Articles On Clients

A student of mine recently informed me of an idea called your bus count. Answer the question: “How many team members can get hit by a bus without the company going bust?” Your answer is your bus count. The higher the number, the more robust your business is to survive unexpected events. Asking for your… read more

There is a common fear amongst most freelancers and new agency owner. And it is this…If I land a bigger client who pays me more money, are they going to expect more? And my answer is…it depends. Check out this quick video to get to the nitty gritty of this common question.

Looking for Better Projects? Ask Clients to Pay for Discovery. Discovery is a process of using your expertise through a series of questions across 4-5 meetings to uncover your client’s business pains and goals so you can develop a course of action to solve/achieve those goals. Paid discovery is charging for this. Doing good discovery… read more

“My nephew can do this for $800.” I call this The Kiss of Death. It’s not your fault that people say it. But it is your fault if you let it define your business. Don’t let our industry fool you. You are not a commodity. Massively competitive labor marketplaces, free content management systems, and cheap… read more

I’ve been in this business for a long time. Despite all my years of hard work, a day came where I realized I was not making money. I still was not getting ahead. I found myself losing every single proposal. In the off chance that I won one, I ended up cutting prices to get… read more

Everybody hates cold calling. A lot of people, whom I respect, say you need to make 40 cold calls a day. If you’re lucky, two of them will work out. My strategy is to make two to five calls but make them count by warming them up a little. Hit the ground running by doing… read more

Labels are important. It’s how we humans categorize things. It’s how we know when you yell to a friend: “There is a bear outside!” That you aren’t talking about an ice cream truck. Which of course if you did think that, something might very well get eaten… but it’s probably you that’s the ice cream…. read more

Clients believe they need websites. And you probably believe you need to build them. But I have a dirty little secret: “No one needs a website.” When I learned this secret… it changed the game. I went from selling $2-3,000 projects to $20-30,000 projects. Almost identical work. But my mindset shifted. I learned a basic… read more

Ever heard the saying, “too much of a good thing can be bad?” Well, I was just chatting with a close freelance front-end designer friend of mine and she needed some help navigating a tough situation. You see, she started freelancing for a company for her normal hourly rate. She was getting paid well and… read more

Scott Yates is Founder of BlogMutt in Boulder, CO. I got a chance to sit down with him to discuss SEO, startups, incentive programs, and everything blogging. “There is no short cut to writing 500 blog posts” “The first 200 are a struggle…” Scott co-founded BlogMutt with Wade Green as a way to solve an… read more

Matthew Gravatt, Founder and CTO of Radiant Interactive in Boulder, CO, sits down with me to discuss ventures, re-birth, invoicing, and company culture. “You’re smart enough…” “If you find that piece of what you really love…you can turn it into something amazing” Matt founded Radiant in order to bring “rock solid software and digital marketing… read more

Andrew Beckman (CEO) and Alex Porter (President) of Location3 Media in Denver, CO discuss starting their company, overcoming growing pains, direct response marketing, social media, and partnerships. Andrew started Location3 Media in 1999 after his time at Doubleclick selling ads on Altavista and wanting to do his own thing. Alex joined shortly after in 2003 after… read more

Bob Morehouse Founder and CEO of Vermilion in Boulder CO discusses Vermilion’s expansion into digital services from print, technology challenges, the value of Instagram, and selling the bigger vision. Bob founded Vermilion shortly after moving to Boulder, CO out of desperation to support his hopeful magazine career focusing on design in the early 1980’s. Vermilion… read more

Stirling Olson, founder and President of Foraker Labs in Boulder, Colorado, sits down with me to discuss getting new clients, discovery workshop, growth ceilings, having a vision, and battling with the product vs service dilemma. Stirling started Foraker Labs in New York on December 1st, 1999 with his previous employer as his first client. Foraker… read more

Anthony Navarre, a full-stack Rails developer at Thoughtbot‘s Denver, Colorado location, sits down with me to discuss his transition from acting to developing, large and small clients, and giving back to the community. Anthony Navarre started using html after his first indie film experience and quickly learned that html by itself wasn’t going to be… read more

President of Booyah Online Advertising, Troy Lerner sits down with me to discuss the one-man band, direct response, and his advice for the challenges he faces as a leader. When Troy was first introduced to Booyah, his initial goal was to poach their talent, but he soon found himself being poached and joining Booyah. Initially… read more

Here’s a piece of advice: Don’t half-ass it. When you do work that’s half-assed, it sets a bad standard for your company. It says, “hey, look at this crap.” At Hub & Spoke, we set out to do something different. Our market was crowded with low quality “template website” purveyors creating websites that might help… read more

Thirteen years. That’s a long time to be running a company, especially these days. I founded Slice of Lime in 2001 and have enjoyed navigating the “digital agency” world for over a decade. We’ve consistently been recognized as one of the “Fastest Growing Companies” in Colorado and have cultivated a great reputation as one of… read more

I hate web developers. Not because we’re boring–we’re some of the most creative people I know. And no…not because we’re not smart–it takes a fair amount of intelligence and skill to build something beautiful. In fact, I don’t even hate web developers because many of us would prefer a Chipotle burrito and a four-hour Breaking… read more

So listen. I’ll level with you. I’m a writer. And I used to be a web pro. So yeah, I know what a pain web copy can be. You can’t launch without it, but… it’s hard to write it. And it’s even harder still to get clients to write it. A professional copywriter can make… read more

The freelance web designer’s dream is to work with clients they love on projects that excite them for the fees they deserve. Unfortunately, most of the time reality doesn’t look like this. Most freelancers I know work with whoever needs them on whatever projects come along for whatever fees they can negotiate. I believe this… read more