What are some of the bullet points you've learned here?
I learned a ton from working for other CEOs, which put me in a great position to see what to emulate and what to ignore.
I'm having a hard time understanding what can really be teased out of watching someone do a day's CEO work for 4-8 hours, so curious what you have personally taken away.
(PS - I am going to give this a try because I do think it can be valuable, but I feel like you'd need to go in with a mindset that you shouldn't just blindly copy others)
Says you are hiring a customer support specialist in your post but the job is not listed in your careers section. Is a customer support role still available?
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is a life changing book. If I never read it, I probably would have jumped off a bridge with all the stress of product launches and public failures that are inevitable as an entrepreneur.
This case study might help you...it's all about how he generated 1000 subscribers in 44 days. Getting subscribers/users is an art unto itself, but isn't hard so long as you are providing real value.
Don't underestimate yourself. Don't be afraid to shine through.
Start small. Maybe start with a single cloud platform, like Evernote or iCloud. Once you know the ins and outs of a particular platform, and are an expert on that, move on to the next one.
Baby steps, just keep moving in the right direction and DON'T STOP and DON'T BE AFRAID.
You are experiencing a fear of success. Overcome it, and just keep your head down and ship.
How much did each of those steps actually help you earn income as a freelancer?
When I tried, most of them didn't help much at all. I am convinced, more often than not, that making a good wage as a freelancer/consultant is to have expertise in an area of interest - like using Ruby on Rails to increase sales of early stage startups through their online store; or using Visual Web Optimizer to increase conversions in enterprise businesses. The more specific the better.
Granted, I am still learning my place and getting my bearings, but my experience and the experience of others seems to point me in that direction.
I have been freelancing for 6 months, and managed to secure a decent, but underwhelming income. The biggest breakthrough I had was finding Patrick McKenzie's blog posts on Freelancing and Consulting. I started here:
For background about me, when I started, I had a decent runway, have been able to save while freelancing, and have even gone on a few trips. But money is always tight, my girlfriend and I eat the cheap, discounted meat & veg that is about to go past date. I worked constantly for 6 months, and felt like I was flailing.
When I started freelancing, I was focusing on web development/design. I tapped into my network in a way that I thought was reasonably well. I got a few good clients, and was charging about 2-4k per project. But I still wasn't enjoying the work or my life (which was the reason I started freelancing!!) On top of that, I would follow up with previous clients, etc, but the word of mouth just wasn't spreading.
Listening to Patrick McKenzie's blogcasts and following up by reading some of Ramit Sethi's material has recently pushed me in the right direction. Ramit gets some guff from some critics on the net, but he did an interview with BJ Fogg (@bjfogg , http://captology.stanford.edu) that really changed the way I look at my business.
The most important part is to PICK A FOCUS. Once you pick a focus, you will much better know who your customers are, and then you can talk to them without even talking about work, just learn their problems and how to solve them. That is the step I am on right now. I have yet to see a fical payout from these efforts (its been 2 days); but I already feel as though I am not flailing and incredibly focused - like a surgical laser. As a result, I am working less, less stressed and am much more confident that I will be able to deliver real value within 1-2 month's time.
I hope that helped. If you want to carry on the conversation in private, you can always tweet at me @SalvatoChris.
SEEKING WORK
Location: NYC, USA; Warwickshire, UK; Remote (I split my time)
Citizenship (for working rights): US and EU (Italy)
Can work Remote: Yes
Full stack developer accepting web developer, iOS development, design and marketing contract work.
I have 8 years of web development and design experience, and 4 years of sales/marketing experience. My steady clients use my services for web tech consulting, web development, web design work, direct sales consulting and metrics analysis. My most recent web clients include the Dow Chemical Corporation. My most recent direct sales client includes Ripple (www.rppl.com).
My bread and butter is churning out Wordpress websites very quickly.
For web development, I also specialize in HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, Python on Django, jQuery and Backbone.js.
My design work is all done in Balsamiq mockups and Photoshop. I manage my projects through Git.
I learned a ton from working for other CEOs, which put me in a great position to see what to emulate and what to ignore.
I'm having a hard time understanding what can really be teased out of watching someone do a day's CEO work for 4-8 hours, so curious what you have personally taken away.
(PS - I am going to give this a try because I do think it can be valuable, but I feel like you'd need to go in with a mindset that you shouldn't just blindly copy others)