Freelancing in Real Life

Lately I’ve been keeping an “I Am/I Am Not” list in the back of my notebook to help determine the skills and services I want to offer to my client base.  This helps me accomplish a few things:

1. It helps me narrow down exactly what my business “does”
2. It helps me determine the things I need to get better at and develop through research, education, and practice
3. It helps me cope when working on things I don’t necessarily love doing

The primary goal of my list is to figure out how I can spend more time doing the things on the “I Am” list (and get paid for them), and how to spend as little time as possible (if any) doing things on the “I Am Not” list.

There is nothing super-revolutionary about this practice, but it’s just a way to keep my mind from getting too cluttered.

How do you make sure you are doing what you WANT to be doing?

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.

 

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.

Image via Wikipedia

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!).

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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