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 42: The Ruby Freelancers Show 042 – Planning For The New Year
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:18 - Planning For the Year New Media Expo Consumer Electronics Show MountainWest RubyConf Rails Ramp Up 06:57 -...
Episode 41: The Ruby Freelancers Show 041 – Hiring Other People
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 02:33 - Designers Referrals 12:00 - Bookkeepers Accountant recommendations/preference 19:44 - Virtual Assistants ...
Episode 40: The Ruby Freelancers Show 040 – Grab Bag
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:28 - What do you do when prospective clients only want to hire you full-time? Employees vs Contractors On-site work 08:35 - How to get clients from a different country or timezone Enforcing contracts Marketing 13:49 - Do people hire you because you’re specifically a “Ruby” freelancer? 21:02 - What types of jobs do you accept and what types do you refuse? Will the project be successful? 30:35 - What types of jobs are you getting from Ruby on Rails? 33:35 - How do you deal with uncertainty or risk when writing a Statement of work? Identify risky areas Be as specific as possible 39:25 - Building LinkedIn recommendations Testemonials 43:32 - Working on a retainer Support Agreements/On Call work Picks Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone (Eric) Nexus 7 (Evan) SCOTTEVEST Fleece 7.0 Jacket (Evan) Twitter Bootstrap (Chuck) Downton Abbey (Chuck) Rails Ramp Up (Chuck) Transcript CHUCK: Yes, I put my microphone right on my face. So you get all of the good noises that come out of my mouth. [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 40 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: Hello CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to kind of work through some of the questions that have been put on our user voice panel. There are a handful of them that we don't think necessarily merit a full show. Meaning that, we don't know if we could talk about them for a full hour so we'll just ask some of the questions and then work our way through them. So the first question that I see that I want to go over is "what do you do when prospects only want you as a full time employee?" And there's a bit more to this, Bryan Ray put it up and it says "I'm pretty new to freelancing. I moonlight in pretty much all of my prospects in the past couple of months, seemed interested after a couple of conversations, but eventually they are only looking for full time employees right now. Either full time or 30-40 hours a contract work, which at that point you're basically an employee working for one client's stricter hours indefinite work as opposed to distinct projects, etc. I'm pretty sure it's due to the fact that I can't dedicate many hours per week right now. Do you guys run into this problem? Or did you when you first started out?" EVAN: For me, I tend to work for one big client to one smaller client at a time so I'm not quite fulltime with a client, but I tend to dedicate a lot of time to one client, but not fulltime. And I've gotten some people who want me to work fulltime and I generally try to avoid those period. If they said that's what they want, usually they're inflexible on it, then I just move on find someone else. At least that's been my experience. ERIC: It's been a bit different. I did, I think it was 2 up to maybe 4 or 5 clients at a time for a while there.
Episode 39: The Ruby Freelancers Show 039 – What Should I Have On My Website?
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:47 - Static sites vs Wordpress Jekyll 03:33 - Important parts of a Website Placeholder sites Contact information 04:27 - Getting contacted Wufoo 07:43 - Blog Posts theAdmin.org 08:45 - Portfolios Eric’s Portfolio Landing Pages 11:05 - Testimonials 11:55 - Mailing Lists/Newsletters Trustbuilding Waiting list of clients 14:13 - Landing Pages Small pages Guide people to their goal 16:33 - Social Media 17:22 - Logos LogoWorks 19:22 - Static Site Generators 21:07 - What do you want people to do when they visit your site? Welcome Gate: LeadBrite Contact Me littlestreamsoftware.com (Eric) intentionalexcellence.net (Chuck) 23:40 - Products/eBooks 25:49 - Landing Pages Headline Subheadline Call to action 29:23 - A/B Testing for Wordpress Optimizely 30:33 - Analytics 31:23 - About Pages Use “I” not “We” 34:07 - SEO 36:35 - Project Inclusion in Portfolios Picks Arkon Portable Fold-Up Stand (Eric) Oversized Low-Profile Creeper (Chuck) Floor Jack With Rapid Pump (2.5 Ton) (Chuck) 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 39 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "What Should Be On My Website". And this was kind of my idea as far as something that I wanted to do mainly because I've been playing with the idea of putting together a website for my freelancing business. It's kind of shocking, I think. To think that I've been doing this for two and a half years and still don't have a really functional website for my business. But at the same time, I mean I have some ideas of things that I think should be on there, and I know Eric has been doing this for a while and has a website that does bring him business. So I thought we could just jump in and talk about some of the things that we think should be there or some of the things that people put on there that maybe they "un" put on there or maybe don't give them as much of a win as they think it gives them. So Eric, I'm a little curious before we start talking about what's on the website, is your website built on like WordPress or anything? Or is it something you built on Rails? ERIC: Yeah so right now I was just using WordPress. Let's say I started with a static site, built a custom Ruby, or actually Rails CMS, scrapped to because I'd rather work on client projects or paid projects than to maintain my own CMS system. And I jumped around to just different stack side generators, but I ended up going back to WordPress just because it worked, it's functional, and I can get basically all the features I needed without having to tip-down and write code and maintain all the code for it. So yeah right now, it's for now on WordPress and I got a custom VPS built for it. So it's all of my sites are actually hosted on a private server, it's not like a shared host or anything. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense.
Episode 38: The Ruby Freelancers Show 038 – Optimizing Pipelines
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:11 - Optimizing your sales and marketing pipeline Lead generation (marketing) Lead conversion Project delivery 08:54 - Follow ups 11:24 - Lead categories Want to work right now Trying to decide Decide against you 12:26 - Closing a client (sales) Not just going for wallets Leads who take advantage/getting something for nothing “Velvet Roping” Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port 15:57 - Client fit Qualifying 17:36 - Marketing Mailing lists Open-source contribution Being active in communities 19:31 - Referrals Where do they come from? 22:05 - Recruiters Responding to recruiters Dealing with recruiters 28:01 - Website traffic analyzation Google Analytics 31:41 - Newsletters Listening vs reading Getting newsletter subscribers MailChimp AWeber Autoresponders 47:09 - What should I do? Where do you want people to wind up? Make it easy for people to contact you/get them where you want them to go Landing pages Comments on blogs 53:31 - Your personal ideal pipeline Picks BrowserStack (Eric) PipelineDeals (Eric) Sad Trombone (Jim) GetClicky (Chuck) AWeber (Chuck) Omnifocus (Chuck) POP App (Jim) Transcript EVAN: If someone takes a poker and makes it really hot and shoves it in your behind, that would be a branding problem. [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 38 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: That's me. CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I wasn’t ready! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from a standing desk. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Optimizing Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline. Sounds like a mouthful. So do we want to start with a definition? What is the-- JIM: Is this Ruby Rogues? Did we dial in the wrong place? CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah I kind of felt like-- [laughter] ERIC: Yeah, I would like a definition. CHUCK: Well, my understanding (and you guys can and probably will correct me) that the sales pipeline or marketing pipeline is effectively the process that you put your prospects through basically from the moment that they encounter your website or market message all the way up until you convert them to a sale or to a client. Is that oversimplified or did I miss something? EVAN: I would say “leads” not “prospects”. CHUCK: Leads? EVAN: Yeah. ERIC: Yeah. It basically starts at leads. Like you know, this person might have come to your site like an anonymous visitor or maybe they heard of you or something that was like, “Oh, who’s Chuck?” and that's kind of where they start that. And then it goes to… what is it… suspects? No, actually suspect is fair. Suspects are people that might be a good candidate for your business. Then its leads when they actually kind of contact you… there's also prospects. It’s hard.
Episode 37: The Ruby Freelancers Show 037 – Overcoming Isolation
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Dicussion 02:50 - Overcoming Isolation Working from coffeehouses Lunch dates 06:25 - Recruiting others with similar interests 07:40 - Talk on Twitter 07:46 - Evan’s Apprentice 09:46 - Pairing Remote vs Physical 11:19 - Personality Types 12:13 - Coworking Spaces Creative Work Busy Work 14:51 - Walking and Driving 15:33 - Meetups and User Groups 17:53 - Commiserating and Ranting 19:08 - Attending Conferences 23:26 - Working Onsite for Clients Picks Strong VPN (Eric) Cloak (Evan) OS X Server (Evan) The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming by Dave Thomas (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: What's the background noise that... Is there any? CHUCK: I hear people talking. It’s OK. EVAN: OK. Why can’t I crank my volume up louder than this? What the hell? Oh, well that might be why. Now say something. CHUCK: Something. EVAN: Good! You did exactly what you were told to do. Thank you. ERIC: Right. EVAN: Right. Actually that should have been my response, “Right!” CHUCK: So what we are talking about… last week we were talking about-- EVAN: [inaudible] CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. Talking about “right”? CHUCK: We were thinking about… talking about— EVAN: [laughs] We were thinking about talking about— CHUCK: OK! ERIC: I think Chuck is stuck on a loop. [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 37 of The Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I love my brown pants. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Combating Isolation and Loneliness -- since we work from home and stuff. So I have to say, I'm a little bit punch-drunk because I've been pulling insane hours for my client. EVAN: So you are rich now? CHUCK: Uhh… EVAN: [inaudible] Oops, we can leave the singing out of the transcript please. Thank you. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah not yet. They haven’t paid me for all my work I guess. ERIC: --- on paper. EVAN: The only one who is punch-drunk today. CHUCK: Wow. EVAN: Real drunk might be better. CHUCK: Real drunk? EVAN: --- actually be topical. Oh wait -- sorry, folks this is what happens to you when you have too much isolation. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. So, any who, so we all work from home -- mostly generally. EVAN: And coffeehouses. CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. CHUCK: So, what do you do to combat that? How do you overcome the working in a room by yourself all day-- EVAN: I thought you were going to say “overcompensate” instead of overcome because somehow that seems more appropriate right now. [laughter] Second, you record a lot of podcasts like Chuck. I had to get that one out there. Third, you start recording more podcasts like me. [chuckles] OK. Seriously, so you go out to a coffeehouse which is where I am -- which is why if you hear background noise, well,
Episode 36: The Ruby Freelancers Show 036 – Speaking at Conferences
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 02:02 - Picking topics Passion Frustration Driven Development: Evan’s WindyCityRails Talk 2012 Listener questions/interest Lynchpin by Seth Godin “Doing what you love and sharing with other people” 07:08 - Speaking at User Groups vs Conferences Practice runs Keydown 09:46 - Twitter inquiries 10:16 - Topic proposals Marketing Abstracts 13:28 - Marketing to conference owners/marketing to the audience Making memorable talks 16:32 - How speakers are chosen Individual merit/”Hero Worship” Keynotes by invitation Past experience 20:56 - Preparing for a talk Practice Keynote / Keydown 25:04 - Writing a book/writing a presentation Flexibility Stream of consciousness writing Markdown Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds 31:37 - Code in slides Syntax highlighting Wrapping lines Screen resolution Geekfest 35:18 - Practice, practice, practice Time your presentation Possibly leave time for Q&A Skipping slides Real-time edits 39:29 - Talking about something/convincing people to try something Avoid library talks Try to get people to shift perspectives 41:56 - Don’t change topics at the last minute 45:58 - Communication between conference organizers 49:32 - Giving talks, getting leads and referrals, and being recognized as “an expert” Picks Pilot G2 Retractable Gel Ink Color Rolling Ball Pens (Eric) Keydown (Evan) Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer (Chuck) QR codes (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. [sniffs] [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 36 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: I'm back! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And this week we are going to be talking about “Preparing for and Speaking at Conferences”. EVAN: Conferences. CHUCK: And I'm kind of inclined to also talk about speaking at users groups. EVAN: Yeah you should. We should. Actually we should let you do all the talking about users groups. CHUCK: Why is that? EVAN: Because I just said ‘you’ first instead of ‘we’. CHUCK: [laughs] What did I do to you? EVAN: [chuckles] Right. CHUCK: So let’s start talking. So Evan, I think you spoken at more conferences than either Eric or I have. EVAN: Or just spoken more, as in ‘talk a lot’. Yeah, especially I’ve done quite a bit this year too. So I remember in the user voice, the person who suggested this topic started with “How do you pick your topics”, and I think it’s pretty much how do you pick your topics and how do you present and how you get accepted. Picking my topics for me is one of two things -- or actually no, it was really one thing – at the end of it, it’s always, it’s something important to me that I wanna share. That I feel strongly about and I wanna share.
Episode 35: The Ruby Freelancers Show 035 – Book Picks
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:36 - Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch (Eric) 04:51 - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (Chuck) David Allen Company Podcast 06:30 - Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli (Eric) 08:47 - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (Chuck) 12:26 - Get Clients Now!: A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches by C.J. Hayden (Eric) 15:08 - 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 (Eric) 17:09 - 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal by Dan Miller (Chuck) 48 Days Podcast 20:10 - The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. (Eric) Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco (Eric) 24:11 - Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Rober T. Kiyosaki (Chuck) 26:29 - Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss (Eric) 28:50 - The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler(Chuck) 32:18 - Dead Tree Books vs eBooks Tactile feel Convenience Note-taking 39:20 - Managing to-dos Phone apps & email Highlighting Quotes folder Tweets 40:35 - Skipping/Skimming parts of books Book samples 42:57 - Finishing books Reading multiple books at once Reading more than one genre at once 45:09 - Books as mediums for learning 46:52 - Reviewing books Picks Developer depression: Isolation is the biggest problem by Lauren Maffeo (Eric) RubyTapas Episode 4: Barewords (Eric) HandBrake (Chuck) BitTorrent (Chuck) Transmission (Chuck) 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 it 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 35 of the Ruby Freelancer show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and this week, we are going to be talking about… we were looking at like the top five books that we recommend, and I think we are just going to kind of add and just recommend our top books. It’s hard for me to make a list of top five and it sounded like Eric had like, four that he’d recommend outright and then it was a tie between another four or five. We’ll just kinda see how it goes. Eric, what is your top book? I'm kind of curious to hear about that. ERIC: And by “top” you mean top of the pile of books that's sitting on my desk? CHUCK: Yeah, the one that you would recommend the most, I guess. ERIC: OK. So I think the one that’s had the best impact was I think “Duct Tape Marketing” by John Jantsch. It’s very much a marketing oriented book, but it has a lot of good like how to run your business and it’s just not just marketing but sales and customers and who you are working for and kind of like what services you are providing. And it’s kind of an older book. I have used it for many,
Episode 34: The Ruby Freelancers Show 034 – Brownfield
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:58 - Brownfield Projects Contrast to Greenfield Legacy Code 06:50 - Labeling and defining a Brownfield Project Age Decrepitude 08:37 - How to handle Brownfield Projects Upgrading Modernizing Tree (Unix) The First Step of Refactoring a Rails Application Socratic Method 15:48 - Rescue Project versus Brownfield Project State of the Client versus State of the Project Urgent Need 20:02 - Technical Problems Business Leadership Problems Conway’s Law Working Effectively with Legacy Code: Michael Feathers 26:56 - Refactoring and Testing Show, Don’t Tell (Leading by example) Redesigning Agile: Part II - Introducing Intridea Forge 31:46 - Educating team members Correcting mistakes Learn how others work Lead by example 36:57 - Pushback Trying new angles Leave the project Lower standards Picks Rails Commit (Eric) Practical KnockoutJS (Eric) The Delighted Developer (Evan) Dead Man’s Snitch (Jim) TweetBot (Chuck) Therapeutic Refactoring: Katrina Owen (Chuck) 069 Ruby Rogues: Therapeutic Refactoring with Katrina Owen (Chuck) Transcript JIM: Brownfield's project, I’m just thinking, reminds me of this joke I heard where there's like a cabin boy on a pirate ship and the captain is always telling, when they are going in to battle, captain turns and say, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!” And so, you know, they’d go to a battle and every time they go, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!” And so, finally, the cabin boy goes to the captain and captain says, “Sir, why are you always telling to ‘get me a red shirt’?” “Well, I don’t want the men to see me bleed if I get stabbed.” And so, the next time they were travelling through the entire like Spanish Armada comes out and just completely surrounds them. And the captain turns to the cabin boy and says, “Arrr! Get me my brown pants!” [laughter] [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 it 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 34 of the Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello. CHUCK: We have Evan light. EVAN: Today, I have whiskey. CHUCK: And we also have Jim Gay. JIM: I am ready to go. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and this week, we are going to be talking about Brownfield Projects. And who says it’s such-- EVAN: It doesn’t sound very pleasant, right? CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. There was some discussion before the show about that. JIM: That term is terrible. I mean-- EVAN: It’s poopy. CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] Somebody has to say it, right? JIM: Actually before we start talking, I started searching like is there a Wikipedia entry for brownfield? Like, who came up with the term “brownfield”? EVAN: Well, we can get it in the Urban Dictionary pretty fast. [laughs] CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] I usually hear it as a contrast to “greenfield” is what I hear. JIM: Yeah, I’d certainly understand that. I always like I mentioned before,
Episode 33: The Ruby Freelancers Show 033 – Managing Client Expectations
Panel Evan Light (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:30 - Dealing with unrealistic expectations 03:13 - “The Iron Triangle” Cost Performance Schedule 04:02 - Bad management 05:07 - Establishing expectations Prioritizing Schedule & Budget 08:08 - Rescue Clients & Projects 11:34 - Developers are not interchangeable 12:03 - Approaching a project 13:55 - Business owner and end user communication 16:58 - Client Communication Trade-offs Hired guns 21:47 - Amateurs vs Professionals 24:04 - Managing communication expectations 28:57 - Engagement & Evaluation of process 34:24 - Wrapping up a project 38:36 - Types of projects Clearly defined outcomes Ongoing 42:23 - Client domains 47:33 - Influencing clients and teams towards better practices 50:30 - Clients that don’t want your input Picks Kalzumeus Blog (Eric) gfxCardStatus (Jim) The New CTO: Uncle Bob (Jim) Verizon LTE (Evan) Kalzumeus Podcast 3: Growing Consulting Practices, with Brennan Dunn (Jeff) IBM 168 | Earning Passive Income with Software, an Interview with Dane Maxwell (Jeff) Anvil for Mac (Jeff) Transcript JIM: Are we the optimal people to talk about this? EVAN: Oh, god. How long are we going to spend figuring this out? [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 it 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: Hi and welcome to the Ruby Freelancer podcast. I'm your temporary host in lieu of Chuck not being here. This is Evan light and today, I got here Eric Davis. ERIC: Hey! EVAN: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up. EVAN: Jim Gay. [silence] Jim Gay? JIM: Yeah, I'm here. EVAN: OK. Cool. JIM: Thank you. That mute button is not working like I thought. EVAN: (laughs) Nice. And that is already in the recording. And today we are going to talk about Managing Client Expectations. So, who wants to get started? JIM: the first thing that comes to me with managing client expectations is an experience I had on a project where, we were in crunch mode right in the start of the project. It was a rescue project and it was terrible code and the project manager was agreeing to his superiors that we would get x,y and z launched by a certain and who would come and tell us the date. And that's always a recipe for disaster. And we have a new developer come on to the project. He had been there like, I think he came on Friday and we had to do work for the weekend. So he, like his first start on the project was over the weekend, Monday morning. We missed the deadline of course because things weren’t working right. And the project manager came in; we were doing our stand up meeting Monday morning and the first thing out of his mouth was, “You guys are killing me.” And it totally killed our morale. So right from the get go, we all have to put everything together and figure out, like, “Oh, how are we going to work on this person who clearly has a misunderstanding of what can be done on the project or with the development team.” So that was the challenge right from the get go for me. EVAN: In my experience,
Episode 32: The Ruby Freelancers Show 032 – Pivoting to New Technology
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:26 - Topic: Pivoting Into New Development Areas 02:00 - Taking time off as a freelancer 02:39 - Business of Freelancing: Eric Davis & Brennan Dunn 03:52 - Podcast Answer Man: Cliff Ravenscraft 04:14 - Chuck’s Intro to CoffeeScript Webinar 04:58 - Pivoting from one technology to another 05:12 - Jim’s experience with ‘pivoting’ 08:20 - Clojure 08:39 - Partial pivoting Learning new skills Trying new programming languages Satisfaction & what works best for you 12:08 - Eric’s experience with ‘pivoting’ 14:47 - Chuck’s experience with ‘pivoting’ 17:09 - Client requirements 18:43 - Transitioning to something you don’t have expertise in Diving deeper Find a tool that is similar to what you’re already doing 22:13 - Billing yourself as an expert 23:20 - Repercussions of pivoting into a new technology Shortages of work Jack of All Trades/Master of None Cutting edge technologies Making up time lost in old communities 26:19 - Personal reasons for pivoting Enjoyment factors Trying new technologies Growing as a developer Preventing burnout 30:05 - Pivoting into new technology versus learning new technology to broaden your horizons 32:31 - Other possible ‘gotcha’s’ of starting from scratch 34:37 - Was it lucrative to pivot out of areas? 39:09 - Adapting to a certain company’s technologies 40:14 - What technologies are people getting into? JavaScript Mobile techonology .NET mruby Perl 6 49:05 - Closing out contracts with current clients before pivoting Picks Business of Freelancing (Eric) Automating with convention: Introducing sub (Eric) Adhearsion (Jim) Rebuilding Rails: Noal Gibbs (Jim) heckle (Jim) f.lux (Chuck) Transcript ERIC: I’ve seen a lot of problems with the Apple ear bud headphones because for me at least, it gets caught under my collar. And so, you can still pick up enough audio, but when you turn, it’s like rubbing on your shirts. You know, like top and bottom. JIM: You’re dressed when you do this? CHUCK: [laughs] ERIC: Yeah. I just have a shirt on. CHUCK: We know we’ve got Eric at least half covered folks. [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 it 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 32 of the Ruby Freelancers show. This week on our panel we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay. JIM: Hello. CHUCK: I’m Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we’re going to talk about “Pivoting into other Development Areas”. Before we get going though, I want to ask you guys; is there anything interesting going on in your businesses of lives lately? ERIC: I’m sick, that’s interesting. JIM: That’s not good. I have been renovating my house unexpectedly. And actually, I’ve been talking with a friend of mine, Sean Marcia and he’s done freelancing and he’s been employed. We have discussions on what’s the benefit of being employed versus being a freelancer and I’ve taken… you know, I plan to take a month off to finish writing my book,
Episode 31: The Ruby Freelancers Show 031 – Insurance
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:07 - Jim Gay is a new member of the Ruby Freelancer’s regular panel! Author of (upcoming) Clean Ruby Cofounder of Arlington Ruby Co-organizer of DC RUG 02:03 - Freelancing and Experience 03:48 - Radiant CMS 05:34 - Liability Insurance 07:52 - Kinds of liability insurance Professional/errors in omissions General liability Umbrella policy 10:15 - Disclaimer: The Ruby Freelancers are not insurance agents, attorneys or financial advisors 10:45 - Putting liability back on the client 11:47 - Seeking advisors and professionals who specialize in your needs 13:20 - Proof of insurance 15:07 - Following best practices 16:26 - Insurance brokers versus salesmen versus financial planners/advisors daveramsey.com: Endorsed Local Providers 20:02 - Health Insurance Personal Plans versus employer plans 24:31 - HSA: Health savings accounts Cafeteria plans Medical emergencies Debit savings cards 28:20 - FSA: Flexible savings accounts 30:44 - When laws change industries change 31:50 - Life Insurance: term life 33:52 - Purpose is to replace income and pay off debts 38:05 - Whole life insurance 41:15 - Contingency plans 45:42 - Disability Insurance Long-term Short-term 50:27 - Working from home: business insurance 57:41 - Go to Meetups, do a presentation, build your career 59:05 - The Ruby Hangout Picks Pomodoro Technique (Eric) TED Talk: Clay Shirky: How the Internet will (one day) transform government (Eric) The Rails View (Jim) Responsive Resources (Jim) Manager Tools (Jim) Easy Voice Recorder (Chuck) Endorsed Local Providers (Chuck) Internet Business Mastery (Chuck) Transcript CHUCK: Should we kick this thing off then or do you wanna do some small talk first? EVAN: Small talk? I don’t know what it is. JIM: [laughs] I was going to make the same joke. [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 it 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 31 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 and this week, we have a new member of our regular panel and that is Jim Gay. JIM: Thank you for having me. CHUCK: Why don’t you introduce yourself really quick, Jim? JIM: Sure. I am currently writing “Clean Ruby”, which about writing applications that reflects business processes a little bit better than we typically do it. I am a co-founder of “Arlington Ruby”, which is a meet up in the DC area; I'm the co-organizer of that. Co-organizer of DC RUG. And, I used to be a graphic designer. I did a lot of freelance graphic design work and then started getting into Ruby when I heard about Rails and saw how great it was, I guess about… I don’t know… 6 or 7 years ago, probably 6. I don’t know. I never marked it on the calendar. So, whenever it was… one point something rather that I got involved, so. That's my story. CHUCK: Wow. So how long have you been freelance?
Episode 30: The Ruby Freelancers Show 030 – How to Prepare for the Lean Times
Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion Preparing for lean times Cash on hand Marketing (BCP - Business Continuation Practices) List of productive activities Bank account fuel meter Emergency funds Acquiring skills Small but consistent jobs $15,000 In Income From An EBook, How I Did It: Jim Gay Prioritizing your expenses Changing your style of living and knowing what to cut Networking Reviewing expenses Wish list of companies User Groups Knowing what’s coming before it does: line up work Get Clients Now!(TM): A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches: C.J. Hayden Focus on sales Cash flow vs income Getting paid up front/deposits Getting organized Having next steps CouchDB and Me: Damien Katz’s RubyFringe Presentation Picks iPad + Linode, 1 Year Later: Mark O’Connor (Eric) Damien Katz Relaxing on CouchDB (Evan) Regrets of the Dying (Evan) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Steven Covey (Evan) Mac Power Users (Chuck) NPR Sunday Puzzles Podcast (Chuck) No More Mondays Show (Chuck) 48 Days Podcast (Chuck) EntreLeadership Podcast (Chuck)
Episode 29: The Ruby Freelancers Show 029 – Learning and Staying Current
Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Discussion Requires Time and Effort No Time vs. Not A Priority Learning Takes Energy Make a list of things to learn, set a schedule. Learning GNU Emacs Books vs. Screencasts IRC Mailing Lists The Third Tribe The Podcast Mastermind Evan's Cat The Main Modes of Learning The Learning Pyramid Picks The Learning Pyramid (Eric) Pragmatic Thinking and Learning (Eric) Downcast (Eric) Ruby Rogues - DHH (Eric) Evening on Backbone.js/Views w/ Q&A with David Heinemeier Hansson (Eric) ViewSonic VA2431WM (Chuck) 75 to 100mm VESA Converter Plates (Chuck) LG Tone Bluetooth Headset (Chuck) Go Groove Blue Sync Bluetooth Speaker (Chuck)
Episode 28: The Ruby Freelancers Show 028 – What do You Wish You had Known When You Started Freelancing?
Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Sammy Larbi (twitter github blog) Discussion Setting Time Boundaries Use Goals Dividing time between client work and product dev. Educating clients, RE: time Subcontractors Set up an emergency fund. Entitled Clients and Pricing Competing With Low Quality Developers Fixed Bids Ask questions and qualify potential clients. Picks A List Apart - Habit Fields (Eric) 8th Light - Fixed Feature (Eric) Radio Shack (Chuck) LG Tone Bluetooth Headphones (Chuck) Evan Light (Sammy)