When magazines or newspapers ask me to write things for them, I tell them I'll only do it if they print what I write verbatim. (They can of course choose not to print it at all, but if they print it they have to print it as written.) Most say no, but some have said yes. Of those who said yes, not all actually did, but no one went so far as to change a title.
I think it's fairly standard in journalism (both newspapers and magazines). A lot of bigger magazines and newspapers have a full-time headline writer who basically does only that, possibly along with some related headline-ish tasks like pulling out those random quotes from the article that get printed in large font in insets.
This person is known as the "subeditor". They also have influence on page layouts in their section, so they have the power to highlight or bury some stories.
Newspapers and magazines also have a stake in their own brand, image, and "feel." They also have a stake in the marketability of their product, or their own idiosyncratic view of such, which in this context would be your essay/article.
I wrote the whole article, just not the headlines/subheads. My editor always tweaks a few words here and there, but I always review prior to publication. So I'd say it's a 9.9.
Regarding technobabble, when I worked at Sunglass Hut I used to mix technobabble with explanations they could relate to: "This pair has borosilicate lenses, which is the same glass they use for Pyrex cookware. So you know it's gonna be durable as hell. This pair has polycarbonate lenses, which are not as scratch resistant as glass lenses, but they are very lightweight and comfortable, and they won't break if you drop them."
I think customers liked it because it made them feel like they just got smarter (smart enough to make an informed purchase).
The other thing I used to do all the time that worked great was suggesting to hesitant customers (understandable since I was asking them to buy $300 sunglasses in Washington State) that they take a couple of laps around the mall, get an Orange Julius, and think about it. Most of the time they would think for a second, walk out the door, and walk back in about 30 seconds later to purchase the sunglasses.
I think it's cyclical nature of the sun that people forget and loose their sunglasses enough because they're not needed frequently and have to keep on buying new ones when they do.
I spent some time in retail sales myself, working for Apple in a Best Buy, and learned a few valuable lessons. There are two ways to sell to people: logic and trust.
My approach was logic. I would spend as much time as was necessary very methodically detailing all the reasons why Macs were superior to PCs, and I did it in a way that made it obvious I was a fan and not just a salesman. It took a long time to make these sales, but I was good at it and converted literally hundreds of people to $1000+ Macs, most of which came in to buy a $500 PC. A lot of people do respond positively to technical facts and information.
However, there was another salesman who didn't give a rats ass about which solution was best, and based what he sold entirely on the spiffs he would get for selling them, most of which were based off how many accessories and service plans he sold with the computer. He consistently beat me in sales every day and could barely tell you the difference between firewire and usb (insert nerd chortle). He didn't need the technical knowhow. He would talk to them about completely unrelated things - the weather, their kids, the local sports team, etc. I'd look over at his customers and they'd be laughing and smiling, and then look at mine and see skeptical frowns. But his customers would have an entire cart full of crap they didn't need and the whole process was complete within about 15 minutes.
Most people just want to feel comfortable when they shop. They want a friend to tell them what to buy, not a salesman, so the quicker you can establish yourself as "one of the good guys" the better.
My only consolation was that my return rates were far lower than his.
I have a friend who has always had slightly skewed social graces. On the other hand, he has been roleplaying since he was 14 and can tell you the odds on any 3d6 combination off the top of his head.
When he became a salesman, we were all rather surprised and chortled amongst ourselves at how, with his underwhelming social skills, he would surely flounder.
He then proceeded to be the best salesman at his company, by wide margin.
How? He minimaxed their system. It was as simple as that. He sat down with the product list and the comp rules and calculated the best possible combinations of items and only sold those combinations. He would sell other items too, but when customers bought them, he would not ring up the sale himself -- he would send them to the front counter and ask that they not mention his name.
My own path to salesmanship was to study the psychology side. Influence by Robert Cialdini was my bible and it propelled me into the top of my own company's ranks by applying some modest mental judo. I made it a rule to never lie or fabricate, but I still sold up a storm in a completely different way from my friend.
When you look at selling as a game, geeks with a roleplaying background are going to dominate because they will experiment, minimax, tweak and study their way to maximising returns.
Sometimes selling certain items + other items had a rule leading to a higher percentage. For example, an external HDD could be included with a PC at a discount, but the salesman gets a commission based on the ordinary RRP. Because of the arcane ways some commissions are calculated, this would raise his margin on the deal overall, leading to a higher commission on the PC as well. Not the intention of the retail company he worked for -- but that wasn't his problem.
Lots of little rules and promotions are constantly coming and going in retail, and my friend was quite single-minded about optimising for them.
I once sold ice cream. We were graded by how many additional items we got customers to add to the ice cream (those cost extra).
Over time, I learned to positively associate certain combinations (graham cracker crust goes well with fruit, for example) and negatively associate others. So, even if I didn't like that particular kind, I could just suggest whatever things people frequently ordered and get a lot of sales.
I was #1 so consistently that my manager took me out of one of the contests to give the other people a shot.
Here's another lesson about customer interaction - don't piss them off with how long it takes a page to load and render.
I don't like depriving people of their potential for ad revenue, but on the second page I got so annoyed at how long it was taking to load that I found and clicked on the "Print" icon. Bam! Full text, cleanly rendered, no flashing graphics or distracting images.
I happen to have had this item open in a window while I went for dinner, then hit "Reload" when I got back, and I noticed it's been down-voted. I wish, oh how I wish, that if someone downvotes me that they'd tell me why. Why did this particular comment not add to the value of HN? Do you just disagree? Tell me why! Do you think it's wrong? Tell me why?
I really, really would value the opportunity to learn. Even if I disagree with you, I'll still learn about the existence and content of an alternative point of view.
This is by far one of my favorite article this year! Everyone has a skill or two that they are really good at. Being good at it, and actually making money from it is two very different matter.
I guess most people here can bring ideas -> products. To bring ideas -> products -> profit definitely take some trying. Take it up a level, ideas -> products -> profit -> acquired ... it's a dream for me at least. And working towards it daily everyday!
Regarding step #5: while bootstrapping is great, it's not always the best choice. I agree with 37signals that more companies should consider bootstrapping, but lots of great companies have required investment up front—indeed, historically, virtually all of them did. To make that 5¢ lollipop, you first have to build a lollipop factory. Nowadays the "factory" might be "an index of the web", and the lollipops might be "ads served based on web searches", but the principle is the same.
I don't think anyone disagrees that brick-and-mortar businesses require investment. However, brick-and-mortar businesses earn their investments by having actual revenue plans. I have the impression that most VC-funded web startups find revenue plans far less sexy than, ahem, eyeballs. And we all know where that leads.
This is a superb article. The portion I was really interested in was the one on bootstrapping. Completely agree with Jason Fried about taking on investor funds, maintaining your independence etc.
I've noticed however that the point he makes about self-funding typically applies to consulting companies: bootstrapping these is very different from bootstrapping, say a SaaS..oops I mean a cloud company.
I would love to hear from other folks that were able to bootstrap a software-product company.
It seems that from the start you've had an ingrained sense of hustle.
I actually laughed at your anecdote about selling sporting goods. When I was in high school I sold electronics at Best Buy. We would have reps come in and tell us about the printer resolutions and pages per minute, the hard drive seek times, the lcd refresh rate, etc. But, as you said, the customers didn't care about that. All they wanted to know was if they could print a 4x6 photo and have it look nice, or run a word processor, or play a video game.
That hustle doesn't seem to die. I've always found a way to turn something into a more entrepreneurial venture, even when working in a corporate environment.
Thankfully my best friend and I are partnering up to create something of value for ourselves now. It's exciting, especially when I've spent the last 10 years hustling!
Great advice from a well respected entrepreneur. His advice on knowing your buyers resonates with me. I can't stress enough in knowing the most about your users & buyers. Understand what they value, and most of all, understand what they need in order to be a long-lasting customer.
37signals is a massive inspiration and I feel privileged (am I the only one that has to look up how to spell that word every single time?!) that I: a) work in an industry where so many fantastically successful individuals take time out to share this kind of wisdom and b) there is an online community where you can go and see the author themselves taking part in the discussions.
Here are the most important parts of this article that stuck with me:
"Understanding what people really want to know - and how that differs from what you want to tell them - is a fundamental tenet of sales. And you can't get good at making money unless you get good at selling."
I know I harp on about this constantly but there's this fantastic interview on Mixergy with Tom Rossi (http://mixergy.com/tom-rossi-molehill-interview/) where he talks about the early days of promoting his CMS and there's this part where he says that one of the first things he did was "pick up the phone" and just start calling people to sell it. Andrew Warner is kind of surprised - picking up the phone and actually selling something is so rarely discussed as a "user acquisition strategy". If you can cold call, if you can sell, then you can get money today.
"I thought about the problem and decided to try something new. Instead of doing long, expensive projects, we'd do short, affordable ones. Instead of billing $50,000 for a 15-page website redesign that would take three months, we'd charge $3,500 per page and offer to complete the page in a week. If you want another page, it's another $3,500 and another week. We called it 37express."
Of course, this is one of the biggest lessons from "agile" and 37signals in particular. One way we've implemented this in our own projects is to give an idea of "likely budget" for a big project, then bill in very small increments with the smallest of the small at the beginning of the project.
Say there's a job, and you look at the basics of what should be achieved, and you say "well, $25k will be a good amount for getting something like that done", then the first bill should be for some prototypical product or even just product research and documentation delivered in about a week for something like 10% of the total budget.
Next invoice might be a slightly longer iteration for maybe double that, then by the third iteration everyone trusts each other, you have a good idea of the problem ___domain and you can really just do a 50% upfront 50% completion for the remainder of the budget.
The other really important part is that each of these early iterations should deliver discrete value - ie. that you could deliver it, the client would have gained some value, but could easily discontinue the project or use someone else to continue if they dislike working with you for some reason.
So you can still do these big jobs, but just treat them as several little tiny jobs, especially in the early stages. This also removes the need for that "contract overhead" - when you remove all the risk, you find that you can more often than not work on basic trust and human decency.
"But that's it. Everything else has been bootstrapped - even though dozens of venture capitalists and private equity firms have offered us lots of money. Instead, my customers have always been my investors. My goal has always been to be profitable on Day One."
We're in the opposite boat ;) although we'd love to get funded for Decal, it turns out "yet another CMS" just isn't hot enough ... maybe we should make it social? In the absence of buckets of VC or angel funding it's been great to have role models in the industry telling us repeatedly that bootstrapping is not only doable, but preferable!
"On the other hand, from Day One, a funded business is all about spending money. There's a pile in the bank, and it's not there to collect interest. Your investors want you to hire, invest, and buy. There's less - and in some cases, no - pressure to make money. While that sounds comforting, I think it ultimately hurts. It replaces the hustle, the scrap, the fight, with a false comfort of "we can worry about that later."*
I've been in both situations - I've been in a company with heaps of funding and (right now) with barely adequate funding and I have to whole heartedly say I 100% agree with this.
Man did we waste money when we had it (office, sales staff etc.). And not only that, but we wasted effort building heaps of features that never made a dime and didn't make the product more saleable. If your product development process isn't commercially driven, I reckon you're heaps more likely to end up with a product you'll never be able to sell.
Thanks for an amazing read Jason, and not just here, but all the other talks, articles, books (Getting Real is great, still haven't made it to Rework yet ;), 37signals/svn, the products (I'm an avid Highrise user), the lot. You're an inspiration and a super hero. Keep bangin'.
Article aside I'm pissed at the poor UI of INC. Why make me click through three pages to read the story but put ALL of the comments on the first page. You crappy UI tainted what was otherwise a good article.
Audiofile is a great name. Paying customers give honest feedback - hadn't thought of it that way! I understand 37signals took some (small amount equity) from Bezos.
Please don't hold the "6 easy steps" part against me. Easy steps anything makes me cringe.