Did you know I occasionally write for the VerticalResponse blog? I do it more frequently there than I do here, and even then it’s not that frequent. But the other bloggers there are of awesomely high caliber so, really, you should be reading them.
I wrote this for you there: Marketing Resources for Startups – Go From Zero to Traction in 90 Days. You’re welcome.
There used to be a movie review show on the Disney Channel by kids for kids. I don’t recall the name, and I don’t even remember watching it that often, but one review has stood out in my mind all these years, as clear as if I had watched it yesterday.
The movie they were reviewing was called “Amazing Grace and Chuck“. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s OK – based on the review the kids gave it, it was not memorable. It was about a young boy (Chuck) who is befriended by a professional basketball player (Amazing Grace). Together, they decide to stop nuclear proliferation. Very late-1980s socially conscious stuff.
After panning it for being too simplistic and too saccharine in its message, they showed a clip where Chuck was talking to an adult about alarming speech. The adult gives Chuck the old chestnut, “You can’t yell out ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Chuck retorts, “But, sir, what if there actually is a fire?”
The show then cuts back to one of the kid reviewers who, in a mocking voice, repeats the line: “But, sir, what if there actually is a fire?” This is the moment that has stuck out so clearly in my mind for so many years, and I think I’ve finally figured out why. That was my first exposure to snark. I didn’t like it. I still don’t.
I attended last night’s IdeaMensch event at Rally Pad, which turned out to be an incredibly inspiring and enlightening event. Among the speakers were Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy, who came off as cocky, no nonsense and totally kick-ass, and Philip Rosedale who, I was surprised to find, was humble, intensely nerdy and – not as surprising – also totally kick-ass.
Philip Rosedale. Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Rosedale is the guy behind former media darling Second Life, where folks engage in a free, open-ended online world, building it as they go along. It predates the current media darling MineCraft by about a decade, but seems to have lost favor with the geek community. As Rosedale pointed out in last night’s speech, Second Life grew to a community of about 1 million active users, then flattened growth. In startup land, flat growth means death. Nevermind the fact that those 1 million users still produce about $700 million in annual revenue, which Rosedale says is more than enough to keep the servers spinning, the developers fixing bugs and adding functionality and the company running. Continue reading
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this here. In April, I started a class offered by the Concord Small Business Development Center, funded by the federal Small Business Association, called New Venture Training. The goal of the course is to work with small business owners and those comitted to going into business for themselves to develop a complete business plan. Sure, you can read a book or buy some software, but the folks running the NVT course walk you through every aspect of your plan’s – and, therefore, your business’ – development.
I learned how to perform actual market research by using the demographics information found at my local library. I learned how to come up with a solid financial plan and figure out where the money will come from and how to keep it. More than anything, though, I gained a vital pin-point focus on my goals and what I want to accomplish with my business. I was sort of all over the board on what I wanted to offer to my clients when I started the class 12 weeks ago. Now I can clearly describe to you what it is TechKnowMe does. (See the end of this post…)
A big, big thanks to the other folks in my class, both those who stuck it out through the end as well as those who had to drop out in the middle as their own businesses began to take off to the point where they couldn’t spare the time. By holding open discussions where everyone shared their experiences, opinions and views, everyone gained a great deal.
And a big special thank you to our instructor Jeff Hall. In addition to being a fantastic, highly trained and motivated teacher as well as a successful businessman in his own right, Jeff’s incredible thoughtfulness and energetic support provided just the right amount of encouragement to make us all believe in our ideas. He gently guided us down paths that led every person in our class to have confidence in their idea and create for themselves a clear path toward success. There’s this idea called the Pygmalion Effect I learned about recently where if you use words of encouragement and unwavering fatih in someone that they will overcome their weaknesses and, because they don’t want to let you down, will often either consciously or subconsciously work to rise to the challenge and succeed. I’m not sure if Jeff is actively applying this concept to us or whether he’s just a genuinely encouraging guy, but I do know that his words of encouragement and belief in me have become a serious driving force behind my desire to succeed in my business. In a year, I want to go visit Jeff and be able to tell him how much TechKnowMe has grown and become one of his success stories.
If you live in Contra Costa County and are seriously committed to starting your own business or already run a business and want to make it run even better, you need to sign up for New Venture Training. I can’t recommend it enough.
TechKnowMe provides web site consulting, design and development services for small businesses in Contra Costa County. Founder Rob Zazueta has served as a freelance web developer in addition to his full time web development jobs for many years, and has continually heard the same complaints from all of his clients. They found someone to build their web site, paid them quite a bit of money and, more often than not, the person developing the web site either didn’t deliver what the customer expected or simply disappeared after it was complete. When the customer goes back to the developer months later to expand or fix the site, the developer is nowhere to be found.
TechKnowMe knows that your website is an integral part of your business’s success and is comitted to ensuring it continues to meet your business goals and grow and expand as your business grows and expands. We work closely with you to make sure your site continually meets your expectations and provide detailed analysis of how successful your online efforts are in meeting your goals. We don’t burden you with technical details or confound you with geek jargon. Instead, we show you exactly how your online efforts are performing so that you know what’s working, what isn’t and find new ways to market and expand your business that you may not have considered. We give you the freedom to focus on your number one priority – building your business.
If you have a website that isn’t delivering the results you want or need to develop a new online strategy and want to start off right, give TechKnowMe a call at (925) 246-5449. TechKnowMe is Your Web Team.
Building on the previous post, one of the issues I’m facing right now is the enormous amount of work I have to accomplish, not all of it paid. In addition to addressing my client work, I also need to focus on building the business and finding new clients. That means marketing, networking, accounting, etc. It turns out I have a bit of a knack for these things. I love marketing and networking with people, I love meeting with clients and strategizing about their websites. And, yes, I do still enjoy occasionally implementing the work I plan for, though that’s lower on my “enjoy” list than it used to be.
The bigger issue right now for me, and the connecting thread in my last three posts, is that there’s far too much work for one guy to do at the moment. The answer, of course, is to find help, and I;ve begun doing that. However, there are a few challenges there as well. Specifically, how to find solid folks who meet my standards who are also affordable for me to still make a profit on the work performed. I’ve received a number of offers from offshore companies, but I’ve managed offshore relationships in the past and I find them to often be more trouble than they’re worth. I’d much rather tap talent local to me, not only in the USA but specifically in Contra Costa County. Even with ubiquitous telecommunications technology, I still like to sit across from a table and look someone in the eye before I trust them with something as vital to me as my clients’ work.
Of course, finding and vetting these folks takes time, which is already an exhausted resource. Worse, it’s unpaid time. In the long term, that time is really an investment for, when I find a groupd of folks I can work with, I’ll be able to take on a lot more work and actually build the business. In these early days, though, when cashflow is everything, it kills me to have to take that time away.
Hence my current trap – I can remain a one man band and take on as much work as my time allows, or I can take some of that time and focus on building a lasting, sustainable business. In my industry, there are a ton of freelancers, most of them happy to do the work they get and leave it at that. But what happens when they move or burn out or change careers? Their clients are often passed on to other folks who may or may not be as trusty as the original freelancers. Plus, despite the money that comes from it, freelancers usually hate maintenance. One of the greatest joys in freelancing is being able to do something new every day. When you get stuck updating and maintaining the same thing day in and day out, it can get tiring.
TechKnowMe is my solution to this problem. I’d love to just freelance, but I have a couple of dozen other things I want to pursue as businesses down the line as well. I’m concerned that, when I’m ready to pursue those dreams, I’ll feel like I’m letting my clients down by ditching them and dumping them on someone else. If, however, I have a cache of programmers, designers and administrators I trust to spread the work, I can be confident that, no matter what, my clients will be taken care of. And this is the same value proposition I wish to offer to the freelancers I hire. It’s better to work as part of a team rather than as a one-person show – better for the clients, better for the freelancer.
But, again, getting that together takes time, which equals money to me right now. So the conundrum continues – risk my cashflow to build a business, or risk my business to maintain cashflow? There’s no real answer, I just need to keep plugging and focusing on keeping the cash coming in while I build. Still, it’s a lot for one guy to handle.
In September I left my full time job to work full time for myself, officially kicking off TechKnowMe as a real, not just in my “spare” time, business. It has been a leap of faith and a fascinating learning experience. I keep telling myself I’m going to blog about the experience for you, since I do think it’s something many of you will find interesting, but I keep running into the same problem – no time.
Time management has always been a weakness of mine. I can easily find myself taking on too much at once or deciding to take a “10-minute break” that lasts an hour. One of the best things about working for one’s self is the freedom and flexibility it provides. That also happens to be its greatest curse.
I’ve been trying various methods of maintaining my schedule and keeping myself in line. I find that when I know precisely what needs to be done, I’m far better at plugging away at it. I’ve implemented some tips and trick divined from Getting Things Done by David Allen, which is chock full of powerful ideas. Some days, though, I fell things have gotten so far away from me that even taking the tim to organize them is daunting.
So this is one of my uphill battles at the moment – finding a way to balance work and life and keep everything moving happily along. There are so many things I want to do, but it’s difficult to find time amongst the things I need to do. One thing I want to do is, as I said, share my experiences in the new venture with you, and I’m going to make a commitment to do that, however sporadically. On days like today, you’ll get a bunch of posts out of me. Then you may not hear from me for a week or two while I push on to get some other things done. All I can ask of you is to be patient and keep reading and, please please please, leave comments sharing your experience and advice. I’ll try to be better at responding to those as well.