4 min to read
What I learned from Jonathan Stark
A guy who knows how to make money
I’ve been following Jonathan Stark for a while and learned a few things from him
On creating a podcast
- your partner can be remote in another country and you can still interact
- Starks partner is the author of the book which got him on his path - he’s talking with his hero
- once you go deep on something you see it everywhere, you see everything through that lens. That’s how you can keep generating content on a topic.
- the bigger the audience the higher the chance someone will throw a rock at you - get used to it
- be controversial
- write something you think you have to write no matter the kickback
- always look for content spark everywhere. Every situation can feed content
Abundance
- scarcity mentality means you don’t want to share
- if I give someone directions I still have the directions
- worried that if I give you information that makes you make money I will have less money to make, why not just make the pie bigger so we can all make money?
- always give first and it will come back to you
- it’s not a straight line from sharing what you know to getting clients - it may not be obvious how the audience will come
- have the courage to niche
- put yourself out there online if you have something worth sharing
On pricing
• once you have customers raise prices until you see customers drop off
• if you’re getting too much business then increase your price to dial down the demand - customers are valuing your services more than you are
• price is a powerful marketing signal - raising price may get more customers because most people want the best bank for the buck which is mid range not cheapest and not most expensive
- mess with your prices don’t keep them static
Does location matter?
- if you’re good in person you’ll be good on video but it’s hard because you have no audience
- get questions from people and answer from people
- get a cohost so you have someone to talk with
- going to the client doesn’t scale, you want to be available online
- create a very focused niche, even then there will be tons of competition
How to Handle Deadlines
• project speed is dictated by slowest person on project
• the slowest person is the client
○ slow getting back to you with what they want and feedback
○ they cannot give you 100% resources to your project because they have other things to do as well
○ developer on the other hand can give 100% so he’s waiting
• 50% on delivery is a bad idea because the client will stretch this part out and that makes your cash flow unpredictable
○ how to sell to client: if we do 50% on delivery it will put pressure on both of us to sign off on the project too soon
• Clients worry about deadlines because developers are paid by the hour so the longer the project takes the more they have to pay. If you give a fixed bid they don’t worry about the deadline so much because the budget is capped.
• Deadline has to be real i.e. this is voting software used for election
• A deadline is tied to a feature set. Not complete but rather features 1, 2 and 3 have to be done by this deadline.
• Bake a code freeze 2 weeks before deadline into the project timeline. At this point you do nothing but make sure the key features don’t have bugs.
• Be ready to explain your thinking. You will have to convert them to your ideas. Don’t expect them to just accept it.
• The deadline is out of control of any one person on the project. Every project is a collaboration between many people on the team and the client. People take vacations, get sick, they don’t work full time on a project because they wait for information so they switch to another project.
• If asked to set a deadline use this language “this project will take at least 3 months but as much as 12 months”
• expect the clients to block you
• “I see you’re extremely responsive, we can increase velocity”
• “It’s in my best interest to get this project done quickly, maybe more than you, then I can move on to another project”
• Try to break project into phases. Easier to control. What is the goal of this phase? It’s good to know additional things are in the pipe but that doesn’t mean it should go into this phase.
• To motivate employees without a deadline you say “I don’t care how long you work as long as this is all done” If you finish before the week, you can go home.
• If there is a deadline, the project grows/shrinks to fit the deadline.
