Petersen Media Group

We help you spend less time ensuring your site is there, and more time making it profitable.

The Bootstrap Business Life

One of the pillars of how I do business is that nothing happens unless the funds are available in cash (not credit) and are not a buffer for those down months. It’s bootstrap business at its best. While it can be frustrating to not do certain growth activities, it’s better than the stress that debt causes.

a little story

Mac Mini DayThe single most rewarding purchase of my life was a 2011 Mac Mini server. For weeks, no, months, I planned the computer I’d be using for the next 3-5 years. Utilizing pro/con lists, spreadsheets of features, CPU power, upgradability, and cost-per-day calculations, I passed on a 27″ iMac and a MacBook Pro in favor of their diminutive brother. It wasn’t a moment too soon, because I was driving my wife nuts with my back and forth debates with myself, which sometimes involved her listening.

We walked into the Apple Store and asked the man to fetch me one and I grabbed a trackpad. My decision to choose the Mini left plenty of funds in our account, even after a second 22″ monitor and additional RAM. It was a good thing, too, because disaster struck.

Tractor JumpstartThat weekend, we drove from Florida to Ohio to visit my grandparents. Just past Valdosta, GA, the dashboard lights started doing weird things and we took an exit that only had a marine dealership. We got a marine battery and were on our way.

Two hours later, the same thing happened at the Locust Grove exit, about an hour south of Atlanta. We spent the night at the La Quinta (a very nice one, too) while the battery charged on a new charger from Wal-mart. At 8am, I put the battery in and drove to the shop 1/4 mile away and we left on our “merry” way shortly after noon. On a good note, we liked the hotel so much, we stayed there the next time we drove up – then we realized we have to drive straight through with a toddler. CRAZY!

La Quinta - Locust Grove, GA

We spent over $700 getting to Ohio over 2 days instead of what was supposed to be $150 in gas.

the lesson in that

What if I’d gone for a bigger computer or used credit? The stress would have been too much for what I can deal with. It was a really good thing we were in a strong financial position for that epic turn of events that would have previously made me quite sick. I distinctly remember walking back to the shop at lunch, just enjoying the weather and peaceful that I’d provided for us to not make this a big deal.

I was reminded of this day as I was planning my “next big thing” and was about to pull the trigger on a Kickstart campaign. First, my wife wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having that money and keeping track of it while we paid it out. Then when I discussed it with the person who was working with me on the idea, they said that it’s not worth the stress of not waiting.

They were right. You’ll just have to wait longer to see what it is, now.

It’s All About Expectations

Surprised? Manage Expectations.A majority of projects that have gone bad are my fault. Sure, it would be strongly argued that it is the client’s fault, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, I didn’t set good expectations. Those incidents create a flood of e-mails, a high-stress call, and sometimes threats for either party that ought not happen.

Expectations, clear ones, set the tone for the entire project and the duration of what could be a long-term client relationship. Don’t mess it up with muddy water.

how to avoid poor expectations

The key to such calamities is communication. I state before a call is scheduled what my normal starting price for a project is and what my timeline looks like. That immediately dissuades those who are looking for a $500 site by the end of the week.

Communication can also disrupt feelings of discontentment with waiting for the project start or completion. Unless there is a hard deadline due to a publication or some sort of hard launch, then it’s best to communicate that everyone gets your full attention when it’s their turn, just as you expect with a doctor’s visit. I don’t mind waiting past my appointment time nearly as much when I know I won’t be rushed out the door when it’s my turn to be seen.

terms and conditions

Terms and conditions should be stated clearly and in plain terms, not legalese. My terms are quite a bit longer than I would like them to be, but if any part of it is removed, then it opens the door for poor communication. As an example, if I solve a need that many people have with their sites and I spent a good chunk of time solving it, I like to share it on GitHub or package it into a plugin – my terms allow me to do that so long as it’s not proprietary to my client’s business. No surprises.

reputations precede you

It’s always good when someone is referred to you from a close friend or respected colleague of that person. There is going to be an instant trust with your new contact because they have built trust with their contact. That’s one barrier down right away.

When I sense that someone is leery of my ability to exceed their expectations, I often open them up to the idea of asking around on Twitter what other people “think about @jpetersen’s #WordPress and #GenesisWP skills” and I have yet to see anyone do that, so it must be transparent enough to do the job.

I’ve said dozens of times that I’m an open book. Very, very rarely do I hide anything that I’m doing with the rare exceptions of launching a new service when I only teased and told 2 people – one of whom was also concurrently working on his own service and we both launched same-day.

Once I’ve figured something out and it’s not any real benefit to be the only one who knows what it is that I’m doing, I share it. Transparency reaps trust and helps an expectation that I’ll help out in the very near future. I don’t like monopolies, even in what I do for a living.

When clients see that is the kind of person you are, you are helping your current and future self out… possibly even future generations.

Jesse Petersen’s Entrepreneur List

Fly HighIf you missed what an Entrepreneur List is, check it out first and then you’ll be up to speed on its purpose in the  situations I call “a funk.” After being in business now for 4 1/2 years, I’ve had about 20 funks. They’re miserable times that create a fear of becoming lazy (something I was called as a teen) or a failure (something I’ve unreasonably put upon myself in funks).

things that create a funk

  • a fantastic revenue month
  • a dismal revenue month when not in a funk
  • a conference (counterintuitive, I know)
  • family stress
  • depression
  • over-confidence

Looking at that list, it would seem that a funk is inevitable just about every other month, and you’d be right. The aim of an Entrepreneur List is to cut off a funk by creating a reminder of why being an entrepreneur is not dependent on persevering through funks.

my Entrepreneur List

I’m going to place my list next to the photos on my desk, which sit between my two monitors. A reminder of why I do what I do will be my motivating factor while at my desk instead of playing, watching shows, or going to the free summer kid’s movies.

  1. I am living my dream
    • keeping my own hours
    • doing what I’m passionate about
    • making a difference
    • providing for my family so everyone is home
  2. I am healthier than ever, getting better instead of worse
  3. I am rich in friends, family, and no longer broke
  4. I am moving toward my long-term goals
  5. I really have no reason to complain
  6. I am blessed
  7. I am growing
  8. I did not get where I am without guidance
  9. I am where I am to be a blessing to others
  10. When I fall, I will get up again

your Entrepreneur List

If you send me a link to your list or put it in the comments, I’ll place it here for others to learn by community. We’re all in this together.

Writing the Entrepreneur List

TheFizzleShowWhile listening to a new podcast that ThinkTraffic recommended, my outlook and perspective going into next week has completely changed because I wrote what I’m going to call my Entrepreneur List. This podcast includes Corbett Barr, whom my first client, Sibyl Chavis got me familiar with his game). It’s called The Fizzle Show and I highly recommend it.

From the start, it was as if the 3 hosts were in my head describing what my life is like in regards to being a solopreneur who must create and deliver to survive and trying to avoid burnout at the same time. It happens, without fail, to some scale, as if it’s become a way of life; the doldrum that follows launching a big project. Sometimes it hits immediately after the final payment of a single project and sometimes it happens after a month with epic surplus in the bank.

you know what that leads to

If you took a look at my Freshbooks account, you’d see a roller coaster of revenue. Until the end of 2011, I thought it was set in stone by the month of the year because I had enough historical data to show that February sucks (not enough to cover the mortgage) and June, September, and December are my record-setting months. Thanks to my pal, Phil Gerbyshak, I shook that thinking over drinks at Starbucks when he came to Tampa to speak at a conference.

My wife and I had already noticed that a great revenue month was always followed by a dismal month. Sometimes two dismal months were back to back and a couple of times that stretched to three months and made us consider whether that meant going back to a “stable” job.

it’s about perspective

What I learned from the podcast entitled How to Stay Motivated was that my perspective was broken. Think back FIVE YEARS from now. Do you see where you were and how you felt about the future — where you’d like to be “someday?” I was chained to a desk making just enough money to get by, getting sick enough for IV antibiotics every  6-9 months, my wife needed to work, and my work, while personally fulfilling, didn’t feel like people appreciated my skill and hard work.

Where were you FIVE YEARS ago? THREE YEARS? Are you more or less where you wanted to be “someday?” For me, I’m well beyond where I would be by now. I hit that just TWO YEARS into business when my wife quit her job. I’m actually living well into my fantasyland  from five years ago.

it’s about living life

They each have a list, which I’ll call an Entrepreneur List, which was partially inspired by a survey of dying people who listed their regrets. It puts today into the reverse perspective of “if I were dying, what would I regret about how I’m living today?” Is your current project your everything? If you’re having a bad day, does it affect you as much as when your boss made a bad day for you?

Are you happy? Do you love life and love what you do, even if you’re not quite “there” yet?

create your Entrepreneur List

Later this week, I’ll be publishing my Entrepreneur List. It will be public for three reasons:

  1. accountability – if I’m being a sad dork on Twitter and it’s not about health or something with our foster care stuff, then I need to be reminded about the list
  2. inspiration – one of my gifts is motivating others, so I would humbly hope to inspire other solopreneurs to create their own lists and share them
  3. remembrance – the nature of the list is dynamic — changing as the things in your life change with you, so this is a snapshot record for my future self

I hope you’ll consider making a list this week while I publish mine to share and motivate each other. This is the WordPress community, after all, and this is nothing if it’s not community.

Simple (but Difficult) Thoughts on Productivity

ProductivityIn that stage of life when someone is said to be “editing,” they are pretty much done finding things they are good at and are paring everything down to the things that have the most passion and feel like what you’re supposed to be doing.

For me, that’s been a huge pile to whittle down since my 20s found me enjoying dozens of things and being good at quite a few of them: microbiology research lab, IT, construction material testing, teaching, writing, analysis, desktop publishing, and a gob of geeky things on or with computers.

Pre-mid-life crisis

Now that I’m in my mid-30s and have found my profession and place in the marketplace, I’ve been in desperate need to streamline my processes. No longer the jack of all trades, I’ve got just a couple of streams of income, so efficiency has become paramount. I’ve been getting one Audible audiobook after another on how the brain works, killing procrastination, and how to continue on the Road of Awesome.

The common thread

Each of the resources I’ve found have differed on several points, albeit minor points. What is interesting is that each of them has a common thread running through them:

cut out distractions – the mind is incapable of multi-tasking anything that takes conscious effort

Studies show that adding a distraction as simple as having IM open while reading a passage takes people 25% longer to read (not including the time spent on IM) than someone with no distractions. Factor in the time on IM and who knows how long it takes.

Microsoft studied 27 employees over several weeks and found that a simple distraction pushed them into a string of routine tasks (such as clicking each browser tab, going to a new site, checking their cell phone, etc.) and not only losing the productive time on the distraction but taking anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to return to the workflow they left when distracted.

I have found myself to be no different.

Other peoples’ priorities

Also notable in every source I’ve found on the subject of productivity is to avoid checking e-mail or voicemail before completing the most important task(s) of the day. I’ve tried that in the past, but caved when I got to my desk, since I work from home. I’d make it all the way until then, but then other peoples’ priorities hijacked my plans for the rest of my morning.

How often do you really need to know what is in your inbox before you write a blog post, work on a proposal, write or clean code, or work on long-term projects? For me, I realized I never needed to know what was in my inbox and yesterday was completely hijacked reading more about WP Daily shutting down (it’s back up again) and responding to non-urgent e-mails, and generally wasted my day until my lunchtime dentist appointment.

Time lost: 4 hours.

I’ll be checking my e-mail today after I publish this, hit MailChimp to ensure it will go out at 9am ET, and spend a little time reading some industry info on development cycles to never stop learning.

Make sense?

Does any of this resound with you – are you doing something similar or is this what you’ve been looking for to get unstuck not getting stuff done until late at night when everyone else’s wants have been met? Let’s discuss.

Process Refining Through Lessons Learned

Lifting lesson learnedRefine your process when things work (and especially when they don’t work) to improve your position in the market. One of the reason fledgling business fail is because they can’t quickly enough learn from their mistakes or their initial mistakes are too much to overcome because they didn’t take baby steps. While I’ve managed to avoid devastating mistakes so far, I’ve had my fair share of lessons learned over the past 4+ years. I presented a lot of them at WordSesh, but here is a nice, tidy list.

The 10 Commandments of business

  1. Respond to initial inquiries quickly. The number of projects I’ve landed because I was the first (and sometimes only) person to respond is too great to guess at this point. Hundreds. Some people don’t even reply to perfectly good requests.
  2. Don’t give away the goose. When you’re doing an initial quote, proposal, or call, don’t tell them everything you’re going to do – they just might find someone in India to do your plan for $300 – at least charge for your time if you’re going to give that much info away.
  3. Charge how much you need to make ends meet. A sure-fire way to fail in business to to charge such low rates that you can’t pay your bills. If you need help with pricing, I’m available for coaching on this, along with many other areas of running your business.
  4. Under-promise and over-deliver. Few things will cause you more work dealing with frustrated clients than over-promising and under-delivering. Sure, timelines can slip, but be open and proactive when they do.
  5. Don’t make it too easy for people to grab your attention through your site. I’ve recently seen a few of my fellow Genesis developer friends tweet that they were taking their phone numbers off their websites. I was shocked that they were published in the first place, but most people are more extroverted than I am. It comes down to adding layers of contact processes for vetting potential clients. See my Contact page.
  6. Do what you say you’ll do. When you say you’ll do something, do it. If things start to unravel, reach out to those affected by an issue.
  7. Do no harm. This is a big one for me. I get a boatload of bad ideas and preconceived notions coming at my via contact form for what people want on their website that should never, ever happen. As a quality dev, it is your job to educate people and help save them from a bad choice. I at least make them insist twice and then inform them that their work will not appear in my portfolio.
  8. KISS. “Keep it simple stupid” is a phrase from WWII and are words to live by when it comes to site organization and design. Visitors don’t want to think, so don’t confuse them with a crazy homepage.
  9. Clear communication. I’ve never used contracts before. Before this week, that is. It’s more of a “what to expect” and “here’s how we’re going to handle payment” agreement, but it really clears the air for what is to come and who is responsible for what.
  10. Ask for referrals. When you finish a project, ask for a referral from your extremely happy client. Chances are, they know someone who could use a good website and you’re just the person to do it.

There’s a lot more to write on the subject, but I hope you find these to guide you to the next level of doing business with great success.

How to Build More Profit into Your Business

Today was a very early day, but I got to talk about “How to Build More Profit into Your Business” with about 125 viewers. WordSesh started at 00:00 UTC, which was 8pm here on the East Coast. My slot was 10:00 UTC, so I was up at 4am for my 6:00 time. The live talk went faster than my practice session yesterday, so I may edit what I did yesterday and post it in place of this live recording later.

You can grab a copy of my slides or just flip through them on my SpeakerDeck page: http://speakerdeck.com/jpetersen/wordsesh-2013

Key Points

  • Always be honest.
  • Care about your clients.
  • Sell benefits, not features.
  • Compete on value, not price.
  • Skill > Speed
  • Integrity > Skill

I’m Speaking at WordSesh 2013 LIVE!

I'm Speaking at WordSesh 2013 Live!

This week I got tapped for my first two WordPress speaking engagements. The first one is WordSesh 2013 coming up this Saturday, April 13th at 10:00 UTC (that’s 6:00am for us U.S. Americans). I’ll be presenting “Building Greater Profits into Your WordPress Business.”

The great thing about this, our WordPress community, is that, while there is always going to be someone (or hundreds) of people who know more about something than any single individual, we all bring something unique to the table. That said, it’s my hope that I validate some things you are doing right, shine some light on some areas you maybe hadn’t thought of before – or things you just haven’t had the courage to do or say – and I’ll be available for ongoing discussions long after the presentation.

I’ll be spending time preparing for Saturday and writing about the process afterward for the benefit of those who are asked to present some day and are curious or concerned about how to prepare and present. I’ve said it many times on Twitter: I’m an open book – I don’t have any trade secrets to do what I do.

On Monday I also released Stealth Login Page plugin and it’s nearly up to 600 downloads in its first week, so thank you all for all the positive feedback. Read more here or go check it out at the repository.

Business Baby Steps

You’ve probably heard that the method to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time.” It’s the principle of taking baby steps to accomplish a big thing. Project managers set up milestones and mini goals to gauge progress, celebrate accomplishments, and to avoid getting bogged down looking at the mountain of work. I’ve also heard that rock climbers plan their path and then concentrate on the five to ten feet above them, all the way to the top.

Starting your business is very similar

If you haven’t already quit your job, start small and make your mistakes while you still have a good safety net to fall back on when someone doesn’t pay or you underestimate a quote. I recommend Jon Acuff’s book, Quitter if you’re looking to quit sometime soon to do your own thing.

Figure out how much you want (or need) to make, divide that by the number of hours you can work, and then how many hours of that you can bill for. If you’re doing project pricing, reverse the steps after calculating your need: how long will it take you to do the project and then price according to how much you need to charge over that time. Set up milestones for cash flow if you need to.

An example

I recently sought help for feeling stuck and unable to concentrate on my voluminous list of projects and to-do items. The advice I got back was to cast out thoughts of how productive I usually am and make a daily to-do of no more than 3 items with the 3rd item considered to be a bonus task – if I get to it, great.

Last week, I set out to convert the brilliant code @norcross handed me to redirect login attempts on a WordPress site and turn that code into a plugin that will work for all themes, not just a fix coded into a client’s theme, if needed.

I’ve only written one plugin, and the vast majority of that was done by other friends with experience. This time I wanted to write it. I watched tutorials, practiced for a few hours with things not working and error screens until I got it working. I went step by step with each file to break it down into the readme file, the plugin file, and settings. I broke each of those up into tasks, too. Adding a settings page to the dashboard menu, plugging in the actual function, designing the settings form, etc.

Now, it’s live in the repository and it’s being well-received by the community. I couldn’t have done it if I didn’t break it down into baby steps – Sunday, I finished eating my elephant.

On to my next large herbivore.

What are you breaking down into chunks to achieve? How can I be of assistance?

What Is Your Work Worth?

Close up of vintage typewriter machineThere are a heck of a lot of us doing this “web thing” today. I read an article a few months back that geeky jobs writing code, managing databases, and multi-level problem-solving are the most in-demand jobs on the market with way more positions than there are people. It’s a programmer’s market right now and you just about have to try to not get enough work. Seriously. If you’re not booked solid now, in March of 2013, you’re doing something seriously wrong. Bill Erickson has a great article on this for consultants, in particular.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that and what to do about it — some of you know I am working on, and I’ll announce it widely soon. (I should probably at least tell my parents first.) Then I was reflecting on a chat I had with Jared Atchison last week month he said that people in our position don’t last very long. He’s right. If they need benefits, can’t weather the ups and downs because they suck at managing a business, or they suck at client interactions, then they go to an employer with a position that more or less makes them happy.

To be clear, I won’t fault anyone for taking a job to do what’s best for their family – some of my best WordPress developer friends have quit being a small fish in a big pond and taken jobs, even just last week in one case. It’s a personal decision – I’m here to encourage those who are at the 10-40 client mark and have a lot of volatility. Some people benefit from joining a team to enhance their careers that would otherwise be an uphill battle alone – programmers and designers alike. Three of my favorite people have joined teams for that purpose.

Heck, I’ve almost thrown in the towel twice. Both times I was broke and desperate, but I couldn’t shake the shame I’d place on myself for “failing” by my standards and would never be happy making in a week what I often made in a day or less. I was tempted to go back to my old employer with great benefits, but I don’t fit under management very well because there are precious few true leaders in those positions, so if you have a great leader at the helm, then you’re very blessed. I’m a rebel and enough of a visionary that I can’t be molded like that.

The million dollar question

What is your lifestyle worth? By that, I’m asking, “what price would have to be paid by an employer to quit what you’re doing?” We all have a price. What’s yours? You can no longer decide you don’t feel well enough to get up at the crack of dawn hour and sleep in until 8am. Traffic sucks, and now you actually have to get dressed to go to work. You have one, two, or maybe even 5 people making the decisions to hire and fire and if one of them has you in their cross-hairs, you’re gone. Jobless. Again. Feeling worthless because someone didn’t value you enough to keep paying you a pittance.

My answer might shock you

I’ve come up with a price. I’ve had it ever since I had more than 50 regular clients paying me every month, quarter, and year in many varying amounts. I’m now at 180 clients on a regular basis and many of them pay me monthly or annually with newcomers and redesigns being larger ticket items. I’d have to be fired by over 100 individuals and most new inquiries in order to be in that prior scenario

My price is $1,000,000 per year. Note, that’s not what I earn each year (yet /grin) but what the price of the risk of putting all of my eggs into one basket that can be crushed at a moment’s notice. It’s unlikely that I would add $1M to an employer’s bottom line in my first year to make up for my salary and benefits overhead, so it’d be for a long-term goal. That said, I’m very happy to do what I do now and would do it for free if that was realistic – which it’s not – and it would take something very grand to pull me away from this. Why would I want to put all I’ve worked for in jeopardy for a salary that can be cut off like the electricity? My purpose and passion extend beyond what happens 9-5 M-F in our office above the garage.

Do epic stuff

You don’t have to make a million dollars per year or have 50k Twitter followers to do something epic. I’m just an ordinary guy doing ordinary stuff extraordinarily well. It’s making a difference to those people I work with. My friend Steve Farber has a saying,

“Do what you love in service of those who love what  you do.”

Being a servant leader and serving your clients is not below you. Instead, it will propel you to new heights.