Here’s a little sneak of something that’s coming up through My Music, a project I’ve been working on since last September.

I’m expanding my work in the music scene and extending my reach out of Ireland with the setting up of My Music Artists International (that’s a MySpace link by the way), an artist agency aimed at promoting and working with emerging and established international acts visiting Ireland from overseas.

Having set up KilkennyMusic.com in 2005 to work with artists on a local and national level, two of us are extending the structure set by KKM to cross international waters, welcoming acts from the USA, Ireland and Australia into the country.

Being involved with music has opened so many doors for me both personally and professionally, including the door for ProFreelanceBlogger.com, having recently held the first ‘Blogging For Beginners’ event.

As My Music starts to grow (the official launch is a while off yet) I’ll keep you posted on the developments happening on a new journey into the world of music and another chapter in the book that has become ‘working for myself’.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Some jobs have it, some jobs don’t.

Some projects have it, some projects don’t.

However, things can’t move forward on any project without some valid means of communication - and good communication at that as well.

I’ve worked with people who were eager to walk a project path with you every step of the way; I’ve also worked with people who would disappear for days and weeks at a time on a job or made it more like drawing blood from a stone to get information about a project.

When you’re working for yourself, at least in an individual capacity, you’ve got to make sure the communication happens - a phone call, an email, meeting for coffee, following up project developments and ideas. Keep banging on that door!

That said, communication is a two way street and if you’ve got yourself a client who is keen on keeping things moving and you’re finding it hard to stay in touch or you’re one of those people who likes to leave things on the long finger then you should look at changing your ways before you find your client looking elsewhere for work in the future.

Like any good relationship - business, personal or otherwise - communication is key and vital to the success of both parties and you’re the only one who can make it happen!

Popularity: 9% [?]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years of business, it’s that no partnership is truely equal. If everything is 50/50 then nobody has control.

Some partnerships work. Maybe it’s two designers pooling their collective resources in order to taking on bigger projects. Maybe it’s someone highly skilled in design and the creative elements of freelancing, coupled with someone highly skilled in a business sense - the one I like to call “the face”.

If you are considering taking on a partner, forming a new business with a partner or entering an existing business as a partner then you need to be sure of a few things.

• Is this person or persons the right one to get involved with?
• What agreements exist in place between partners?
• Where does the responsibility lie - individually or collectively?
• If the partnership dissolves, what happens next?
• Do you really need a partner?

That said, here are a few links to online resources and articles you might consider exploring and reading if you are indeed looking to take or or set up a partnership.

• Locating The Ideal Partner
• Partnership Agreements - Are They Right For You?
• Before You Go Into Business With Family Or Friends
• Steps To Starting Your Own Business
• Starting A Partnership
• Creating A Winning Business Partnership
• Definition of the term “partnership”
• Setting Up General Partnerships & Limited Partnerships

The articles above are contributed by numerous authors writing for About.com. Details relating to partnerships apply across the board, regardless of where you live.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Some people argue that there are great differences between being a freelancer and being an entrepreneur. Some say freelancers are only concerned with the short-term while entrepreneurs are looking at the bigger picture.

However, speaking with my entrepreneurial hat on, I feel that working for yourself or going freelance share similar results, and as such the results are driven by similar characteristics in a person.

The Characteristics Of A Freelancer

I was interviewed recently about my business, one of the questions asking me to define what characteristics are evident in me as a person when it comes to business, and what characteristics are needed when you decide to work for yourself. These represent the characteristics of an entrepreneur, but on a whole I think they can be mirrored by those of a freelancer.

• You are a risk taker
  An entrepreneur will often take risks and must take risks in order to advance in business. These risks are often calculated. Working as a freelancer you are taking risks on clients (particularly new ones) and risking the uncertainty of future income. You must be able to take that risk in order to make the first step.
• You are passionate and enthusiastic
  I’ve met more people and have more friends who are “bored” with their jobs, working 9-5, five days a week, for some random large company. The happier of the bunch are those doing things for themselves. They’ve found something they love and are enthusiastic about and they’re making their living from it - designers, writers, film makers, advertisers, marketeers. Being both passionate and enthusiastic about the work you are doing is what gets you out of bed in the morning. If you can’t find those two vital ingredients then perhaps you need a change in direction.
• You are determined
  If you are freelancing part time I will make the bold assumption that you are balancing your income with another job or source of finance. If you are freelancing full time then determination plays a big factor - determined to succeed, determined to make your mark, determined to seek new work, determined to develop your skills and keep yourself on the top of your game.
• You are organised
  Organisation is a skill earned through practice. Organisation as a characteristic of one’s nature is also vital when working freelance. You are now responsible for setting and meeting deadlines, client appointments, paying the bills, paying the relevant taxes and juggling your self-employed workload. You need to be organised.
• You are a decision maker
  I’ve got a post in the pipeline titled ‘Procrastination Is A Freelancer’s Nightmare’. You need to be a decision maker and some times you’re going to need to make those ‘edge of the knife’ type decisions. It’s part of the entrepreneurial mindset and it is part of the freelancing mindset.
• You have a vision
  An entrepreneur without a vision is one without a path on which to travel (you can quote me on that one as well). Working for yourself isn’t just about going job to job, client to client trying to make ends meet. You’ve got to have a vision both for yourself now and where you want to be. Is your end goal to turn into a fulltime freelancer? To use freelancing as a means of getting a high-paid job at a big firm? Are you looking to eventually develop a small business of your own, a large company of your own?

  The vision is the key, it is what takes the drive and determination, the passion and enthusiasm and combines them into one, helping you to succeed at what you do best.

Would you agree with me? Have you got long term plans in your freelancing career or are you looking at a stop-gap between jobs, something to bring an extra few dollars or euro on the side? If you are looking at things on a full-time scale, then what characteristic do YOU feel best represent the freelancer in you?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Yesterday I made a point about having to reference everything when it comes to online banking. Today, I’m once again both mindful and thankful of that point.

After 3 consecutive days totalling roughly 27 hours, I’ve come through the other side of the accounts and I’ll be making and collecting payments due from/to me tomorrow morning.

The downside is that I lost 27 out of 40 hours (I usually put in 40 hours at a minimum in the office) available to me this week, leaving just 13 for client work, the bulk of which will be a full day behind my regular desk tomorrow. This is valuable time lost on jobs that will have to be made up over the next week or so (and will be made up, I assure you of that).

However, I’m looking at it this way.

Say I pay myself an hourly rate of €15. My take-home wage on a weekly basis would be €600. If I’ve spent 27 hours doing accounts, chasing bills, invoices and documenting everything along the way, those 27 hours have cost me a total of €405, leaving me an effective take-home page of €195.

Last year my accountants fees were in four figure territory, not three, largely due to the fact that this kind of work wasn’t done. So if I’ve dropped €405 because I took three days out to review finances, I’ve likely saved in excess of €1,000 for making the effort.

I’m not an accountant by any stretch of the imagination but if you were to sit me down in the morning I can show you where everything came and went - purchases, sales, cash, wages, loans, taxes and more.

If you’re working for yourself I feel it is vital you both know and understand that kind of information - especially when it comes to filing your taxes at year end. I also saved money on using accounting software too - I started a series of spreadsheets in OpenOffice, made out all my formulas and references and got stuck in.

That said, I’ll still use an accountant at the end of the year to make sure everything is in order from a legal perspective, but I’ll have saved a lot of time, hassle and money in the process.

I can promise you, after these three days I will thoroughly enjoy the weekend.

Popularity: 15% [?]

As I mentioned yesterday, I had informed a number of clients I would be unavailable Tuesday and Wednesday as I was making time for my accounts (for the business).

After two days of pouring over invoices, receipts, bank statements and preparing a number of payments to go out this week, I offer up this tip if you are using online banking…

It will save so much time in the long run. In my case, I deal with two bank accounts, one as a current account and one strictly for tax purposes - any taxes or VAT owed wind up in here so I can keep track of everything during the year. Given that situation, I transfer funds online between both accounts on a regular basis but it sure helps to use the ‘REFERENCE’ tag if you’re online banking platform allows it.

This comes in the form of a ‘reference’ box, notes, additional info on a payment - make sure you’re referencing and detailing everything. Unless you’re documenting every payment you could be facing a battle when, like me, you choose to go back through months and months of accounts.

Luckily, I referenced *most* payments. The rest seem to be falling into place!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Today and tomorrow I’m making time for accounts. I don’t mean accounts as in clients, I mean accounts as financial accounts, the ones and zeroes that add up to make a business tick and keep me in food and clothes.

So for the afternoon I’m surrounded by

• Bank statements from the past 15 months
• Credit card statements for the same period
• Phone bills for the same period
• Miscellaneous purchase and sales invoices

This process is one which will continue into tomorrow. Rather than try and squeeze everything into an afternoon, I’ve been planning this for some time. I figure the time and effort I put into it now will eventually save me a lot of hassle when it comes to dealing with our current accountant (I say current because you never know when you want or need to change accountant!). Plus, when we went to our accountant the first time around we ended up paying double the original quote as a lot of preparation work, such as what I’m doing now, wasn’t completed.

In preparation for this I have

• Contacted all clients I currently have open jobs with and declared myself unavailable for two days this week
• Switched off my office-hours mobile phone number, changing the voicemail to notify callers again that I am unavailable until Thursday.
• Used the vacation feature in Google Mail (I use Google Apps to drive my office email setup) to reminded those contacting me via email that I am unavailable until Thursday.

For the first few years of working for myself (in partnership), it seemed easy to divide and conquer when it came to accounting. This meant that we would divide the workload, I take all the design and leave the accounting to my partner in crime.

But, I believe that if you are serious about running your own business or working for yourself that you need to be well versed in every element of the business - including the accounting end. Sure, it’s grand to see that you’ve got money coming in and out of the bank but at the end of the day, where is it all going?

So my laptop is on and open (with Twihl and Juhu keeping me company throughout the day) and I’ve created a series of spreadsheets in Open Office to help me track all this paperwork.

Let’s see how it goes!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Going back through my del.icio.us links from earlier in the year I came across this nugget from the Outlaw Design Blog highlighting a few places online you can get yourself some contract templates to customise for your own design needs.

Going forward, I think contracts are vital and I wouldn’t be without one. When I’m taking on new client work I have the client sign off on the terms of the proposal, in most cases agreeing to pay 50% of the project fee up front unless other terms have been negotiated (depending on the scale of the project) but what both myself and the client are getting is a binding agreement between two parties to deliver the terms of a proposal - from design deliverables through to payments.

The same can apply the other way, I have also been approached by clients with their own contracts, setting out terms for the deal, matters arising from termination or failure to live up to the terms of the contract - it works both ways and protects both parties.

As such, here are a few places you can gather contracts online. Take the time to review them, see if they’re adaptable to your own needs and if so, implement them.

Contract Resources For Freelance Designers

• Business Of Design Online - includes NDAs, project approval forms, request for quotes, order change forms etc.
• AIGA Standard Form Of Agreement For Design Services
• Work For Hire Agreement, necessary to ensure copyright transfer
• Logo Design Contract
• Freelance Design Contracts & Templates, including SEO, web marketing, art approval, invoices.
• Web Design Contract, from Premium Web Development LLC.
• Web Design & Programming Contracts from Site Pro Central

Have you come up with any contract layouts or have any contract tips that you can offer? Why not leave a comment and let us know?

Popularity: 13% [?]

A recent question came up on LinkedIn.com recently (connect with me here, introduce yourself!) asking what one of the biggest issues was in starting up a business, something I’ve done on three fronts already and will do again in 2008.

Money

As the answers came in, some people mentioned money. When you start out working for yourself, there is no certainty of income. Even after three years in one particular business, there is no “certainty” of income - you still have to go find work and complete work in order to earn money. People found it hard to either find clients to get cash, or further back again, to find the cash to start a business in order to try and find clients who had cash.

Marketing

Some people mentioned marketing - getting yourself known, attracting clients, pitching for jobs, chasing leads, building up your own brand. It’s a time-consuming activity - yes, something that has to be done, but not at the detrement of your livlihood.

My Issue: Time Management

My issue in starting out working for myself? Time management. More specifically, time management in relation to open projects and taking on one job too many at a given time.

There is an urge to go out and grab a client, maybe a second one and a third one to match, take on their work and immediately put yourself under unneccesary pressure. When you’re starting out, there is zero point in spreading yourself too thin. I’ve fallen victim to it once or twice in the past, but the lesson was learned. While it is great to be able to say you’re really busy, juggling too many jobs can have a negative effect on the work you end up delivering to a client. It is better to be patient and deliver a top-class result rather than to rush in to a job and finish up with a half-assed attempt, something that could have been improved upon if you had more time or simply weren’t juggling as many projects.

After a while you’ll get a feel for things and come up with your own time management system, deciding how many hours you can dedicate to a job in a week. There is no written formula for determining how long a job will take you and ultimately how many jobs you’ll be able to run concurrently, but if you start slow and remain patient, you’ll soon develop you’re own time management routine for working through jobs.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.

Popularity: 11% [?]