The Boss of You

Hello, friends. What’s new?

You may have noticed we’ve been a little, um, absent lately. It’s been about six weeks since we last blogged here, but we haven’t been slacking, no ma’am. Here’s what’s up:

We’re blogging weekly for BC Business magazine, for one thing – recent topics include getting over your fear of firing, the elusive quest for balance from an entrepreneur’s perspective, government grants for B.C. businesses, and improving client communication by getting curious. Emira even wrote a three part series on business partnerships. We’d love for you to come join us there, though I am hoping to get better at cross-posting stuff here when it’s relevant.

I’ve also been doing some public speaking lately, which has been a lot of fun. In late may, I gave a talk at Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver called “The Power of And,” where I had 20 slides + 20 seconds per slide to talk about why I love the internet, and what I believe is at the heart of the work I do for a living. (I’ve posted video of my talk below.) And at WordCamp Vancouver, I gave a talk to a room of WordPress designers, developers and bloggers called “Being Curious for a Living: How asking questions creates loyal clients (and better websites)”. Even if you’re not a web designer, I think anyone in the creative services industry could get something out of it. (That talk is below as well.)

Finally, we’re gearing up for an appearance at the Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs in Seattle in mid-August. It’s looking like a stellar congregation of people, so we hope to see some of you there!

Thanks for hanging in there through a busy time for us. We haven’t forgotten about you!

The Power of And (Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver)

Being Curious for a Living (WordCamp Vancouver)

I’m not sure how many web developers read this blog, but if any of you lovely people know a kick-ass coder who wants to work in a small Vancouver studio with amazing clients, please point them to Raised Eyebrow’s latest job opening, OK?

Here’s a bit more info from the Raised Eyebrow blog:

We’re excited to announce a new opportunity at Raised Eyebrow. Our little-web-studio-that-could is growing again, and we’ve got an opening for a Front-End Developer/Themer to help us build awesome websites for fabulous, mission-driven clients.

This is a position for someone with solid technical skills — someone who can rock HTML and CSS, who prides themselves on attention to detail and clean, elegant code. You’ll be turning design comps into themes for Drupal and WordPress sites, so experience with one (or both) of those CMS’s is preferred, but if you’re confident in your coding skills and are new to Drupal & WordPress, don’t let that stop you.

Because we’re a small shop, everyone here tends to wear a few hats, so we’re looking for someone with smarts, adaptability and a serious appetite for learning. We pride ourselves on the quality of our work, our efficiency, and our passion for our clients — and we’re looking for someone whose shares those values.

In our beautiful, heritage Gastown office, you’ll find a friendly team of experts, a ridiculously well-stocked tea cabinet, and abundant opportunities to work on projects that allow you to flex your technical muscles and bring your heart and ideals to work.

Sound like a fit for you (or someone you know)? The job description, with details on how to apply, is right here.

The fabulous Danielle Laporte did me the great honour of inviting me to contribute to her amazing entrepreneurial toolbox, The Firestarter Sessions. (It’s kind of like an e-book, but bigger & bolder — there are videos and worksheets and you just kind of have to experience it. In fact, Danielle calls it a Digital Experience for entrepreneurs.) She posed several questions about creating your online presence, and asked me to pick one and answer it. But, um, I misunderstood the instructions… I answered all of them. (Why yes, I am an overachiever.) Danielle gave me her blessing to post the answers she didn’t use — I thought they might be useful to some of you. This is number two. (The first one, “5 ways to be a great web design client,” is here.)

3 Keys to a Website That Sells

1. Simplicity. Everyone says this, but what they really mean is: Give people only as much information as they need, when they need it. (Read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug for a super-short, awesome explanation of how simple works on the web.) You can have a lot of content on your site but still keep it simple.
2. Beauty. Looks matter, especially in what for most people is a visual medium. If you want people to buy your stuff online, give them big, detailed photos so they can see your products from every angle — just as they would if they were picking them up in a store. Create balanced, well-structured pages. Pay attention to typography. (And ask your web designer to advise you on this stuff.)
3. Personality. Infuse every aspect of your site with your spark. Consider all the details. Instead of “Leave a comment,” try “Philosophize” or “I have something to say, dammit!” Make it sing your tune. People will connect with you and it’s that connection that pulls them in and brings them back.

The Firestarter Sessions includes 19 sessions, 13 videos and 22 worksheets, and sells for $150 (with $5 going to charity). A live session with Danielle goes for about $500, so this is an amazing value. Buy your copy here.

The fabulous Danielle Laporte did me the great honour of inviting me to contribute to her amazing entrepreneurial toolbox, The Firestarter Sessions. (It’s kind of like an e-book, but bigger & bolder — there are videos and worksheets and you just kind of have to experience it. In fact, Danielle calls it a Digital Experience for entrepreneurs.) She posed several questions about creating your online presence, and asked me to pick one and answer it. But, um, I misunderstood the instructions… I answered all of them. (Why yes, I am an overachiever.) Danielle gave me her blessing to post the answers she didn’t use — I thought they might be useful to some of you. Here’s the first one.

5 ways to be a great web design client

1. Know what you like. How do you want your online presence to look, feel, function? (Knowing what you don’t like helps a lot, too, and can be a good place to start.)
2. Have specific goals. Start with the basics: What do you want out of your online communications? Sales leads? Branding? A place to express yourself? All of the above? (If it’s the latter, please help us out by weighing the relative importance of the other stuff.)
   Now drill down: How, exactly, will you measure success? Figure out a dollar figure, site traffic goals, conversion rates that constitute a successful website. Without goals, we can’t advise you well on how to meet them.
3. Ask questions. There really are no dumb questions. Be curious. When you inquire, you give us insights into what matters to you but more importantly, you help us serve you better. An openness to learning about how the web works is the best thing you can bring to the process.
4. Understand your deadlines. If we’re going to launch your site in time, there are things we’ll need from you along the way. Please respect our time and understand that if you’re late getting them to us, we can’t be held responsible for getting our part done on time.
5. Care about content. The biggest thing that all the best and most popular websites (and web personalities) have in common is that they give great content. Be of use to your community, give freely, and don’t waste their time. They’re not your “audience,” they’re — we’re — people who want to connect with you. If you take the time to refine your message, make it inviting, interesting, and unique, you will succeed. You could have a black-and-white one-page site set in Times New Roman and people would still come to visit.

The Firestarter Sessions includes 19 sessions, 13 videos and 22 worksheets, and sells for $150 (with $5 going to charity). A live session with Danielle goes for about $500, so this is an amazing value. Buy your copy here.

We wrote in our book about the idea of businesses hooking up together to co-promote, here was our example:

“… give discounts on your yoga clothing to everyone who brings a juice card from the healthfood store next door, and you in turn give out coupons for a free shot of wheatgrass with every purchase from your store.”

Lately I’ve seen some excellent examples of just this kind of co-promoting ’round the internets, including the two below, and thought I’d check in with all you smart gals to see if anyone else is doing anything creative to boost sales and help expand another small business by partnering up.

• Jennifer Perkins of the Naughty Secretary Club was asking on Twitter for a clothing designer that might want to user her jewelry on models for some co-marketing. This one is brilliant as it is potentially a way to both split photoshoot costs and co-promote two brands. Love it.
• I see through my local mama’s email list this morning that our favourite kid’s gymnastics studio (which happens to be owned by a very smart mamma, friend and The Boss of You reader) is doing a summer cross-promotion with a fitness studio across the street so that mammas (or dads I’m assuming) can get personal training across the street while their tots are doing their summer camp gymnastics. As a new mamma I can attest to the brilliance of this one and only wish that 14 week olds were old enough for summer gymnastic camps so I could take advantage!

Please share any creative ideas for co-promotion you’ve taken on in the comments.

A funny thing about being an author is that although you get to take most of the credit for your book, the fact is there’s a huge network of people and organizations involved in getting your book into readers’ hands: From your agent and your publisher to bookstores and libraries, bloggers and reviewers, the web of connections is actually quite mind-boggling.

One of the biggest hubs in that network is Amazon, which not only serves as a critical bookselling outlet, but also controls things like whether your book will become a Kindle e-book or an audiobook. (Although Amazon isn’t the only source of audiobooks, they own Audible.com, and they make their own decisions about what books to publish in audiobook format.)

Well, over the weekend I was checking our Amazon reviews, and much to my delighted surprise, I discovered that The Boss of You is now available in both audiobook and Kindle formats! This is huge for us — these days, I rarely have time to sit down with a printed book but I am becoming a huge fan of throwing an audiobook on my iPod and taking it to the gym with me (or out for a walk, or on my commute). And all the travelers I know swear by their Kindles. Not only does this increase the convenience factor for our book, but it’s also accessible to a whole new audience, including people with visual disabilities. Whoo!!

So, here’s a list of the new places you can pick up a copy of The Boss of You:

• Audiobook edition: Get your copy from Audible.com, or pick it up from iTunes.
• Kindle edition: Available exclusively from Amazon.

There’s one key person I want to thank for her contribution: Thérèse Plummer, who narrated the audiobook edition of our book. I’ve never met Thérèse, but she did a gorgeous job bringing our words to life and infusing them with warmth and approachability. What a wonderful gift it was to hear our text read aloud in her voice.

The organizers of the Conference for Creative Entrepreneurs (more details on the event, which Lauren and I are speaking at here) website has been posting some super handy tips lately in the format of “5 minute pre-conference tips”. For example:

• How to Optimize Your Etsy Shop
• Get an EIN (a handy thing for US based solo-entrepreneurs)

Overall, the blog is a pretty active place these days and full of useful info for business owners, including info on other events of interest. Those gals are so smart.

Design Sponge has put together a great list of business books for the creatively inclined small business owner/freelancer. And, I’ll be so bold as to say that The Boss of You makes a nice addition to the list — and I’m not the only one, a few people have emailed/pinged me to say the same :)

I posted on our Facebook page to see if Boss of You fans had any business questions for us, and we got a great one right off the bat:

I read your book (awesome, thank you!) and I ran into the first snag when trying to figure budgets. What i want to do would be a new venture into something I’ve never done before, and that each person does in their own way and pace (so asking others already doing it wouldn’t help much), so i have no idea how to figure how much production i can get done in how much time, hence i can’t figure an operating budget or make sales projections.

Any ideas/suggestions? I’m all ears!!

—Carina Feldman

Here are my thoughts: First off, are you able to track your own time for a few clients / projects and then average it out in order to estimate your costs? That would be my suggestion if it’s possible.

I strongly advise using a time tracking system (personally, I’m a fan of Harvest) to record all the time you spend on each project. From there you can generate reports to help you with your pricing.

If the clients and projects really vary, then you’ve got to find a way to predict the variables. For example, check out Ads With Intention’s customer intake form; it asks prospective clients to identify how much preparation they’ve done (photos chosen but not cropped, images already cropped & ready to go, or needing help choosing images & advising on content), which in turn allows the designer to determine how much time she’s likely to have to spend with the customer in order to get the job done.

Other lines of work have time-specific cost structures — for example, massage therapists or music teachers simply charge by the hour — but the rest of us have to estimate our fees based on the time we anticipate spending with each client, and then charge accordingly.

Now, that being said, time is not the only factor in your pricing. Some business experts advocate pricing based on the value of the service you provide, rather than the time it takes you to get the job done, and I think there’s some wisdom in that. But the challenge that a lot of us have when we’re starting out is that we often underestimate how long something is going to take us, and that means we under-charge for our services. The best way to find out whether you’re charging appropriately — at least in order to assess whether you’re making the salary you deserve — is to track your time, set a target wage for yourself, and then check your numbers for each project you have so that you start to learn what types of projects are more or less time-consuming (and therefore more or less costly).

For the sake of your start-up budget, you’ll simply have to enter some round numbers, and then re-assess after a month or two, once you have some firm numbers you can work with.

With drizzly, grey skies still keeping spring at bay in Vancouver, it’s hard to believe the dog days of August are rapidly approaching – but they are, and with them will come an event we are very much looking forward to: The Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs.

The conference (which we’re calling CCE for short) is a 3-day long weekend (August 13-15) jam-packed with great speakers and sessions — and I’m not just saying that because we’re going to be speaking. Even if we weren’t, I’d consider traveling to Seattle to see the likes of Jenny Hart, Lisa Congdon, Cathie Fillian, and the amazing trio that put together Seattle’s Grassroots Business Association: Kristen Rask, Megan Reardon and Andrea Porter.

It’s aimed at designers, artists and crafters (or, as they put it, “handcrafted professionals” – which sounds much more sophisticated), and session themes range from small object photography, to guerrilla marketing, to online selling and the history of craft. And if you buy your ticket before June 1, you can pick up a 3-day pass for just $225. (Single-day passes are $125.)

Oh, and your ticket includes breakfast and lunch each day. How’s that for a good deal?

Emira and I will be leading a session on HR for the Self-Employed (AKA how to treat yourself like a valued employee), and I’m also teaming up with Kristen Rask to share some advice on how to get a lot done in a small amount of time. Plus, we’ll be signing books on Saturday night at Elliott Bay Books, hooray! (We love that store, and can’t wait to see their new location.)

Should be a great, great time. Who’s in?