Weekly discussion by freelancers and professionals about running a business, finding clients, marketing, and lifestyle related to being a freelancer.
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Episode 72: The Freelancers’ Show 072 – Saying NO
Panel Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:18 - The Power of “NO” Getting Things Done by David Allen Instapaper Evernote Omnifocus 06:56 - Just-in-Time Learning 09:02 - Saying “NO” in Hindsight Overcommitment 11:54 - Getting Comfortable with Saying “NO” Derek Sivers: No more yes. It's either HELL YEAH! or no. Confidence Risk Level 19:14 - Having a Financial Cushion Accounting The Freelancers Show 072 - LessAccounting with Steven Bristol 23:04 - Red Flags That Mean an Instant “NO” Client Investment Slimy People The Ruby Freelancers Show 054 - Red Flags with Potential or Current Clients with Ashe Dryden Disrespectful Clients 32:31 - Irregular Clients Project Minimums Referring Clients to Other People Picks Das Keyboard (Reuven) Kalzumeus Podcast 5: Quitting Consulting Via Productization (Reuven) About the Facebook platform, from Pando Daily (Reuven) Derek Sivers: No more yes. It's either HELL YEAH! or no. (Eric) Filmic Pro (Eric) Jaybird Bluebuds (Curtis) Next Week Book Club: Getting Things Done with David Allen Transcript CURTIS: So, am I the leader since I'm recording? REUVEN: I guess so! [Laughs] CURTIS: Whoo-hoo! ERIC: Curtis, leader! [Laughter] CURTIS: That's right, you can call me "The Leader" for the whole show. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CURTIS: Welcome to the Freelancers' Show Episode 72! Today, we're going to talk about the "Power of No". We have, Eric Davis joining us. ERIC: Hi! CURTIS: And Reuven Lerner. I'm Curtis McHale, filling in for Chuck today because he is, I don't know, he's off, probably sitting on the beach somewhere, not doing much. Like I said, today's topic is the "Power of No". As we've been coming up to the bookclub, I've been reading the "Getting Things Done" book and I think the thing that's continually been impressed on me more and more and more is that so many of the issues are all these tasks and 9000 things that are flying at us are just the power of 'No'. I actually been used it yesterday in my Instapaper queue at 97 articles and decided, "I'm never going to read half of these, why they even put them in?" and just said 'No' to them all and dropped down to like 25 actual real articles that I will make time to read. What about you guys? Eric, have you used no or have you, I guess, not over-committed yourself? ERIC: No. CURTIS: [Laughs] Thanks! ERIC: Oh! Yeah! [Laughter] ERIC: I have to say that a lot. While you're talking, I open up my Instapaper, and god! Maybe a month ago, I actually went in there and there's a button, I've been afraid to hit it. It basically says, "Delete everything that's aloo in 30 days." I've had Instapaper stuff in there that came from tags that I had in Delicious, which were from 2005-2006 that I've -- CURTIS: I don't know there is that button. That's just on the web view? ERIC: Yeah. CURTIS: I manually deleted all mine! ERIC: Oh, yeah! Look for an "Archive All", it's on the right side. But yeah, I overcommit stuff. I've had times where I've had over a thousand items on my to-do list, and the Getting Things Done stuff, that's not really...
Episode 71: The Freelancers’ Show 071 – Recording Video
Panel Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:16 - Screencasting Backgrounds Teach Me To Code 03:41 - Software ScreenFlow FFmpeg Jing Camtasia Final Cut Pro Screeny QuickTime Adobe Premier Pro CC Screenr 10:10 - Features Ease of Use Export Formats Add-ons Quality Readable Text 16:04 - Sound 16:26 - Modifier Keys 17:01 - Highlighting OmniDazzle 17:19 - Talking and Explaining during Screencasts Notes PeepCode Teaching Developers | Free PeepCode Blog 20:32 - Presentation Software Keynote Present.js VideoHive After Effects Apple Motion 26:04 - Recording Lectures/Vlogging 28:51 - Getting Work via Screencasts 30:52 - Equipment Audio/Speaker Quality 32:54 - Audio Encoding HandBrake 35:41 - Hosting YouTube Vimeo Libsyn Amazon S3 OneLoad Blip.tv LeadPlayer 41:31 - Subtitles & Transcripts Picks Bookends (Reuven) Boomerang for Gmail (Ashe) OpenEmu (Ashe) Archive.org list of MAME roms (Ashe) Logitech Gamepad F710 (Ashe) LeadPlayer (Eric) Seth Godin: Clients vs. Customers (Eric) The Freelancer's Guide to Long-Term Contracts by Eric Davis (Eric) Flowdock (Jim) OneLoad (Chuck) AudioJungle (Chuck) VideoHive (Chuck) Create Awesome Online Courses (Chuck) Book Club Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th. Next Week Saying No Transcript CHUCK: That's why my kids call onto this to, "Daddy, did you make lots of words about that?" [Laughter] ASHE: That's what I do for a job, honey! CHUCK: [Laughs] Yeah! [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 71 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Jim Gay. JIM: Hello! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hi everyone! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi there! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hey! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we're going to be talking about "Screencasting and Making Videos" and that kind of stuff. I'm a little curious, I know Eric, you've done some screencasts and some video stuff, have any of the rest of you done much? ASHE: I actually do it for end-user training, especially when I'm building something that people going to have to go on in like put content in. A lot of times, I will do videos for them and then transcribe them, so that's basically the documentation for them. CHUCK: That makes sense. JIM: Yeah, I'll do the same thing, but I'll use it for anybody, either like a project manager giving them my high-level overview of something, or a user showing them how to use something, or a developer like, "Here's how I attack those bit of code," something like that. CHUCK: Some of the folks on the show will know that I did Teach Me To Code for about 2 years and I did a whole bunch of screencasts for that. I do some screencasting for my clients, but not really a whole lot. Most of the time, they are technical enough to understand it. And if they aren't,
Episode 70: The Freelancers’ Show 070 – LessAccounting with Steven Bristol
Panel Steven Bristol (twitter blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:15 - Steven Bristol Introduction LessEverything LessAccounting LessFilms LessConf 02:11 - Bookkeeping Why it Sucks 06:04 - Analyzing Numbers Categorization Tagging 08:31 - Why Use LessAccounting? 12:07 - Looking at Your Books (Frequency) LessTimeSpent 14:38 - Steven’s Accounting/Bookkeeping Background 16:42 - LessAccounting vs QuickBooks 19:54 - Building a SaaS Business 21:35 - Consulting 23:24 - Transitioning from Consulting to Product Work 26:34 - Marketing Niche Markets Blog Articles - LessEverything 31:32 - LessEverything Company Makeup Having Employees 34:27 - Building & Running a Business Picks MacBook Pro (Reuven) Relately (Jim) Capsule (Curtis) Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (Eric) Software Indie Podcast: From Consultancy to a Product with Rob Rhyne (Eric) Nathan Barry: How To Launch Anything (Jeff) Daring Fireball: Markdown Syntax Documentation (Chuck) Readme Driven Development (Chuck) Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness (Steven) Planscope (Steven) Couch to 5K (Steven) Book Club Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th. Next Week Recording Video Transcript CHUCK: Why can't those idiots who write software right software? [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 70 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello there! CHUCK: Curtis MacHale. CURTIS: Good day! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello again! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week we have a special guest, and that is Steven Bristol. STEVEN: Hello! CHUCK: Getting started, Steven, do you want to introduce yourself? STEVEN: Sure! My name is Steven Bristol, I run a company called "LessEverything". We do a couple of things. The first thing we do is something called "LessAccounting.com", which is a bookkeeping accounting software we run up in the cloud geared towards small business owners and accountants that hate QuickBooks that hate difficult that want something finally easy in the world of accounting and bookkeeping. We've been doing that for about 6 years now. In addition to that, we have another company called "LessFilms", where we do small films animation, conference videos, that sort of thing for people. And we used to do a thing called "LessConf", which was the best conference in the world; just ask anybody. We started off as a consulting company and bootstrapped our way into a product company. So we've done a little bit of everything in the tech world. CHUCK: Nice. So between you and me and the other few people who might be listening to this -- STEVEN: Sure! CHUCK: Bookkeeping sucks! [Laughs]
Episode 69: The Freelancers’ Show 069 – Setting Boundaries
Panel Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:16 - Setting Work Hours “Do Not Disturb” iPhone feature 06:51 - Making Clients Aware of Boundaries 08:33 - Handling “Emergencies” Deciding How Clients Should Contact You 11:48 - Keeping Chat Logs, Meeting Notes, Recordings, etc. Ecamm Call Recorder for Skype 13:15 - Email 15:58 - When Clients Set Boundaries with You 17:44 - Working with/for Family and/or Friends 24:32 - Setting Boundaries for Working at Home with Family Metal Door Stop Sign Is Daddy on a call? A BusyLight Presence indicator for Lync for my Home Office - Scott Hanselman Messages (iMessage for Mac) Picks Drafts (Eric) Sleeping with Your Business Partner by Becky Stewart-Gross (Eric) Fluid App (Curtis) Postman (Jeff) Shift by Hugh Howey (Ashe) Google Apps (Chuck) Fringe (Chuck) Book Club Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th. Next Week Less Accounting with Steven Bristol Transcript CHUCK: If I ever disappear, it's because I told my Dad that I was moving more than an hour away with his grandchildren. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 69 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello from Chicago! CHUCK: We have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi everyone! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we're going to be talking about "Setting Boundaries" and how to handle that. Have any of you had a project where you tried to set boundaries with a client and then went poorly? ASHE: I have. Definitely with a certain type of client, my biggest boundary that I set with new clients is the hours that I work. There are certain class of clients that believe that people should be available all the time no matter what; no matter if it's emergency or not, they didn't really care for this trekked work hours. CURTIS: Yeah, I think we've all had that. I had a client email me once and then call me at 2 am, and my response was my rate went up based on how annoyed I am because -- [Laughter] CURTIS: I was really annoyed! I actually tell clients that my weekend rate and my evening rate is based on how annoyed I am. [Chuck laughs] ASHE: Nice. CHUCK: I just tell my clients that it's double after 5 or 6 pm, whatever is side, unless I decide to work. In other words, if it's on my terms; but if they call me, yeah. I also tell them I don't have an on-call rate because I won't be on-call. CURTIS: Yeah, fair enough. I had one client that was upset a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't launch their site at midnight for their whole 10-people a day and I told them that I would for $10,000; if they want me to do it, that was my going rate for midnight launches. CHUCK: Nice.
Episode 68: The Freelancers’ Show 068 – Building a Consultancy with Ben Lachman and Robert Cantoni
Panel Ben Lachman (twitter blog) Robert Cantoni (twitter) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:29 - Ben Lachman and Robert Cantoni Introduction Nice Mohawk 02:26 - Finding Work Dividing Client Communication Handling Marketing and Sales 06:52 - Forming a Partnership Contracts 08:23 - Partnerships vs being on your own Finding work for others 15:39 - Managing larger consultancies 16:18 - Potentially expanding the business 18:33 - Marketing Avenues Referrals/Word-of-mouth 23:02 - Working with other consultancies 24:59 - Ideal vision for the business 29:10 - Advice for someone looking to build a consultancy Pick your projects wisely Picks A/B Testing (Curtis) 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron (Eric) Coursera Public Speaking Course (Ashe) Nairobi Developer School Indiegogo Campaign (Ashe) Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are (Jeff) Patrick Mackenzie: What Product Companies Can Learn From Consulting Companies (Reuven) David Siteman Garland: Create Awesome Online Courses (Chuck) Jefferson's Bourbon (Ben) Matasano Crypto Challenges (Ben) ustwo Pixel Perfect Precision Handbook (Robert) Mike Monteiro: Getting Comfortable With Contracts (Robert) Book Club Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th. Next Week Setting Boundaries Transcript CHUCK: Ashe is our voice of reason. BEN: Great. [Reuven laughs] ASHE: Oh, we're in trouble. [Laughter] ERIC: Can we mute her then? [Laughter] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 68 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello from Madison, Wisconsin! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello there! CHUCK: Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hey! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have a couple of special guests! Our first guest is Ben Lachman. BEN: Hello from Athens, Ohio! CHUCK: And we also have Robert Cantoni. ROBERT: Yup! That's my name! Hi, everybody! CHUCK: Why don't you guys introduce yourselves before we get going? BEN: Go for it, Bob! ROBERT: [Laughs] Okay! Ben and I work together, we have a company called "Nice Mohawk Ltd.". We do iOS development and lots of freelancing stuff. We have one app of our own that's sort of out in the store, that's what we do; mostly contract work at this point. CHUCK: You say nice mohawk, and I think bikers. ROBERT: [Laughs] Like motorcycle? CHUCK: Yeah. ROBERT: Motorcycle bikes? CHUCK: Yup. BEN: Not tricycle. ROBERT: Yeah. CHUCK: Not tricycles [laughs]. Sweet. [Robert laughs] CHUCK: Ben, anything you want to add to that? BEN: No! I mean we have -- so I started out on my own. And then a little over a year ago, we started Nice Mohawk together,
Episode 67: The Freelancers’ Show 067 – LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth
Panel Wayne Breitbarth (twitter linkedin) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:07 - Wayne Breitbarth Introduction The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success by Wayne Breitbarth 01:37 - Importance of LinkedIn 02:39 - Making Connections Advance Search Filtering 03:16 - Handling Random Requests/Spam 04:16 - Finding Others vs Getting Found 07:34 - Profile Advice Catchy Headline Descriptive Summary Establish Credibility List Resources 12:50 - Profiles vs Resumes Attention Span Calls to Action 17:39 - Groups 20:00 - Choosing LinkedIn over other platforms (i.e. Google+) 22:03 - Endorsements 26:06 - Free vs Paid Accounts 28:19 - Getting the most out of LinkedIn Cool Profile Strategic Connections 31:28 - Volunteer Causes and Experiences 34:39 - Profile Pictures 35:53 - Finding and joining good groups 37:38 - Handling Profile Views Finding out how people find you 41:27 - Spending time on LinkedIn 42:29 - Reaching out to others via LinkedIn 43:36 - LinkedIn Third Party Applications LinkedIn App Hootsuite 44:27 - Status Updates 44:48 - Company Pages Picks S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System (Reuven) org-S5 (Reuven) Backups (Reuven) PHPStorm Tutorials (Curtis) My Daily Scrum (Curtis) Scrivener (Eric) Bartender | Mac Menu Bar Item Control (Jeff) Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael S. Hyatt (Wayne) This Is Your Life Podcast (Chuck) Platform University (Chuck) Next Week Freelancers Show: Building a Consultancy with Ben Lachman and Robert Cantoni Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 67 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello! CHUCK: Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good day! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's Wayne Breitbarth. WAYNE: Hi everybody! CHUCK: Since you haven't been on the show before, do you want to introduce yourself? WAYNE: Sure! My name is Wayne Breitbarth, I'm the author of "The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success" - sort of a self-taught, self-made LinkedIn expert; didn't want anything to do with social media, but now has found a way to actually make a living doing it and just having a blast doing so. CHUCK: Awesome. I've been reading your book, and it's really, really good. And I'm really excited to talk about a lot of the stuff related to LinkedIn. For us as freelancers, I'm a little curious, what do you think the most important part of LinkedIn is for us? WAYNE: I think what we all have to do -- we're all sort of in the game of trying to build our business every single day of the week, right? One of the most important things you got to do is make a lot of connections - the right connections. Secondly, you got to make sure that your profile has got all the critical keywords. I know you are very techy guys, so you probably get that part that many people don't.
Episode 66: The Freelancers’ Show 066 – Unconventional Marketing with David J. Soler
Panel David J. Soler (twitter blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:04 - David J. Soler Introduction Relationship Marketing & Sales Podcast davidjsoler.com 01:54 - Building Relationships and Getting Referrals Trust, Likability, Credibility + Value (TLC+V) Handwritten, Personal Notes 13:39 - Trust Integrity Reputation Consistency 23:52 - Unconventional Marketing ‘Wow’ Factor Before, During, and After Items of Value 30:11 - Referrals 32:10 - Meet Your Clients 34:31 - Appreciation and Encouragement 36:37 - Relationships Over Business Picks Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money by Rabbi Daniel Lappin (Curtis) Ladda Buttons (Curtis) Freelancing Rules of Thumb (Eric) Apple Developer: for WWDC Videos (Jeff) Mac Pro (Jeff) httpie (Reuven) Reversing PDF Documents (Reuven) Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson (Chuck) The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (David) Next Week Freelancers Show: LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth Transcript DAVID: Are we live on the show? Are we broadcasting...or just setting up? CHUCK: I'm just doing some quick sound checks and then we'll get going... DAVID: Okay, great! CHUCK: Which is just me watching the volume meter while everybody talks. So, go ahead. REUVEN: Ohh! Is that what secretly happens? [laughter] REUVEN: And here I thought you're just trying to get us to be friendly. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 66 of The Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good morning! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner is trying to connect. I guess the wiring in Atlantic Ocean got cut; somebody wrong it over or something. I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's David J. Soler. DAVID: Hello everybody! Thanks for having me! CHUCK: No problem. Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? DAVID: Sure! My name is David J. Soler, I am the host of the Relationship Marketing and Sales Podcast. You can learn more about me at davidjsoler.com. I am here to share and answer new questions that I can that you guys want to ask! CHUCK: Awesome! Now, I know David because we're in the same Mastermind Group, so we talk twice a month and he has helped me with quite a bit of marketing stuff. The thing that really kind of got me excited about getting you on the call besides your podcast, which is awesome, you've had some great guests, too. I think my favorite is the one with David Siteman Garland. DAVID: Yeah, it was blast. He's just a real smart guy, online entrepreneur, and just lot of great helpful tips. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been a blast to interview people like him. CHUCK: Yeah. Anyway, you did something that was a little bit kind of outside the box that got me thinking, so I thought we'd bring that on and have you talk to us a little bit about some of the, I guess, less conventional things that you do. What you did was you sent 'Thank You' cards out to everybody in our Mastermind Group. I have to say, I don't usually get Pay-Per-Mail unless it's Pay-Per-Mail that says, "You owe us money." [David chuckles] CHUCK: So, I thought that was interesting! I was just wondering, what other ideas or techniques or ways of coming up with things like that, that we could do in our freelancing businesses to kind of make a connection? DAVID: Sure, definitely! Well, the thing about it and approach that I'm trying to take you say unconventional, really,
Episode 65: The Freelancers’ Show 065 – Handling Prospects’ Poor Technology Choices with Jevin Maltais
Panel Jevin Maltais (github Quickjack Solutions) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles M...
Episode 64: The Freelancers’ Show 064 – Social Media
Panel Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 42:46 - Social Media Panel Activity Levels SaneBox 03:12 - Primary Social Networks Twitter Facebook LinkedIn 04:07 - LinkedIn Recommendations Job Leads Resume @ProBlogger: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program 10:25 - Twitter Censorship Visibility 16:54 - Facebook Games Facebook Ads Rob Walling: The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising 22:10 - Social Media Management Apps Tweetbot HootSuite Buffer Instapaper If This Then That (IFTTT) Pinboard 24:57 - Automated Tweeting 27:47 - The benefits and pitfalls of using Twitter Is that Owned Content Worth Anything? - Curtis McHale Building and maintaining relationships 31:45 - Google+ Google+ Communities SEO Benefits Google Authorship 35:15 - Forum Sites Reddit /r/freelance FreelanceSwitch Hacker News Harassment and bullying Paul Graham: What I’ve Learned from Hacker News 43:11 - Membership Sites 5000bc Dynamite Circle Picks HappyCow: Vegetarian Restaurants, Vegan Restaurant, Natural Health Food Stores (Reuven) Mouseflow (Reuven) Python Module of the Week (Reuven) xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? (Jeff) 78,000 Apply for A One-Way Ticket to Colonize Mars | Singularity Hub (Jeff) Favstar (Ashe) feedly (Ashe) TripIt Pro (Ashe) Chrome Messenger Bag (Curtis) Philips O’Neill Over-Ear Flex Headphones (Curtis) Review - Philips O'Neill The Stretch Headphones - Curtis McHale (Curtis) Ergotron Monitor Stand (Curtis) Authority by Nathan Barry (Chuck) Candy Crush Saga (Chuck) Next Week Handling Prospects' Poor Technology Choices with Jevin Maltais Transcript CHUCK: My daughter put, "My dad's job is cutting the grass," and my son put, "My dad's job is working..." [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 64 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello there! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi there! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And this week, we're going to be talking about "Social Media" for freelancers. How active are you guys on your social media? ASHE: I'm on a limb here and say I'm probably the most prolific Squidoo-er of all of us. CHUCK: I would guess you're right. [laughter] CURTIS: I'd certainly go into heads down mode, probably once a day or I don't post anything for extended extended periods. CHUCK: Yeah. I put funny odds and ends that people say on Twitter and then I do interact with people on Twitter. So if you tweet at me, then I'll probably reply if you say something that is more interesting than just yes or no. But other than that, I'm really not on there too much. REUVEN: So I'm going to be at the other end of the spectrum from Ashe, and I think I might have not tweet once. I'm starting to get convinced that it's worth doing, but so far, that's like -- once you are sent out a note on Facebook, so in everyone, thanks for all the happy birthday wishes. So if there's anywhere I'm active at all, it's on LinkedIn. But even there, it's pretty moderate. CHUCK: Wow. CURTIS: Yeah, on Facebook, I always checks as my wife were saying happy birthday. So I'm going to get like a million updates in a day, and they all email me because I check it so infrequently that I just have it set to "email me". CHUCK: Yeah, mine set to "email me", and then I use "SaneBox", and SaneBox sorts it all off so I never see them anyway. [laughter] ASHE: Awesome!
Episode 63: The Freelancers’ Show 063 – WordPress with Curtis McHale
Panel Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:37 - Reuven Lerner Introduction 01:10 - Curtis McHale Introduction WordPress The Coderpath Podcast 01:57 - Consulting, Tools & Apps fvrb (Curtis’ Ruby Brigade) Billings Pro Ronin Trello Evernote Dropbox Evernote Hello Evernote Skitch Napkin Mailbox IFTTT (If This Then That) 10:21 - Ronin FreshBooks Harvest Harvest Online Invoicing & Time Tracking: Curtis McHale Multiple Currencies Marketcircle: Daylite Complete Review of Daylite 4: Curtis McHale 13:16 - Customer Relationship Management The Trello/Evernote Combo Highrise Salesforce Curtis’ Trello Gist Podio 15:50 - Trello 17:18 - Booking Out Work 18:38 - Consulting in WordPress 21:33 - Getting Leads & Establishing Connections 23:15 - Application Development with WordPress Tom McFarlin 25:51 - Advantages of WordPress Joomla/Mambo Drupal 29:18 - Dealing w/ new WordPress Versions Security Issues Metasploit 34:39 - Resources curtismchale.ca WP Theme Tutorial Become a WordPress Development Professional by Curtis McHale sfndesign.ca Picks IRS Cracks Down on Independent Contractors - What it Means for Your Small Business (Eric) WordPress Core is Secure - Stop Telling People Otherwise (Eric) One Tab Chrome Extension (Jeff) Arrested Development (Reuven) ridiculous_fish (Reuven) zsh-syntax-highlighting (Reuven) Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro (Reuven) iOctocat (Chuck) ioctocat on GitHub (Chuck) Kinesis Freestyle Keyboard (Curtis) Unfinished Business Podcast (Curtis) The Trello/Evernote Combo (Curtis) Next Week Social Media Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to the Freelancers Show Episode 63! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have, Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hi there! CHUCK: We also have a special guest, and that's Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hey! CHUCK: So I'm going to have Reuven introduce himself first, and then we'll have Curtis introduce himself. REUVEN: Sure! So I'm a web developer mostly doing Ruby on Rails and Postgres stuff; I've been freelancing since 1995. I would say I divide my time between actual programming and consulting, and then I'm off a lot of training as well; I teach a lot of courses. And I live in Israel, which you might not figure out from my accent. CHUCK: Yeah, we have 3 time zones, 4 time zones represented on the show right now. [Reuven chuckles] CHUCK: And Curtis, you want to introduce yourself? CURTIS: Sure! I'm Curtis McHale. I actually started, I guess many years ago now, doing some frontend Rails and Ruby stuff. But now, I pretty much only do WordPress work. That's what I do; I've been building sites and stuff since 1996, I guess. That's when I started dabbling in it in amidst to have a psychology degree. CHUCK: Yeah, I have to say I remember listening to you and Miles on the Coderpath Podcast. CURTIS: Yeah, that's when I was doing my list of it, like I was saying earlier just before the show, I went to Mountain West and did a bunch of stuff, but I did not come in as frontend Rails so I needed to pay the bills and that's what I did. CHUCK: That makes sense! [Curtis chuckles] CHUCK: So I'm a little curious, we got you on here to talk about WordPress, we also got you on here to talk about your consulting in general, so how do you wind up making that transition? Did you just take the work that was coming in, and that was WordPress? Or, was there more to it than that? CURTIS: Well,
Episode 62: The Freelancers’ Show 062 – Giving Things Away For Free
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:53 - Consulting/Giving time away for free 04:59 - Giving away content to generate leads 09:16 - Tier content and pricing ...
Episode 61: The Freelancers’ Show 061 – Travel
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:44 - Packing 03:15 - Traveling for clients vs conferences 06:38 - Packing cont’d & flying Rick Steves Packing Cube - 3 Set 08:05 - Lodging Staying w/ friends Airbnb Hotels 14:01 - Traveling w/ electronics New Trent iCarrier 12000mAh Dual USB Ports External Battery Pack TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router StrongVPN 19:51 - Getting through the airport & flying Alaska Airlines Mobile App TripIt Instapaper Dream Essentials Sweet Dreams Contoured Sleep Mask with Earplugs and Carry Pouch 27:15 - Staying off the beaten path 29:38 - Taking care of yourself while traveling 32:43 - Getting around Car rentals Public transportation 37:05 - Finding deals & saving $$$ KAYAK Bing Travel Fare Predictor Travelzoo 40:40 - Traveling within driving distance Picks StrongVPN (Eric) Funding your startup with a "one on / three off" setup (Eric) Lonely Planet (Ashe) Wikitravel (Ashe) Markdown Here (Ashe) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Mobile Companion with Rechargeable Battery (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Review (Chuck) DevChat.tv Indiegogo Campaign (Chuck) Next Week Giving Things Away For Free Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 61 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "Travelling for Work". This is something that I do frequently and suck at terribly, so I'm a little curious as to what suggestions you guys have for travelling. I think most of my angst comes from like packing and I always wind up forgetting stuff. [laughs] It's just the way it is. I just throw a whole bunch of stuff in the duffle bag, put on my computer stuff in my computer bag, and then curse the TSA in my head the whole way through the airport. ASHE: Ain't that's how a lot of us do it? [laughter] CHUCK: Yeah. So, I know you travel quite a bit, Ashe. ASHE: I do. I travel a lot for conferences. CHUCK: So, what's kind of the biggest thing that makes your life easier when you travel? ASHE: I have a separate bag that I use for travelling, and I actually have like a separate copy of everything that I use in my regular life that goes inside that bag. So like I have a toiletry bag, and my toothbrush, and hairbrush, and everything always stay in there. That way, I never have to remember to pack that stuff because the things that I always tend to forget are my hairbrush and my pajamas - every single time. I'm not entirely sure why, but those are the two things that I always forget. So I try to minimize the damage by trying to keep as much stuff in my like travelling bag as possible. CHUCK: That makes a lot of sense. There I admit that when I went down to New Media Expo -- my wife doesn't listen to the show, so I won't be in trouble -- but she hadn't on a laundry in like two weeks and I had no clean clothes, so I drove down to Las Vegas and I went and bought underwear and socks so I would have clean clothes to wear while I was down there. ASHE: Nice! [Chuck laughs] ASHE: I know a lot of people that when they travel internationally like they'll pack everything very tightly. And then when they're getting ready to leave, they actually throw out their underwear and their socks and I mean that's kind of cheap to replace, so they have room for souvenirs or whatever else they're bringing back. ERIC: Yeah, I've heard people that do that. Like what they'll do, is they'll travel to a place that's kind of cold then pick up a jacket there. And then if they leave,
Episode 60: The Freelancers’ Show 060 – Project Management
Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:58 - Project Management 02:46 - Project Management Software Pivotal Tracker Redmine Asana 05:26 - Communication and Clarification Discovery and Estimation 09:59 - Agile Methodology Workflow 15:28 - Billing Project Management Time Harvest 18:57 - Managing Internal Projects To-Do Lists Outsourcing Board of Advisors 25:46 - Managing Future Projects and Ideas Getting Things Done by David Allen 28:47 - Book Writing Workflows Picks National Geographic Found (Ashe) Will You Sponsor Me? - Elise Worthy (Ashe) MediaElement.js (Chuck) Hover (Chuck) Next Week Travel Transcript ASHE: Life's a little weird sometimes... [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 60 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We have a few people out at, I think it's MicroConf...I should just look it up so I know the name of the conference. Anyway, they are in Vegas and I think we might have one or two people at RailsConf, or it may just have stuff going on today. So, it's just the two of us! ASHE: Sounds good! [laughs] CHUCK: It feels like you're filling in for Eric! ASHE: Eric can never be replaced... CHUCK: [laughs] Only temporarily, huh? ASHE: Only temporarily. I'm just standing up for you, buddy! CHUCK: [laughs] Awesome. Alright, so this week, I was thinking that we could talk about "Managing Projects", both projects, kind of internal projects I guess, and for clients - client projects. I have to say this is something that I'm really not good at, so I'm hoping that you can impart some wisdom. ASHE: Oh, I'll do my best. I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I don't think that many of us come from a Project Management or like any kind of Management background, really. So, it's something that's very new that we don't necessarily have the skills for right off the bat. CHUCK: Yeah. But at the same time, if you've worked for a company on a team, using somebody managing the project, whether they were aware of it or not… ASHE: Yeah. I think that working at a couple of places is definitely given me an idea of what Project Management isn't, which might help to kind of stir in the direction of what Project Management should be. CHUCK: So, you're going to give us an 'anti-definition' then? ASHE: Yeah...I don't know. I've struggled a lot. I think that a lot of people have similar complaints about project management styles or like the kind of stereotype of what a Project Manager is; promising things too soon or promising things without actually running it by the developers. Or, trying to figure out what actual problems are in the project management process instead of just the tools that are involved, because I've seen that one a lot. Where, "Oh, something's not working! Let's just change the project management software that we're using because that must be the problem." [laughter] CHUCK: That's right. It's always the tools. ASHE: Yeah! So, that's definitely not the way that I would go. I'm kind of interested, what are you doing for project management right now for software? CHUCK: I've used, in software projects anyway, I've used Pivotal Tracker; really really like Pivotal Tracker. I've looked at Redmine, and I want to get to know it better mainly because I have people coming to me and asking me to customize it. And so, I wanted to get to know it a little bit better. But for the most part, that's what I'm using. And then for other projects, I've been using Asana lately, which was mentioned on the show by Farnoosh Brock, if you want to go back and look at that. So yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing.
Episode 59: The Freelancers’ Show 059 – Overcoming Burnout
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:13 - Coping with Burnout Taking up hobbies Outside job stressors Exercise 07:21 - Overcommitting 09:59 - Expectations Having children Setting boundaries PPC Principle = Production vs Production Capacity (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey) 16:32 - Work/Life Balance Your personal definition of relaxation 20:26 - Depression 22:27 - Coping Mechanisms Partner support Talking through it 29:43 - Preventing Burnout Don’t push your limits Regrets of the Dying Frustration Driven Development by Evan D. Light Picks Slate Magazine | Boston bombing breaking news: Don't watch cable. Shut of Twitter. You'd be better off cleaning your gutters. (Eric) Happier (Evan) Happy: The Movie (Evan) Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin E. P. Seligman (Evan) If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This - Peter Bregman (Evan) A Wet Towel In Space Is Not Like A Wet Towel On Earth (Ashe) Mou (Markdown App) (Ashe) No Equipment? No Excuses: 20 Exercises You Can Do At Home (Ashe) My Best Mistake: Too Much Success - Gary Vaynerchuk (Jim) Unplugging the TV (Jim) Battlestar Galactica (Chuck) Downton Abbey (Chuck) Downton Abbey at 54 Below - Season 4, Episode 1 Sneak Peek (Chuck) @freelancershow (Chuck) Next Week Project Management Transcript CHUCK: Alright, I'm still adjusting volume here. JIM: Am I too loud? EVAN: Oh, no! But, you're way too deep... [laughter] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 59 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: Hellooo! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week's topic is going to be "Dealing with Burnout". Just to give you a little bit of background, I actually chose this topic because I am dealing with burnout. Anyway, I thought it'd be interesting to talk about it to see if you guys experience this and -- EVAN: No, never! Ever! JIM: Alright, it's been fun! [laughter] EVAN: That's it. CHUCK: I'm totally burned out on these guys, I'm leaving. EVAN: You have a nice model object. CHUCK: [laughs] Anyway, I got off this project a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know! I just haven't been able to really sit down and want to write code. And, it was really hard for me because I was burned out all through the month of most Ruby Conference. I enjoyed talking to people, but usually I wind up messing around with code and stuff during the conference and I'll come home and go the whole bunch. I really enjoy writing code! And, I'm really not enjoying writing code...And so, I was wondering what you guys do to cope with this kind of thing? EVAN: [inaudible] [laughter] EVAN: I'm serious! I just work a little bit less and maybe I don't produce many hours and maybe I spend more time doing complete things that have nothing to do with the computer. ASHE: Yeah. A couple of years ago, I had a really bad case of burnout. It probably last to close to a year. I just hated doing work every single day and I started picking up hobbies. I had nothing to do with sitting in a computer like I picked up meeting, which for most people who know me like I'm not like a very domestic does-curly-girl-type thing, so picking up meeting was kind of different for me, which I love doing now and I really enjoy doing that; rode my bike more, spent more time outside. I was trying to get like my work-life balance back in order, so it's only working a maximum of 8 hours a day. [Chuck laughs]
Episode 58: The Ruby Freelancers Show 058 – Convincing Clients of the Value of Testing, Refactoring, Documentation, etc.
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:13 - Is there value in testing and refactoring? Client Value vs Developer Value Unit Tests Acceptance Tests 09:22 - Saving time and money Better Code Maintainability 13:45 - When not doing tests hurts 14:39 - Refactoring “Changing Shit”/Restructuring 19:48 - Approaching restructuring “Leave it better than you found it” Use metrics Coding “taste” and style 30:36 - Software exists to provide value 32:33 - Documentation 34:45 - Getting clients to see the value in tests Characterization Tests 41:04 - Deployment 42:57 - Client Dictatorship Using specific libraries or tools or databases The Trust Factor 054 – Red Flags with Potential or Current Clients with Ashe Dryden Draconian technology Picks Software Engineers Spend Lots of Time Not Building Software (Eric) Status Board (Eric) Backbone.js (Chuck) Toy Story: Smash It! (Chuck) Next Week Overcoming Burnout Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 58 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. It looks like everybody else is busy, so it's just going to be us this week! So how's it going, Eric? ERIC: I'm not that busy. I had a busy week last week; and basically, I actually took yesterday off. So, I'm just starting to kind of get back into things again so I actually have a bunch of time. CHUCK: Yeah. I just picked up another contract so things are starting to ramp up for me again. And then I'm trying to get all these stuff together for a few other things I've got going on. But yeah, there's always something to do. ERIC: Yeah. The hamster world never stops spinning. CHUCK: Yup. I'm seriously thinking about going and taking a nap after this instead of working, though. So this week, we're going to be talking about "How to Convince Clients of the Value of Test and Refactoring" and things like that. I guess we should talk about the premise really quickly of "Is there value in Test and Refactoring and stuff?" ERIC: Yeah. I don't know, I don't agree with a lot of the kind of popular opinion about bits on how you test everything and all that stuff. I'm very -- pragmatic is a good way of raising about it, I'm not sure -- I think there's value there, but I don't think there's as much value as a lot of people place in it. And especially if you consider it from the client's perspective, there might not be as much value in testing and refactoring, all that stuff, as developers put into it. CHUCK: Okay. What value do you see in tests? ERIC: For client, the value that they're going to get out of test is going to be "Regression Type Test", like this bug occurred, it was fixed; there's a test to prove it's never going to come back. There's also value in kind of like "End-to-End Test" - some people call that "Exception Test" or "Integration Test" where the system works from point A to point C going through point B. That's where the clients are hopefully really involved with like writing the test, how it's going to flow, and all that stuff. In those cases, I think there's a lot of value for the client. Depending on the client and the type of software you're building, they might not want to put a lot of time into it. I've had couple of clients where they are too busy to actually write this Sentence test, and so I would write them based on what the client would tell me, and then as we iterate on it like the workflow, we would tweak or understand the system and I would take that understanding and write the test for them. On the other hand, "Unit Test" I think for a client, there's very little value for them directly in unit test. I think,