Jacobs


After leaving Jacobs… I really felt like it was time to get my projects organized.

Here are key points that really made me sit up and think?

Bill monthly. Get your clients used to seeing a bill?
I had never thought about billing monthly. I just figured that standard practice for web design was to bill at milestones. “Cash Flow is king” As soon as i got home I set up my clients on Fresh books and sent out invoices for the month. I received 100% followup from my them.

“Unless otherwise directed”
This was another “AH HAH”  Clients need to be accountable for the work that they need to do. Projects need to be completed ON TIME! one place where I was getting constantly “jammed up” was with change orders and clients not responding to request in a timely manner. I need to adopt a more proactive way of dealing with clients.  so that the project continues to moves along. I now finish my request with statements like “Unless otherwise directed” i will complete A, B and C. I have also started to assign deadlines to responses…

Everybody has a boss, Don’t surprise your boss…
I thought that as a freelance designer / developer I would be my own boss.  what really happened i went from having 2 or 3 bosses to 6-12 at any given time.  I’m learning that having kick off focus groups help me to understand the clients needs and expectations, as well as, involve the bosses to avoid surprises.

Bleeding, Leading, Cutting Edge …
For a lot of my career I focused on being on the bleeding edge: first to have a palm pilot, first to have a i pod, ps2 etc… As a young professional I thought this was hip and “smart” I now have a drawer full of “first” that totaled  up are worth about 25 bucks!  As I am getting older, and have to make business decisions it just seems like a bad business decision and a waste of time to be on the bleeding edge.I still study and I am aware of trends. but if feels a lot better to let somebody else test out the technology. Then adopt once it is tried and true.

With all the electronic devices and tools we still fail to communicate …
Just yesterday i typed up an email to a client that i thought made perfect sense, which was followed up with 2 other emails for clarification.  I reflected back to this visit and just called the guy. We figured out what needed to be done on the phone in 5 minitues.

Make sure you are getting other people productive before you work …
wether that is letting the client know what his or her task are, sending a font to a intern, or getting content over to a team member for approval. Getting them what they need first allows for the team to work in tandum. “it only takes one person to kill a project” i want to make sure that i am not that one person.