Update on my general situation

I’m using the term “weekly” pretty loosely here. My last update was almost a month ago.

The few couple months have been some of the “busiest” I’ve had in quite some time due to overcommitment. At one point I had 7 or 8 simultaneous active client engagements and 4 people working for me. I’m also going to Nigeria tomorrow, and the preparations for that trip have been pretty diverting.

Probably the most exasperating part of the last few months of craziness is that I’ve made almost no time to work on Snip. That’s frustrating because the more consulting work I do, the less passive income I’m building for myself, and having less passive income diminishes my ability to work on building passive income. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s of course possible to escape that vicious cycle, but only if you muscle your way to escape velocity, which I’ve prevented myself from doing by overcommitting to client work.

So I shed my 7 or 8 clients one by one until I got down to just two clients. I would put both these remaining two clients under the category of “dream client”.

This trip I’m taking to Nigeria is disruptive to me in the sense that everything else in my life is going to get put on hold for 3+ weeks, but it’s also had quite a cleansing effect. It gave me a reason to strip away all but my most essential activities, and to delegate things that can be delegated. When I come back from Nigeria, I don’t plan to pick back up any of the old time-taker-uppers.

Even with so much stripped away, I’ll still be fairly overcommitted when I get back, with undelegable work. One thing I have to do is get to a certain point with a certain project so I can get paid for it. After that I can conceivably scale back with time on that project, or delegate the work, or both.

Snip-specific stuff

As part of my goal-setting for 2015, I set a goal to get to $1,000/mo in revenue for Snip by March 31st of this year. (Current revenue is about $430/mo.) Unlike the times in the past when I’ve set similar goals, this time I conceived a path of how to get from here to there. Said path follows.

• Fix onboarding bugs (done). I recently discovered a couple embarrassingly critical bugs in my onboarding process. For example, you couldn’t create a new stylist, which as you can imagine is pretty important to the process of getting started. I saw this set of bug fixes as a non-negotiable, critical, high-priority item.
• Plug the tax rate hole (done). Until recently there was no way for salon owners to get their own retail tax rates into the system. This meant that, until I somehow remembered to ask the salon owner what their tax rate was and manually enter it into the system, any retail transactions that salon did would be wrong. This is obviously bad, and unduly time-consuming for yours truly. I called this problem the “tax rate hole” and some time ago I plugged it.
• Put trial sign-up form on home page (name, email, password). After seeing months of an abysmally low opt-in rate for “view demo” as a call to action, I had an idea. What if instead of a demo video, I just let prospects into an interactive demo. The first screen of this could be the actual “calendar screen” in Snip, but with everything kind of grayed out and a pop-up box in the middle that says “Unlock Demo”. You can enter your name and email address to “unlock” the demo. I imagine that if people feel like they’re already “there” and they can kind of see inside the UI already, they’ll be more inclined to just enter their info to be able to play with the demo. I was originally thinking this would involve a considerable amount of programming, but then I thought, “Hey, wait, I’m retarded. I can just take a screenshot and make the background grayed out in Photoshop, and then slap a form on top of that.” In fact, the version 0.1 of this form could just be a big fat button on top of a screen shot that says “Free Interactive Demo” which links to the 30-day trial sign-up page. What I’d like to do as a next step is take out the extra step and put the sign-up form directly over the screenshot, but that will require some programming acrobatics (WordPress will need to call currently-nonexistent Rails API endpoint to create an account) and that’s a time commitment I can’t afford in the next 24 hours before I leave for Africa. But I’m super fucking pumped about the idea.
• Autoresponders throughout 30-day trial. Right now you don’t even get a stupid welcome email (at least not automatically) when you sign up for a Snip account. You should be getting emails like every day for the whole 30 days (and beyond) until you tell it to fuck off.
• Redesigned website. My website looks like shit and has forever. Once I have the previous items in place, I plan to spend $500-1000 to have it professionally redesigned.
• AdWords. It would be stupid to pay $5-10/click to send people to an ugly website with a broken funnel. Once I have a (presumably) non-broken funnel and a better-looking website, I feel like it’s no longer unwise to buy some traffic.
• Get as prominent as possible on Capterra. Capterra is a review site and they rank first for some salon-software-related terms, enough so that I think appearing prominently in Capterra matters.

Gotta go.

Things have been going a little better as far as allocating time toward Snip goes.

Last Friday I fired a 20 hr/wk consulting client for being disrespectful. What’s funny is that at first I thought, “Yes! I just freed up 20 hours a week!” but then I realized I have another client that I also need to do work for this week, and so I’m nearly as busy as I was last week. PLUS I just received a signed contract from one of my very most prized clients so far, and I can’t afford not to do a really good job with that one, so at least as over-committed as I was before if not more. But at least I’m putting away some money.

In 2015 I plan to subcontract more of my consulting work and keep my own billable hours down to a maximum of about 30, but hopefully usually more like 20. I now have one really good “base” client that’s 20 hours a week that extends into the indefinite future, so that allows me to be someone selective and patient when it comes to other client work.

As far as recent activity goes: on Monday I did a video interview with Neil Ducoff, CEO of Strategies consulting, and that was great. I had a few high-urgency feature request/bug fix type things to take care of, and I fixed one of those things last night (Tuesday). Tomorrow I have another video interview for the Snip blog.

Activity on Olark has been pretty crazy lately. On Thursday night some guy chatted with me and then signed up for a trial. On Saturday I had the same thing happen again, and then immediately after that another person chatted with me and started a trial. This morning I got an email saying yet another person signed up for a trial. I’ve been getting a lot more search traffic lately and I’m on the first page now for “hair salon software”, so maybe that’s why I’ve seen an uptick in activity.

Just anecdotally it feels like I’m at about the level of activity now that I was at in December 2013, right before I switched from sniphq.com to snipsalonsoftware.com and plunged myself down to the 4th of 5th page of search rankings after having reached first-page status for a few important terms. This January I of course don’t plan to switch domains again, so I can expect my search traffic to keep improving (especially since I’m doing more SEO activities now than then).

I’ve been increasingly “successful” with consulting in the sense that I’m making good money with it. I’m also being UNsuccessful in the sense that consulting is taking up pretty much all my waking hours.

I haven’t really worked on Snip at all this week. I did get a new customer, though. Number 10. This brings me to about $430/mo in revenue.

I also had a lady chat with me on Olark yesterday and then call me. She ended up saying no thanks because she really just wanted a replacement for her current appointment reminder plug-in thing that integrated with her existing salon software and didn’t want to switch salon software.

About a month ago I started two new engagements roughly at the same time. Prior to that I had had a rule – that I was pretty good about following – that I would “pay myself first” and spend the first hour of every day working on Snip.

One of my new engagements involves teaching students in Nigeria how to code, and since Nigeria is 6 hours ahead of Michigan, I have to get up super early so I can be with them from about 7 to 11 my time. This has kind of killed my routine of working on Snip for the first hour of the day.

At first this routine was new and the engagements were new and I didn’t feel too terrible about putting Snip on the back burner for a minute. Then I realized these two new engagements probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon and that this new schedule is probably “it” for the next year or more. So I have to figure out a way to have Snip in the mix still.

Today I decided my schedule will be that I’ll do my training thing from 7-11 each morning, then do an hour of Snip, then do my other client work and whatever else. Since my current focus is getting traffic via putting up interviews on the site, I spent an hour finding people to interview and reaching out to them to ask for the interview. I have a log of who I’ve asked so I can track my success rate and not accidentally ask the same people multiple times.

So I’m back on the rails after about a month of fucking up. At least if you count one day’s worth of not fucking up being back on the rails.

To mention the numbers real quick, I have 9 customers and my revenue is at about $380 per month. Getting closer to that $500/mo mark.

My consulting situation is by far the best it’s ever been by the way. I’m earning way more than I ever have at a job, and I have good clients who I like to work with and fit with my overall career plans. But I gotta remember that while consulting can give me a good income, I need to keep focus on Snip in order to develop wealth.

As of late 2013 I was ranking on the first page of Google for “hair salon software”. Unfortunately my domain name was sniphq.com and I figured I was unlikely to outrank competitors who had “salonsoftware” in their domain names. (Most of the keywords I care about involve the terms “salon” and “software”.) So I switched from sniphq.com to snipsalonsoftware.com, knowing that it would hurt me in the short term but almost certainly be better in the long-term.

I’m happy to report that now, for the first time in about a year, I rank on the first page again for “hair salon software”. It was a long, slow climb to get back there. Hopefully now the ceiling is higher as I expect.

I’m NOT happy to report that I’ve been so busy with client work that I haven’t worked on Snip at all. Fortunately that means money is good, so I can afford to redesign my website sooner.

Super busy with 45+ billable hours of client work per week now. I’ve done almost nothing with Snip except an interview with Ivan Zoot.

Gonna be super busy for about the next 3 weeks.

Oh, almost forgot: on Monday I received my first payment from my second out-of-state customer. Super pumped about that.

I now have 6 client engagements going at once, which is of course completely insane. I frankly probably won’t even be working on Snip at all for the next month.

The good news is that working more means more income, so maybe I can finally afford to have the Snip site redesigned soon.

I’m in the middle of a one-week trial period for a client project that requires me to start at like 7am each day. This has totally fucked up my schedule of working on Snip for the first hour of each day. I haven’t really worked on Snip at all this week.

I find out tomorrow if this gig will continue into the future. It’s a good gig, but if it continues, I’ll have to figure something out to get my Snip schedule back on track.

This somehow never occurred to me to do before but I finally started tracking what I call “inbound communication” in a spreadsheet. So far inbound communication includes Olark and my 800 number. In the 12 days I’ve been tracking this stuff (10/17 to 10/29) I’ve gotten 12 pieces of inbound communication. Six of those were bullshit – not actual prospects. Of the other six, three were good, solid leads. (All three started trials.One gave me her credit card info.) Of those who were genuine prospects but not good leads, two wanted features I didn’t have (POS system and a “walk-in” feature, whatever that means) and one just kind of peaced out on the conversation without coming to any kind of conclusion or giving any identifying information.

Last week I said I wanted to funnel all my funnels into my 800 number rather than web forms. I’ve changed my mind yet again but only slightly! I think I want to simply add the 800 number as an option, since I’m frankly kind of scared of the idea of only having the 800 number as an option, especially since that would be so hard to track.

I’m becoming increasingly certain that focusing on traffic is no longer premature. Twelve pieces of inbound communication in 12 days is of course an average of 1 per day. I think I could reasonably expect that if I 10Xed my traffic, I’d be getting 10 pieces of inbound communication per day, which would make my head explode in the best possible way. And if three twelfths of my prospects are good leads, or 25%, then that would mean 2-3 good leads a day. Even with my same shitty website.

But I guess my shitty website brings up a point: it probably only makes sense to focus on “free” traffic right now. It would be stupid to buy a $2500 magazine ad or something when I still have a shitty website; that money would be better spent on a better website. So I guess my plan is to focus on free traffic while continuing to save up enough to have the website professionally redesigned.

I frankly can’t believe how “well” the site is doing in its current state. There’s more activity now than there’s ever been. Interested to see what my inbound communication log looks like after a full month of recording.

I missed last week’s update. Sorry.

A cool thing happened between now and last time I posted: a new prospect called my 800 number, started a trial, gave me her credit card info, and got fully onboarded into the product. She said she tried some of the other products and she liked how user-friendly Snip is. If she becomes a paying customer she’ll be customer #9 and the second out-of-state customer, the second customer who was “attracted” rather than “hunted”.

I also discovered that my Olark chat had been broken for a couple weeks. For some reason even though I knew I hadn’t been getting chats for a while, it didn’t occur to me to just try to chat with myself and see it it worked. It didn’t. That’s fixed now, and in the last few days I’ve gotten a few chatters.

I also had this really annoying problem where my Google Analytics goals were inexplicably not working. I thought I had run out of things to try, and then finally, I realized that my WordPress URLs have trailing slashes but my GA goals didn’t have trailing slashes. That was the problem. My goals work now. I’m now looking forward to being able to attribute conversions to channels, particularly AdWords vs. non-PPC channels. How much do I have to spend on AdWords in order to get a customer? If I can know this number, and get it down to at or below what I believe my customer LTV to be, then I can confidently pour more and more money into AdWords (provided the ROI continues to be there).

Paying for a professional redesign of my marketing site is looking like more of a remote possibility at this point in time. A number of forces came together to mostly wipe out the money I had saved up over the last several months. The only place substantially more money will come from is my consulting business, and I’m of course always trying to make as much money as possible in that area, so I don’t need to deviate from my current course to save up more money. It’s just a matter of time.

I want to review my most recent plan that I shared:

1. Pay for professional site redesign
2. Turn on Google AdWords (done)
3. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
4. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
5. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

#1 is currently out of reach and #2 is done so that leaves:

1. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
2. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
3. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

I’m actually re-thinking the steps of my funnel after experiencing some recent activity. Here’s how I was originally conceiving the funnel:

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> view pricing page -> sign up for a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> read autoresponder emails -> sign up for a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> pricing page -> fill out pricing form -> receive phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> chat with me on Olark -> invited by me for a phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> call 800 number -> start a trial -> become a customer

My most promising prospects so far have involved a phone call. What if I just funnel everything into a phone call? I think a phone call is probably a higher-commitment action than filling out a form, but it’s much easier to build trust over the phone than over the web. If the difference is between closing, for example, 5% of 40% (2%) and closing 50% of 20% (10%), then the tradeoff could make sense. So maybe my funnels would look like this:

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> view pricing page -> call 800 number -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> read autoresponder emails -> call 800 number -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> pricing page -> fill out pricing form -> receive phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> chat with me on Olark -> invited by me for a phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> call 800 number -> start a trial -> become a customer

Let’s compare that now to the most recent plan:

1. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
2. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
3. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

Funneling everything into a phone call would make #2 unnecessary because when I talk with a prospect on the phone, I can just set his or her trial account up “manually” on my end. It would also make #3 unnecessary because so far the onboarding pain points have not been problematic when I have the opportunity to answer questions and explain things over the phone. So that would leave:

1. Change “start trial” CTAs to “call for more information” CTAs
2. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

My level of activity/engagement over the last few months has felt pretty good, and I feel like if I can 10X my traffic and therefore engagement level, that might well put me in pretty good shape. Right now my traffic level (less than 800 uniques in the last 30 days) feels like it puts everything below the threshold of measurability/meaning. It’s of course easier said than done to 10X my traffic but I don’t think I’m asking for a lot as far as absolute numbers go. Eight thousand visitors a month is not a ridiculously huge amount.

So I’m changing my mind for the billionth time, which I feel pretty stupid about. I don’t know what all this mind-changing means. I wish I would stop changing my mind so much, but of course the only reason I change my mind is because I believe my new belief is right and my old one was wrong.