07: Must learn balance Daniel-san!

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly podcast where two old internet vets talk about technology, the internet, where it's going to shit and what we do to fix it. I'm Jason. And I'm Brian.

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Hey, Brian. Hey, Jason. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. To start this episode, I just want to say thanks to Rudy Jachan for coming and being our guest last week. Our first guest. Yes. Excellent conversation, as always, with Mr. Rudy. That's true. Fantastic guy. So... Here we are, episode seven.

And I just got an email from Rackspace, because I'm a Rackspace customer. And it's their, you know, their monthly newsletter. And I just, I have to mention this because it, I was, I was chuckling for, I'm still chuckling about it. The Rackspace newsletter is called the Rack Review. I don't know how they get that past any of the spam filters, because it sounds like a booby rating site.

Yes, it does. It sounds like, you know, plenty of sites that we used to visit in the past. Or maybe still do. Or used to work for. Or used to work for. Or was a plot device in a movie by, you know, what's his face? I can't even remember the director's name. Totally screwed that up. Oh, well. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.

It was the movie with the guy from So... How I Met Your Mother, who's in every movie known to man now. And... Neil Patrick Harris? No, the other one. The Muppets guy. Oh, the Muppets guy, who's always naked. Yes, that guy. He needs to put some pants on. So it was the one where he got the girl knocked up. But he was running a, basically a Mr.

Skin site. Okay. So I rack review site. Gotcha. Find the chicks. So is it... I don't know if it's on purpose, if they do it on purpose. I hope it is, because that is quite funny. It is pretty good. It's tongue-in-cheek. Yes. I do hope it's on purpose. If not, then I'd really like to meet the guy that came up with the name and doesn't realize it. And I'm sure everybody else in the office is snickering at him behind his back.

Yeah. It reminds me, when we first started JPEG Magazine, Derek Powazic, who was our co-founder and lead designer, would always do our newsletters, because he was the community guy. And he would start every newsletter with, hi, peggers.

Oh, dear. Yeah. Not really realizing what was going on with that. Granted, pegging gets into the kind of deeper, darker hierarchy of weird and kinky sex. Yes. And I didn't know what it was, but our friend Jason Shoup, who was on the team, kind of pointed it out.

He was a good friend of ours at that point. I don't know if he was on the team or not. Well, let's do a quick flashback to our education episode and the whole concept of the professional Google searcher. If you're about to name anything, do a quick Google search. Yeah. Or Wikipedia.

Just see what might come up. Yeah. And on that point, I'm not even going to tell you what a pegger is if you don't already know. Google it, boys and girls, because it's- Turn off the child filter. Turn off, yes. And, or you can go to Wikipedia, because there are some amusing illustrations, or at least there used to be.

Illustrations. Yes. Excellent. Uh-huh. Kind of like the old versions of the Joyous Sex book that I remember sneaking into my parents' room to see, which were all illustrated instead of with photos. And very hairy 70s people. Very hairy, because I- All the dudes had beards. Oh, wait. Kind of like now. All the dudes had beards.

And all the ladies had armpit hair. Uh-oh. Oh, yes. Yeah. My mom had that book, too. And I used to sneak in and take a peek. Oh, the wide, wide world of sports. Now it's just a Google search away. Kids, you don't know how lucky you have it.

So go check out Peggers, and that'll make that story a hell of a lot funnier. So you're taking off soon. You're going to the great, sunny island of Hawaii. Well, through the magic of internet technology, I'm already back by now. So I hope I had a really good time.

Yes. I'm assuming I'm very tan and relaxed. Mm-hmm. This is a disjointed timeline episode. Yes. We're knocking this one out before, because I will be missing a week, and actually having the first real vacation I've had in two years.

Mm-hmm. as far as anybody in our position can ever have a real vacation. By saying I'm having a vacation, I'm getting on a plane, going somewhere really, really nice, but taking everything with me so I can do my job. So you are planning on working? I don't have a choice. I've informed all of my clients that there will be no major projects to be done. But in this world that we now live in, daily updates are the norm. I have

two bands on tour that are doing daily shows, and things will need to be done about those. I have regular updates that we do for other clients that have to be done on a daily basis. I should probably have hired an intern at this point to take care of it, but I didn't. So, and, you know, it's just, I'll have emails I'll need to respond to. I'll have people I'll have to talk to. It just doesn't go away. But when I go on vacation, that just means I wake

up. I take a look at everything. I do a half an hour pass while, you know, other people putter around and go get breakfast or get me coffee. Then I actually have my vacation day, and I turn my phone off, sort of. I basically just, you know, I switch off the alerts, and I'll take a look at it every now and then. And I already allocate, you know, a half an hour at the end of the evening to make sure that everything's taken care of and deal with stuff that I have to deal with again. So that's, that's me shutting down.

Wow. Good Lord. Yeah. And it's, and you're probably going to wake up to a metric shit ton of emails since it's five hours. Like California is basically five hours, going to be five hours behind you or ahead of you, ahead of you.

I think it's three. It's three hours ahead. Oh, that was five. So the timing should be interesting on that. So yeah, I'll wake up to a lot of emails and knock them out really quick. The nice part is when I check again at night, I can do whatever needs to be done and send off emails and nobody will respond. So I know I'll be fine and enjoy a nice dinner and perhaps go to a luau and have some poi and some rum based fruity drink with

a lot of umbrellas in it and know that I'll be okay. So it's, it's, um, yeah, I, I accepted the fact that this is the reality. It's, it's what I knew would happen when I started my own company. It's, you don't get to just completely disengage ever, unfortunately.

Yeah. I'm lucky. I've only been to Hawaii once and it was for a seven day cruise, an Irish music cruise. Oh, wow. Yeah. I like the Irish music. Probably wasn't a lot of sobriety on that cruise. No, surprisingly, I remember more of that one than the second one I went on, which was to Mexico, which was a bad, bad time. But since we were on a cruise, no internet, no cell phone.

So it was a forced, uh, not anymore. Now, no, I mean, I could, I could have used the internet and I could have used the cell phone, but it was like $25 for 15 minutes. Right. And it wasn't that important to me at that point because I was, that's when I was back at JPEG. That's what made me think of that. And I had just hired somebody to do, you know, to be my, my second. Right. Yes.

I didn't even take a laptop on that trip. I took my cell phone and that was it. And never turned it on until I, I turned it off when I got off the plane and I turned it on when I got back on the plane. Right. And then turned it right back off because the stewardess said, turn off your phone. Well, in, in the 15 years I've been running my own company, I have, I have not taken any trip without bringing at least my laptop with me. I mean, the amount of stuff I bring with me has changed drastically from 15 years ago.

Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Like what, what, what did you used to take and what do you take now? Oh, well, well, I used to take at least, I had an entire bag full of adapters and cables and wires. Um, I, well, I also used to travel a lot more internationally, but even that's changed a lot because I, I, I remember having this huge, like $70 packet of world adapters that you had to have with you. And you even back in the day, I used to have, I took a power

converter because laptops ran on so much juice back then. And they were so like hardcore that you actually had a converter with you for certain countries. Um, drives, external drives, uh, you know, the amount of stuff that I used to lug with me was ridiculous. Now it's pretty awesome. Um, I bring my laptop, I bring my external drive that I dump off, you know, everything, all my work projects are dumped off on the external drive. I don't put that stuff in the cloud. I don't,

I'm not going to do that. Um, and that's about it. I mean, I bring my iPad, but that's for reading by the pool with a margarita. You don't work off your iPad at all? Um, not really. I find it a lot. Uh, there are some things I can do just fine. I definitely do emailing and stuff like that off the iPad, but if I actually have to really get into a site or do some coding or do some graphic stuff, I don't do it on the iPad yet. I haven't transitioned to that. Yeah. Graphic stuff is hard,

but I've got on my iPad, I've basically got it set up with SSH keys into all of my servers. So I can, I can basically, you know, SSH in and do anything I need to do on the servers straight from my iPad. It's, it's great. That's pretty, actually pretty sweet. I might have to start adopting that. It would certainly be nicer than having to run back to the room if I have to do something as an emergency, which is what I do at this point. But I mean, I'm also smart about my travel. I book my hotels and I pick them based, well, not based purely on, but I make sure that I get the wireless

internet and it's a decent connection. And it's all been relatively easy now. I don't, I, I mean, granted, I do spend a little bit of money and I go to nice places, but, um, the, the difference now between 15 years ago to travel and work is stunning. Yeah. So you can get most of your stuff done on your phone. Yeah, I can really, I really can because 99% of my job, especially once I've informed my clients I'm gone is email. So it's all communication. It's all just communication and keeping in touch

and letting them know that you're still there. Hold their hand, hold their hand, even though I'm in a pool. You should get that, uh, that cool service where you, they, uh, basically take your iPhone and dip it in this kind of crazy liquid that waterproofs it. I was just thinking about that last night because I hadn't even thought about it yet. I was like, wow, if I dunk my iPad in the pool, that's a little bit difference in terms of cost as a, say the paperback that I normally just would

have had with me. Yeah. So, yeah. So, uh, a bit late for that since I leave tomorrow, but you know, I haven't packed yet. So onto that. I'll invite you back to my place. It's only mine because it holds my suitcase. It looks like home to me all right. But it's a hundred miles from yesterday night. Who must I be? A man in a suitcase.

And the beer for this particular episode is a new one to me, Four in Hand Crafty Ale Stout. It's quite lovely. Yeah, it was decent. I mean, it, uh, could have packed a little more punch. I'm used to Guinness, so it was a little bit weaker than Guinness. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's no, it's no Guinness, but, uh, it's a nice warm day today and, uh, it hit the spot for a heavier beer.

And, uh, there we go. It's good stuff. And, uh, also, uh, Fat Tire Amber Ale. We also have Fat Tire Amber Ale here, which is lovely. It's, I mean, it's almost like eating a sandwich. It's, it's pretty, pretty heavy and pretty thick, but, uh, I saw it at the store and was like, I think I could go for a Fat Tire today.

Well, it also packs the, uh, calorie punch, so make sure you slap on that Fitbit a little bit later and do a walk. All of this stuff does, man. All this stuff does. This is the only time I ever drink beer. Yeah, I've been trying to stay away from beer recently as well. Um, actually, I've been using an app as well called, uh, Lose It, loseit.com, which, uh, lets you plug in basically everything that you're eating and every exercise that you do and does calorie tracking and all that sort of stuff. And it's, it's really interesting and it's definitely

made some changes in my life. Really? Yeah. Because I found that I, I'm never, uh, vigilant about doing that. Um, it's just, I, you just got to make it part of your routine, man. Every time that you're sitting there eating, you know, you do that, that email check before you start your food. You just bring up the app, you punch it in. And well, half of the stuff I eat is homemade. So, you know, so I'm not going to get, I don't like eating out of a box, so I'm not going to get the calorie count from their

things. Like when I make my lasagna, my lasagna, and it's probably healthier than the stuff that you get at the store. But I mean, it's still lasagna, I guess. So it's still lasagna. So there's only so healthy it can be. So we were talking about that you never get to turn off because you run your own business. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty much impossible to, to basically even really have one day off. I mean, there's, there's something that comes up Saturdays.

There's something that comes up Sunday. Part of that is, is the industry that I work in because the music industry doesn't really stop. It's not like nobody's playing a show on Saturday or Sunday night. So, but also running your own business, you, you are, the buck stops here. At the end of the day, I've got to deal with it.

So why did you start your own business instead of going to work for, uh, an agency, like an agency that you were at before you started your company? What, what turned you off of it? Did you not just like being in an office, not like having a boss? Did you want to be the boss or? Um, I never had any desire to be a boss, which is probably why we haven't expanded yet. I mean, we have a network of contractors that we work with, which is great when we need them. Uh, I don't like

being a boss per se. Um, we've, we've stayed small company because neither my partner or I really want to manage someone. Um, I, I think it's just my temperament. Uh, I just does not play well with others. Um, you know, I, I feel, I know what the right thing is to do and I don't like being told otherwise and I'm going to do it the way I want to do it. And that's that. Uh, I didn't start off, you know, it's not like I came out of college and just started my company. Um, I wish I would have,

uh, I worked for a couple of companies first, which we talked about, I think in our first episode and my experience with management, unpleasant, my, my reviews, unpleasant, not that they were bad reviews, but it's always, you know, I got really pissed off because I would take a lot of breaks, uh, because I was really fast at what I was doing and people around me that were doing the same job, but less, I would have three times the amount of projects that they had and I was managing them

all and managing them. Great. We're getting promoted because they were, you know, company men. That sat there and we're seen in the cubicle all the time and went to the stupid mixers and the parties and, and I just didn't do that stuff. I don't like it. Um, yeah, office politics is just, I'm not good with office politics. Yeah. To hell with that. So, you know, I, I'd been in two or three different companies and generally it was great at the beginning because they were smaller agencies and, and that was fine. I liked that. Um, but eventually they would build up and build up and

build up because that's your goal when you're one of those agencies and it would become more and more and that was that. And I, I just couldn't do it anymore. And the, you know, the straw that kind of broke this camel's back was, was I had moved to London with, with my now business partner, Wendy, as part of a bigger company to start up their London office. Awesome. I, I, London's one of my favorite cities in the world. I'm a Brit pop guy. It's perfect timing. Radiohead just put out,

okay, computer. I was living in London. I was going to the shows and they didn't have much of an office there yet. They basically just gave us a music manager's name and we moved into his office and hung out and did his projects and it was cool as crap. But then they decided to build it up. And next thing we knew, instead of doing cool music gigs, they had invented basically a project that was basically just a pitch machine. It was PowerPoint on steroids and we were doing really, really boring

things and we were being dictated to by salespeople and bosses came in. Yeah. Salespeople back then too, were a completely different breed from now. Oh yes. Oh yes. They would sell, sell them the moon and then have to go back to them two days later when they come back to us and tell us what they pitched to them. We're like, yeah, that, that doesn't exist. You can't do that. Salespeople back then had no concept of what we were actually doing. They were just selling. So they would say yes to everything,

even if it was completely technologically impossible at the time. Yeah. Utterly impossible. Yeah. Beyond impossible. So, so that was my experience and that was finally kind of, you know, at that point they had asked me because they had asked me basically to sign a five-year contract. So to stay in London and then they would do all the paperwork for me to work there and blah, blah, blah. And I, I just looked at it and went, no, I don't want my life to be this. I, I, I can't do this. I can't have a boss. I can't have

everything dictated by people that don't even know what they're doing and get scolded because we can't do it. And so I said, fuck it. I'm out. Cool. So now fast forward 15 years, you are now the master of your own destiny. Yeah. What are some of the, basically the pitfalls that you've had along the way, you know, with, with running a business? Cause I know, I know at least a

couple of people that listened to this are in the same boat. They want to start their own business, but they don't know how. And you know, I don't want to go through like, it's, you know, you can listen to a thousand podcasts that talk about this stuff. I just want to talk about some of the nightmares that you've gone through, how you've gotten through them and advice for some other people, like how to avoid those pitfalls. Right. Cause I've got some of my own that I'll, yeah, there's a ton. Let me just touch on people that might be thinking about starting something up

right now. Don't waste your time on paperwork and, and figuring, you know, going through the checklist that they have online about everything that you need to do to start a business. Don't, don't get mired in, in the details of the paperwork, get out there and start your business and figure out if it's even viable or not. And then you can go back and take care of things.

Yeah. Make your first buck before you spend a thousand dollars on incorporating. Yes. Don't spend a thousand dollars on incorporating. Don't even worry too much about the DBA. Just put it under your name and open a bank account because you got to figure out if it's even going to work or not first. This might only last you six months. Yeah. And I'd say just, I would get at least a DBA. So for the tax reasons, so it's under a different tax. Yeah. The one thing that you should never, ever, ever skip out on is the tax stuff. Make sure that stuff is sorted. Find yourself

a business accountant that you trust and use him. Yeah. Cause I didn't do that or her. I did not do that. And you know, flash forward 20 years for me and it's going to take me another 20 years to get out of the, the screw ups I made in the first 10 years of being a contractor and doing that. So yeah, the account inside of it is super important because it's incredibly complex. I don't know if you've ever

looked at the tax code yourself. It would fill an iPad, um, get, get the accountant. That's, that's the most important thing that you could ever possibly do and talk to people who are in the same kind of industry. Make sure you have a good network of contacts. Uh, and then just give it a shot, see if it's viable or not. And then you can go back and start crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's and taking care of all the little things. I would also say, uh, maybe not like a full-time

lawyer, but at least have a lawyer that you can call. Yeah. And they can at least do a basic contract for you. Yes. Because I, we are both huge fans of the Mike Montero. Fuck you. Pay me video. Yes. Which is one of the best videos. And I wish I had had that video when I started because I've got screwed so many times. Me too. But they're like, those are the basics. Just start, get a, get a accountant, a lawyer who you can just do basics of. It doesn't even have to be a full-time

lawyer. You don't have to give them $400 an hour. Yeah. Just have a good contract, just a good work for hire contract. Yeah. And, and split your money. Don't, don't co-mingle funds. Do not co-mingle funds. Keep everything super separate. Have the accountant, have a lawyer that you can trust. Uh, watch that video, which will be in the show notes because I, yeah, when I saw that, uh, when you showed it to me the first time, I almost start crying. Yeah. I was like, God, I wish I had heard that. And yeah, when you don't undersell yourself, if you believe in what you're

doing, don't ever work for free. Never. No. Because it demeans not only you, it demeans the entire industry. And once a company knows that they can run roughshod over people, they're going to do it to everyone. So we're all in this together. And, uh, one other thing, quarterly tax payments, make them, make them if you can, if not be really aware of them and how much money you're going to owe. You do not want to be caught with your pants down in April. Yes. Ever make the quarterly payments,

especially as a starting business. You can start to fudge around with that later on when you, because ebbs and flows and you start doing budgets and figure out what projects you have for the year and when the money's coming and when it's not. Just don't get behind with the IRS ever because that is probably the thing that will screw you up the biggest. And not only will it end your company, it will screw you up personally. Yes. I have paid more in penalties and fees than I've ever owed in taxes. Yeah. They don't mess around. No, I have, I have probably dropped at least $150,000 in penalties

and interest and fees over the years. Right. And it doesn't go away. Yeah. So don't screw that part up. And, um, just something else just immediately came to mind, uh, which is amazing that exists now because it didn't used to. I, when I started my company, I literally moved back from London and basically set up in my parents' house. Uh, I threw computers and we had desks in my parents' living room and that was amazing that they let us do that just to get things going. Um, again, not with the,

not getting mired down in the details when you're just getting started portion, don't go get an office. That's stupid. You don't know if you're going to make anything or not. I, I, we can, I could do a whole nother show on the pros and cons of working from home, which is what I'm still doing. And I'm coming down more and more on the con. I don't think it's a good idea, especially if you're just starting a business. There are these amazing co-location spaces all over the place. Now, next space, uh, amplify there's, there's a bunch of them and they're fantastic and they're relatively

cheap, especially if you're working with somebody else and with your company, even, well, even better if you're not, because basically you'd just be sitting at home by yourself all day, waiting for your clients to call and crying into your cheerios, get out into one of these spaces, buy a 10 day pass, give it a shot. Networking happens there. You'll get jobs from being there. Yeah. Um, the last company I worked for up in San Francisco, metrically, we worked out of a, um, it was basically

the first space we worked out of was an incubator space. So we were with, you know, seven or eight different companies like encoding.com came out of there, uh, live fire, live fire. I think the commenting thing that the, the, the discuss, uh, competitors, uh, but a bunch of people, but it was, you know, that was mainly funded through, uh, kind of a VC type of package deal type of deal, but that place folded because they sold the building. And so the whole thing kind of fell apart.

But after that we went to basically what was half of a coffee shop in the mission in San Francisco and worked out of there. Right. It was great. You know, just a bunch of tables. You just go in, grab a spot and power up, go through your, go through your work. And they had meeting rooms that we could use, but we met some really cool people and there's a coffee shop next door, so you can stay caffeinated to your eyes fall out of your head. But it's also nice because there's restaurants and you're, you're around, you're being out and you're being social, um, running

your own business and doing it from home. You run a severe risk of basically going pretty much insane. Yeah. I don't, I don't recommend it either at all. I'm doing it right now. I'm running my, I mean, I literally have like a three foot by four foot space with my desk, my chair and my iMac. And that's what I work out of. And so that's why my Fitbit is so up to date because I can only stay there for like two hours at a shop before I have to get outside and see sunlight. I don't, yeah, I don't recommend working from home, but don't spend a lot on a co-working space,

you know, try and piggyback on other people who have like package deals that you can get in with. Like I've known a couple of companies that they'll like buy a five seat or a 10 seat license just because they're going to be ramping up, but they haven't ramped up yet. Yeah. So go with that kind of thing. I don't want to go too long on that. You can always just buy a couple passes and hit some of those every now and then and find a coffee shop that you really love and do that on Tuesdays and do a co-locating space on the Thursday of every week and then try to do it out of your house Monday,

Wednesday, Friday, but certainly don't go, you know, blow all your cash on an office when you haven't tested out your business yet. Yeah. When you don't know if it's going to work. Yeah. Get to, and it also depends on what you're going to do. I mean, like I'm a coder, so I just do technical work. So I'm not really doing a whole lot of client meetings or stuff like that, but I also do need silence sometimes, but you do client work. Other people might be doing their own startup with like a product. So, I mean, it all, it all kind of depends on the kind of business that

people are trying to do. Yeah. Um, but it's still, yeah, just be social, be social, do networking. Uh, I remember back when we first kind of started out, we, we reached, there was a bunch of other people kind of doing the same thing. A bunch of other people that, that we had known that had worked at the same few companies that I had worked at when we started that were all becoming independent contractors, whatever. And we started a group just amongst us and we called it the web hermits and we

would have lunch once a week together. You remember? Yeah. You were in it, right? Yeah. I was one of them. So we used to do the web hermits and everybody, you know, it would just be a rotating cast of whoever picked lunch. You pick a place on Wednesdays and we all got together and sat around for two hours, had some lunch, bullshitted, talked about stuff, shared tips, shared jobs. Yeah. You know, start, start your own, uh, what's that thing that,

that's the super big one. Meetup. Yeah. Yeah. Start your own meetup group about your business and find other people that are doing something similar. Don't even start it. Go, just start going. Or join one. Yeah. I mean, but you just, that's one of the major ones is stay social and don't get too, I mean, yeah, you got to work, but just. The networking and, and the getting lost in up your own ass in the internet is, is the two biggest downfalls I can see for anybody that's listening to this, that's thinking about starting a business. Cause the obvious is it's going to be

tech. So, and not necessarily. I mean, I've got, I know some people that are listening that are in completely like they're, they're scientists. They're doing, doing other stuff. A couple of writers, you know, it's, it's different, but you know, just, you have to tailor, tailor that, that whole experience to your business. Right. But, um, another suggestion I think I would have, um, and this is one that actually will bite you in the ass as you're starting a new business,

because I've been canned by clients for absolutely no reason. Review the people that you're hiring regularly. Even if you think you've got a really, really good accountant every couple of years, hire another accountant to review last year's taxes from your previous accountant.

I've switched accountants four times. Now I've redone it. Cause you can resubmit taxes for three year periods. I've had my, my most recent accountant went back over my stuff and he was like, Oh, he's missing all kinds of stuff. I got nice fat rebate checks from the U S government for three years running. Wow. So I would recommend that for, for anybody that you're hiring any service level. Don't just assume it's going to be okay. People get complacent. It happens. Yeah. We don't,

and I get pissed off when we get fired by our clients, but I get it, you know, review things every now and then. Sometimes you need to shake things up. Don't get too set in your ways. Always be looking to just take another second look at what your other options could be for anything. Well, Dan, that's a really good tip. I wish I'd had that one too, because I got screwed by a couple shady accountants. Yeah. You know, and if you're not good with finances, find a cheap bookkeeper too.

Yeah. Bookkeeping is actually way, way cheaper than accountants. And if you're not good at this stuff, it will bite you in the ass. You will be buried in April going through all your receipts. If you're not somebody that can keep up on that stuff and put it into QuickBooks or whatever program you want to use and find a frigging program for your company and start it up immediately, hire a bookkeeper.

You meet with them once a month, you hand them a box of receipts and they take care of that all for you. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Um, I've gone a different route now with, with, uh, my business. I've actually got a business manager now who have, he has all these people on staff. He's got accountants, he's got bookkeepers and got money managers. Right. All that, you know, just all in one package.

That's fantastic. So I have to pay. I mean, it's basically a percentage of my income that goes to, goes to this full service package, but I'm finding that is, you know, so far it's like I can sleep at night now. But if there are those, if, if you're not into doing those things and you don't actively enjoy them, like I'm so frigging anal. I like QuickBooks. I like putting everything in. I like knowing where everything is at. If you're not going to do it, hire someone immediately because you won't do it

and it will screw you. These are super important things. If you're writing your own business. Um, also the networking thing, again, go to conferences, certainly at the beginning. Uh, that's something I've been slacking off on a long time, but for even for me, like I haven't even been going to Coachella.

I work in the music industry. Coachella is where the entire music industry goes. All of LA empties out into once a year and I haven't gone, which is criminal of me. I should be there every year, but you're a diva. And if you can't get VIP passes, who wants to stand in the sun? I can get VIP passes. I'm just too lazy sometimes. Um, go to things that involve your industry.

Absolutely. Get on panels. Well, also go to things that involve the clients that you're looking for, not just what you're doing, but if you're, if you're actively soliciting clients, if you're, if you're in client services, go where the clients are and you get to write that off your taxes.

So yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's, it's a business expense. Um, you've got to do it. It's building business. Oh, what else could I think of? I'm trying to think of any other major, huge, crazy, horrible things that have ever happened. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. That has bitten me in the ass multiple times. Okay. I had another one. Go ahead. What do you mean put all your eggs in a basket? Um, don't have just one type of client. I, I never should have, there's, there's a lot to be said for niching yourself because that really makes you stand out

in a certain industry, but always have a couple other things going on in a different industry. Always. Because, uh, as you all know, the music industry is completely crashed and we used to have a lot of non-music industry clients. We used to do a lot of tech dev and, and now we're scrambling to get back into that and trying to find our purchase holds because you'll lose contacts if you just focus on the one industry, all eggs in one basket. If, if that industry goes down, you're going down with

it if you haven't diversified yourself a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I was just going to say in any of your contracts that you have set up, hopefully with your lawyer, always have a kill fee if somebody changes their mind. I have recently, I got bit by that hard and, uh, probably lost several thousand dollars because it wasn't properly documented. People were friends. I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're going to be really tempted to do handshake contracts. Do not do that. Do not do it. Ever. Not once. Never. Yeah. It's, I mean, cause there's, there's no recourse and they can say, Oh, well, we're looking over it. We'll pay you when we get through it. And I mean, the money just never comes. Yeah. Yeah. Handshake contract. And I'm just working with, you know, people who, if you're in a business or in any kind of industry, like at least with us, we're tech,

we build websites. Everybody wants what we can, we can make. So family is always going to hit you up. Never do freebies. Don't do freebies. No, actually don't ever do websites for your families, even if they pay, trust me, it will not work out well. No friends and family, no friends and family ever refer them to someone else. Yeah. Yeah. Get one of your buddies that you're hanging out with, refer to them, say, here's my family, take care of them. And they will, I'll do your family's website.

You do mine. Yeah. And then be friends anymore. Exactly. Refer them to somebody you don't really love. Yeah. That was a big pitfall because definitely I've gotten bit on that so many times and it just, it can't work out well. It just doesn't, um, ever. So don't ever even take those on.

Yeah. Get the, get those contracts, get the kill fees. Um, kill fees are super important. Uh, I usually do something that's more like, you know, I need at least three months notice. If you want to fire us, we get three months. And even if you just want to terminate immediately, you pay us for those three months. So, cause you have ongoing maintenance. Yeah. I usually do retainers with my clients.

So retainers, we were just talking about this earlier. Uh, I've never really done retainers because some, most of the work doesn't really kind of lend itself to it, but at least that's what I thought it was in my head that I could never get retainers. You can get a retainer. Now, now I don't, I don't press a key. Right. Until there's at least 10 hours of prepaid work. Right. Um, and most clients it's going to be 20, you know, actually every client

is 20, uh, because if they're, if they're not going to pay you a retainer, what makes you think that they're going to pay you after you're done? Yeah. If they can't cough up some money up front, they're not going to pay it back ever. So that's another thing. Uh, everybody has their own option about doing it. If, if we're not on a retainer basis, if we're just doing it on a per project fee, I always ask for half up front and I will not start on the project until that first check arrives.

Yeah. And if you get it to me late too bad. And if you've got a deadline too bad, that's the deal. Half up front. If you want to walk over here with a thousand dollars wad of cash, fine, but I'm not, I'm not touching a key until I get some money. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's been a problem for me lately because a lot of my stuff is maintenance and quick fixes, you know, call you in the middle. Like we talked about, that's perfect for the retainer though. That's when you put them on a X amount of hours per month. And that's what

you, what I'm sending you an invoice for this amount of dollars every month. And I'm available to you. Now do your, do you, do you do expiring hours on your retainers? So if they hire you for 20 hours a month, they only use 10 of those hours. Do you have rollover minutes? No, there's no rollover minutes. No rollover minutes. But they're, they're, you know, you buy into a certain amount of hours and we give you a discounted rate as part of the retainer. Yeah. And as soon as you go over that,

then you're back to our full rate. Yeah. But if you don't use them too bad. Yeah. Well, that's the cost. It's not, it's not about the hours. It's about the availability. I am making myself available to you for X amount of hours this month. I have made sure that I will not have other projects that cut into that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's basically buying out hours of my time. So, you know, no rollover minutes, because when you call me at midnight screaming about something that needs to be fixed immediately, guess what? You bought out that time

and I'm available. Right. Prepaid geek. Exactly. Prepaid. Oh man. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's tough trying to keep on top of all this stuff when you're still trying to do the job, learn new things. And, but it's, it's a cost of being the boss. It's, it's extremely difficult to run a business and do the work that, uh, that the business does. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it takes a certain personality type to do it. And if you don't think you're cool with that, don't start your own business ever or find, you know, partner with somebody else, find somebody else that might be into doing that because yeah, it's, um, it's a lifestyle running your own business. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It's not a nine to fiver. No. And I've, I've found that I don't think I'm in, it comes, comes and goes like sometimes I'm really good at

running my own business, but then it gets to the point where I just crack and go get a day job and then say, why do I, what, why did you quit? Go back to it. You know, I've had this really bad kind of, I think you're, well, you're, I think you're a bit like me in, in the sense that you don't know how to stop and have downtime. Yeah. If you're running, you're running and you burn out really quick. Downtime, downtime is super important. Oh my God. There's something to tell all of you people coming from somebody who hasn't taken a vacation in years, but I am leaving tomorrow,

but, um, yeah, I don't get full downtime, but at least it is an abbreviated version of it in terms of, you just need time to be not on call. Yeah. And if you don't do that, you will burn yourself out and your work will suffer. Your clients will fire you and you're not going to have a business anymore.

Yeah. You need to be able to step away now and then. Yeah, that's definitely something I have learned in my old age. It, when I was doing, cause I, I put the same amount of hours into my own business as I did when I was working at startups. Right. And there was a time when I was at Technorati and I worked 40 out 40 days without a day off. Right. And literally right before launch, I came in and had band-aids on all my fingers cause they were all blistered and bleeding and they did like,

well, you're also on edge at that point and you'll get an email from somebody that will just set you off and you will just be like, I can't fucking believe this. Right. And if you were relaxed and had a little bit of a break and came in with a clear head, it'd just be like, oh yeah. Okay. Whatever. No biggie. No, I literally got an email that said we needed to change a font on our font size on like the, the search results pages. And I had a panic attack. Like it felt like I was

having a heart attack. I passed out and slept for something like 12 hours on my couch, like halfway with my feet on the couch and on the floor. Yes. So downtime is key. You can't, you gotta actually build it in. I mean, if you're going to start your own business, you basically need to be able to break down your life into our segments and know, you know, all right, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to give myself an hour and I'm actually going to have a lunch and I'm going to come back and I'm going to do an hour that's just for me. I'm going to sit and do something I want to do, learn how to

play guitar, learn how to play piano, something. Walk the dog, walk the dog, take an hour to yourself, then come back to it again. Yeah. Yeah. And don't get caught in the idea that you have to respond to every client immediately. Yeah. Because once you set that precedent, you're screwed. Because I can, one of the, one of the great things when I, when I went to JPEG, we had a great, great slogan. If the site goes down, you know, okay, we'll fix it as fast as we can. But, uh, Devin, our chief operating

officer one day just stood up and was like, guys, don't worry about it. We're not curing cancer here. Yeah. We're not. We're making a website. Just don't get stressed about it. I've had to remind my clients to, Hey, sites go down. Yeah. Shit happens. And then the same, the same guy, it's like what we, we just launched metrically. I worked with him at the next one. And I was like going super fast trying to do this. And I was trying to clear a database table inadvertently because I was using a,

our internal GUI. And instead of clicking, uh, empty table, I hit dump table. Whoops. So the whole, the whole table was gone. It was the user's table. Whoops. And he's like, when was the last backup? I'm like, Oh, two hours ago we got automated backups. He's like, Oh, no biggie. No, we lost like 10 clients.

Just go put it back in. Shit happens. Hard drives crash. Yeah. Things, horrible things will happen when you're running your business, whatever the hell your business will be. And you just got to take a deep breath, go, all right, this isn't the best thing that could have happened. But how do we fix it?

Let's do it. And, and we'll, unless you're a surgeon, nobody died. Yeah, exactly. If you're a surgeon, don't fuck it up. Please.

So, I thought of one more thing, uh,

when we had our little break and Jason and I both just revealed our likes to each other, that, um, I think makes a lot of sense, especially for anybody starting a brand new business. Surround yourself comfortably. Do not be in an environment you're not comfortable in.

Spend a little bit of cash. Make sure that you're like where you're sitting, that you like what you're seeing, that you have a view that doesn't drive you crazy, that you've surrounded yourself with things that not only work for you, but they make you happy. It's a, it's a concept I call fart.

Okay. No? Stick with me here. Bring it. Bring it. Fart. Functional art. Okay. I thought you were going to do a Gary Busey type of thing. No. Functional art, which I just call fart. Um, pretty things, uh, a good inbox and outbox that, that isn't just the not one 99 steel mesh from Ikea, something that you like to look at something that works with your entire surroundings, create an office environment for yourself that you like to

be in because if you're happy there, you're going to have a much better day and buy a good chair, buy a good chair. I'm still on the Herman Miller air on chair, actually by a standing desk and skip by the standing desk, which I'm still looking into at some point. I will get that. So speaking of things that you like to surround yourself with, yes, on my trip up to San Francisco, two weeks ago or three weeks ago, whenever this comes out, um, my friends, uh, David and Chen took

me to an unbelievably awesome store called Muji. Muji. Muji. Okay. And I was familiar with, I'm familiar with Mochi. No. Gnocchi. I like Gnocchi. Gnocchi is the Italian. I'm Italian. Mochi is the Japanese ice cream. Oh, that's good too. Yes. I thought it was Mochi.

Mochi. Okay. Either way. Okay. So I had the, there's an app that they put out for the iPad called the Muji notebook. And I would, so, and I tried it and it really didn't resonate with me. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And forgot about it. And then my friend was like, you got to try this pen. It's the best pen I've ever bought.

And I tried this little pen. It was like just a little Bic type of thing, but it was so precise and felt so good in my hand. I'm like, oh my God, I got to get one of these. And he's like, okay, we'll go to the store. And so while we were walking around, he took me to this beautiful store down in Soma, the Muji store. And it was, it was amazing. They sell every, they sell clothes, they sell furniture that they sell kitchenware, but more importantly for my, my goals, they sell

notebooks and they sell pens, right? I love Moleskines. I use a Moleskine. I've used it for 10 years now. I've got probably 20 filled ones in my house and I just got this new cool pen that does a slide thing that stays with the notebook. It was, it was really, really cool stuff. But then I got to Muji and I was just in love. I mean, I got, I got pens, I got pencils, I got notebooks, but

the basic black Muji pen. I got the 0.38. I'm guessing that's millimeter or one would assume version. And I got the 0.5. Cause I thought I tried to try them both in the store, but the 0.38 is what I, is my go-to now. I love this thing. It's clear. It's, and here's the other thing, no branding on anything they sell. Oh, I'm such a huge fan of that. I, it reminds me of Case Pollard in, um, what was a pattern recognition? The William Gibson book, one of my favorite books.

I used to love the Amber Crompe and Fitch cargo pants because, uh, the, the version that I used to have out like five, six, 10 years ago or whatever was so frigging comfortable. I remember seeing you in those. I took a black, I took a Sharpie to their logo and I would cross it out. I refuse to wear people's logos. I am not paying money to wear a frigging logo. I love that they don't do branding.

So that's why I've never seen you in an Ed Hardy shirt. You would never see me in an Ed Hardy, Ed Hardy shirt anyways, because the design is so fucking horrific, but I don't, I don't like logos and I do tend to not wear anything that has a logo. I I'll cross them out. I hate that. So the fact that they do no branding whatsoever is fantastic. Yeah. Um, he, who shall not be named who I used

to do stuff with, uh, taught me a great thing. Just go buy a $1 49, um, thread or seam stripper. Yep. And you can pull off all the tags, almost everything. And it takes a few minutes and then boom, you're done. Yeah. Uh, my friend gave me this beautiful, like eight, $900 Von Dutch motorcycle jacket, but it had a giant Von Dutch logo over the tit. And I'm just like, ain't much better than

Ed Hardy. Exactly. But it was one of the greatest jackets I've ever had. So yeah, say goodbye to that. Now there's just a few little, little stitch marks in a distance. You can't see it. So that's a good investment too. So yeah. And I do, I do say, you know, surround yourself, make it, make your surroundings comfortable. I'm not one for extravagance in my workplace. You know, I used to run a site called Spartanized, which is about getting rid of excess. Well,

you, you and I are both pretty minimalistic, so it depends on your personal style. But I mean, I definitely think whatever your style is, don't skimp on that. Yeah. Go ahead and spend a little bit of coin to make your entire day so much better. If you're going to spend eight hours sitting in a room, make the room pretty. So what I do is I have one of my favorite artists is a guy named Marcus Pearson.

Uh huh. He does, he does these anthropomorphic coyotes. Um, and I've, I've known him for, God, I met him when I was 15. Cause my dad did his first art show. Now he's huge. He's like a huge success. And since he's done all these shows with my dad, he gives him these very rare limited edition pieces of art. And my dad gave me one of them and that sits in my room. And it's, it's this little hand sketch piece called, uh, uh, what the black sheep knows about the black sheep in the

family. Cause all this artwork comes with stories and I have, that's my piece of art that I always have in, in my field of vision because I can always look back at that and just, it takes me away from what I'm doing. You know, that's what I need. I need to look at something and just have it take me away from where I'm at. Yeah. And it's not even about the view for me. It's about, you know, just, I know I have my favorite art, but before that I had other pieces that I would go to.

Yeah. So it is functional, but it's also beautiful. Yeah. And I've spent a lot of, I'm spending a lot more money on save rent than you are to be in an area that I really like that makes me happy. I go out on my balcony, I see palm trees, I can smell the ocean breeze. I can take a five minute walk and walk along the beach for 10 minutes and then come back. Yeah. And, um, um, yeah, it's, it's, you got to find something that makes you happy. Um, and, and a lot of,

it's a lot of the small stuff, having a good pen like you just recommended is, is amazing. And I, I tried it out and it feels good. And cause I write a lot. And so if I'm going to write a lot, I want the best pens I can have. I left one. I saw one of my pens here. That was my, my favorite go-to before that I left here last time. That's out the door. I've used that pen for 10 years. I love it. So yeah. Um, and you have something, um, I have a website as well, which is,

is all about fart and functional art and design and, and it's, it's fab.com. They also have apps for, for everything. So you can also just grab the app for it. And it's basically just a collection of really well done, well designed, interesting ideas, uh, things, you know, they solve problems you never knew you had. It's, it's that kind of thing. You know, you have your amazon.com where you can find

basically everything, whatever you want. You have your Ikea's where you can go set up your desks and, and create your offices, or you can go to fab.com and find really interesting, cool, innovative ways to solve regular problems. They have amazing amounts of products, just tons and tons and tons of things.

And it's, it seems, I don't, I should have probably researched it a bit more. Um, I just love it because I spent a lot of money there. I don't know how they work it out. Obviously, if you're some sort of industrial designer or if you just came up with this cool idea, you can sign up with them and have your products placed in there. Okay. So they don't make anything themselves. They curate.

No, they curate. It seems to be a curated system. So, and do you go to the, uh, Think Etsy, but actually cool. Okay. So, but you do all, you do all your e-commerce through them. You don't go to the creator site. No, no, you do all your e-commerce through them. They do the shipping. They, they even have beautiful packaging. The fab boxes that show up are lovely and they've thought through every aspect of it. I mean, it really is beautifully designed. It's not incredibly. I mean, some of the things on there are obviously incredibly expensive, but you can find everything. I mean,

they, you know, limited edition posters and weird, crazy artwork to put up on your wall to entire desk systems, to entire, you know, USB, crazy plugins and, and all this sort of stuff that you can set up around you that I'm, you can find anything that matches whatever style that you have.

It's designed cool. It's a great site. And I, this came up because I was complimenting you on your bottle opener from fab. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I have a magnet bottle opener that attaches to your refrigerator. It's, it looks cool as crap.

Yeah. It's incredibly functional. It's fart. Yeah. We got to take a picture of that and put it in the show notes for sure. Because I'm just looking at it. I'm like, this is just nice. It's just like, it's a, it's a single slab of metal, but with a, almost a one eighth dome that comes out and underneath it, you kind of put the thing in and pop your bottle. There you go. But it, it doesn't look like the traditional, you know, old style bar opener or, you know, it, it's cool. Yeah. It's just cool and

beautifully designed. And I love stuff like that. And if I had a ton more money, my entire place would probably be coming from fab. So to, to finish this up with the, the things that, you know, you need to surround yourself with to make working great. We were talking a bit ago about my new thing, which is I have the fortunate, fortunate circumstance to live with someone who has a hot tub. Oh yes.

Which we, it hasn't been used in almost nine months, but now the weather's getting better. In the morning, I roll out of bed, heat that puppy up to a hundred degrees and sit in it for 20 minutes just to start the day. Sun's coming up and I sit in the hot tub, relax, think about nothing. And when I'm done, I get out, grab a shower, get to work. My day has been a thousand times better. Right. And it also,

the other, the first day I got in it, I was just kind of sitting still and I hear this, this buzz. It sounded kind of like a, like a giant bumblebee. And I look up and we've got a little canopy over it. And in the canopy with me is a hummingbird. And that thing got to within like a foot of my face.

And I'm just standing at this thing going, that is cool. That is a cool way to start your day. Snow White out here with these things. Yeah. That's really awesome. I have a condo in Toronto and cause for a long time, I was spending a lot of time there. And, um, I had a sauna in the, in the downstairs group song or whatever. And I did the exact same thing every morning when I woke up, I would go downstairs. I would sit in the sauna for 20, 25 minutes, maybe do a workout,

then come back upstairs, take a shower. It really makes your day go so much better. So never neglect the body. Yeah. And just, I mean, take some time before you start your day because running a business or being a consultant, it's stressful. Yeah. It's really stressful. And most of the stress comes at night. I was, I was telling you, I had, I literally have nightmares about clients that don't

exist projects that don't exist and deadlines that I am way past that never happened because it can be, it can be a tough business and your mind does crazy things to you. So I wake up in the morning, I'm just a ball of nerves. I'm like, Oh my God, I gotta get this project out the door. Oh, what? And I'm like, Oh wait, that never happened. Yeah. For normal people, it's like, they leave their job at six and they don't think about it. And they've got how many, like six hours if you go to bed at midnight, that will not happen for you if you're running your own

business. Yeah. I highly recommend, and it'll be really hard, but at least an hour before you go to bed, you put that phone away and you stop looking at your computer. You read a book, you watch some TV, you got to have some downtime and never grab your phone first thing in the morning.

No, go have your cup of coffee. I'd highly recommend some exercise or something relaxing, meditation, sauna, hot tub, something first thing every morning. Yeah. I mean, do something before you get it. It might sound like super California hippie bullshit, but I'm, I'm from Pittsburgh, you know? So it, it really does help with the stress.

No, if you pick up that phone first thing in the morning, you're in the weeds immediately and you're never going to get out of that. You can't even have your cup of coffee and you're into it. I think that was the best tip that, that was one of the tips that I got from Tim Ferriss the day that I met him that changed my life because we saw him when he did his ignite talk before the book launch and the book launch came out at my friend MJ's birthday, which was yesterday. Happy birthday,

MJ. Oh, we're doing birthday shout outs. Hey, I got to. MJ's my home girl. And he got up on stage and he's like, check email twice a day. The world's not going to end and never check it first thing in the morning. I'm like, yeah. Oh my God. It, it changed my life. Uh, there's no way I could only check email twice a day, but, uh, I'd certainly do the first thing in the morning and I give myself at least an hour at night. So you got it. Otherwise you'll die. Yeah. Seriously. Take care of yourself

because nobody else is going to, and it's a tough racket. Nobody's going to. Just you. Thank you. So just a few tips from us grumpy old geeks and how we're still kind of mostly surviving. Cheers to that. Cheers. Okay. Last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida.

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