It’s the beginning of the year and things are slow. You are hustling to get work and the work that comes your way you don’t feel you can turn down. By the time summer rolls around, you have been working your butt off and let things—like life outside of your office—go by the wayside.

Having a life outside of your job is incredibly important. Spending time with your family and friends, as well as making time for your hobbies keep you grounded, energized, and overall happy.

I really loved the ideas these entrepreneurs shared with Inc.com on how to get a life outside of your job. Here are more of my favorites:

Communicate Constantly With Your Spouse

Then you will know how to  best support each other. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, says the biggest decision you’ll make in your career is who you decide to marry. I think this has really been true for me. Having a spouse that you know is in your corner is a huge source of comfort and confidence. – Anishiya Taneja, founder and CEO of TravelDNA, a travel planning site.

I would not have the confidence to do what I do if I did not have the support of my  husband. He believes in me, which helps me believe in myself. We can both tell when the other has had a bad day, and we do little things for each other—like cook dinner, do laundry, shovel the snow off our deck—to help each other out.

We also make sure to tell each other when we need an extra hug or quiet time. We both have high stress jobs, so talking about them and being honest with our needs is important. Continue Reading

Many freelancers are stuck in a rut. We don’t dare pass up work because we aren’t confident it will keep coming in.

We forgo weekend plans and even vacations because we are busy. But guess what? All work and no play leads to burnout.

It’s important not to forget that you do have a life outside of your office space. You don’t have to be stuck in front of a computer forever, just because you are a freelancer.

I came across this article on Inc.com that asked busy entrepreneurs to share their best tricks for coping with the daily grind. While the advice is geared towards start-ups, I’ve added my thoughts on how the advice can be heeded for freelancers. Here are some of my favorites:

Make What Time You Spend With Your Family Count

Drive the kids to school each day and really talk to them without checking your e-mail. Turn off the cell phone entirely when you’re playing with them, or you are watching their games. Don’t think about work during that time. High quality time really counts. – Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a visual voice-mail smartphone app.

It’s important to MAKE time to spend with your family. I am a newly married woman without kids, with a husband who is addicted to his iPhone and MacBook. He travels a lot for work, and I have been busy with tradeshows on the weekends. The other night I put my foot down—NO TECHNOLOGY!

We made dinner, rented a movie, and turned our cell phones, iPad, and computers off. Even when Shane wanted to look something up about the movie we were watching, I told him it could wait until tomorrow. And you know what? It did! We paid attention to each other—which is something we both desperately needed to do. Continue Reading

Do freelancers really need market research? After all, some freelancers – and even some businesses – manage to get paying customers without putting a bit of thought into how to acquire those customers. Maybe you could be as lucky as they are, your inbox always full of messages from potential clients, without ever spending even a minute researching them.

But it’s doubtful everyone’s that lucky. Odds are, you need to do even the most basic type of market research to keep your freelance practice going. Your research doesn’t have to include complex graphs and lengthy questionnaires. Market research simply means gathering and analyzing information about your target clients. This information can range from basic demographic information, such as their location, to more abstract information such as what makes your potential clients “tick”.

The good news is you don’t need to hire a pricey marketing firm to learn these things, nor do you need to sign up for Market Research 101 classes. You can start with the following simple tasks…

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A friend of mine had an interesting post on her blog recently.  She shared the soundtrack of her life, with each part of her world arranged by an individual tune.

As a freelancer, I’ve been trying to figure out if I am more productive with the music on, or with the only sounds in the room being the clicking of the keyboard and the snoring of my dog.

I’ve tried a few different audio stimuli:

• Hard rock – no, not screamo, but good old classic rock and roll.  AC/DC, Stones, and sadly, Nickelback.
• Talk Radio – maybe it’s just me getting older, but I am starting to appreciate some of the content on NPR and CBC
• Binaural beats – Could be that this is psychosomatic, but if I need to maintain intense focus (read: get it done before the pressing deadline) I put on some good headphones and click on the binaural beats.  Something magical about theta waves or something like that – but, it hasn’t failed me yet.

Nothing is a clear winner yet, and each seems to be more useful for certain tasks.

What do you use? Are sounds, or lack of sounds, the best tool to help you pump out quality projects? Continue Reading

With the economy so unstable and a personal down-shift in the number of good-paying projects, I have begun to search for a full-time job, or at least a part-time job to fill in the financial gaps. My preparations for this search has included some deep thinking about my skills, assets, and what it is I really offer a client and how different that is from working in a company. Based upon my discussions with contractors, recruiters, and line managers, I’m finding that the current needs of organizations differ enormously from the work I’ve done for the past twenty years as a freelancer. For me, the shift from “one-stop-shop” web designer and marketing writer to some sort of singular role on a team within an organization that creates web sites is a paradigm shift.

This article is part therapy and part research about what we offer to our clients as freelancers and how that translates back into corporate life. Continue Reading

If you’re hanging in with me and considering having a resume—yes, even though you freelance—the next step is to make sure your resume is written well. (Missed Part 1? Read that article first!)

With many new rules in the game, it’s important for freelancers to stay on top of resume-writing trends so they can compete in the marketplace. Because even though you’re a creative freelance, you have to compete with other people and corporations. You have to speak their language. When full-timers get hired, they need resumes. Resumes can be required of freelancers, too. And even if they’re not, it’s good to have one at your disposal.

Even if you’re not looking for full-time employment, a well-written resume shows clients that you take your career seriously and you don’t think you are above using the most basic of career tools.

Here are some tips to help your resume stand out when it comes to wording and spreading the word about what you have to offer!

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Photo by Josiah Mackenzie.

I’ve attended quite a few high school graduation parties over the past couple of weeks. During all those parties, I’ve gotten pulled aside several times by soon-to-be college freshmen who want to know if they can freelance while attending college. Considering I did exactly that, I think freelancing while in college can be a good way to bring in some money, as long as you are prepared to handle both your commitments to your studies and your commitments to your clients. There are a few steps you can take to make the whole situation easier, as well.

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A recent thread on a forum I follow centered on how to ask for referrals to new clients. Some posters mentioned that they are reluctant to ask their existing clients for referrals because they don’t want their clients to know if they’re struggling. And they don’t want to ask other freelancers, because they don’t want their competition to think they’re weak. I admit that I sometimes grapple with these concerns, but existing clients and fellow freelancers can be great resources for referrals.

Here’s how to make the ask without making yourself look desperate:

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Last year, I was in the middle of a project with a graphic designer. She came to a meeting with the client and I completely distraught – she looked as if someone had died. She cried as she explained that her computer had died over the weekend, taking with it her work on this project and six years worth of other projects. She had a computer repair service working on retrieving all her data: they had charged her almost $2,000 and couldn’t guarantee that they would be able to restore anything.

$2,000 is pretty steep for retrieving data, admittedly, but my colleague was effectively at the mercy of any one who could even offer to get her data back for her in time for her project deadlines.

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The coffee bean — a commonly traded commodity, like many freelancers.

Anonymous Corp was a small company that used several freelancers for writing and graphic design. When they decided to cut costs, each freelancer was asked if they could offer better pricing. Joe immediately offered to cut his cost in half. Karen pointed out that they were getting significant value for they money they paid her. She offered to help the client transition to a less skilled freelancer if they no longer required her level of expertise.

What do you think happened?

Basic economic theory says that when price goes down, demand goes up. I see freelancers applying this logic all the time in order to get more work. What most small business owners don’t understand is that this is based on the idea of commodities—products or services that are pretty much interchangeable.

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Photo by costi.

The unfortunate truth is that many people who attempt to go freelance fail. Of those who make the attempt, a smaller amount manage to brave the unknown and make a living for themselves doing what they love best. An even smaller number of freelancers are able to build their businesses to the point where they can’t handle the work they’ve got – let alone take on any more clients – and are doing very well for themselves, financially speaking. Sometimes these guys are happy to draw the line, cut back on the marketing efforts and keep going as is, but another group wants something more: to create a business that can expand, to work less and make more all while giving other deserving freelancers the chance to have more work.

It’s definitely possible to create a business from a small but successful freelance operation. There are many challenges – for instance, how do you transition from a personal brand to a business brand without losing recognition or customers? But perhaps one of the most important struggles is creating a structure that works. All too often, freelancers create their start-ups with all of the organizational structure that they had before – in other words, for most, none.

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Have you ever had a project that turned out to cause way more stress that it was worth? Of course you have. We all have. Most of the time you’re left saying “Why didn’t I see this coming?”

Here are some early warning signs of a problem project and some tips for upgrading them from hopeless to profitable.

1. “I tried doing it myself, but…”

This is a sign of the frustrated artist. They fancy themselves creative, and have given it their best shot, but found that their skills fell short. Now they are turning to you, the consummate professional, to pick up the pieces.

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