https://www.joshcanhelp.com2018-07-10T00:00:00ZJosh Cunninghamjosh@joshcanhelp.comPitfalls of Being a WordPress Developer2018-07-10T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/pitfalls-of-being-a-wordpress-developer/Something happens to you as a developer when you start on and stick with a single platform for a long period of time. As you get better and better at that platform, you get further and further away from the rest of the ecosystem.<p>I’ve been developing on the web for almost a decade. Most of that time has been spent building on WordPress. Every platform has it’s fallbacks, WordPress not excepted, but I’ve found it to be a capable, reliable partner when building content and community sites of all sizes. Properly built, configured and maintained, it can handle massive amounts of traffic and stay secure in the process. I regret nothing with my choice of CMS.</p>
<p>But something happens to you as a developer when you start on and stick with a single platform for a long period of time. As you get better and better at that platform, you get further and further away from the rest of the ecosystem. In my case, getting better at WordPress has meant:</p>
<ul>
<li>conforming more to WordPress coding standards</li>
<li>using the WordPress API better and more often</li>
<li>ensuring my code can always run where WordPress can</li>
</ul>
<p>… and so on. While I was busy becoming a better WordPress developer, I was also busy:</p>
<ul>
<li>ignoring or forgetting about non-WordPress standards like <a href="https://www.php-fig.org/">PHP-FIG</a></li>
<li>architecting only around the WordPress themes/plugins/mu-plugins model</li>
<li>missing out on the benefits of tools like Composer and new PHP versions</li>
</ul>
<p>This is not a problem with WordPress and the community around it, this could be any platform at all – Drupal, Rails, jQuery, Django, or any abstraction on top of a basic language or technology. It’s also not something bad that WordPress is “doing to me,” it’s a function of committing to a technology and doing my best to work within a specific environment. The WordPress Way is the way it is for a reason: coding standards, interoperability between add-ons, and broad environment support makes for a stronger overall experience for users and developers alike.</p>
<p>Not everyone is going to fall into this trap but I definitely have and it’s been both discouraging and frustrating to find that my 10 year career in web development has left me with engineering skills of someone with maybe half that experience. To be fair to myself, a lot of the working time during those 10 years has been non-development – design, UX, SEO, technical writing, training – so this is also a Problem of the Generalist. But repeatedly failing engineering interviews and gathering long lists of comments on code reviews are tough pills to swallow.</p>
<p>I’m currently an open source engineer at Auth0 maintaining our <a href="https://github.com/auth0?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=&language=php">PHP repos</a>, including a relatively large <a href="https://github.com/auth0/wp-auth0/">WordPress plugin</a>. My technical writing experience makes me valuable as a documentation contributor (highly valued at Auth0) and my relatively broad experience helps fill gaps where needed (like PR reviews, troubleshooting, and support requests). I’ve learned more in the past 5 months than I have in the last 4 years combined with no end in sight and I wouldn’t want it any other way.</p>
<p>I wanted to collect some of the ways that I’ve lagged behind as a developer because of my WordPress focus with a goal of helping others who might be on my same path. If you love engineering, as I do, and want to continue on that path, these are a few things that might hold you back.</p>
<h2>Composer</h2>
<p>Composer is a wonderful, beautiful thing. It’s reliable, usually does what you expect, and makes both package management and autoloading dead simple. I find it incredibly useful now, but only after using it regularly in the last half-year or so.</p>
<p>I talk more generally about package management below and why that’s not often “a thing” in WordPress development. I think the reasons there are the main reasons why Composer is not incorporated into most WordPress projects.</p>
<p>But package management is only a piece of what Composer can do. It can also:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md#autoloading">Autoload classes via namespace</a>. This might be overlooked if you stick to the WordPress minimum PHP version of 5.2.4 as <a href="https://secure.php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.rationale.php">namepaces</a> were added in 5.3. If you started using WordPress before 2009, like I did, then that might remain a foreign concept.</li>
<li><a href="https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/scripts.md">Build out project-specific scripts for testing and code sniffing</a>. But, if you’re not testing and sniffing anyways, this feature is irrelevant.</li>
</ul>
<p>Both of these, along with the main package-management capabilities, have become essential to my development flow recently. And the main impetus was, to be honest, a good showing for an interview project. I knew about all of these things and that, in a general sense, they were a part of “modern development” but just never found a reason to implement them.</p>
<h2>Package Management</h2>
<p>Composer is the package manager that you should be using but probably aren’t. But why not?</p>
<p>It might be because the idea of “packages” in the WordPress world is analogous with “plugins.” Adding additional functionality means searching the repo in a UI, installing, and activating. Extending that is using the (hopefully) existing hooks within that plugin to do what you want.</p>
<p>But there is a world of small libraries out there that help you be more productive and can, if you become familiar with the code, help you learn quite a bit about how to do things. Why write an environment parser or a logger or a router if there is a competent package out there that can do it for you?</p>
<p>But, then, why do you even need any of that in a WordPress plugin? WordPress has an environment using constants in <code>wp-config.php</code> (guh) and an options table to log to (double-guh) and a router (infinity guh). And an HTTP library. And the <code>$wpdb</code> class.</p>
<p>When you start pulling in external libraries to do things that WordPress already does, you add mostly-unnecessary weight and more to manage. But if you don’t, you’re stuck with what’s there which can be dated, hard-to-use, and lacking functionality. It’s a catch 22.</p>
<h2>New PHP features</h2>
<p>WordPress was built, and continues to be maintained, to support the largest possible audience of hosts. As such, it <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/">supports PHP versions down to 5.2.4</a>. There is a pretty fierce and long-running debate about whether this minimum version should be increased but, so far, the consensus from the core team has been “no.”</p>
<p>Whether or not this is the right move is irrelevant for the sake of this argument and, if you want to break from that minimum version, you’re perfectly welcome to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2017/08/29/minimum-php-version-requirement/">declare a higher version in your plugin</a> (WordPress supports up to the latest PHP version, 7.2). But if you want to support the most sites and field the least support requests, you’re stuck with an unsupported and aging version of PHP.</p>
<p>In the meantime, PHP moves forward. If you keep with version 5.2.4, you’re missing out on:</p>
<ul>
<li>Namespaces in 5.3</li>
<li>Late static binding in 5.3</li>
<li>Shorthand arrays in 5.4</li>
<li>Traits in 5.4</li>
<li>Function array dereferencing in 5.4</li>
<li><code>finally</code> keyword for try-catch in 5.5</li>
<li>Better password hashing in 5.5</li>
<li><code>empty()</code> supporting arbitrary expressions in 5.5</li>
<li>Class name resolution via <code>::class</code> in 5.5</li>
<li>Array and string literal dereferencing in 5.5</li>
<li>Constant expressions in 5.6</li>
<li><code>use function</code> and <code>use const</code> in 5.6</li>
<li>Massive performance improvements in 7.0</li>
<li>Return type declarations in 7.0</li>
<li>Constant arrays using <code>define()</code> in 7.0</li>
<li>Group <code>use</code> declarations in 7.0</li>
</ul>
<p>One problem with missing out on these features is developer happiness. The features above can make your code more clear, more performant, and take up less vertical line space overall. That alone should be a be motivator.</p>
<p>But the biggest problem is just falling out-of-pace with PHP in general. Newer PHP libraries will be confusing, modern PHP development teams will be inaccessible, and you’ll miss out on functionality that might help you learn another technology.</p>
<p>Also, PHP 7+ is really, really fast. Try it out locally, you’ll see an improvement (particularly running WordPress).</p>
<h2>OO Practices</h2>
<p>I recall watching a presentation several years back from a well-respected developer in the WordPress community called “Object-Oriented Design in WordPress” (or thereabouts). I was just “getting into” OO (meaning: reading about it and trying to understand it) and was excited to get some real guidance on how it comes together in the WP architecture.</p>
<p>By the end, I knew how to write multiple singleton objects to essentially do what a <code>namespace</code> does. Guess what I did for the next several years?</p>
<p>Whether or not Singletons are <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons">are a bad design pattern</a> or not is beyond the scope here but I will say that classes are a poor way of working with the WordPress hooks system. <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/36110">Here’s how to unhook a class method from an action or filter</a>, you write it differently to being with. How about in a plugin that didn’t do that? <a href="https://github.com/herewithme/wp-filters-extras/blob/master/wp-filters-extras.php">Here’s the answer</a>, not pretty.</p>
<p>All this to say … you will be hard-pressed to find great examples of OO implementation in WordPress core or in the ecosystem at large. This is a problem because, regardless of what you think about OO as a practice, it’s still a widely-used design pattern that you should be familiar with. PHP has a pretty competent <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.php">class and object system</a> so there’s no specific obstacle beyond lack of understanding.</p>
<h2>Command Line</h2>
<p>The command line is one of the most powerful things you can learn as a web developer. I’ve been learning more and more about using and scripting bash commands this year and it’s helped me do a lot more with a lot less. Besides Composer, <code>npm</code>, and Docker, I use it to <a href="https://gist.github.com/joshcanhelp/50f66002643ece68f01bf5f94e1abe56">install WP test fixtures</a>, <a href="https://gist.github.com/joshcanhelp/2120f1b7abf5e170fb7d1a001ed73dd8">update WP SVN tags</a>, keep backups of photos and music, maintain helpful aliases and environment variables, and more.</p>
<p>The problem with learning the command line, though, is that it takes a long time to get comfortable with it. It’s also a difficult one to approach if you’re not already familiar with the environment. Paths, variables, confusing file permissions, weird command names, scary potential screw-ups … they’re all there and feel like they’re hiding around the corner to screw up your day.</p>
<p>If you’re not using Composer or <code>npm</code> and you aren’t familiar with some of the great command line tools in other frameworks like Laravel and Rails, you might not have any exposure here at all. The gateway drug of the command like for WP developers is WP-CLI but I’ve met more developers that don’t use it than do (which is a shame, I couldn’t function without it).</p>
<p>Because the command line can do everything, it can be hard to know where to start when learning it. And if the environment around you isn’t pushing you in that direction then you’re unlikely to ever get enough of a foothold to keep exploring.</p>
<h2>Missing MySQL knowledge</h2>
<p>MySQL was on my “list of powerful and expansive technologies to just learn completely in my off time” for a long time. I knew enough to put together basic SELECT and UPDATE statements and could cobble together simple commands to solve basic problems but most of the time spent “writing statements” was just Googling, screwing up, and restoring back-ups.</p>
<p>The big change in MySQL experience happened throughout last year. I was charged with managing a fairly large database of content that had seen many different plugins, styles, and themes over the years. There was a lot of inconsistency in how things were created and even more in how they were displayed. I found myself writing semi-complicated queries (relative to my experience up until that point) regularly to find, replace, and adjust content for new template files.</p>
<p>One of the biggest code smells for a WordPress plugin is how much MySQL is used (<a href="https://vip.wordpress.com/documentation/code-review-what-we-look-for/#direct-database-queries">WordPress VIP all but explicitly rejects it</a>). Because <code>WP_Query</code> and it’s sister classes for comments and other records are so capable, there is rarely a need to write or read with custom queries. More often than not, if you see MySQL being used it’s because someone either wasn’t familiar with the API or they just couldn’t be bothered.</p>
<p>Another big setback relates to WordPress’s database structure and conventions surrounding it. The structure used is pretty and it’s rare that you’re left wondering to put somewhere. You’ve got:</p>
<ul>
<li>A <code>posts</code> table with records for each piece of content and a <code>postmeta</code> table for all the extra data.</li>
<li>A bank of tables for taxonomy for content records.</li>
<li>A <code>users</code> table with records for each user and a <code>usermeta</code> table for all the extra data.</li>
<li>A <code>comments</code> table with records for each comment and a <code>commentmeta</code> table for all the extra data.</li>
<li>An <code>options</code> table for literally everything else.</li>
</ul>
<p>Creating a new table in WordPress is trivial but is generally frowned upon unless you have a great reason to do so (<a href="https://vip.wordpress.com/documentation/code-review-what-we-look-for/#database-alteration">WordPress VIP directly says “no” to this</a>). If you cling tightly to WP standards, which is a good thing in general when you’re using the platform, opportunities to understand database structures and how they come together are rare if any.</p>
<p>And that’s a shame because understanding SQL and relational databases in general is a broad, useful skill to have. It can greatly assist with performance tuning, is a key component to low-level data science, and is just a good way to be able to think. The SQL query language and similar is used in so many places and in so many technology stacks that knowledge of it is probably second in value only to the command line.</p>
<p>Not only that, lack of MySQL knowledge will hurt you working with WordPress as well. If a seemingly simple content listing page is reaching 100 or more queries, do you know how to reduce that and where to start? If you install a required plugin and suddenly some of your external pages are slower, can you diagnose what might be going wrong? What if the WP API doesn’t do what you need, are you familiar with the <code>posts_*</code> family of filters?</p>
<p>Lack of knowledge here is an easy condition to find yourself in and a tough one to get out of without self-directed experience or learning.</p>
<h2>Mitigation</h2>
<p>So, you’ve been writing standards-compliant, minimum version WordPress code for many years. Now what?</p>
<p>Starting now, you could devote all of those extra hours you have in the evening and on the weekends to learning all the stuff above. But it’s possible that you’ve already tried to do that for the last half of your development career. It’s also difficult to stay motivated on non-essential (and non-paid) computer tasks. It’s usually best to go take a walk, really.</p>
<p>The only way I’ve found to make real, lasting change in my life is:</p>
<ul>
<li>First, <strong>acknowledge that change is hard and learning can be painful.</strong> You’re going to feel a little dumb for a while as you get your bearings in all this new stuff. This is normal and expected. Give yourself a little slack ahead of time and remember that the discomfort of feeling stupid will quickly be replaced by the feeling of accomplish once you’re using your new tools.</li>
<li>Then, <strong>focus on the benefit of the change.</strong> In this case, you’ll be writing better code that will position you for opportunities in the future. It will also help you modernize your code writing in such a way that will help you adopt new technology (which, if you’re mostly writing 5.2 PHP for WordPress, will be a breath of fresh air). Finally, and the most motivational for the right type of person, these tools and techniques will make you more productive, no question.</li>
<li>Finally, <strong>create situations where this new behavior is easy to practice.</strong> You’re probably not going to upend your entire career based on a blog post but there are ways to work these changes into your day-to-day tasks. Scope your project a little higher to account for some learning time and sell it as making sure you’re delivering the best thing you can.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here’s what has made a difference for me:</p>
<h3>Set a plugin minimum PHP version >= 5.6</h3>
<p>If you’re creating a new plugin for the WP.org repo, set your minimum PHP version to 5.6 or higher. If you’re writing open source software then you’re already doing the world a favor so don’t hurt yourself by limiting what you can do.</p>
<p>If you’re curious about the impact on your user base, WordPress maintains some <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/">helpful statistics</a> on versions used. Over two-thirds of WordPress sites are on version 5.6 or higher. If that’s cutting out too many folks for what you’re trying to do, then go with 5.4 and you’ll cover almost 90% of sites.</p>
<h3>Use Composer in every project</h3>
<p>This one is an easy one and, after a project or two, you’ll see the benefit and never go back. Take less than a half-day of time and set it up like so:</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally">Install Composer globally</a></li>
<li>Make a folder for your project in some /wp-content/ folder</li>
<li>In that folder, type <code>composer init</code> and walk through the steps (don’t define any dependencies yet)</li>
<li>Walk through the <a href="https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md">basic usage</a> section and install a regular requirement (like <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/webdevstudios/cmb2">CMB2</a>) and a dev one (like <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/wp-coding-standards/wpcs">wpcs</a>)</li>
<li>Create a regular plugin file (PHP >= 5.6) that loads your required lib(s) and uses <a href="https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md#autoloading">namespace autoloading</a> to load a custom class</li>
<li>BONUS: Write a Composer script that runs <code>wpcs</code> against your project (excluding the /vendor/ folder)</li>
</ol>
<p>That will be your startup procedure for every new PHP project, either open source or client.</p>
<h3>Install and use Query Monitor</h3>
<p>Second only to WP-CLI, Query Monitor is probably one of the greatest WP dev tools out there. You might have used it to figure out if a plugin is going crazy with queries or to solve an issue but take it a step further.</p>
<p>Always have this installed and running in your development environment and pay attention to the actual queries that are being run. If a page template has a custom <code>WP_Query</code>, find that in the queries panel and read through what you’re doing. Connecting the API you know, WordPress, with the output you don’t, MySQL queries, is a powerful learning tool.</p>
<h3>Think hard about automation</h3>
<p>The word “automation” is a bit loaded but, in this context, I mean offloading repeatable tasks to a saved process. In the case of, say, some kind of process run on your database (replacing URLs, deleting unused meta, etc), you could do it one of four ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>Manually, which is boring and mistake-prone</li>
<li>With a plugin, which is easy but you gain nothing</li>
<li>With PHP in a page template you run once or WP-CLI.</li>
<li>With a DB query, saved somewhere for later</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s very easy to just go with the first one and be done with it. Then miss a couple and do it again. Alternatively, the second one is more repeatable but dangerous if it’s a plugin you’re not familiar with and you’re not left with any new knowledge.</p>
<p>The 3rd option is better than the other two because you do end up with something you can re-use and you thought through the problem. But you’re in the same environment as always and writing the same type of code you usually would be.</p>
<p>Commit to the 4th option, in as many situations as you can. It’s likely to take a little longer the first time around but the second time, you’ve got something in your toolkit. Save it in Sequel Pro, if you use that, or a text file or a Gist. You could even find a plugin that does what you want, figure out how it’s done, and save that script for later.</p>
<h3>Learn another language or framework</h3>
<p>I’ve read this advice over and over: pick up a new technology every year. Having seen more new technology in the last half-year than the previous half-decade combined, I can definitely vouch for the importance of this. Every new thing you try will make you think differently about development and expose you to new concepts. You can bring the stuff you like back to your comfortable stack or you might just starting buidling things in something else.</p>
<p>But just <em>doing</em> this is hard. Can you devote a half day a week to trying something new? If so, great, I promise it’s worth your time. But if not, you’ll have to be a little more creative.</p>
<p>If you’re building a small site and WordPress is not a requirement, try a different CMS, maybe one built on Laravel so you get to see a different way of building things. If what you’re building is not a content site and you don’t need to rely on a lot of functionality from plugins, try building it from scratch. I’ve found you can build literally anything on WordPress … which is not always a good thing. Use <a href="https://auth0.com/docs/quickstart/webapp/php/01-login">Auth0 for authentication</a> and hunt around in Composer for packages that can handle some of the other heavy lifting. Look into Laravel or Symfony. Even if it’s just an experiment, it’s worth the effort.</p>
<p>If you’ve got an idea for a thing and the time/energy to build it, put it on something totally different. It will take longer and brace yourself for frustration but you have total control over the output and you’re able to cut corners to just get it running.</p>
<p>If you are exploring new technologies, here are a few recommendations:</p>
<ul>
<li>I mentioned it a few times above but give Laravel a shot. It’s easy to use, has a competent CLI (hint hint), and will expose you to MVC in a simple way. I’ve been through the getting started tutorial at least twice and each time I’ll get a site up very fast and think “wow, that was it?” There is a lot to learn but ramp-up time is short.</li>
<li>If you do a lot of front-end development and feel comfortable with JS, give Node a try. The syntax will be familiar and the joy of writing the same code for both front and back-end is real.</li>
<li>If you want to do something totally different, try Ruby on Rails. There is tons of great documentation and tutorials out there and the focus on developer productivity and happiness is refreshing, to say the least. Over and over I find myself typing something and thinking “I wonder if this works?” and it just does.</li>
</ul>
<h2>That’s all I’ve got.</h2>
What it means to me to be a free agent2010-06-24T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/what-it-means-to-me-to-be-a-free-agent/My answers to the 16 questions for people making a living as a free agent.<p>Seth Godin posed <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/16-questions-for-free-agents-.html">16 questions for people making a living as a free agent</a>. While the people I currently help and those I might help in the future may benefit from knowing the answers here, it’s more important to put in words why I do what I do to make sure I understand that for myself. Still, I hope this little exercise provides a helpful window into how I work and who I am.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2010/06/jch04.jpg" alt="" title="jch04" /></p>
<h3>1. Who are you trying to please?</h3>
<p>It’s easy to say “I’m trying to please my clients” but I don’t think that’s a complete answer. My satisfaction as a designer, developer, and service provider comes directly from how well I’ve solved other peoples’ problems so, in the end, I’m truly trying to please myself. If someone is unhappy with their site or their logo or their blog then I take it personally and, for my own sake, do everything I can to figure out a better way or a new look.</p>
<p>I look for this satisfaction from the very beginning of a project and try not to take on anything that I’m not going to be proud of in the end. I like to make other people look good and I like to help other people succeed and if I don’t think I can do that (because of the starting point or the project or the person I’ll be working with) then I won’t take the project.</p>
<h3>2. Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?</h3>
<p>This question really made me think…</p>
<p>I know I’m not just trying to make a living, that’s been clear from the start (it’s been clear, at least in my head, since I went back to school 7 years ago). I try as hard as I can to make a difference, both in the way people work and in my industry in general. That’s been a big motivation to keep going but it’s also a big reason I keep blogging (and want to even more). If people can do better work, reach more people, make more money, and/or understand something better because of me, I’ve succeeded and I feel great.</p>
<p>But a legacy? I’ve thought about the business I want to own, the team I want to build, the office I’d love to outfit but it never really occurred to me that I would be building a legacy. In fact, in never occurred to me that I could. Though I’ve never really framed my activities as legacy-building, I’ve always been looking forward to creating jobs for people and building something that can stand on its own. So I guess the answer is yes, I am trying to build a legacy and I think this question just gave what I do a name.</p>
<h3>3. How will the world be different when you’ve succeeded?</h3>
<p>The world will be different in two ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>There will be more business owners and individuals on the web who understand what’s going on around them and how to use the tools that are available.</li>
<li>There will be more attractive, easy-to-use, and well-coded sites and applications out there.</li>
</ol>
<p>Not a particularly difficult goal for the most part.</p>
<h3>4. Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?</h3>
<p>I don’t think I could choose one or the other and I work to maximize both (as much I as I can with my time limited to 168 hours a week). In many cases, I’m setting up sites and teaching people with the outcome being a site that they can maintain on their own. If I have to be a day-to-day part of the operations on a site I’ve built then I probably didn’t really do my job very well. On-going check-ups are one thing but content management has matured to the point where web novices can do great things on their own. I like empowering people to not need me.</p>
<p>I do, however, put a lot of energy into communicating with my clients and making sure they understand all of their options. I’m sure this is why I have so many word-of-mouth referrals and returning clients. I hate to burn bridges and I’d rather do the work and finish the project correctly than get paid for every minute of my time. I also put my current clients ahead of any leads I’m pursuing as it’s only fair to complete work you’re on the line for before taking anything else on. In that way, I inadvertently choose to put existing clients ahead of others.</p>
<h3>5. Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that’s two questions)</h3>
<p>I do want a team but the size is not something I’ve thought about. If I had to come up with a number:</p>
<ol>
<li>One excellent designer who knows how to write code</li>
<li>One excellent programmer who understands good aesthetics</li>
<li>One excellent writer who understands SEO</li>
<li>One excellent finance person who understands sales</li>
<li>One excellent generalist who understands how it all comes together</li>
</ol>
<p>So, count it up, I would say 5 great people who all understand customer service and how to have a good time.</p>
<h3>6. Would you rather have an open-ended project that’s never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)</h3>
<p>I like the idea of a project with natural end points that can be worked towards though almost anything can be improved so I’m not sure you can really categorize all projects into one or the other. Would building a business be an open-ended project that’s never done? What about a web application? I like a mix of both (building and maintaining JoshCanHelp and blog as well as starting and completing individual projects).</p>
<p>The “how high” question is a common one, especially as it pertains to a design. When is a design complete? I think a design is complete when it does what you set out to do and nothing more. This makes sure you’re always looking towards completion and leaves the door open for improvement if that becomes a goal.</p>
<h3>7. Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?</h3>
<p>I’m understanding more and more the “art of the sell,” particularly as it pertains to my business. At first, my attitude was “if they want it, they’ll pay my deposit and we’ll get started.” This worked for the most part but I had a lot of people drop off or disappear before anything was started. Now, I try to make moving forward with me as easy as possible by:</p>
<ol>
<li>Explaining the process and the technology as best I can</li>
<li>Making sure they hear that, yes, I can do what they need to get done</li>
<li>Providing a very clear path forward, whether it’s a bank of questions to answer, a distinct choice to make, or an easy way to pay the deposit.</li>
</ol>
<p>My job as a salesperson for myself has much less to do with selling something than it is with getting people ready to go through the process. Building a site is just as hard for the client as it is for me; it involves tough decisions, a lot of work creating the content that will appear on the site, and a lot of time working with me to get the right look and feel. Helping people to understand what lies ahead and how I can help them get through it not only makes for a smoother journey but makes it easier for people to commit to moving forward with me.</p>
<h3>8. Which: to invent a category or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?</h3>
<p>Easy: invent. I like to solve problems creatively and when you do that, you create new genres. Outperforming an incumbant, however, builds genres as well. Many people want the same old thing, a copy of a nice-looking site that they can call their own. Other people want something a bit different. When you start to re-think how a site can be built, you start creating new categories of sites.</p>
<h3>9. If you take someone else’s investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?</h3>
<p>If I ever find myself in that position, I believe I would “sell out,” though I have a tough time understanding what, exactly, that would mean. If you change your product to appeal to a broader, more motivated, or more cash-flush market, is that always selling out? If you take a niche product and make it more broadly appealing, is that selling out? If you change something to make more money and you still like what you’ve got, is it still selling out?</p>
<p>I believe in investor value over personal satisfaction (I don’t see it as the pinnacle of importance, though) so if I ever found myself at a point where I didn’t like what I was making, I assume that there’s always a way for me to leave and hand the keys over to people that believe in it. I won’t work on something I don’t believe in so if it’s me or the product, I’m out.</p>
<h3>10. Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?</h3>
<p>Done personally growing? That’s hilarious… I won’t be done personally growing until I’m dead and buried. I will continue to grow, change, learn, and develop through the rest of my life as it’s a big reason why I get up in the morning.</p>
<h3>11. Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask…</h3>
<p>I like to teach, lead, challenge, guide, resist, and sometimes annoy my customers. If they trust me and can voice their opinions and hesitations, we’ll do just fine. I don’t like to just build what people ask for, I like to push a few boundaries, look at a few options, and help people do their best.</p>
<h3>12. How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?</h3>
<p>I’m impatient in general but I know that about myself so I can wait a while before I get confirmation of how well (or poorly) I’ve done. That doesn’t mean I’m not freaking out with the mic on mute and the webcam off but I’m not going to let that show. Everything in due time, I really believe that.</p>
<h3>13. Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)</h3>
<p>I think perfect is important. I fail in public and I fail in private but I’ll shoot for “polished” before I’ll shoot for just “functional.” On the web, there is so much to consider before you launch a project – design, interaction, search engine structure, keywords and phrases, site speed, social media interactions – and to just complete a few is a dissevice. In the beginning, I would casually mention that we could do a bit of keyword research or I’m able to create a Twitter background but that leaves so much undone when people just say “no thanks.”</p>
<p>But I’m digressing a bit… in the end, I’m looking to create the most complete, best product for who I work for. Many times, this means launching at “close” rather than “complete” and I think the iteration and testing that comes once it’s live is a very critical part of the process.</p>
<h3>14. Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe) or is it better they be anonymous and separate?</h3>
<p>One of my favorite things to do is to connect people that can help each other. To that end, I’d love to throw an annual party for my clients and get people together to network and chat. I’d love to see what I learn by bringing all these people together and hearing what they had to say about me and what I do.</p>
<h3>15. How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)</h3>
<p>Failure is painful but necessary. Wipe out is scary but always on the horizon in this line of work. Humiliation, however, is frightening and, I would guess, completely avoidable. If I invest my time and money into something that sounds like a great idea and it falls flat on its face, I wouldn’t be embarressed if I could explain (to whomever would listen) why it seemed like a great idea at the time. I think humiliation would come from making a really dumb move without thinking about it or proclaiming something totally ridiculous on a whim.</p>
<p>Then again, aren’t failure, wipe out, and humiliation all just states of mind? If I went broke doing something I loved to do that didn’t end up being a commercial success, I might not consider that a failure and I might not consider my state, if I’m still surrounded by the people I love, wipe out. If I did something really stupid but I wasn’t embarrassed about it, can I still be humiliated? If I stick to my guns while people call me names, is it still a humiliation if I truly don’t care what they think? Something to think about….</p>
<h3>16. What does busy look like?</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2010/06/Picture-136.jpg"><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2010/06/Picture-136.jpg" alt="" title="Picture-136" /></a></p>
<p>Busy looks like having your hobby be overflow from your career. Busy means waking up earlier than others to get essential things done. Busy looks like Saturdays in front of the computer and Sunday nights preparing for the week. Busy looks like me.</p>
<p>I think the more important question is: where does busy stop? If I am answering emails on my phone while I’m at a restaurant with my wife, that’s too far. If I work all day without stopping for a whole week, that’s too far. If I’m juggling to the point where people are beginning to ask me 3 or 4 times for something to get done, that’s too far. If the quality of what I create is suffering because I have too much on my plate, I’m not doing anyone any favors, particularly myself.</p>
<p>A lot of what I do involves creating, either designing or building something. You can’t create very well if you force yourself to create 10 hours a day, several days in a row, it just doesn’t work that way. Also, it’s easy to forget that answering emails, chasing down paychecks, and talking to clients all count as work though, oftentimes, you can’t claim the time. This kind of work can eat up 5 or 10 hours a week sometimes and take up time you could be doing something more important: creating or resting.</p>
<p>I’ve been working very, very, very hard for the last 8 years working full time or more, earning a BS in Chemistry, and building this little business I have going. I have tested my limits over and over and know my limits pretty well. I’ll push it now and then but I always expect to pay for it in one way or another.</p>
<p><strong>Thanks for listening!</strong></p>
Free software and websites that really, really, really help me2009-02-02T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/free-software-and-websites-that-really-really-really-help-me/The following computer-based implements have become so essential to me that I would pay good money to keep them. They happen, however, to be completely free.<p>From time to time, I go searching for a utility, website, or document to help me with whatever I’m doing. It usually takes no more than 15 minutes to find, install, or read whatever I find and implement it towards a solution. The solution typically completely satisfies the need and sometimes goes beyond. Some discoveries, however, go so far above and beyond what I was attempting to do that they integrate themselves completely into my digital life and make me wonder what I did before finding it (which always leads to the now philosophical question, what did I do before the internet). The following computer-based implements have become so essential to me that I would pay good money to keep them. They happen, however, to be completely free.</p>
<h2>Syncback Freeware backup software</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html">Get Syncback Freeware back-up software here (click “DOWNLOAD” next to “Syncback Freeware)</a></p>
<p>Sometimes, with software this useful, I want to direct people to the paid version so I feel better about using the free one but, alas, I serve my audience.</p>
<p>This program makes backing up all of your data VERY, VERY easy. It also makes keeping an up-to-date USB drive VERY, VERY easy. It also makes web development VERY, VERY easy (well, at least a component of web dev. Here’s what I use Syncback for:</p>
<ul>
<li>I still carry around a USB drive (keep reading and I’ll tell you why that’s a little silly) but keeping the information current is a pain in the butt. I used to keep a mental log of all the files I changed and then copy them over to the USB drive so I had an extra copy. I’d forget which folder I had open, start to work on the USB files and just end up irratated. Now, I set up a back-up profile for my USB drive, set aside a contingent of folders that I keep all my current work, school projects, and important files, and just run a one-way synchornization with the USB drive. Old files get over-written, new files get copied, and deleted files get removed. What used to consume potentially an hour or more a week now takes, literally, less than a minute.</li>
<li>I have an external back-up hard drive that I keep in a separate location from where I live (it does not make a lot of sense to keep your back-ups right next to the computer being backed up… if that place burns down, everything is lost). I used to save documents to a “staging area” so I knew what needed to be backed-up but that made two different places to find files. I also used to burn DVDs but that was a major hassle. Now, once a week I plug the external drive in, run a sync profile for each main storage area, and bask in peace-of-mind.</li>
<li>For anyone that develops in PHP (creates themes for WordPress or Pligg), Syncback has been a great tool. Since you can’t just open the files on your harddrive and you can’t install WordPress on your machine like a regular application, I use Syncback along with a localhost installed with XAMPP (another great piece of software). When I want to work with PHP files, I copy everything from one folder to a test folder for XAMPP. I can run MySQL database applications about ten times faster locally than on-line which really helps cut down on dev time. Also, I can write to the files in the local directory without worrying about screwing anything up and without the hassle of uploading via FTP.</li>
</ul>
<p>A few resources for you:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-automatically-back-up-your-hard-drive-147855.php">A great Lifehacker.com article (redundant) about using SyncBack to set up automatic back-ups</a></li>
<li><a href="http://randomwalksinlowcountries.blogspot.com/2009/02/backups-and-synchronization.html">Another SyncBack fan</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Dropbox file synchronization</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTY0Mjc1OQ">Get Dropbox synchronization software or find out more about it</a></p>
<p>It’s hard to express in words how amazing I think this software is. It definitely begs a quick description before I start making over-the-top proclamations of how great Dropbox is.</p>
<p>I mentioned before that I use a USB drive (well, I did until I lost it recently). The reason for the drive was that I had 3 computers I used on a regular basis (home desktop, office desktop, laptop) and needed the same data on all three. If I had to work at home, I’d copy the right files to my USB and hope I didn’t forget anything. If I wanted to do write at a coffeeshop, I’d make sure my USB was up to date and take my laptop. Dropboax makes this totally unnecesary.</p>
<p>This is how it works:</p>
<ol>
<li>Make one folder to hold the documents you want to designate as your “Dropbox folder.” Make a set of folders in there to separate the different files you’ll have (work and personal or different clients or however you’d like).</li>
<li>Download and install Dropbox (you’ll need to create an account). Choose the containing folder as your sync folder.</li>
<li>After you have everything set up, install Dropbox onto all the other computers you want to be synced. All done!</li>
</ol>
<p>I’ve never had a problem with Dropbox, it’s never deleted files, and I’ve never had a conflict. It runs in the background, doesn’t suck memory, and just makes my life better. It’s a great way to stay productive on different machines but it’s also a triple back-up for the really important files that I’m currently working on. I have copies on three different computers (plus the external back-up).</p>
<p>Dropbox gives you 2 gigs of storage which is quite a bit for what I need. If you’re only working with documents, you won’t get anywhere close to that. Image files and photographs stat to eat up space so you can upgrade to the 50 gig plan for $10/month. I have a lot of different files synced and I’m only at about 50%.</p>
<h2>Remember the Milk (RTM) online to-do list</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/"><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2009/02/remember_the_milk_icon_by_moutzouris.jpg" alt="Rememberthemilk icon by moutzouris" title="remember_the_milk_icon_by_moutzouris" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/">Sign up for Remember the Milk</a></p>
<p>When I first found RTM, I was not too sure about it. Yeah, it worked well, seem intuitive, and had a clean interaction but I just didn’t think I’d ever use it. At the time, I was using my Windows Mobile phone synced to Outlook for tasks and that was working just fine. More than 6 months after signing up, I finally decided to really give it a try and have never looked back.</p>
<p>The best thing about RTM is the level of functionality that it has but does not force upon you. Can create lists of things to do, add locations on Google Maps, add priority, URLs, notes, due dates, everything. It’s a bit overwhelming what you CAN do with the software. But nothing forces you to use any of this. I made a few lists and added a few items and started small, ignoring about 80% of the functionality. Then I started using it from my phone via their mobile web interface which was great. Now, I’m using all kind of stuff with it:</p>
<ul>
<li>I sync it with my Google Calendar and <a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/gmail/">use it through Gmail</a></li>
<li>The three levels of priority (hint: use the “more actions” drop down at the top of the list) making sorting much more helpful than due dates</li>
<li>I add little notes all the time so I don’t lose anything</li>
<li>I added RTM friends and share lists (I share a project list with one colleague and a tasks list with my girlfriend)</li>
</ul>
<p>And that’s just the half of it! You can sync it with your phone (part of the Pro account for a measly $25 per month), add pins to Google Maps, add time estimates to help planning, and add tags to help search. RTM has made me a lot more productive but, more than that, it’s really helped me get organizaed and not miss all the little things.</p>
<h2>Rambling</h2>
<p>Software and websites like the ones above are excellent tools not because they are absolutely essential but because they help automate things that make you successful. Ignore the whole time-saving aspect and think about what these things can help you accomplish and how much better they make you look. A couple examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>I’ve been able to produce files that clients of mine though they lost themselves. I’m like their backup for the projects files we’re working on. The answer to the question “do you still have that file I sent you” is always “YES” and that makes them more comfortable and me look like a supah-star.</li>
<li>I’m not forgetting the little things anymore. If you ask your web designer “can you correct this little thing” and he or she doesn’t do it after you remind them 4 times, it’s a bit irritating. Are you going to leave them? Probably not because you have a good relationship with them. But if they do everything you ask and even a fwe things you forgot about, doens’t that make you want to come back? Doesn’t it make you want to recommend them to other people?</li>
<li>Having my files backed-up and always available is just a great feeling. I’m covered, I’m fine, a big problem would not be a huge disruption. My photos are safe, my music collection is safe, I always have everything I need wherever I go. This not only makes me look prepared, it makes me FEEL prepared and that’s key.</li>
</ul>
Advice to a client: don't just have a great idea and act on it – remember the bottom line too2009-01-21T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/advice-to-a-client-dont-just-have-a-great-idea-and-act-on-it-remember-the-bottom-line-too/<p>So you’ve got a great idea, do you? Good for you. You’ve joined the ranks of many, many people with a great idea. Don’t get me wrong, having a great idea is wonderful, it’s affirming, and it’s fun to share with your friends. But, besides something to distract you, what do you have?</p>
<p>There are a lot of good ideas running around. I’ll bet you most of the people you know have a good idea for a business or a product or a website. Ask around, see what people say. I think you’d be surprised by how many good ideas there are out there. It begs the question: why aren’t we all rich?</p>
<p>I see three components to success story based on a really good idea.</p>
<ol>
<li>The good idea itself. Let’s assume the idea is good (meaning that it is physically and fiscally possible, it’s not a direct copy of something else, and it addresses a real need).</li>
<li>The motivation to really and truly act on this idea (meaning that you get a team together, cash out your savings or get a loan if you need money to start, and do the damn thing like you actually care).</li>
<li>The ability to maximize the amount of money you make from this idea (meaning, simply, that you [or someone on your team] have the business sense to make a profit, minimize expenses, and market successfully).</li>
</ol>
<p>People get so caught up on the first step, the idea, that they forget the rest of it. If you forget about the second step, you might as well forget about the first one. If you forget about the third step then, congratulations, you have a hobby.</p>
<p>This all relates back to a conversation I had recently with a client. He had a great idea for a video series that has a real chance of becoming popular. He’s probably one of the few people who would/could do it and, if done properly, I think it has viral potential. Sweet, a great idea, one step down.</p>
<p>Since the video relates directly to something he does on a regular basis, having the motivation to do it shouldn’t be too hard. Add a little personality, a bit of music, some creative editing and I see Hollywood in his future. Well, that or some good popularity on YouTube and, potentially, a sell-able DVD.</p>
<p>So, let’s assume the first two are on lock and the videos will actually be created. What then? I have no doubt that people will want to see the videos and send them around to their friends but will this happen if they cost, say, $2.99 to view? Probably not. What about a monthly subscription for full access? Probably not. What about only offered on DVD? Probably not. So how does this idea translate into a paycheck?</p>
<p>It’s going to take real time to create and edit these videos and no one wants to work for free so these videos have to point to income. The simplest thing to do is to have the videos gain attention for T-shirts, CDs, or shoes or something of that nature. At the very least, the attention gained by the free videos does something financially productive. The only “problem” here is that the items being sold don’t relate very well to the videos. As such, people who are only interested in the video might not give a crap about the other stuff. This is where we get creative:</p>
<ul>
<li>First, you need free versions and paid versions of the videos. The free versions are lower quality (for online posting) and include an ad bar at the bottom (get a sponsor?).</li>
<li>Think of the videos in terms of a series of themes, each theme with it’s own series of videos. Each theme is a skill and the first 2 or 3 or 4 videos are free. Want the rest? Download them for $4 per theme or $20 for the whole set. All the videos will be higher quality, ad free, and burnable to a DVD. Also, offer everything on DVD for $25. Now the videos are monetized.</li>
<li>Don’t stop there, though. Do you have anything else for sale? What about those T-shirts or an unrelated DVD or maybe a service? Wear your shirts and mention your service on the video. Even better, include a 15 second introduction on the free videos hawking your wares.</li>
<li>Last but not least, always think of what’s next. You want the current venture to be leading to the next one. Are there more video series that can be done? Can you write a book about it? If the videos become popular, use that popularity to go down other roads and create/promote similar things.</li>
</ul>
<p>In the end, one of the 3 idea components will likely out-weigh the others in terms of how it contributed to the eventual success. This might be luck (you were lucky enough to come up with an amazing idea or lucky enough to randomly meet the best teammate or were lucky enough to time certain things just right to cash in) or something else but it doesn’t eliminate the importance of the other three being present.</p>
<p><strong>If you have a great idea and just don’t know what to do with it, send me an email or a Twitter and I’d be glad to talk it over with you. If I can help you in a professional sense, that’s great. If not, maybe I can help you get perspective. And don’t worry about me stealing your idea… I have enough great ones to keep me busy for a long time!</strong></p>
What to do with downtime: slow-going tips post #12008-10-10T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/what-to-do-with-downtime-slow-going-tips-post-1/<p>Anyone charged with finding business for themselves dreams of the days when you’ll be able to reject more projects then you take. In the meantime, drumming up business can seem like a very daunting thing to do. There are lots of places to find ideas but what will work for you depends on what work you do, what you like doing, and what resources you have at your disposal. It can be frustrating to face an empty inbox or a clear schedule but if you’re not going to get out there and do the leg-work, no one will.</p>
<h2>I’m new to all of this… how can this help?</h2>
<p>I’ve worked with several people who wanted to increase the amount of paying customers they were seeing. Together, we came up with a few ideas for how this could be done. Some of these things work and some of them don’t but if you’re at a slow spot, it’s certainly not going to hurt you to market yourself a little bit.</p>
<h2>Idea #1 – More/better search-able content.</h2>
<p>If it’s been over 6 months, it’s time to change, update, and add to the content on your website. Even if your information is timeless, correct, full of tasty keywords, and prolific, it pays to continue to build on what you have. I can’t think of one popular site out there that has information on it that doesn’t change. What to write? You can detail the services you offer. Do you teach a class? Are you attending or speaking at an event? Do you do something that no one else does? Write about it and post it on your site. Search engines can’t do much to find your site without text and if your site is just a few sentences and your phone number, why do you have a website? Tell a story about yourself.</p>
<p><strong>Contact me if you need help coming up with ideas, want a second pair of eyes, or you’re not sure how to make your content as findable as it could be.</strong></p>
<h2>Idea #2 – Strategic flyers</h2>
<p>Internet marketing is one piece of the puzzle, but maybe you’re missing another big piece. Put a flyer together (or have someone like me do it for you) and put it in coffeeshops, post it on college campuses, and tack it to appropriate corkboards locally. Not everyone uses the internet to find everything they need (I know, crazy, huh?). Get yourself out there locally and don’t be afraid to talk to different people.</p>
<p><strong>I can help you lay out a flyer, figure out what to say, and make sure that it’s optimized for printing. I also know some amazing print designers if you want to take it to the next level.</strong></p>
<h2>Idea #3 – Hit the streets</h2>
<p>Talk about what you do to everyone you meet. Almost anyone I meet for the first time knows what I do after a minute or two of conversation. I’m not pushing it down anyone’s throat but it can be a great icebreaker, first of all, and it can always lead to paid work. Not meeting many people? That’s not true, you meet new people all the time. You talk to people at the store, on the street, to people ringing you up, to other people in line, maybe to classmates. If you’re afraid to put yourself out there then it’s going to be hard to drum up any business.</p>
<p><strong>Let me help you design a business or use the internet to find groups in your area.</strong></p>
<h2>Remember: it’s only as hard as you make it.</h2>
<p>This kind of leg-work can seem like the hardest thing in the world to someone who doesn’t know where to start or has no experience in it. Working for yourself, even if it’s a part-time, off-hours hobby or niche, has to involve putting yourself out there and making your services known. Answering ads and helping friends only goes so far with respect to interest generation. Once you’ve milked your network, it’s time to move beyond.</p>
<p>The one thing I keep in mind when I post on this blog, reach out to a potential client, or hand a business card to someone is that I’m a unique person offering a unique service. I might not be the only one doing what I’m doing but only I do it the way that I do. There are people out there who don’t know me that couldn’t find a use for what I’m doing if they tried (these are the people falling behind their peers, FYI). There are also people who aren’t a fan of my aesthetics or my color choices or my layout tendencies. These people will never call me for a job and will never use my services. There are, however, far more people that could use what I have to make their lives easier. There are small businesses out there who want to do more with the internet but just don’t know how. And there are individuals who just want what they have to work. I can help all of these people but, until I find them or until they stumble onto my site, they’re putting up with processes and equipment that does not work.</p>
<p>Take a chance, risk a little bit of rejection, and make yourself known. You’ll be glad that you did.</p>
How to make a Technology Taming Plan2008-09-24T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/how-to-make-a-technology-taming-plan/If you like learning how to use things and do it quickly then maybe more time should be spent picking things up, playing with them, and deciding whether or not to use them. If, like most of us, you have limited time and want to simplify your daily life, it’s time to make a Technology Taming Plan.<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/09/tamer_dark_sm.jpg" alt="" title="The Technology Tamer, Josh Cunningham" /></p>
<p><strong>Which is harder to do:</strong> using technology or figuring out what technology you should be using? This question is perfectly relative to each person who approaches it and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter how difficult or easy something is if you truly want to get it done.</p>
<p>The reason to ask yourself this question (repeatedly) is to make sure that the time you invest in learning new things goes to good use. If you like learning how to use things and do it quickly then maybe more time should be spent picking things up, playing with them, and deciding whether or not to use them. If, like most of us, you have limited time and want to simplify your daily life, <strong>it’s time to make a Technology Taming Plan.</strong></p>
<p>How does one go about making one of these plans? The process goes like this: figure out what your goal is (gain more eyeballs on your website, sell more products, better connect with people), choose your methods for getting that done (re-design the site, start a blog, start networking on-line), and then pick the best tools for getting it all done. The key is to take each step by itself and not move to the next until you’ve completed the preceding one. This is the best way (that I know of) to make sure you don’t get bogged down in logins to site you don’t use, applications that take up hard drive space, and electronics that sit unused.</p>
<h2>I’m new to all of this… how will this post help me?</h2>
<p>We all have problems with getting done what needs to be done. Sometimes the problem is a lack of motivation but that’s not always the whole story. It’s hard to dig right in without a plan of action or a place to start. It’s hard to clean your house when everything is a mess and you’re not sure what to tackle first. The same goes for moving your business, career, or personal life forward. If you know you want to make a change but you’re not sure of the first step to make, it’s very important to be clear about what you want to do and be aware of the tools out there that can help you do this. The implements can appear to outweigh the opportunities but this is not the case. Having a plan and taking specific action will always move you in the right direction (as long as you know what that direction is).</p>
<p>I’ll show you how to figure out your goal, think about ways to achieve it, then find the tools to get it all done. Of course, this is just a brief overview; <strong>if you need more in-depth help, talk to me!</strong></p>
<h2>Step 1 – What do you want to do?</h2>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/09/map_wide.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Just like any endeavor in life, having an outcome in mind is the very important first step in progression. Whether you reach that outcome or not is not important but having one in the beginning is. Having a goal to point your effort towards gives important direction to everything you do. It also serves to keep you focused on the reason WHY you’re working so damn hard. Going to college is very difficult if you’re not sure what you want to do with what you’ll have at the end. Putting 100% into your work is very difficult if you don’t care where you’re going. Having a successful business, practice, or freelance operation is impossible if you’re not clear on what you want to accomplish.</p>
<p>The same goes for properly using the technology around you. If you buy a Blackberry but you don’t know what you’re going to do with it or why you need it, you’ll probably just end up making calls on it. This is fine but you chose the wrong tool for the job. If all you were going to do was make calls, you probably don’t need more than about 16 buttons and a 2×2″ screen. If, on the other hand, getting email, having access to the web, and keeping a detailed calendar is essential for what you do then the investment was a good idea and so is the time you will take to learn the functionality.</p>
<p>But even that is jumping a bit ahead of ourselves. The first thing to do is to evaluate where you are and where you want to go. Because it’s going to be difficult for me to generalize this, let me give a few examples using clients that I have.</p>
<h3>You’re an artist</h3>
<p>I’m going to go out on a limb and say that being an artist these days is a lot harder than it was not too long ago. Though, ostensibly, this country is the land of the free, it’s still not all that easy to blaze your own path and do your own thing. The expectation out there is “get money” and if you’re not chasing that then what, exactly, are you doing?</p>
<p>The artists that I help don’t seem to be affected so much by this sociological construct but they still want more work than they are getting right now. So, we talk about expanding into new markets. The first thing that needs to get nailed down is literally what they want to accomplish in the end.</p>
<p>One thing everyone on the internet wants to do is to be more visible on search engines; this includes artists. Putting your art on a website is tough, partially because it’s hard to search for particular images (if they are not tagged properly) and partially because art doesn’t have to always lend itself to a long description (making it even harder to find). This, however, is a great first step. The goal is “<strong>get better search ratings in the major search engines</strong>.” Congrats, that’s a goal! You’re not seeing enough people from the internet, you’re not getting as many hits as you think you should, and you’d like to improve that.</p>
<p>Another thing I hear from artists is that they want to teach more people and lead more classes. More students means more tuition and more tuition means the bills are getting paid. This is another perfectly legitimate goal, “<strong>enroll more paying students in my classes</strong>.” You’re teaching 10, you have space for 15 so you want to boost enrollment by 50%. Or you teach one-on-one three times a week, you’d like to do it 5 times a week to fill up your time. Every time you talk to someone, hand out a card, send out an email, or take any step forward, think about asses in seats and you’ll stay on target.</p>
<h3>You’re a freelance financial consultant</h3>
<p>I know a very successful freelance financial consultant who does not have a web presence of any kind. He’s neck-deep in phones, computers, printers, spreadsheets, and digitized income statements but he doesn’t have anything out there that grabs people on the internet. There’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing because he has more business than he can handle. But let’s say he started to train people to do some of what he does. Now, he has employees who are doing the less-sensitive work and he’s freed up to work with the more important clients. Since the number of people he can hire is basically infinite, his income potential is not being realized by being strictly word-of-mouth.</p>
<p>So, this consultant decides he wants to “<strong>find qualified people that I can train to handle certain parts of my business</strong>.” This is an ambitious, well-directed goal that, at worst, will make you meet a few new people and really figure out if this is the direction you want to go. You’re starting out working 16 hours a day and you’d like to maintain your income but only work 10. Or, you can hardly keep up with what you’ve got and need help keeping it all straight. You want to expand but you need the right people. This is a great place to start.</p>
<p>Now that you’ve found a few junior accountants to take some of the math off of your hands, you want to find businesses that need your help. You want to “<strong>discover specific potential clients who need your expertise</strong>.” You work with 100 businesses and you want 300 in your Rolodex. You helped sell 5 businesses last year, this year you want to triple that. You know exactly where you’re at now and you have a clear idea of where you want to be soon.</p>
<p>In addition to building your business, you’re going to need to know what other people are doing as well. You want a unique and useful offering for people to come to you and start buying what you have. You want to price competitively (or contrastingly) and make sure that you’re not missing the boat on something else. You need to “<strong>collect good competitive intelligence to shape your offerings</strong>.”</p>
<h3>Get it?</h3>
<p>Don’t bite off too much at this stage because you’re just going to end up frustrated. At the same time, don’t limit yourself because you’re not exactly sure how to get to where you’re going.</p>
<p>You need to walk a fine line between vagueness and specificity to get this step right. Be vague enough so that you’re not naming actual things you’re going to be doing (yet) but be specific enough so the goal doesn’t end up “make more money.” You want the direction in place so the next step, choosing a path, is easier.</p>
<p>Oh and <strong>WRITE THESE DOWN</strong>, write them all down regardless of what came out of your brainstorming. If you don’t have these on paper, you’re not going anywhere. It sounds a bit silly but this reminder will help you keep your eyes on the prize and your nose to the grindstone. It’s also very important for focusing on what you need to do.</p>
<p>By the way, try to keep the list short. I’d recommend two or three items but, to be honest, that’s a bit hypocritical because I have four of them:</p>
<ul>
<li>More online connections (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)</li>
<li>Bump up my monthly freelance income to a certain amount</li>
<li>Add more people to which I can subcontract work</li>
<li>Add more/better sites to my portfolio</li>
</ul>
<p>Remember, the more of these you have, the worse your focus will be on each one. It might be better to take one or two on at a time and, when they get to a good level, move on to the next. But, again, that’s me giving advice without taking it! :)</p>
<h2>Step 2 – How are you going to do it?</h2>
<p>You have the toughest step out of the way, choosing the outcome. Now let’s start thinking about how this outcome will come about. I’ll use the examples from the previous section.</p>
<h3><strong>“Get better search ratings in the major search engines”</strong></h3>
<p><strong>Everyone</strong> wants better search ratings but how do we go about getting them? Spend 5 minutes reading on the subject and you’ll realize that getting better ratings comes down to three things:</p>
<ol>
<li>Keywords (choosing them and using them)</li>
<li>Incoming links (sites that have a direct link to you…more popular sites and more reputable sites are always better)</li>
<li>Content following Seth’s 3U’s: useful, unique, and updated.</li>
</ol>
<p>Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It is simple but it isn’t easy.</p>
<p>So, our goal is in mind, we (hopefully) are aware what our situation is right now, what’s next? Now, we pick apart the paths we can take to determine the way forward. I’ll start with the first one, keywords. If you don’t know what I mean when I say “targeted keywords” then it’s time to spend some time on Google (or call me). What you will figure out is that you need to choose some keywords that describe your offering and always use those in your writing. There’s your first how from this goal, “<strong>choose the best keywords for what I do and use them in my content</strong>.” We’re not sure exactly how to pick them or the best way to write about them but we’ve got an action to take and we’ve got the reason why.</p>
<p>Let’s also say that you decide to boost your incoming links. The only real way to do this is by creating good content and then getting people to read it and link to it. You’re going to need your keyword skills from above and you’ll need Useful, Unique, and Updated content. You’re also going to need people online with websites that want to link to you. You need to “<strong>make yourself known in the online world and create something that people want and/or need</strong>.” Again, you’re not certain how but you know what and why now.</p>
<h3>“<strong>Collect good competitive intelligence to shape your offerings”</strong></h3>
<p>Competitive intelligence is a funny thing. Not enough of it and you risk being in the dark, overcharging, and being generally uninformed. Too much of it and you might start cloning your competitors and end up a mushy, gray mix of all of them. You want to know what they’re doing but be careful what you wish for!</p>
<p>OK, so you want to know about your competitors and you promise to heed my warning. Now it’s time to think about <em>what you want to know</em> and <em>how you’re going to get it</em>. Let’s say you want to know who your direct competitors are and what kind of press they are getting. To do this, you’re going to need to understand the industry (if you don’t already) and keep a pulse on it. You want to “<strong>keep an eye on the industry at large, specifically who is playing and what they are announcing</strong>.”</p>
<p>Watching the industry change and progress while keeping your eye on the key players is an important for step, to be sure, but you want more than that. Maybe you’ve identified 1 or 2 or 3 specific companies, locally or otherwise, who are all competing with you for the same customer pool. It would be great to know what some of their clients (or former clients) have to say about what they offer. You want to network a bit and “<strong>find people with specific knowledge about your competitors</strong>.” You sneaky devil, you.</p>
<h3>Get it?</h3>
<p>We’re knocking out the critical parts of the Technology Taming plan and getting down to brass tacks with the first two. These two are conceptual and work together to make sure that when you start to look for solutions to your problems that you’re not choosing things that don’t get you to where you want to go.</p>
<p>What we did in Step 1 and Step 2 was take care of the “why” and the “what.” The <strong>why</strong> will keep you focused on what you’re doing, even if the road is a bit bumpy. The <strong>what</strong> keeps you on-point in finding your solution instead of trying everything out there. Maybe one of these “whats” aren’t going to get you what you want but, if you’re honest about your intentions and your objectives, the only thing left is to try out your predictions.</p>
<h2>Step 3 – What tools are you going to use?</h2>
<p>Now we get to the fun part!</p>
<p>This might be the step where you call someone like me to help you <em>find and learn the tools you need to use</em> to <em>do the actions you planned out</em> to <em>accomplish the goals you’ve set</em>. But, if you want to go it alone and discover the tools yourself, here are a few resources (besides plain-ole Google):</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://lifehacker.com/">Lifehacker.com</a>: I was resistant to this site at first if only because they cover SO much ground and I was jealous. Eventually I realized that they were a great resource but left a lot of legwork to be done, which I like.</li>
<li><a href="http://blogsearch.google.com/">Google Blog Search</a>: This little tool is getting used more and more by me. Blogs can have great, timely, very palatable information and, more often than not, you’ll find one with the author’s opinion mixed in which can help to make decisions.</li>
<li>Forums (<a href="http://forums.vwvortex.com/forumdisplay.php?79-Computers">like the Computer Community at VWVortex</a>): Forums on the internet can be frustrating and time-sucking but, take it from me, they can be unbelievably useful. Ask the right question and you can start a firestorm but it’s the debates that can give you some of the best information. My advice is to join a general-purpose one and build your reputation there then milk it whenever possible!</li>
<li><a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/">Yahoo Answers</a>: I’ll be honest: there are some INANE conversation topics on this site (stay away from the Relationships section) but there are also some smart, talented people who patrol these boards and answer questions. Sign up and start to answer a few questions and watch your addiction grow as you get points for answering. Interesting idea for sure and a great place to learn what other people are doing.</li>
</ul>
<p>So, let’s go through the actions that we chose for the goals we want to accomplish. Keep in mind, these are just suggestions. If you’ve tried these before or simply want more information, I invite you to research them a bit and post back here with what you find. Finding the right tool for the job is rarely as easy as it seems. Don’t stop at the first answer; keep researching until you find a few things you can work with.</p>
<h3>“<strong>Choose the best keywords for what I do and use them in my content”</strong></h3>
<p>Keywords are a funny thing… so funny that I’m not going to go into really deep detail about them. The key (no pun intended), however, is choosing words that don’t have tons of competition but do have a lot of people searching for them.</p>
<p>The only place, in my mind, to start is the <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal">Google Keyword Tool</a>. This handy page will help you figure out the best words to use in your articles, blog posts, and general content. Just type in a(several) word(s) or phrase(s), fill in the captcha, and, behold, your list of terms. What this tool does is collect synonyms of the word you typed and then tells you what the competition is, how often it was search for, and what the search volume looks like on average. What this tells you (succinctly) is how hard it is to rank for the keyword (competition), how many people search for that term (value), and the growth rate (value versus average). Look for low competition, high value, and growth or stability instead of decrease.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/09/keywords.jpg" alt="" title="Google keyword examples" /></p>
<p>Once you pick a few of the right keywords, start including them in your content (organically) and keep track of your website analytics or incoming calls/sales to see if the change made a difference.</p>
<h3>“<strong>Make yourself known in the online world and create something that people want and/or need</strong>“</h3>
<p>Wow, that’s a big one isn’t it?</p>
<p>Plain and simple, the only way to do this properly is to start at the bottom and build your on-line reputation. This is a tough thing to do and, trust me, if you don’t enjoy it AND see a palpable benefit, you will never continue the effort needed.</p>
<p><strong>Making yourself known</strong> is one half of the equation. There are seemingly infinite ways to gain some ground on this but here is what I’ve been doing:</p>
<ul>
<li>Started a blog. Read other blogs, commented on them, linked to my blog.</li>
<li>Signed up for Facebook (I know a lot of people on there anyways), signed up for Twitter (took a while to build any kind of following on there… try following others), and linked the two together.</li>
<li>Signed up for LinkedIn. built a great profile, recommended many former co-workers. Now, their counter-recommendations act as testimonials on this site.</li>
<li>Signed up and spend some time on a few different forums. I try to give at least as much as I ask for.</li>
<li>Stay in touch with many people</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/09/social_icons.jpg" alt="" />Everything on that list is an action I would be doing <strong>anyway</strong> but, because I have a whole online persona/profile to maintain, I do it with even more gusto.</p>
<p>Building an online network is mostly a slow process unless you’re already established somewhere and just missed the internet boat for a while. I’ve found it very frustrating for a while but, as time goes on, it’s very enjoyable, allows me to meet a lot of new people, and expose myself to many more projects and collaborators. In the end, it’s essential.</p>
<p><strong>Creating something that people want and/or need</strong> is a whole other thing. To be honest, sometimes this is like starting a business with every step forward. I’ll be honest: I certainly haven’t figured out the silver bullet here though it seems like others have. Here are my thoughts on the matter:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use the keyword tool above and a blog</li>
<li>Use <strong>google.com/trends</strong> and <strong>google.com/news</strong> to see what’s growing out there. If you’re game, try to jump onto a pop culture or fashion trend (especially if you’re in the industry). If you’ve been gathering your network and can move fast, it shouldn’t be too hard.</li>
<li>Two words: <a href="http://www.willitblend.com/">viral video</a> (a video that garners a lot of attention quickly). Get yourself on Youtube with something off the wall.</li>
</ul>
<p>Weak list for sure but I can’t help you TOO much… I need to keep some stuff for myself, right?</p>
<p><strong>Honestly, this is just a matter of putting yourself and your talent out there any way you can. Do what you love and do what you’re good at then do it how only you can do it and you’ll hit the moon in no time.</strong></p>
<h3><strong>“Keep an eye on the industry at large, specifically who is playing and what they are announcing</strong>“</h3>
<p>You need to sign up for <a href="http://reader.google.com/">Google Reader</a> and get your RSS on, for sure. Use Google Blog Search and look for words that describe your industry, look for blogs that get at least a few comments a day, make sure you like what the author puts out, then subscribe. Now, go to Google News and search a relevant phrase. Is this information that you’d like to see on a regular basis? On the left, there is a tiny “RSS” link you can click. Do that and add this subscription to your Reader as well. Repeat until you have a few solid streams.</p>
<p>Find at least ten blogs to sign up for and read them in Google Reader at least a couple times a week. Feeling good? Now take it a step farther:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sign up at <a href="http://technorati.com/">Technorati</a> and look for blogs in your segment with good authority.</li>
<li>Sign up at <a href="http://digg.com/">Digg</a> and keep an eye on stories in an appropriate category.</li>
<li>Learn how to use Yahoo Pipes (look for an intro post soon). This is advanced-level.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Get it?</h3>
<p>It’s all about finding the right tools for the job. Search them out, try a few, and switch it up if they don’t work for you. There are millions of ways to get information, thousands of pages that can help you do what you want, and just as many applications that can help you out. Keep your eyes open and your fingers moving!</p>
Why I freelance (a picture story)2008-06-13T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/why-i-freelance-a-picture-story/<p><em>Scene 1 opens with our hero attempting to delete a file found on a shared network drive.</em></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step01.jpg" alt="deleting a file in windows XP" /></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step02.jpg" alt="confirm a delete in windows XP" /></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step03.jpg" alt="cannot delete a file in windows XP because of another user" /></p>
<p><em>Our hero attempts to contact the colleague in question.</em></p>
<p><em><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step04.jpg" alt="skype chat window" /></em></p>
<p><em>…time passes…</em></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step05.jpg" alt="skype chat window" /></p>
<p><em>No response.</em></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step01.jpg" alt="deleting a file in windows XP" /></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step02.jpg" alt="confirm a delete in windows XP" /></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step03.jpg" alt="cannot delete a file in windows XP because of another user" /></p>
<p><img src="https://www.joshcanhelp.com/_images/2008/06/step06.jpg" alt="skype chat window" /></p>
<p><em>fin</em></p>
The 4 Components of a Great First On-Site Visit2008-04-22T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/the-4-components-of-a-great-first-on-site-visit/I learned a great deal about stress management and face-to-face interactions on my very first on-site call. I came up with 4 important things to think about before your first face-to-face customer interaction.<p>I’ve done “on-site tech support” for a long time now. Every job has seen me as a go-to guy when IT was busy, I have plenty of tech-frustrated people in my life, and I’ve always been willing and able to help out someone in need. When I decided to take my skills to the world, however, I suddenly realized that having great customer service and problem-solving skills are only past of what I needed to get the job done.</p>
<p>I learned a great deal about stress management and face-to-face interactions on my very first on-site call. I came up with 4 important things to think about before your first face-to-face customer interaction. Trust me on these: save yourself a call or two to tech support on your customer’s cell phone while you ponder the finer legal aspects of destroying a customer’s phone system.</p>
<p>. . .</p>
<h2>Complete Communication</h2>
<p>There is nothing worse than having a problem that could have been circumvented by communicating properly. If only you had asked that one question or stated that little limitation. Understanding the job from the get-go and knowing what a customer wants and when they want it is key to getting the job done properly and assuring repeat business.</p>
<p><strong>Store the information.</strong> Don’t even take a customer call unless you can record it (using Google’s amazing <a href="http://www.grandcentral.com/">GrandCentral</a> service or your phone) or you have a way to take notes. If you’re driving, consider just sending it to voicemail. Taking down the details as the customer talks not only keeps you plugged into what they are saying but then you have a record of all the important information. No one likes to repeat what they have already said and losing email information or a phone number makes you look unprofessional. Take it from a former call-center rep: write it all down.</p>
<p><strong>Make sure you have the basics.</strong> Did you get their phone number and email? Do you have their address? Do you need their web address or provider? Are you sure what time and day you are meeting with them? If you’re not planning a consultation or discovery meeting before the work starts, now is the time to get the technical details. Do you know the equipment you’re working with? Brand and model numbers? Operating systems? Do you know the color scheme they want or the room you’re working on? Get it all down now so you can save time on the next task, research.</p>
<p><strong>Next, nail down the job details and priorities.</strong> At JoshCanHelp, I provide a large range of services to small businesses and individuals. This is great for people I work for because I can help them see a big picture of what needs to be done, even if I can’t do it myself. This also, however, leads to long customer to-do lists involving many different visits and pay periods. Someone might want a website remodel and content creation and email templates and a calendar function and a gallery and a shopping cart but they called you to update their on-line calendar.</p>
<p>Let your customer talk up a storm because you can learn a lot about their situation and what to expect. But, by the end of the call, make sure you’re clear about what needs to be done RIGHT NOW. Focus your attention and your communication on the top priorities, even if you have to set them yourself. Even though many people know what they want, sometimes it’s hard for them to differentiate between what’s annoying them greatly and what’s the first step or most important change. Help them find that and you’re a hero!</p>
<p><strong>Finally, make sure to communicate properly.</strong> What do I mean by that? That means keep the right tone and watch what comes out of your mouth. You’ll work with people that are easy to talk to or people that share a lot of their personal details with you. That’s all well and good but I’d advise you to keep your own details to yourself – at least in the beginning. Stay away from conversation killers like politics and avoid badmouthing ANYTHING; you never know what other people are into.</p>
<p>Please bear in mind, I’m not asking you to delete your personality or act like a robot. I think it is safe to say that you can be yourself in all of your friendly, goofy glory without giving out too much information. In these interesting times of blogging, <a href="http://twitter.com/joshcanhelp">microblogging</a>, and social everything, the once-semi-solid line between what everyone knows and what only you know is now a multicolor gradient. Regardless, on your first customer visit, err on the side of caution and keep your health ailments, financial issues, and activist causes to yourself. ‘Nuff said.</p>
<h2>Vigorous Research</h2>
<p>They call this “doing your homework.”</p>
<p>You might remember a situation during your school years where you went to class unprepared and you were (of course) called on to answer a question you SHOULD know because it was contained in the reading that was assigned the night before. This is, perpetually, the feeling you are looking forward to if you don’t do your research.</p>
<p><strong>Like before, start with the basics.</strong> Since you took the time to grill the customer on the things that need fixing, organizing, creating, or modifying (depending on what business you’re in), you now have a list of things to get yourself familiar with before the big meeting. Don’t fool yourself: no one knows everything. Just because you’re an expert in the field doesn’t mean there is no research to do.</p>
<p>Print out (or save) instruction manuals for any equipment you’re going to work on (these can be found on-line for almost everything now). Breeze through them and become familiar, maybe even highlighting a few essential parts. Familiarize yourself with problems that other people have had by checking out forums and blogs. Make sure you know the settings, the infrastructure, maybe even the history behind what you’re doing. The most informed you are, the better impression you will have and the more useful you can be.</p>
<p><strong>Make sure you have a plan-of-action in place.</strong> You should now have a clear picture of what you’re going to do and what you’re going to work with so put those together and create a plan of attack. You’ll walk in the door, exchange pleasantries, and {fill in the blank}. Translate your list of to-dos into chronological form (step 1, 2, 3) so you stay on task and get the job done as efficiently as possible. You were hired because you know what to do and when to do it so show your client what that looks like by having an agenda and sticking to it.</p>
<p><strong>Last but not least, find travel information.</strong> Whether you’re flying across the country or just meeting across town, knowing your route ahead of time is critical. Get driving directions, traffic information, and even a view from the street on <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a>. Is there construction going on or road closures? Check it out on the <a href="http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/trafficinfo/">DOT Road Closure site</a> ahead of time. To make yourself as useful as possible, research your way out of as many obstacles as you possibly can.</p>
<h2>Essential Equipment</h2>
<p>Come prepared or don’t come at all. What you do takes time, knowledge, and the right tools to get the job done. When I say tools, I don’t just mean a screwdriver and a sawzall (though both of those might be necessary depending on what you hope to accomplish), I mean anything you need to tackle the task at hand. Personally, this is one of the hardest of these four to get perfectly right. You certainly don’t want to show up without everything you need but coming to a meeting with a pack mule just looks ridiculous.</p>
<p><strong>Match your tools with your agenda.</strong> In the previous step, you were smart enough to make an agenda of what needs to be done. Now, sit down with that agenda and spend some time figuring out what you’ll need to take care of it all and more. Think tools, think software, think documents, think everything. Since I deal with networks, hardware, and software, I bring extra ethernet cable, small screwdrivers, phone cords (for DSL), and my laptop. On my first call, I didn’t use the screwdriver but the other three got me out of a serious jam and made it possible to get the work done.</p>
<p><strong>Keep it organized.</strong> You might have brought the kitchen sink but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if you lost it in that Navy-issue duffel bag you brought. Don’t just shovel your crap into an attache and expect to wing it when you get there. Make sure you know what you’re brining and where it is. Keep your papers organized, even if you just use a few manila folders. Make sure your laptop and cell phone are both charged up and trouble free, your tools are sharp and in the right spot, and your color samples are nice and neat. Remember: cultivate that professional image.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">sweat</span> forget the small stuff.</strong> While you’re packing up the essentials, don’t overlook the little stuff. Sure, your customer might have a CD-R or a pen or a piece of paper but it will look a whole lot better if you have them with you. Get a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman (I use the <a href="http://www.leatherman.com/multi-tools/pocket-tools/juice-cs4.aspx">Juice CS4</a>) so you always have a blade and a pair of scissors. Carry at least two or three pens, a Sharpie, a notepad, a USB drive, and tape.</p>
<h2>Timing is Everything</h2>
<p>Master the three things above and this will be a cinch. Whether you’re on the clock or just ironing out details, time is of the essence. How you use your time, and your customers, will make a difference in your paycheck and your quality of life.</p>
<p><strong>If you’re off the clock, keep it short.</strong> This is one thing that I need to concentrate on. If you’re doing research for a customer that you’re not billing them for or your taking a call from a client, keep your eye on the clock and keep it short. It’s easy to let a quick Google search turn into a two-hour Wiki-thon and, before long, you’ve eaten up valuable time that could be spent elsewhere. Stick to the script and save a couple hours every week.</p>
<p><strong>If you’re on the clock, stay on task.</strong> How much do I need to say this? Show your customer that you take their time seriously and stay on task. Show them your agenda and then show them how excellent you are by following it to a “T.” Stay off personal calls unless it’s an emergency, work efficiently, and mutli-task where you can. If you’re paid by the hour, don’t think of hours saved as money lost, think of it as a future goodwill payment. Get the job done and you’ll be asked back for more.</p>
<p><strong>Combine communication with timing and stand out.</strong> I live, work, and go to school in SoCal. Something that I’ve noticed, even with close friends, is that no one seems to care about schedules. If you’re late, whatev, no biggie. I’m still getting used to this and, as such, I call people when I’m running more than a few minutes late and always honor appointments and phone calls. I show up on time, I don’t schedule things too close to one another, and I’ve cultivated a good sense of how long things take. All of this adds up to a general attitude of consideration and respect, something I know my clients appreciate.</p>
<p>. . .</p>
<p>If anything, I hope this list saves you an embarrassment or two in the future. It’s a bit daunting the first couple</p>
Free Excel Invoice Template2008-04-15T00:00:00Zhttps://www.joshcanhelp.com/free-excel-invoice-template/I just recently made an invoice for myself and thought I would share it with the world! It’s clean, simple, and easy to use.<p>I just recently made an invoice for myself and thought I would share it with the world!</p>
<p><a href="https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/077ewkWJLO9Zz_ByWzM6l24cg#invoice%5Ftemplate">General invoice template (.XLS)</a></p>
<p>This took me about an hour to put together and I modeled it (slightly) after another template I found on-line (I didn’t like the format or the look). It’s clean, simple, and easy to use. Here are the steps on how to customize it a bit and use it for your business:</p>
<ol>
<li>Open the template and fill out the company name at the top as well as the information on the bottom left. If you want to include a promotion or additional piece of information for all invoice receivers, change that text as well. If not, right-click that big, gray box and select <strong>Format Cells… > Alignment > Merge Cells</strong>. While you’re there, also go to the <strong>Border</strong> tab and select <strong>None</strong> under the style. Lastly, select <strong>No color</strong> under the <strong>Fill</strong> tab.</li>
<li>Now, save this template so you don’t have to go through all of these steps again.</li>
<li>Now you’re ready for customer information. Fill in the <strong>Date</strong> (this is the date that the invoice was created), the <strong>Customer Name</strong>, and the <strong>Customer Number</strong> (or another identifier).</li>
<li>Under the <strong>Date</strong> column, enter the date that the service/item was furnished. In the Description column, enter what was sold or the service performed. I also include the billing unit I use (such as “Consulting, hourly”) to make the invoice make a little more sense.</li>
<li>Under <strong>Amount</strong>, type in the amount of hours or widgets provided. Now, enter the price per widget/hour in the <strong>Price</strong> column (I told you this was easy) and you should see the <strong>Total</strong> column activate and show the proper total amount. You should also see the <strong>Total</strong> and <strong>Due</strong> fields at the bottom populate.</li>
<li>Keep entering in line items until you’ve got everything on there. Now just delete the cells under the <strong>Total</strong> column that weren’t used. This will not affect the total at the bottom.</li>
<li>If the customer has already paid you for all or part of the amount, enter that in along with the date and the <strong>Due</strong> cell will update.</li>
<li>Now, save it as a recognizable and scalable name (meaning that you can replicate the style over and over for the same and different customers). I use the customer’s name followed by an underscore character then the invoice number for that customer (simply “001” or “002” or whatever number of invoices I’ve sent) then another underscore and, finally, the date in 8-character format (mmddyy). For example, if I was invoicing myself today for the first time, the invoice file name would be “Cunningham_001_041408.”</li>
<li>After you’ve saved it, simply print it out and mail it. If you’ve going to email it to the customer, I would suggest turning it into a <strong>PDF</strong> file using something like <a href="http://www.download.com/PDF-ReDirect/3000-6675_4-10255233.html?tag=lst-1">PDF ReDirect</a> (free).</li>
</ol>
<p>And that’s all there is to it! Enjoy!</p>