Are you a freelancer or a small business owner? Going Solo is an educational conference organized specially for you.
Take a day “off” in Switzerland’s to learn tips and tricks from experienced freelancers on the business skills you need to be a successful soloist: setting rates, finding clients, balancing work and life, dealing with administrative stuff, and connecting with “colleagues”… and more.
- Listen to interviews of the main speakers
- Watch a video introducing the conference.
It will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland on May 16. That’s coming up soon but registration is still open for a few days.
Lausanne also happens to be in the middle of Swiss wine country, and home of some of the world’s most famous ski slopes. If you’re still not convinced, just think: you could be one of three lucky attendees who will win FreshBooks Shuttle Bus packages for a year. That’s better than chocolate!
Register now!
FreshBooks is all about helping the little guys. Usually that means helping people who are just starting out in business, but in one case we are helping people who are starting over in life.
Mistakes are easy…
26 years ago, Del Hendrixson made a mistake that cost her a year and changed her life forever. She made the mistake of helping people the wrong way. She forged documents to give illegal immigrants in the United States access to basic social services.
A year in prison does things to people. A working graphic designer before, she lost it all when she went to prison. Then she lost her way. As she tells it, “prison is a very traumatic experience. You have no choice but to become a survivalist. When you come back to society, you come back a Rambo. People who have never been through it don’t realize it, and so they don’t comprehend what they are messing with.”
… but starting over is hard.
After Del paid her dues back to society, she faced the same fate as every other ex-convict. She couldn’t find work. “I kept applying for jobs after I got out, but they asked me if I was incarcerated and I had to say yes.” Finally, one day a sympathetic soul reached out his hand to help, an event that changed her whole life. “If I could design the logos and sell the jobs, he would teach me how to screenprint. He said he had done things in life he regretted so he promised to help me. I promised to give back to others if he helped me.”
She made good on that promise. In a big way. In 1982, starting with $20 in her garage, she founded Bajito Onda, a 501(c)(3) charity to help former prisoners rebuild their lives and reconnect with society by teaching them creative professions like printing, design, and publishing.
Our reason for being is educational, cultural, empowerment and equality. It’s the reputation of Bajito Onda that represent the people who don’t have a face or voice in society.
The difference she has made is astounding. Over 25 years, she has personally trained over 10,000 people in Dallas to be self-sufficient, contributing members of society. She has presented to the United Nations. She has grown her organization to include half a million of members from around the world, from America to El Salvador to Honduras to Africa. She likes to call them her underground family.
Helping through art.
Bajito Onda is well known for its extensive collection of prisoner art made by members of the Bajito Onda family. Del started collecting after she was tapped to organize prisoner art shows where prisoners never got a penny in return. Del decided it would be better to do something to give back to the artists. So, she started her the Bajito Onda Prison and Street art gallery that collected everything from wood and leather works, to airbrushed bandanas (panos), to paintings.
“I hated to sell the originals because once the original was gone, we couldn’t do anything else with it. I started scanning their art and printing it on t-shirts in my shop,” she explains. And of course, because it represented Bajito Onda, “when they got out of prison, I helped them get a job as artists or to become their own printers.”
A new business!
This month, Bajito Onda launched their clothing line of authentic Hispanic prisoner art. Funds from the sales will go directly into supporting Bajito Onda’s charitable works. They also hope it will inspire other prisoners to join the Bajito Onda family.
Bajito Onda streetwear and merchandise is currently distributed Changes of New York and Bioworld Merchandise of Las Colinas, Texas. You can also buy directly online from the Bajito Onda CafePress store.
How does FreshBooks fit in
Bajito Onda uses FreshBooks to manage invoicing for shipments. I’ll let Del explain it in her own words.
A few years ago, I was going crazy trying to figure out a way to invoice people. We were still doing it the old fashioned way: with paper. A lot of things happen when you’re sitting alone in the warehouse at night. I wondered if there was some sort of ‘online invoicing’ tool, so I searched for it. And boom! There it was.
My clients accepted it. It wasn’t handwritten. It looked professional. Trackable. Downloadable. Really efficient. I contacted FreshBooks and they agreed to donate the service to our foundation.
Del, we’re happy to help out such an inspiring organization! Congratulations on the new online clothing store!
My name is Ariel Bernard, and I’m president of DesignByAriel, Inc.. We rely on FreshBooks to keep our business running, our employees organized, and our clients smiling.
“We found FreshBooks in mid-2006 and have been in love ever since.”
Before FreshBooks, we were using four different Web- and desktop-based tools to achieve the same results. Our clients were confused, billing was time-consuming, and projects were slow to start. The bottom line was our clients wanted a solution that was easy and efficient.
Our primary requirement for selecting a new accounting and invoicing solution was something Web-based. It was the 21st century and so few of the options were in Web-based billing. We’re a Web company, with employees and contractors all over the United States. We needed a Web solution for billing that worked.
We found FreshBooks in mid-2006 and have been in love ever since. Our clients find it easy, and our staff enjoy the efficiency of the time tracking and expense recording.
If we had to choose one feature that is truly groundbreaking, it would have to be one-click invoice mailing. We spent so much time in the past preparing monthly invoicing. Now we can send out 50 invoices in five minutes. Beat that, QuickBooks!
“There is nothing like getting to your desk on Monday to see that more than half of the invoices sent have been paid over the weekend by credit card.”
Payment is second on our favorites list. We find over 80% of our clients prefer to pay with a credit card. Our clients like to handle issues at their leisure; with FreshBooks, they can settle their entire account balance at 4am on a Lufthansa flight using their MasterCard. There is nothing like getting to your desk at 8am on Monday to see that more than half of the invoices sent have been paid over the weekend by credit card.
FreshBooks is much more than billing, we also drive our entire support ticket system through the same service. There are many Web-based support ticket systems out there, but if you want your clients to actually use the system you put in place, we’ve found that a consolidated service is the only way to go. In our opinion, FreshBooks is the best all-in-one solution available.
Since 2003, we’ve been developing innovative websites, interactive web-applications, forward-thinking branding solutions, and much more. With FreshBooks as part of our arsenal, we’re billing, support, and client-management gurus, too.
Back in February, FreshBooks had the honour of speaking at Third Tuesday hosted by Joseph Thornley of Thornley Fallis. Pretty early in the presentation I think Mike and I we could tell that this was going to be a special night because the crowd was incredible, the questions were really thoughtful and there was just a great vibe in the room.
Mr. Thornley must have agreed because he has started posting clips of that evening over on his Pro PR blog and we couldn’t be happier to share it with all of you!
Here is one of the three videos posted now and there will be more going up at Pro PR in the days and weeks to come!
Yes I know the videos are a bit hard to see but if you close your eyes you can pretend you were there and see why we had so much fun at this appearance!
…And if you found any of this interesting and would like to see it “LIVE” we will be doing this event again in June for Third Tuesday Ottawa!
[Editor's note: apologies for all the exclamation marks, but Saul makes an excellent point: "they're prettier than periods."]
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