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Episode 57: The Ruby Freelancers Show 057 – Fixed Bids
Panel 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 00:39 - Experience working with fixed bids 04:08 - Risks Value 06:45 - Collecting Payment Working in phases and milestones 08:56 - Are fixed bid projects fair? 16:57 - Nailing down specifics 19:51 - Dealing with scope creep Contract clauses/additional contracts 26:15 - Getting clients to agree with your fixed bid or hourly preference 28:29 - Estimates Prioritizing Point estimation 37:11 - Transitioning from fixed bid to hourly work 38:42 - Figuring out what to bid Project management Value-Based Fees: How to Charge - and Get - What You're Worth by Alan Weiss Option pricing 44:41 - Ask clients why they prefer fixed bid pricing Picks Healthy Programmer by Joe Kutner (Ashe) DuoLingo (Ashe) #RubyThanks (Ashe) Becoming a Better Programmer Indie GoGo campaign (Ashe) Douglas Rushkoff: Wall Street Journal adaptation from Present Shock (Eric) Ruby Heroes (Chuck) Colloquy (Chuck) Value-Based Fees: How to Charge - and Get - What You're Worth by Alan Weiss (Jeff) Next Week How do you convince clients of the value of tests, refactoring, etc.? Transcript ERIC: Chuck, I'm cold. Keep me warm! [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 57 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello from Madison, Wisconsin! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we're going to be talking about "Fixed Bids". How much of you guys done with fixed bids? ASHE: I used to do them a lot more than I do them now; I actually tried to not do fixed bids. CHUCK: Is there a reason for that? ASHE: Yeah. It never really sticks really well with the fixed bid; I mostly do hourly now. I prefer hourly because it allows the client to kind of expand or contract their needs without feeling limited by the contract and it makes me feel less mean. CHUCK: Oh, it makes sense. ASHE: So I don't have to constantly say "Well, that wasn't really part of the original contract". I can give them what they need and what they want without having to have that difficult conversation. CHUCK: How about you guys, Eric and Jeff? JEFF: I've done a few very small fixed bid projects. But by large, I'm mostly hourly mostly for the same reason as Ashe has. And beyond that, it's really hard to get a scope timed on off and it makes it comfortable for me to try to bid on something. ERIC: For me...I don't know, maybe 20% if that -- I actually have a different reason. I don't mind fixed bids, but the project has to be very specific. There has to be a lot of trust between me and the client first off so that I can trust that they're going to understand what's cocube is; we don't have those problems or discussions. The other side of it is, the project has to be [inaudible] and that it's something I've done before or there's not a lot of technical risk on the project. If there is a lot of technical risk for a lot of unknowns, then I basically say "We're going to have to be hourly because I can't guess this upfront and commit to it". CHUCK: Yeah. I've done a couple of fixed bids myself, they were less than a thousand dollars effect; both of them were $500 a piece and it was an enough work that it wasn't that risky. One of them, I really actually didn't get paid on; and it was because I was setting up some software, some third-party software, for somebody on their server. He was unhappy with the result because there was a bug in the software that I set up, but I didn't actually write it. Anyway, it's kind of interesting I haven't done major fixed bid projects,
Episode 56: The Ruby Freelancers Show 056 – Learning on the Job
Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:20 - Finding Projects 04:50 - Being up front with clients about what you do and don’t know 06:14 - People who don’t know as much as they think they do Dunning-Kruger effect 08:21 - “Fake it til you make it” Honesty 11:23 - Offering a technology before you know it can be done Referring someone else instead Contract Specifics 15:59 - Lowering your rate to take a project to break into a new market Value Discounts/Comping Time 22:37 - Getting stuck and taking time to figure things out Time Tracking Reaching out for help in exchange for ____ (temporary mentorship) Velocity Subcontracting 28:35 - Taking a project because you want to learn a specific skill 30:02 - Refactoring Convincing a client that it’s good to refactor Showing good code vs bad good Is it code that you’re proud of? Client budget 34:45 - Educating clients on technology Episode 1 - Mongo DB Is Web Scale (NSFW) Technical Risk 37:05 - Panelist New Technology Interest Picks xkcd: Password Strength (Eric) GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle? (Eric) Diceware Passphrase (Eric) SaneBox (Eric) Mailbox (Evan) Flexibits | Fantastical for Mac (Evan) How much sleep do we really need to work productively? - The Buffer Blog (Jim) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte (Jim) Most Productive Vim Shortcuts (Ashe) UX Apprentice (Ashe) Wool by Hugh Howey (Ashe) Robocalypse (Chuck) The iPhreaks Show (Chuck) Next Week Fixed Bids Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 56 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi there! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from Sauna in Virginia Beach! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I'm truly confused [inaudible] CHUCK: Is there an order? JIM: Yeah, we had an order? EVAN: I'd do Eric, and then you do me, and then you do whoever else up in a Shell Bluff. CHUCK: Oh! I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv, and I'm doing it wrong...So this week we're going to be talking about "Taking a Project to Learn Something". I think Ashe said it better, so I'm going to let her explain what we're talking about. ASHE: Sure! So basically, the concept of taking on a project specifically say "you can learn something new and expand upon what you already know", so learning on the job kind of thing. CHUCK: You mean like speaking coherently when you didn't sleep last night? ASHE: Exactly like that! [laughs] CHUCK: [laughs] Awesome! JIM: I'm curious then right off of that, because I haven't done a whole lot of that. How do you find these projects? It's one thing to think or I'm going to work on this new technology, but then actually finding somebody who needs it and convincing them that you're the person for the job. ASHE: Well for me, most of the time it's people coming to me asking if I know how to do a certain thing or if I've done a certain thing before. That gives me an idea that that's something that people are looking for, or it's maybe something that I should look into more and maybe think about learning. I don't generally go out of my way to find projects that are for something that I haven't been learning or haven't wanting to learn. EVAN: Yeah, same here. My current projects -- I'm doing a lot more JavaScripts than I normally do and I've been doing JavaScript off and on for a long time, but I haven't play with Backbone, my friends expect this project has a little bit. So what I told the client, because he'd ask if I knew that the other contractor,
Episode 55: The Ruby Freelancers Show 055 – Better Communications with Clients, Prospects, and other Contractors with Jenn Swanson (Communication Diva)
Panel Jenn Swanson (twitter Communication Diva eBook) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:32 - Jenn Swanson Introduction C...
Episode 54: The Ruby Freelancers Show 054 – Red Flags with Potential or Current Clients with Ashe Dryden
Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:48 - Ashe Dryden Introduction Indie Developer and Conference Organizer from Madison, Wisconsin 02:39 - Contracts Signing yours vs theirs Having a contract The Ruby Freelancers Show 049 - Contracts with Attorney Jared Richards 09:08 - Working with Down Payments and Deposits 10:35 - Clients asking you to reduce your hourly rate or paying you in something other than money 13:26 - Discovery (DaaS - Discovery as a Service) 19:35 - Referral-based Work 20:58 - Business Hours & Availability Poor Project Management Needy Clients Setting clients up to work in a way that works well for you 26:28 - Clients treating consultants and contractors as employees Points of contact 31:49 - Clients not knowing what they want 33:58 - Signing unreasonable non-compete agreements 37:57 - Timelines and Deliverables Asking clients for what you need to do your work/keep deadlines Setting expectations before work begins 45:05 - Communication Meeting in the middle Has the client worked with a freelancer before? 48:02 - Deal Breakers Expertise Conflicts Emergency Deadlines 55:20 - Managing Non-Payment Non-refundable Deposits One strike, two strike approach Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. (Video, NSFW/language) Freelance Contracts That Anyone Can Understand: Ashe Dryden ashedryden / freelance-contract 58:53 - Client Respect Disappearing Clients Punctuality Meeting Agendas Meetings Picks Arduino (Eric) amperka / ino (Eric) Block Fortress (Evan) Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra Star Trek TNG Shirt | eBay (Evan) Sevabot (Jeff) Google Calendar (Chuck) Amazon S3 (Chuck) graze (Ashe) Gittip (Ashe) DAYTUM (Ashe) Next Week Better Communications with Clients, Prospects, and other Contractors with Jenn Swanson (Communication Diva) Transcript CHUCK: That's true. I have pretty high tolerance for a lot of things. EVAN: Well, you work with Dave Brady, right? [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 54 of The Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: It's really episode 42.. CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We have a special guest this week, Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi there! CHUCK: Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly since you haven't been on the show? ASHE: Yeah, that's fine. My name is Ashe Dryden, obviously. I live in Madison, Wisconsin; I'm an indie developer and conference organizer, and generally, community harasser. CHUCK: [laughs] Yes. EVAN: It fits in the one who are troublemaker. [laughter] CHUCK: Yup. We're learning from the best. [Evan laughs] CHUCK: Anyway, this week we're going to be talking about "Red Flags" with potential and current clients. It was interesting the way it came about. I had been fighting with -- I don't want to use the word 'fighting' -- but I had been emailing former client who hadn't paid me for probably like 7 or 8 months. And so there was this whole discussion that we had on Twitter about deposits and things like that, and Ashe mentioned that she has this list -- I don't know if it's a formal list or kind of a mental list -- of red flags that she watches for. So we thought we'd get her on the show to see what red flags she has for current client, some potential clients. I'm sure we all have things to add and experience that we've had with clients that can tell you that some -- EVAN: Oh, no! All my clients have been saints, so I don't know what you're talking about. [silence]
Episode 53: The Ruby Freelancers Show 053 – Building and Marketing Products with Farnoosh Brock
Panel Farnoosh Brock (twitter facebook Prolific Living Prolific Living Podcast The Healthy Juicer’s Bible) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:37 - Farnoosh Brock Introduction Prolific Living New Media Expo 01:41 - Marketing 04:00 - Marketing Coaching Services Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling by Michael Port Target Audience 06:05 - Giving away products vs time and services The Ruby Freelancers Show: 006 - Setting Your Rate 08:32 - Pricing The Prolific Living Podcast Episode 83: 4 Bold Steps to Communicating Your Prices without Apology Price higher than you feel comfortable Handling price criticism 12:54 - Levels of Access Freebies 16:48 - Value Working backwards pricing idea 19:39 - Advertising Mailing Lists (some at different levels of marketing aggressiveness) Guest Posting Blogging Social Media LinkedIn Groups Forums 23:59 - Closing Sales on the Phone Zig Ziglar 26:40 - Video Marketing Free content as teaser to paid content Credibility 31:51 - Effective Marketing Strategies Escape from Cubicle Nation 48 Days, LLC Cliff Ravenscraft 36:17 - Podcasting 37:46 - Getting on other people’s radar 39:33 - Help a Reporter Out (HARO) (Vocus will call you once as soon as you create an account. Saying you aren't interested will stop calls.) 45:39 - Speaking/Webinars SlideShare Speaker Deck The Ruby Freelancers Show: 036 - Speaking at Conferences 49:09 - Book Marketing (Self-Publishing) Amazon Author Central Reviews Farnoosh's Amazon Page Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) 55:13 - Book Marketing (w/ a Publisher) Taking the lead 59:05 - Self-publishing vs going w/ a traditional publisher 01:03:19 - Making the right product for your market Building your platform Amy Hoy The Formula You Need: 30 x 500: Zero to Launch for Your Very First Paying Product Picks Seth Godin's Blog: Choose your customers first (Eric) "If it Bleeds, it Leads" (Evan) Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler (Evan) Ruby Midwest (Evan) VIM to EMACS (Evan) Hazel (Chuck) Battlestar Galactica (Chuck) House of Cards (Evan) Young Justice: Invasion Destiny Calling - Season 2 (Evan) Asana (Farnoosh) Scrivener (Farnoosh) Edirol Recorder (Farnoosh) Paul Graham: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (Farnoosh) On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King (Farnoosh) Next Week Red Flags with Potential or Current Clients with Ashe Dryden Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 53 of The Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: Chuck had to think about Eric for a moment there... CHUCK: [laughs] I'm Charles Max Wood from Devchat.tv. And this week we have a special guest, and that's Farnoosh Brock! FARNOOSH: Hi! Thank you so much for having me on! CHUCK: You haven't been on the before; do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? FARNOOSH: Yes! My name is Farnoosh Brock, and I am the president and founder of Prolific Living, and that's at prolificliving.com. Chuck and I met at New Media Expo back in January and we had a lot of fun! He was really shocked that he met an electrical engineer -- an ex-electrical engineer -- at the party there, and we just hit it off! So, thank you so much for inviting me to the show. CHUCK: Yeah, no problem! It was kind of interesting when we met. First off, I met your husband before I met you. He's a photographer,
Episode 52: The Ruby Freelancers Show 052 – Big Company Layoffs: Should I Worry?
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:57 - Wanna be a regular Ruby Freelancer Panelist? Tweet interest to @rubyfreelancers02:12 - Big Company Layoffs ...
Episode 51: The Ruby Freelancers Show 051 – Bookkeeping and Business Expenses with E. Scott Sweeney, CPA
Panel E. Scott Sweeney, CPA (Scott@CPASweeney.com 801-756-3394) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:02 - Scott Sweeney Introduction The Ruby Freelancers Show 01...
Episode 50: The Ruby Freelancers Show 050 – Better Prospecting for Freelancers with Steve Kloyda
Panel Steve Kloyda (twitter facebook linkedin youtube The Prospecting Expert) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:03 - Steve Kloyda Introduction The Prospecting Expert The Prospecting Minute 02:38 - Being a good prospector Never stop prospecting Passion 04:42 - Prospecting and Selling To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink 08:10 - Marketing and Sales Cliff Ravenscraft 12:05 - Prospecting Tools Email Text Messaging Video Social Media The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk 19:25 - Audience Connect Educate Engage 24:54 - The Wizard of Oz Purpose Who Game Plan Solution Next Step 34:03 - The Best Next Step 38:31 - Referrals Fear of rejection Psychology Centers of Influence 46:51 - Keeping the sales process simple Ask for the business Objections Picks Indie Game: The Movie (Eric) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) Parade of Homes (Chuck) Evernote (Steve) Evernote Hello (Steve) Evernote Food (Steve) Nozbe (Steve) How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger (Steve) The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin (Steve) Next Week Bookkeeping and Business Expenses with Scott Sweeney Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 50 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. I just want to remind you that you have one week left to go sign up for Rails Ramp Up at railsrampup.com. And we have a special guest and that is Steve Kloyda! STEVE: It's great to be here, thanks for having me. CHUCK: Oh it's great to have you! I met Steve at the New Media Expo. He was hanging out with the bunch of us from Cliff Ravenscraft's "Podcast Mastermind", and it turns out that he knows a lot about prospecting for potential clients. And it seems like that's one of the hard things that we have to do as programmers - to find new clients. So I invited him to the show and we are happy to have you. STEVE: It's really great to be here. And yes, we are all searching for new clients at point or another and it's probably one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales people face on a daily basis. So I'm really excited to be here to talk about it because this is my passion. CHUCK: Awesome! You're also the podcasting expert at thepodcastingexpert.com, correct? STEVE: Yes "theprospectingexpert".. CHUCK: [laughs] Sorry.. STEVE: It's alright. Theprospectingexpert.com is my website address and then I have a podcast that I do every week called "The Prospecting Minute" podcast. CHUCK: Is it longer than a minute, I take it? STEVE: Actually it's 3-5 minutes. Sales people tend to have a very short attention span, and some of my -- I do interview some people and sometimes I go 25 or 30 minutes, but the average show is between 5 and 7 minutes in length. That'll like to give them quick,
Episode 49: The Ruby Freelancers Show 049 – Contracts with Attorney Jared Richards
Panel Jared Richards (twitter jrichards@btjd.com 801-438-2040) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:21 - Attorney Jared Richards Introduction Bennett-Tueller Johnson & Deere of Salt Lake City, UT @UTStartupLawyer 03:37 - Things you should have in a contract Who owns what Work for hire/licensing 10:40 - Prospective Liability and Disclaimers of Liability 13:07 - Risk Management Tools Warranty and protection against data loss Limitations on liability 16:25 - Copyright & Patent Infringement 19:57 - Getting paid for your work Cash up front On-going retainers Escrows Credit card authorization forms Interest penalties Collection costs 29:18 - Acceptance and Rejection Procedures 36:25 - Is a Statement of Work necessary? 40:20 - Subcontracting 42:25 - Client turnaround and response time provisions 43:24 - Purchasing of services/expenses 46:21 - Using client contracts instead of your own Jurisdiction Indemnificaton Liquidated Damages Provision 52:20 - Conflicts of interest 58:56 - Arbitration, Mediation & Litigation 01:05:05 - Subcontractor Agreements Insurance Regular reporting Picks Growing Developers - Curated Conversation About Building Developer Talent (Evan) Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Burr Leonard (Evan) Exercise (Evan) Take Time Off Work (Eric) Breathe (Eric) Fire Up Ember.js | PeepCode (Chuck) Meet Chef (Part 2 of 2) | PeepCode (Chuck) Google Advanced Search (Jared) Next Week Better Prospecting for Freelancers with Steve Kloyda Transcript JARED: I prefer keep away from the attorney jokes. They get told behind my back, I don't really get to hear them in person. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to The Ruby Freelancers Show, Episode 49. This week we're going to be talking to Jared Richards, he's an attorney, about contracts. Before we get started, let's introduce the panel. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I'm back! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we have a special guest, as I said before, Jared Richards. JARED: Hey everyone! CHUCK: Jared, you want to introduce yourself really quickly so people can know who you are and how to find you? JARED: Yeah absolutely. Jared Richards, I'm with the law firm in Salt Lake City, Utah called Bennett-Tueller Johnson and Deere, more casually known as BTJD. We have a large corporate practice and a lot of our group focuses on startups, more specifically technology startups. So we handle wide array of things from IP protection, contracts, venture capital, and sales of businesses. That's where we spend all our time, and thanks for having me on the show. You can find me on Twitter @UTStartupLawyer. CHUCK: Yeah. So I met Jared a year or so ago...nah! I think it was longer than that. Anyway -- JARED: Yeah I think it's been a couple of years, yeah. CHUCK: Yeah, it was at launch up,
Episode 48: The Ruby Freelancers Show 048 – Outsourcing to ODesk with Jonathan Shank
Panel Jonathan Shank (twitter Your First Virtual Assistant) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:03 - Jonathan Shank Introduction Your First Virtual Assistant 02:13 - Odesk Witmart 03:45 - Types of jobs you can outsource Translation Research Transcription 08:35 - Picking the right people 11:18 - Figuring out what to outsource 13:39 - Hiring domestic vs overseas workers 16:52 - Sampling groups vs hiring regulars 21:05 - Improving delegation skills 23:27 - Mistakes people make when getting started outsourcing Be Specific 26:11 - Letting strangers into your business Training 31:19 - Fiverr Crowdsourcing 99 Designs 34:29 - U.S.-based VA firms 36:38 - Outsourcing technical things Picks Bidsketch: Freelance Marketing 101: Creating a “Magnetic” Freelance Business (Eric) Presto 04213 Electronic Timer (Chuck) David J. Soler (Chuck) Work the System (Jonathan) Next Week Contracts with Attorney Jared Richards Transcript CHUCK: Yeah it's all fun and games until you put a nail through your foot. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 48 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And we have a special guest, Jonathan Shank. JONATHAN: Hello! CHUCK: So Jonathan, do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? JONATHAN: Sure! My name is Jonathan Shank, I've been working with Virtual Assistance for a couple of years, which I guess the reason that I'm up (here). I represent [inaudible], by that kindly to be on your podcast. I guess I started a couple of years ago as working on my own business on the side and I found that when the whole world of virtual assistant is open to me, I realized there's so many people out there that can help me with my business that it really was something that really helped me out quite a lot. So as a result, I've been working with them for a couple of years, and I've had so much success personally that I kind of decided that I just want to share that with others. So I started the website "yourfirstvirtualassistant.com", and a podcast, and there is other thing. Basically, (I'm) just trying (to) show people just from square one how easy it is to take a lot and find your first virtual assistant. So that's kind of how it started. Now whenever I have a chance, I kind of spread the news of how you can use them on various businesses. CHUCK: I went to your talk at New Media Expo and it seem like you were mostly talking about oDesk. Is that the way you usually go? Or are there other avenues you take to find people? JONATHAN: Yeah. I would say that the vast majority of what I use has been oDesk. I've tried a lot of the other sites as well, and for me, how I work it seems to be the best, at least as really conducive to how I like to do things. For instance, if you have a fixed-price job, it's very easy to quickly have a small [inaudible] avenue to get a lot of people that do inexpensive work. You go to some of the other sites,
Episode 47: The Ruby Freelancers Show 047 – Full-Time Contracts and Projects
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 03:45 - Long-Term Contracts 07:14 - Marketing while under contract 10:01 - Working on other projects while working full-time 16:10 - Energy 17:01 - Money Emergency funds 21:41 - Lone developer vs team projects 28:05 - Full-time contract pros and cons Renewing Flexibility Meetings Routine 40:50 - Finding full-time contracts Picks ruby-orgs (Jim) dtao / safe_yaml (Jim) Freebook Sifter (Eric) Discomfort Zone: How to Master the Universe (Eric) Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver of the 10th Doctor (Chuck) Contactually (Chuck) Dropbox App (Chuck) Next Week Outsourcing and Odesk with Jonathan Shank Transcript CHUCK: I'll get ideas from my ideas. There's an idea. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 47 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from Arlington, Virginia's greatest suburb, Washington, DC! CHUCK: Awesome! I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And real quick, I want to mention this to a few people. I get request from people who listen to all of the shows that I do, so some of you will be interested, some of you won't. That's fine. If you're not interested, I apologize. You can't help by getting the word out, but I'm going to be teaching a Ruby on Rails course starting in March. And I'd love to get people to sign up, if they want to learn Ruby on Rails. I think the approach that I'm taking is a little bit different from what a lot of other people do, and that it's a course over 8 weeks. I encourage you to build an application and then we get it deployed to a server or to Heroku or both and just help you figure it out, help you find what road blocks you're going to run into as you build whatever application it is and kind of get you all the way through the process in 8 weeks. I don't think you can get that from a book, from videos, or from a 2 or 3 day in-person course class. So if you're interested, go to railsrampup.com and sign up! And I just appreciate you listening. If you're not interested, then I would appreciate it if you just tweet that out and let people know that it's available. ERIC: Awesome! Yeah I think that would be great. Like I know a lot of people who come to local meet-up groups and say "Oh, I'm trying to learn" and they spend some time hacking away from reading tutorials and cobbling stuffs together from the internet. But a long course like that could really help people kind of get over the hump and understand. CHUCK: Yeah that's what I found. I've had a few people actually come to me and say "I read this book, (or) I took this class, and now I'm trying to build my app, and I'm running into these issues." And so that's what this is kind of designed to work around. ERIC: Cool! CHUCK: Alright! Well let's get into today's topic. We're going to be talking about full-time clients or full-time projects, I guess. Either way. JIM: Neither projects where you're what?
Episode 46: The Ruby Freelancers Show 046 – Working Locations
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:28 - Working From Home Distractions Environment 07:35 - Pros of Working From Home Animals Purr Programming 2.0: Lance Gleason Schedule/Flexibility Naps Deliveries/Home Repairs Commute 11:57 - Focus & Productivity Renting an Office 14:22 - Cons of Working From Home Office Neighbors/Noise Pollution Furnishing an Office Cabin Fever 22:37 - Working in an Office Social Outlet Others’ Opinions 25:31 - Overcoming Distractions Family Comes First Making up Time 29:54 - Staying on Task Shifting your Work Set Hours Pomodoring Setting Boundaries 37:35 - Fixed Number of Hours xkcd: Ballmer Peak Picks Hydrofarm Thirsty Light (Chuck) Powermat Power Dual 1200 Rechargeable Backup Battery (Chuck) PVC Pipe in Plants (Eric) iPad Mini (Evan) Transcript ERIC: Replace Chuck with a recording robot. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelancing business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 46 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: Hi! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about Working Locations. I've had a few people talk to me in the past, when I tell them that I'm a freelancer and that I work from home, they just look at me like "How do you do that? How do you deal with all the distractions? I mean, I'd just go and e-pop corner in front of the TV all day or something”. And so I thought we could talk about the work locations, some of the pros and cons, and how you deal with distractions and things like that. So, I tend to work from. I know that Eric, you usually work from home as well, right? ERIC: Yeah. Like maybe one or two days set up a year, I might not work from home. But I'm here; this is where I'm at. CHUCK: Yeah. And Evan, you used to work from home, didn't you? EVAN: I did until about 2 months ago, and then I rented an office. CHUCK: Alright. Did you just go with like an executive suite type thing or -- EVAN: Well, yeah. I went on craze list. Well I looked around a lot, but ultimately I went on craze list and found a small -- a local realtor who is leasing by the room and just basically got a room that I came equipped with a desk and internet and power and what not. Grabbed my Aeron chair and there it was, and computer was good to go. CHUCK: Yeah that's what they have out here, I don't know if it's just the term out here, but they call them executive suites. Basically, you're renting like a room and then you get access to the conference room when you need it, and the building furnishes power, that kind of stuff. EVAN: I don't think we have a term for it out here because that would imply that we have enough civilization to come up with terms like that. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. Adobe built a huge building that's right outbuy where most of those suites are out here. So, I'm kind of curious as to what your experiences been working from home you guys.
Episode 45: The Ruby Freelancers Show 045 – Employment Vs Freelancing
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:41 - Employment History 06:58 - Perks of Being a Freelancer Variety of Job Areas Choose Your Work Flexibility & Freedom 15:22 - Paycheck Security Unemployment Contractors Vs Employees 20:54 - Coast-Along Employees 21:50 - Health Benefits 23:34 - Marketing & Selling Providing Value to a Company 27:27 - Business Skills 29:37 - Self-Direction & Motivation 32:48 - Loans 34:51 - Going Back to Work (after freelancing) Picks Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel H. Pink (Eric) Powermat Home & Office Mat (Chuck) Une Bobine (Chuck) Transcript ERIC: Hold on, I got to shut my door. My dog opened it and I don't want the cats to come fly in here. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 45 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: I had tea to drink! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about the Risks of Freelancing versus Fulltime Development. The general idea is that -- I get a lot of people that we talk to and basically the idea is this that they're like "well, I would go freelance because it looks like you'll get a lot of perks, but I just can't stand the risk". To me it just doesn't feel as risky. So we're going to talk about that; talk about some of the what's and why's and maybe why freelancing is or isn't as risky as being a fulltime employee and some of the other things that related to that. I'm a little curious Eric, what is your kind of your employment history? ERIC: I worked when I was in high school, just normal high school type jobs. Went to college, did some college jobs like delivered pizza, that sort of thing. And then right after college, went to work for a software company and actually got started there in technical support, then went to testing, and then went to software development. So I was like going through and by the end of it, I was doing desktop software development, wasn't in a mobile at the time. I did all the web development, manage all their servers, manage their network, and so I like had my hand in a lot of pies by there. Then after that, we moved and I started my own company. CHUCK: Wow! After college you worked for one company and then went freelance? ERIC: Yeah, pretty much. In college, I'd say freshman year or maybe sophomore year-ish, I got heavy into like reading about entrepreneurship and all that. I've actually started 2 or 3 businesses. I didn't know what I was doing and basically, looking back at it now, it was stupid for me to do those. But I learned enough at that time and figured out that I like running my own business. And so basically most of the jobs that I had were just stop gaps to pay the bills and to learn more and tell I was actually felt confident enough that I could actually run my own company. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense. So my work history is somewhat similar. I worked in high school, too, I worked at grocery stores as baggers and checkers, and whatever.
Episode 44: The Ruby Freelancers Show 044 – Passion of the Code
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:16 - Keeping Passion for Work Alive Happiness vs Money Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 04:14 - Making it a Craft 08:45 - Client Fit Raising Rates 10:41 - “Safety” and Satisfaction The Ruby Freelancers Show 012 – Getting Starting as a Freelancer 13:41 - Self-Actualization Community Exposure Praise 25:04 - Practice Every Day Mastery by Robert Greene 27:08 - Having Outlets 31:31 - Change & Creating New Habits Balance Tiny Habits w/ Dr. BJ Fogg The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg 38:34 - “Serious Practitioners” Picks Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer (Jim) Multitenancy with Rails by Ryan Bigg (Jim) Writer’s block and the drip: Seth Godin (Eric) Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard (Evan) Transcript EVAN: Eric, you there? ERIC: I'm chewing... EVAN: I don't believe I've heard that particular voice before... [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] EVAN: Hello! And welcome to the Ruby Freelancers Podcast! Today, I am hosting -- my name is Evan Light. Normally we have Chuck Wood hosting, and I have here Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! EVAN: Eric is only somewhat conscious, so we can only ask yes or no questions. ERIC: Yes. EVAN: [laughs] And Jim Gay! JIM: Hello! EVAN: So today we decided we are going to talk about "keeping the passion for the work alive", and the tradeoffs involved in doing work we enjoy versus doing work that pays well. This came from a Skype chat that Jim and I, I guess we're getting into undecide during other Skype chats [inaudible]. And I was explaining that I value doing client work that I enjoy more than earning a buck. And Jim was pushing and pointing that, pushing out pushing back that earning a buck is really gushed or unimportant. JIM: Yeah I think we're both kind of agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. When we were talking earlier before we started recording the show, I was thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of needs which -- if people aren't familiar with that, basically on the lowest level of hierarchy it's like "can you survive?" Are you eating? ERIC: The reap of your head? JIM: Yeah, exactly. That type of thing. And then higher up the scale is like the top self-actualization; being pleased with who you are. And I think as long as you've got enough income coming in that you can pay for your house and feed your family and things like that, then you can start going up the path that's like figuring out "okay do I actually care about the work that I'm doing?" EVAN: But there's also -- Well, yeah, okay so potentially there's (I don't know if this is a matter of potentially -- I really need to complete this sentence though), there's the boundaries where we perceived to those boundaries to be in Maslow's hierarchy. I mean this is something -- Maslow's hierarchy: self to something like consider a lot, but the question of where you perceived those boundaries to be might different from person to person. The physiological,
Episode 43: The Ruby Freelancers Show 043 – Improving Teams
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:39 - Addressing Team Issues Implementing Change Stand-Up Meetings 04:44 - Stand-Up Meeting Issues 07:37 - Organization Politics Expetise Experience 11:21 - Idea Resistence People Problems Control 18:16 - Problematic Coworkers 20:26 - Team Communication Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Skype Hubot Campfire GoToMeeting Adobe Connect Google+ Hangouts tmux 28:10 - Assigning Tickets & Stories 36:22 - Finding Solutions to Problems You Don’t Understand 38:04 - When Change Doesn’t Happen Satisfaction Level 40:01 - Management Issues/Changes 42:43 - Team Planning Planning Poker Estimations 48:17 - Ideas for Integration Leveraging Experience Picks Poor man’s guide to managing Ruby versions (Jim) Extreme Programming Pocket Guide (Eric) Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz (Chuck) Transcript ERIC: Helloooooooo! [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 43 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay. JIM: I'm back! CHUCK: You are back! We missed you! JIM: Thank you. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and I've been working hard on railsrampup.com. So if you wanna learn Ruby on Rails, go check it out! Alright, this week we're going to be talking about -- I don't know what the title of the show would be yet, but we're going to be talking about like improving team, processes, communication, etcetera, etcetera. When you're a freelancer on the team and -- we may go into like what you can do when you're new, what you can do when you've been around and earn some street cred, but let's just jump in and talk about some of the stuff. Just to kick it off, I generally like to just come up with something that's relevant from my experience. I'm working on a team right now, and the things that actually been reasonably good over there. And most of the time if I have a concern, or a thought, or an idea, I can just get away with going to the Director over the project and he'll usually talk through it with me and then implement a change if it's good idea. So, I just kind of wanna throw that out there because sometimes the solution is pretty simple. JIM: Yeah! I've definitely done that; making sure that I'm constantly talking to whoever the project manager is. I don't know, I've kind of looked at conversations like around process and comments and say "You know, I've noticed this and I wonder about changing it to that". Just in terms of thinking like "let's try it!" or maybe "we should try it!". Or if you don't wanna try it, fine. I'm sure there will have other things. But I've never felt like even though sometimes I felt really strongly, we really ought to find a better way to communicate or something like that. I never tried to put my foot down like "look, it must be done this way". And sometimes I feel like I want to be the guy who will do that,