Funny you should mention all this. I sometimes think I live on spreadsheets! The hardest part for me, starting out, was figuring out what to charge. I really blew a lot of business, at first, charging too much and sometimes not charging enough. I've since learned to ask enough questions to help see the "value" a task, product or service has in the eyes of the client, before I put a price on it.
And, besides, 300% is rough and high. It's what I have charged a lot of the time. For clients I don't get along with, I mark up even higher. For those I find a joy to work with, I go as low as 200%, etc. (And, yes, my attorney has sanctioned these methods;-)
I sure appreciate everything you're saying, but I've heard, in the last year or so, that the "80% failure" statistic has been overused and is overrated, somewhat. A lot of businesses are really "shelters"; A lot are DBA's that turn into LLCs or Corps. (like mine); A lot are probably more like a Trust (we have a revokeable living trust that's worth a lot more than we are). Who knows where that statistic comes from? No one ever seems to site a source when they quote it.
Another factor I've seen, first-hand, is the tendency to fail through over-funding. Such logic doesn't make much sense and flies in the face of our Economist-lesson friend's posture. But think of it this way: You start a business and have $150,000 in cash to work with; Or, you start a business with next to nothing to start with. Now, a normal business problem comes along. You need a desk, a chair, a PC. Which business just spent about four times for these items as the other?
This exemplifies what I've seen on all kinds of levels. The "screw-ups" aren't people who make every decision they make a mistake. It just surprises me, sometimes, how far from the obvious path they tend to wander and still keep going in the right direction. I'm certain I'm screwing up a lot of the time, too (like posting to/. instead of spending time backing up my client's database;-)
At any rate, I appreciate your kind words, but all SATs suggest I'm merely average.
Uh, there are lots of theories. I've just made that one my pet theory.
And by the way, I know very few economists who are good at business. In fact I know plenty of people who know very little about economics but are independently wealthy due to having started up their own business.
Good business, after all, is really about relationships. (Know-it-alls have a hard time with relationships and don't usually know much about what that means;-) After all, it's true that knowledge is power, but it's not what you know, but who...
What a complete crock. That is what you've been fed and what you believe. It is not based on anything real. It can't be. Honest, I don't mean to be rude, but that's my reaction to hearing this so much with little or no experience on the part of the naysayer.
First of all, one thing I can't fathom are the number of businesses which constantly screw things up for themselves and yet still make payroll and earn a profit! How do they stay in business, I wonder. The point is: There's a wide margin in which to succeed or fail. It takes a real screwup to fail!
Second, when you land your first client or two you won't believe the markup you can charge for the work. If you just show up! Wasn't it Woody Allen who said, "Eighty percent of success is just showing up."? When I pay someone to design graphics, or do some PC software installation thingie, I mark their hourly up 300%.
That may seem wrong until you consider a few things: 1) You are taking all the risk; 2) You have connected the client with someone they would have no clue how to find on their own; 3) You have connected talented folk with work they would not have found on their own; 4) The client doesn't care about price as much as they care about the risk of no action toward solving a problem. And there are many more subtle reasons why a 300% markup is good and fair. Of course when I have time and do the task myself (nearly 80% of the time) I get to pocket all of it.
The point is, the risks you talk about are there, just not nearly as magnified as you make them out to be.
So, my question is, if you have no reserve cash, where did you find all the 'free-as-in-beer' accountants and attorneys?
A few were in front of me and a few behind in the unemployment line.
Seriously, though, it doesn't take any cash to consult either one. When I need a legal document, my attorney draws it up, I have the client sign it and my bill arrives in the mail about the same time as my client's check.
In the last recession, we had high unemployment, yadda, yadda, yadda...
What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.
My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")
Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.
When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.
Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).
I've seen this "free as in beer not speech" thing a lot at/. (along with a lot of other things, you silly conformists) but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. Wherever I go, beer is pretty darn expensive!
Free Beer: Someone took pity on your poor, unemployed ass and bought you a beer with their hard-earned cash.
Free Speech: Someone's number came up and they got drafted into the Army, flown to some pit-of-the-world country and got their legs blown to bits by a land mine so you can keep being as obnoxious as you want in public.
From the site: You may have noticed that Yahoo has ceased working. The fix in 0.69 (of which (slightly broken) source packages are currently available) was not adaquate. We're working on the new authentication method now; hopefully it will be cracked soon.
Cryptic! Cryptic! Cryptic!
And hard to read and maintain, too... Have I worked with Perl? 10 Years. Have I worked with PHP? 5 Years.
The sooner I can get away from Perl, the sooner my my migraines will subside.
Java beats them both in syntax elegance, but [sorry advocates] it truly is slow.
I used to vote Republican (ten years ago). Now I say: TAKE BACK YOUR FREEDOM, USoA!!!
Vote Democrat!!!
I try not to be/think "partisan". But the truth is, the best possible chance Liberty has of making a comeback is (just about) anything non-Republican. The best possible chance of getting any non-Republican power back is in the hands of the Democrats!
No. Don't vote Independent; Green; Libertarian. That will only weaken the one party left that can help STOP this madness!
If you use special formatting that doesn't display well in OpenOffice, chances are, it won't display well on other people's copy of MS Office -- unless they have the same OS and same Office versions and patches as you do.
If you're using MS Office XP, imagine what the guy with Office 97 sees, or even Office 2000. Not pretty, too much of the time! Same is true going the other direction, version-wise.
The same may become true of OpenOffice's legacy file formats, as well, some day. Who knows. The point is, that's really a piss poor argument (and is getting really old) for not converting to an open-standards-based office suite. (Although I can't really tell what your point was -- I'm just tired of hearing that same lame argument).
Apache runs 2/3 of the HTTP servers on the internet.
No, Apache is not content-centric. In simple terms, it's a "file fetcher". It speaks HTTP. Apache delivers what ever "content" it is requested to [GET | POST | PUT] -- if it deems it a legitimate request.
What has helped keep the Internet out of monopolistic harm's way has been the influence of multiple, larger forces: AOL/Time/Warner, educational institutions, govenment organizations, standards groups, etc.
Microsoft may be the largest software entity in terms of revenue, but it is not the largest entity in terms of influence.
Yes. And over a year ago, I scrounged around the lab for a thrown-away PC just so I could try Knoppix, for the first time.
My impression: Piece of shit!!!!
Try as I may, I couldn't 'mount -t ext2/dev/hda[1|2|3|4|5]' to save me! Well, that was my *first* impression. It melted into shocking admiration when I discovered no hard drive in the chassis (was a really scavenged box).
Been a loyal Knoppix fanatic ever since. [Gushes]
In fact I was at a customer's site, last week and the customer wanted to move their ACT! DB to a centralized server (I'm not making this up). They were running Windows 95 on a PC they had manually used as a "central" ACT! DB for years. The OS wouldn't configure the NIC card I gave it, so...
You guessed it: Knoppix to the rescue! I had that DB off the machine in less than an hour (rsync'ed to a Samba share on the main server).
Reminds me of the time we found a Z80 (yes, this was a while ago) that we could talk into fits!
I delidded the IC in the reliability lab. It was a plastic case so I had to fire up the bunsen and boil sulfuric acid and use a dropper (fun process!).
Under the microsope I found that one of the gold leads was just laying on the pin pad. It made enough conatct for the CPU to work -- unless you got real close and said something in a low tone and at just the right, fairly quiet volume.
For the experience, I feel I know a lot more about the internal workings of women.
You may have noticed that we are becoming a world and a nation of haves and have-nots. The middle class is shrinking while the number of millionaires and people below the poverty line is increasing. Despite what you may believe, have heard, or been told, it's not the because of the Republicans, the Democrats, the government, lazy workers, greedy capitalists, unions, or competition from other nations. It's because we live and work in a global, information-based economy
[uh, written in 1996!] where knowledge is king. Those who know how to take what they learn and turn it into marketable products, service, and information grow rich. Those who don't get left in the dust. This is true for nations, companies, and individuals worldwide and it will be true for the forseeable future. As economist Lester Thurow put it, "In a global economy you may live in a first-world country, but if you get a third-world education, then eventually you will get third-world wages."
-- Michael LeBoeuf, The Perfect Business
Now, quit reading/., quit whinning about jobs being exported and get back to your homework!
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks!
;-)
Funny you should mention all this. I sometimes think I live on spreadsheets! The hardest part for me, starting out, was figuring out what to charge. I really blew a lot of business, at first, charging too much and sometimes not charging enough. I've since learned to ask enough questions to help see the "value" a task, product or service has in the eyes of the client, before I put a price on it.
And, besides, 300% is rough and high. It's what I have charged a lot of the time. For clients I don't get along with, I mark up even higher. For those I find a joy to work with, I go as low as 200%, etc. (And, yes, my attorney has sanctioned these methods
I sure appreciate everything you're saying, but I've heard, in the last year or so, that the "80% failure" statistic has been overused and is overrated, somewhat. A lot of businesses are really "shelters"; A lot are DBA's that turn into LLCs or Corps. (like mine); A lot are probably more like a Trust (we have a revokeable living trust that's worth a lot more than we are). Who knows where that statistic comes from? No one ever seems to site a source when they quote it.
/. instead of spending time backing up my client's database ;-)
Another factor I've seen, first-hand, is the tendency to fail through over-funding. Such logic doesn't make much sense and flies in the face of our Economist-lesson friend's posture. But think of it this way: You start a business and have $150,000 in cash to work with; Or, you start a business with next to nothing to start with. Now, a normal business problem comes along. You need a desk, a chair, a PC. Which business just spent about four times for these items as the other?
This exemplifies what I've seen on all kinds of levels. The "screw-ups" aren't people who make every decision they make a mistake. It just surprises me, sometimes, how far from the obvious path they tend to wander and still keep going in the right direction. I'm certain I'm screwing up a lot of the time, too (like posting to
At any rate, I appreciate your kind words, but all SATs suggest I'm merely average.
Uh, there are lots of theories. I've just made that one my pet theory.
;-) After all, it's true that knowledge is power, but it's not what you know, but who...
And by the way, I know very few economists who are good at business. In fact I know plenty of people who know very little about economics but are independently wealthy due to having started up their own business.
Good business, after all, is really about relationships. (Know-it-alls have a hard time with relationships and don't usually know much about what that means
What a complete crock. That is what you've been fed and what you believe. It is not based on anything real. It can't be. Honest, I don't mean to be rude, but that's my reaction to hearing this so much with little or no experience on the part of the naysayer.
First of all, one thing I can't fathom are the number of businesses which constantly screw things up for themselves and yet still make payroll and earn a profit! How do they stay in business, I wonder. The point is: There's a wide margin in which to succeed or fail. It takes a real screwup to fail!
Second, when you land your first client or two you won't believe the markup you can charge for the work. If you just show up! Wasn't it Woody Allen who said, "Eighty percent of success is just showing up."? When I pay someone to design graphics, or do some PC software installation thingie, I mark their hourly up 300%.
That may seem wrong until you consider a few things: 1) You are taking all the risk; 2) You have connected the client with someone they would have no clue how to find on their own; 3) You have connected talented folk with work they would not have found on their own; 4) The client doesn't care about price as much as they care about the risk of no action toward solving a problem. And there are many more subtle reasons why a 300% markup is good and fair. Of course when I have time and do the task myself (nearly 80% of the time) I get to pocket all of it.
The point is, the risks you talk about are there, just not nearly as magnified as you make them out to be.
So, my question is, if you have no reserve cash, where did you find all the 'free-as-in-beer' accountants and attorneys?
A few were in front of me and a few behind in the unemployment line.
Seriously, though, it doesn't take any cash to consult either one. When I need a legal document, my attorney draws it up, I have the client sign it and my bill arrives in the mail about the same time as my client's check.
In the last recession, we had high unemployment, yadda, yadda, yadda...
What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.
My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")
Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.
When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.
Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).
I've seen this "free as in beer not speech" thing a lot at /. (along with a lot of other things, you silly conformists) but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. Wherever I go, beer is pretty darn expensive!
Free Beer: Someone took pity on your poor, unemployed ass and bought you a beer with their hard-earned cash.
Free Speech: Someone's number came up and they got drafted into the Army, flown to some pit-of-the-world country and got their legs blown to bits by a land mine so you can keep being as obnoxious as you want in public.
How can this be?
From the site:
You may have noticed that Yahoo has ceased working. The fix in 0.69 (of which (slightly broken) source packages are currently available) was not adaquate. We're working on the new authentication method now; hopefully it will be cracked soon.
Dated: September 26th, 2003 - 1:55PM EDT
Ever seem like that scene where the Skipper says, "Gilligan! The Professor and Mr. Howell can't both be '+1 Interesting'!" ???
BTW, I also happen to think Perl is unbeatable for certain and varied system administration tasks.
Used on its own is one thing. Integration with presentation (e.g. HTML) or other languages is another story...
Cryptic! Cryptic! Cryptic! And hard to read and maintain, too... Have I worked with Perl? 10 Years. Have I worked with PHP? 5 Years. The sooner I can get away from Perl, the sooner my my migraines will subside. Java beats them both in syntax elegance, but [sorry advocates] it truly is slow.
Oooh! That was funny! I really crack myself up!
I don't find this funny, at all.
I used to vote Republican (ten years ago). Now I say: TAKE BACK YOUR FREEDOM, USoA!!!
Vote Democrat!!!
I try not to be/think "partisan". But the truth is, the best possible chance Liberty has of making a comeback is (just about) anything non-Republican. The best possible chance of getting any non-Republican power back is in the hands of the Democrats!
No. Don't vote Independent; Green; Libertarian. That will only weaken the one party left that can help STOP this madness!
(If it can be stopped at all.)
IBM is largely seen as a hardware house; Microsoft a softie (i.e. thus the reference to "software entity").
And gee, helping small businesses, especially IT based ones, expand, profit, and employ more people, is HIGH on all government wish lists.
Not those governments funded by big business.
If you use special formatting that doesn't display well in OpenOffice, chances are, it won't display well on other people's copy of MS Office -- unless they have the same OS and same Office versions and patches as you do.
If you're using MS Office XP, imagine what the guy with Office 97 sees, or even Office 2000. Not pretty, too much of the time! Same is true going the other direction, version-wise.
The same may become true of OpenOffice's legacy file formats, as well, some day. Who knows. The point is, that's really a piss poor argument (and is getting really old) for not converting to an open-standards-based office suite. (Although I can't really tell what your point was -- I'm just tired of hearing that same lame argument).
Apache runs 2/3 of the HTTP servers on the internet.
No, Apache is not content-centric. In simple terms, it's a "file fetcher". It speaks HTTP. Apache delivers what ever "content" it is requested to [GET | POST | PUT] -- if it deems it a legitimate request.
What has helped keep the Internet out of monopolistic harm's way has been the influence of multiple, larger forces: AOL/Time/Warner, educational institutions, govenment organizations, standards groups, etc.
Microsoft may be the largest software entity in terms of revenue, but it is not the largest entity in terms of influence.
Thank the gods for that!
Yeah, I see how this got started:
Ed: "No! That's GNU/Knoppix" [veins popping]
Fred: "Noooo!!! It's just plain Knoppix!"
Yes. And over a year ago, I scrounged around the lab for a thrown-away PC just so I could try Knoppix, for the first time.
/dev/hda[1|2|3|4|5]' to save me! Well, that was my *first* impression. It melted into shocking admiration when I discovered no hard drive in the chassis (was a really scavenged box).
My impression: Piece of shit!!!!
Try as I may, I couldn't 'mount -t ext2
Been a loyal Knoppix fanatic ever since. [Gushes]
In fact I was at a customer's site, last week and the customer wanted to move their ACT! DB to a centralized server (I'm not making this up). They were running Windows 95 on a PC they had manually used as a "central" ACT! DB for years. The OS wouldn't configure the NIC card I gave it, so...
You guessed it: Knoppix to the rescue! I had that DB off the machine in less than an hour (rsync'ed to a Samba share on the main server).
Mike, you wanna pass the plate around?
Opps! Posted to the wrong thread. Sorry for the dup.
/.
Oh, well I am on
Back in the day, we had bugs the size of little bitty moths -- not like these modern, new-fangled, gargantuan bugs, the size of whole windows.
...and we were grateful!
Back in the day, we had bugs the size of little bitty moths. Not these gargantuan bugs, the size of whole windows.
AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!
Reminds me of the time we found a Z80 (yes, this was a while ago) that we could talk into fits!
I delidded the IC in the reliability lab. It was a plastic case so I had to fire up the bunsen and boil sulfuric acid and use a dropper (fun process!).
Under the microsope I found that one of the gold leads was just laying on the pin pad. It made enough conatct for the CPU to work -- unless you got real close and said something in a low tone and at just the right, fairly quiet volume.
For the experience, I feel I know a lot more about the internal workings of women.
I thought Dice went bankrupt and out of business... Oh yea, they did.
That's funny. So the job I just got from a Dice posting is just imaginary?
Hmmmm. The money I earn spends the same. Bankruptcy or not, Dice works for me!