Hey this is the daily overpass my name is Eric and I make apps. Now today let's
talk about getting clients for your software company.
Okay so today I want to answer a question that came in last week from
Aireec Joseph who says " Hi Eric my name is Aireec, sounds similar" yeah but it's
spelled differently Aireec, which is a bad ass a way to spell it. I think I might
start spelling my name that way just for fun. Right he says anywhere I'm a
freelance developer and I want to start a software development company. I want to
know which came first the app or th e customers? That's a really good question
so which came first the app or the customers the app, I mean I had a few
customers before we did our first app, but hardly anything worth doing. So, I
started overpass in 2004 and sometimes I say it with pride, like you know
been around since 2004, but other times I say it with embarrassment because I
wanted to do client work and I couldn't get any clients for like a long time. So
I set up the company in 2004 because I needed a limited company to do
contracting with and I didn't want to just call it like Eric Wroolie
enterprises or whatever my initials. I wanted a really cool name and I
spent a little bit of time thinking about it and I found the name
'Overpass' and I really liked the name and I set it up, and that's how I'm
gonna get some clients, I start my own thing, be my own man
and everything like that, and I did nothing with it. I did the same
thing a lot of people do, I set up a website, I got some business cards and I
waited for the phone to ring, which of course doesn't happen. It's the exact
same thing with apps, as a developer, as a technical technician, you think it's all
about the product, it's all about the service, we'll set everything up we'll make
everything perfect and then we don't focus on the marketing, we just expect
people will find us and because you're better than everybody else they'll go
with you. The truth is they don't even know that you exist and they don't
know that the app exists so this is the problem I had. I would work a contract
and the contract would come to an end. I remember 2006 I left the contract
because I wanted to focus a hundred percent of my time on overpass. I went home
and I and I read a bunch of books on sales, I read a bunch
books on cold calling and I made a few calls. I mean it's and it was like I
was just that was just so not my thing I hated doing sales I still kind of hate
doing sales and so I didn't do anything. Like a year passed and I worked on
little projects and and I did get a few little jobs, but hardly anything worth
not not worth keeping the money going but luckily, I had enough saved up from
contracting my previous contract that I was able to survive. Eventually I
went back into corporate life and went back and took on another contract, I
kept doing this for about ten years, leaving those contracts, going back in,
leaving those, going back in. I would do a lot of blogging and social media
stuff and try to get the word out there and get people to notice
overpass but it was kind of just half-assed. I wasn't fully committed to
it and it was a thing that I really wanted to do but I wasn't I wasn't fully
committed to it. I was yeah with the oh I need to learn how this new software
works, I need to learn how this new technology works, but like we talked
about the other day, working in on those projects that I never finished, made me a
better developer. because I would go into these new contracts and I would have a
much higher rate of pay, because I've learned say c-sharp on my own or
something like that, so that worked really well. Now the app, the first app
that we did was 2012 and that came out and that was like the first
ever thing that I could call my very own; I mean all these years
of being a software developer where I'm like I worked on that I worked on that
and I felt a sense of ownership for it they didn't belong to me and my first
app was like this is my app on the App Store and it was just going out there
and tried to get people downloading it and but I was still very timid so I was
working I'm still working a contract but I went from five days a week down to
three days a week they were really good to allow me to do that and then I
started getting a little bit more confidence and more people started
contacting me and started thinking how do I get node how do I get more noticed
and all the blogging and and and the SEO work and everything that we had going on
started to pay off but it's it was such a slow process it's
embarrassingly slow how timid I was about the whole thing I should have been
jumping up and down and said hey I'm overpass over here this is me but but I
wasn't in fact when I left one of my contracts I left a forwarding email
address of my overpass address and somebody says Eric do you have a company
he's like yes I have this company but I don't really you know and it was this
thing I had this dream but I was almost like apologetic about the fact that I
had this dream because I didn't want to tell other people about it and if I
could go back I would just you know I would punch my my younger self in the
face because I'll just snap out of it be more assertive get out there and tell
people about it so the app started to help because then I started to realize
hey we can you know that we could do this and we started building these
things and because I had these own products of my own it gave me a lot more
confidence when I wouldn't met with clients because I could say this is what
we worked on we've done this we've done this this is kind of stuff though that
we've done you know it really started to pay off I said I started doing the
videos and the videos helped too because we're always thinking about how do we
get out and meet new people I'm a very I'm a very shy and introverted person I
can sit at the computer all day and not talk to anybody which is I mean I've
just always been that way but I'm getting more used to getting out meeting
people and be more personal with people and everything like that so yeah Rick I
know it's kind of a roundabout way to answer the question but get the setting
up a software company is easy doing the limited company is easy even hiring
developers is easy but getting the clients is going to be something that
that's the most important thing and in fact I would even say see if you could
get clients first before you set things up just even if you you know and just
reach out there engage their interests think how can you appeal to those to
those people who your clients going to be what is the niche they're looking at
do the same thing we would do with an app we think who are the people who are
going to be interested in this app what can I do to make them see this app what
kind of things would they be searching on and the on the on the web
how can I reach out to them what kind of content can I write to do this what kind
of demo projects can I make that would make it very interesting for them so and
it's always something that you know I'm still working on I'm still still
bringing in new clients we're still talking to new people and but it's it's
there's so many developers out there setting up their own company there's
doing their own thing and there's only so many clients so where we have supply
and demand and where I think we're getting the point where we have more
supply than we have demand and then that gets a bit dangerous they have to think
when that's the case when there's more develop developers out there then you
can swing a stick ad then you have to think how do I stand out from the rest
of them and I think Eric that's that's the the question to be asking yourself
when you set your stuff up who are who are your clients gonna be how do you
reach out to them how do they make you how do you make them find you and and
don't just do like I did and and create some business cards to sit them down and
wait by the phone wait for the phone to ring so hey I hope that's a little bit
helpful I may have talked about some of this stuff before in the past but it's a
it's a really good topic and I made so many mistakes in this area that I that I
hope none of you guys out there make if you start to do your own company so
anyway that is it for today I will talk to you guys again tomorrow