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

Hi, I’m Grace and I run the micro design studio Postscript5, which I founded in 2006. I brand, design and build web and application interfaces for awesome clients. I’m based in Northern Ireland where I work with clients from around the globe.

I enjoy blogging and contribute to publications such as Mashable and Computer Arts. When I’m not in the studio, you’ll find me behind a camera.

What does your typical work day look like?

A typical day means having breakfast and a read through my RSS Feeds (in Google Reader) and morning news at 8.30am. I also use this time to go through my emails so I’m ready to start work around 9. I work through my prioritised tasks until around 10.30 when I have a morning break (at least one cup of tea is involved in this!) I also use this time to return phone calls or contact clients. I work through to 1pm when I stop for lunch and then finish at 4.30pm. I usually leave the office for lunch and meet with friends/family as I feel it helps re-fuel my creative energy for the afternoon.

I finish earlier than most because i like to take 20/30 minutes to plan my next day, prepare invoices and generally tie up any loose ends from the day’s work. This is a typical day but of course every day is different, as I do consulting work I may be out of the office for most of the day or there may be client meetings scheduled throughout the day, but it serves as general overview of my day to day routine.

On some days I may even work in the evening, thereby leaving the rest of the day free as I find it helps to switch up my working hours to avoid monotony.

I try to keep both the evenings and weekends free of any work related activities and use my time on personal projects instead as I find it’s important to set work boundaries and keep a good work/life balance.

Are you a full time freelancer? And if so, how long have you been full time?

I run Postscript5 full-time, and have done for around 5 years.

You’ve been involved in a few side projects including Sc.ripted and thefreelancefeed. How does having side projects help & influence your freelance work?

I enjoy working on projects which are not client related as it lets me experiment and work at my own pace as well as putting some of creative energy into projects that build up my name and brand.

These type of projects are essential to help me explore ideas, new techniques and different methods and technologies. Each project I work on helps me learn something new and helps to improve and develop and knowledge and skills.

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

I don’t honestly see too much of a change in the way the studio is run and progressing from the present. I’m able to cherry-pick projects that excite and challenge me, which allows me to schedule my time so I can also pursue other interests such as writing and photography.

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

Coda – Coding heaven
Arq – The best back-up software I’ve ever used
Curdbee – Inexpensive, brilliant invoicing
1Password – All your logins in one place
Dropbox – Syncing and Version Control

Any piece of advice/wisdom that you’d like to give freelancers reading this interview who may just be starting out?

It’s crucial you have the upmost confidence in your ability, to make freelancing work. You’ll also need to have flexibility, good organisational skills and a high degree of commitment. Most of all, have fun and love what you do.

Go ahead and plug anything you’d like that you feel like readers would enjoy – social links, recent projects, etc.

Connect with me on Twitter, via @gracesmith or @postscript5. I’m also now publishing articles and studio news on the new Postscript5 site, and it’d be great to see some of your readers over there.

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Thank you again Grace for Gracing us (pardon the pun) with your presence. I appreciate it and I hope that the readers gain some knowledge from it as well as connect with a pretty kick ass chick (if I do say so myself).

This interview actually came about because Grace sent me an email asking if I’d like to interview her – and I did. This goes back to the old saying that closed mouths don’t get fed. If you want to be hired by someone, ask them to hire you. If you want to be interviewed, ask the website/magazine/radio station.

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Thank you Amber for taking the time to do this interview, I really appreciate it and am thrilled at your answers.

I hope everyone reading this interview today gets inspired to go out and kick ass like Amber does!

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

Well, my name is Amber Leigh Turner and I am a student freelancer living in Nashville, Tennessee. I do freelance graphic and web design, primarily branding design and custom website designs. Other services I offer include printing, website domain name and hosting services, marketing consultation, and wedding invitation and websites. Outside of my freelance business, you can find me all over the internet, primarily at FreelanceSwitch as an author, one of their forum moderators, and one of the moderators of the job board. I also run a student freelancing blog called StudentsThatFreelance.com

What did you do before freelancing (or while part time freelancing)?

I worked in retail, in the insurance industry, and my last job was a prepress technician for a printing company. I haven’t had a job (other than my freelancing) since I was 20!

How long have you been full time freelancing and how long did it take you to get to the $2,500+ per month income?

I started freelancing July 2007 so I have been doing this for four years. I have only been really serious about my freelancing (what I consider full time) since January 2009. Only within the last year have I seen the results of all of my four years of hard work by meeting and exceeding my goals that I have set for myself, including having the best month of my freelancing career in May of 2011, with June 2011 looking to break May’s record.

On average, how many hours per week do you work?

Right now, I am averaging about 40-50 hours a week, but right now is what I consider a peak time, with multiple clients and multiple projects going on at once. When I don’t have so many projects at once, I average about 30 hours, which includes marketing, admin, and innovation time that I work to grow my business.

As far as marketing goes, how did you get your name out there and generate leads?

I originally started on Craigslist (I know, shame on me), but it eventually grew to Google SEO, finding clients on good job boards, and now recently I have built up enough clients to start having referrals. About 1/3 of my clients are referrals, 1/3 are repeats, and the other third is a mix of Googlers, job boards, and other freelancers.

What does your typical work day look like?

Typical? There is no typical day for me, especially with schedules as crazy as school classes. During the summer, I primarily spend my days right here in front of the computer, doing my freelance thing and working on learning more about freelancing, design, web development, and anything I can to help improve my services. During the school year, my days alternate between classes, homework, and freelance work. In any given day though, you can bet that I am spending alot of my time with my freelancing, including answering client emails, preparing estimates and proposals, working on web design concepts, or working on my services.

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

Too many to name! Mainly the one thing I wish I would have known was that I should have gotten into freelancing sooner. I started when I was 19, and the more I freelance the more I wish I started when I graduated high school. I would be much further along, and now with a year from graduation, I wish I would have built more of my business up before graduation. Another big “wish I knew this when I started” piece of advice that I am struggling with now is starting early in finding ways for passive income. If you don’t then you are going to eventually reach a cap of how much you can make, and what is the fun in knowing what the cap is? I would start early thinking of ways to build passive income, and there is alot of ways out there!

I know you’re redesigning your portfolio at the moment. Any chance we can get an exclusive sneak peek?

I wish I knew what it was going to look like I am actually working on getting an actual business name going instead of working under my name. However before I decided to do that I had designed an entire site out how I wanted it and I may just use that same design. Alright, I cave! Here is your sneak peek!

But who knows, designers always change their mind on their own stuff, right? I could launch something completely different by the time the dust settles!

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

That story starts back to my parents. When I was fairly young, my dad started his own home maintenance and lawn care company. Ever since then I liked the fact that he could make his own hours, set his own pay, and could do work he wanted to do without dealing with bosses. Since then, I wanted to own my own business. I actually started freelancing right when I took a job at a printer as their prepress technician–prepping documents for commercial printing, recreating documents (medical forms mainly) for printing, etc.

Before then I worked as a cashier in a small retail store and as an assistant to an independent insurance agent. I wanted to dive head first into design since that was what I was getting my degree in. So why not get double the experience in half the time? Also, having two prior jobs before I started freelancing, I hated them. I hated having set hours doing set things and couldn’t control anything. Plus that entrepreneurial spirit was burning in me as well. The planets aligned and I started freelancing and haven’t looked back since! I even quit my prepress tech job after 14 months because I wanted to start doing my own thing, and felt ready to.

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

Or the “I can’t live without my blank” question First of, if you are a creative, you must have some form of the Adobe Creative Suite. My weapon of choice hands down is Adobe Illustrator. I use InDesign for all of my proposal, invoice, and contract templates mainly. Dreamweaver is a must for me, but since I purchased a Mac recently, some of my freelancer friends are trying to sway me from Dreamweaver. We shall see if they are successful. Other must haves are Dropbox (for storing and sharing large files), BackBlaze (online backup), Excel/Numbers (I manage my accounting by hand via spreadsheets–however now they are part of Google Docs), and finally Skype (for communicating with clients and other freelancers).

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

Wow, in five years. Well I see myself graduating from college with two degrees (Bachelor Fine Arts in Graphic Design and Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing). I also see my freelancing growing into an agency that allows me to hire other designers and developers to work with me to create great work. I also want to get to the point where I can hire other students in an internship status or as a beginner status to help them gain experience when no one else gives them a chance due to lack of experience, portfolio, etc.

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

Stick to it! My boyfriend can attest to this. I have wanted to quit a million times and go running back to the security of a regular job. But you just have to push yourself to continue your freelancing. It will pay off. It helps to have someone or others there to help push you and keep you motivated. Having that support system helps a great deal. I would not be here doing this interview if it wasn’t for my boyfriend who–every time I was worried about not making it as a freelancer–told me to stick with it. And I am glad I did, and even happier that he was there to help motivate me and not quit doing what I want to do and love to do!

Thanks for being a part of this interview Amber. Anything you’d like to plug, feel free to do so here!

I am all over the interwebs. Feel free to check my site out (outdated–but you can still see the old one) at Amber Turner Creative, follow me on Twitter at @amberlturner, watch my basketball skills on dribbble, and/or fan me on Facebook. Most importantly for all the student freelancers out there, check out what I have to say about freelancing as a student at Students That Freelance. I haven’t written in a while, but I am starting back with new posts three times a week.

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Some of the questions asked in today’s interview were the same questions we asked the Solo Success Stories in our recent book release, One Man Army. If you’d like to see some other freelancers answer questions like these, plus get a book full of amazing information for solo freelancers, make sure you pick up your copy!

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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!

–

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

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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.

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