AnywhereMan

“It’s not a pink slip. It’s a blank page”

Last night I finally sat down and watched “Lemonade,” a documentary about several different advertising professionals who were laid off by their respective agencies and used the opportunity to focus on turning their passions into careers. The 35-minute film itself was produced by one of the professionals in the film.

If you have any entrepreneurial spirit whatsoever (which I think many of you do), you need to see this film. Whether or not you have a job with an employer, the spirit and passion that these people used to turn a seemingly negative situation into motivation to succeed at their own venture is incredibly inspirational.

It’s a quick film (35 minutes), but it packs a lot of punch. It’s almost like watching a film version of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s “Crush It,” which is a short book but really pumps you up to chase your passions. I think there are so many different stories in the film that you’re bound to relate to at least one of the featured individuals. The guy who created the film itself started a blog/job board for laid-off advertising pros called Please Feed the Animals, and I found myself really relating to him. Now, I haven’t been laid off before, but I am passionate about blogging and video.

My Response

One thing my wife and I discussed after viewing this: People with a marketing background definitely have a leg-up when it comes to starting their own venture and making it known to the world. Many of them are web-savy and know how people respond to various approaches of advertising. Many times the business ideas are the easy part. It’s getting the ideas/products out to the general public that takes the most creative muscle.

With that in mind, one of the things I’ve recently started doing in my spare time is starting “mini-businesses.” These are basically products/services for which I can create an entire web presence in a day or less. I’m also looking at offering this type of service to clients (especially startups like the folks in this film, but not necessarily advertising pros) through yet another mini-business.

I’ve been doing some video documentation on this process, so be sure to come back soon for details on how I’ve been starting these mini-businesses in a rapid deployment manner. I’m a big proponent of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. This is my attempt at forcing myself to do it on a regular basis.

Two Thumbs Up

I definitely recommend seeing this short film. In fact, you can watch in right now, right here! Here’s an embed of the full-film from Hulu:

Take the time to watch this film, be inspired, and then report back with your thoughts. If you’ve seen it already, what did you think?

SPOILER ALERT: One featured individual used his layoff as an opportunity to turn himself into a woman, but I’m guessing most of you won’t go down that path.

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• Lemonade: a short film about creative unemployment (core77.com)

Yeah, that’s me at age 20 or 21 living the rock and roll lifestyle. I’m not sure if anybody actually attended that show.

In my previous post I mentioned a book I’ve been reading by Tina Seelig called “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.” Tina, who has a Ph. D. in neuroscience, is the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She teaches courses on entrepreneurship and innovation.

Today I want to give you a little more info on that book since I really enjoyed it and took a lot of good knowledge from it. I think a lot of the topics it covers are incredibly relevant to us who are running our own freelance businesses.

The underlying theme I took from this book was the idea of challenging assumptions. Why do we do the things we do? Why not try something outside of the box? If you pay attention to successful entrepreneurs, you’ll notice a tendency to look at things from different angles and often trying different approaches to various problems. Throughout the book she gives some really creative examples of this type of approach in action.

Other notable themes: Failure is okay. Be fabulous. Be thankful. And more…I don’t want to give away the whole book because it’s definitely worth your time to read it. It’s a quick read and Tina did a great job conveying innovative ways to approach both your life and career.

As an additional teaser, here is an excellent video of Tina talking about some of the central ideas in her book:

More book reviews coming in the near future. I’ve been reading some good stuff lately!

It’s been a quiet year so far here on AnywhereMan. Quiet on the blog, not-so-quiet in real life; it’s been downright busy. Hence, no time for blogging but lots of time to put into practice the concept I talked about in my last video: “Today I’m going to ____.”

In fact, it’s become “Today I’m going to ____. Tomorrow I’m going to ____. And the day after that…” It’s been really crazy.

Last month Seth Godin talked about a simple, free, and awesome web-based to-do list application called TeuxDeux.  I’ve been using it a ton, and while I don’t keep my entire life’s tasks on there, it’s been great for making sure I get every little project update and client request taken care of. If I happen to not get everything done today, it pushes overdue tasks to the next day and marks them in red. There’s even a space for “someday”/big picture tasks.

It’s actually been a total lifesaver.

So when you get up each morning and tell yourself what you need to get done, add it to your TeuxDeux list and get it off your mind.

Do you already have a daily task management app that you use? Tell us about it!

A little while back I posted a video from Jason Sadler of IWearYourShirt.com where he talks about (and wears a shirt for) FlexJobs.com.  Sara Sutton Fell, the CEO of FlexJobs, contacted me recently about doing an extended review of her site on AnywhereMan.  She gave me access to the site and today’s video gives a little insight into what I found.

I finished reading Crush It a few weeks ago and am finally getting around to doing a review. If you’re building a business of any sort, read Crush It! There are some great tips in this book and it was well-worth the read.

Example: I uploaded today’s video to Viddler, Vimeo, and YouTube using TubeMogul, a little trick I learned in this book.

NOTE: Sorry for the lack of true HD in today’s video. Waiting on a new cable for my Canon HV30.

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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• Five Best Video-Sharing Sites [Hive Five] (lifehacker.com)
• Video Challenge – Vimeo vs YouTube vs Facebook (mathewpacker.com)
• Quietube and PopScreen: Doing More With Videos and Web Shows (shegeeks.net)
• Start Your Video Blog with Video Flick (bloggingot.com)
• News: iPhone 3GS videos causing glitches for Flickr, Vimeo (ilounge.com)

In an effort to improve my AnywhereMan video workflow, I picked up a new Logitech QuickCam Pro webcam for around $80 which allows me to produce 720p video right at my desktop. So far I love it, and today I talk about this camera as well has the rest of my video setup.  Still tweaking the audio level with the webcam (sorry about the clipping in a few spots!), but I’m really loving the video quality for the price and how it handles the lighting arrangement in my office.

NOTE: So I recorded this video, uploaded it to Vimeo, and had some issues with the frame rate. The audio worked great, but the video took forever to load and after it did I was super choppy. I guess the Logitech software records at 15 fps by default, and Vimeo prefers 30 fps. Trying to figure out whether I need to find 3rd party software to record 30 fps from the webcam, or if I should just start using YouTube over Vimeo from now on.  I will keep you posted. I love Vimeo, but I also love a quicker process!

CONFIRMED AFTER FURTHER RESEARCH: The QuickCam Pro for Notebooks cannot do 720P at 30 fps, just 15 fps. Why don’t they tell you this stuff ON THE BOX? The picture quality still looks great though.  I will stick with this until Microsoft sends me their new LifeCam HD to review on this site.

Shop Online

• Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks from TigerDirect
• Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks from TechDepot
• Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks from Amazon
• Canon Vixia HV30 HDV High Definition Camcorder from TechDepot
• Sony Vegas Pro – ( v. 9 ) – complete package from TechDepot

In today’s video I discuss the “office” portion of my phone setup. When I started my own freelance business I didn’t want my mobile phone to be the primary number I provided to my clients. I therefore set out to find the best office phone option based on both cost, quality, and portability.

Here’s the phone I reference in the video:

Philips VOIP841 PC-Free DECT 6.0 Wireless IP Phone

When I bought the phone it was around $110, but I’ve seen the price vary a ton since then.  Now it’s not uncommon to see them go for $200+.  Look around for the right deal.

 
How do your customers call you?  Tell me about your phone setup in the comments below.

How’s your whuffie? What is whuffie? Check out my review of Tara Hunt’s new book on the currency of social capital:

I’m posting this on AnywhereMan because I feel that social visibility is incredibly important for those of us who are out here on our own. By not being tied into the corporate pipeline we are missing a lot of the face-to-face social interactions that we would have in a normal workday. Through movements such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, we now have a way to increase our networking opportunities.

Tara’s book will give you a variety of methods to increase your whuffie to benefit your personal brand. Be sure to follow Tara on Twitter at www.twitter.com/missrogue.

Get the book from Amazon:
The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business