PIXL Designs

One of the biggest questions I have to continue to force myself to ask is “Do I have a healthy balance between work, life and business?” We recently saw the importance of this when Tiger Woods spoke about life getting out of balance.

As a freelancer, this question needs to be constantly on your mind.

I have experienced the ups and downs in this category. So to start this week, I want to share a few tips on how to recognize that your priorities are out of balance.

1. Anger: This emotion is the most consistent for surfacing when life is out of balance. Small things will set me off. Things that don’t even matter will give me fodder for angry comments.
2. Jealousy: When things are out of balance, it’s easy to look at others’ lives and businesses and become jealous for what they seemingly achieve without working very hard. It’s easy to forget that they have pressures and struggles just like I do, and they had to work hard to get where they are at today.
3. Fatigue: When you are firing on all cylinders all the time it’s easy to get tired emotionally and physically. This not only makes it even harder to regain balance, but your quality of life/work suffers.

Tomorrow we’ll be exploring how to counteract these three mental and physical emotions. Keep in mind again that this is not an exhaustive list. Instead, it’s a few of the more common emotions that I believe can surface when life gets out of balance.

Watching several athletes take tumbles in the Olympics lately has reminded me of something that is a rule in sports and business: let the momentum carry you.

When you take a tumble in sports you can’t tense up. You have to let the momentum carry you or you will otherwise get hurt. You have to be aware of your surroundings and how you are falling and let the momentum carry you. That’s the only way you can walk away from a fall without injury.

Momentum is a strange thing. On the one hand in business terms it defines you. On the other hand, you cannot manufacture it—you have to let it carry you. You can’t do momentum, you have to gain momentum. If you try to force momentum, you’ll only hurt yourself.

So as a freelance business we have learned to simply do what we do best and when momentum around a design, an idea or a project begins. Let is carry us forward to our destination.

One of my favorite social media apps currently is Twitter. This is an amazing tool for personal or business use. Twitter provides real time content in a manner that forces you to be concise and efficient by limiting your posts to 140 characters or less.

And as you know, efficiency and trimming the fat are key components to running a freelance business.

So back to Twitter. I believe Twitter is here to stay. People crave consistent content and love knowledge. Twitter enables users to follow trending topics in the world, add their input, share their own experiences and contribute to the ongoing stream of consciousness on the Web. Freelances have a great opportunity to share articles with other freelancers which can generate authenticity for their business. In addition, they can communicate to prospective clients or comment on trends they follow. This gives them a way to seem like more than a Web site, but rather a person.

So here are a few tricks I have learned since using Twitter:

• There is power in the RT. Retweeting is a huge feature in Twitter and interesting content can get your audience spreading your posts to hundreds of others in a short amount of time.
• Don’t post anywhere close to 140 characters. You want to be retweeted and you don’t want another user to reach this limit when they retweet your post. What do I mean here? Well, our Twitter account is @pixldesigns. So anything that is retweeted will have “RT @pixldesigns” on the front of it. This is an extra 15 characters added to your original post!
• Shorten your links with bit.ly. You don’t have to do this, but I recommend using either bit.ly or a URL shrinker (Tweetie for iPhone provides one built-in). This enables you to post links to internal pages in your site without all the extra domain paths

Of course these are only a few short things you can do with Twitter, but following them will definitely help you grow in your business presence and become a smarter user of social media.

One of the biggest things we have to do with running our business is trim the fat. We simply cannot waste time. It is important when there is work to be done, to do it. And when there is none, to spend time together as a family.

I will carve out specific time to work on the Web site, hone my skills or even reach out to some customers. But family is essential. That is why I trim the fat.

As a freelancer it is easy to get into a pattern of reading site after site looking for all the answers you seek on what makes good design and how to increase your design prowess. However, if you don’t learn to trim the fat you will waste your time. Trimming the fat is all about:

• increasing productivity
• maximizing free time
• creating efficiency

Focus only on things that make you productive. Don’t worry about ready every single article in the world. Read a few, find inspiration and accomplish the goals you set. Maximize your free time by cutting out the things you don’t need. If you don’t have knowledge on a subject and it is really hard for you to grasp, go on to another subject. Keep your time wasters to a minimum. This will help you in creating efficiency. Every business has time wasters, but if you can work hard to reduce these you can create efficiency. This not only helps your workflow process but it allows you time to be creative and dream.

Creativity and originality are always on the forefront of a freelancers mind. It is imperative that we don’t let it bog us down, but rather let it move us forward.

We often hear the phrase, “less is more,” but what exactly does it mean? 37signals explored this in a blog post that resonated with me. I think it does imply that more is better, when the opposite is often true—that less is better. I think we need to apply this concept to our designs. Quit worrying about trying to achieve perfection, worry about trying to do better with less. The problem with “less” is many people interpret this as “I can work less and make more money.”

This is not what we’re saying.

You have to work hard in order to make money. So why complicate your work by doing things you don’t understand or don’t have the skillsets to achieve. I’ve often heard that you should never turn down a design project because you can outsource to someone who can do the things you cannot. This is crap. How can I uphold my design distinction and brand if I’m outsourcing?

Now, before you jump on me about how outsourcing is a great way to grow your business, keep in mind the focus of PIXL Designs. We aren’t growing a million dollar company. We have a mission and a vision that is about relationships and integrity. Working full-time in addition to running a freelance business doesn’t enable us to branch out wide and try to have this huge company so many want. To us, less is more. The less distractions and nuances we have, the better we can become by focusing on our strengths.

Google has garnered much attention lately with the launch of Google Buzz, a social network that is built into your GMail. I am watching how this plays out carefully for two reasons: 1. We set all our sites up with Google Domains and GMail is the host for our email 2. We encourage our customers to utilize social networks to keep in touch with their clients/members and reach out to new ones.

So what are my thoughts? Well so far our GMail hosting has stayed Google Buzz free which is great. We aren’t quite ready to start encouraging our customers to use Google Buzz and here are three reasons why:

1. Stay patient. As a brand, your church, business or organization has to be careful to maintain your image in the public eye. Social networking has given easy access to your clients/members but in turn it also gives others easy access to you. I believe it is a great idea to stay patient and not be an early adopter of social media. When Twitter first came out I actually registered several weeks before I became an active user. This was to give me time to see how others were using the service and to also do my research on whether or not it would be around for a while.
2. Stay ready. One of the problems with today’s world is that a new service/idea can be generated and take off overnight. So I encourage you to stay up to date on trends and media. You don’t necessarily have to rush to implement anything, but you also want to be on the top of the wave if something has momentum.
3. Be strategic. Strategy is a common theme in churches and business around the world. However, many people simply think strategy revolves around the focus and vision of that particular organization. I believe you also need to be strategic in how you implement any type of social media. Are you a creative agency? Then be creative with social media. Are you a church? Then make sure your presence reflects Christ. Are you a lawn care business? Then make sure you are pushing your products and services along with general tips. The cooking industry is amazing because some of the world’s best cooks give all their secrets out for $20 in a cookbook. This is extremely strategic and is a great model for how to grow your church or business.

So what do I think about Buzz? I’ll give it a while. So far I haven’t been too impressed because it’s not really innovative. Google has done some really great things, but they are drifting further away from their heart and soul—search. I believe social connections will continue to play an important role in the future of churches and business, but I’m not quite certain Buzz is the momentum that will carry us there. Just my two cents, of course. Throw in yours.

We have spent the past couple of years staying up-to-date on HTML/CSS trends which are the basic building blocks of Web sites. Building sites entirely from scratch in HTML is really hard to do. Almost two years ago, however, we discovered WordPress. Wordpress is essentially a blogging platform based on PHP and MySQL that has theme support and let’s you code in your designs. In layman’s terms, WordPress allows you to install pre-built themes (free or for a small price) that are secure and robust, and allow to easily customize your design.

I believe in the power of WordPress. Clients today want to update their own site, customize their content and generate revenue from their site and services. WordPress allows me to do all of this and still maintain a solid design. There are numerous sites you can purchase themes from, but some of our favorites are found at Woothemes. Currently we run a beta of Standard Theme from Human3rror and will be implementing it across multiple sites when it is released in full.

WordPress churns due to its extensive widgets and plugins libraries. There are numerous easy-to-use add-ons that allow you to add

• Google analytics
• Ssearch engine optimization (SEO)
• Calendars
• More!

And best of all you can add these with the touch of a button and free of charge!

We are huge proponents of WordPress and believe it is a technology that will continue to grow and evolve to keep pace with the Internet. If you are a freelancer that is looking to help your clients develop an active Web presence and take their sites to the next level, then don’t hesitate to being using WordPress today!

Freelancing poses some serious questions related to finances. Among these are Do I need a business bank account?  How should I keep track of business finances? Do I have to pay taxes quarterly? How can I invoice my clients? Do I have to spend money to get an LLC?

Each of these are great questions. I’ll attempt to answer some of the ones we asked, but know this is not going to be an exhaustive list. It will simply be what has worked for us.

Do I need a business account?
Since Laura and I are the only ‘employees’ in our business and we only run through about 10-15 projects a year, we do not have a separate bank account. I can see where this could benefit tracking if freelancing is your full-time job, though. The IRS requires you keep tons of records, especially if you have a home office like we do. The way I see it though is I don’t need a whole separate bank account to manage when we already have two IRA accounts, a 403(b), a stock account, a checking, savings, credit card and health credit account. That made me tired just typing it out!

How should I keep track of business finances?
In the past, we have used Quicken entirely to track our finances. And it is simply daunting. There are lots of features, but sometimes these can be overwhelming. This past year we switched all our financials over to Mint.com and haven’t looked back. Mint is simply amazing. In about 15 minutes I set up all my accounts, categorized all my expenses and income and had a clearer picture of my entire financial state. Mint has recently helped us set a budget and stick to it. It sends us weekly email reminders about upcoming bills, lets us know when we are approaching our budget allotment for a certain category, and it also has an iPhone app. Intuit, who owns Quicken, bought Mint out in late 2009 and while I wasn’t too wild about that, they promise to keep Mint the same and so I will continue to highly recommend it.

Do I have to pay taxes quarterly?
Taxes are extremely time consuming, but thanks to Turbo Tax I am still able to do my own taxes. One major piece of advice is track everything. I mean everything. Purchases, purchase dates, mileage, utilities, cell phone, internet, mortgage/rent, etc. The IRS requires you keep hard copies of it all too so you will need to keep good records. Anything I purchase online I also make sure to store receipts in an administrative folder based on the year I purchased it. As for the question, you can if you need discipline and make a lot. Since we don’t make much over $5,000 a year then we usually even out our expenses and earnings (which is what you want). Big profits will move you up in the tax bracket since social security and medicare are not coming out of your checks. Proper management can really alleviate all tax pressures so just be smart.

How can I invoice my clients?
We currently use Freshbooks, an amazing to track project time, estimates and invoices. Freshbooks is a simple, yet amazingly resourceful Web app. And the best part is it links to your Basecamp projects which enables us a more efficient workflow. It’s a breeze to set up and clients’ can even see their own invoices/estimates history. At the end of the year, I use the reporting feature to find out exactly how much I made for tax purposes. For a while we actually had enough client projects to justify paying for Freshbooks. Currently we only have three active clients. Freshbooks allows you to upgrade/downgrade easily which is a huge plus for freelancers.

Do I have to spend money to get an LLC?
This will really depend on your business. I would say it is a very wise idea if you have employees, but since we are a husband/wife team currently our business is filed under our names. Essentially this means your EIN (employer identification number) is your social security number when doing your taxes. You might want to read more on this topic since I’m unfamiliar with it.

I know this isn’t the most exhaustive list and there are probably a million other questions you have. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your questions or opinions. We are simply excited we can even share about some things that have worked for us.

I have recently been testing out some video software for the YMCA of Middle Tennessee as we prepare for our annual celebration in April.

Here’s a clip of something I shot yesterday with our Panasonic AG-HMC150P camcorder. Video was shot in full 1920x1080i HD and edited in Final Cut Pro, Motion, Color and Photoshop (used this for the black vignette on the edges of the video).

Tomorrow we’ll be exploring some various financial tools to help in freelance design. Be sure to check it out because these are some essential tools we have found to work and keep us on track with our business.

Project Management
We currently use Basecamp for all our project management needs. Basecamp is a web-based collaboration tool created by 37signals that lets you share files, consolidate communication, and assign tasks. Basecamp is also extremely easy to use and learn. Some of my first clients to use Basecamp were familiar with computers, but not as computer savvy as the current Generation X. And they figured Basecamp out in a cinch. This went a long way in my credibility and it helped create the experience for our client that we were looking for.

• Sharing files is huge in the freelance world. You want to be able to send your clients proofs, but you don’t want things to get lost in email jargon. Enter Basecamp. This project management tool let’s you upload your proofs or high-res files to your clients job where than can login and download as many times as they like.
• Consolidating communications is essential. When working as a freelancer you no doubt find it hard to keep personal and business email separate from each other. With Basecamp this is no longer an issue. Now I communicate with clients through messages on Basecamp. The biggest benefit of this is that Basecamp keeps your messages in a nice thread in your client’s project. This allows me to delete an email after I have read it or replied to it and know that it is saved under its topic in case I need to view it again.
• Assigning tasks is one of the best ways to bring your client into the project design without actually letting them control the project. We currently setup our projects once the deposit has been paid and assign tasks with deadlines. This helps to hold us accountable and it gives the client a view of the design stages. Once the design is complete, the task can be assigned to the client for proofing. This allows them to feel a part of the process, and rightfully so. This is as much their project as yours, and as your valued client they deserve to be in the know.

Basecamp has really served us well in the past year. It has some really great features and it is simple to use. In fact, it wasn’t until PIXL Designs started using Basecamp that our business really took off. I highly recommend freelancers give Basecamp a try. Who knows, you might even start to get over those design anxieties and make a little profit.