Learning to program

In my latest podcast I opted not to interview anyone, but instead talk about what I've learned so far from trying to learn Ruby on Rails.  I talk a bit about feeling like I'm learning how to use a computer all over again, feeling somewhat more empowered, and how different people have been willing to help me with the project.  As always you can listen right on the blog, or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Hanging by a thread

A lot of people in my family have started their own businesses. My mother's father started a magazine company. My father's father started a printing company. My father started a consulting and training business. And I have a few aunts and uncles that have started other various small businesses.

Pretty much everyone I know who has started their own company has stories about the various ups and downs that inevitably come with launching something on your own. And when they talk about the challenges, looking back on them, they almost talk about overcoming these with a greater sense of pride than any specific accomplishment or success they may have had.

I'm bringing this up because I find myself and my business in a bit of a weird place lately, and I got a bit of unwelcome news this week. A project that I've been working on has been de-prioritized, and with it, my level of involvement will also decrease. I'm still working with this client on some projects, but just to a lesser extent.

In a weird way, this is actually a bit of a success. At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how I was no longer going to charge hourly for my services. Instead, I have different tiers of engagement on a project. I wanted companies to be able to use my services as easily as I'm able to use Software as a Service tools. So,

So now, when I'm on a project, it's at a tier of either:

• "Monitoring and Maintaining" where I provide a little help to good teams that just need assistance keeping things coordinated
• "Lead and Manage" where I run a project, lead sprints, and all the normal things you'd expect, or
• "Repair and Relaunch" - where a project that's all messed up needs a massive overhaul.

So just like I may sometimes downgrade a Software account for a few months, and then upgrade during others, my clients can now do the same. I think this model is the future of not just project management, but all types of services.

I'm really grateful that this client came on board with me with this new approach, and the fact that they could easily change my level of involvement with their company for a little while, in many ways, validates my idea.

And, I have no doubt there will be a time in the future that they want to bring my company back up a tier when they have another important project they need help with. Everyone who owns a small business should be as lucky as I've been to have a client like this one.

The challenge is, in the grand scheme of things, I'm still just getting started with this approach. One client I had wanted to keep me on a project I was working on for another month or two after a contract ended, but was unwilling to go with this new approach. I've also had a number of people call me about opportunities where the discussions ended almost immediately just because they couldn't, or wouldn't, wrap their heads around the fact that I wasn't charging hourly. I'm fine with this, because I truly believe it's the right thing to do, and the right way to set the proper course for my company.

Now, there's a valid argument that could be made that would basically say something like "just go after business that pays hourly, what's the big deal?" It's true after all, if you don't survive this month, who cares what your course might be in a year. I've struggled with this because the logic is sound. The problem is that all it does is perpetuate the status quo with my business. It does absolutely nothing to advance my company, or position me for the future.

There's a business quote I read once that went something like "You need to determine how you're willing to fail, not how you want to succeed." The point wasn't that you should want to fail, or even take lessons from failure, but that you should ask yourself this question to act as a barometer for whether you believe in what you're doing. I think there are a lot of "successful" people who are less proud of the paths they took than they might otherwise be.

Where I'm at right now is that I'd rather fail at this approach than succeed by taking another hourly paid gig. I don't believe in that model, I think the incentives are misaligned with the customer's, and I think it puts the value of a service in the entirely wrong place.

Most people are unwilling to absorb a little pain and discomfort in the present in order to be better positioned for the future. It's why trillions of dollars have been given to banks, why the US government now owns car companies, and why we are still entirely dependent on foreign oil, and protecting our access to it with the largest military the world has ever seen.

I will not go down that path with my business.

I'll wrap up shop and work for someone else's company that I believe in before I go down a path I think is wrong just to keep my business alive for another year.

I hope this post didn't come off like a complete downer, because I don't mean for it to. It's just that I've been pretty open with my beliefs, how things are going with my business, and my general opinions on things. I just didn't think it would have been right to omit the fact that, financially speaking, my business is going to sort of hanging by a thread for a bit.

The irony is that with some of the side projects I've been working on, and my new endeavor to learn Ruby on Rails, I'm more excited about the future than I have been in a long time.

So, if any of you out there are looking for someone to help you get your important stuff done, I hope you'll consider shooting me an email. Just like software companies, I even offer a 3o day trial period. If you're not happy with what you see after a month, you don't have to pay me a nickel. That's what I mean when I say I want my service to be like software: Flat fees, no long term contracts, and 30 day trial periods. Can you see why I think this is the future of service companies?

Who knows, you may be the topic of conversation a decade or so from now when I'm talking with pride about some of the challenges my little business had to overcome.

Self Censorship

As I'm sure you're aware, there has been a lot of discussion about Google's decision to stop censoring search results in China. I'm not really going to opine much on the decision, but will basically leave it at this: With all the financial madness going on, two wars still happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows what else is being dealt with that we don't know about, it's fair to say I believe there is a larger context that we should be aware of when having the discussion.

This has had be thinking about the ways in which we censor ourselves.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how awesome I thought Google translate was, and played around with it a little bit since then. I realized that in order to really get results in a different language I had to take a few steps. I first searched for 'Financial Corruption' and translated it into Chinese. I put that into Google, and a bunch of US sites came up. I realized, I probably had to go turn some setting on. Indeed, you go to Settings -> Search Settings and the default is English. Once I selected Chinese and searched again I was on my way.

Even if you go to Google.cn, and input english, you are of course more likely to get an American site - but certainly an English speaking one. Google "Financial Corruption" in English on Google.cn, and you get pretty much the same search results as if you search for it on Google.com in English. But, if you go to Google.cn (or Google.com with your language setting properly turned on) and search for 金融腐败, the Chinese translation for "Financial Corruption", and then take that url string and put it into Google Translate, you get an entirely different set of results. There are more efficient ways, but I wanted to link everything assuming that most readers had english turned on as their only language.

My point here is that while, yes, it is very bad that the Chinese government censors the internet, it would do us well to, for a moment, take a look in the mirror.

I don't regularly search for news about the Greek soverign debt crisis in any European languages, though surely there's a valuable and worthwhile perspective written by someone who speaks a language other than English. Nor have I read the take that the French or the Germans have on the new healthcare legislation that was just passed.

As powerful and far reaching as the internet is, almost all of us are looking at just one tiny slice of it. It's great that we're talking about the internet, and freedom, and censorship, and the impact that it's having, and will continue to have, on governments. These are important conversations.

What we should also be talking about though, is how we're censoring ourselves.

Casual Friday is a form of mind control

I have a few friends who work for companies that have a "casual Friday" policy. The idea here is that on Fridays, employees can where whatever they want to work - ie, something casual.

Ooooh, hooray! I'm a 33 year old man raising two kids, paying a mortgage, managing a significant budget for your company, and I'm so excited because today I get to where whatever pants I want! You're so awesome boss!

Are you kidding me?

If once a week your employer is saying "hey, you can wear whatever you want to work" - all they're doing is telling you that they have so much power over you that they get to control what you're going to wear on a daily basis.

It's a ridiculous form of mind control.

Stodgy companies of course respond by saying something to the effect of: "but we often have clients visiting" or "there are important meetings to attend with key executives" or some other lame excuse for a ridiculous policy.

The reality is that if your people can't figure out the appropriate attire to wear for a particular event, then you've hired the wrong people. The other reality of course is that people work most effectively when they are comfortable. And clothes have a direct impact on our comfort.

Just talk to a woman who has to wear panty hose every day, or a man that has to wear an upside down noose - I mean tie - every day.

If you want people to wear pleated khaki pants with a checkered button down just because that's what you wear, at least have the wherewithal to realize that what you're doing is telling people they have to wear a uniform.

And if you expect people to wear a uniform, don't be surprised if they're unwilling to take a risk, make a mistake, or do something amazing. Because you've trained them to be so obedient that they can't even pick out their own clothes.

Casual Friday's are nothing more than an exercise in mind control. On Monday, be an adult and wear whatever pants you want.

Twitter is for listening

I'm pretty sure most people that use Twitter for their business in some capacity are using it the wrong way. I say this because it seems most people view Twitter as a way to tell the world about something that they know about - or something they're making, or doing, or selling, or whatever.

And to be sure, this is certainly one benefit of twitter. I make it a point to tweet a blog post I've written, mention something interesting I see, and post the occasional picture of my kids. But the ability to say something on twitter isn't why it's valuable.

Listening is where the real value is at with Twitter.

I had never even heard of Derek Sivers until Jason Fried mentioned his writing. I learned about a whole new way I could make websites by learning to use Perch, something that Ryan Singer tweeted about. I only knew that Andrew Dubber was going to be putting up an idea a day, every day for thirty days, because Derek Sivers linked to it. And because I learned of Andrew Dubber, I now know there is a double distilled whisky-type alcohol called Manx that you can get from the Isle of Man. (There's lots of other great stuff I've learned by hearing of Andrew Dubber too.)

Truly though, the times Twitter has been the most valuable are the moments when I've learned something from someone I respect, or when something I mentioned got noticed - but only as a direct response to something that I heard.

This is why I got so confused when I would see people that were following 3,000 or 4,000 people. How can you keep up with anything that anyone is saying?

These people of course are following others in the hopes that they'll be followed back. Their plan is to basically follow a bunch of people, hope they get followed back, not listen to well over 90% of these people, and lastly, hope that a good percentage of the people that they're ignoring will pay attention to them.

Good luck with that.

I was talking about this with a friend when I was informed that TweetDeck allows users to determine which of the people they follow that they're actually going to listen to. So now, whenever I see someone that's following thousands of people and also uses TweetDeck, I just figure that's exactly what they're doing. And I don't even notice how many followers they have, because all I see is the thousands of people they're ignoring.

Tell me, if you're asking people to pay attention to you, knowing full well that you're going to be ignoring them, why should I give you my attention? Haven't you just built a wall between us before I've even had a chance to listen to what you have to say? Aren't you just telling me that you're probably going to ignore me? How big of a fan of yours can I become if this is my perception?

I use my blog for speaking, but Twitter is for listening.