6 Tricks for Doing Business on The Far Side

I was so pleased to be invited to The Cartoonival of Wisdom, a multi-blog comic spree all about what you can learn from your favorite comics, cartoons, or characters.

It took me about a decasecond to decide on The Far Side.

Everybody loves The Far Side. Except the people who hate it with a fiery passion. Hooray! And therein, my dears, lies the business lesson. Or, more accurately, lessons:

Don’t be yourself — be more you than you
Say what everyone else only thinks
Twist the every day
Brevity may not be the soul of wit but sometimes it’s the big toe of hilarity
Screw conventions (not convents)
And, most critical of all: Don’t be Family Circus

In fact, let’s start with that last one.

Don’t Be Family Circus

Family Circus is the exact opposite of The Far Side. Family Circus is, in a word, Nourishing Gruel: there’s no flavor or texture to it, ergo it is the world’s most palatable food-like substance. It’s so utterly unobjectionable that it’s devoid of life.

Which is why your ex’s housewife mother used to laugh at it, which drove you nuts, since it’s… well… about as hilarious as a suppurating wound. Oh, that Billy! Suppurating all the time! Hee hee! Pus!

God bless Nietzsche.

Moral of the Story: Family Circus is only funny when subverted. Preferrably by German nihilists.

Screw Conventions (Not Convents)

Comics used to be all about good, clean, family fun. In other words: mindless repetition. The Far Side changed all that.

Conventions may have their place, but wherever there’s a convention, there’s a whole passle of people just waiting for the best way to rebel against it. There’s good money in rebellion, cuz overlooked markets are passionate markets.

Outrageousness (and even outrage) is the very essence of a Purple Cow.

The Jane Goodall Institute … had their lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate, in which they described the cartoon as an “atrocity”. They were stymied by Goodall herself, who revealed that she found the cartoon amusing. — Wikipedia

Until Gary Larson came along, who would’ve had the guts?

Moral of the Story: Outrageousness alone can get you noticed. Back it up with other qualities to keep the momentum.

But even Gary Larson knew better than to mess around too much with nuns. They’re deadly.

Brevity May Not Be the Soul of Wit…

But humor with all the dots connected for you is about as appetizing as pre-chewed food. We like to chew our own food, thankyouverymuch — and we like to feel like we’ve brought something to our experiences, whether it’s a comic strip or a bit of software or a book.

We want to feel like we came to the conclusion, like we took the journey. We want the AHA! to happen in our brains.

The Far Side is almost always just one panel. Some of the most artful (and beloved) panels don’t even have an explanatory caption. You’ve gotta do the work yourself, which means you get to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.

Moral of the Story: Don’t pre-chew your product. A little incompleteness is necessary for funnies, for learning, and decision-making. Leave room for your customer in your product. They’ll feel smart.

Twist the Every Day

Everybody likes a little twist, it’s practically neurobiological. As Daniel Gilbert wrote it in his excellent book Stumbling on Happiness:

As long as your brain’s guess about the next word turns out to be right, you cruise along happily, left to right, left to right, turning black squiggles into ideas, scenes, characters, and concepts, blissfully unaware that your nexting brain is predicting the future of the sentence at a fantastic rate. It is only when your brain predicts badly that you suddenly feel avocado. 

That is, surprised. See?

Gary Larson is the unrivaled champion of avocado. That’s why The Far Side is impossible to ignore, even if it pisses you off.

Moral of the Story: Holy guacamole, product-makers! We’ll bring the chips, you bring the dip.

Say What Everyone Else Only Thinks

Most of us harbor a great many thoughts we’ll never let pass our lips — funny, nasty, rude, crude, hopeful, painful, pessimistic, and cynical thoughts. We’re too chicken (or too civilized) to say them ourselves, but we love it when others do it for us.

Listen - just take one of our brochures and see what we're all about… In the meantime, you may wish to ask yourself 'Am I a happy cow?'

We especially love it when those others give us a sly wink — that they know we’re thinking it too. (Ergo, we must be at least as smart as they are!)

Moral of the Story: People will pay to watch someone else voice their innermost-denied thoughts. Take a stand, write a manifesto, voice the unvoiced, garner the giggles, rake in the dough. Then maybe people will make a Flickr Reenactments pool just for you!

Don’t Be Yourself – Be More You than You

And, the ultimate lesson from The Far Side: don’t be yourself.

All evidence suggests that Gary Larson is, himself, a lovely guy. He loves animals. He donates to charity. He plays jazz guitar.

Does that come through The Far Side? Yes… maybe. Some of the strips have a tender and wise heart at center, but mostly they’re just good, cynical fun.

The rumors that he eats children are probably exaggerated.

Everybody says “Be yourself,” but nobody tells you that everyone’s whole self is, well, a little boring. If you want to achieve a cult of personality — and hey, who doesn’t? — curate your self. Choose your most interesting, entertaining, or useful bits, and then magnify the heck outta ‘em.

Moral of the Story: Put your best (or most interesting) foot forward. In a clown shoe.

More Cartoon Wisdom

What you can learn from Bob the Angry Flower and his hammer
What’s up, Doc? Timeless wisdom from Bugs Bunny
What happens when Synergy (the holo-computer) resigns from Jem and the Holograms
How we could all be a little more Bloo
And, naturally, the Pinky & the Brain Guide to World Domination (the same thing we do every night, Pinky…)

And you definitely want to buy some The Far Side collections. That’s not an affiliate link, even. You should buy them for no other reason than that they’re brilliant and will provide you with years and years of joyful neuroses.

Trying to sell Nourishing Gruel?

Yum! I'm getting hungry just looking at it.

Enjoy this time-honored recipe, beloved of new business people:

Take 1 awesome, adjective-rich person. Drop into a bowl of potential customers.
Fold in a generous dollop of desperation
Toss in any other ingredients you have on hand.
Puree until bland and consistent.

Serves 4, but don’t expect ‘em to get excited about it.

On paper, Nourishing Gruel has the broadest appeal of any food: it provides perfectly adequate sustenance. It has no flavors or textures that could offend any palate. It is perfectly un-objectionable.

Which, naturally, is the reason Nourishing Gruel’s got top billing on the menu at your favorite restaurant. Thank you sir, may I have another? Right?

Whaddaya mean, you don’t like flavorless slop of indeterminate texture?

Nourishing Gruel in Action: Nervous Fashion Designer Edition

I ripped the following lines from would-be fashion designers hoping to charm their way into the Garmz marketplace. All four are about dresses, all four desperate to get their fashions manufactured and their dreams fulfilled.

But that’s where the similarity stops.

Can you tell the Nourishing Gruel from the real dish?

Exihibit A: For every stylish girl from 20’s to 30’s who wants to look sophisticated and classy.

Exhibit B: A fresh girly look with a modern edge to it.

Don’t think, just pick with your gut: Which one is the real dish?

Exhibit C: A dress made perfect for summer by airy canvas and light blue gradient lines.

Exhibit D: Perfect dress for various occasions.

Everybody Tastes

Maybe you can’t tell a USP from your own left butt-cheek… but you should be able to tell that Exhibit B and C are very, very different creatures from Exhibit A and D.

They feel different. Not necessarily better. But stronger, more real.

Broad Appeal… or Too Boring to Live?

Nourishing Gruel is mush. You can’t do much with mush. It doesn’t give you anything solid to either grab onto, or push away. It just leaves your fingers all goopy and gross.

Real dishes, on the other hand, have flavors and identifiable ingredients… a texture, and taste, that you’ll either love or hate. Real dishes are packed with meaty nouns and limber adjectives, all the better to sink your teeth into.

Real dishes are detailed enough for you to form an opinion.

Change the Recipe

If you’re afraid your product will appeal to nobody, then, well, it’s only natural to try to broaden its appeal as much as possible to ensure you get somebody. Sadly, this results in Nourishing Gruel.

You think you’re widening the net, but in fact, you’re just enlarging the holes.

You wouldn’t buy it, so don’t try to sell it.

Stick your neck out and offer your customers something real.

Have you been battling the Gruel?

What techniques do you use to avoid it?

Have you seen any great Gruel examples lately? (Or counter-examples?)

A Simple Rule for Pricing Newbs Who Got The Fear

5-Second Slayage / Pricing / Slaying Unicorns — 16 comments

Double rainbow! Double dip! Double down! Double Plus Good! It's so beautiful I'm gonna cry. (cc jermudgeon)

Do you want to earn more money? Do you like nice, hard-line advice that you can easily apply without sitting down and having a cup of herbal tea with your feelings?

Because for once, I’m not going to faff about trying to teach you the True Nature of Value. That’s another post. Series of posts. And I want to be sure you’re ready.

Today it’s just you, me, and a simple rule that you can apply today, without thinking, to improve your profits.

Here’s the One Simple Rule. Are you ready? Reaaaaaady? Wait for itttt… drumroooooll…

Double. Your. Price

Yep: Double Your Price.

Take the price you feel in your gut is right… and double it.

There you have it: a simple, clear, no-room-for-wiggling rule that will help you dramatically increase your profits.

Why does it work?

It works because you’re a Pricing Newb Who Got The Fear, and because you must start with the price you feel in your gut is right. That part is key.

You’re a Newb. Your gut is uneducated. Your gut cannot be trusted.

Your price-uneducated gut is more afraid of scaring people off than it’s scared of having shitty profits. Just like your statistics-uneducated brain is more afraid of dying in a plane crash than a car crash.

Therefore, the price your gut comes up with will be extremely low, unhealthily low. Probably by half — or more. Ergo, doubling will restore you to pricing health.

Case Study: Me

But, unlike many business bloggers, I’m not just speculating based on what I read other people do. I experiment on myself first.

As you might know, I wrote me a little ebook once upon a time.

We originally sold the beta version of JavaScript Performance Rocks! for $19, to the intersection of people who were both Early Adopters and Had A Coupon. A few people without a coupon paid $25.

When the book came out of beta, we raised the price. My original plan was to bring the cost up to $29, a modest raise of $5.

But I had educated my gut about price in the mean time, and instead, I womanned up — raising the price to the incredibly lofty $39.

In other words, I doubled the price.

And the results?!?

Now, this is not scientific to the third decimal place, but… I just divided our total income by the number of sales, and come to the conclusion that the average price for each sale was $29.

Working backwards with the other statistics, I found that:

approximately 42% of all sales were at the beta-only price
approximately 57% of all sales at the highest price.

Did sales slow down after we raised the price? Well, yes, compared to the launch price, we sold fewer copies per month on average, although not by much. A higher price will do that to you (except in those weird times when it increases your sales!)

But raw sales are meaningless to a self-published girl like me. The real question is: Did doubling the price hurt our profits?

In a word: no. In fact, high price sales sooooooo didn’t hurt our profits that…

High price sales generated 75% of our income with only 57% of total transactions

That laughter you hear? That’s me, on my way to the bank.

I rest my case.

And I repeat: Double. Your. Price.

What are you pricing?

What type of thing is it? Who’s your audience? Do you Got The Fear?

Talk to me.

PPS — Love tough love? Then you’re gonna be in heaven when you click that Subscribe button, buddy. Or subscribe by email. Or, heck, be like the cool kids and follow me on Twitter for even pithier advice.

All Schnitzelconf Speakers are Male, White, & Have That Flippy ‘Do

Schnitzelconf — Comments Off

Yes, there you have it: I am the worst conference organizer in the history of man. Not only is every hand-selected speaker at Schnitzelconf male, and white, between 25 and 35, but they all have essentially the same hair-do.

I am not only racist, sexist, and ageist — I’m stylist, too.

What can I say? I put in an order for sexy bootstrappin’ clones… and the universe delivered.

But seriously.

For starters, I’m a woman. A woman who has spent countless hours helping people, writing, teaching, arguing that bootstrapping is the way to go, that there is no true economic freedom without products.

I have what is known in whacky, unfashionable circles as a mission.

That’s why I’m running this conference to begin with: to spread the good word. It’s a pure act of love. I could have charged 3x the going price and sold out. Instead, I’m organizing for nothin’, and even paying out of my own pocket.

And yet, I knew that the day would come when somebody tries to rip me to shreds for being sexist, racist, or an all-around uncaring self-absorbed bastard.

So, in response: three things.

First off: quit insulting my speakers

They are gutsy. They are smart. They are witty. They are friendly, accessible, and genuinely kind. They are generous. They all teach on their own time, blogging and speaking about how they built their businesses, so that others can learn from them and make their own success. They are not getting paid.

They are indisputably wonderful people first and foremost. That’s why I picked them.

I will hear nothing to disparage my speakers. Which is, of course, what you do if you insinuate that I chose them because of their penises and their skin color.

For the love of all that is tactful: no.

Secondly: what on earth could I gain?

Naturally I’m not excused from being potentially sexist and racist, just because I pack a genuine vagina and, ooh, enough fashionably non-white heritage to get special college grants.

Please, think about it:

Why wouldn’t I want a conference lineup like a United Bennetton ad? What would I gain by deliberately excluding people who were different from the typical idea of an entrepreneur?

Being a bootstrapper is all about being different!

I’ve made a whole career out of being different!

And, of course, my raison d’etre is to bring the idea of bootstrapping to Europe… wherever possible, featuring European or extra-American bootstrappers. That’s certainly different.

But is it different enough? Not if you go by the critics.

The thing is… I couldn’t find any “different” (meaning not white men, regardless of cultural origin) bootstrappers willing to say yes to speaking at my conference before I had to finalize the program.

Believe me, I looked, I searched, I read those “women speaker lists,” and I asked everyone I know. (And I know a lot of people.)

They must be out there — I have to believe that — but they sure as hell aren’t advertising the fact.

Like the mythical unicorn…

Now, I found absolutely oodles of entrepreneurs of various stripes (not white men). But, sadly for me, they were funded, or they sold specialty shoes, or art, or advice for living.

Those things just don’t fit the Schnitzelconf topic of bootstrapped internet product sold for value to (small) business.

Neither does life coaching or any type of freelancing or consulting, two fields full to bursting with not white men.

Fear of entrepreneurship is not the problem…

These men and women who are consultants, life coaches, advisors, gunslingers for hire — they’re clearly unafraid of entrepreneurship. These men & women are gutsy and bold.

So…

Thirdly: Why aren’t they making products?

They’ve already taken risks. They’ve already indicated a faith in their abilities, or at least an inability to live out their lives doing the regular grind.

Why aren’t they doing the one thing that can give them the best financial security of all? The most freedom? The most power?

That’s the question for me. That’s the question people should be asking.

That’s why I’m putting on an affordable, accessible conference about making products.

That’s why I’m blogging and posting free resources about making products.

That’s why I’m teaching an online course about making products, for the same cost as Photography 101 down at the local community college.

That’s why I annoy the crap out of everyone around me, telling them to make a business and not a startup, to make products and charge for them.

The things I create are easy to read, easy to understand, and fun. That’s how I reach out to people who are beyond the “traditional startup Venn diagram.”

Notice a pattern here?

To the man in the arena…

I welcome any suggestions of successful bootstrappers to watch — regardless of race, color, creed, or hair product.

I welcome anyone to copy the model of Schnitzelconf in their city or country. I will gladly link to you and help you announce your event.

I welcome any suggestions on how to encourage those silent, hidden entrepreneurs of various stripes to raise their profiles, so they can be seen and known, to inspire and reach even more people.

If you have something constructive to offer, or a favor to ask, email me.

But, if all you have to offer me is sly insinuations and mud-slinging, get out of my way. I’m trying to change the world.

How to Sell Your Digital Goods

Digital Goods / Tools — 6 comments

The un-recommended way to sell your digital goods. (cc kozumel)

Working on your first digital good for sale? Or just thinking about it?

Don’t let the technical details of “how to actually sell the damn thing” keep you from making it — or shipping it.

In this one little blog post, I’m gonna fill you in on aaaaaall the digital goods dirt — so you can get the decision over with, and get back to doing your thing.

Oooh, and making money.

Digital goods meaning what now?

Just a note for clarity: by “digital goods,” I mean any kind of downloadable media that stands alone: PDFs, HTML, audio, video, little bits of software that don’t need licensing — like Wordpress themes.

This is important, because when you need to generate license keys tied to usernames and whatnot, things get a lot more complicated. So, for today: nice, simple, self-contained digital goods.

You’ve Got 5 Basic Needs

When it comes to digital goods, you as a seller have 5 basic needs:

collecting payment
delivering the content to the customer
staying in contact with customers (e.g. mailing updates, getting their contact info)
managing refunds
getting your money

Beyond those 5, you might want to offer an affiliate program, or upsells to other products, but let’s be honest — right now, you just have to finish your thing and get it online, and in the hands of your customers. Once it’s online, you have to be able to sell it, and talk to your customers, and get your money out.

That other stuff is cream! Worry about it when you’re rich.

And 5 Platforms to Choose From

Since you’re a sensible person, you’d assume that every platform on the market covers all of your 5 basic needs… but, sadly, you’d be wrong.

Coincidentally, there are 5 Platform Types that will help you sell your digital goods.

(No, I didn’t arbitrarily decide on 5 and work backwards from there. It just worked out that way. If there is a god, he’s clearly a marketer.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the 5 Platform Types:

Roll Your Own. You don’t wanna do this. It puts you further away from making money, not closer — and that makes it a no-no. (I need a freshly shorn yak, embarrassed and baby smooth. STAT!)
Classic Ecommerce Solution + Digital Goods Add-on. Example: Shopify with Fetch. While Shopify is splendid for physical goods, this approach is glommed on with duct tape. Fetch doesn’t cover all 5 Basic Needs (no way to send updates, email your customers, no affiliate program). And you’re paying for two services at once. To which one can only say: MEH!
A Traditional Ebook Marketplace. Traditional? Ebook? Is there such a thing? Yes: Clickbank has been around for a coon’s age, if by “coon” you mean grotty old internet marketer. Upsides: works, well-tested, reliable. You can absolutely trust them and they hit 4 out of 5 Basic Needs (except email lists). You don’t need any kind of payment provider. Downsides: it has “the IM taint,” and worst of all, your customers pay ClickBank, and then ClickBank pays you later. By check. (Or direct deposit, if you qualify.)
Full-Blown Digital Goods Ecommerce. There are several pretenders to this throne, but the only true heir is 1ShoppingCart. 1SC is for the pros and people who have the time/energy/money to integrate. Pros: Covers all 5 Basic Needs very nicely, offers the highest respectability, tons of payment integration options, including many credit card processors. It never touches your money. Cons: Expensive. Digital Download versions start at $99/month. Complicated set-up. Only offers password-protected areas for your customers to download your digital goods, as opposed to unique URLs. (So it’s hard to block out old customers, or limit downloads.)
E-Junkie. Halfway between Clickbank and a full blown shopping cart lies E-Junkie, in a category of its own. Despite its sophomoric name, it’s totally on the up & up — and, offers PayPal, Checkout, and Authorize.net integration. It covers all 5 Basic Needs, although if you send out updates they charge you for bandwidth costs. (You can pay a slightly higher monthly fee to self-host your own files.) E-Junkie has a whiff of the taint, but it’s cheap ($10), your money goes straight to you, and it’s not too complicated to set up. Downsides: ugly as hell, Flash, user-unfriendly and time consuming to perform basic tasks, and, you know, “E-Junkie”?

So, as you can see, there’s no single solution that screams perfection and take-home-to-mama-ability.

5 Ways to Choose the Lukewarmest Platform for You*

The key problem with choosing your platform is that all of the solutions suck, as you might have gathered from my snarking. They all have serious downsides.

Given all of the above — as much as it pains me to say so — I recommend E-Junkie. While the user experience is Double Plus Ungood, it’s cheap, functional, and available.

If you have a PayPal account, a domain name, and hosting, you can put up a sales page, set up your digital goods listing in E-Junkie, embed the Buy button, and be selling in 30 minutes.

As far as lukewarm things go, that’s not too bad. It’s more like lukewarm milk than lukewarm beer: not your favorite thing by far, but putting it in your mouth won’t cause you to spontaneously projectile vomit.

Bottom line: Set up E-Junkie today

Thus, I’m advocating that you go ahead right now and sign up for the lesser (in every sense) of two evils: E-Junkie.

E-Junkie’s only true competitor on features is 1ShoppingCart, which will take much longer to configure and costs, oh, about 10 times more.

Let’s face it: Your problem isn’t that you’re overwhelmed with sales. If only! Your problem is that you haven’t set up a payment platform because you’re unsure, and it seems like a lot of work. Ergo you are making no money. Ergo you are losing money.

That’s where E-Junkie shines: hard-eyed pragmatism. Which is exactly what you want, as a budding digital goods provider.

* I lied. There’s only one way to choose, and I just couldn’t bear to ruin a good thing.

PS — Suffice to say, we went with E-Junkie for JavaScript Performance Rocks!.

PPS — Want the bullshit-free skinny on creating & selling info products? You better hit that Subscribe button, buddy. Or subscribe by email and get motivating kicks in the ass direct to your inbox. I guarantee they’ll earn you more than your weekly Farmville report.

Happy Burnout

Hard Work / Productivity / Slaying Unicorns — 13 comments

It’s Happy! It’s Burnout! It’s… Happy Burnout! (cc sizumaru)

I love the controlled chaos of entrepreneurship. I love writing, marketing, scheming, reaching out to people. I’m a pop-outta-bed kinda girl, always looking forward to the big adventure.

Except lately.

Lately, there are days when I just can’t muster up the energy to choose what to tackle. Lately, when I sit down to write, it feels like a funeral dirge, not a jig. Lately, there are days when I can’t stomach the idea of adventure at all.

The confounding thing is, everything’s going so well. I could barely ask for more. I’m electrified, joyful, and glad… and very clearly burnt out.

Yes, folks, that’s right — I’ve got a bad case of Happy Burnout. Burnout caused by, as it were, an excess of awesome.

Happy Burnout Happens

As a stoic workaholic, believe me, I know burnout. Burnout knocks me on my ass, makes me wanna scream “screw you!” to the world, drop all obligations and go into hiding.

But not Happy Burnout. Happy Burnout looks different, and feels different.

Any questions? (cc mike9alive, curt deatherage)

Burn yourself out on things you love, on intrinsic motivation rather than external obligation, and the core symptoms will be similar — listlessness, disinterestedness, lack of creativity. But the psychological icing is a different flavor altogether.

With Happy Burnout, there’s no rotten, spiraling self-talk. You don’t hear that venal little whisper to damn it all to hell. For me, at least, that voice only appears when I’m doing work I shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

Happy Burnout hard to spot, for that reason, and these:

Happy Burnout lacks vicious and destructive thoughts
Happy Burnout can arrive one hour, and leave the next
Happy Burnout leaves you very functional, most of the time
Happy Burnout sneaks in, rather than announcing itself with a crash
Happy Burnout leaves you puzzled why you don’t want to do the things you love

Happy Burnout is different.

Happy Burnout is a sneaky little bastard

Regular old familiar burnout is like a game of One More Thing KABOOM!.

Suddenly, a client asks for one more thing… one more thing goes wrong… one more thing piled on… and it all comes tumbling down. Kaboooom!

Happy Burnout is One More Thing — hold the Kaboom.

You can imagine how this change in pattern disrupts your coping strategies. Or, at least, disrupts mine, because typically, I skirt burnout, waiting for that big kaboom, feeling it build up. So I’ve been chugging along happily, taking on big, lofty goals — and when things went well, with no blow-up pre-shocks, I took on more.

No kaboom. Never a kaboom.

I was waiting for an advanced notice, but it never came. Even my stress level didn’t seem noteworthy. I was enjoying it.

Entré the sneaky little bastard.

Happy Burn-Out looks (and feels!) like great success, like everything’s going just right… up until the point where it isn’t. But then it can get better again. Until it isn’t (again).

I’m in it now, and I can tell you that it sucks. I’m overjoyed one hour, and totally whatever the next.

That’s nothing like Angry Burnout, where I was furious at all the external obligations, and the people associated with them. It’s nothing like Rebellious Burnout, where I want to tell the whole world, “Fuck you — I want off!”

And it wasn’t even Constant Burnout, where I was totally incapable of getting into anything, ever.

Happy Burnout can come in waves, alternating even minute by minute.

I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

A Recipe for Happy Burnout

Here’s a foolproof way to create Happy Burnout, a recipe I can guarantee since it’s worked so well for me:

work late into the night
work on weekends
crash every few weeks and veg — instead of taking true breaks
withdraw from friends because you are busy and/or apathetic
travel a lot
take on a lot of different types of projects at once, e.g. building a new product and also remaking your apartment
take the “I’m sick!” messages from your body literally — you have an infection, not a stress problem

And, finally, the last, most critical step:

really love what you’re doing

Because it’s this last one that changes Rebellious Burnout, Angry Burnout, Constant Burnout into Happy Burnout.

Happy Burnout can only come about when you really enjoy your work. When your work fires you up — and burns you to a crisp.

I’m not special, and neither are you

I thought burnout was a thing of the past for me, because external obligations that made me sick were a thing of the past for me. (Well, except tax prep.)

Heck, we’d even just hired an intern — and a crackin’ good one at that. We had help. I was different. I wasn’t making the mistake that other entrepreneurs make. And I was only doing what I loved.

Yep… my work has been passionate, autonomous, intrinsically motivated, emotionally rewarding, and aligned with my Core Values.

And therefore, I thought I was immune to burnout. I thought I was different.

Bet you’ve never heard that one before.

What to do about it

Well, I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but I can tell you what’s helped me so far:

Not working all the damn time… Or working all the time, and spending all of the rest of the time with friends, or on other projects, or consuming media.

… Even if you love it.

I started taking weekends off, almost by accident, and wow, what a difference. I can feel the Happy Burnout symptoms fading away, and I’m excited to write again, and scheme again, instead of throwing up my hands.

Tearing yourself away from work you love is hard. Trust me, I know. I’m great at avoiding work I don’t love, and very, very bad at avoiding work I do love.

But you know that phrase, “Find the work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Clearly that’s not the case: Work is work. It uses up our ability to think critically and manage ourselves… even if we enjoy it.

I’ve certainly learned that even if it feels like I’m “never working a day in my life,” I still need to take the weekend off.

Are you in Happy Burnout?

Or have you been? Please chime in. I want to hear about it. If we share our experiences, we’re all that much richer and better prepared for it.

I’d love to hear…

what got you into Happy Burnout
what it felt like, how you realized it for what it was
what you did to counteract it
how that worked
what you’re doing differently now

Why I’m putting on a bootstrapping conference in Vienna

Bootstrapping / Events — 3 comments

Yes, definitely Vienna. cc paula moya

Despite what my former American neighbor said — “Eh, it’s all the same. They barbecue and drink beer, just like us!” — up and moving to Austria has been a total shock to my system.

So what’s a girl to do when she’s voluntarily excised herself from her meatspace social networks and moved to the land of glorious socialism?

Why… start a conference, of course!

I believe Europe is full of entrepreneurial spirit…

One thing I love most about Europe? All the little shops that have died out in America, like butchers, bakers, shoemakers, clockmakers, glovemakers and specialty shops for real honest-to-god locksmithing.

Despite this rich, immersive heritage of real-people-doing-real-business, though, tech product entrepreneurs fall almost exclusively into the — forgive me — shoot-the-moon-and-boil-the-ocean category. Lots of consultants and freelancers, yes — but nary a bootstrapper in sight.

At first glance, one can’t help but feel that the people here just… don’t… get entrepreneurship.

I’ve heard lots of sophisticated theories as to why this may be:

Guaranteed healthcare and housing makes people fundamentally more risk-averse, or less ambitious.
All that paid vacation.
It’s so much more difficult to start a business.
Fear of change.

Eh, I say.

All of those reasons are true on some level — but on most levels, they’re bullshit. Those are the reasons that a very smart kid gives when asked, Timmy, why did you play football inside when you knew you’d break something?

They’re plausible. They sound good. They’re well-worn excuses that are easy to reach for. And they are wrong.

So what’s the real reason?

Why does anyone do things “on autopilot”? Why is anyone unreasonably afraid of a low-risk endeavor? Why does anyone simply not think of an obvious alternative?

Is it simply that they’ve suckled too long from the teat of glorious socialism? Or could it be…

A simple lack of role models?

By golly, I think we’re onto something!

Somebody’s got a role model! Just look at those eyes! cc woodleywonderworks

Role models are critical…

Think about it: When you’re surrounded by people who do a certain thing, you know, without thinking, that you can do it, too. That’s why so many Austrians (and other Europeans) are unafraid to open a restaurant, café, or little shop. They’re not only not alone, they’ve soaked up positive examples their whole lives.

On the other hand, if you don’t know anybody doing a software-as-a-service or charging for ebooks, it can seem exotic and risky. It’d probably never even strike you as an option.

It’d be literally unfathomable.

Role models? What role models?

In Europe, there’s practically no one you can point to as a bootstrapper. If they exist, they are very below-the-radar. Or you don’t know that they’re European until you investigate.

They sure as hell aren’t normal, everyday, oh sure I know Jim down at Widgets for Business, he’s doing very well!

Don’t take my newly transplanted word for it — I’ve asked everyone I know to name any successful, established bootstrapped web companies. There are a precious few, a tiny handful. Most of my acquaintances were unable to name a single company.

Why?

A lack of role models.

Entré vicious cycle.

Nobody doing it -> no role models -> nobody doing it.

I wouldn’t be here without my role models

So when I decided that I was going to make myself set down roots in this city if it killed me — I knew that what I had to do was be a role model and bring role models here.

I knew I had to try to create here the kind of city-network that I’ve watched my friends Tara, Alex, Tony and Dave create in SF, Philly, New York, and Baltimore.

Naturally, I never would have had the guts to take on such a big task if I hadn’t watched my friends do it. They are my role models.

That’s something I want everyone to have.

Announcing Schnitzelconf

Why should people listen to me at all? That’s the first question.

Well, I thought to myself, People love parties. But I suck at throwing parties… but maybe I could throw a conference. (I happen to know a surprising number of folks who’ve run conferences… more role models that make this decision a natural one.)

And thus, Schnitzelconf was born.

Schnitzelconf will be September 7, in Vienna, Austria. One full day of nothing but bootstrappy goodness.

Schnitzelconf: Sept 7, 2010 Vienna

We’ve convinced some really fantastic people to come tell us their stories, 7 speakers in all. Of those seven, we’ve “only” announced half so far:

Yes, we’ve got folks who do digital goods, software as a service, and even downloadable software. They are all established and successful. We have an amazingly cool venue.

Schnitzelconf is going to kick ass.

Did I mention that Schnitzelconf is not-for-profit? I wanted to keep the ticket prices low and, honestly, it’s a labor of love. To earn enough to make it a sensible business decision, we’d have to charge thousands.

So, instead, early tickets are available for only 250€.

We’re batching the tickets so that people have time to arrange their cash to make it work — another thing most Europeans don’t do is buy things on credit.

The first 17 early bird tickets are already gone, and the next batch (of 13) will go on sale in early July. After that, tickets will be 300€.

Why you should come to Schnitzelconf

If you’re in Europe, and not sure what to do, I hope you’ll come. If you’re in Europe and find yourself craving an alternative to tabloid startup culture, I hope you’ll come.

If your first reaction is “Eh, I could use that 250€ for something else,” I urge you to reconsider — and think of it as a business decision.

Schnitzelconf will be tiny — only 70 attendees total — to promote mingling. It will sell out, the only question is will you be one of the 70 who gets to meet and learn from people who are successful doing what they love?

That’s the kind of opportunity for return-on-investment you can rarely buy for a measly 250€. (Also, it includes food!)

That’s the kind of thinking you’ll need as a bootstrapper, whether or not you come to my conference.

Tickets will go on sale again in early July

The first 17 tickets sold in 48 hours.

If you want to get your paws on an early bird ticket at the lower price, you should sign up for our email list.

Oh yeah. And welcome to Unicorn Free. I’ll be blogging more about bootstrapping, selling products, and running events (like Schnitzelconf) here. You should definitely subscribe or at least follow me on Twitter.

Footnotes

[1] All tickets so far have been sold to attendees in these countries: Austria, Germany, Denmark, Spain and the UK. I’d be delighted if people came from elsewhere, too!

[2] I could NEVER, ever, ever do this thing alone. Much love and thanks to the people who make it possible: my husband Thomas, and friends Harald and Alex.

3 Parts, 1 Simple Plan for Building an Empire

Plans — 2 comments

I’m building an empire. In the interest of helping people who might otherwise be inclined to believe that Stuff Just Happens, I thought I’d share my plan with you.

Now, before I am rich and famous, so when people accuse me of being disingenuous when I say I make my own luck, I can say “Dude, didn’t you read my blog?”

My plan is a twist on this simple and well-known classic:

Collect underpants.
???
Profit!

Unless your underpants are made of money…

OK, I jest. My real goal is to:

Make kickass software and change the world of interaction design for the better
Inspire & help a thousand designers/developers to launch their own products
Make a helluva lot of money

Yes, I want to be rich, famous, and influential. Gee, is that all?

Well, I think so. Wouldn’t want to be greedy, now!

Plan or do not plan, there is no luck

If you take yourself seriously, you have to plan. If you don’t take yourself seriously, you don’t have to plan — and, as we all know, a failure to plan, yadda yadda, plan to fail, look at me, I’m using parallelism.

Sometimes worn-out clichés (like “A failure to plan is a plan to fail”) are irritating and empty-sounding due to their worn-out-ness — like Avril Lavigne. But, unlike Avril Lavigne, the very reason they are worn out is because they’re right.

Planning is a love letter to your future. (Avril Lavigne, on the other hand, is not.)

I take myself seriously. And I loooooove my future and want it to feel that special love through time!

So I plan.

My plan: Core components

So here’s my plan, in glorious detail, all the better for you to steal.

I have a business model that I’ve used over and over, and the basic building blocks — the template — are these three bits here:

But if those are building blocks, what do I plan to build, exactly?

Three separate houses

The things I’m interested in, and good at, fall quite cleanly into just three subjects: design, business, and code.

I decided — after much painful deliberation and many false starts — that I’d be able to have the greatest impact if I treated these as separate categories with separate audiences:

Stacks of blocks, going upwards… They’re verticals! Get it?

And, inside each vertical, I’ll create the ingredients and follow the recipe: advice, attention, and products.

Now what? Or, the beautiful cycle of build-sell-teach-sell

From these silly little diagrams, you might guess that the next step — now that I’ve chosen categories and components — would be to go about givin’ some advice, gettin’ some attention, and sellin’ some products.

Fuck yeah!

It really is that simple.

Create awesome products
Sell those awesome products
Tell the awesome story about how you made and sold the awesome products
Package that awesome story as a product (leavened with advice), and then sell that, too

You’re happy. They’re happy. Your wallet’s happy. Everybody’s happy!

Happy happy joy joy money money!

Everybody’s really happy, in fact.

So far, out of 1,400 sales with a 60-day return policy, only two people have ever asked for a refund on our JavaScript Performance Rocks! ebook.

That is an unheard-of 0.14% return rate, friends.

And the first Software as a Service I designed and built with my husband and friends? Well, Freckle time tracking is doing very nicely indeed, with 18% month over month growth — of revenue.

That is the sweet smell of success: great audience, great product, great money, happy customers.

And it’s all built on the base of great free advice and tools, and then figuring that hey, those people who love your free advice and tools will also happily pay for more — more in-depth, better-packaged, better-orchestrated, holistic, synthesized, and analyzed.

Plans are beautiful. You should get yourself one.

In conclusion: Copy me, please.

Planning is so underrated — some days, I look at the current chatter about startups and products and think people are hell-bent on playing Internet Roulette with their future success. And I just can’t stand to watch.

Plans don’t have to be complicated, as I’ve demonstrated. Mine is the spirit of simplicity: make stuff, and sell it, then teach other people to make stuff, and sell that.

It’s a good recipe, and very flexible. I hope you’ll try it.

Subscribe: You know you wanna

There’s more where that came from!

Don’t miss the good shit just because you’re not on speaking terms with your feed reader: Subscribe by email below. Or, yeah, take a gamble and subscribe with RSS. And you should follow me on Twitter (@amyhoy).

Don’t bite the shit sandwich

Ideology / Money / Slaying Unicorns — 17 comments

CC thecheals (ps - it's Nutella)

The “startup” world is bursting with bullshit (or, if you prefer, ‘unicorn dust’).

There are bullshit peddlers on every blog-corner. They don’t want merely to get you to read. They don’t want merely to sell you their products now and again. They want to sell you on their religion.

There are two reasons to sell religion:

To feel validated
To sell something else under the cover of righteousness

Many startup writers want to sell your their ideology because they feel validated as human beings by your agreement. That’s not incredibly skeezy, it’s just human. (Though perhaps a tad bit unself-aware.)

And then you have the other group.

There’s a handful of people, prominent people, who drive their propaganda machines with a purpose: they want you… as grist for their industrial mill. They want to sell you on BIG things (high-dollar consulting, high-dollar seminars, systems), or they want a piece of you directly. An investor can’t exist without products to invest in.

They have skin in the game. Their outcomes hinge on whether you buy in.

So they lure you in by dressing up a shit sandwich.

Mmmmm! they simper through browned teeth. Tastes delicious! Just like chocolate!

Go big! Worry about scaling! Hire a CEO! Take investment — here’s how! Don’t charge! Sell your company to a big company! Never mind that it’ll gobble you up, chew you up, and spit you out as so much gristle!

I’m not one of them

I won’t lie: I’m trying to sell you on an ideology, too. That’s what I’m doing right now, in fact. And I will try to sell you products. I make some pretty fucking awesome products.

But I will never try to sell you a shit sandwich. My whole raison d’etre is to eliminate the selling and eating of shit sandwiches.

I am tired of seeing smart, capable, motivated people derailed by the idea that they need a plan for liquidation. That they need VC. That they have to grow big, and that the only way to do that involves a poisonous four-letter word spelled F-R-E-E.

Wanna drop that shit sandwich? Here’s what you do

This is the backbone of the new religion you can install to replace that shit sandwich in mid-chomp:

The best business model in the world is the exchange of goods and services for money.

If you have to dream up monetization strategies, you’re doing it wrong. Wal-Mart’s board of directors does not sit around their big, shiny mahogany boardroom table and propose monetization strategies. We all hate on Wal-Mart, but you’ve got to admire their ability to turn a profit. Which they do by charging money for things.

Because you don’t monetize a business. A business has the exchange of goods & services for money baked in from the start. And it it’s baked in, the idea of monetization is moot.

Money is better than monetization.

It’s shorter.   It’s sweeter.

It’s easier to say.

 And you can spend it.

Selling direct to your customers — providing value, solving problems — is one of the best highs there is. And it is a helluva lot more rewarding than trying to figure out how to fuel your car with your click-through rate.

That’s the ideology I hope you’ll adopt

Because, frankly, I want more people to see the light.

I want the world to be full of small, savvy, spunky businesses, like mine. Not for my ego’s sake, because I’m an arrogant SOB and I don’t need you to validate my choices. The one thing I don’t need in this world is to feel safe.

The icky, gooey bottom line is this:

It kicks total ass to work directly with your customers.

It kicks ass when you — designers, developers, writers, teachers — realize that you’ve had the power all along. That you can make your own products, that you don’t need a book contract, an angel investor, a gilded invitation, or even permission.

The fancy word for that is “disintermediation.” The not-so-fancy word for that is fucking awesome.

Now kwitcherbitchin, drop that shit sandwich, muster up your arrogance, and go forge yourself a business.

Create value. Charge money for it.

Disintermediate.

Change the world.

And if you liked where this is going, subscribe. Subscribe by email’s up top!

I’m proud to be Unicorn-Free

Uncategorized — 5 comments

Who doesn’t love a unicorn?

Unicorns are magic. Unicorns eat moonbeams and shit rainbows. Unicorns are ice cream and bacon, all rolled into one.

Mmmm, bacon ice cream.

Unicorns: like Santa Claus, with hooves

There’s just one catch: Unicorns don’t exist.

And, honestly, they’re not that exciting.

A beautiful horse with magical properties? Oh god! Stop the presses! Such wonder! Such creativity!

…Or not. People saw horses all the time, even white horses with flowing manes and majestic heads. And it’s not as if no other horse-like creatures have horns. (Goats and deer, baby, goats and deer.)

It’s quite another thing entirely to imagine a warm-blooded, rubber-skinned mammal of the sea, who lives under 5 meters of ice, with a giant spiral tooth sticking out of its head. A horn that’s almost as long as its body.

Some narwhals even have two horns! And they use them to joust!

I mean, hot damn! How awesome is that?

Real narwhals are awesomer than fake unicorns

Narwhals beat unicorns hands-down in the creativity department. They don’t come with bacon ice cream, but you can make your own.

Oh yeah, and narwhals are real. Which means they win.

You can’t monetize glitter and rainbows, even if they do come from a unicorn’s butt

The past year and a half, I’ve been building up my own product business. It’s felt like I’ve been working in a void. There’s barely a thing out there for a single designer or developer who wants to create her own real, but tiny, business. Ditto for small teams that like the freedom that smallness gives them.

The discussion always seems to revolve around funding, or getting acquired, and retiring.

Or growth. Or hiring. Or tech tricks. Or it’s about affiliates and IM products, and getting rich off teaching people’s parrots to talk.

Or it’s about hyper-optimization, and split-testing which way you should orient the toilet paper roll. (The answer is over, not under, by the way.)

Or everyone in the group agrees that they are working on the next big breakthrough, when really they’re just building a social network for dogs.

Unicorns, every one of them.

What’s out there now is serious where it should be lighthearted, and glib where it should be serious. To my mind, the most important topics of all go unacknowledged entirely.

I come to slay the unicorn

I am a believer in small, creative, flexible businesses. I’m an even bigger believer in creative people doin’ for themselves, making their own products and working directly with their customers, the people whose lives they can touch.

I think these tiny businesses foster happiness, and forge superior products, and better relationships.

That’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing, for myself, and why I want to help you do it, too.

So I can’t look at this gaping void in the conversation, leave it void-like.

And thus, Unicorn Free was born.

I hope you’ll join me.