Hey this is the daily overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today I want to talk about getting started in a business.
Ok so it's 8 p.m., I'm in the office. Y'know today has just been a really hectic day! I've just
been slammed with client work, so a lot of the clients that we've had in the
past few years have contacted me in the last couple days, either with
enhancements or issues and things that just have to be
seen to, so... yesterday when I talked about your freedoms,
on some days, you're just run off your feet and that's just
part of the game. When you do client work especially, you don't
have, you know, if I talked about being able to set your own schedule,
sometimes with client work you don't have that, they have these things called
deadlines and all that stuff. But that's just the way things work. I
just wanted to thank everybody yesterday for all the great comments you
left and everything. I felt a bit vulnerable I guess talking about that
stuff. I felt like you're all here and I'm just talking about me, and I
didn't want to be just boring. I felt like I just turned
on the camera and started talking, wasn't sure where I was gonna go with it, which is
what I normally do anyway. But you all asked a lot of really good questions and
a lot of you I think would want to start up your
own company if you haven't already, or you're thinking about it. and Gable, you
asked a lot of really good questions. I keep thinking I'll answer
all these, but I think it will take a long time, so we'll visit all
those things as we go. But the first thing I wanted to say is, I just
wanted to just be completely plain and open - it's like, I
don't necessarily know what I'm doing. To me running the
company and getting everything off the ground is a bit like being a parent.
You go from one step to the next
and then you're in over your head, and then you figure your way out of that.
So like when you have kids, when you don't have kids you think you can't
imagine yourself as a parent, and then the kids come and you think, okay now
what do I do? What do I have to learn? What do I have to do this?
And we face this a lot as app developers, we face it as business owners,
if you do client work you face it that way too, we all know this.
you have an app idea, so then you think, what do you do next? So you
have to learn how to code it or who to hire and get it out there, and then
once you get it out, you realize "well nobody's buying it.
Nobody's downloading it. What do I have to do now? Oh, I have to learn about ASO,
I have to learn about key words, I have to learn about App Store optimization
and running ads, and that kind of stuff." And doing a company, you know, when I
started I made so many mistakes. I went to my
bookshelf - so, I'll just tell you this real quick.
When I started out my company was in 2004, but I mostly did contract work but
I would take these long periods of time where I take off and I think "I want
to set up my own client base, I want to do client work, not just me but I want to
hire developers overseas and then we'll just take local clients, and
we'll set up a company and all this kind of stuff. So I
set up a website, I got the business cards, all that kind of stuff -
'overpass is open for business' and everything. And then I didn't really do
anything. But then I realized I had to go out and get people, so I
thought, you know, I'll do some cold calling, that's what
everybody does as a company, you have to do cold calling. But I didn't
want to just jump into it because, why would you do that?
So I need to research. I need to know everything before I go. It's really naive
when I say this. So I read all these books, I was going through my
bookshelf today and here' some of the ones that I have, 'cold calling
techniques that really work' by Steven Shipman. I read like 4 of this
guy's books. I've got 'Secrets of telephone selling', so
I've written so many sales scripts and all this stuff, and I've also
got, just to cover all the bases, I've also got 'Never cold call again'.
And in the early days when I was doing this, so I'd leave a
contract that was a perfectly high paying contract, and I would set out I would
try to do my own thing. I wanted to start my own software company, but I
needed clients. So that was the whole thing. So I set up the company, then the
next step is 'how do I get clients?' So then I started doing cold calling and I
tell you what guys, you know it was probably the saddest
thing, if you had seen me do it, it's the saddest thing ever. I probably only called
about half a dozen companies right, and it was over months, it was just terrible and
you'd call up and it was a lot like asking someone out on a date.
Because you think the conversations going just fine until they realize
what's going on. It's like "hey, how's it going? Yeah yeah good,how about you?
yeah yeah good. Yeah so anyway, I was wondering if you want to go out Tuesday
night?" So it was like that.
Really really sad. So then I'd go back to a contract, but I'd also work
on my own software and I started working on websites and stuff like
that. And the problem that I had and I still do have this to a degree, is that
when I work on something for myself, I get to be - that perfectionist comes in,
and I start thinking "I'll just add one more thing!" or whatever. Or I'll work on
something for maybe as much as three weeks but then you know other
priorities come up, or I'll have like a different idea and I'll move on to the
other thing. So when I did the first app, I started coding it myself, but in
the end I hired a development company in India to do it and they did a
horrible job, but, you know, in the end it was something that I could
release to the App Store. So now, we have lots of clients now. Sometimes
more than we can handle, and one of the things that I realized now, having a
company just in retrospect, is that if nobody knows about you then they're not
gonna buy from you. So we spent a lot of time on content marketing, a lot of time
on putting stuff out there, putting our own apps out there, but when
I talked about like last year, last year about 80 percent of our revenue was from
the apps and 20 percent was from clients, but in terms of stress it was
like 80 percent of stress came from client work and 20 percent came from
apps. But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I am NOT an
expert. There's still some things I need to learn, there's things I need
to go. But those of you who are thinking about starting your own company,
my advice would be just to start. You know, you're gonna stumble forward and
you're just gonna get it done. Don't quit your
job, don't hire a bunch of people unless you're really really
confident. I've never been that confident. If there's one thing that I,
you know, I suppose I take a lot of risks, but I don't take unreasonable risk.
There's a reason why my developers are overseas it's because it's
a lower price and it's easier to move on if it doesn't
work. And there's a reason we put out so many apps, it's because I
don't want to invest six months or a year or two years in one app and put it
out there and hope that it does well, because that's a
very risky situation. now you could argue that the quality of my apps is not as
high as it should be and that might be true, but it is trying to minimize the
risks if it is things like that. Even with client work,
the nice thing about now is that we get more requests for client work than we
can handle. So most of it we turn down, most of it I turn down. It's just
because, maybe it's because of days like today, when I'm thinking "oh man,
either I hire more people or you know I just I learn to work more efficiently,
and stuff like that. So anyway, the point I wanted to make today. First of all,
thank you so much for the comments yesterday and to
say that, while I learn things as I go, I don't consider myself an expert.
But it's the same with everything. And I think the best way to
learn something is to do it, and just stumble forward.
You know, when we talk about apps and somebody will say "hey, I
released an app six months ago" - by the way some of you have really
good downloads which is awesome -"I released an app six
years,sorry, six months ago. I've had like five downloads". And I think, to me
I think, well good for you, you've done something. Most
people don't. Or most people, they'll tell you their app idea and
they'll want you to to build it for them, or they want to remove all
risk from the situation - they don't want to invest money in it, they don't want to
invest time in it, they don't want to do all that kind of stuff. And
risk is something that is always being allocated. You know, when
you're a permanent employee working someplace, you work for a company
that assumes all the risk of making sure you have all the work,
but you have very little risk. And if you're a contractor, you assume the risk
of finding work, in finding you know contracts. If you work for clients, you
assume the risk of finding clients, and they assume the risk
that their project will work. And when you produce your own apps, you assume the
risk of making sure that app works and you have the revenue that comes in and
everything like that. Anyway, dude, another rambling on
video, sorry about that! Hey, if you are gonna start, get
started. There's nothing wrong with starting and it
not working.
There's no ...
The reason we don't start is because we don't want to look stupid and you don't
want to risk everything, and you don't want to put your family in jeopardy but
you can handle a lot more than you think. So anyway that's
just my opinion, what do I know?I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!