Ramblings about the web and things - part of the JuicyFly empire.
There's about to be a big change on my website - and my blog. I'm going to be moving the blog off blogger (it's a great system, but I want it all centralised) and to a completely WordPress driven site. There might be a bit of disruption on the site over the weekend but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...
2008, eh? Amazing how quickly it comes around. I can remember feeling smug this time last year for getting through my first ever self-employed Christmas.
Last year I made a few business plans and a few personal plans. Let's see how they panned out and make some new plans to not keep to:
Business plans
Here are some things I want to do before I'm 30.
Just a quick one to say that the party was a great success, and thanks to all who made it. Hopefully there will be many photos to come, but in the mean time you can find mine here.
I got an email today out of the blue asking for advice now that I'm a seasoned businessman. Stop laughing at the back. I am, honestly. I've been going a year.
This was my reply:
1. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Keep every contact you make and - as long as you have the time and it doesn't get in the way of earning - do them the odd favour now and then. You'll never know when you need to call in those favours. Dad taught me that.
2. A friend who'd started a business a while ago told me one thing when I started - "it always takes more money than you think it will". I dismissed him out of hand. What money could I need? I had my laptop, a big pad of paper and some felt pens. Then I hit a quiet period. If you can - or as soon as you can - build up a "war chest" of about 3 months' money, because when the work dries up (whether it's for seasonal reasons - you'll be busy at financial year end and quiet in summer in some sectors) you'll be stuck without it. So yes - it does always take more money than you'd think.
3. Never stop looking for work. When I started I got two really nice, big chunks of work. They paid the bills and let me have fun, and it was interesting work. There was travel and glamour and I got caught up in and sat back, thinking I had it made. And I stopped doing what I'd done to get that work in the first place - calling people, applying for work, trawling websites. After that things dried up and I had no work for a while - and got into money troubles.
4. Money moves at an odd pace. You have to get used to cashflow. I spent the whole of September working - only one day off all month - and I've not seen a penny of the money yet. I've not even invoiced for it. Remember it's never as simple as do job - get paid. It's find job, negotiate, do job, issue invoice with 30 day terms, wait, chase, eventually get money, so the bank balance is anything up to 60 days behind the workload, and certain people you want to give even longer terms to because they're nice people and they're as busy as you. You're either rushed off your feet and poor or quiet and rich - and when you're quiet and rich you have to hold on to that money because you won't know how long it's supposed to last for.
5. If you work for friends don't be afraid to charge them what you charge everyone else.
6. Your last employer may well be your first client. Be nice when you leave and keep in touch with them.
7. You never stop learning - so keep a log. I hadn't done this and my girlfriend got sick of me telling her about mistakes I was making over and over again - so she suggested I write a project diary. I have a blog hosted on my home PC now where I write - and rant - about projects I've done. When I undercharge, things I do wrong, things to note... keep it personal, for yourself alone, and keep it up to date.
8. Listen to people. Everyone has ideas and opinions and you don't have to use them but you'd be surprised where good ideas can come from - and who might know someone who might know someone else who needs you.
9. Don't pay for something if you can get it for free with a little work. There are services to get government contract alerts sent to you and they cost a fortune - but if you actively look you can get the same info for free. If someone has an old desk, printer, keyboard, whatever you need - take them. Be smart and professional for your clients by all means - but everything else just needs to work.
10. Get a good accountant - someone recommended by a friend - and pay them to do your tax return. They'll save you more than you'll pay them.
11. Put at least 30% of everything you earn into an ISA or other high interest savings account. Never spend it. Never be tempted to use it to bail yourself out of a quiet period. This is your income tax. You pay it in one big chunk at the end of the year, not as you earn, and it's easy to forget this. If you save more than you need, put that to the next year's bill. When you stop working for yourself, take the excess, buy yourself a Mars Bar or something. Don't touch it before that.
12. Approach your local business support organisation (www.businesslink.gov.uk should be your first port of call) and do whatever courses they offer. I did book-keeping, marketing, and legal and admin day-long courses for £30 a pop and it was the best money I ever spent. For the business, I mean - going to Florence was the best money I *ever* spent. Or my MG. Or that meal in Paris. Or something.
13. Be anal about keeping records. Receipts, invoices you issue, invoices you receive. The more accounting you can do yourself, the cheaper it will be for an accountant to do your tax return. Learn the basics of double-entry book-keeping at the very least.
14. Be prepared to sacrifice your social life some months - and to sit at home, alone, bored for others. Build your portfolio with charity and club work when you're quiet.
15. Any attempt to do cash-in-hand work for a friend *will* get more complicated than it needs to because you'll need to pay tax on it - and avoiding paying that tax will lead to massive worries about being found out, which really *is* a bad thing. It is possible, but make sure it's worthwhile, and certainly don't go public (like on a blog or something) and say that it happened. Of course, this point is purely hypothetical.
16. Stop thinking of other agencies and freelancers as competition and think of them as friends and colleagues. If you're too busy to do work, recommend someone good (remember your reputation can be tarnished by a bad recommendation) and make sure they know you were involved. They might return the favour, give you work themselves, or otherwise owe you.
17. Enjoy it. And enjoy the benefits. Eat a decent lunch. Listen to the radio when you work. Work in your pants. When you've got 3 months' money as a safety net and you know your income tax is covered, treat yourself a little. Put what you can through the business (a good accountant will tell you what you can and can't get away with). Every now and then sit back and smile. I celebrated (quietly) my 6 months - and I'm having a party for my first year.
18. Things will go wrong. It'll be hard. You'll want to jack it all in at least once a month. You need to remember why you started working for yourself and keep going. It is incredibly rewarding but also depressing at times. Remember that whatever happens now you've made a big, positive change in your life - you're more employable as a failed freelancer than as someone who's never tried. You've given yourself infinite flexibility. If I wanted to leave the country tomorrow and start a new life somewhere I could, very easily, and that's an incredibly liberating feeling. I really do feel that I'm capable of anything now.
*Edit*
19. Don't spend your VAT. I just remembered this one. I did it once, got my VAT bill, and watched everything from my next invoice just dissapear into the VAT man's pockets. Always assume (if you're a low expenditure company like me) that everything you collect in terms of VAT is just "sitting in your account" (like Father Ted used to say) before going on to the VAT man. Anything you do get back is then a bonus. Put it in your ISA with your other tax money.
20. Get a pension and - if you can afford it - income protection insurance. If I break all my fingers in a freak piano accident I can't earn, and then I'm in trouble. That's why I avoid pianos.
I took a little time off from the busy schedule this weekend to get shot in the bottom, leg, arm and back. Thoroughly good fun:
http://www.pixelwork.com/newsStory.cfm?id=254
Yep, new iPods out now, so as a blogger I'm legally obliged to write about them.
There's going to be lots of debate about the iTouch (the stripped-down iPhone) and costs - but, being shallow, I'm going to skip over that and just drool a lot. God, it looks incredible. What an interface! I'd like one, but it's just far too expensive at the moment and I think a 30GB iPod would be a better deal.
The new nano and "classic" both look really nice too - the metal enclosure is a lot more resistant to damage than the plastic, and from my shuffle I know that any little knocks and nicks they get add to the character somewhat. I'm not sure about the new colours for the nano - the old ones were pretty good as they were.
The new nano is a nice size - looks quite squat but not ugly.
So... I want one. A "classic" as my first choice. Please give me work so I can get one... :D
It's nearly September, and September is Tacheback time.
Tacheback runs every year and basically involves being sponsored vast (well, some) sums of money to grow a moustache. The money raised goes towards male cancer charities and you can find out more here:
http://www.tacheback.com/
I'm doing it for the third year now and hoping to achieve something which actually looks OK and not - as one teenager once told me on a train - a "poo-tache". Regardless of that, I need your money, and I need it now. Right now.
You can donate online at https://www.bmycharity.com/maltpress2007 - I'd appreciate as much money as possible because I think it's a great charity. And because I'm going to look very, very stupid and I think that's worth cash.
Come on - stump up.
Some nice news - a couple of sites I've been working on have launched, so I can update my portfolio a little.
First up is the Strathclyde Pension Fund Office, www.spfo.org.uk - I wrote the content for this site back in February. Reading Room, from Manchester, did all the technical stuff and got the content into the site, and it's recently gone live. It's looking really good - and I can still vaguely remember some of what I learnt while up there (mainly that the Scots are lovely and Glasgow is a beautiful city and well worth a visit).
Secondly a site I designed and built - not my core work, but a nice little project nonetheless - has gone live. Old school friend and most excellent singer/songwriter Clara Kousah's website was a labour of love with many man-hours (and much swearing) involved, but I think the final result is quite nice. I'm pretty proud of some of the technology I used, if not the design... you can find out more on my past work pages.
Now - onward and upwards!
It's been pretty busy here - mostly trying to get new business. This week in particular has been extremely hectic, and it's only starting to slow down a little as I wait for other people to get back to me with things. It's a shame the bank balance doesn't reflect the amount of work I've been doing, but it should pay dividends in the future.
It's actually been pretty stressful this week, but also enjoyable - I've been working on a rare design/build job for a change, and it's nice to get to play with a bit of PHP. I've also been playing with a bit of Flash/ActionScript, which isn't something I'm very familiar with, but which has turned out to be very interesting. I've built - using examples online and a bit of tweaking - a Flash MP3 player. I'm quite proud of it. My grasp of PHP XML parsing and regular expressions is improving greatly too, and my GIMPing skills are getting a lot better - it's just the visual creativity I think I lack. Any more work like this and I think I'll outsource the design side of things.
Before I sign off, I thought I would post the following YouTube video made by a friend - it's a great little vid and it's got a good message. I'm planning on 10% less living beyond my means. And possibly 10% less wasting time on the internet.
That's right - from an invoicing and tax point of view (which I suppose is good enough) I've been running now for six whole months. It's still scary and exciting - which is why I started, I suppose - and I still love it.
In that time I've driven many hundreds of miles; typed many many thousands of words; met lots of lovely new people and spent an inordinate amount of time going to, or at least trying to go to, Ikea. I've learnt how to do my accounts; I've started to learn how to sell myself. But not like that.
And now for the next six months. I'm planning to get some more big clients all on my own - which is a nice feeling, especially when I can develop a relationship with them (and because I get all the money, hurrah!). I'd like to travel a bit more, too, and I have six months to clear my debts - something which I don't really think is going to happen, but I have to keep trying.
Anyway, it's quite a milestone for me - so please, charge your coffee mugs and join me in a toast - to six happy and successful months!
Yes, car woe once again. I was actually physically stranded as I started to write this - stuck in a (very nice) office owned by some very nice friends and colleagues who do excellent work and who let me sob there quietly while I awaited rescue.
My clutch has gone. Where, I'm not sure, but it's gone - it was certainly there when I left in the morning, ha ha ha. I'm not sure if going to Swansea finished it off completely, but it must have been on the way out for a while, which is a shame. Oh well - these things are sent to try us, and it's certainly trying me at the moment. I need to arrange meetings many miles away, which is a bit annoying, but I have to earn.
I never even got to go to Ikea to get my new chair. Humph. Looks like it's a Staples special - I've got a money off voucher, so that's OK. I might start a business account with them.
*edit* - whoops, I didn't edit the draft properly. resulting in some bizarre present/past tense-confusion.
I'm very aware that this blog is slowly becoming me whinging about how ill or in pain I'm in, but I think that's probably something to do with me getting older. Not old (yet), but certainly older.
Anyway, my back and shoulders are utterly messed up at the moment and no amount of ibuprofen seems to help. I'm having rather odd spasms in my lower back at the moment, which aren't painful, but do feel very strange.
I think it's all to do with my posture and the fact I've been working a lot in the kitchen - using my laptop more and more now I'm having real PC troubles. There's no technical support here - I have to do it all myself or ask my brother to do it - and to frank I don't have the time at the moment. It's very tempting to just go out and get a Mac, to be honest.
Rather than that I think I might go out and get a decent soft wheely chair at some point. Perhaps a trip to Ikea is in order...
It's funny how illness strikes when you've got deadlines to meet and loads to do. All those months of not having enough to do - and wondering if I could pay the bills - and now I'm snowed under I'm unwell. Ah well.
So that's why I've not blogged for a while - very, very busy at the moment and having huge amounts of fun. Late nights and lots of learning - can't get better than that. And it'll be over this weekend, when I'm off to Swansea to see some old uni friends, and then I've got a quiet week next week to recover. Unless, of course, anyone would like to give me some work. Just nothing which requires me to breathe through my nose or shout a lot.
Today I decided to have a change of scenery and do some work in Cambridge. There's a lovely cafe called Ta Bouche, which does good food, plays decent music, and has free wireless. I think I've plugged them mercilessly before. Anyway, it's a great place to go to get out of the house and approach a subject fresh if I need to.
While I was working, a girl sat at the table next to me and I overheard her talking about the business she's starting up... "great", thought I, "an opportunity to make a contact, maybe get some work, and spread my opinions far and wide". Details were exchanged (well, given, by me) and I felt very stupid for not having any business cards with me.
And then I got home and looked in the mirror and felt even more stupid. My god, I look a state - unshaven, in desperate need of a haircut, and not exactly dressed like a professional. It's a much needed reminder that I should always be thinking of the next client - and that I might bump into them anywhere. Something new for the to-do list: get a haircut.
Yup - I've got my concentration back. I've been working hard again now and things are going nicely - just won a new contract, which I might be able to give some details of when the project's finished. It's given me a real boost and it's a lovely bit of work with some very nice people, so I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into it.
I'm about to nip into Cambridge to sort out a new phone which will help solve two problems at once - getting lost and keeping up with emails on the go. T-mobile are the only carrier I can find to offer an unlimited data plan, and the cost is fantastic too. I don't make hundreds of mobile calls at the moment, but I think that might be as much because I'm on pay as you go as any other reason. I'll be keeping the same business numbers, so that won't change - but hopefully I'll be getting a fancy phone with GPS on it too so I can find places a lot easier....
...and I don't know why, or what to do about it. I'm going to try working somewhere completely different tomorrow to see if that helps.
Thing is, I've got some really interesting work to do. It's something I can really get my teeth into and I want to make a really good job of it. But inspiration just won't strike at the moment. I've made a start - so I'm not staring at a blank bit of paper any more - and I even know what I want to say... it's just saying it which is causing problems.
I think what I might do is continue the reading and research now, play a little bit with sIFR and have an early night. That might help. And I just have to hope I get it back tomorrow.
For some reason I'm having real trouble concentrating at home at the moment. I know I have loads of work to do, but I just can't do it. It's not even as if I'm being distracted by anything in particular - I'm just not able to work at home very well. One solution - although it's going to end up very expensive - is that Ta Bouche, a coffee place/restaurant/bar in Cambridge has free wifi, good food and attractive passers-by. I'm thinking of becoming a regular there so I can cheekily ask to plug my laptop in and not be limited to three and a half hours' work.
I have loads on at the moment - writing proposals, doing work for existing clients, the usual month-end admin stuff, and concentration just isn't happening. I think I might hop on the bus soon. Especially because Clare Grogan is standing in for Nemone on 6 Music and I don't really like her.
My whiteboard is working out well - it's always full and I update it every day as things happen. Very reassuring to know I've got enough work to be able to do that. More work would always be appreciated though...
Oh, and I'm thinking of going limited before the end of the year. If I can maintain my levels of work for another couple of months and build up a bit of capital - and if I can get through my tax self-assessment...
Hello! If you've tried emailing me today, I might not have received your mail. I'm in the middle of changing hosts and I'm not sure I'm getting all emails. I'm relying on an ancient Hotmail account which all my emails are automatically forwarded to at the moment... things should be back up and running tomorrow, with luck. In the mean time, phone is the best option for getting in touch.
I've treated myself today - I went out and bought a Pure DAB radio. It's fantastic - BBC 6 Music in stereo without dropping bitrate every five minutes, lots of buttons to press, and great reception even without the arial up! How ace is that - I'm listening to Lammo at the moment and it's never sounded better.
Plus I get XFM now. How cool is that?
I discovered the other day that while managing an individual project is fine - and, to be honest, swapping between several projects is OK too - I wasn't very good at keeping track of them, especially the issue of giving things project codes. I reached a critical mass of projects where they just stopped being easy to keep track of in my head.
So, after much asking of advice, I've got a new filing system, involving job bags, a new project (and quote and invoice) numbering system, and a new toy - a whiteboard. It's all gridded out and different colours. I feel like I'm in CSI, which I've always wanted. Ideally one day I'll work in an office with a big glass wall I can write on, but until that day my little whiteboard will do.
I've also got my iPod shuffle - my leaving present from my last job. It's a coloured one, and it's utterly, utterly fantastic. I can't believe the sound quality from such a small thing. I need to do some iTunes organisation - I've got loads of Pet Sounds session tracks on there and they don't quite work on shuffle...
