Author: Matthew

  • Quote of the Week: Sherlock Holmes

    “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable.” –Sherlock Holmes, The Cardboard Box

  • Quote of the Week: John Locke

    “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” —John Locke

  • Excluding iPads from the mobile-fu Rails plugin

    mobile-fu is a handy little Rails plugin that automatically detects when mobile devices are accessing your web application and adjusts the request format accordingly. For example:

    Mime::Type.register_alias "text/html", :mobile

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  has_mobile_fu

  def index
    if is_mobile_device?
      render :text => "You're using a mobile device!"
    else
      render :text => "You're not using a mobile device."
    end
  end
end

    mobile-fu even loads any mobile stylesheets you’ve created, including device-specific stylesheets for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. There is also a way to set the mobile flag manually. This comes in handy when you want to test your mobile layouts without actually picking up a device.

    I did find one problem, though: by default, mobile-fu sets the mobile request format for iPads. This probably isn’t the desired behavior for most sites. Mobile Safari does an acceptable job of rendering without the need for specific enhancements on the server side.

    I want my HTML pages to continue rendering on the iPad the same way they do in a desktop browser (at least until I have time to customize a layout specifically for the iPad).

    It’s easy enough to get mobile-fu to do the right thing, though. Simply override the #set_mobile_format method thusly:

    class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  has_mobile_fu
  
  # Continue rendering HTML for the iPad (no mobile views yet)
  def set_mobile_format
    is_device?("ipad") ? request.format = :html : super
  end
end

    I also recommend adding the following to your CSS:

    -webkit-appearance: none;

    This prevents the iPad from rendering form controls natively. Native controls tend to break the layout of pages designed for desktop browsers. I’ve found it best to reserve native controls for when I actually build a dedicated iPad-only layout for the site.

  • Quote of the Week: C.S. Lewis

    “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” —C.S. Lewis

  • Indieconf 2012: Build an Army of Products

    The intriguing title of Brennan Dunn’s talk was what convinced me to attend. I’ve never actually heard Brennan present before but I enjoy a good product talk. His presentation met and exceeded my expectations. It was well worth attending.

    I share the dream of many freelancers to one day stop trading time for money, ditch my consulting work, and focus 100% of my time on products that I’m passionate about. I’m not there yet, but for the past 5 years I’ve been moving in that direction with Teascript and a few topical blogs. I was looking forward to hearing a fellow freelancer share his story of going down this path.

    A year ago, Brennan had zero dollars in product income. He was consulting full time and “didn’t like it.” Not the work itself so much as the “hamster wheel.” He wanted off and decided to make it happen. A year later he is running a successful blog, selling an e-book, running a sustainable subscription-based SaaS application called Planscope, and producing a podcast.

    Over the course of the talk he explained (in as much detail as time allowed) the specifics of how he built up these products which have generated in the area of $35k for him in October alone. After learning this, I wanted to hear exactly how he accomplished such a feat. Fortunately, Brennan is generous with his information and explained as much as he could.

    Making the switch

    Ultimately, we control our own schedules. Nobody else has that privilege. The first step towards building successful products is changing our habits. It’s certainly possible to “moonlight” our way into a product business, but speaking from personal experience it’s much more difficult. There will always be tantalizingly billable work just waiting there for us to dive into.

    Speaking for myself, I’ve found it beneficial to ease into a product by gradually reducing the immediately billable work on my plate and replacing it with hours dedicated to my ideas. But as I said, this is a challenging approach (but less risky than other options).

    We’ve all heard these common excuses as to why we can’t switch our focus to products:

    • But… freelancing pays the bills!
    • But… products are hard!
    • But… my product is probably going to fail!
    • But… I don’t know how to sell!

    The truth is that unless we can get over these excuses, put ourselves out there, and execute on an idea… we’ll never know what could have been. Sure, failure will happen. Sure, it will be challenging. But is the dream worth the trouble? For me, it is.

    Don’t sell to consumers

    Brennan doesn’t believe in selling to consumers. “Only sell to businesses. Consumers don’t understand value.” He’s right. The products he has created target freelancers and consultants who are admittedly in a fuzzy area between consumer and business, but more often than not have a business mindset. The key part of this mindset that Brennan leverages is the willingness of a freelancer to pay a healthy price for a product that will ultimately bring a much greater return on investment.

    Another leverage point is the production of complimentary products that can be cross-sold. Once someone signs up for one of his newsletters, for example, he can eventually cross-sell them on his e-book. Once they’ve purchased the e-book, he can suggest they check out his SaaS application. This is a classic sales funnel, but it works. Acquiring new customers is hard and expensive. Selling to existing customers is easy and a big win.

    Brennan emphasized that his selling is low touch. In other words, he doesn’t do cold calling, send out massive spam campaigns, or hand out brochures on the street. His focus is on establishing a convincing marketing site that draws potential customers and turns them into qualified leads by giving them useful content. When this kind of marketing can be automated, our products can be sold with very little intervention. No more trading time for money.

    How to get started

    Pick something low risk. Start small. We shouldn’t have to ask friends or family for startup money. Bootstrapping a product from the ground up ensures the worst thing we’ll lose if the product fails is a few dozen hours of our time.

    Here are some questions you should be asking yourself:

    • What can you build that will sell?
    • What do people ask you about?
    • What does your network of people complain about?
    • Are you knowledgeable about any of this?
    • Can you research your way into a product?

    Brennan touched on pricing and suggested the following ranges:

    • books: $10 – $50
    • self-serve SaaS: $9 – $99
    • screencasts: $9 – $29

    Tiered pricing is also an option. The App Design Handbook was his example of a well-built web site offering various tiers of pricing for various packages (book, videos, an Xcode project, etc).

    Marketing strategies

    Establishing a customer funnel is crucial. Start by sending out a free weekly newsletter with useful content for your target market. This builds trust in your brand and helps turn potential customers into qualified leads who are familiar with your products. Use drip email campaigns to avoid having to come up with fresh content every week (something that could quickly become tiresome). Determine the LTV (Lifetime Total Value) of each of your customers so you know how much to spend on advertising.

    Give things away for free. Freebies present an extremely low barrier to entry and overcome trust issues because customers see that you know your stuff and are willing to give some of it away. Track everything. Data is king and gut assumptions can be costly. Determine CPC (Cost-per-Click), conversion rates, ROI, and so on. Split (A/B) test your landing pages, marketing emails, etc.

    Get people into your funnel by telling them how your product will solve their needs. Ultimately, nobody cares about your product. Everyone wants to know, “What’s in it for me?”

    Blog about your product, your career as a freelancer, your interests, your hobbies, etc. Reference your products within your blog posts. Include numbers and statistics in your posts. Numbers stand out and draw attention, building credibility for your brand.

    Specific technologies

    Brennan uses MailChimp and AWeber for drip email campaigns. He uses e-junkie to sell his books. In general, he leverages existing services to host his content instead of building things from scratch. This enables him to focus on creating top-notch content instead of fiddling with external concerns.

    He uses the following content pattern for his landing pages:

    pain => fix => offer => testimonials => overcoming objections => call-to-action

    By the end of Brennan’s presentation, my head was literally swimming with new ideas and things I wanted to try. Since Brennan was someone who had successfully jumped the chasm from freelancer to product owner, it was motivating to hear him explain how he got there. It convinced me more than ever that as freelancers, we are in a great position. We have the opportunity to productize our expertise and knowledge and transform our work in a fundamental way. Let’s not waste the opportunity.

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012

  • Pomodoro Desktop for Mac review

  • Quote of the Week: Groucho Marx

    “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” –Groucho Marx

  • Indieconf 2012: Unlimited Supply of Prospects

    The second to the last talk on Saturday was given by Bill Davis of Team Nimbus. He outlined one of the seven sales components his team recommends: a pipeline that gives you an “unlimited supply of prospects.” (Now I want to know what the other six are.)

    Bill opened with an analogy from “Little House in the Big Woods” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the book, the father spends all year restocking the woodpile next to his family’s house. He draws from the large woodpile and makes a smaller woodpile inside the house. He pulls wood off this smaller pile to feed the fire. He always has a larger pile to go to if he starts running low on wood. This way, he is able to keep his family warm through the winter.

    The point of the analogy is this: don’t exhaust your woodpile. Your woodpile is your cache of potential clients. As freelancers we generally spend most of our time throwing wood on the fire (doing work for current clients) when we should be spending most of our time restocking the woodpile. Soon, the woodpile is exhausted and we have no idea how to replenish it.

    “You cannot sell your way into small business growth.” — Bill Davis

    As freelancers, the best way to grow our business is to increase our exposure to new client opportunities. But what is the typical way we do this? We might talk to potential clients at a conference, do some cold calling, or post on a job site. All of these are things salespeople do. Bill explained that most freelancers can’t or won’t spend the time necessary to learn how to become an excellent salesperson. Therefore, why do most of us buy into a client acquisition model that almost exclusively depends on us being excellent salespeople?

    Bill’s sales pipeline has six buckets:

    • Outdoor Woodpile – qualified prospects who have a certain business need (e.g. pediatricians in Raleigh)
    • Indoor Woodpile – prospects to whom you have communicated your ability to solve their business need
    • On the Fire – prospects who have demonstrated an interest in having you solve their business need
    • Client – prospects who have decided they want you to solve their business need
    • Advocate – client who has referred you to someone else
    • Raving Fan – client who has benefitted from your business growth

    Each bucket in the pipeline will have varying numbers of prospects. The goal is to continue stocking the Outdoor Woodpile with prospects, while also ensuring that existing prospects continue moving through the pipeline at an acceptable rate. Plenty of prospects on the Outdoor Woodpile will never make it to the Indoor Woodpile. In the same way, many clients on the Indoor Woodpile will never make it to the Fire. But that’s okay. Having every last prospect move completely through the pipeline is not necessary for it to be successful.

    What made sense to me about Bill’s approach is that it helps me organize my prospects and determine where to exert effort. Instead of being tempted to focus in a single area, it helps balance my sales efforts and adapt to the transient nature of lead generation. As long as my Outdoor Woodpile is stocked, I can work prospects through the pipeline. It’s a system that has rules. As a software developer, that appeals to me.

    For example, Teascript is a SaaS application I built in 2007. I’ve been enhancing and improving it since then and it’s generating a significant amount of monthly income for me, but it hasn’t really taken off the way I’d prefer. Learning about Bill’s system made me realize that my almost exclusive focus on creating new features has been incorrect.

    Teascript’s core offering is to enable homeschoolers to easily create professional high school transcripts for their students. I’ve proven that users will pay for that core offering. My implementation is solid. But I need to build my pipeline. I need to be connecting with prospects by providing free information on how to build a transcript (blog posts, e-books, maybe even a workshop). Then I can sell my core offering to them from a position of strength, after having built that relationship.

    It’s going to take time and practice to fully implement the sales pipeline Bill gave me. But it’s going to be worth it. The amazing thing about the pipeline is that you can recycle “logs” (prospects). If a prospect has become a client by responding to your pitch but then declines to move further, place them back on the Outdoor Woodpile and start over again.

    When asked what to do if a market for a given product or service is already saturated, Bill responded that “if most businesses serve their clients the way most businesses do, there will always be an opening for you.” I think he’s absolutely correct. With a few exceptions, there are always opportunities to do something better, faster, or cheaper than the next guy. If anything, simply providing an amazing customer support experience has a tendency to turn Outdoor Woodpile logs into Raving Fans almost overnight.

    Only one more Indieconf talk to recap, and boy is it a doozy: “Build an Army of Products” by Brennan Dunn. If you’ve ever wanted to stop trading time for money, don’t miss Monday’s post.

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012

  • Indieconf 2012: Shaping Your Solopreneurship to Your Life

    If I had half as much energy as Katie Benedetto I’d be set for life. Katie clearly enjoys what she does and is passionate about sharing her experiences. [slides]

    She opened with a simple question: “What’s one way your work would better suit you?” It’s important to clarify what we want out of our freelancing work, decide how to get there, write it down, and set a deadline to achieve the goals we’ve established.

    If our freelancing work is controlling our life, we’ve got it backwards. Why did we choose to become freelancers to begin with? It was probably because we wanted to be our own boss, set our own schedule, and in general enjoy more freedom in life. But if we’re not enjoying that freedom right now, we’re the only ones who can change that.

    Katie had plenty of good resources to recommend:

    The term Katie uses for designing our own freelance career is “lifestyle design.” She explained how she has been designing her own freelance ventures to maximize her happiness and achieve specific goals. Critter.co is her latest example. It’s an app she’s building through her web development company, Yellow Rubber Ball. The app is designed to auto coach users through various goals they set for themselves. Sign up on the web site to be notified when it’s ready.

    Katie encouraged us to use our position as freelancers to do things other people just can’t do. For example, we have the freedom to take our work with us when we travel. With that kind of freedom, we should be visiting new places all the time! (Since I only need my laptop to work, I went on a working trip to Amelia Island a few weeks ago. It was a wonderful experience and I was able to stay “in the black” financially despite the expense of the trip.)

    As freelancers, we also have the option to choose to be authentic in our business relationships. Since we’re not relying on a single source of income, we don’t have to make uncomfortable compromises to keep getting paid. If a client isn’t working out, we can let them go and find another that does.

    Katie closed by sharing that in her experience, potential clients don’t necessarily want to work with a giant corporation to begin with. This is where we as freelancers can let the personal touch we offer be the benefit that clinches the sale. But we can’t employ a personal touch if we’re still stuck in the mindset of a corporate job.

    Tomorrow we reach the penultimate entry in my Indieconf recap. We’ll learn about a powerful method for designing our sales pipeline to provide an “Unlimited Supply of Prospects.” Catch you then!

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012

  • Indieconf 2012: Seven Lessons in Personal Marketing

    After a brief interruption so I could post my overdue RubyConf 2012 recap, we return to Indieconf at the McKimmon Center to learn “Seven Lessons in Personal Marketing.” [slides]

    Alan Stevens was a dynamic speaker who kept the audience’s attention throughout his presentation. He explained that to do this, he treated the presentation as a conversation. As soon as he entered the room, he began talking with someone in the audience. He then transitioned into his presentation without missing a beat. By doing this, he dramatically reduced the pre-talk jitters he usually gets before he speaks in public. Clever, practical, and something we should all try.

    Alan’s talk focused on “The Seduction Community,” something I wasn’t previously familiar with. Apparently, it’s a group of people (I’m guessing mostly guys?) that analyze the social forces involved in interpersonal relationships and seek to “hack” their behavior so they can pick up women. Alan was introduced to this concept by Merlin Mann.

    “How did this topic possibly make the cut?” Hang with me, it all makes sense by the end.

    Some of the “pickup artists” Alan mentioned are:

    Many of them have blogs where they regularly post advice on social hacking, but most of them just run sites about how to get more dates or how to make yourself more attractive to women. I can’t imagine the damage I’m doing to my SEO by linking to them, but I digress…

    “All sales is nothing more than making friends.” –Shane Pearlman

    With that quote we come to the main point of Alan’s talk: you can hack your social interaction to make more friends and, as a direct result, sell more stuff. Here are his Seven Lessons summarized:

    1. it’s OK to talk to strangers
      • nature has not designed you for the world in which you now live
      • beware of your lizard brain (the limbic system)
      • Karl Rohnke’s CSP model (comfort zone, stretch zone, panic zone)
      • approach anxiety (it never goes away, so don’t try to make it go away)
      • “Confidence is not the goal. Competence is.”
    2. lean back
      • panhandler’s “lean in” emotionally and physically
      • don’t be a panhandler
      • physically lean back, “hey, it’s cool”
      • there’s nothing to lose here
      • everyone has a shield
      • “Your primary goal must be your own enjoyment.” (not that you need anything or have a goal in mind)
    3. prepare your mental frame
      • examples: 13 year olds, Bette Davis, kid sister, underwear, the host
      • mental attitude that helps you give off the right signals
      • are you chasing butterflies or are you being a light that draws what you want to you?
      • be lighthearted (everyone doesn’t have to like you)
    4. provide value
      • give people insight into themselves
      • enter a set at the same or slightly higher energy as the people in the group
      • this can help make other people more comfortable
      • reach people at an emotional level
      • seek rapport, not approval (understand each other’s feelings)
    5. talk to groups
      • talking is the only means you have of conveying your personality
      • speak slowly, with pauses and enthusiasm
      • Toastmasters
    6. get warmed up
      • loud music, jumping up and down
      • get out of your shell BEFORE you’re in a given situation
      • practice your mingling on the socially challenged
      • get into a talkative mood and practice talking to everyone
    7. have a plan
      • two essential components: Avatar and Story
      • be yourself, but be your best self
      • Avatar: the image you present, should be slightly different than the norm but not weird
      • Story topics: did something fun, did something you weren’t supposed to do, took charge of a situation, etc.

    Something else Alan said really struck me: “Networking is doing favors for other people.” This isn’t about taking advantage of people, hypnotizing them into buying your crappy stuff, or being friendly just so you can get something in return. This is about genuinely caring for other people and trying to figure out what you can give them that will cause them to give you something in return.

    It’s about “putting your best foot forward” and eliminating the inhibitions and barriers that are preventing you from being an effective salesperson. Because as freelancers, we have to be able to sell our services effectively or we won’t last long.

    I’ll close with a final book recommendation from Alan: “The Art of Mingling” by Jeanne Martinet. This one looks really good. I’ve added it to my Christmas list. Santa take note.

    Tomorrow I’ll recap Katie Benedetto’s talk titled “Shaping Your Solopreneurship to Your Life.”

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012