Response to Clients From Hell

Recently Carl Smith did a video blog entitled “Clients From Hell? Blame Yourself!” (If you’ve not watched it, you should.) It’s something I agree with and something that my mind ended up thinking of again today as I read my feeds and read the new Clients From Hell. This one in particular:

A client wanted an e-commerce store designed. We asked if she had a budget, and she said, “No; it…

A client wanted an e-commerce store designed. We asked if she had a budget, and she said, “No; it costs what it costs.” My partner and I proposed a very reasonable price and in the proposal, we stated that additional hours would be billed at $60 per hour. She refused to even look at the proposal, handing it off to one of the interns to “deal with it.” The project wore on for about three months and we still hadn’t been paid for our initial invoice. We called the client and she assured us that her intern was handling it and that we would get a cheque in the mail. About a week later, we hadn’t heard from her. So we did what we usually do: halt work and send them a message. The client phoned me after receiving the message, basically screaming at me that it was too expensive. She said, “spend no more than 10 hours designing and programming it; I don’t want to spend more than $600.” We had spent 10 hours in meetings alone.

See, in this post the person is blaming the client. Saying they are “from Hell.” When truthfully there were red flags from the beginning. The first, of course, being that the client did not read the estimate. Secondly, not only did they start the work without receiving the initial upfront deposit, they carried on for three months(!) without stopping work to receive the payment.

So many of the posts on there are in this similar vein. If you are not smart about your clients and about the money, then you can not expect them to go smoothly or to go correctly. If you feel a client is “from hell” at the beginning, then go with your gut feeling and try to move on to another project.

(Looks like I am not the only one either)

Just Ship It!

One of the biggest problems many designers have is being a perfectionist. If it was left completely to us; nothing would ever ship. “Oh, there is just one small change I want to make” or “Oh, now I don’t like it. I want to start again” are often cried by many designers.

The beauty of the web over print is the ability to iterate, to change and to tweak. Most of the most popular websites like Facebook were not pretty when they launched, nor did they have as much functionality as they wanted or have now. They all have one major thing in common; they launched! They got to the scene early, captured as many people as they could and then built their features while they were getting feedback and usage.

That is also another great point to make. Their community helped shape the features they had not launched yet. It allowed for them to prepare for different usage and edge cases. They could decide which feature to launch next due to a combination of their own intuition and the knowledge they uncovered from being live.

What if people judge my website for its looks? Have you seen Google? MySpace? People use anything as long as it works. People are fickle. They’ll forget how ugly it is when you bring out a prettier version later.

You only get one launch? I think David Smalley did a good job of explaining it in my latest post.

There are many reasons why you can not ship it, but unless it is something extremely vital, then just do it. See if the idea sinks or swims. You may decide that it is not worth it after all.

So what are you waiting for? Just ship it. Good luck!

The Web Business: Secrets of Pricing

Talking about pricing can be taboo. I remember the difficulty I had when I first entered the industry and tried to decide a competitive price. Everyone kept it close to their chest as if it is part of their secret to success and of course they are scared they will lose the ability to change their price for future projects.

I have seen an uncanny amount of people either overcharge or under-charge their pricing. Pricing is worked out by what your ego thinks it should accept against how many requests you have.

London Made‘s rates vary depending on the service and who is asking. There is a lot of variable factors but the few things that do not change are the fact we work our socks off to do the best job we can and every project is priced differently depending on many factors.

The two biggest tips in pricing I will give you is to be cautious and do not under-price or over-price. Secondly, is to estimate 20-30% longer than you originally suspect. There will undoubtedly be issues that you have not yet thought of. If you under-estimate and then report to your client you will need to take more hours, your client will be pissed. If you overrun your first quote into the 30% buffer and still do not make the full quote, you will look like a hero.

Pricing is an art, not a science.

Building A Startup: The First Few Weeks

I am finally biting the bullet and investing $10,000 into a startup I am creating. It is all the spare cash I have and then some and it is a sink or swim moment. Already life has changed significantly and I am starting to think everyone should create a startup at least once.

I gave the green light to my developers on Tuesday, completed site-wide design and have started investing in various services so that I have time to set them up. We have storyboarded and worked a timeframe out that sees us finishing in 3 or 4 weeks from now.

I already feel anxious waiting to launch the startup. I do not want someone to come out with the same idea in that time and render my time and money useless. I always tell my clients to slow down with their rush and that the execution is the most important thing. Being on the other side of the fence has me in a completely different mindset. Of course, I know that I will not release until the execution is satisfactory.

It is very hard not to think that my startup will be a resounding success and I will be a millionaire overnight. Realistically I know that this will not happen and the maximum chance is that we earn ten thousand max in the first month. I still see this as unlikely. Hopefully it will be a success but even if it is not, I will be happy that I did it.

We shall wait and see how the next few weeks planned out. However, I am excited and nervous. I have never run a startup before, only built and designed. I just have to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Me. A bit of a life story.

My life has not always been easy but I think I can appreciate that now. I watched a lot of beautiful business and it helped shape who I became. I was born May 9th 1986 in London and am the third out of four children. Like all my brothers I was born premature which was probably an explanation in why I was born with multiple life altering diseases. Among a few of note was dyslexia, motor apraxia and colour-blindness. While these problems do not hinder me in my adult life and no one thinks I was born any different, it took many years of extra circular activities such as physiotherapy to get to that place.

As a weird but eventually wonderful result, it changed my life for the better. School ran at a different pace than I did and did not hold my interest for long (I was predicted all A-Stars but only walked away with 2 GCSEs.) I soon switched off and started in my own direction. At age 12, I picked up a Macromedia Flash 3 demo disk. After searching the internet for help and tutorials, I soon became adept at it. Firstly making crude animations and then quickly learning it for commercial usage. It was the age of bulletin boards and I found a web design community called Pixel Junction. I met my then soon-to-be business partner David Hope. We ran a company called Reality Art Studios for a total of 6 years before we decided that we both started to want different things and wanted to grow in a different environment.

Around 2002, while I was learning PHP, my travels I met my then future partners and close friends Bryan Veloso and Faruk Ateş. Two people who my respect for has only grown. In 2005, we briefly started a company called LT3media with Cindy Li, Hayo Bethlehem and Victoria Rendell. It was not to be, all 6 of us trying to fit our schedules together did not work and we parted ways.

Fast forward to 2005 and I leave for Asia to be with a girl (who eventually became my fiancée, then my ex.) A while later she tells me that she has to move to America, and so I tell her I will follow her. I do and spend 2 years in Galesburg, Illinois. At that point Obie offered a job at Hashrocket where I spend 90% of that time leading a vital project. I got to enjoy far too much Patron and hot tubbing with great friends and watch the company grow. 7 months later I decide that I need to be my own boss again.

Now, I have started London Made with the incredibly talented Jonathan Conway.

Since an early age I watched my father while he worked in the movie industry. He is a fountain of fun stories that include hanging out with Rod Stewart in hotel rooms, his help in creating the original Clash Of The Titans and so on. He also was one of the chartered accountants that worked on the Rolls Royce receivership and ran a successful pub for many years. My mother was much the same and is an MBA who used work as a Stock Trader, etc. I think it gave my parents equal parts joy and frustration that I was the only one of their 4 children to become an entrepreneur.

I do want to be a millionaire, but not so that I can pack up my job and retire, so that I can build more businesses, help other people with their dreams and build some charities. That has always been my dream.

I really enjoy helping people with their dreams and passion and am a true believer of the pay it forward concept. I spend about 35% of my day helping people; be it life or work. Truthfully, I am more than happy to do it. If I help one person and it changes their life for the better, chances are they will help at least one person and so on.

Few facts:

According to Working With Rails, I have worked with Rails for 5 years and 8 months.
I have designed for a total of 12 years.
I would rather do it right and the best I can, than be rich and do it half-heartedly.
My favourite books include The Hitman Diaries, Memoirs of A Geisha, Enter The Dragon, Freakanomics, Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.

The Art of Recommendation

Throughout the businesses that I have owned and run and particularly at London Made, we pride ourselves on being able to fulfil most requests. We have worked with many developer’s or designer’s that have fit the project better. If it is a small task in a big project, we will often subcontract. Otherwise, we hand off projects.

If we can not handle it, I will nearly always try to seek a colleague that I think fits the project needs and deserves the work. A large part of it is spreading the love but there is some awesome by-products such as colleagues remember you and that colleagues often try to pay you back somehow. Be it a gift, a referral back or a hat tip in a blog post or such.

One major downside being that your neck is on the line. If you recommend a colleague that does a bad job, you are also remembered in that equation. That’s why I am very careful who I send it to.

Start forwarding the projects you can not fulfil and watch the rewards now!

London Made: The Partner

I can finally announce that I will not be doing London Made alone and that I will be running it with the talented Jonathan Conway.

Although I will still program, I will be able to focus more heavily on designing while Jonathan will fulfil the programming side of the business.

I’ve also updated the website significantly since yesterday to help reflect this.