CrisL
New Contributor
Hi, Cris here from Vienna, Austria. Prepare for a long post.
I'm almost finished with unscripted so I though to join the forum and here goes my introduction.
I started programming on the C64 as I was 10 or 11 and learned Basic from the included manual. Seemed only reasonable to go to a high school doing IT and programming. Well, coding was fun, IT was fun but most teachers sucked, some where drunk some didn't know how to teach and probably I just wasn't the best learner if things didn't seem interesting to me.
At that time there was no udemy, not even google. So learning for us was downloading some tutorials from ftp server that some guy in south Africa wrote about coding graphical stuff with Pascal.
The couple of us that where into that stuff where addicted, coding day & night ...
but in the end I dropped out of school. No degree, no debt, no future?
Well, I started with something that translates to apprentice (you visit school and go to work), I was 15 at that time and worked for a company selling construction materials. I was doing low end stuff, filing papers and crap like that.
One year in, a guy from controlling joined the apprentice table and asked "who of you could enter me some data in excel?", well guess that would be me. Unfortunately one day I forgot the BIOS password to power up the PC so I opened up his computer, turned the dip switch to reset password and carried on with my task.
I confessed that I forgot the password and hat to reset it, awaiting some mad speech but instead the guy was so impressed that a couple of months later I was in the IT department.
Lesson so far: I thought I was lucky, looking back ... where was the "Luck" in me picking up the C64 Manual and learning basic in stead of just playing around?
So, years later my first f* that event. I finished the 3 years of "apprentice" and was very pissed about the money I received as full employee, I was doing tasks for 3 people and complained about this. The answer was "you are to young to earn more" also they got some new guy to help, doing only one of my tasks and earning more then me.
Without a new job in sight, still no degree, f* you, I resigned!
At first they didn't try to stop me, though I would rethink it since I could never find a better job.
Well, I did. very fast and with a much better pay.
I had no IT degree, no real proof of my IT and coding experience since I just finished a apprenticeship for "whole sale agent".
But I convinced the new company I would be a great value for them.
6 years after dropping out of high school, a former colleague started at the same company. He had a degree, I didn't and we where both doing almost the same thing.
Guess what, after 2 years he quit or got fired, can't remember, because he didn't really like programming. Well that's 5 years of learning wasted.
I stuck 10 years with this company and finally decided to quit and start my own business. I didn't have real f* that event this time, but there was no echo any more. I couldn't see the awesomeness anymore. At first, hell, my Code ist running in Western Canada for the state lottery. Every damn Ticket played runs though my code. How cool is that.
10 Years later, that really didn't excite me anymore.
I had no clue what I really would like to do, I did know my way around servers, I knew I can learn new things on my own, I knew a bit of web design and so I started with IT Support and Web Design.
Over the years I added more and more products and services, some where crap, some turned out to be great.
Now, almost 10 years later I am doing 6 figures in sales which doesn't say much about the actual money I earn, there are servers to pay, office rent, employees ...
But in the end, I am doing ok.
So why am I here then? As I mentioned, I'm doing ok not super awesome. but 10 years in (starting to see a pattern with the 10yrs) I have noticed some issues in my business.
I started hating what I do because the results and echo isn't there anymore.
Another reason is that I was doing it wrong and chasing the wrong projects and investing to much time in the wrong place and also billing wrong.
As mentioned I like coding (yes I know ... to many I, I, I.. MJ will hate me for this) so I wanted to get coding projects for web development. But the issue here is that I though most customer want it billed by the hour although they don't and even then my estimates where created by estimating how many hours I would need and guess what? Every damn estimate turned out wrong, every time I needed more time then expected which lead to frustration on both sides.
But I was also doing businesses where recurring payment was involved. Hosting but more over VoIP as I started some time back to be a phone company and this is where it payed back to invest time to learn all that VoIP stuff.
So what are my future plans?
First of: stop creating estimates based on 3 lines in an email and estimating hours. New estimates are not done for free. I actually charge money for a roadmap session.
I am investing a couple of hours to talk to the customer, ask all the details out of them so I know exactly what they want how they think and where the value is that I will add.
After that whip up some Mockups, a plan of what they need to do, how the web project needs to work. Only after that I will tell them what the project will cost. The advantage for both is, I get payed before starting to code, I know what the want and what value it will give them so I can do value based pricing, the customer knows what costs to expect and also if they don't like my offer, they payed me for the roadmap and mockups. So they get to keep them and shop around else where.
second: invest more time and push the VoIP Phone services more. I have don't even have a page on my site dedicated to this. All customers I have come from word of moth, actually ... that's true for all my projects.
So if my customers are so happy recommending my services, I should use that (testimonies, some recommendation program) and try to get more customers.
The phone market won't be existing for ever. Business still use it but with all the other communication channels one has to prepare for the Phone business to disappear but for now it's almost a passive income I just need to scale it.
Sure I need to take care of the servers, update my systems... but the hard part is done, it's installed, it's configured, carriers are in place, adding a new customer takes 5-30 min and can be done by anyone. After that, monthly payments come in.
So what I have learned so far and what I can give as advice (even though I still have a lot to learn), don't be f* lazy! You want something, learn how to do it. Short cuts won't do! Value, value, value. I wouldn't have come this far without adding some value to my customers. I might have not known until now, but they all hired me because they saw some additional value in my services and they wouldn't have recommended me without getting value after doing business with me.
I seem to be on the right track but didn't know how to use this. Also one think I should have done more often. Say "No" to some customers. If the project doesn't seem right or there is a gut feeling that the customer might be complicated, just say know.
There is no problem with complicated projects (remember, no shortcuts) but dealing with difficult people can set you back and in the end you traded to much time for to little money, you loose time where you could learn new things and improve yourself.
ok, that would be enough for now. Told you this would be a long one.
Cris
I'm almost finished with unscripted so I though to join the forum and here goes my introduction.
I started programming on the C64 as I was 10 or 11 and learned Basic from the included manual. Seemed only reasonable to go to a high school doing IT and programming. Well, coding was fun, IT was fun but most teachers sucked, some where drunk some didn't know how to teach and probably I just wasn't the best learner if things didn't seem interesting to me.
At that time there was no udemy, not even google. So learning for us was downloading some tutorials from ftp server that some guy in south Africa wrote about coding graphical stuff with Pascal.
The couple of us that where into that stuff where addicted, coding day & night ...
but in the end I dropped out of school. No degree, no debt, no future?
Well, I started with something that translates to apprentice (you visit school and go to work), I was 15 at that time and worked for a company selling construction materials. I was doing low end stuff, filing papers and crap like that.
One year in, a guy from controlling joined the apprentice table and asked "who of you could enter me some data in excel?", well guess that would be me. Unfortunately one day I forgot the BIOS password to power up the PC so I opened up his computer, turned the dip switch to reset password and carried on with my task.
I confessed that I forgot the password and hat to reset it, awaiting some mad speech but instead the guy was so impressed that a couple of months later I was in the IT department.
Lesson so far: I thought I was lucky, looking back ... where was the "Luck" in me picking up the C64 Manual and learning basic in stead of just playing around?
So, years later my first f* that event. I finished the 3 years of "apprentice" and was very pissed about the money I received as full employee, I was doing tasks for 3 people and complained about this. The answer was "you are to young to earn more" also they got some new guy to help, doing only one of my tasks and earning more then me.
Without a new job in sight, still no degree, f* you, I resigned!
At first they didn't try to stop me, though I would rethink it since I could never find a better job.
Well, I did. very fast and with a much better pay.
I had no IT degree, no real proof of my IT and coding experience since I just finished a apprenticeship for "whole sale agent".
But I convinced the new company I would be a great value for them.
6 years after dropping out of high school, a former colleague started at the same company. He had a degree, I didn't and we where both doing almost the same thing.
Guess what, after 2 years he quit or got fired, can't remember, because he didn't really like programming. Well that's 5 years of learning wasted.
I stuck 10 years with this company and finally decided to quit and start my own business. I didn't have real f* that event this time, but there was no echo any more. I couldn't see the awesomeness anymore. At first, hell, my Code ist running in Western Canada for the state lottery. Every damn Ticket played runs though my code. How cool is that.
10 Years later, that really didn't excite me anymore.
I had no clue what I really would like to do, I did know my way around servers, I knew I can learn new things on my own, I knew a bit of web design and so I started with IT Support and Web Design.
Over the years I added more and more products and services, some where crap, some turned out to be great.
Now, almost 10 years later I am doing 6 figures in sales which doesn't say much about the actual money I earn, there are servers to pay, office rent, employees ...
But in the end, I am doing ok.
So why am I here then? As I mentioned, I'm doing ok not super awesome. but 10 years in (starting to see a pattern with the 10yrs) I have noticed some issues in my business.
I started hating what I do because the results and echo isn't there anymore.
Another reason is that I was doing it wrong and chasing the wrong projects and investing to much time in the wrong place and also billing wrong.
As mentioned I like coding (yes I know ... to many I, I, I.. MJ will hate me for this) so I wanted to get coding projects for web development. But the issue here is that I though most customer want it billed by the hour although they don't and even then my estimates where created by estimating how many hours I would need and guess what? Every damn estimate turned out wrong, every time I needed more time then expected which lead to frustration on both sides.
But I was also doing businesses where recurring payment was involved. Hosting but more over VoIP as I started some time back to be a phone company and this is where it payed back to invest time to learn all that VoIP stuff.
So what are my future plans?
First of: stop creating estimates based on 3 lines in an email and estimating hours. New estimates are not done for free. I actually charge money for a roadmap session.
I am investing a couple of hours to talk to the customer, ask all the details out of them so I know exactly what they want how they think and where the value is that I will add.
After that whip up some Mockups, a plan of what they need to do, how the web project needs to work. Only after that I will tell them what the project will cost. The advantage for both is, I get payed before starting to code, I know what the want and what value it will give them so I can do value based pricing, the customer knows what costs to expect and also if they don't like my offer, they payed me for the roadmap and mockups. So they get to keep them and shop around else where.
second: invest more time and push the VoIP Phone services more. I have don't even have a page on my site dedicated to this. All customers I have come from word of moth, actually ... that's true for all my projects.
So if my customers are so happy recommending my services, I should use that (testimonies, some recommendation program) and try to get more customers.
The phone market won't be existing for ever. Business still use it but with all the other communication channels one has to prepare for the Phone business to disappear but for now it's almost a passive income I just need to scale it.
Sure I need to take care of the servers, update my systems... but the hard part is done, it's installed, it's configured, carriers are in place, adding a new customer takes 5-30 min and can be done by anyone. After that, monthly payments come in.
So what I have learned so far and what I can give as advice (even though I still have a lot to learn), don't be f* lazy! You want something, learn how to do it. Short cuts won't do! Value, value, value. I wouldn't have come this far without adding some value to my customers. I might have not known until now, but they all hired me because they saw some additional value in my services and they wouldn't have recommended me without getting value after doing business with me.
I seem to be on the right track but didn't know how to use this. Also one think I should have done more often. Say "No" to some customers. If the project doesn't seem right or there is a gut feeling that the customer might be complicated, just say know.
There is no problem with complicated projects (remember, no shortcuts) but dealing with difficult people can set you back and in the end you traded to much time for to little money, you loose time where you could learn new things and improve yourself.
ok, that would be enough for now. Told you this would be a long one.
Cris
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