Hey, this is the Daily Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps. Now today let's
talk about, The daily struggles of running an app agency.
Okay so today I want to answer a question that came in to our Facebook page
about a week ago this is from Chu jar charges I'm sorry if I'm
mispronouncing your name I'm really bad at that he says, "Hey Eric I love your
videos and your advices you're giving to me and other app developers. It's very
helpful that you talked a lot about how to interact with clients at what their
problems are-" Thanks. "but I would like to hear more about your problems and your
daily struggle. What are your biggest problems you have to face in your app
agency?" and so I followed up with it so what do you mean like client problems
and he said yeah just thanks you know client problems time management
everything like that on a day to day basis now. I'm a bit nervous to answer
this because in order to do this I have to talk about some of my shortcomings
and I know what my shortcomings are I'm really bad at delegating, I'm really bad
about saying no to things and always try to squeeze too much into the day. So my
hope is that you and our clients, everything looks like it's smooth and
effortless. It was just gliding through everything's just
clicking right but a lot of times we have lots of issues and a lot of
frustrations. So when I come into the office in the morning, I'll go
through and process through the inbox and a lot of stuff is just junk you know
or things that are that I'm included in but then I'll go through and create a I
try to get my inbox down to zero every morning and I put everything into a
Trello board, so I have I have my own Trello board where I have things that
need to be done this week things that need to be done today and then
things that will do at some point and things that I need to read.
And then there's also other folders in the in Gmail, where the action folder
the waiting for folder and the read folder. So all of that stuff just so I
can try to get some semblance of what needs to be done right but any given day
where you have lots of things that that could be frustrating we're trying to
squeeze everything into the time. Like we might have
client issues when I have a client project where they come back and
they say, "We noticed that one user's having this issue work over and
over again where the app is losing session state or
something like that" and we have to look into that and figure out what's
different about that one type of phone that's different from the others.
We may not still be in warranty on the application but like I said, I have
trouble saying No. So yeah, we'll have a look at it. We might have
clients that are saying like we might have a project that's running
late a little bit so we have to do all that kind of stuff.
We have issues with developers
so there's always issues with developers
where the things that make things might be running slow or they need a few extra
days and I have to be the one to go through and say okay what do you need
the extra days for why are we off course and because I
remember. I mean I'm a developer too so I'm very understanding about these
kind of things so I think it's a really good reason, okay no, okay cool I
can understand that but you still have to be the one who goes back and tells
the client and then you know that could be difficult. We have it we have the
internal team so I might have a team member who doesn't have anything to do
this week but they're very important next week so I have to make sure that
you know it's we don't want to sitting around with nothing to do so give some
like a nice challenge so always thinking about that kind of thing,.
We have family issues so like I have you know three days a week I cook
dinner and none of my kids like the same thing so amongst everything
else you're making all these decisions you're looking at this, you're looking at
that and you're just like it sometimes just feels like a roller coaster then I
got to think, "What am I gonna cook for dinner tonight? When was the last
time I made spaghetti, like two days ago What else can I make?" what I'm
trying to think about all these kind of things I know and every time I do that I
think if one of these days, I'm gonna make my schedule for the week
everything I'm gonna cook but I never do. Time just gets away from me so a lot of
the times it is just your there's thing after thing, after
thing and then with the phone rings, we get new projects in we're talking about
new things people will ask a lot of questions. We have clients
may ask for new features and we have to manage that. How much will it
cost to do this? How much it costs to do that? so there's all that kind of stuff
and it really is a case. There is taking out too much work and
everything like that. I need to get more people in and I need to get
better at delegating things and there's something that we're doing we're
increasing, we're improving the processes all the time so it can be very very
stressful and a few months ago somebody sent a message saying, "Eric I don't understand
and why you work with clients if you have your own passive income?" because
that's the other thing so Google Play might send something through are we
going to update these apps too and you know who can do that is it just me who
can do that or if we get somebody else to do that everything else if we bring
somebody else on because it sounds easy like I'll just hire a developer and then
they'll do it but then they got to go through and get familiar with all the
other code and is that is the cost of doing that, is that going to be easier
than just doing it myself and you know things like that so it's always thinking
about these these types of things and always setting the priorities for the
day and then there's a few things that never get pushed. Just things that
I say that this has to be done every day one of them is this video,
right if this video was pushable then it would get pushed every day.
I just thought I was gonna do a video yesterday but I didn't have time. No the
video has to be that's it, like the video has to be done because I made it
important. The same way going to the gym is important and if you
see somebody who goes to the gym everyday. They could have loads of other
things to do but that's non moveable they do that every day and
that's something that gets the gym is something that gets pushed a lot for me
like I was gonna go to the gym but I guess I'll work on this so,
there's a lot of struggles that sometimes it feels like
Everything is my fault
and it's a lots of things, it feels like sometimes it's pushing in on you
everything like that so it could be very stressful sometimes but my whole
goal in life is that's what I do for clients. That is the value that I add.
If there's a technical problem,
I need to know the solution for the developers.
If there's a scheduling problem, I need to be able to
make that work for the clients, I need to make sure that I take on
all the headaches and that's what I do and then we do it again the next day and
I'm always working to try to improve this and at one day it will be a lot
more efficient but sometimes it is very stressful and
sometimes there are mornings where I wake up and I think, "Go into work and
why did we say yes to that project? Why did I say I would get
that done by Wednesday? And it's Wednesday today" because when I said it
it was Thursday last week and next Wednesday seemed ages away at the
time but now we're here already. Alright and there's all these kind of things
and I'm constantly apologizing and I'm all constantly saying you know I'm sorry for
its delayed in this email and all this kind of stuff right but, all these
frustrations. Why keep doing it? Why keep doing it like what somebody said why
would you still work with clients sometimes I think, *wooh* but you know what
I get to be the owner of Overpass, I get to come into work and our Video
Editor says, "Hey I edited a video from yesterday, what do you think?" and I think,
"That is awesome!" I get to come in and my designer says, "I've been working on the
mock-up for this new client project, what do you think?" and I think, "That looks
really cool! I can't wait to show the client that." I get to have the clients
call up and say Eric we're really pleased with this latest build you have tell the
developers how happy we are and I get to be the ones to tell them and I got to be
when the developers say Eric we're really struggling with this problem
and it's like a really complicated mentally thing. I'm the one who gets to
jump in there and do that. So it's very rewarding to do it but it's it's
probably not the most efficient system, there's so many things we do that
I am happy with the efficiency of it there's other things where it's the
reason we lack the efficiency is due to me, so I was like I'm reading you know
I've read this book years ago so I follow all these productivity things.
I've read so many books on productivity. Always trying to do new things.
I always try to make everything look seamless but sometimes it is, it does it feels like
we have too much going on at the moment. We need to start saying no to some
clients which is always hard to reject a client. As always somebody calls
up and I'll get contacted by salesmen the cold callers and everything
they'll call up and say, "Hey do you need help with your lead generation
strategy?" No not at the moment we don't where we can't get enough going on right
but we also have to think how could we grow as a company and
when I talk about talking about my shortcomings. This is exactly it.
The roadblock and the stumbling point and all of this is me a lot of the times.
Do we bring somebody else on and we brought people on and I've got
people who do a lot of things in our team and it's just thinking about what
could we take and give to somebody else and delegate it. So there's a lot of
things that I need to work on but it is very rewarding and sometimes
I do think, "Maybe we should just stop doing client work
altogether? Maybe we'll just work on our own applications?" We'll come in and it'll
be leisurely and we'll just say what what should we
do today should we I'll just work on this new function here and we're
releases to the App Store and everything will be nice and slow and boring.
There would be nobody. I can't, everyday I get
to help people but a lot of times it feels like there's so
much going on. "Dad can you drive me to this thing?" Oh man, but I've got this
meeting or "Can you come out me to set these offices?" Sure absolutely
great yes, great right and I take a lot of satisfaction with our clients when
they thank me and they say we're really happy with the work so far and
yeah like I said if sometimes I feel like if they knew all the
things that we're moving around underneath they would be like,
I don't know but my goal or my whole job is to make sure that they don't see all
that kind of stuff. For them they have an effortless thing, they got a client
the client project and I think that should be the same with with
every agency and like I said there are days where I just say, "That's it no more
agency work. We're gonna, no more clients for it's gonna
do our own apps" but we'll see it changes from day to day and I'm always trying
to improve it. So anyway I hope that's been helpful and those you guys, you can
see how awful things are sometimes and that's it for today I'll talk to you tomorrow.