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!
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.
Happy Camper
Recently I had a conversation with a young designer who told me something like “When my client approves my design, I’m happy, even when I know it can be better”. This inspired me to write this post, because I think he’s wrong. (more…)
Ever since I got involved with The Web Squeeze, I’ve seen dozens of “Where do I start”-questions. Let me give you some pointers on where to start.
Your nickname will not cut it 90% of the time. How would I pick up the phone when “deluzione” is my business name? Potential clients will think I’m a mobster and I can be hired to design their website, or put a horse’s head in their ex’s bed.
The best business names are an actual word or name. Poppen Design (my business), GatorWorks or Point2 Technologies are decent names if you ask me.
It helps if the domain name is available, so keep that in mind as well.
These people might not be cheap, but they save you a lot of headaches. You can do a lot of finance by yourself. A great invoicing tool is Lessaccounting. It covers proposals, invoices, you can connect your bank account and you can create reports on pretty much anything. You can invite your book keeper to look around in your account, so he or she can do your taxes for you.
It’s also a great tool to find out if you have budget for advertising, or if you can afford a new car.
When clients approach you, they’ll want to see a portfolio, so you’ll have to make an impression.
Again the question: Where to start?
Wait, what…!? Yes. Failing is after teaching the best method of learning.
“The moment you let avoiding failure become your motivator, you’re down the path of inactivity. You can only stumble if you’re moving. If you don’t have a few failures, you’re not taking enough chances. Nobody can be right all the time, and the big companies didn’t become big by playing it safe.”
President of Coca Cola (taken from “The wizard of ads – Turning words into magic and dreamers into millionaires“)
Trust me, I speak from experience. I’ve been laughed at, been called names, got out of a tanked business, and it brought out the business man in me. I say that quite shameless, because it made me stronger than I was before. So, fail, get up, brush off, take the loss, learn from it, and make it better.
Failing brings me to the following tip:
Like I said at #4: Teaching is the best way of learning. When you try to explain something to someone else, you have to know what you’re talking about. That’s one reason why I write tutorials sometimes, just to remember what I’ve learned before. So, write tutorials (trust me, there are always people that know less about a topic than you) and put them on your own blog(you can easily create one at WordPress.com), explain to co-workers how things work and of course, sign up for The Web Squeeze’s forum, which is a great place to teach AND learn.
You’re never too old to learn. There’s always someone that knows more than you. There’s always new stuff to learn. Keep learning. There are 2 sides to this one:
1: Learn more about 1 specific item. Let’s say e-commerce. Make yourself an expert in the e-commerce field. You will be able to charge more if you know the product and possibilities inside-out.
2: Learn a variety of things. Let’s say you know PHP. Try to learn Ruby or jQuery. If you’re an all round person, you have a bigger chance of getting projects based on the variety of knowledge.
Nothing worse than doing business with someone who doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. Replace words like “I think” and “maybe” with stronger words like “I can” and “yes”, but make sure you’re not lying. It’s ok to say you don’t know something though. If a client asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, don’t stumble. Just say you don’t know, but you will get back to him/her, AND DO SO! When I get into this situation in the morning, i want to make sure the client has the answer by the end of the day.
I don’t mean only social networking like Facebook or Twitter, but create an offline network. Go out, meet people. Join a soccer team, a gym, chess club, fishing club or hockey club. Chances are that you meet people that might need your services, and it gets you out of the office.
This might not always apply, but when clients become your friends, it’s harder to say no. Friends might get discounts for just being your friend. Face it, if a client asks for a discount it’s easier to say you can’t, than telling a friend.
I mean, you can play around of golf with your clients, but be sure you know what you’re getting into.
Starting your own successful business is a lot of hard work, but to make sure you’re not burnt out after a few months of work, remember to take brakes, and try to avoid 16 hour work days.
When I’m online (that’s about 50% of a whole day), I scour a lot of blogs, and some of them amaze me how the authors come up with the topics they write about. I recently read iBouaghtamac.com, which is a great resource for Mac related tips. I noticed Brent had one of those little tabs on the side of his website with the title “Suggestions?”. When I clicked it, it opened a nice overlay, powered by Skribit, where I could dump my suggestions for the site. Not layout or design-wise, but “what should Brent write about”.
I thought that was a great idea, and I started investigating if I could get Skribit on my site. Turns out the service is free! (well, unless you want pro-features like modify your own theme and moderation).
So, please, if you like reading my blog, and have suggestions for me, for let’s say a tutorial, review or any other kind of article, let me know through that little tab on the right side of the site. Thanks.
As a web designer there are apps you simply need. To give you an idea of which ones I use I created a little list. You might find it useful..
There are quite a few image editing programs out there, but I’m sticking to Adobe’s Photoshop. Simply because “I grew up with it”. Yes, it’s costly, yes it has quite a learning curve, but I’m used to it and I know my way around. Although I’d love to get CS4, I’m still using CS3. I will have to upgrade soon..
Author: Adobe
Platform: Mac OS X / Windows
App URL: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/?promoid=DTELR
I love colors, but I’m not a color scientist. Adobe has a little app called “Kuler”, which is actually a website, and the app is just a step between the site and Photoshop/Illustrator. In Adobe Kuler you can create color palettes, based on an uploaded image, or from a base color. I use it all the time when I create new designs.
Author: Adobe
Platform: Cross platform (Adobe Air)
App URL: http://kuler.adobe.com/
I keep yelling “I’m a designer” when I don’t understand a piece of code, using it as an excuse to let someone else do the coding for me. When I have to/want to do some coding myself, which is limited to html/css for me, I use Coda by Panic. A great app with code highlighting, it closes tags automatically (sometimes this can be annoying though), and the best thing, I think Coda has is the “clips”, which let you define and save custom pieces of code you use often. For instance, I have a client that wants his brand name in red all over the site. I made a clip for ” <span style=”color: red;”>*</span> “. Love it!
Author: Panic
Platform: Mac OS X
App URL: http://www.panic.com/coda/
Of course, as a designer you need a browser, which for me is Firefox. In addition to Firefox and Coda, I use Firebug. Whenever a website I created looks kind of wonky, I “fire” up Firebug (no pun intended). It’s the best Firefox add-on I’ve used since the Web developer toolbar, which is also awesome. The cool thing about Firebug is that you can edit the css, and it updates the site as you’re making the changes. No, don’t worry, it’s not a WYSIWYG editor. You can’t save the changes you’ve made, that’s a bit of a disappointment to me, but other than that, I think you should try it.
Author: Parakey
Platform: Cross platform. Works in Firefox. There’s also a “lite” version for Opera, IE and Safari
App URL: http://getfirebug.com/
Social networking is a big part of my business. No, I’m not a social marketing guru, social marketing expert or whatever lame name you can give it. I use Twitter to connect to other designers, and get a lot of inspiration from them. Tweetdeck helps me sort the most interesting people, the search terms I want to monitor and keep track of replies and DM’s in a quick and simple interface. They should do something about their hideous logo/dock icon. The latest version has a friggin’ yellow icon, so I exchanged that with another one. (Follow me: @deluzione). It also updates my Facebook friend-status.
Author: Iain Dodsworth
Platform: Cross platform (Adobe Air)
App URL: http://www.tweetdeck.com/
To interact and collaborate with other designers I use Adium. An open source Mac OS X app that combines all the instant messengers into one. Live messenger, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Jabber, Yahoo, AIM, Myspace chat etc. The list goes on and on. You can connect all of these in 1 contact list. It has a clear interface and yo can group your contacts. The only thing it lacks is a webcam feature (which I’m sure you can add on through the Adium community), and file transfers tend to fail every once in a while, but since I only use it to chat, I don’t really give a rat’s ass..
Author: (Community driven)
Platform: Mac OS X
App URL: http://www.adiumx.com/
I recently started using Things. It’s a Mac OS X app that’s more than a todo list. Ok, It’s mainly a todo list, but it does it in a very slick manner. You can categorize your todo’s into projects. You can add notes to those projects, which I use to write down what I agreed an with a client, let’s say after a phone call. You can schedule todo’s, tag them, and when you’re done with them, they get logged in the log book. I’m the forgetting kinda guy, so I guess this saved my business right there by doing what it does best: remind me of stuff.
Author: Cultured Code
Platform: Mac OS X
App URL: http://culturedcode.com/things/
I almost forgot about inclusing Quicksilver, because it’s so much in the background, but it’s an app that I would miss if I turned it off. It’s a quick launcher, which launches programs in a touch of a hotkey. I have Option-ESC to open up the quick launch screen. I enter the first few letters of the app I want to open, and Quicksilver finds the app instantly. I also set “Option+F” to open a Finder window. It makes switching to unopened apps a lot quicker.
Author: Blacktree
Platform: Mac OS X
App URL: http://www.blacktree.com/
Backup, backup, BACKUP! I have an external hard drive for backups, but just in case my house burns down, or gets hit by lightning, frying all my electronics, I use Dropbox to backup all my work online. I’ve been using it for a while, and I really like the fact that it’s pretty much invisible, until you need it, and that it instantly uploads as soon as you made changes to a file. It also uses revisions, so when you need to go back a few versions of a file, it’s right there, in your dropbox. I can still manage with the free 2gb, but as soon as I hit my limit, I will for sure upgrade to the 50gb.
Author: Dropbox
Platform: Mac OS X / Windows / Linux
App URL: http://www.getdropbox.com/
You know you have those days, when you ask yourself at the end of the day: what did I actually do today? You shrug and think: “Not much.. I think”. Don’t lie, yes you do! I found Rescuetime to solve that problem. I was asking myself quite often that question, and was wondering why I didn’t get the work done I wanted to do, asking myself: “Where did time go?”. Rescuetime is an app that logs every 2 seconds which screen you have opened and puts it into a secure dashboard where you can figure out what you’re doing wrong. It gave me a clear view of things I was doing during the day, and where I could be more productive. It categorizes programs and sites, and you can rate those categories as productive or not.
Author: RescueTime
Platform: Mac OS X / Windows / Linux
App URL: http://www.rescuetime.com
Last, but certainly not least. It’s probably the most important app I use: Cashboard. Cashboard is an online invoicing app that does everything from adding clients, create estimates, track time (through a widget on your dashboard), create invoice, send automatic reminders, you can set late-fees, or early payment discounts, send PDF-invoices, it makes graphs and.. it makes me happy every time I open the app 
Bonus: Enter code “CASH_ALPHA” when signing up, and you’ll receive a 60-day trial (instead of the standard 30 days).
Author: Subimage LLC.
Platform: Web app. The widgets are available for Max OS X and Windows Yahoo Widgets.
App URL: http://www.getcashboard.com
And, what about you? What apps do you use to keep your business going?
