Check out the interview and make sure you keep an eye out for the awesome things Jon has been doing. Any questions you have for him, let him know in the comments and I’ll make sure he gets here to answer them

Introduce yourself to the readers here and let us know what you do for a living

Sure! My name’s Jon. I’m a 27 year-old designer working from Montreal, Canada. My portfolio and blog are located at SpyreStudios.com. It is also my company/business which I founded in 2007 after freelancing for about 2-3 years. I’m also a guitarist and I play in a heavy act here in Montreal.

What does your typical work day look like?

Well, every day is different from the last but usually it starts with a good cup of coffee, checking emails and replying to messages on various social networking sites. Then I’ll work for about an hour on my personal projects (SpyreStudios and Design-Newz) and then I’ll write down a couple things on my to-do list – that’s when the ‘real’ day starts. I rarely know when my day will end, but I try to clear my to-do list before going to bed

Any “I wish I knew this back when I started” advice for freelancers who are just starting out?

The best piece of advice I can give would be to never stop networking, even if you’re having a very busy day, setting even just 30 minutes aside for networking will pay off in the long run. You can never have enough contacts.

Also, don’t get caught in the feast or famine cycle. Save some money for rainy days and don’t forget to put some money aside for when tax time comes. When you can afford it, get a good accountant.

I really enjoy your Design Newz website. How’d the idea for that come about?

I’ve always liked the concepts behind sites like AllTop and PopUrls and even though those 2 sites show quite a lot of design-related content I thought it’d be nice to have a site dedicated only to design and development. Being an active Twitter user I also noticed that a lot of designers were sharing and retweeting design-related links so I though ‘why not have all of this in one central location?’. I wanted my new site to be like a one-stop-shop for designers and developers looking for inspiration, articles and tutorials. So I opened up my Moleskine notebook and started drawing wireframes and all. And then about 6 hours later I had a complete site running on WordPress and was ready to launch.

When did you realize you wanted to be a freelancer and was your first role as a web designer or something else?

Actually I don’t see myself as a freelancer, I prefer to think of myself as a business owner and entrepreneur. I am, of course, always looking for opportunities and partnerships, but I prefer to create opportunities and set the rules myself. I like to work with clients – as opposed to working for clients. This way I can also focus on my own projects.

If you could give five pieces of software as “must haves” for freelancers, what would they be?

These are the apps and software I use every single day. Of course this list could be much longer.

• Adobe Creative Suite (mostly Fireworks)
• WordPress (needs no introduction I guess – my favorite platform)
• MAMP Pro (for installing WordPress locally)
• TextMate (or any other text editor)
• Mail app (or another reliable Mail application)

Your Spyre Studios site is a blog but also your portfolio. Do you find it easier to manage both on one domain? Are there any benefits from having the blog as your main focus and the “portfolio” secondary to it?

I find it’s much easier! I actually tried separating the two and setup SpyreMag.com and left SpyreStudios.com as a simple portfolio site. But I soon realized there was no point in having two separate sites and diluting traffic. I then went ahead and put everything back on SpyreStudios.com and redirected the SpyreMag domain.

I like the fact that the blog is the main focus. This way, potential clients can see what I’m interested in and what I (and guest authors) write about. I found that this setup works for two reasons:

• People interested in the blog have direct access to my portfolio, no need to ask them to check out my portfolio on another domain. Everything is right there.
• I work a lot with bloggers and small business owners looking into starting a blog, so it just makes sense for me to have the blog as the main point of interest.

Where do you see yourself in five years? Will you still be freelancing or do you have plans for something bigger?

I can’t say where I’ll be in 5 years, but I don’t think I’ll be freelancing. I’m working on creating different sources of recurring and passive income to allow me to have more free time to focus on some personal projects and play music.

Just for fun: Since you’re a real rockstar, do you find it weird that designers are calling themselves rockstars?

I’m so glad you asked me that question! I’ll try to be as concise as possible with my answer because you know I could rant on this for hours haha

To answer your question: yes I find it weird. I see no reason to call yourself a rockstar if you ain’t one. Seriously, unless you’re actually in a band, are touring the world, spending time in a recording studio and drinking Jack Daniel’s from the bottle… don’t call yourself a rockstar. Period.

Why would I want to work with a rockstar anyway? Would you trust a Pornstar to design your website? I don’t think so. Same goes with Ninjas and Gurus. What? You’ll do some killer Ninja moves while you upload files to my server? Come on!

While it may appeal to some because they’re very ‘trendy’ buzzwords, it doesn’t appeal to me at all, and I actually am in a band and have toured all over the country.

// Ok, rant is over

Go ahead and plug anything else you’d like – Thank you for doing the interview!

You’re very welcome Mike. Thanks for having me, always a pleasure! Stop by SpyreStudios and Design-Newz anytime!

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Thank you Jon for being a good sport and doing this interview.

Freelancer Interview: Jon Phillips is a post from Guerrilla Freelancing For our regular subscribers, we've got a relaunch in order in the next week or two. Keep your eyes peeled :)

Todays interview is with the always talkative and highly talented Andy Sowards. So check out the interview and make sure you let Andy know what you think in the comments section.

What does your typical work day look like?

Busy? Ok I will be a little more detailed. Well, every morning starts off like pretty much everyone’s morning does. Email. Once I get through the pile of email that was received while I was sleeping then the work starts. My typical workload for each day changes drastically, as I am a designer, developer and a programmer (Triple threat?). I can be creating a web application with MySQL/PHP one day, moving a blog from blogger, typepad, etc over to a new wordpress setup with a new design the next, and programming a custom order page with dynamic options using javascript/jquery and a 3rd party shopping cart on another day, or all in the same day, just depends on the day . There are the constants of every day that keep me going though, like starbucks, design blogs, mt. dew, xkcd.com, call of duty 4, and twitter, to name a few.

I love the twitter picture of your and your kid. How has it been juggling all of the projects you have going as well as your personal life?

Thanks! I actually get a lot of positive comments for that picture, and I need to update it because I have 2 other little boys(that one is my oldest). It has been very challenging to say the least to juggle everything that I am doing and still have a ‘life’ and time with the family. I try to schedule my workload around them so that I don’t miss any moments, and if a project deadline is quickly approaching I usually end up losing sleep rather than time with them. It is definitely a lot of work to juggle these things, but it is definitely worth it! I love what I do, and I love my family!

I’ve seen you working on projects recently from Virl to Tweet a Prize. Anything else on your plate you’d like to give exclusive sneak peeks to?

Glad you have been keeping an eye on those! I have definitely been busy in the past few months with those projects, and right now I am working on a few more things like that (none that can be seen yet, unfortunately) so definitely stay tuned! One of the things that I can share with you however is a sneak peek at my new Logo for AndySowards.com, I have been working on the redesign to my blog site, and it is really close to being launched, I am very excited about that. I am cleaning up the design and adding in a lot of functionality to give my readers some cool stuff to play with. So keep an eye out on the blog for the new redesign and you will get a chance to see some of the new projects I am working on from there!

Are you currently a full time freelancer or do you also work for another company?

I do work for a small web agency in my city that does work for some well known authors, entrepreneurs and online marketers. We build custom wordpress solutions as well as direct response websites, sales letters, event promotion websites, and pretty much anything and everything else you could think of needing on the web. Freelancing started as a pet project and has quickly grown into a sustainable side business.

When did you realize you wanted to be a freelancer and was your first role as a web designer or something else?

Well, as I said in the previous answer, Freelancing started as a pet project. When I first started, my first role was just a web designer, I did not know much html, knew no css/javascript or any programming languages at all. Over the years, I first conquered Photoshop as I started to learn HTML. Once I had HTML down I then started to practice with CSS and Javascript. Once I had mastered all of those, I began working with PHP as my first programming language, shortly after, integrated that knowledge with MySQL for database interactivity. Over the course of 3 years(just about) I had mastered all of them. The reason I started freelancing was because I was looking for a new challenge, a new skill to add to my skillset. At my job as a web designer/developer/programmer I was pretty much in charge of my day, I had clients assigned to me, and I did everything for those clients, including phone calls, coordinating with them to get them what they need, when they need it, and providing quotes, feedback to their questions, etc. It was basically like I was already running my own freelance business. So I did the research and started building up my own brand on the side, and it is now growing into a successful freelancing business in a little under a years time.

In five years from now, how do you envision your business model being?

In 5 years from now I will Definitely be fully self employed, and I see my business model being based upon several different things. First, I want to have my freelancing design/development/programming business fully stabalized and have a few employees to help manage it and build the brand, would also like to see AndySowards.com become a key pillar in the design community as a resources/tutorial blog. I also will have several side projects going as passive income and hopefully build them all up to be successful startups in their own right.

If you could give five pieces of software as “must haves” for freelancers, what would they be?

dreamweaver, photoshop, illustrator, FIREBUG(for Firefox), Billings 3(invoicing software on mac) (if not using mac Zoho Invoice is good and simple invoicing software)

Any piece of advice/wisdom that you’d like to give the readers at Guerrilla Freelancing?

Just keep at it, You have to know what you want, and be willing to work for it! I believe that if you do these 3 things you will succeed (in anything really).

1. Never stop learning, always improve yourself.
2. Be willing to go the extra mile, even if you are tired or unMotivated
3. Be Passionate about what you are doing, have fun.

I believe that If you have those 3 things, then you will crush it. Times get tough as a freelancer, but it is way worth the effort put into it.

Go ahead and plug anything else you’d like – a special thank you for taking the time to be interviewed!

Definitely! I would like to invite everyone to checkout one of my latest client projects that went live, as you mentioned in one of the quesions above, http://www.virl.com, is a twitter based social media web app that lets you quickly and easily shorten and share news, URLs and Photos.  Also, I just partnered up withBrandURGE, as a Partner and Chief Software Architect, so check out our first venture Tweet-A-Prize: The Twitter-based social media scavenger hunt for BIG prizes! http://tweetaprize.com/. Other than that, on a personal level I was mentioned in my fav magazine, Web Designer, last month! You can check out the cover and the mention here, and also check out the interview I was mentioned in the magazine for! Also, of course, stay tuned to AndySowards.com I have a TON of posts lined up for when the redesign launches in addition to the daily nerdy links that are posted everyday anyway!! Its gonna rock! Thanks everyone for reading!

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A big thank you goes to the Social Media Machine (it’s my new nickname for Andy) for doing this interview. We appreciate him taking the time to answer our questions and share his wisdom with us here. If any of the readers here have questions for Andy, feel free to drop a comment and let us know.

If you’d like to be interviewed on Guerrilla Freelancing, feel free to contact us and let us know.

Freelancer Interview: Andy Sowards is a post from Guerrilla Freelancing For our regular subscribers, we've got a relaunch in order in the next week or two. Keep your eyes peeled :)