saint-rebel

Quick run down of what I have been up to…

• Working with and advising at new Tech Incubator/Phoenix Co-work campus Gangplank
• Launched BestPartyEver.com into Beta, and went “post revenue” with our first paid customer shortly after, where my term sheet?
• Intentionally throwing juice to the party ideas lens cause it will pass juice to bpe {SEO}
• Revisiting the summer of 1994 with the Ghetto sounds of Too $hort
• The PHX suns were booted from the playoffs.. so looking forward to next year
• Working with Wardo on some projects
• And went to SF  with the Unicorn  to horn the digg party.. was awesome.

That is all..

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Say you were rich and famous, okay say you are more rich and famous than you are now. How would you give back? How about interweb celebs doing quirky self-effacing things for charity?  Okay done.  Check it out >

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I have bitched more than most about bad clients, and bad projects, and good projects that turn bad due to bad clients (notice we accept no blame ). The holy grail of course is the project that has good people behind it, starts good, and ends good.

We just wrapped a project that started good and ended the same way. Best of all it was not only fun and smooth sailing, it was also profitable. Seems like a no brainer… make money. But in client services more often than not a project becomes an alligator and eats time, resources, and profit.

Here are a few tips I have to ensure your next project is a gem;

1. The Alpha Dog. They are paying you money because you are the expert, not them. In a no nonsense way, reassure the client that you do know best and their money is being well spent. High Confidence with a small bit of arrogance on your part will show the client you know your game, and they need not try to micro-manage the project, or your team. It is important to “correct” them early should they push the boundry. Give them an inch.. they may take a yard. Now not all clients are this way, but I have found that the typical client who is dropping $20k-$50k on design work is a little nervous and will try to manage that money if they sense weakness on the agency side.
2. Clear expectations/scope. Be clear on exactly what you are delivering, and at what price. I find it even helpful to declare what is not in scope. State what you are going to do, what you are certainly not going to do.. and that then only leaves a small bit of ambiguity left for possible misunderstanding.
3. Communicate. During this project span I attended SXSW and came back with a terrible flu/cold that wiped me out for 7 days after the 7 days I was in Austin. The client was aware I would be unavailable during SXSW, but was looking forward to resumption of their project the Wed. following my return. The illness blew up the schedule, but a few simple emails to the client assured them we would work double time upon our return to make sure their project was on schedule. They understood, and we did work double time and delivered. Everyone was happy.
4. Get paid up front. Depending on the project we typically break down the fee schedule into 3-5 payments. What we found though that works best is 100% up front. Here’s why. Sometimes freelance designers have the tendency to get as much done as they have been paid for.. and to drag out a project with payment cycles for fear of getting too much done, then getting stiffed on a final payment. Billing all up front forces you to “Earn the money” so you work hard and fast to fulfill the project. For me at least it is a integrity thing. I have already been paid this money, so it is on me to make good on it… it would be stealing to take the money and just sit on your hands. Also the client sees you mean business when you have the kajones to ask for $10k-$20k-$30k up front.

I am sure I could come up with some more tidbits.. but why don’t you use the comments section to share your own.

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sxswpanel slides

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Welcome to the new year. I have some plans for this year that I am very excited about, allow me to share:

We are making the transition from client services to internal projects at obu web. Building a killer client services company was fun and all, but it had its downside. Chasing client dollars and managing the various dispositions of employees are a near constant drain on enthusiasm. In 08 we will complete this transition to focus only on our internal projects.. those being:

BestPartyEver.com is ready to blow up in 2008. We have invested a good chunk of time, dollars, and energy into this party planning and party ideas resource. It has taken a while to put all the pieces in place, but the response has been great. Traffic and registrations are up week after week, and we still have some great stuff to add to the site still. We are in talks to secure a small angel round to propel bpe forward.  We are also just as committed to building the site and user base organically like we have been.  Takes a bit longer, but we don’t have to give up and control.

MoroPartners.com is a new internet consulting firm that I am working with. Moro Partners is an internet consulting firm that helps businesses successfully navigate the website design, development, and internet marketing process. We are also lending our expertise to established and startup web client services companies to assist them in biz development, strategy and sales. I am learned a lot in the past 5 years and feel Moro is a good avenue for me to share that knowledge to the benefit of fellow industry professionals, as well as companies purchasing web design and internet marketing services.

We will also be making some changes to Flare9 our website builder product, to refine the offering and position it for a possible acquisition.

I will be blogging quite a bit more often on the various blogs I maintain this year as I focus more on the consulting services of Moro.

If you are not in it to Win it, why are you even playing?

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What is a sleeper? I think it is most commonly associated with cars. At least that is how I know of it. Imagine pulling up at a red light in your fancy sports car next to an unassuming car that looks like it took one too many trips to the local school PTA meetings, and when the light turns; the car leaves you in a cloud of blue smoke and screeching tires.

The same concept can be applied to a new web startup.. one that slowly does its thing under the radar.

Our startup BestPartyEver.com is sort of like that. We are bootstrapped up to this point and have leveraged our other talents to slowly build our presence. We are opening a seed round to procure that first little bit of outside capital that can help us move things along a bit faster, and in doing so I really started to look at the strategy of some of our neighbors in the space are using to launch their own product/service.

Here is the most fascinating takeaway. If you look at their media “buzz”: all the nifty mentions on the important tech blogs, the articles in the webzines, even the mentions on TV, etc.. They do not have much more of a presence than we do.

Looking at alexa.com and compete.com and comparing our 2 sites, I find that yes they have a slight advantage on us in traffic, reach, and a few other metrics, but here is the difference: we have done it without spending more than $500, vs. they are clearly dropping hard $ on getting the word out.

I think their play is more about getting on the radar of the investment crowd, then building their business. Which makes sense cause they just pulled down some cash.

Maybe it is 2 ways to the same end.

I am also likely consoling myself right now, knowing that without spending any real money, on a razor thin budget, we have built a platform/system that can hang with the “cool kids with money”

And here we are now looking for money ourselves. Yet with an injection of cash, I still think I will play the role of the sleeper. Let the other guy spend money saying how good his service is, I will spend the money on making my service better., and so far it seems to be working. All stats are trending positive, more first time traffic, more repeat traffic, more pageviews, more time on site; week after week after week, and still my only cost is servers and labor.

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This band is sick, this guys guitar playing is sick.. Sean tierney is good, but this guy is rock a god. Only downside is their radio cuts do not do them justice.. this is a band you have to see live (which i haven’t yet, in person). Dirty dirty dirty sound.He just kills in this one.. 

Catch this guitar solo around 5:00 min 

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