Right Right Now Notes.

• Right Right Now Notes:

I’m going to call my business ‘right right now.’ Maybe write right now. Dunno. Not super important TODAY. Focus: I delivering short projects on short deadlines with an increasingly good basis. I’ve been doing similar work so far, and I don’t have a system in place to ensure that we get things done fast. I’m improving–but there is only so much someone can do ad hoc.

These are all things I’m almost thinking. I may change my mind about some, all or most of these ideas. First of all, not being the cheapest is not going to be something I changed my mind about.

This is mostly ‘attributes,’ I’ll do one on sales strategy (cruise monster, offer project work in lieu of jobs, etc).

Starting Point ideas/brain storm (some well thought out, some just whittle bitty ideas, still cooing and puking)

• instant return. profitable as a JOB by 9/15/08. 3 jobs in by then. find work now, find work before business cards are printed. Sales focus first.
• No investors, partners. Collaborators and advisers, sure, but it’s my ship, my time to rock, my dream/idea.
• 100% high quality, known & vetted freelancers. No race to the bottom, only quality assets delivering the work.
• need: freelancer vetting process
• ability to throw 100 hours a week at a given project with quality people.
• focus on LAMP with the “P” being anything from Rails to python to whatever.
• Some design and writing.
• A good, trusted place for quality workers to send and profit from overflow work (possibly)
• Create gitomer type kick ass elevator speech. (maybe Christina can pitch in)
• Freelancer gets an average of $100/hr++
• 100% of the time, never, ever, ever, under any circumstances take hourly projects.
• Get a crystal clear spec in the beginning.
• Charge for changes suggested by the customer.
• Get a timeline established and agreed to within X of taking project.
• Have a 1 strike-and your out process for missing deadlines. “none of our remaining people have ever missed a deadline.”
  • have some sort of system for personal emergencies that allows us to swap assets

        - point is: company never misses deadlines.

• Collect greater of 50% or $2500 in the beginning. Once rep established, collect more.
  • Easier to find paying clients than it is to collect from douche bags

• Have a project average of roughly 30 hours to completion and $6,000 net.
• All people are 1099’d as legitimate contractors.
• Roles:
  • Sales People (find work, negotiate prices and contracts.)

        - Spec Writers: Can be sales people, the people that get the job order or tech lead/asset.

        - assets: people that do the work that runs the business.
        -         evangelists: find assets.

• Requested assets get an additional 20% in some cases, with 10% extra going to freelancers, 5% going to evangelist. (TBD)
• Contract will not obligate an asset to be used, but that’s not super strong.
• In demand assets get their rates automatically increased.
• NOTHING HOURLY. REUSE WORK, DELIVER A KICKASS EXPERIENCE.
• Agreement:
• Assets will have fanatical devotion to hitting deadlines.
• Deadlines will be realistic.
• Unrealistic deadlines will have premium prices of +75%.
• Unrealistic deadline is 60+ combined hours in the first week.
• All cost of researching EXISTING systems borne by client. i.e. if we have to research a company’s old code, that is the only ‘hourly’ project.
• We can outsource functionary shit, but never architecture/design high end stuff.
• All passwords delivered & code with reasonable comments (what it does, mostly).
• Collect at spec, and have clear agreement that is simple and easy to understand.
• TODO: Get Bonded/E&O.
• Single proprietorship (leaning towards. Name on the door, ass on the line. LLCs are pseudo protection, and my assets are under lawsuit threshold).
• Avg. project is closed out within 20 days.
• Noncompete:
  • 18 months from when we found a job asset and company must buy out at $20,000. Not a big one, but one to keep us from being eviscerated.
• Agreements
• Deadlines: Core of our business. missing deadlines is huge.
  • Negotiate realistic deadlines. Negotiate realistic deadlines.

        -        Once deadline is hit, do it again

• First time assets get hounded by me. We need to get progress reports.
• Assets are graded based on:
  • Client rehires
  • fiduciary values (must care deeply that the client has good tools)
    • DEFINE FIDUCIARY VALUES
  • client happiness
  • communication with team/client and internal.
  • deadline delivery.
  • on budget.
  • Client interactions
  • Referrals of other assets (bonus system/residual must be in place)
  • economy??
  • finding opportunities for work for us??
• Assets must have:
  • linkedin 6 months old or older in active use
• Written process that we are held accountable to and that improves!!!
• “How did we do” after each job, reviewed and process improvements created. 6 sigma.
• Process must manage expectations (skill)
• We want to be “ink dry-to-go” within 24-48 hours.
• How do we make it easy for people to buy our people….?i.e. channels that need to be open, ways to order?
• We don’t have a ‘bourse’ of commodity coders. No no no no no.
• We are ‘cheaper in the long run because we’ll make your stuff work together’.
• Process made crystal clear:
  • Agree to engage us.

        -        Get spec &         Send check.

        -        For new clients, spec-work = billable (again: easier to find a new client than to deal with dickheads)
        -        Register asset (to enforce buyout.)
        -        deadline clock starts…
        -        Work done.
        -        mile stones all have ‘approval & payment deadlines,’ when next deadline up.
        -        each milestone paid prior to beginning of next one.

• clients get credit = to 125% of their last bill.
• We must qualify clients to ensure that they can & will pay.
• Assets Find opportunities naturally.
• Have assets perform without rancor
• We don’t want assets financially dependent on us unless they are ‘money drunk, ‘ and then we can deal with as needed.
• Have this be based on finding short term jobs.
  • Our assets are free to meet one another? collaborate? not a company…but anyway.

Intellectual Property: We’re work for hire with rights to repurpose source code.

RRN= us client= them.
–client gets original code w/rights to reuse.
–author gets no residual|nothing is due after contract is paid to RRN.
–coder can reuse.
–RRN and Client both gets use of code. All are negotiable; not a principle matter, but we want to have understanding of who gets what and when.

More to think about, i’m certain.

Related posts:

1. Selling Strategies…Notes.
2. Thinking about an agreement:
3. Perverse Incentives Of Consulting Firms
4. Client Intake: How To Make A Killer First Impression & More Sales.
5. Slow Down the Beginning to Speed Up the Ending…

Tagged as: sales