AnywhereMan

Let’s pretend you are a high school senior. You already know what you want to do for a career: you want to be a programmer for a company like Google or Facebook.

What’s going to get you there in the best, least debt-incurring manner? Four years of college? Or walking up to Google and telling them you’ll work for them for four years for FREE? After four years, you’ve already got a ton more experience than your peers who are just graduating and you won’t have the massive student debt (you might just need a paying part-time job on the side…which you’d need through college anyways). Your professional network is also going to be immensely larger.

Yes, you’ll start at the lowest rung possible but 1) You’re not costing Google anything and 2) you’re learning exactly what they want you to learn. You’ll be putting in some extra time doing self-study over the years, but almost everything you’re learning will be applied.

So which is the better deal? And which would give you a better chance of getting your foot in the door in the first place? Now that everyone goes to college, does it really get you ahead of the pack? I think education through experience is becoming more important than formal education.

Disclaimer: I have a four-year degree. Obviously this approach wouldn’t work with a profession such as a doctor, teacher, or lawyer. But I think it would have worked for me (Business/marketing degree).

I’m in my car right now typing this on my iPhone. My wife is driving, my kids are arguing over a cd, and we are somewhere near North Platte, NE on our way to Boulder, CO to visit my brother and his wife.

About two weeks ago my wife and I decided we should be somewhat spontaneous and pack up the family for a week of mountains, thin air, and for me: work. I have too many projects going to just leave them for a week, so my MacBook is with and I’ll be attempting to get a few hours of work in each morning. I may even check out some of the local coworking spaces.

I’m actually excited to see if my productivity increases knowing that I only have a few hours each day to work. If things go well maybe a lot more spontaneous vacations will happen from now on. I will try to blog some of my findings this week.

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful summer!

Today I had three different people contact me about three different full-time contract positions to do development. On a normal day, I get zero inquiries like that.

I also had someone call me to inquire about having me help them develop a website containing photos that you must be 18 to view (I turned it down). Oh yeah, and it was LOCAL! Totally random.

Image via CrunchBase

A few weeks ago, fellow Freelance Jam host Brian Casel and I discussed some of the ways that we each use Twitter during a quick “jam session” on Ustream. One of the topics that came up was how many people we actually follow.

Brian follows only a select few so his stream doesn’t get too noisy (makes sense!). I tend to follow a lot which in turn makes for a lot of chatter in the public timeline. I like to be accessible by DM to people who take the time to read my tweets and vice-versa, and I sometimes think people might be offended if you’ve interacted yet don’t follow back.

To combat the noise of the public timeline, I’ve made use of Twitter’s list functionality to pay close attention to specific friends and people who tend to share and talk about things relevant to my profession.

In addition to using lists, I do most of my tweeting and listening through Seesmic’s web-based app. It’s as smooth and smooth can be and it even has sound alerts when you get a new mention. It also allows you to create columns for mentions, lists, the public timeline, and saved searches. Having columns makes it easy for me to focus on a specific niche of people I follow depending on my needs at any particular moment.

With my 13” MacBook Pro, I can fit four columns on my screen at once. Here are the contents of the first four columns and some reasoning as to why I choose to show each specific one.

Column #1: Mentions

I obviously want to know when someone replies to something I’ve tweeted or mentions me in their own tweet. Having this column placed first makes it easy to skim.

Column #2: Friends

The people that I add to this column are considered genuine friends. I want to make sure I stay current with what is happening in their life and things they are working on. Watching this filtered list of 100 or so people is so much easier than watching a steady stream of 2000.

Column #3: Web Folks

In order to keep a pulse on the web industry, I’ve created a list specifically for people who work in web. This helps me keep track of the latest trends and news. It also acts as a list of people I can go to for advice and specific questions about web development and design.

Column #4: “Keep An Eye On”

I use this list for exciting entrepreneurs, bloggers, potential clients, people whose opinions I value, and other VIPs that don’t fit into my other lists. I’ve got people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Matt Mullenweg, and Chris Brogan in this list.

Other Columns Not Visible By Default

If I scroll to the right of my four main columns, I also have the general Twitter stream of ALL the people I follow. I also have a few saved searches including one for #genesiswp which is the official hashtag of the Genesis Theme Framework (affiliate link), my preferred WordPress framework. Another is a search of the general #wordpress hashtag.

Who Do I Follow?

As you can see, having various saved lists and searches allows me to focus my attention on micro-groups all while following a decent-sized group of people. I feel that following back is important when it comes to people who are courteous, fun, helpful, and authentic. I wish to be accessible to them, but I also need to make sure I’m not drowning out tweets from the people I’m most interested in. Twitter lists plus Seesmic help me do that.

And as always, Twitter is not about the number of followers that you have. For me, it’s about the collection of authentic, engaging, and informative people that I choose to follow and engage. I tweeted about this yesterday: If you declare yourself as a social media marketer, expert, guru, ninja, or chef, yet I don’t see a single @ reply in your first 100 tweets, you won’t get my follow. But if you follow me, say “hi”, and don’t auto-DM me, I’ll typically follow you back.

As many of you know, these days I am primarily getting my work done from the coworking space that I helped start here in Grand Rapids, MN. It’s been a huge plus for me in my freelancing lifestyle. The wifi is fast, the smack-dab-in-the-center-of-town location is ideal, the people are fantastic, and it gets me out of my home and into the hustle and bustle of the “real” working world.

However, lately I’ve been finding that it still does me some good to switch things up on a regular basis. If I get into too much of a pattern doing the same thing over and over, I tend to get restless.

As a result of that, I’ve been making it a goal to take advantage of the times when my wife and kids are gone and do some work at our dining room table. Or I’ll go back to the old standby and head over to the coffee shop for a few hours. It’s amazing how just switching things up a little stimulates my focus and helps me become more productive and/or creative.

So while I’m doing 90% of my work at CommonSpace, being able to change things up here and there keeps me from getting into too much of a predictable pattern.

How about you? Do you like things to be the same each day or do you like to move around a little bit?

Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed as a freelance web developer in the sense that I am the commodity, manager, CEO, bookkeeper, salesperson, and customer support representative all rolled into one person. This is nothing new and I can guarantee most freelancers have moments where they feel stretched (to say the least).

However, from a sales perspective this is something that offers us a huge advantage.

Who better to sell the services that you offer than YOU? YOU are the expert. YOU can give people the most accurate information related to the service that YOU are offering to them. YOU can make promises that YOU know YOU can keep.

When I am working with a potential web client, I am able to give them a first-hand demonstration of what I can bring to the table in terms of knowledge of my craft and assurances of the success I’ve had with past clients. They can ask as many questions as they want, as specific as they want, and I can answer them. I don’t need to make a call to the experts or make something up. I do what I am selling, and that’s worth a lot.

In fact, that’s probably why I’ve never really felt like I’ve had to sell: People inquire about what I do and I tell them about it. I even give away a lot of my so-called secrets for free. I don’t really need push any harder than that, and I don’t.

Accurate knowledge and first-hand experience build trust, and people either make the decision to do business with me or they don’t. Likewise, I can choose to take on their project or I can refuse it if I feel we’re not a good fit. I am, after all, the person who will be doing the work.

This post was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk‘s new book The Thank You Economy which I just started reading this week. At the beginning of the book he talks about how he built up WineLibrary. He spent a lot of time just being helpful, and success followed.

So get out there, do what you do (and do it well), share what you know, and let the business come to you. Sometimes being the person that has to do everything in the company can be a chore, but it can also be an advantage.

After last week’s discussion on Freelance Jam – specifically the portion about billing based on hours versus a flat fee – I’ve been analyzing my entire billing system. For the past three years I’ve billed based on hours and it’s worked fine.

However, in the past few months I’ve been taking on bigger projects. I also feel like I’ve dramatically improved my design and development process. And I’m also realizing that the better I define the project scope and strategy up front, the better the project turns out. I’d love to invest more time into that but I’ve always done things somewhat “open-ended”  (read charged by the hour) to allow clients to change their minds along the way. But that seems to be incredibly in-efficient, especially when working on larger projects.

I still don’t have a complete plan for making the switch to flat fees, but it’s looking like that’s the direction I will go. Herre are a few of the articles I’ve been reading that are making me re-think the whole billing thing:

• Why I Believe in Pricing Work Based on Value (by my Freelance Jam co-host Brian Casel)
• 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Charge By The Hour (some very good points I hadn’t considered)
• Why You Should Never Charge Hourly (great idea to charge even more if it seems like a high-maintenance client)

So if anything, in Freelance Jam’s short existence so far, it’s helping me evaluate my very own freelance business. Hopefully it’s doing the same to some extent for our viewers.

Cover of Rework

My summary of the book: Focus on the essentials of your business – the pieces that are most important – and stop thinking or worrying about anything else until absolutely necessary. And be flexible.

My review: Excellent book. An easy read and lots of very very practical advice for businesses of any size.

Check it out (affiliate link).

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Twitter’s fifth birthday. Happy Birthday, Twitter!

For me personally, Twitter has been a major component in connecting with others in my field, connecting with potential clients, and keeping a pulse on trends and topics that are relevant to my business.

In fact, I’ve got a call this afternoon to discuss a project with a client that I initially responded to on Twitter a few years back. He was complaining about his then current web developer. I stepped in and offered my services. We struck up a great working relationship and are now onto new projects.

I still remember my Twitter “aha” moment that started soon after I started freelancing full-time. I even wrote a post about my initial discoveries.

So, do you use Twitter? It almost seems like a silly question. I know most of you probably do, but maybe some of you don’t. Why or why not?

If you DO use Twitter, how has it helped you and/or your business or career? Has it ever hurt your brand in any way?

Quick rant: If you have an email address or email contact form posted on your website, USE IT.

If I contact you online, don’t email me back with an automated message that says “Call us.” The reason I emailed you instead of calling in the first place was because I don’t want to navigate through all of the “Push 1 for…” options, account verifications (even though the live operator will just ask me for my account number again), and then just sit on hold for ten minutes.

True story: I contacted my bank a few months back through their website (a national chain – leaving the name off because this phenomenon is not exclusive to them). I had a simple question about submitting documentation electronically.

The next day I received an email from them informing me that I had a secure response awaiting me in my online banking inbox. I then logged in to their website, opened the message…

…And it gave me a phone number to call them.

Seriously, take advantage of the convenience of simply emailing me back. Even if it takes a day or two, you can get back to me on you own schedule and I won’t mind at all. You don’t have to worry about me sitting on hold for too long. It’s kind of a perfect option.