I’m going to start a new tradition where I create a small website, service, or other project. Here are the rules:

• It has to be launched in less than 25 pomodoros (12.5 hours), including brainstorming, design, development, launch, and initial marketing

That’s it.

Why am I doing this? Here’s why:

• Startups are getting cheaper and cheaper to launch. But how cheap can you go? How cheap should you go?
• I have a lot of little ideas that I’d like to experiment with.
• Gives me fun projects to learn new stuff with
• Keeps me grounded in the “less is more” mentality
• Why not?

I’d like to do it every month, but we’ll see how the first one goes. My first project will be launched in the next day or two, so stay tuned.

If you want to read more, here’s a few posts:

StartupWeekend.com

Ready, set, develop: how to create a six-hour startup

How to create and launch a startup in 10.5 hours

My buddy (and fellow founder) Luke Fretwell just launched a new version of his site last week. He wanted something a little more dynamic, so I helped him transition the site to Wordpress so he can blog and manage the content easier. I’m really digging the clean and refined design, but I’m sure he’d love to know what you think as well. Don’t hesitate to contact him for your design needs…he’ll do a great job. If you’re interested in setting up a Wordpress-based site of your own, or have other web development needs, don’t hesitate to contact me.

We’re in the middle of working out some project and process management issues for BlueSwarm, one of which is what platform to use for project management and issue tracking. We used Basecamp for awhile, which was great, but we needed something that was a bit more geared towards tracking bugs. Free would be a nice bonus. Trac seems to be the industry standard here, and a few days ago, I spent several hours trying to get Trac installed and running correctly. Getting it up and running wasn’t terribly difficult, but I was struggling to get several plugins hooked up and configured, get it working with Apache, etc. After awhile, I finally got tired of messing with it and went hunting for alternatives. One of the ones that I found was Redmine, which is built in Ruby on Rails. I played with the demo and really liked it, so I set out to get Rails installed on our server so we could get Redmine setup. Rails turned out to be less of a hassle than I had imagined it would be, which was nice. The one issue I had was that Redmine is not compatible with Rails 2.2.2, so I had to downgrade to an older version. But I got it working, got Passenger working so we could use Apache as our server, and now we’re up and running. Redmine is clean, simple to use, and works great so far. I have no complaints. If you’re looking for a solid issue tracking / wiki / project management platform and you’re frustrated with Trac, give Redmine a try. I’d love to hear what you think.

When you freelance for awhile, you start to hear the same lines over and over from people trying to hire you. These are some of my favorites, and I’ve learned to just take them with a grain of salt. They’re not always untrue, but they’re cliche enough that I raise my eyebrow a bit when I hear them. Please note that clients are great people with solid ideas and we work together to create things that are special. I’m just poking a bit of fun at potential clients in general. If you can’t handle it, perhaps we wouldn’t be a good fit

“We’ve got a lot more work if you can just do this one at a discount.”
Great. So if I let you take advantage of me now, you’ve got a lot more chances to do it again in the future? Sign me up!

“We’ve gotten a lot of interest from VCs and investors…funding is pretty much a done deal.”
Deals fall through. Funding is hard and rarely happens. This is not to say that it won’t, but it’s a bad reason to take a freelance gig, in my opinion.

“This has never been done.”
It almost certainly has. Probably many times. If it hasn’t, perhaps there’s a very good reason.

“Someone will steal my idea.”
They won’t. Ideas are next to worthless. Execution counts.

“Would you be willing to work for equity only?”
No.

“This shouldn’t be that difficult.”
And yet it is. Weird.

“I’ll get that check in the mail.”

If you have any to add, share them in the comments.

In August of 2007, I quit my job as a product manager at CNET Networks and started freelancing full-time. I do mostly web development and social media consulting, and I’m really enjoying it. I thought I’d share a few of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

1. Working at home sucks

Maybe it would work if I was always working at home by myself, had a separate room that was just for work, and had everything setup just so. Maybe. But I find that being at home has too many distractions, from TV, to my wife, to our new puppies. I get 2x - 4x as much done at my office as I do at home. What that means in practical terms is that paying a few hundred bucks a month for a small office or co-working space is well worth the price. Even a coffee shop is usually an improvement for me over being at home.

2. Working from anywhere you want rocks

On the other hand, having the freedom to work from home, or a coffee shop, or the beach on a tropical island, is one of the best things about working for yourself, especially in the line of work that I do. My wife and I have travelled a lot over the last year, something we never could have done if we were holding down jobs.

3. Everything takes longer than expected

From finding new clients to signing contracts to finishing projects to getting paid, everything seems to take longer than you expect. I guess this is because I’m an optimist by nature, but it’s something I’ve definitely had to adjust to. My advice: make sure you always have a decent reserve of time, money, and goodwill. You’ll probably need them.

4. Process is important

I guess this isn’t limited to freelancers, but I’ve just realized how important it is. When you do development work, you find yourself doing the same types of things over and over. I find it hard to force myself to take longer the first or second or third time around to setup shortcuts and process enhancements that will enable me to do it faster in the future, but it’s definitely worth it. If you find yourself cutting and pasting the same piece of code, then making a bunch of adjustments to change minor details, consider making it a class or a library that’s more flexible. Organize, optimize, and review your processes regularly. It takes more time now, but it saves a lot of time in the long run.

5. Small gigs > large gigs

All else being equal, smaller jobs are far better than large ones, in my opinion. It’s the same reason that small entrepreneurial projects are better than large ones: they tend to get finished on time and under budget much more often. Large projects have more room for error, ambiguity, scope creep, and miscommunication. Additionally, I find that I get fatigued when working on projects that stretch on for weeks or months. It becomes more of a struggle to get excited about working on the same thing yet again, whereas for a small project, you can maintain your interest and excitement through most or all of the project. The best project is one that you can knock out in a day or two.

I’d say that the one thing I have learned is that if you’re doing a large project, break it into phases and try to think of them as discrete mini-projects in themselves. But small projects are still better.

6. This is a stepping stone for me

I never intended to stick with contract work long-term, and the last year has just reinforced that in my mind. The hard part about freelance work for me, a born entrepreneur, is that it vacillates between two extremes: either I’m working on projects that I’m not particularly passionate about or interested in, usually because they’re not going to go anywhere and I know it (and I tell the client), or I’m working on really interesting projects that I know in my heart will succeed or continue to be a success. That sounds awesome, I know, and I’m fortunate to work on more projects like that than those in the first category, but the problem I have is that I’m helping another entrepreneur achieve his or her dream, rather than achieving my own. I love helping people, and I especially love helping people accomplish their goals and dreams, but I hate the feeling of being a hired hand when I should be whipping up my own success. Does that make sense?

As a result, I’ve started aggressively pursuing more entrepreneurial projects of my own, some of which you’ll be hearing about in the coming days and weeks. I’m enjoying freelance work and I’m very grateful to all my clients for the opportunity to work with them, but I’ll be really glad to eventually be done with freelance work. It’s just not as free as I’d like

If you’re a freelancer, let me know how this lines up with your experiences. I would love to hear from anyone considering making the plunge who has questions or comments.

One of my clients launched HowYouEco.com today, which actually includes a suite of sites (HomeEco.com, WorkEco.com, PlayEco.com) and is directory project that helps people keep track of everything going on in the green movement. I got involved late in this project and mainly helped wrap up some loose ends and clean things up a bit. The site is pretty simple now, but they have some very cool plans for the future. Please take a look and let them know what you think!

Projects launched in May 2008: 1 (1 client, 0 personal)

I saw a post on Craigslist today that I’ve seen a few times for the last week or so on my feeds from around the country. Here’s the link:

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cpg/646621213.html

Anyway, there are numerous red flags in the post, such as:

• looking for a “webmaster” (it’s 2008, not 1998)
• focusing on cheap work
• client has been “burned” (which MAY mean they are a bad client)
• capitalization of “PhP” (could be a fluke, but still)
• no explanation of what “inexpensive” means to them
• general tone is a bit amateurish and naive

I went ahead and sent a quick response where I basically said that it was unreasonable to expect people to respond if they don’t know what your idea of “inexpensive” is, and that you can expect to pay $50 - 60 / hr at a minimum for someone really good.

This lady emails me back and berates me for my “rude” response, tells me that she was considering me for these other projects until now, tells me that she has lots of work and is always being asked to recommend people, etc. Basically that I have blown a huge opportunity by being honest with her. We went back and forth via email a few times, but in general, her position was that my email wasn’t polite enough, which is true. My email was abrupt and not at all polite, but I didn’t go out of my way to be rude to her either. I was simply stating the facts and trying to help out someone who, by her own admission, had been burned multiple times before. I explained to her that my clients pay very fair rates and expect (and get) great work in return. In return I’m very honest with them, rather than telling them what they want to hear. So far, the only jobs this behavior has cost me are the ones I don’t want in the first place. I’m a professional and I want to be hired by professionals, not amateurs who expect to hire a brilliant PHP developer with 5 years experience for $25 / hr.

This individual was also peddling the classic “do this one job for cheap and then there’s lots more high-paying work down the road” scam, for which I have trouble expressing my opinion without resorting to profanity. The bottom line is that this bridge is obviously burned, but I have trouble imagining a situation in which I’d want to cross that river anyway, so I won’t lose any sleep over it.

But it did get me to thinking about her general assertion that I should be more polite or it will cost me business. Now obviously, as professionals, we are required to act professionally and conduct ourselves in an ethical manner, maintain integrity, etc. But the question I have is: does building a strong personal brand mean that you’re not going to anger people, make enemies, etc? Or even more extreme, does it mean that you MUST make people angry, make enemies, etc?

I’m not entirely sure, but I see a lot of people that I admire who have no shortage of detractors and enemies and who are constantly stirring up storms of controversy. However, these people have very strong personal brands, very strong networks, and have experienced a great deal of success. Most importantly, they’ve actually gone out and accomplished something worthwhile. They’re not unprofessional, to the contrary: they’re ultra-professional. They’re not afraid to tell it how it is, regardless of whose feathers they ruffle, who gets upset, who finds it offensive. I think part of this is just the basic reality that disruptive technology, business models, and trends tend to upset those too attached to the status quo or those that feel they’re owed something by the system. When things change faster than they can adapt, they often point the finger of blame at those driving the change, rather than learning to thrive in a dynamic environment.

I think the bottom line for me is that making sure you don’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, make enemies, anger people, or stir up controversy is a good way to build a bland and boring personal brand, and you’re not likely to have a significant impact in your space. Yes, there’s always room for professionalism, integrity, and even a little tact, but the bottom line is that if you want to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs.

About nine months ago, I quit my day job to become a full-time independent consultant focusing on product management and development for web projects, mostly in the social media space. I’ve also been investing in real estate for awhile, with a few residential properties in my burgeoning portfolio.

Through some real estate networking events in San Francisco, I met the partners of a small real estate brokerage here in town called Star Realty that focuses on helping residential investors make the jump to commercial real estate investment. They’ve only been around for a year, but their business is solid and they’re just now starting to really think about building a system to enable strong growth over the next 5-10 years. The two partners aren’t very tech-savvy but they understand that this is the direction the industry is going and they have a chance to be on the cutting edge if they start now.

We’ve been discussing working together for awhile and we have decided to move forward, so I’m very excited. I’ll be working on helping them overhaul their brand and build long-term brand equity online. As this combines several of my favorite subjects, and is a chance to get in early and have a meaningful impact on their long-term success, I’m very excited and have tons of ideas on how to help them succeed. I’ll post more about things once we get setup, but just so you see what kind of challenge I have ahead of me, check out their current site:

http://www.star-sf.com

Update: I’ve heard concern from a couple of clients that this will impact my work with them or that I’m giving up consulting altogether.  Just wanted to reassure everyone that I’m still very much available for consulting work and will be for the foreseeable future.  This is just a client engagement that I’m particularly excited about because I feel it will have a strong impact and further my knowledge of marketing and building brand equity in the social media space.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”
British soldier (1888 - 1935)

I’ve posted this quote before, but it’s especially appropriate for recent developments in my life. I haven’t posted to my blog in the last 3 months, and so much has changed since then. Let me give you the highlights:

This Blog
I’ve received lots of notes from people asking if I’m going to finish the investing series I started. I owe my readers an apology. I’ve just been swamped with a bunch of other things, some of which you’ll read about below. I wanted to let people know that not only will I be finishing this series, but I’ll be launching a new project in the next few weeks that the readers of this blog will hopefully find very interesting. It’ll live on a new site of its own and I’ll be releasing details within the next couple weeks, hopefully, so stay tuned. I know you’re probably thinking that I’ll flake on this as well, but the good news is that my time has opened up some. For more, read on…

CNET Networks
As I’ve mentioned before, my day job is an Associate Product Manager at CNET Networks, one of the largest web companies in terms of traffic. I started at CNET in August of 2006 and I’ve really learned a lot there and made some great friends. However, about three weeks ago I started looking around for some contract work, primarily through craigslist.org. After about a week, it was apparent that not only was there enough work for several full-time jobs, I could make 2-3 times as much doing freelance work as I was making at CNET. I managed to hang on for a few more days before I decided that going freelance full-time was the right move and I gave my notice at CNET. My last day was Friday and I am now completely free. I have punched my last clock and done my last 9-5. From where I’m sitting right now, I have a hard time imagining any circumstances under which I would be an employee again, but I’m always open to discussion :-). I already have more than enough work coming my way to stay busy and I now have the flexibility to be able to work from anywhere in the world, at any time that I choose. I’m sitting in a 24-hour starbucks in San Francisco writing this at about 12:30am and it’s comforting to know that I don’t have to get up in the morning unless I want to.

I will say that CNET was an awesome opportunity for me. They gave me a shot when I needed it most and it was a fantastic place to cut my teeth in the web field. I met a lot of very passionate and talented people who inspired me greatly. They offered me a great job before I left, but ultimately, I’m just not an employee. I came to the Bay Area to start a company, not work at one. I don’t want people to think that I’m saying that there’s anything wrong with being an employee or that I didn’t enjoy it. I am fortunate in that I have skills that are in such high demand that I can pay the bills with part-time freelance work and have a lot of time left to focus on projects of my own, some of which I’ll talk about below.

Oh, and my wife quit her job the same day. She’s been working towards it for a lot longer than I have and now we’re both unfettered freelancers, free to travel the world, set our own rules, and take the road less traveled.

BlueSwarm.org
For the last six months or so, I’ve been hard at work with two brilliant and talented partners on a project called BlueSwarm.org. It’s a social network aggregator / lifestreaming / friendstreaming service, which are all fancy ways of saying that it helps you easily keep track of what your friends are doing all over the web and vice versa. Very cool stuff. We launched a private beta of the site on July 7th and have been steadily working on improvements since. Please check it out and request an invite…we hope to be giving out a bunch in the next couple weeks.

Real Estate
As I noted in a post earlier this year, I purchased a single family home with a partner and rehabbed it. We had it on the market for about six months before I finally decided that I’d rather keep it than drop the price any further. I negotiated an agreement to buy out my partner and I now own my 2nd long-term rental property.

Last Wednesday, I was forwarded an email about a sweet little 3/2 condo and managed to put it under contract at a great price within the next 24 hours. The best part is that about 75% of the purchase price is covered by an assumable private note at 6% fixed (!) and the current seller agreed to carry another 15% of the purchase price at 7.5% fixed, leaving me with just 10% to put down and no banks or mortgage companies to hassle with. If you can find a private lender at a good rate, I highly recommend it. We can close any time that works for us, so hopefully in the next couple weeks, I’ll own my third property. The empire grows…

I think that’s pretty much it…I’m also getting my pilot’s license and learning to sail, but so far those haven’t been too time-consuming

In closing, I would just like to say that I’m overwhelmed by how richly God has blessed my life in just about every way. I’ll be 25 years old in less than a month and the world is stretched out in front of me, filled with endless opportunity. I say this not to brag, but to encourage others to take the road less traveled, to take risks, to discover and follow their passions. I won’t say that it hasn’t been hard at times and sometimes it’s completely overwhelming to have a seemingly endless array of options available, but overall, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Once you taste the freedom, you won’t either.

I had lunch today at Google with a friend. Why do I continue to go there? It frustrates me to no end and I’m always left feeling jealous and inspired at the same time. They really put the cult into culture. Probably half the people are wearing apparel with the Google logo (which, let’s face it, looks like crap). It’s a vibrant place where you can see the best practices in the care and feeding of employees. Over on Crunchnotes, Mike talks about how Google smugness is at an all time high because of their “Google Ice Cream” stunt. He’s right about the smugness (it’s a company, people, not a family, no matter how fuzzy you feel), although this particular issue really didn’t seem like a big deal…just a few coolers with ice cream sandwiches with the Google logo on the packaging. I think moves like this are good PR because the cost is very low relative to the buzz. Another perfect example is the anecdote about how Google mailed a blogger some aspirin after he complained of a headache from their site.

It all got me thinking about what Google faces over the next 20 years. It seems like their main threat right now is focus. Something like 99% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. With Microsoft and Yahoo hot on their tail, how long can Google keep growth rates up with just one revenue stream? Google has some of the brightest people in the world working for them. But the challenge is not to hire those people and keep them happy. It’s to figure out a way to harness all that intelligence and create revenue streams. Google literally launches new products several times a month, it seems. Almost all of these products are not innovative (in that someone else has already executed the same concept) and most do not gain significant market share. Other than search, are any of Google’s products at the top of their class? Google has tremendous mindshare right now and they get a hugely disproportionate amount of attention for the moves they make, but eventually that will taper. When it does, Google will have to effectively market the great tools they turn out. And at the end of the day, I wonder if Google has the marketing prowess. They’re awesome at engineering, but marketing…I guess we’ll see. I’m not predicting the demise of Google, by any stretch. But it will be interesting to see the child that is Google grow into an adult over the coming decades.

At the end of the day, though, the world needs more places like Google for people to work, and I will do my part to create them.