Mark Poppen

I’ve done a screencast on the introduction of Typekit for The Web Squeeze about 2 weeks ago. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Introduction to Typekit from TheWebSqueeze on Vimeo.

Yesterday Chris Powell (@chrispowell) and I shared a session at BarCamp in Saskatoon about how we started our web design business. It was streaming live on UStream, but in case you’ve missed it, here’s the video of me (first) and Chris. Great questions from the audience!

In this video I’ll be answering @hidobrado’s question if I ever had to fire a client.

Links mentioned:

• Twitter

Here we go, my first videoblog. I’m not used to being in front of a camera yet, but I hope that will wear off. Leave a comment to say what you think of it.

Links mentioned:

• Backboard
• Getsignoff
• Twitter

This post is part 2 in a series of 3 posts of starting your design business.
Starting your design business – Part 1: Prepare
Starting your design business – Part 2: Get started
Starting your design business – Part 3: Keep it up

Keeping it up

Preparation, check. Get started, check. First client, check. Now how do I keep working? Ok, so you didn’t get the roller coaster ride you were hoping for. That happens to 90% of all startups, but don’t worry. There are ways to work towards a comfortable lifestyle based on your business. They all involve hard work, but that’s what you’ve prepared for.

Assuming you’ve had a few clients, and not just that one first client there are a few tricks to keep the money coming. The easiest one is the service call. A service call is a phone call to ask how your client is doing, just some small talk, chit-chat. This is where you have to activate your “possible-sale-signal-detector-hat” (for a lack of a better word). Don’t let your second question, after “how are you”, be “need anything else?”. It will be a short phone call, I can tell you right now. Ask if the client had response on the project, and if they did, what the response was. There are always comments, ranging from “cool, but I missed [fill in blank]” to “awesome!”. Absorb these comments. If it was all positive, keep doing what you’re doing, unless they were lying. If you get negative feedback or suggestions, absorb this as well! No buts! Work out a way with the client to fix the negative feedback.

Create incentives

Why not ask for referrals? Assuming your current clients are happy (they should be, because you did your service call), they are the ones that can give you free advertising. In my experience you need to reward your current clients for referring a new one. I guarantee you, it will not hurt to give your current client a x% discount on their next purchase for referring a new client.
I gave away cash once. $ 100 For each referral a client did. I had to add a time-limit to the promotion. I rest my case.

Keep networking

A full project management system doesn’t mean it will be full for the following months. Be prepared. The projects you’re working on WILL end. So, even when you’re busy with projects, keep talking to people, keep asking for referrals, keep advertising (if you were). I made the mistake once, to stop working on raking in clients because I was so busy. 2 months later, all my projects were done, and I had no new projects lined up. Good thing I had the safety net I talked about in part 1.

Find a rhythm

Being busy, doing the things you love doing is awesome, but you have to rest. I’m at the point where I decided not to read/answer any client email on weekends. I’m not designing on weekends, unless I have a really good idea for a client project, but I keep it to a minimum of something like sketching a design, so I can continue on monday. That way I have time for other things, like spending time with my wife, friends and in-laws.

I have a daily routine which starts with a shower. After that I read my rss-feeds with my breakfast-bowl. Next are emails. Emails I can answer right away get done first. The emails I have to do something for (like fixing a css, or add something to content) will be planned later in the day. After I’m done my “quick emails”, I check my project manager to see which projects need instant attention and I’ll work on that ’till lunch. I tend to watch a TV-show during lunch, to make sure I take enough time for my lunch break. When lunch is gone, I keep going on the project I started working on, until about halfway in the afternoon, when I get up to take a walk to the post office down the street to get the mail. Depending on what’s in the mail, I usually get back right away to finish up the things to do from the email in the morning, usually until supper time. Depending how much I got done during the day, I continue work in the evening, but no more client-communication.

I found other people going even further. I haven’t done it myself, but it seems tempting, and I might give it a try. Some designers have their days planned like Monday – client emails, Tuesday – Design projects, Wednesday – coding-day, etc.

Established

By this time, you should have established a business that is able to bring in a decent money-flow and have your own ways of making your business a successful one.

Like I said in part 1, these tips are not guaranteed success. This is the way I started my business, and I’m hoping it will help you start yours.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve used these tips, or if you have tips for me (I’m always learning).

This post is part 2 in a series of 3 posts of starting your design business.
Starting your design business – Part 1: Prepare
Starting your design business – Part 2: Get started
Starting your design business – Part 3: Keep it up

Get started

So, you’ve done all your preparation, you’re sure you can handle the stress that comes with starting a business; you’re ready… now what?
I think the most common question for a starting designer is: “How do I get people to hire me?”, which is a tough one, although pretty easy to solve: network!

I got lucky with my business advisor, I guess. Like I said earlier, he carries around my business cards to all the new clients he meets. When he asks if they planned a website, he hands over my business card. These clients are now the base of most of my referred clients.
It’s not my only networking-source though. Parties, meetings, seminars, trade shows… everywhere I go, I don’t go without my business cards. Again, I have to mention Twitter. I have had a few projects coming through Twitter. People who found my profile and apparently liked my work.
It’s all about talking to people. If you can’t do this, go work for an agency.

This is the time you should check out project management software (if you’re planning on collaborating with teams a lot), Time management and accounting software. The reason why I didn’t put this in the preparation is because you can’t check out if you like the software without having an actual client. Sure, you can puts around in it, but usually the software only shines when you’re really using it on a live client. My suggestions for these applications:

Project management: 5pmweb – I chose this web-app because of many reasons. The main ones are that you can add a project, add tasks in that projects, and the tasks can be relative to another task. So, if you have a task “design site” and the deadline is being pushed back a week, all the tasks after that will be pushed back automatically. A real time-saver!
You can duplicate projects. Since most of my projects have the same workflow, I thought it’s a time-waster if you have to re-type all the tasks for every project.
Another cool feature is that you can share the projects with your clients. This way your clients don’t have to send you an email, or call you to find out in which stage their project is.

An alternative to 5pmweb could be Verb. It’s a very lightweight and FREE project manager. If you don’t want to dish out $18 per month, this is a great option.

Time tracking: Office time (Mac OS X/Windows) – I’ve tried a lot of these, and most of them fail me on 1 thing: my forgetfulness. Usually I remember to turn on the timer, but when I get side-tracked or distracted, the timers just keep running, which make the final time for a project very inaccurate. Office time detects when you’re idle and gives you an option to subtract the idle minutes, add it to another project (so, let’s say a phone call from another client interrupts your design process), or keep the minutes (if you’re working out wireframes on paper). I haven’t been using Office time that long yet, but I’m sure it’s a keeper.

Accounting/invoicing: FreeAgent Central – This is a little gem! I was really debating if I should use desktop software like Billings, or go for something online. I’ve decided to go for the online option, mainly because FreeAgent has really amazing and powerful options. There are too many to mention in a post like this, but a few things that amaze me are the ability to upload your bank statement. FreeAgent will recognise all transactions and can link them to invoices you’ve sent. It also keeps track of all your expenses. It does this all for $ 20 per month, unless you sign up through my referral link, which will give you 10% discount, and for every person you refer to FreeAgent, you’ll receive another 10% discount (for as long the referred person stays signed up!).

This is also the time you can work on your workflow. Although this evolves overtime, write down the steps you take with your client to get to the end result. After you made this list, start working on how the process felt, and where you’d like to do things different. My workflow for a regular web design project looks like this:

1. 1st Client contact. This is either by email, phone or face to face. I ask for an email address where I can send some information to regarding the project. I have a worksheet in PDF I send to potential clients with questions like “What do you expect from a website”, “Do you have a logo”, “Do you have a domain name/hosting” etc.
2. Send previously mentioned worksheet by email, requesting to make an appointment for a sit-down meeting. I like face-to-face conversations, rather than phone-meetings. I’m a visual guy, and I worked in sales a lot. Body language is an important factor to me.
3. Have the actual meeting. Getting to know the business I’m designing for. Understanding what the business is all about is half the inspiration for whatever I have to design. Don’t ask standard questions, make an actual conversation.
4. Set up a quote/estimate. With the information I gathered from the meeting, I set up a quote. For everyone, this is a different process. A good series of articles about pricing is “Pricing bootcamp” by Buildinternet.
5. Assuming the quote got approved, I ask for a 25% down payment.
6. Design a moodboard. This is a sketch with pencil and paper, to outline what I have visualized as the layout for the site. I got the idea to do so from David Perel. Although he does it digital, I like to add the pencil and paper first.
7. Assuming the moodboard gets approved by the client: Design a mock up of the site in Photoshop. Depending on what you agreed on with your client, you might have to make 1, 2 or more of these.
8. Assuming the design gets approved, I ask for another 25% deposit.
9. Code the site. I usually outsource my psd2html. I have 3 awesome people that can take this on for me.
10. When I wait for the site to get back to me, I install a CMS, set up email addresses and set up the domain name.
11. When the site gets back to me, I implement the design on the CMS and…
12. …the troubleshooting starts. We iron out little things, like CSS that goes bad, a database that’s not playing nice etc.
13. I show the site to the client in a test environment where they can start filling their site with content. Usually I guide them through this process. Teaching the CMS and advising on proper content. I also ask for the final 50% payment.
14. Site goes live. Client is happy.
15. Aftercare (this one is important!). Don’t let your client hanging after they paid the final payment. After a week or so (depending on how often you communicate with the client) ask him/her how the website is doing, if there’s anything you can help them with or (and this is the magic part) ask if they need anything else. I also design business cards, so that’s always a nice pitch if I haven’t mentioned it in the initial meeting.

After you landed your first client, I would do almost anything to make him/her happy, even if it costs you money, because the best advertising you can get is a referral. They’re free and work 100x better than an ad in the paper. So get your first client(s) as happy as you can. Remember, you’re investing in your business.
Put this project in your portfolio, and have this client write a raving review/testimonial about your services.

From here on, be prepared (but don’t expect) a roller coaster ride.

Part 3 of this series will be posted next week.

Please, leave a comment with how you got started, or if you have links to useful websites for starting up a design business.

I’m not the guy that likes to experiment with an OS too much, especially if my work depends on it. It’s a reason why I chose Mac. Hassle free and easy to use. Apple released Mac OS X Snow Leopard a while ago, but I wasn’t too keen on jumping right into upgrading, especially because I read some reviews on upgrades going bad.

After the first update came out, I was more confident in upgrading, so I bought the software from the Apple Canada store and got it delivered within a week (which is fast for rural living). Since I had quite a few projects lined up, the DVD stayed in the box for about a week, but tonight I did it. I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and Apple reassured me again, why I made the right choice to switch to Mac. A painless upgrade without having to answer tonnes of questions or formatting hard drives. Just pop the DVD in, hit install, accept the license agreement and wait.

Ok, it didn’t go flawless. After about half an hour of installation, OSX spit out the DVD, rebooted and it was right back to where I started: 10.5.8. After reading the installation guide (RTFM *hum*) I found out you should unhook all external drives. I had my Time machine backup drive left on, which interfered with the installation.

Without that glitch, the installation took about an hour, including the first update. So I’m running 10.6.1 right now, and so far, everything seems to run faster, but that might very well be wishful thinking and a mind-game.

This post is part 1 in a series of 3 posts of starting your design business.
Starting your design business – Part 1: Prepare
Starting your design business – Part 2: Get started
Starting your design business – Part 3: Keep it up

In a previous post, I gave some tips on running your own business, but I never really gave advice on how to actually start up. I’m not an expert and the following tips will not guarantee success, but this is how I did it, and for me: so far, so good.

Prepare

When I came to Canada in 2007, I had to wait for a residence/work permit, so I had loads of time to investigate what the business culture was like. I knew I wanted to start my business from scratch, and I did not want to to start off on a payroll at a local supermarket or something, so I did a lot of preparing for when I would get my permits to work.
Because my wife was still Canadian, she started working right away, which now is our safety-net. I’ll get back to that later.

I suggest a few things in preperation.

1: Find the website of your government. The government of Canada has a website with all the information about federal rules when setting up a business.
2: Find the website of your province/state. I live in Saskatchewan, and they have a separate website for everything provincial.
3: See if you can get a business advisor through the government. I’ll get back on this later.
4: Find out if you need a business license and how you can/should register your business.
5: Work on your business plan. Knowing where you want to be in 5 years is like winning half the battle. You know what you’re working for, which can only motivate.
6: Prepare a financial plan. This way you have a monthly feel of if the business is feasible or not. You create an excel sheet of all the income and expenses you’ll be expecting.
Your business advisor can help you with step 5 and 6.
7: Find an accountant. This person doesn’t have to do all the number crunching for you, but at least build a relationship, so if you have questions about your financial situation or things like taxes, you have someone to turn to.

Prepare some more

Get the simple and cheap things ready before you start advertising your business. Business cards for instance. A cheap way to market your business.
With these business cards in your pocket, you’ll have to go talk to business-people, you know, potential clients. Not so much to advertise your services, but to find out what the business-culture will be like. Do you like talking to these people, or are you having trouble connecting?
Something I did before I started was work on my own website. Since I had a lot of time, I had the opportunity to learn how to hand-code CSS. I read a bunch of design related tutorials and improved my Photoshop and Illustrator skills. I also created random personal websites, which I put in my portfolio. I got on Twitter and connected with a bunch of designers, who taught me a lot of things. Twitter is a huge resource for design tutorials and inspiration.

The business advisor

This guy has been a tremendous help when I started my business. You can ask anything about the business, and he will know it. If not, he knows where to find the answers. Usually, they have a really good feel for the market. As an example; My business advisor put himself in the position of being my (potential) client, and he would ask me questions a client would normally ask. I can tell you, there quite a few things I wasn’t prepared for, but because HE was the one asking, he could help me with the solution as well.
Now, as I said in the preparation-section earlier, you should find out if you can get an advisor through the government. This way, you’re not spending loads of money on consultations right off the bat. My business advisor came through CCS. I paid a whopping $ 5 (administration fee), and I got a business advisor that knew how Saskatchewan business people would do business with me. He helped me set up my business plan, financial plan and contract. He even referred me to a lawyer to have a look at that contract. I can say: without his help, my business would not have been where it is now. It also helps that he’s always talking to people that are starting up a business. He has a stack of my business cards for those kind of people.

Safety net

I couldn’t have done it without my wife. The only way to set up a business is to have a safety net for when things go sour. This can be in the form of a part time job, a bloated savings account, an inheritance or, like in my case, a wife with a decent paying job.
As I said earlier, while waiting for my residence permit, i was not allowed to work, so we had to live off 1 income. This was a good preparation for things to come.

Keep in mind: a loan is NOT a safety net! That will have to be paid off eventually, and the interest might even kill your business.

Part 2 of this series will be posted next week.

Please, leave a comment with your preparation strategies, or if you have links to useful websites for starting up a design business.

I’ve been wanting to write a post on this a while, because I think you might want to know why I am or am not following you on Twitter. Here are the 1 do’s and don’ts if you want me to follow you. I sure as hell don’t want to be an arrogant guy, I just don’t think Twitter is a popularity-contest. I see it as a communications-platform, so I don’t use auto-follows, auto-dm or programs to get me more followers.

Let’s start off with why I’m not following you.

1: Bio: None

If you want to connect with me, great! But you need to introduce yourself a little.

2: Marketing, Social media strategist, Guru-marketeer, Successful internet-something

Please, spare me the “I can tell you how to make money online”-bullshit. I’m a designer, I love my job and I don’t want to be in your pyramid-scheme. Keywords in your bio that trigger my non-follow are: marketeer, sales (unless for an actual company), market, money, successful, profit, empower, affiliate, MLM, social media, “guru”, and my personal favorite: “The Google mystery solved.”.

3: Mentioning the same URL tweet after tweet

I know you want to promote something, but you don’t have to be an ass about it. If you’re interesting as a person. It’s very likely it only takes 1 tweet to have me check out your product..

4: 1000:2 Ratio

If your following-count a whole lot higher than your followers-count, there must be something wrong. Either, you blocked all your followers, you’re a spammer or you’re REALLY not interesting..

5: The hot chick profile pic.

Yeah, really? I follow a few designers that are a delight to the eye, but they actually have something to say. A female model called “Eric”.. probably not.

6: Tweets about formula 1

Huh? Yeah. It’s nothing personal, really, but since I’m a HUGE formula 1 fan, I don’t want spoilers in my timeline. Since I’m not able to watch races live, I have to watch the rerun. And it’s a lot less fun when you know who won on forehand.

And these will give you a great chance of me following you.

1: @replies

This, to me, indicates you’re actually interacting with people, which means you’re not a bot. Always a plus.

2: RT’s

Not a necessity, but it’s a bonus. There is a thin line between retweeting every tweet you see and retweeting valuable stuff, though.

3: Designers

I follow most designers that follow me. Who knows, we might work together in the future. I get more and more business through Twitter, so please, do follow.

4: English or Dutch

Tweet in English or Dutch, so I can understand what you’re talking about.

I use Twimailer. This is a service that intercepts the Twitter mail to you about new followers. It re-formats the email, so you can see if a follower is a spammer, right in your email. It shows, information like the bio, website and location, the profile picture and the last Tweets. I found it to be very useful in sifting spam from legit followers.

Of course, you can follow me: @MarkPoppen

You might not have heard of Anouk, but she’s The Netherland’s rock-chick. She’s an amazing singer. As a music loving designer, my eye caught Anouk’s new album cover. Apparently the gory-ness is not photoshopped, but the “Anouk logo” is, and it’s an upside-down one, and I think it’s awesome.