General

I'm not sure where the time went. It feels like just yesterday I posted the March grades and now its been over 2 weeks already. I'd like to send out a thank you to Patrick McKenzie who mentioned my blog on his site. I've always had a lot of respect for Patrick based on the amount of help he has given back to the uISV community. I've relied heavily on his blog for help and advice on getting my uISV up and running.

I don't want to steal any of the thunder but I'm excited for a new product launch coming up from one of our members if the class of '07. I don't think an offical announcement has been made so I'll hold off, but I've been given a sneak peak and it looks very impressive. Stay tuned for a full review once it is announced.

I'd like to point out a huge benefit of actually getting your product in the hands of users, even in a beta stage. If you go read Jon's blogs about SendAlong, his product to send large files you will a flourish of activity right after he released his product. He added quite a few new features, and I guarentee that some of them he never considered until his users suggested them. Until you have real users banging on your product, you will not really know how they will use or want to use it. I'm a big fan of release early and release often because of the many benefits of having real users using your product.

As a uISV I've always put customer service as one of the areas that I want to exceed expectations. I have always been good with customers, which for a software developer can be a unique thing. A lot of developers I know would rather never see a customer, they just want to code. And sometimes you don't ever want the customer to see them either. While having great customer service should not be your sole differentiator, it does not mean you should not strive to achieve great customer service.

I've always admired the length that Patrick McKenzie has gone to provide support to his customers (and even some of his competitors customers.) I used Patrick as the gold standard of customer service. I recently received a comment through my website (for creating employee schedules.) They actually provided both their email and phone number which I've found out to be fairly rare thing to do. The customer briefly described their scheduling pain and wanted to know if Web Work Schedules could help.

I composed a brief email back and sent it off. A short while later the email bounced back undeliverable. I verified the email address and then checked the domain to see if I could find their web site. Still no luck, so I decide to do it the old fashion way and pick up the phone and call him. Thankfully he was working today and was able to give me a few minutes of his time.

It turns out the feature he needs is not currently in WWS, but it is a feature that would be useful to most of my customers, so I have no problem implementing it. Like I said before, customized software is a slippery slope, which is why I evaluate each feature request. The customer told me that he had purchased some scheduling software before. It was hard to use and he could not get it to work. The company never responded to his questions. He felt that he just wasted his time and money.

Contrast that to the effort I've made so far. I tried to email him, but that failed. Then I call him and ask him questions about his problems. I listen to his answers and explain that the current state of WWS will not solve his exact problem, I would like to work with him to create a solution that will. I followed up the phone call with an email outlining the steps to take if he would like to work with me to enhance WWS so that it solves his problem. I also mentioned I'd would wave the monthly fees during development of the new feature.

So how does this customer feel about my company? Well I'll let you judge by his email response:

"Thanks again for working with us on this that is GREAT customer service."

Unrelated side note: I find it funny that the last couple of potential customers that have found me on search engines and have contacted me happen to live within a few hours of where I'm located. The world seems to be getting smaller every day.

I was contacted by a potential customer for Web Work Schedules, the software that allows you to create work schedules online. Her company has a slightly different way of scheduling. They needed some additional information on the schedule, and view the schedule in a new way (a month at a time.)

There is a great feeling of discussing your application with potential customers if you believe in your product. My wife use to work in this particular vertical market that this customer is from, so I had some insight on how they were currently doing their scheduling. I don't know why I didn't think of this particular vertical before. It seems so obvious to me now. The company currently uses Excel to create its schedules and emails them out. Needless to say, WWS is a huge step up for them.

But first I needed to decide if I should make the required customization. There is a slippery slope on doing customizations for clients. It is hard to scale and if you are selling a $50 service, you might actually be losing money by doing the work. But since the changes they were asking for will be useful to every company in the vertical market, and most likely in other markets as well, then it was an easy decision to make.

And having active customers to work with is a huge motivation factor, so I was able to bang out the changes (and a slew of other issues that had been bothering me) in a few days. During the whole time I kept in contact with the customer, trying to understand their scheduling process, their current pains and what I can do to help. By being proactive in the relationship and delivering a capability that will solve their problem, I hope that I will have a new happy customer.

Even better than that, is that I have a whole new vertical market to go after. This small niche is currently under served and could be a big success for me. It pays to get to know your customers, because you never know what you might learn. In this case, I discovered a new niche market.

I’ve read a few posts recently about people wanting to start a uISV. I thought I would share a little of my experience with the different stages of starting a uISV.

1. The Idea
   
   • This is the best stage to me. You are going to conquer the world. Bells and whistles are going off, why didn’t you think of this before. This is going to be so much fun.
   
   
   • Reality check: This is the easiest stage there is. There is no actual work involved in this stage. It is fun to think about your idea and maybe even plan out how everything will fall into place once you start. Ideas are cheap, its execution that is important. I’m guess the vast majority of uISV’s never make it past this stage.
   
   
   
   


2. Initial development
   
   • As a software developer, I think this is the best stage. You’ve chosen the technology you are going to use (maybe even experimenting with a few from the bleeding edge). You put in long hours but it doesn’t feel like work, this is fun! You stay up late into the night and your fingers are a blur at the keyboard. You are banging out various parts of your app.
   
   
   • Reality Check: This is the second best stage there is. (The best is when someone actually buys your product.) This stage will soon end when you run into a challenge and suddenly coding is a lot like working at your day job. You start avoiding sections of code or features that need to get done. You start to regret some of the earlier decisions you made. A lot of uISVs are abandoned at this stage. I have no hard numbers but from personal experience, figure at 60-70% failure rate.
   
   


3. Beta Release
   
   • You’ve completed enough of the app that it is ready to show to people other than your family or close friends. You can almost see the finished product. Just a few more things to wrap.
   
   
   • Reality Check: All those task that you have avoided are coming back to haunt you now. The mundane tasks that have to be finished, the mind numbing ones, and possibly even a technical challenging one as well. While the beta is just around the corner, just weeks away, it keeps slipping beyond your grasp. Part of the issue is that you are afraid to release it. So you keep making excuses on why it is not ready yet. The hours you spend on your uISV are down considerable from when you first started. You sit down to work on it, but end up browsing the web instead.
   
   



4. 1.0 Release
   
   • You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You will have accomplished what 98% of uISVs have failed to do. Launch a product.
   
   
   • Reality Check: In all your free time (working nights and weekends) you forgot to do any marketing yet. And being more technical, marketing is not one of your strengths. The only way some one finds your website is by searching for your-company.com in Google. The whole world of SEO, AdWords, link building is brand new territory. On one hand you feel great that you actually have a product, but you are waiting for validation until someone actually parts money and pays for it.
   
   

This is not the path everyone takes when starting a company. Since it paints a difficult path to follow, you might ask if it is worth it. I’ll refer back to my post on consulting vs ownership and say that yes it is. If I ever do it again (I’m hoping my current efforts on my customer service knowledge base and online employee scheduling will take off and I will not have to) I’ll have gained a lot of experience and do things a little differently.

The two main things I would do differently is

1. Start marketing from the moment I have an idea. This includes SEO work, blogging, market research, etc.
2. Choose an idea that can be developed in 6 months or less. This reduces the chances of burn out. To me the 6 months is the upper end limit. The less time it takes to develop, I think the better you need to be at marketing because it would be easy for copy cat competitors to spring up.

So for you that have started a uISV, did you hit these stages? Are there any stages that I missed that you think belong in the list? Let me know in the comments.

One thing that I have been good at over my career is selling myself. This is a skill that you can always be working on. Even when I was working for my last company, up until my last day there, I was selling myself to the company's customers. You never know when someone will need your capabilities. Here are 4 key things that are required to successfully sell your services

1) Believe in yourself (your capabilities, your worth to the client)

2) Always be selling, especially when they are not buying

3) Never burn any bridges

4) Over deliver

To have any success I think you have to believe in yourself. I know what my skill set is and where my strengths and weakness are. I also know how fast I can pick up new skill when required. This is tied together with knowing what I'm worth to my customers. It helps that I know what my company used to bill my out at, so I know what people were willing to pay for me. Even still, my first contract was under priced. When it was time to renew, I said I would, but only at a new rate.

When you are consulting, every interaction is a sales call. The weekly status meeting is a reminder to the client of my capabilities and what I'm bringing to the table. My goal of every interaction with clients, partners, and any one else I run into is to be professional and be viewed as an expert in my field. Each time I build up my personal brand that these people will remember when they have a problem that I can solve. Networking and selling go hand in hand. The benefit of selling yourself (instead of trying to sell a product) is that it should never feel like a sales pitch. You should just be yourself, connecting with people, expanding your network and building your personal brand.

The world really is a small place. Even on the internet with billions of people online, people know people. I always leave a job and/or customer in the best possible conditions. The majority of my work has come from past employers or customers. If I had burned bridges it would affect my reputation. That is a problem when what I'm selling is myself.

The easiest way to sell yourself is to over deliver on the last job. This is the sure fire way to get repeat business. Word of mouth advertising is the best form of advertisement. I just received an email where a former client was telling a potential client that "I recall we spoke last week about you looking for some outside the box SOA talent. ... I cannot speak highly enough about Chris' talents." So now not only am I selling but now my customer is even selling for me.

By leveraging these 4 items, I have been successful at getting consulting work. Would you add anything else to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Its nice to be wanted. I have another potential contract that I'm considering doing. The big issue is that some of the work will have to be done on site. I've got really use to my 10 foot commute. The commute and time commitment is making me really think if I want to take the work or not.

I read T.J.'s post about Making a Goal to Quit the Day Job. It made me reconsider how much time I've been putting into the consulting vs the . Even so I feel that given the holidays and the deadlines, my recent progress has been good. But I think I need to find a more even balance between the two.

And then .

And its almost spring in San Diego, the recent rains have the weeds growing like crazy and I promised the wife that I'd have the lawn in 4 months ago.

And then there are my two kids that I want to spend as much time with as I can before they grow up. I can't my son will be two next month. Where did the time go?

And then there this blog

I know most of you probably have just as much if not more going on in your lives. So how do you keep it all balanced?