Stop Giving S**t Away and Start Feeding Your Family!

Key concepts to understand and act upon if you want to move past the "side jobs" and into a real web development career that pays the bills.

Transcript

1. Stop Giving S**T Away and Start Feeding Your Family! Heather Acton @heatheracton WordCamp Minneapolis 2014 April 27, 2014 hact.in/wcmpls-feed-family
2. Hola!
3. My Story (Abridged) Degree in mechanical engineering Worked for P&G for 10 years Left P&G after 2nd child was born “to be home with kids” Dabbled in entrepreneurship Built a family website in WordPress Built numerous sites for free, or for far below value ~2 yrs ago, husband left P&G to support me launching Helio
4. What the Helio? What we do: Custom WordPress Development Clients: SMBs & corporations Typical project price (dev): $3-20k
5. Why am I sharing this? Big Omaha You are nosy I enjoy mentoring & inspiring
6. the only 1 that really matters Do amazing work. Be amazing to work with. Do this over and over again. Credit: Mike Monteiro in Design is a Job
7. 2 Be conscious of what you love doing and what you are amazing at doing. Hire other amazing people to do everything else.
8. 3 Be able to clearly state why you do what you do. “People don’t buy what you do; they buy WHY you do it.” - Simon Sinek, How great leaders inspire action
9. 4 Build trusted relationships with other talented people.
10. 5 Step out from behind the keyboard.
11. 6 Give the right s**t away for free. Community events. Forums. Non-profit workshops. WRONG S**T: Full websites “Brain picking”* Small tweaks
12. 7 Be professional. Invoices. Meeting space. Wardrobe. Language.
13. 8 Be prepared. Get business and errors & omissions insurance. Pad your savings account. Have support.
14. 9 Work smart. Scope documents. Contracts. Initiation & final payment timing.
15. 10 Work hard. Isn’t entrepreneurship great? You get to choose your own hours!
16. 11 Play sometimes. People don’t buy s**t from crabby people.
17. 12 Stay cool. Stay honest. S**t will hit the fan.
18. Questions? Almost nothing’s off the table.