7 Learnings
This is the transcript of a talk I gave to Erasmus students who were visiting our beautiful town of Waidhofen an der Ybbs.
Hi, my name is Christoph Hochstrasser. I’m @hochchristoph on Twitter.
I’m twenty-five and I work as a freelance (self employed) designer and developer. I’m in my second year of being self employed (two years in May).
What’s a freelancer? A Freelancer is someone who works for himself. Not permanently for a single company. It’s somewhere between entrepreneurship and working a job. I also like the term “Solopreneur” very much.
Today I want to share 7 random things with you that I learned about business and life.
1) Web Development != Coding
So what does a web developer do whole day?
Watching pictures of cute cats on the internet?
No (sometimes)
Coding would probably be the first thing that came to your mind right now. But that’s just one thing that I have (and mostly like) to do, not the only one.
I’d call what I do “Creative Problem Solving”.
Also, as a rule of thumb 80% of the time is spent solving problems by talking to people, 20% is about solving problems by designing or coding.
For example:
- Clarifying project requirements together with the client
- Writing User Stories and designing the product
- Dealing with feature requests and bug reports
- Dealing with vendors, reporting bugs to vendors
- Writing proposals for acquiring new clients
- Legal stuff (contracts etc.)
2) Just do it™
I was in a so called “HTL” and studied Electrical Engineering. I did programming already back in secondary school, but it never really grew on me. But then in the HTL I got into making websites, and I instantly found it insanely satisfying.
What really fascinated me, was what hitting the refresh button in a browser could do, you see your changes in an instant.
Also that a website is something that can immediately be tremendously useful for everybody. Without buying CDs in store (this was 2005), without installing, and without buying new CDs whenever a new version comes out. Information and tools that are immediately in the hands of users and that developers can fix or improve after they were delivered.
I spent 4 years teaching myself web development on the side.
You may ask, „How do you learn something like that on the side?”
Nike isn’t exaggerating. “Just do it™” works. Whatever interests you, do it a lot to get better at it. Works for playing the guitar and programming alike.
Also, have side projects. Lots of side projects. During that timeframe I did create almost everything, even if it did already exist. A content management system, an event portal, a website design for some friends, a web framework, even drew symbols by myself. I did it because I wanted to know how things worked. It lets you see the different tradeoffs and decisions which were made in creating a thing (and it’s an awesome feeling, when you get all by yourself to the accepted solution).
3) Inspiration Always Hits You When and Where You Expect It Least
However, I’m not completely proud about how some things went. Like the way I handled school. There wasn’t really a time on school days that I didn’t spend making websites, often even in class. I deeply regret this.
Try not to be arrogant and think: “There is no way this could be useful in life.”
Everything you learn can be useful and could inspire you in totally unexpected ways. After working so long in this field of creative problem solving, you learn that the best ideas spring to mind when away from the screen. When doing something completely different, like when taking a shower. Or while at the art museum.
4) Challenge Yourself, But Try Not To Bite Off Too Much, So You Don’t Choke To Death
With a good deal of luck and some connections I got to work at a pretty good company in Linz.
There I learned about something called Scrum. Scrum is mostly about how to work on a software product in iterations. I also like to call this “Bite off a little bit at a time to avoid choking to death.”
Imagine, you have a vast spec. Then you spend months or years developing this spec to a full featured product. Once it enters the market you learn that it doesn’t solve customer problems, so no one wants to buy the product.
Iterative development tries to solve this, so you don’t waste time with developing something that in the end no one wants.
As a rule of thumb, try to not work on something longer than a couple of days without showing something to a coworker or friend. Don’t spend more than about 2 weeks without showing it to a real customer. Try to show something (also rough prototypes) to real customers as early as possible.
This maps pretty well over to the business side of things. Try to talk with real customers about a business model as early as possible. Avoid spending weeks without talking about your business model with a real person outside of your bubble.
5) Reflect Regularly
It’s not so much about the process itself, or certifications. It’s more about thinking and reflecting about processes on an ongoing basis. There isn’t a process which can’t be improved upon. Processes are there to be adapted to your needs.
Implementing something like Scrum exactly by the book isn’t the point. You also don’t have to start with something very heavy-handed and sophisticated. If you do only one thing, then let it be the act of regular reflection.
Every two weeks hold a Retrospective. Reflect (with yourself, team, class, company) how things went in the last two weeks. What went well? What didn’t go well? What accelerates, what are the brakes? There’s a whole lot of questions to ask.
Resist the urge to accuse any one of being stupid when things didn’t go well. It’s not fair, not very adult and not productive. Accept that every person acted in a way that made sense to them under the given circumstances at that point in time.
6) Talk To Real Customers
This is the one thing I absolutely failed at when starting out and still working on improving.
Let’s start off with this: You aren’t an entrepreneur starting with registering your company. You are already an entrepreneur well before that.
No one stops you from talking to customers before you have officially started doing business.
This is your biggest advantage when starting out. You can completely do what you want. No one cares about you. No one will know when you fail! Entrepreneurs with established businesses just can’t do that. Most have reputation and customers to lose.
If your customers will be business owners, then don’t shy away from going to them and asking them if they would be willing to give advice to an ambitious new entrepreneur. Most will happily provide it to you (most people like being valued for their opinion).
Ask customers about the business models you want to create. Accept their feedback and adapt. You have time.
7) Don’t write a Business Plan Until You Absolutely Positively Have To
What I’m not saying is, that you shouldn’t think about your business and business model. You should absolutely do this.
I understand that some institutions, especially those who give you money, like banks or investors, expect you to have a Business Plan. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t generally produce a Business Plan. What I mean is, try holding off on writing this document until you absolutely must.
At the beginning you are at the point of time where you know least about the business, the market and the customers. Going forward you will learn more and more about what the business model should be, what problem you solve, and who your customers are.
You need to adapt your plan constantly at this early stage. The traditional Business Plan stands in your way.
The problem here is, that Business Plans become huge documents. When a document is huge, you don’t think lightly about changing things. Because each change produces a ripple effect, which leads to changes all over the document. So you avoid changing things. And because it’s a huge document, most people won’t bother reading it.
Try something more simplified for the start. I personally really like the “Business Model Canvas” method very much, and others do like it too. It lets you produce a business model very quickly, talk about it with other people and even talk with customers without giving away the details. Everything can be changed easily and tried again.
Fin.
Thanks for reading.
