image by William Hook via Flickr

In my previous post I came “clean” about my messy desk.  Several of you commented offering words of comfort and advice, and I appreciate that. I reached out to a few organizing experts on Twitter as well, and professional organizer Stacy Kaplan from Clutter Away by Stacy K. offered up some great tips.  Here’s what Stacy had to say:

1. Spend 15 minutes a day organizing your desk. Take a photo at the end of each session to track your progress.
 

2. There are 4 places where a piece of paper should end up:

(1) in the recycle bin (most papers),

(2) on a desktop filer (more about this in the next step),

(3) in a file drawer adjacent to your desk or

(4) in a deep freeze file away from your desk.

Files in spot #2 are for important papers and are most likely currently sitting on your desk. Files for spot #3 are for papers you need regularly. Files for spot #4 are for archival items, such as old taxes and records.
 

3. For your desktop, I recommend using a vertical, graduated filer where each folders stands up and the folder behind is higher than the folder in front. Office Depot and Staples have these filers. You should end up with 5-7 files and they should be for those papers which you need all the time (i.e. To Do, To Read, Bills To Pay, Travel, Tickets/Invitations, etc). Make labels for each folder accordingly.
 

4. Purge (recycle) any papers which are:

- Duplicates

- Obsolete

- Available on your computer or the Internet

- Available from someone else if you accidentally toss

- Untouched for at least a year

- Saved for “just in case” but not critical

- Related to a task you don’t have time to do

Good luck and please keep me posted on your progress!

Thanks for these tips, Stacy! I will keep you and the rest of my readers posted on my journey…my long, much needed journey.  Everyone, be sure to check out Clutter Away by Stacy K. for all sorts of great organizing-related services. Even her website is well organized! 

In an effort to make this site as honest and transparent as it can possibly be, I’m going to ask for your help.  I have a home office. I have a desk. I have a filing cabinet. Yet look at all this stuff:

Help me.

I would love to hear what type of system you use to not only file paper documents, but what you do with your data backups on CD/DVD, post-it notes, books, pens & pencils, checkbooks, etc.  What organization plan is the quickest to learn and implement? I don’t have a week to devote solely to organizing. I need to be able to pick it up on the fly.

What system has worked best for you? Please share some insight.

I’m going to try something new and I think it would be great to detail my progress here on AnywhereMan. Hey, it could be fun. The funny thing is, my digital workspace (email, digital files, etc) is way more organized than my physical workspace.

Seriously…help.

Thanks everyone!

You may have noticed that recently I started using YouTube to show the videos on AnywhereMan instead of Vimeo.  The reason for this change was a glitch I encountered with Vimeo and its inability to properly encode the .wmv files that I was uploading from my new webcam. The problem was the files’ 15 fps frame rate, and YouTube handled this frame rate much better.  

However, it now looks like Vimeo fixed whatever was wrong and I am able to upload those .wmv files for correct encoding.  I’m at a point where I’m uploading to both YouTube and Vimeo for each video, both for dependability and for having multiple ways for people to find AnywhereMan.  I thought it might be good to give a breakdown of the apps I view as the “top three” video hosting services out there right now, and my opinion of each one.

Vimeo – The Artist’s hideaway

Vimeo is my favorite video hosting service out there, for many reasons.  First of all, it has the best HD handling and overall video quality (watch the videos on the Canon HV20/30/40 channel for proof).  It also has the cleanest interface, the best player, some awesome social media/community features, and it lacks much of the garbage videos cluttering up YouTube.  Vimeo has explicit rules about making sure you are uploading original content, whereas YouTube is completely full of old TV show clips.  Vimeo also doesn’t have the 10 minute limit that YouTube does.  This was appealing to me as I’m considering doing some short documentaries.  The other thing I love about Vimeo is the ability to create groups and channels, such as the AnywhereMan channel.  

The negative aspects of Vimeo service are things such as the occasional problem like I had with the .wmv files and the time it takes to get your videos encoded…if you have the basic free subscription.  I like Vimeo enough to buy a Plus membership which allows for very quick video upload and encoding among other perks like 5 GB of upload per month and HD embedding.  I really like it and the cost has been worth it.  The other negative is that I can’t watch my Vimeo vids on the iPhone or iPod Touch.  However, since I dually upload to YouTube, that takes care of that issue.

Here is a sample of a video on Vimeo:

YouTube – Where all the kids hang out

My second-favorite video service is YouTube simply because it’s one of the biggest video destinations on the web and it does a great job of getting uploads indexed in search engines.  I don’t love its encoding, but it gets the job done.  Whereas Vimeo is where I see more film-makers, musicians, and photographers hosting their original content, YouTube is where I see a lot of high-schoolers posting videos of their friends getting hit in the crotch with skateboards. It has a lot of legit content too, but there’s a lot of competition.  Again, it’s big and it gets the job done, but whereas I’m willing to pay $60/year for Vimeo, I’d maybe pay $3/year tops for YouTube.  I’m not too loyal to it.

Here is a sample of a video on YouTube:

Viddler – Business time

The final service of what I view as the Big Three of video apps is Viddler.  I list it here only because I see a lot of others (like Gary Vaynerchuk) using it.  The thing that Viddler really has going for it, especially for businesses, is the branded player option.  You can actually upload a copy of your logo and brand the video player.  You can tweak the colors to match as well.  In a way I view Viddler as the perfect complement to Vimeo: Vimeo is trying to be as non-commercial as possible, while Viddler is probably the best-suited for business content.  I am not sure if I consider AnywhereMan “commercial” or not, so Vimeo wins my love. Of course.

I’ve heard that Viddler can support HD, but I haven’t seen it on the HD videos I’ve tried uploading.  It looks like they are offering paid accounts now, so I’m guessing that’s a feature on those.  

Here is a sample of a video on Viddler:

There are plenty of other video services out there and I hope to highlight some more in the future, but I thought I’d give you a quick run-down of the apps I’ve had experience with.  I’m doing more and more video and I’m really enjoying it!

If you are producing video content, what are you using to host your videos?

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I’m a freelancer. I’m also a husband and a father.  My wife stays at home with our kids and she’s a great mom. Sometimes she needs to get out of the house to get groceries, take pictures, or go for a run. It’s been nice for her that I’m usually at home to keep an eye on the kids so she doesn’t need to load them up and bring them with. 

I know that many of you are parents, and if your kids are pre-school age, this is yet another advantage of the Work Anywhere lifestyle.  While working from home definitely has its negative aspects, being available as a part-time daycare provider has been a good thing.

Obviously my kids agree. I’m like a human jungle gym.

NOTE: Sorry about the crappy audio on this one again. The level meter says I’m okay, but something is distorting the signal. Might be time for a clip on mic.

The Twitter phenomenon has been absorbed into the daily lives of most of us, and as someone who works from home, it has become my “water-cooler” outlet (as I’ve mentioned before). The idea of keeping followers updated on “what’s on your mind” has become a staple of the web today.

Apply this idea to a team of telework professionals all working for the same company but in different locations.  Imagine being able to constantly keep each other updated on what everyone is working on at any point in time.  The public (and spammy) nature of Twitter wouldn’t work well for this.  

Enter Yammer,  the “internal communication platform” (and a great social network for virtual teams).  Here’s a quick description from the Yammer website:

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never shared with third parties.

In a way, Yammer behaves much like Twitter, but instead takes place within the safety of an organization. In fact, Yammer offers a way to create an org chart for those involved with a particular account.  How does it know who should be in an account? It uses the domain on the member email addresses.

For example, I signed myself up to try out the service. The domain on my email account is liftdevelopment.com.  It then created a central “Liftdevelopment” account, and any other users who sign up with a liftdevelopment.com domain will get added to that group.  

Those that are signed up can then publish their status throughout the day and view statuses of others.  Files can be attached to statuses, messages can be bookmarked, and RSS feeds can be added.  Within a specific account, groups can be created.  Plus, there are desktop, iPhone, and Blackberry versions of Yammer available to take the tools just about anywhere.

Yammer is free, but there are premium paid accounts available that allow you to set up a central admin profile.  Companies with one of these premium accounts can manage users, delete messages and files, export data, remove former employees, etc.

For a one-person company like mine, the functionality of Yammer isn’t something I need. However, for a scattered team of individuals, I can see the collaboration features bringing value to communication and collaboration.  If you fall into this category, be sure to at least check it out as Yammer is getting a growing amount of buzz.

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