More changes afoot with the “marketing plan app” project I’ve talked about off and on. But in a good way. Feeling so much more positive about this project at the moment and that it is so much more do-able.

There is no longer an app for that

After several months of work on my proto SaaS version of  the app, involving lots of steep learning curve stuff with me and my buddy PHP, frustration at having to cull out so much content to aim for a remotely reasonable first MVP, and a distracted winter involving various bouts of soul-searching,  I decided to go in a different direction with this material. I still think the premise of the content I was working around is good and can be useful to people, but I’ve come to the conclusion that building an app is the wrong way to go in quite a number of ways. Aside from the logistical issues (of me and coding), I frankly, don’t think it would be a successful product in that form. A curiosity, a thing a few people would love an most people would’t even bother to look at. It was niche to begin with, an then, within that niche, the marketing challenges were just mountainous. I think, for any startup, you have to at least be able to envision it succeeding wildly — and, whether this is realism or some reflection of my inherent lack of confidence, for this one, I could only picture a ton of work followed by a sort of bitter, expected fizzle into the bin.  Either way, not the sort of thing one should pursue!

Bigger than a (small) breadbox

I also realized that I have a lot more to say/give/offer than just the original idea of helping creatives to structure editorial calendars in a right-brain way (which is what the app was essentially for). After almost 20 years working with clients creating branding, design, marketing and, moreover, strategic plans for the integration and implementation of all of those, I have a lot  to share. Much of it is actually a sort of rebellion against the old way of doing things — the way I did them for a lot of those 20 years. Insights gained through seeing what worked, what didn’t, and, especially, what was just outright bloat.

I find, as I look inwards, backwards and forwards, there’s a lot there. It’s hard to come to this realization, and worse to admit it aloud, when you have a tendency to be less-than-confident (of which I’m guilty). But there it is. I have some strong opinions and ideas, and helpful methodologies from all these years of doing this work, and I really would like to “get it down on paper”.

So much is changing, and it needs a lot of looking into

We’re living in very exciting (inspiring!) everything/everywhere/everyone times. The world/economy/business has changed SO much in the age of radical connectivity, and is changing more daily, exponentially. The old ways don’t really work anymore, and encouragingly, there are enormous opportunities for small- and micro-businesses, startups and entrepreneurs to change the world. And these are my people. But there are way more them than I can work with — and they don’t often have the budget for it, anyway. Luckily, they’re smart cookies. So…

I’m structuring this original “app” content plus much more into a New Thing. While I have quite a bit of the concept and content cooking at this time, the exact form of the New Thing is still to be finalized. It’s probably some manner of online course (or multi-media journey, if you will) and/or a print and/or digital highly-interactive book (read: tons of worksheets so you can really figure your shit out and DIY) and/or a series of in-person courses. Or, all of the above. Maybe after all this, once I discover, through rolling this out, what people like/find useful/want, I can make some kind of app version. But, I really doubt it will go that direction, actually.

In a way, the audience for this might actually not be the same as the audience who comes to my website (or would, if I ever cobbled my own shoes and promoted it in any way). It’s the artists, bloggers, microbusinesses and very-early startups for whom it makes no sense to hire someone like me.

The point is to let small businesses, startups, solopreneurs and creatives REALLY understand their own branding and be able to use that understanding to create appropriate and effective marketing (i.e., content marketing) and even do a whole lot of their own design work. It’s me revealing a lot of the “secrets” I use to do this for my clients (not that it’s a big secret, but I’ve certainly never written it all down in one place before!). It’s taking a lot of the mysterious “black box” aspect out of contracting design, branding, strategy and marketing work and just telling you how to do it — in a pretty accessible, hopefully somewhat fun way.

More details to come!

What kind of lame “as yet untitled” title is “web app” for a web app? It’s sad. Sorry about that. We’ll call it the Durable Editorial Calendar for now. Or something like that. Just so it feels like it has a name. And here’s the update.

Last we heard, I was spinning into a tizzy in the late summer because I knew I should do some user interviews and didn’t have time to (or didn’t want to!?). My tizzy resulted with deciding I would just start building something I, personally, would find useful, talking to people along the way casually, and then doing the validation a little later on — at the MVP stage or what have you. OK, fine. Fair enough.

Trouble was, on top of lack of time, there was a lack of knowledge of backend programming. For a while I tried to rope a significant someone into writing me some Ruby, but this proved impractical. As it turns out, I happened on the folks at Web Start Women somewhere around this time, and, as it so happens that I am female, I availed myself of some of their coding classes. I’ve also been reading a pretty terrific book by Larry Ullman. Not that I’ve gone from frontend hack to backend virtuoso overnight or anything, but I’m well-chuffed to report that I am slowly starting to build the bones of my app using PHP/MySQL. It’s a steep learning curve, and it’s going to take me a long time, I suspect, but I’m actually really enjoying the challenge, and excited to see some progress (even if it’s the ugliest, quasi-functionalest kind of baby of a beginning).

It’s another whole topic, but tackling the left-brain logic of programming coming from a seriously right-brain-centric background is fascinating — and makes me wish school wasn’t so sort of lame back in the dark ages when I was in it.

I’ve also thought more about how to limit the initial functionality of the app. Mostly, I figure I will concentrate on building the most basic form of editorial calendar generator, with a focus on online “content” activities. This will be the proof of concept after which I can iterate the design, UX and features. Limiting the bells and whistles is always a challenge — then you find out how much code you have to write to secure and validate the simplest user input!

Here’s to progress. And curly braces {}!

You may have noticed that I made a sweeping declaration about detailing the progress of my app/startup and then proceeded to go totally mum. I think I paralyzed myself a bit. Here’s the scoop.

Still totally down with transparency and reporting what’s going on — I just got a bit bottlenecked, a bit indecisive, and a bit unsure, so there was nothing to report. I realized that although I’m very interested in lean startup methodologies, and think they are a great way to go for traditional (and especially tech) startups, I was getting bogged down in thinking I had to do things a certain way.

I knew my first step should be to arrange lots of user interviews and figure out what the market wants and get ideas and test hypotheses. I’ve spoken informally to a few people about my ideas and have gotten all sorts of new ideas and possible directions in return (thank you!). I kept putting it on my to do list to brainstorm people (various potential target audience/enduser folks) to talk to and then to arrange lots of meetings to do so.

But week after week passed and the demands of running a design firm too precedence over this massive meeting-scheduling project. And really, the idea of scheduling a gazillion “non-billable” hours to listen to people seemed like a bit of a utopian dream in the context of my daily work. Sure, when you’re job is running a startup, it makes a ton of sense. When your job is running a design firm and working on almost a dozen client projects yourself (as well as bookkeeping and all sorts of other necessary admin), maybe it’s not the ideal use of time.

I also got to thinking of the various great products that have been built by people creating what they needed themselves, based on their own needs (i.e, the initial 37signals model) and how there is something valuable in that methodology too. Being guided by your own needs or by your “auteur” instincts is very different than being guided by market opportunities, user needs and extensive research. It may well not make sense for a traditional startup — working fast with limited funds and with the goal of selling product, making money or various eventual lucrative exit strategies. But it does make sense for me. Building an app is not my “day job” at the moment. It’s a side-project. And the app I want to build is something that comes out of a need I have had in running my own business (and have dealt with in a manual way, which would be cool to automate).

So, after kicking the pros and cons around in my head a bit, I’m thinking, at least at first, I won’t be following adhering to the lean model (though its ideas will inform things, I’m sure). I’ll be working on the mad-scientist-in-the-garage-no-set-schedule-seeing-what-happens model. (If only I were as cool as a mad scientist… sigh…)

Yup, my first pivot. Yay.

This past week, through serendipitous scheduling convergences, I managed to go to three separate events that had to do with running your startup on the cheap, one way or another.

• A book reading by Chris Guillebeau for his new book The $100 Startup
• Keven Mandeville’s Skillshare class: How to Create a Promo Video for Under $100
• RamenCamp 2012

Regardless of where you see yourself (or not) in the spectrum of “bootstrapping” or even of “startup”, there’s no doubt that we all need to embrace more sustainable business practices, in myriad ways. Sure, paying professionals (like me!) hefty sums to do things in proven, expert ways is a great option, but sometimes you need to go DIY or just generally be more agile or have a lighter footprint. So, here’s a melange of different sorts of nuggets gleaned from my educational travels last week:

Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup

1. Meta-takeaway: Read Chris’s new book. I haven’t yet (in all honesty) but his first one was fabulous and from how he talks about it and what people who’ve read it are saying, this one’s no different. His blog is also wonderful.
2. Need fast cash or an idea for your business? Ask yourself: What is the thing people always ask me for advise on? Then think about how you can turn that into a consulting or service “product” — be it a sideline to make some money, or a fulltime business model. Promote online, or in “real life”. Keep it simple. Chris gave the example, from his book, of Gary Leff, a travel hacker himself, who will optimize and book awards travel for you for a fee. As Chris tells it, Gary was doing this anyway, for friends, because it was something he was good at. He turned it into a sideline business (he still has a day job) and makes quite a bit of money doing it.
3. I’m paraphrasing Chris liberally here, but: you don’t need special skills to set up on your own, you don’t need a lot of capital, and don’t need previous entrepreneurial experience. You do need authentic enthusiasm and, most importantly, to stop thinking about it and just start. This sentiment was actually echoed closely, later at RamenCamp, by Jason Jacobs, founder of Runkeeper. Sure, we all know we need to “just do it” but it’s interesting to hear those who have urge it, saying their only regret was not starting sooner.

Kevin Mandeville’s How to Create a Promo Video for Under $100

1. Meta-takeaway:Skillshare classes are an awesome way to learn stuff on the cheap (or free) and to give back (or gain thought leadership traction) by teaching. I don’t know if it’s like this as much in other cities, but Skillshare Boston often has classes that are extremely relevant to small businesses and startups. Chris Guillebeau said you don’t need to have any special skills to begin — but you might need to pick some up as you go along — and this a great place to do it.
2. Need inspiration (or want to get your finished product showcased)? Check out Startup Videos — a great library of what people are doing for their promo videos, categorized in a bunch of useful ways.
3. Making a promo video DIY is totally feasible and cab be exceptionally effective.
4. Consider doing a cutout animation style video like this one that Kevin made, using screenshots and/or digital illustrations brought to life by Screenflow, PowerPoint or Keynote animation. All of these rudimentary animation techniques can take you from nothing to a complete product promo video in a day or two (which is not going to be possible with traditional animation techniques or live video of people and such). You can make something reasonably professional with these techniques even if you’ve never made a video before, so don’t be daunted, just give it a shot.
5. Tactical tips: product promo videos should be no longer than 2 minutes. Usually, it’s best to upload them as MP4s (host on YouTube, Vimeo or the like) at 720dpi size.

RamenCamp

1. Meta-takeaway: This was a really useful, interesting, inexpensive event, full of actionable, realistic advice on running a modern, lean business. Look out for it next year.
2. Caroline Beaulieu says, if you’re going DIY with your branding, foremost, be thoughtful and self-aware. She says to think about your brand story as it were a children’s book — how do you express your essence that fundamental a level? I think this is great advice.
3. Both Seth Lieberman and Hiten Shah talked in different ways about making your biz dev as scaleable, self-sustaining and self-replicating as possible. Sure, easier said than done, but I liked the tip that, if your product is some kind of web thing, don’t forget the “powered by” link on anything your deploying. This let’s your product go out and spread itself to potential users without you doing a thing.

photo by nomadic lass on flickr

I hate the idea that advertising/marketing is at odds with transparency, or worse, honesty. Luckily, post the old-timey charm of 19th century snake-oil panacea elixer broadsides or the mid-century big tobacco ploy to convince us that cigarettes would make us smooth yet not poisoned and dead, we live now in an era when truth in advertising is actually a reality — at least for some progressive, humane concerns.

A lot of this comes into play somewhat naturally as modern companies embrace content marketing and “pull” tactics rather than the traditional one-way broadcasting “push”. I think, also, as GenX, GenY and the younger folks, who all grew up in some degree of media-overload come to be the people making the media, they don’t necessarily want more of the same. (Some don’t seem to mind (or are in it for the money) and you can see my generational compatriots churning out creepy polar bears to tell you sugar water will make your life better at top ad agencies, but that’s another story all together.)

So, here on my wee bloggy blog (i.e., my content marketing vehicle), I’ve decided to do something a bit counter-intuitive, in that it’s quite likely to expose my business (and personal) vulnerabilities. Something, perhaps, at odds with convincing you of my “thought leadership” (ugh, can we come up for a less icky way to express that concept?).

I’m going to try to document, from the beginning, the process of building my first real web app/tech start-up project. 

A digression, with a bit of background

It was always my goal, when starting Durable, to do more than branding and design consulting. Yes, that is the bread and (vegan) butter or what’s going on here, but, since the beginning — since way, way further back than the beginning, since I was dreaming of what I wanted to do with my life when I was still a teen, I’ve wanted to run a multi-purpose creative concern. One umbrella company with all manner of magical projects, products and world-improving bits and bobs underneath.

I have a whiteboard full of projects to filter into the workflow, and scraps of paper in a zillion notebooks with other vaguer plans. There are art projects, tech projects and social change projects. It’s a lot to do, and obviously I can’t do it all at once. So, needing to start somewhere, I’ve decided to begin with something that is closest to “home” for Durable as it exists today, is ultimately utilitarian and, I think, going to be really satisfying to work on.

What the hell is it?

Right, yeah, I should tell you that. Here’s the thing: I know what I think it is, and what my assumptions are going in, but I also know what it is will change, probably a lot, and quickly.

What “it” is is a web-based app that lets you get organized about your marketing plans in a visual, intuitive way. I see the first version of this being a sort of content (or editorial) calendar with an interface which let’s you see your plans in a very graphic way and interact with them using color coding, simple icons and a drag-and-drop interface.

What’s the problem it solves? Making a content marketing plan and calendar can be daunting, tedious and very left-brain-centric (think spreadsheets and gantt charts). Some of us work better and see relationships more clearly with things laid out in front of us in a pleasing, graphical form. This app will help visual thinkers build plans and keep them organized, up-to-date and easy-to-change as needed.

You see I’m making an assumption about the audience here — that it’s people doing marketing for their own small businesses, or who are not necessarily professional marketers. The feature set is meant to simplify their process (and even offer guidance), not be a robust platform that does everything (though one could see that too… tying in to Salesforce, Basecamp, social media APIs, etc.). I don’t know yet if this is the right audience or the right feature set. But my goal is to figure that out soon.

What’s done so far and what’s next

Features: So far, I’ve sketched a flow chart and a bunch of non-detailed wireframes on paper. These are what I might want in this app were I building it for myself (and, indeed, this whole idea stems from a visualization of a marketing plan I designed and have used for my own purposes off and on — and that people always seem to connect with when they see it).

Audience: In terms of audience research I’ve run the idea by a few people casually and met with responses from “interesting but I don’t really get it” to “I’d use that.” My next step is to schedule a bunch of meetings with people and talk to them more formally about the idea and see what I can glean. (If you’re interested in being one of these people, shoot me an email. There may be some coffee in it for you!). This “audience” step is crucial, and until I get it in gear, is a bottleneck for the project. I’ve got to find out what people think, what they need and what direction I should start off in.

Branding: It’s too early to think about the brand yet — except my hypotheses about the audience, and a commitment to an awesome user experience and a highly graphical look and feel to the app. I don’t really have a name. I think that will come as I identify more about the audience and core feature set. In my head and notes, I’ve been using working titles like “Visual Marketing Plan” or “Visual Content Calendar”. Not very catchy. Maybe they’ll turn into part of a tagline later. Maybe the name will be some tidy sub-brand like “Durable Marketing Plan”. Who knows.

Team: For now, it’s mostly me, and maybe, if things work out, a rails developer. More brains on the problem would be beneficial, but for now, this is what it is.

Finances: This is an easy one. At this point, we’ve got nothing. Except time (when?!) and enthusiasm. No plans to do anything but bootstrap away indefinitely at the moment.

Of course I’ve thought a lot about tons of other aspects of this (like how to build a prototype, business models, etc.) but I’ll write about those and lots more as they become more relevant.

Let me know what you think about my app concept, and/or meta-ly the concept of telling you the concept at this juncture. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

photo by joshuadavisphotography

I’m a biological determinist at times

Humans, like other animals, are impressed by confidence. Peacocks display their plumage, redback spiders do a dance, camels inflate their mouth sacks and produce excess saliva, and critters of the opposite sex decide they are good potential mates. After all, procreation is a key biological imperative (or so people with children tell me), and if you’re going to bother, you want it to work and for the offspring to be strong and reproductively productive.

I think it’s for the same instinctive reasons that we want to work with people who are confident. In our work, we’re drawn to people who can explain clearly and boldly what they do and what they have to offer. Even if, in reality, they have never even made a baby peacock before, if they can state their case confidently, look fabulous and do the right amount of strutting their stuff, we will feel lucky to be able to give them a go.

I know it’s hard. Some days you wake up with no faith in yourself or your abilities, whatever reality is. This is our particular human psychology. With the big brain-to-body ratio comes both benefits and complications. But waking up feeling bad about yourself still sucks and it’s really hard to pull yourself out of that particular pit once you’ve fallen in it. God forbid you’re scheduled to convince anyone of anything that day.

But climb out you must, lest no one think you’re a sexy peacock and want to work with you.

Now is the part of the post where I’m meant to offer sage advice, like I know the answers to such dilemmas. Thing is, I don’t.

However, I can empathize, and I can suggest two things. One’s a psychological technique and the other’s a sort of business tip.

1. Reframing with a dash of DBT

Reframing (or “cognitive reframing”) is a idea used in psychology, and while I’m sure, clinically, there’s lots to it, my layman’s take is that you have to “look at the bright side”. I know that sounds impossible and clichéd, but if you can force yourself to try it, and to make a habit of it, it does actually help.

I hear you protest, “there is no stinkin’ bright side!” Oh, don’t I know it. That’s where the forcing yourself part comes in. Here’s a process I extrapolated from dialectical behavioral therapy (similar to the more well-known cognitive behavorial therapy) that I think is very useful. You just keep asking yourself WHY. Like you’re a 3-year-old. Relentlessly. It will help you get to the bottom of the bad stuff you’re feeling about yourself and give you some options for a new story to put on that tape loop in your head. I think it’s best illustrated by an example:

My brain 1: I suck.
My brain  2: Why (do you think you suck)?
My brain 1: Because I don’t know anything about such-and-such.
My brain  2: Why (does that matter)?
My brain 1: Because everyone will think I’m bad at such-and-such.
My brain  2: Why (would they think that)?
My brain 1: Because so-and-so knows so much more about it, I look dumb in comparison.
My brain  2: Why (would what so-and-so knows be relevant to what people think of you)?
My brain 1: I guess. I guess comparison is not useful. But I’m still not going to sound confident talking about such-and-such.
My brain  2: Why (would you predetermine failure like that)?
My brain 1: Oh, yeah, I guess I should at least act confident. That would make things go better.

As you see, I don’t manage to totally convince myself I don’t suck, but I do manage to reframe the whole situation, leaving myself with a different problem: how to at least fake it. And the thing is, once I get myself to this place, chances are I’ll snap into an actually confident mood as things move along, and forget that I sucked all together.

Tangentially, this same sort of technique is really useful for getting to the bottom of any “limiting beliefs” you’re holding onto about yourself, not just these sort of short-term, bad-day sorts. I’ve even used this relentless why process to dig up the root of some bad messages that got implanted in my head when I was a kid. It doesn’t make them go away magically, but knowing they’re based on false premises really does help me think twice about those negative voices when the start to play on repeat.

2. Get your story straight (yeah, branding)

Total change of tack here, as this is coming at the same problem from a business angle. Whether we’re talking about you the person, or you the company (or me) here, each of those entities has a “brand” at some level. You’ve seen all the “your personal brand”, “brand you” blather go by in recent years. I’m not going to go ape on all that stuff, and branding, generally, is a big huge topic that I’m not going to get to deep into here.

There’s this one salient facet: the very kernel of branding is getting your own story straight, and then codifying it.

If you or your organization have gone through this exercise and you can look back at your vision statement, or your mission or your value proposition or even your content strategy or style guide, or your collage or your Right-Brain Business Plan, or whatever you have — these things can remind you of what you stand for when your faith in yourself/your business falters. (Because their true, right? If not, you have a bigger problem.)

If you haven’t done any branding (that is, discovering and codifying your story), going through this process in some way, at some level is going to give you an excellent tool for the days when you have doubts. (And for the days when you don’t!) It’s kind of amazing what you can find out, the revelations you can have. Then you write it down, and can refer back. It’s cool.

More true confessions

Recently, I was hanging out with a couple friends, also owners of small business, and I was complaining of a very bad day I’d recently had. I’d gone to a networking event and, feeling rather befuddled and down on myself that day, I managed to give several new people I met the impression that I couldn’t even properly explain what I do and was generally wishy-washy and perhaps a little pathetic. I could see it in the way they were trying to help me tell my story coherently (oh god, that’s what I do for a living, how mortifying!) and the condescending way they asked me questions — almost as if I were far younger than them, even though I’m not. I don’t blame them, and it’s a little sad that I was so off that day that I doubt we’ll ever reconnect. But that’s that, no use crying over spilled (soy)milk and all.

The part of this story that’s interesting is that the friends I told this to, both of whom are über-smart cookies and talented and clever, said, “I have days when I wake up feeling like I suck too”.

No way! You do?

That was the revelation. That was why, ultimately, I wrote this post. Much as we like to suppose everyone else has their shit together way more than we do, I think we all, actually, have at least occasional bad days. They’re probably not going to go away, either. But two things help: try to make it better instead of getting into a downward spiral and remember, it happens to everyone.

real artists ship by andrew powers

When I  look back at the journals I kept as a kid (I’ve long had this mania for archiving), I find they all start with grandiose “dear diary” declarations with implicit assumptions of posthumus fame. Let’s forgo that here.

Pro-crass-tin Nation

Though, I must admit, I have fallen prey to the whole, “I’ll start the blog when…” trap which has immobilized me ’til now. I know, Steve Jobs, Seth Godin and pals will scream “just ship!” from the rooftops and I will feel pangs of guit. And certainly any day I’ll admit a definite love and admiration for the lean startup and Agile worlds…

But the traditional world of design, which is where I cut my teeth (what a disgusting expression), is not about just shipping. It’s about genius, followed by perfectionism, followed by as few revisions as possible.

There’s something to be said for the idea of having at least a bit of a plan in place before you begin. There’s also the idea of not shipping a shitty product, which is quite wise. I think these are pretty important caveats to “just ship!” You do want to make sure it’s not going to be detrimental to put something out there — action is vital, but not without some degree of both strategy and quality control.

Looking good while running (lean)

And so, tidily, this is a great analog for one of the topics I want to write about going forward — the role design and branding play in the whole lean startup game. It’s a pickle sometimes, running lean but also looking good enough and having your story straight enough to gain some brand equity and having user experiences that delight your users. These are things you need to invest in, but that’s a scary and sometimes counterintuitive prospect when you might be pivoting tomorrow.

Other items of interest, at least to me

Luckily, not everyone’s a startup (though we can all probably learn a lesson or two from the ideas that rule their worlds). There’s lots of other cool stuff we can talk about too: sustainability (in its widest definitions), making our lives and other people’s lives better (lifehacking, collaborating, building communities), making art, design, branding (for good, not evil),  new technologies, business models, and visionary ideas. These, broadly speaking, are some of the things that interest me (oh, and my dog). (And coffee.) What else do you want to talk about here? I’m sure it will evolve. Can’t plan everything, that would be boring.

So, welcome, hello. And thank you.