Finding the right career path doesn’t happen over night. It’s a journey that involves trying on many different hats until you find the right fit. For Gavin Preece, owner of Orangedrop, this meant trying his hand in acting, music, and even nursing before realizing his true passion- coding and programming. He then turned his love for coding and programming into a career and started his own design agency. Gavin built a team that helps clients design websites, business applications, brochures, business cards, and other design collateral to enforce their brand. After finding the right job and team members, Gavin had a new challenge of finding the right billing app for his small business. We interviewed Gavin to learn more about his journey starting a business, and how he found Billings Pro along the way.
What I Love About My Job
Gavin: For me, it’s the opportunity to be creative that I love. I’ve been creative ever since I was young. I have experience acting, singing, dancing, and playing guitar. I always had a creative side but felt I was borderline autistic. Code and programming appealed to me and I started coding when I was around 7 years old. I was on TV for quite some time and on a Welsch channel and worked for a company called HTV. I was a child actor until I was 18 when I decided to change career paths. I got into nursing for a short period. Throughout my career, computers dominated my life. It was a natural progression that I eventually fell into this line of work. I worked as a Word Press developer for a large PR and media agency in the UK and then about 6 years ago I opened up OrangeDrop to start putting my own name on my work.
Best Part of Owning My Own Business
Gavin: I like meeting and helping clients more than anything else. The best satisfaction is when you take someone that doesn’t have a strong identity and you turn it around and deliver something they are really proud of. When the client is happy and sees a good return on investment, that’s the greatest satisfaction I can get.
Challenges of Starting a Business
Gavin: The biggest challenge when I started my business was around financial management. There is a tendency in graphic design and development work to undervalue what you do. The biggest challenge I faced was managing and assigning a value to what I could do for people. I found it difficult in that I had to apply a value to what I love doing. What started out as a hobby became a career and you have to get paid for what you do.
Why I Started Looking for a Solution like Billings Pro
Gavin: I used Sage for many years and the biggest problem was that I work across multiple devices so I needed all my work in the cloud. Sync was the biggest gap that there was in terms of any other apps I was using. Having the ability to sync everything no matter what device I picked up was important. If I lose all 5 of my Macs, I need to be able to pick up my work from my laptop. I was doing some research on a site that recommends apps for freelancers called AppStorm and saw Billings Pro.
What I love about Billings Pro
Gavin: I really like the fact that Billings Pro syncs across all devices. It makes it easier for managing projects. Billings Pro is customizable so building invoices is no longer a headache or time consuming. With Billings Pro I can customize my invoices quickly and produce something professional. A lot of apps come with standard templates but you’re limited in what you can do to customize. With Billings Pro I can generate something professional in relatively little time.
My Experience with Marketcircle Support
Gavin: I had a problem when I upgraded to Yosemite. I contacted Marketcircle support and they were absolutely outstanding. They got back to me within minutes of creating the support ticket. I didn’t have to wait around and I was really happy with the support they gave.
Who Do I Recommend Billings Pro to?
Gavin: I most definitely recommend Billings Pro to freelancers and agencies. Its user interface is really slick and makes it easy to manage your client payments. Billings Pro has reoccurring bills so I can see when hosting for clients is due. I like that Billings Pro offers approvals, reports, and makes it easy to attach slips for projects so I can track my work.
