Shawn Adrian knows a thing or two about time–specifically, about saving a lot of it for himself and other businesses who work with quotes and estimates. The co-founder of the QuoteRobot application, which trims hours off of the quote-generation process, chatted with our Intrepid Freckle Reporter, Marissa.

Marissa: Tell me a little bit about you and what you’re working on.

Shawn: I’m Shawn, and I’ve been designing websites now for about fifteen years. I’m busy with client work, but I’m also currently working on my own app called QuoteRobot.

What’s QuoteRobot about? Tell me more.

The basic idea is that QuoteRobot will help designers and coders create proposals faster. With QuoteRobot I can do a four page proposal in a graphical template in fifteen minutes. In the past, creating that proposal could take around 2 hours. So it really, really trims the amount of time it takes to create proposals and quotes.

QuoteRobot also keeps track of the proposals that I’m sending out and their dollar values, and then it tracks how many of them come back to be accepted, so it generates a close ratio for me. It lets me know how I’m doing.

And QuoteRobot is your own personal creation, not for a client?

Yeah. My friend Jon and I created it. I thought of the idea a few years ago and brought Jon on to program it because I didn’t program at the time, so we’re partners on it. It will be my first app as a residual income business model that I’ve developed for myself and not for clients.

Where are you in the development process with QuoteRobot?

We have a private beta open right now, and we’re inviting people that we think might have some good feedback to use it and let us know what they think. We’ve got about 10 or 15 people in there playing with it now, and I’m currently using it for doing all my proposals to clients too.

We’re just polishing and bug-tweaking and working out the payment processing stuff right now. We’re so close to having it launched, and it has a great business model and it’s already helping me create winning proposals. It just saves so much time.

Note from Marissa: Since Shawn & I spoke, QuoteRobot has come out of private beta. You can sign up and try it out free for a full month!

That is really exciting! And it sounds incredibly useful.

Yeah, thank you.

What else is getting your attention these days?

Another exciting thing is a project I just launched in April with my wife. It’s called Exching. It’s a used clothing market place. Kind of like a pretty Craigslist for clothes.

So that’s growing, and it’s exciting to see growth. We get new people signing up every day and new items being added for sale almost every day. It’s sort of a pet project—there’s no business model there—but I like to see it grow, and because it’s sort of a pet project for my wife and me, it’s a good source of joy.

Your website has a name that I find pretty catchy: Nerdburn. Where does that name come from?

You know what, I don’t have a good story for it! I was a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and I was looking for dot coms, just putting words together that I liked. And I just kind of came up with Nerdburn. I was a little bit of a nerd at that age—at least my friends said so—and I made an interesting logo with a little “N” and a “B” and a flame coming off the end. I thought it looked kind of cool. So, yeah, it was a teenager’s decision!

Then after I left the agency world and started to go freelance in 2007, I didn’t feel like registering a new domain name, so I just used that one. It was just sort of an art portfolio at the time.

It’s funny… I get more compliments on the domain name than I would have ever guessed, even in corporate settings! So it worked out all right.

So tell me a little bit about how you came to know become friends with Freckle.

I always try to keep up on the latest apps, especially when they’re beneficial to my area of work. As a freelancer who has to wear the business hat as well as the creative hat, I’m always trying to figure out ways to be more productive, spend less money, and just be a little more organized.

When I stumbled across Freckle I didn’t try it out right away. And to be honest, at first I wasn’t actually interested in it. Time tracking wasn’t something I’d done before, and I thought it sounded like a lot of work, like it would be just another thing that would take up time.

But I really liked the interface. Sometimes I write about interface design on different apps, so I thought I’d write a blog article about Freckle’s interface. I figured I’d better use it for a week or so to understand how it worked.

Once I started using it, I just loved the numbers. I loved being able to see where my time had gone, broken down in the Pulse. Then I just carried on using it. After I’d used it for a month, I got really excited because I could see averages of how many hours I actually spent working each week. It turns out that I was working a lot less physical hours than I had imagined.

As a freelancer, I’m kind of in work mode all the time. From the time I get up until the time I go to bed—much to my wife’s displeasure!—I’m thinking about work. So I had this perception that I was working a lot of hours every day. But when I actually started tracking the hours that I was actively designing something, or programming something, or on the phone with a client, there were gaps in between of just dead time.

I found that I wasn’t working as many hours as I assumed that I was. And that actually gave me a kind of freedom. That awareness helped me pack a bigger punch into the hours that I do spend working.

Having a record of how I spend my time shed some light on my working habits and helped me to fine-tune them. It also helped me better evaluate my hourly rate and calibrate it more accurately to the work I was doing.

What are your favorite features in Freckle?

I like how easy it is to add time. I just log in and it’s got a one-line interface there.

The Pulse page is definitely my favorite because it gives me an idea of where I’ve been spending my time, which days are my busiest and which days are my least busy. That’s all useful data.

I also really like the tagging. Now that I’ve been using Freckle for a few months, I’m adjusting how I use the tags to get better data. I used to tag my time with the client’s name. But I realized that if I tag the time entry with what I was doing—like Photoshop or writing HTML—I could get a breakdown of how exactly I spend my hours, not just who I spend them on. That date helps me understand what activities are most profitable for me.

How does that data help you structure your pricing or invoicing?

I give clients quotes on projects based on the number of hours that I think it will take, and then that’s a firm quote. I’m basically billing on the number of hours that I estimate the job will take. The data I get from Freckle allows me to adjust my future estimates based on the hours that it actually took me to do a job. I can give more accurate quotes because I know how much time the last job actually took me.

What books or other people’s blogs are you finding particularly useful right now?

I just finished reading Getting Real from 37Signals and that was really good. A lot of it you could get from reading around online, but it was nice to have it in a succinct package, and it was good reading. I’m also reading The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey, and it’s a really great business book. It’s a reminder that on keeping commitments and how to build lasting relationships. I think it’s bound to be one of those business classics, especially for self-employed people.

Basically Covey sort of quantifies the value of trust in relationships. He calls it a trust tax, or a trust dividend. In high-trust relationships, you’re getting a trust dividend. You’re a noticeable percentage more productive and faster with less cost. And in low-trust relationships in business, you’re paying a trust dividend, and things take longer and cost more.

My own QuoteRobot project is an example. My buddy Jon and I trust each other explicitly and when we make a decision, it gets done that day. There’s no hesitation on either side because we trust that we’re both making decisions for each other’s mutual benefit. Whereas, in untrusting relationships, there’s a lot of hesitance moving forward with new decisions and new ventures.

That’s a really interesting approach: the idea of quantifying trust which is usually seen as such an unquantifiable notion. I’m adding that to my to-read list.

Yeah, it’s really good. It reads a bit like a text book, so it took me a while to get through, but it’s worth it.

What would you say is your unique super power?

I’m 28 years old now and I started doing this for money when I was fourteen. It is literally the only job I’ve ever had aside from a couple of months here and there as a teenager trying out different things. I’ve never done anything as long as I’ve done this. So I can say confidently that I have a natural ability to see that a project has segments, break it up into those segments and execute and deliver each segment individually to complete a whole project.

Maybe that’s why I feel confident developing an app that helps other designers create quotes—it’s something that I’ve been doing for so long that it’s no trouble for me to break up a project into its little parts and understand what it’s going to take to complete each part.

That’s an excellent super power to have, especially considering your work. But since even superheroes have lessons they have to learn from time to time, what advice or lesson do you most often have to be reminded of?

A commitment is a commitment. Especially as a freelancer working from home, I get a barrage of emails every single day and it’s so easy to respond to one saying, “Oh yeah, I’ll take care of that later today,” without even considering the impact that it will have on the number of hours I have available to work that day. So the one thing I constantly have to remind myself—and I’ve considered having this tattooed on my arm—is to keep commitments, to not make a commitment unless I intend to follow through on it, because all of those small commitments are either building relationships or eroding them.

That’s pretty wise.

Well, I hope it sticks. I wouldn’t have to keep reminding myself it was sticking!

Well, there’s always that idea of that tattoo.

Yeah, I might actually do that. If I do it, I’ll send you a picture.

That would be excellent. As we approach the end of our interview, how about one last question. I’ll make it a fun one: What is a game that you always win?

Oh, interesting… I think life is a game to some degree, and I am winning in my perspective. I haven’t won and there are many who are leagues further ahead, but as far as my personal race goes, I feel that I’m winning. And I think if you look at it in segments, there have been parts that I have lost, but if you look at it as one game, I’m winning. So that’s my answer.

That’s a really good answer.

About Shawn

Shawn is a 28-year-old freelance graphic and web application designer in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. You can connect with Shawn on Twitter and his website.

We were nothing short of delighted when Rachael E.C. Acklin–you may know her as the Caffeinated Elf–expressed an interest in talking with us as part of our Freckle Focus Interview Series. Our intrepid Freckle reporter Marissa happily hung out with Rachael and talked about time, digitized friendships and the importance of stepping away from the computer (just once in a while).

Marissa: So how did you and Freckle meet and become friends?

Rachel Acklin: I decided to try it because when the name caught my attention. I mean, “Freckle,” that’s not a name that you intuitively put with time-tracking stuff, so I was intrigued right away. When I looked at it I thought, “Wow, this is really attractive.” I loved the way it looked, but I didn’t feel like I really needed it.

Later on, I realized I need something to track my time because my business was getting bigger and I didn’t want to lose track of things. I wanted to start using a system before my business got too crazy. So I returned to Freckle and I realized that it was not only free for the first thirty days, but that the $12 monthly subscription was really, really inexpensive. So I jumped on it.

Has Freckle helped you since you started using it?

Yes. The first benefit I’m getting is awareness of how much billable time I spend each day. When I first started using Freckle, I thought I was spending upwards of six—or sometimes even ten—hours each day actually working. I felt like I was tied to my desk all the time.

But after I started tracking my billable hours, I realized I was only working an average of two and a half to three hours a day on things I could actually charge money for. It completely blew me away.

Freckle helped me re-frame how I see my workday. I now realize that I don’t have to be tied to my computer for hours and hours to get a lot done. I know that once I hit that three-or-so hour mark, I’m not really getting anything done anymore, and I need to get up and walk around for a while, and then I can come back later and start working again.

Freckle gave me a much better idea of what I’m actually capable of doing in a day, so that I could stop expecting far too much out of myself.

What do you know now about your time that you didn’t know before Freckle?

What I didn’t know was how much time I was spending thinking about my work, and stressing out about how I was going to organize the work, and how I was going to plan to do the work. I was spending a lot of time doing that and it felt like work. I was so surprised when I found out that I was only spending a couple of hours every day on the actual work, but that I was spending so many more hours–at least twice as many hours every day–thinking about it and planning for it. I was spending so much more time planning for it than I needed to.

Being able to see on Freckle that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time actually doing the work… first, it was shocking. But then I realized it actually means that I don’t have to be at my computer for more than a couple of hours in a day and I can still get everything done! So it was shocking at first, but it was actually really freeing.

Were you been able to take some of the edge off of that stress once you were aware of it happening?

I was, but it’s cyclical. I do it to myself again when my work load gets heavier. I’m realizing that if I work through a weekend and everything feels okay, I start to think that I’m Superman and that I don’t need breaks.

In the moment, I tend to think, “Well, I just need to get this stuff done… working without taking a break will be fine.” So needing to give myself those breaks, that’s a lesson that I re-learn over and over and over again. It’s good for me to have reminders set up to help me remember that, and Freckle is a good reminder of what I’m actually getting done and what my actual capacity is.

What is your favorite part about Freckle?

I love that it’s pretty, and I love the Pulse view, because it quantifies all the stuff that I did. I’m always looking forward so much that I forget to recognize what I’ve already accomplished. The Pulse is a nice little reminder, but it’s also pretty. I feel like I did something good with my day when I look at it, that I created something enjoyable. It’s the pretty colors and nice use of fonts and plenty of white space–and I just really enjoy the feeling I have when I’m on the website. It makes me feel happier.

What’s a technique you’ve used that helps Freckle work for you?

I really like being able to tweak the increments it uses. Depending on what kind of client situation it is, my default billing might be every fifteen minutes, or I might bill in five minute increments or just one minute increments. So I really like that I can change that for each project without any fuss. I just make a couple of clicks, and it’s changed.

Change of topic: what is your favorite productivity or self-work tip, tool, book or blog out there that you dig currently?

The number one thing on my list is Charlie Gilkey’s planners. They really help me frame what I’m doing so that I’m not just waking up every day and scrambling to see what I can get done. I can make an actual plan–as big or as small a plan as I want. That’s definitely helped me. I’ve introduced the members of my team to the planners as well, and they’ve been really happy with them too. The fact that we can kind of all use them synchronously is pretty nice.

There’s the paper stuff that I really like, like 3×5 cards and Sharpie pens, and then there’s the digital stuff I like, like Backpack. It depends on where I am in the creative process and what I feel like I need to do. Sometimes I need something tangible in my hands to write it down and organize it, and sometimes it’s easier for me to just kind of dump it all out quickly by typing it.

Tell me a little bit about something exciting happening with your business.

I’m going to be forming an LLC with several other people! It’s not just going to be me anymore. Kyle Durand is helping me set this up. It’s exciting and it’s scary–it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done. The business is still going to be my baby, but now I’m going to have other people who are awesome, great people who want to be a support system for me.

They’re going to be helping me do my great work. I’ll be able to do my designing, and really focus on connecting with different people and building my relationships with people. I really feel like the sky’s the limit! I’ll have a team taking care of my accounting and helping me stay on track with my projects. This team is going to be giving me the freedom to do my business the way I want to do it. It’s pretty amazing.

It’s also humbling because I didn’t think I was really to this place yet, and I struggle with feeling like I don’t deserve a support system–like maybe I haven’t worked hard enough yet to get to this place. I didn’t realize that I have all these weird little stuck places around that! But this is such a huge, amazing, awesome, scary, wonderful thing happening. I’m really excited about it.

Who or what is inspiring you right now?

There are a lot of things that I’m pulling inspiration from. I’ve been working through Pam Slim’s book, Escape from Cubicle Nation. That one’s really good. I also have the Box of Crayons book, Do More Great Work, and I’ve started reading that too. That one is also really amazing.

I have my picture from the Lift Off retreat on my desk, and I look at that when I’m feeling really stressed out. It gives me a huge amount of inspiration.

The Liftoff Retreat Group

My friends give me a great deal of inspiration. I realize it’s easy to “digitize” our friendships and think, “Well, if I go away from my computer for a few days, I’ll just put my friends away for awhile and I’ll come back to them later.” But especially since meeting everybody at the Lift Off retreat, I understand more than ever how real everyone is. I have these real friendships. I have people who care about me and whom I can reach out to when I need help, who will say, “Hey, what can I do to help you?” or “Everything’s going to be fine.” That’s… well, that’s just really amazing to me.

What is a piece of advice that you feel like you most need to be given?

I think probably the thing that I tell a lot of other people is something that I should be told on an ongoing basis: that my list of stuff to do is going to be here when I get back, and not to deny myself a break. Don’t deny my family more time with me just because I’ve got some stuff that still needs to be done. It’s not going anywhere, and there will be time for it.

What lessons have you learned over the past year that have changed the way that you run your business or approach life?

I think the biggest lesson I learned is that I am already good at this. I can already do this. I didn’t have to wait to be good at it. Sure, there were things that I needed to learn to do better. But a lot of the things like marketing and figuring out systems—I knew how to do that. I didn’t have to wait for a guru to tell me, “Here’s the best way to plan your day” or “You should probably do it this way.” I learned I could trust myself.

It was one year ago when I told my husband it was fine for him to quit his job, because I could support us, and everything would be fine. That was really scary, but I knew I needed a chance to try. So on the one hand, I felt sure I could I do it, but on the other hand I thought, “Wow, I might screw this up really bad.” But I realize now that if I hadn’t taken that step, I wouldn’t have proven to myself that I can actually do whatever I need to do. I’d been told that I could do it, and I paid lip service to the fact that it was true, but now I know that it’s true because I’ve done it. Which is probably another thing that people should be reminding me of.

Well, knowing you’re capable of handling things is always easiest to remember at the moments when it’s not terrifying.

Exactly. It’s like that blog post that you wrote about the Cinderella myth. Sometimes when one thing’s going well, everything else is falling apart. That’s a lesson I wish that I had realized sooner–that just because one or two things aren’t working out doesn’t mean that I’m failing. It’s just a cycle. It just happens; it’s normal. It happens to everybody.

So what in your world, business or otherwise, is perfect right now?

My direction. What’s perfect is the direction that I’m going with my brand, and in my products. I’m really focused right now, and it’s going really well.

Rachael: our favorite poster girl for caffeine... and elves.

About Rachael

Rachael E.C. Acklin, known ’round the web as the Caffeinated Elf, is often caffeinated but only occasionally elflike (the moniker pays homage to her love for JRR Tolkien’s writing).

A kickass Thesis, Twitter background & web designer and a creative coach by trade, Rachael puts her creativity and love for writing to work for her clients. She also writes for herself, blogging at her own site since 2006 and participating in National Novel Writing Month every year. When she’s not rocking a shiny new website design for a client or entertaining the masses on Twitter, she’s enjoying time with her four kids and husband from the Caffeinated Elf Homebase in Flint, Michigan.

In addition to her website, you can also find Rachael on Twitter.

You should give Freckle a spin!

If your time is precious to you, then you’ll love Freckle, too. It’s free for 30 days, across all plan types — and if you charge $25/hr or more, Freckle will pay for itself (and then some!). Take the Freckle tour!

Hey there! Are you a Freckle customer? Has Freckle helped you? Would you like to be interviewed? Drop us a line!

Our inaugural Freckle Focus Interviewee is a lap steel player / guitarist / drummer / lover of the Freckle Pulse page, Christine Bougie. Christine was kind enough to take a break from recording her third album to have a chat with our intrepid Freckle reporter, Marissa.

Christine: Musician. Artist. Time-Tracker.

Marissa: First, tell me a little bit about you and what gets your attention each day.

Christine Bougie: Well, I’m a freelance musician, so I play backup music for many different artists as well as playing my own music under my own name. I play with at least ten different bands or other singer-songwriters on a regular basis. I also do some teaching, guitar lessons and recording sessions and performances. Most of my time is spent learning and working on other people’s music. And then I’m out, actually performing that music too.

How did you and Freckle meet and became friends?

I’m the type of person who likes to track my time. I’ve tried different ways of doing it just on paper, writing it down, or trying to schedule my time on my calendar.

When I saw Freckle, first of all, it looked beautiful, so I wanted to check it out because visually it was so nice. And it’s been the easiest thing to use!

The simplicity of the design and how it functions has changed the way that I do my work. As a self-employed musician, there’s a lot of time where I’m at home during the day until I have to go out and play at night. And that’s the time I need to juggle all of my different projects. I need to make sure I spend the right amount of time working on this person’s music and then working on my own music and then recording.

I track each person or band I play with as a separate project, and I track the time I spend learning tunes and playing along with that person’s music in that project. I also track personal time, like how long I spend cleaning my house or running at the gym, because I find it interesting to see. I don’t really use billable hours for my work, so my time-tracking is totally for my own personal use. But I just like seeing the visual of the Pulse page. I can see exactly where I’m spending my time and the patterns that happen during the week.

What’s something you’ve learned or discovered about your time?

I’ve discovered how much time I actually have available, and it’s given me a greater perspective and awareness of where I really want to spend that time. I’ve turned down work that I otherwise would’ve accepted if I hadn’t had Freckle to show me what time I have or don’t have available. I usually take on too much work and say yes to too many projects, so having Freckle has helped me be realistic about my time and capacity.

I had no idea where my time was going. Now I have a clear idea of how much time each kind of project takes. I’ve also learned what my best and most productive times of day are. So, for example, if I’m learning tunes for someone’s gig that’s coming up in a week, I know how much to allot to work on that and when the best times will be to do that work.

Shows and gigs used to just feel like big, looming deadlines, and I would procrastinate and cram all of the work in at the last minute. But now I just set up my project, budget the right number of hours for it, and watch that project’s graph fill up as I work on it.

It helps me prioritize too.

How does it help you prioritize your time?

The monthly pulse view shows me where my time goes. It’s motivating to see the time spent and progress made on my big important projects. And it’s de-motivating to see how much time I’ve spent doing things that I didn’t really want to do. It helps me determine what’s really valuable for me and what’s kind of a time suck.

Also, it’s like this idea that Jerry Seinfeld talked about—not breaking the chain. Someone asked him how he wrote jokes every day, and his advice was to set up a big calendar, and every time you write, put a big red “X” on the calendar. Seeing those Xs accumulate everyday will motivate you to keep it going, because you don’t want to break that chain. Freckle helps me do the same thing. Because the different projects are color coded, I can see each project’s color on the screen each day I’ve worked on it, and that’s motivating to keep it going.

So what’s been your favorite part of Freckle?

The pulse is my everything. In fact, it’s the homepage on my computer!

I love the layout and how easy is it to use, that there’s no drop menu of selecting different times or anything. You just kind of write. If you spend a hour, you press “1″ and if you spend 15 minutes on something, you press “15″ and it’s smart enough to know you mean 15 minutes and not 15 hours. That kind of stuff. It’s just very intuitive. Someone asked me, “You track so much stuff—how do you find the time to enter it all in?” And I just said, “It only takes one second.” I just finish working on something and then type in three little boxes and that’s it.

Christine's Pulse for March!

Also, the timer… That feature only got added a few months ago, and now I always use it. I can’t even imagine not using it. I love that I can just click on a project and it times itself and then gets entered into the system—I don’t have any extra steps of timing something and then writing it down myself. I just press “enter,” and the time is added.

How would you describe your relationship with time?

I kind of see time as a feeling rather than something rigid or static. And to be tracking things like this through Freckle, because it’s visual, it’s given me a different way to view what time really is. I’m not thinking about the minutes or the hours as much as how much energy I put into things I want to do.

What’s something you really, really love about the people that you work with?

What I love about the people I work with is that everyone is doing what they love all day long. There isn’t really a separation between work and play because we’re all musicians. Some of my friends think I’m crazy because I’m so organized and I do stuff like time tracking. But I like to have a little bit of structure because so much of what I do is so free and open. It’s creating and playing and having fun, which is great. But to really see progress, I like to create structure. Most people I work with are go with the flow more than I do I guess, and I like that. I need that too, because it’s a balance between my structure and the creativity and the play.

And what’s something coming up on the horizon that’s really exciting for you?

Well, I’m working on a new album! I have two previous albums I’ve recorded and I’m just about to start recording my next one this month. So that’s really exciting and that’s a project I’m tracking through Freckle too. I’m focusing on trying to raise some money to get that happening.

Will this be of your material or is this for a group that you’re working with?

It’s my own album of instrumental music, and I plan to have it out in October. I mean, I’m recording with other people all the time and playing on other peoples records and touring with other people too, but this album will be my own music.

As we’re wrapping up here, is there anything else you wanted to say that I didn’t ask you about?

I don’t know of any other musicians who are using Freckle. But I think that it would be good for more artists to use and to think about where their time goes. I would just say that I hope that I could influence some artists to check it out and give it a try.

Christine in her element, playing the lap steel

About Christine

Christine Bougie is a lap steel player, guitarist, and occasionally a drummer, based in Toronto, Canada.

In addition to playing on over 30 recordings, she released two albums of original instrumental music: Hammy’s Secret Life (2007) and This Is Awesome (2008). She’s currently working on a third album, titled Aloha Supreme, to be released in 2010. In the meantime, she continues to perform with artists including Amy Millan, Julie Fader, Roxanne Potvin, Sylvia Tyson, John Southworth, Jenny Whiteley, and many more.

You can catch up with Christine at her website, ChristineBougie.com, and on Twitter.

You should give Freckle a spin!

If your time is precious to you, then you’ll love Freckle, too. It’s free for 30 days, across all plan types — and if you charge $25/hr or more, Freckle will pay for itself (and then some!). Take the Freckle tour!

Hey there! Are you a Freckle customer? Has Freckle helped you? Would you like to be interviewed? Drop us a line!