Month: January 2015

  • The point to your process is to weed out the clients you don’t want

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    Even if the client is annoyed by your question or your pricing the whole point to your client on-boarding process is to weed out the clients you simply don’t want to work with. Remember that even if they’re rude. Links Components of your Initial Client Email

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  • Is the Freelance Roller Coaster Making You Sick?

    Is the Freelance Roller Coaster Making You Sick?

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    When I started my freelance business it was all daisies and roses. In those early days, each client who called me and said they had work and wanted me to hold a spot would, of course, come through. I’m sure you can see where this is going… The truth is, most of those leads didn’t…

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  • Procrastination Reveals Priorities

    Procrastination Reveals Priorities

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    Late in 2014 I was asked to do some technical coaching for a member of the WordPress community. It amounted to much of what I get paid to do for clients already. Teach deployment protocols/process Git coaching Code reviews Other things I already do I’ve got to admit that I was very interested in the…

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  • How do you speak about your clients?

    How do you speak about your clients?

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    I recently listened to a great podcast episode by Michael Hyatt on the subject of how you speak about your spouse. To summarize, the way you speak about your spouse in public shows a lot about your character. If you speak poorly about your spouse, you most likely have, or will have, a poor relationship. The…

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  • Is Success Only in Your Head?

    Is Success Only in Your Head?

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    You’ve got ideas, right? You’ve got big plans for that big thing you’d like to create or launch, and you’ve already stopped lying to yourself about your time. So what’s holding you back now? What’s the reason you haven’t yet followed through on that big idea? Maybe this new idea requires capital and you don’t have the…

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  • Dealing with Negative Feedback

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    When faced with negative feedback from a client or a friend how do you deal with it? Do you get defensive or do you dig in and see where the truth is? Do you create a plan to get better?

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  • December 2014 Reading

    December 2014 Reading

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    I was able to spend time with a few good books this past December, so in this post I’m sharing some of my favorite recent reads. Perhaps you’ll be moved to add a few of these to your reading list for 2015. 1. Kesrith by C. J. Cherryh Get Kesrith on Amazon Kesrith  is the first…

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  • Review: Good to Great

    Review: Good to Great

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    This is the second book by Jim Collins, Built to Last being the first. In Built to Last, Jim wrote about entrepreneurs who started businesses and managed to build big, profitable organizations from nothing. Yet, Jim learned that while the stories in Built to Last were interesting, some people who read his book didn’t really want to hear…

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  • Completed Tasks Aren’t a Measure of Success

    Completed Tasks Aren’t a Measure of Success

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    Back when I wrote about my initial prospect email I shared with you that one of the questions I required the prospect to answer went something like this. How are we going to measure the success of the project? You might think that is an obvious question to ask but most of the people I talk to…

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  • Tools: A Bit of Everything

    Tools: A Bit of Everything

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    This is my final post on the subject of the tools I use, and this one will be a bit of a grab bag. I’ve either written about these at length fairly recently or they just didn’t warrant a big long post because they were fairly straightforward. So today I’ll hit the highlights so you…

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