I didn’t go to the “SXSW Dual Conversation: The End of Business As Usual” panel, so I’m commenting on an article on Digital Savant written about the panel. It could be that I missed critical context or tone to the discussion that took place.
It sounds like Billy Corgan has accepted the changed landscape that the digital world and, perhaps more importantly, the fans have imposed on the music industry. He’s accepted it, but it sounds like he still doesn’t get it.
He said the solution to the problem (“problem” was not clearly defined, at least not in the Digital Savant article) was for the fans to support the music they like. Well, duh. But that’s not exactly the whole of it. He’s laying the music industry’s woes entirely at the feet of fans. Bullshit. Everybody had a hand in that pie. We already know how the music industry and, more specifically, the record labels / RIAA fucked things up. No need to rehash that. No, I want to point a finger at the artists themselves for a moment.
And not artists like Metallica who went after their own fans with cops and lawyers. Those douchebags are in the same bucket as the RIAA as far as I’m concerned. Though they did that with the same underlying motive that Billy Corgan alluded to in his SXSW conversation.
I’m pointing a finger at artists like Billy Corgan because what he’s upset about is not that he can’t make a damn good living as a musician, but that he has to work more to make less. And that’s kind of reasonable, unless we’re talking about millions of dollars, in which case, fuck you Billy Corgan. Or, put another way…
Oops, your sense of entitlement is showing.
Or, put a third way…
I think you just stepped on your dick.
Look. I’m sorry you can’t make MEGA millions anymore. I’m sorry that, as a performer, a good chunk of your income in the future will come from, well, performing. If you’re a smart performer, you’ll probably make another huge chunk of change from merchandise. But I get it. It’ll never replace the gold that used to rain down from the sky with each breath you took in the Before Time.
At the end of the day though, you’re going to be a lot happier if you get over that.
Okay, this isn’t actually a reader question. It’s a question from a friend of mine and I thought it would be worthwhile to share my reply:
Chat, do you know anyone who consults with small businesses on how to make their website make more money for them?
Sorry, I don’t. It sounds like they need at least two people:
Realistically they probably want to partner with a savvy web company. But, also realistically, said company will charge a lot up front and won’t be interested in revenue sharing or anything like that. So they should probably start with the business consultant. And in lieu of spending a bunch of cash on a web expert, I’d recommend starting off with a book like the Website Owner’s Manual:
http://boagworld.com/websiteownersmanual/
It covers the “secrets to a successful website”, evaluating objects, planning and measuring success, creating killer content, website promotion, techniques for engaging visitors, and more. It’s specifically written for people who own and operate websites rather than being written for people like me who help the people who own and operate websites.
This answer barely scratches the surface of such a broad topic, but hopefully it provides a place for people to start. I’ll write more about this in the future so if you have specific questions feel free to post them in the comments section.
The key to viral (or social) marketing is to make it easy for your users to help you. To do that, you need to give them the tools to help you. And to do that, you probably have to put a little bit of thought into what the best tools are.
Over at Spiceworks we have a user group called Spread Spiceworks. It’s grown organically over time and I thought I’d share some of the tools we’ve created to help our users evangelize us.
Spread Spiceworks Widget
An email form to let people instantly tell their friends about us. You have to be careful about spammers trying to abuse things like this. To keep things simple the body of the email is actually hardcoded on the back-end. If they want to send a custom message, the same text can be copied to their clipboard.
This section has buttons and screenshots to post on their blogs, on forums, or pretty much anywhere that allows HTML. Clicking on a button or screenshot opens a modal box with the HTML code. (I added syntax highlighting because, well, I’m a nerd.) If a user is logged in the HTML code will include their referral ID. That way, if anybody clicks on one of their buttons and downloads the app, they get credit for it in the form of points. I’ll talk more about the points a bit later.
This section also has wallpapers for desktops, PDAs and mobiles. While those things don’t actively help people to “spread Spiceworks” they do help passively. And, more importantly, they help our passionate users to stay passionate.
This links to our various social networks so users can stay up-to-date on what we’re doing. Elsewhere we incorporate buttons to let people share our content on their social networks.
You want to know how to create a really passionate user? Get him or her together with other passionate users. Our meet-ups are user created and user run. We facilitate things by helping them organize the group, publicizing the events, and providing them with topic materials.
This goes hand-in-hand with the meet-ups. We’ve provided users with an “Introduce to Spiceworks” slide deck they can use to give presentations… if that’s their thing. In fact, we’ve provided almost 50 slide decks! And we’ve bundled them together with custom business cards that they can print. The cards use the same referral code that the buttons use.
This is where users can go to buy hats, t-shirts, messenger bags, onesies, wall clocks, etc., all adorned with the Spiceworks brand. They look stylish and we get free advertising wherever they are.
I mentioned that the buttons and business cards have referral IDs attached to them. Actually, so do the emails and screenshots. Whenever someone downloads Spiceworks from a link that includes a referral code, the referrer gets credit and that credit takes the form of points in our community. The more points you have, the higher your “level” is in the community. Attaining higher levels is purely a point of pride amongst users and yet it’s a powerful motivational tool.
So these are some of the tools we use. What are you doing to help your passionate users?
Looking to hire a web designer or developer in the Austin area? Are you a web designer or developer looking for work in the Austin area? Here are a few helpful resources:
Be sure to read the AIGA Standards of Professional Practice. To post a job, go here.
Before posting a job, be sure to read their job posting guidelines. The Refresh Austin guys also run the Austin Web Design & Develop Meetup, which is a great place to meet designers and developers in the area.
This one is geared primarily towards developers. Anybody can view jobs but you have to become a member to post jobs. Membership is free.
I’ve listed this one last for reason. As a job seeker you can expect to find a lot of crap job offers that pay either a fast food wage or a stake in the company (read: work for free). If you’re looking to hire someone, either know what you’re doing or avoid this option. Roughly 80% of your applicants will not be qualified. You can find good people and good jobs there though so I wouldn’t totally dismiss the site.
Of course there are non-local boards you can check out too:
And there are a few staffing agencies worth talking to:
I’ve had the best luck, again on both sides of the fence, with Aquent. If you’re going to a talent agency, I’d start with them.
If you have a website you should be keeping track of who’s visiting it and what they’re doing while they’re there. Google Analytics is a great tool for doing just that. If your site is built with WordPress, like mine is, you can also install a plugin like Site Stats, which will create a new page for your dashboard full of useful information like:
If you want to grow your audience this is essential information to have.
If you’re being smart about your job search, you’re tailoring your resume and cover letter for each company you are applying at. If you’re really smart, you’re not making that obvious to the person receiving the resume and cover letter. This is a simple matter of how your organize your files on your computer.
Bad:
One resume. One cover letter. If you’re only applying for one job, having one resume isn’t too bad, especially if it is a well designed resume. But your cover letter should be tailored to each company you are applying at and you should have an archived version of each as well.
The other big mistake here is that the person’s name isn’t included in the filename for either document, which gives it a very good chance of getting lost in the shuffle. Especially if the reviewer organizes things electronically.
Okay:
This is actually much better. John’s full name is included in the filename for both resume and cover letter and he is creating multiple versions of each file based on the different jobs he is applying for.
Better:
Here is where a simple change in the way John organizes his files can start to payoff. It’s the same set of files as in the last list but its no longer obvious to the person receiving the files that he is applying for different positions. Why does that matter? It’s the difference between hiring someone who does something well and is passionate about it versus hiring someone who does lots of different things and, well, they really need the job.
Best:
This is the cream of the crop because it works whether he wants to specialize in something as specific as Interface Design or he is just looking for something creative. It also reflects the high level of detail he is putting into his job search. Because he should be paying a high level of detail. He should be researching each company he applies at so that he can tailor his resume and cover letter to them. He should be dropping one or two relevant facts about each company in their respective cover letters to demonstrate that knowledge.
I’m reading through resumes and cover letters, looking for freelancers to add to our pool of talent at Spiceworks. And most of the resumes suck. They are horribly designed. (Two pages in all caps, seriously? And you call yourself a designer?) As a whole they have terrible leading, headers, use of white space, suffer from poor font choices, and are riddled with typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, missing punctuation, inconsistent punctuation on lists, and on and on.
With any given design in your portfolio you can at least fob off poorly designed elements on the client/boss/committee. But you can’t do that with your resume. That’s all on you. At the absolute minimum it should be free of errors and use a good font. That’s not setting the bar very high.
Bonus tip: if the only thing you have listed under accolades is that time you participated in a civil war reenactment eight years ago, considering leaving that section off of the resume altogether. I’m just sayin’.
I’m not talking about specific things you need to do with regards to marketing, structuring your business, or any of that stuff. I just wanted to take a look at what it takes to run your own business. What the “right stuffâ€? is.
I quit my job at the end of May. I took a two week vacation and then I went to work on my own business. As a web developer, I had to build my own website. As an entrepreneur, and a one-man shop as is frequently the case for the budding entrepreneur, I had to write my own copy, brand myself and market myself. When businesses responded, I had to sell myself and then close the deal.
The first month-and-a-half was spent on creating my image and the website (Studio Green) to go with it. I didn’t start soliciting business until around the beginning of August. When I quit my job I had no clients, no business plan, and no actual company. It was a huge leap of faith.
That brings me to the first requirement for a successful entrepreneur: balls. Cajones. You can call it by another name, but what it comes down to is that it takes a certain kind of person to toss the dice knowing that they’re gambling with their financial future.
For some people, like myself, there is almost no other choice. We don’t take orders well. I have a great deal of respect for the military, my father and step-father were both in the Air Force and my brother served in the Army, but I can guarantee you I would have been dishonorably discharged. It isn’t in my nature to follow blindly where others lead.
That I’ve only been fired once in my professional history is, quite frankly, amazing. There have been times when I would have fired me, had I been my own boss. This is a great place to point out that this article isn’t meant to be self-aggrandizement. Yes, on the one hand I have confidence, but I’ve also just pointed out that it cuts both ways. Having issues working under someone else can cause, well, issues.
So along with balls you have to know who you are. You have to be able to recognize both your strengths and your weaknesses. I’ve always had a strong work ethic and been extremely well organized (I’m hardcore obsessive-compulsive), but it turns out I’ve become very used to having a guiding influence. Left entirely to my own devices, I’ve floundered a lot in the first months. What do I do today? At times I had so many things to do that my brain just shutdown and I did nothing. Other times, I felt like I was really on top of things and I allowed my brain to shutdown and I did nothing.
A startup cannot allow that to happen. So I’ve taken to making lists. Lists help structure my day and provide concrete metrics for me to measure progress by: I can cross things off my list and write down how long each one took.
Okay, so we have balls and self awareness. What else? Intelligence? It can certainly be an asset against your competitors, but it turns out it isn’t the end-all. In fact, most geniuses lead very average middle-of-the-road (and income) lives and are quite happy working for others and not taking big risks. Your average successful entrepreneur isn’t dumb by any means, but tends to be in the average for IQ. That makes sense to me. It can be very easy to over-think things end up not taking enough action or taking the wrong actions. Doing can be more important than thinking in some respects.
As with all of my posts, I tend to ramble from one item to the next without much organization. I’m not being graded (unless you count readership as a grade), and I don’t have time to edit my book reports. Again, doing is more important. So consider this my segue to the next qualification: curiosity.
Curiosity may be the single biggest requirement for an entrepreneur and it’s actually the impetus behind this post. I had the opportunity to meet with another entrepreneur today, to discuss a possible business relationship. During the course of our conversation, I had the opportunity to ask him questions about how and why he started his own business. How long he’s been an entrepreneur, why he chose his particular service or product (note: I’m being vague because his business isn’t pertinent to the discussion and because I don’t publicize what business I’m seeking), and other questions. He probably felt like he was the one being interviewed.
The one thing that stuck out was his curiosity for a broad range of things that covered the gamut of his business. He is curious about the aspects of running a business, about his product/service, about the technologies behind his product/service, those used to produce it, the mindset of the people involved, his clients, their mindsets, the interrelationship formed by all of these items, and more. He is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. He has a broad understanding of each area, but not the deep understanding that comes from devoting oneself to that one thing.
Dreamers often drift from subject to subject and have a broad range of interests. If you can turn a dreamer into a doer, you would have an entrepreneur. We have too much curiosity to sit still and do the same thing every day. But dreamers typically lack the energy and will, that’s why they are dreamers.
And that will be the last requirement to go on the list: energy. Under the self-awareness category, I have to admit that this is my weak point. Entrepreneurs are out pounding the pavement, shaking hands and kissing babies. Okay, that’s politicians, but take away the baby part, and you have an entrepreneur. They go wherever they have to go and do whatever they have to do to be successful. They have boundless energy, they are social creatures, and they thrive on challenges.
Me? I’m practically a hermit. That wasn’t always the case. When I was single and all of my friends were single, I went out all the time. But I was looking for something other than business. Now I’m married and I don’t have to go looking for love in all the wrong places. My friends, for the most part, are also married. These days I get out a lot less and I’ve gotten used to that. My sedentary lifestyle has had a crippling effect on my energy and drive.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be successful though. It means that I have an obstacle to overcome. All it takes is a little strategy, like making lists so I always have something to do. In my case, it means not networking through the local chamber of commerce and various local networking groups. I find them boring and stale and I have nothing in common with the other people there. (The ones I’ve been to were almost universally an older, more sedentary crowd with businesses that were decades, if not generations, old.) My time is much better spent hanging out with designers and artists.
The services I provide are split pretty evenly between designing and programming and I much prefer hanging out with the artists than the programmers. I found plenty of places to hangout, both virtually (Deviant Art) and in the real world (AIGA, Meetup.com). It turns out that a lot of designers have no designer to build websites for their clients and need to subcontract.
I don’t go to meetings or hang out at these places to solicit business. I go there to socialize, have a good time, relax, talk to my peers, and to just get away from my desk and my computer. But I recognize the business potential that also exists. I make sure I always have business cards available and I give them out to everybody. Networking and soliciting business is something you do 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s why being an entrepreneur takes so much energy: because you are always on the clock. What makes it bearable is that you get to pick what that is that you’re clocking in for. Pick something you love and you’ll be alright.
Your strengths and weaknesses will be different than mine. But if you can take an honest look at yourself and know what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are then you can play to your strengths and find solutions to your weaknesses. You just have to have the balls, the curiosity and the drive to do so.