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The WordPress VIP Workshop
I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to join some of the most advanced and influential WordPress community this week. The 2012 WordPress VIP workshop in Napa was a really interesting and inspiring event. I think it was well worth the money. I had been really wondering what to expect. I had thought that we might guide the agenda through some sort of collaborative process. Maybe even setting it when we arrived. I was surprised to learn upon my arrival that the schedule was in fact a fixed agenda. The Scene The receptionist asked us if we’d like some wine while we signed in before shuttling us to our room in one of the shinny new cars provided by their sponsor, Audi. I think Andy Skelton said it best when he pointed out that The Carneros Inn, where we were …
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10 minute preview of Freelance 101
I will be speaking at How Design’s Creative Freelancer Conference in June 2012. A few weeks ago I gave a 10 minute interview touching on the key topics I plan to cover during my talk. Check out the interview at Creative Freelancer Blog. Talk: Planning for the First Year of Freelance I started freelancing full time out of necessity during the dot bomb in 2001. There were no blogs on freelancing, no conferences, but I was deeply blessed to find a mentor who helped me avoid the worst mistakes my first year. While you shouldn’t get paralysis by analysis (just get started), certain key tips often make the difference between navigating a successful freelance career and a lot of sleepless nights. Whether you are dreaming about freelancing or in the thick of bootstrapping, be practical and be intentional about running …
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What Should I Charge?
The most common question I get when speaking to new, and even experienced, freelancers is “What should I charge?” How should I set my rate? Hourly or Fixed? How much will I make this year? I have a formula I use to raise or lower my rate, as well as some key strategies you can use to set up a good game plan. The key is to be intentional and strategic. This talk was given at International Freelancers Day 2011.
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Oops, Where Is That 60k?
“Your income is directionally proportional to the problems you solve.” Want to make more money? Solve bigger problems. It took me 5 years to realize that applies to my business even more than to the problems I solve for my customers. What are the biggest problems in your business? Are you out of time? Team unreliable? Can’t seem close the right deals? For over 5 years straight our income doubled. I can tie each of those growth spurts to internal operational decisions. Working on our business as well as our products & services has proved the most profitable expenditure of time and resources we have made. We improved and systematized project management. We standardized our approach to certain projects. We set actual goals. We identified and propagated culture intentionally. Each of these paid off handsomely. Work on Your Business: Tracking …
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A Ramble on Responsive Design
Responsive Design is the latest mantra to gain traction in the web community. Ethan Marcotte threw down the gauntlet and challenged the web design community to seriously reconsider how we think about design and code. Responsive Design is an approach that encourages us to build websites that respond to a user’s behavior and environment – i.e. a single code base that adapts to multiple devices. With a peck of flexible grids, a dash of media quieres, and 1/2 a cup of incredibly smart javascript, you could bake a single website that tastes yummy in people’s browsers, tablets, phones, TVs and whatever other crazy device hits next. Hallelujah – device ubiquity problem solved. Kind of. I’ve got nothing against Responsive Design. In fact, I think it’s great. This isn’t a critique of responsive design inasmuch as it’s a critique of how …
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Working Remotely With a New Baby
Our team is popping babies out left and right. If you join us, be careful as odds are, you (or your spouse) is about to get pregnant. I’ve been wondering how I could help Peter, Reid, Brandon & Lucas prepare for something they have tried to imagine but can’t know until they are in the thick of it. Having a child is challenging for anyone, but if you are also trying to run a company from home, its a double header. There were a few simple pieces of advice that truly helped me. Some were environmental and other behavioral. So I got the team together and here are the thoughts we wanted to share. From Shane: You need your own space. This is simply non-negotiable. First of all, babies are loud. They hoot and holler and cry and shriek and …
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Retreat!
I just returned home from the latest Modern Tribe retreat. Four times a year, the Tribe brain trust takes 4 days to dedicate to the business. As hard working folks, it’s easy to become fully focused and dedicated on our clients. We want to provide excellent service. We want to provide the best designs, and the cleanest code. As a consequence of this focus, it’s easy forget that we are also business owners. As we encourage our clients to examine their internal processes, stay in touch with their users needs, polish and craft their marketing messages, and enjoy themselves a little along the way, our own process, marketing and growth is so often neglected. What’s a business retreat look like? We set an agenda. This usually takes a solid hour itself. We break things up by “needs a computer,” “fun …
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On Setting Goals and Running
I’m a chubby dude. I’m not rotund by any means, but I’m a little more ‘Jolly Old St. Nick’ than I am ‘teen werewolf heartthrob.’ With my first kid on the way, I’ve decided to get in shape. From what I’ve heard, having a kid can really whipe you out, so it’s best I get this underway before he comes. I’ve been here before. I actually enjoy a lot of physical activities, so having spurts of fitness coupled with periods of healthy eating isn’t unheard of for me. It’s always been pretty half assed though. The thing of it is, I see this same half assed approach in other people and it drives me bonkers. “I wanna launch a product, but…” “I wanna be a ballarina, but…” or “I wanna freelance full time, but…” It’s the dabbling that’s a problem. …
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Becoming a Modern Tribe
Hi. I’m Shane. 10 years ago, I started a company of 1. It was a healthy mixture of dream and desperation. With a lot of love from some great people, and some sweat, it worked out. I solved some cool problems and surfed when most of my friends worked. Freelancing let me make my living from home and coffee shops. I supported myself and eventually a family. What started as a backup plan became a career. It was fun. While I loved being in business for myself, after 5 years, I found myself wishing I didn’t have to be in business all by myself. I wanted to collaborate with other awesome people. Across town, Peter meandered a similar path. Eventually (with a little prodding) Peter quit his job at a tech company in the valley and started freelancing full-time. We …
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If You Can Be One Thing, Be Dependable
Early in my career as a business owner, I thought being clever was more important than being on time. In retrospect, I probably would have never renewed a contract with my 20-year-old self. Flash forward and today my partners and I run a service business that thrives for a simple reason: we consistently deliver, time after time. As one of our longest clients recently told me, “I am buying peace of mind. I could give it to someone cheaper, and then either manage it myself or have to worry they might fail. I can trust you guys to take care of it and I will go focus on what matters most to my business unit.” In short, we’re successful, because we are dependable. Finding a vendor, employee or partner who will consistently play their part is one of the great …
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