ClearYourMind is our company blog about business, web 2.0, web 3.0 and everything a "web-guy" loves by Javier Cabrera,
owner and principal of Emastudios, a tiny web design agency based in the beautiful caribbean-like Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Guess what, I decided to lower our prices to $2800 instead of the $3500 we had since a couple of weeks. The first reaction from a current client was “hey, why you want to lower the agency prices; not biting at $3500?” my answer was this: yes, that’s the problem
What do you REALLY want to do?
In the past, we offered a basic price of $2500 and most of our works where actually in the range of $2500 - $3800, so we sit down and run some numbers. Before the launch, I decided the best for our agency was going live with a $3500 price, which will elevate our price range as well. The problem was I didn’t realized (nor any of the guys here) the new price will also come up with a new class of clients. We had some offers to do work in the last few weeks, to be honest, we had almost 15 offers to do work. We took only 4 as “not shopping” offers and we move into them only to realize, it just wasn’t our market.
Think different.
We aim to work on projects that make us go “wow” while we are working on them, like the Cellphones widget project or the Clio one (becoming notorious on the web now!), and one I’m personally really attached with, the iSchedule project. Those are projects from the so called startups we just DREAM to work with every day. That’s our market, and we got too far away from our market.
We had offers for interesting projects yes, really interesting projects; but they weren’t just the market we like to play with, and if we aren’t doing what we really love to do, then what are we doing here? That’s why I decided, by myself, it was best for the agency to drop the prices from $3500 to $2800 for a web site.
Working with “web people” is one of the best thing that happened to us, and, although we had some pretty interesting projects on our hands in the past weeks, we just can’t avoid thinking on startups and the relationship that comes from working with them. I had become almost a friend of some of the people I work with every day; and that’s priceless.
They where biting at $3500? yes sure; they where.
We liked what came up from the waters? of course we liked. Some interesting projects came up.
What happened then? nostalgia? I won’t put it like that. I believe that, our decision showed us the true meaning of our niche. Now we know; now we really understand.
I’m so tired of having to search on Google those little CSS tips we use every week at the job don’t you? It will be nice to have a page where the best of them (and more frequently updated) are shown for us to have. That’s why I created this quick reference list with all the CSS Tricks & Magic I usually end up using over the week. Of course, they are not all in here, but the ones that have cross-browser support, are easy to use and are updated often enough to catch up with all this crazyness (IE) we see around the web. Here they are:
Boxes with Rounded Corners
Need to have those little boxes with rounded corners around your blog or web site? here’s how:
Nifty Corners Cube (http://www.html.it/articoli/niftycube/index.html
Fear no more, nifty Corners Cube is here. You no need to have corner images to make rounded corners anymore; this CSS/Javascript does it all. Simple to use and works in any browser.
Spiffy Corners Generator (http://www.spiffycorners.com)
Want to just copy & paste? shame on you! but here’s the solution you’ve been looking for: a simple rounded corners generator; can’t be easier to get it now isn’t it?
Rounded Cornr Generator (http://www.roundedcornr.com/)
Another way of doing a men’s work. With this generator is even easier to have rounded corners on your website. Fully customizable!
First of all (and before someone kills me), I respect Guy Kawasaki. And I respect him a lot. Even with that hair, I respect him. He is one of the few people I admire and that actually drain my day-to-day activity into reading his blog rss feed and books. If I have an advice to give to anyone is this: read Guy Kawasaki blog, the man knows what he is talking about. He understands business really well, and although you may not be in the same business as most of his public, listening and reading his blog WILL (pay attention, it’s true!) OPEN YOUR MIND to new ideas and better practices.
That said, now is time for the punch. Guy Kawasaki Blog Sucks, and big time if you ask me. I’m not talking about the content he writes there everyday, but about the blog itself which, believe or not, I designed. [Read more →]
What would happen if suddenly Internet is down? not down like, half an hour, or half a day but, weeks or months? What would happen with companies like mine, or with companies like 37signals, WeBreakStuff, Techcrunch or others? The answer is here and via SouthPark. It may look silly at first, but try to think about what would happen for just a second.
I was taking a beer with my ex-boss (back from the dot-com golden age era) and talking about business and life. He owns a telecommunications company today and I own EmaStudios. We were actually talking about the changes that comes to the every day business life and came to the conclusion we both have different ways to “get there” and although, both are valid; my way may be better to avoid surprises.
My ex-boss likes to run
He started on the business life very young; when he was 18 actually. He loves to have those dot-com era stories where you set up a company in a month, gathered a few couple of good programmers, started working on something and before you know it; you are already on a plane to see your angel investor who will pay for the whole company 2, 3 million dollars. He loves those stories where the guys didn’t even had a parking lot or a building, and had to put their Ikea desks together by themselves while eating on the floor because they didn’t even had a meeting table.
That’s running. That’s being in a rush to “get there before” someone. And it is good, it has worked for a lot of people: but not for everyone. Usually, if you do that, you may have a big chance of burning down your contacts (coders, designers, etc) who will begin to claim for your head when you business model isn’t paying off (for example, if your angel investor never shows up) and they start seeing those “exiting” times where they have to install the internet at the office by themselves like “he is making me work for free”. [Read more →]
Did you read all those articles about becoming an entrepreneur and how great and easy it is? well, they are all a big lie. Like everything in life, it takes long time to realize it was different than we thought it will be. But not everything is lost: being an entrepreneur can be one of the most challenging things on earth and anyone can do it by just realizing there is more out there. But it won’t be hard (as I always say) it will be HELL to go through. With luck, you will have realistic articles like this, based on personal experience and facts that will help you in the darkest times (there will be for sure) on your entrepreneurial career.
Busting Myths
There are a lot of pre-conceptions in being an entrepreneur; a lot of people actually writes articles, blogs and even books about the subject without having a real experience; they just write after reading it from another source which end up in washed concepts about how great or easy being an entrepreneur really is. I’m not here to disqualify people or to bring anyone down; just to bust myths!
You can be an entrepreneur without quiting your day job!
Try being an entrepreneur if you like; but don’t quit your day job until you get some success first!
Although it is true some people can handle two jobs, it is a fact that those jobs need to be something that doesn’t require creativity (clerk, washing cars, parking the cars after washing them…) or business ability; or even learning new skills. Trying to make it at the Bank from 9 to 6 and after that, working in your business it is almost impossible; you will end up quiting the Bank or, as many, quiting at being an entrepreneur. Is not just checking emails by night; it is hard work to go from A to Z with just a book under your arm and the head full of illusions. [Read more →]
Ok this is not a long post but, it is worth it. I came today with new pants to the office; never used before this morning and they are so tight, I was choking myself with them so I had to do something extreme: I took away my pants. That’s it. I’m working with no pants, as silly as that can sound. Going back home and change my pants for a more comfortable ones will take me an hour and half there, and a hour an half back here; waste of time so I took a dangerous and extreme decision, I took away my pants and leave them on the couch. Currently I’m working just on my underwear’s; and it’s damn cool.
As sexy as it may be (I weight 150kg, so hot!) it’s very important to be comfortable with your work area and this made my realize I have some things to take care on my desk like bringing new plants and move some books I’m not reading (but rest on my desk nevertheless) to my shelve. Try it. Take your pants (or order your desk!). As a side note, tomorrow I will be using my pants again as a regular work day. It is a shame but I will have to!
If we can say something about dreamhost in EmaStudios is that, they live up their hype. People from all over the world are choosing day after day moving their web sites, applications and projects to DreamHost; but what’s this not-so-good-looking service all about? why is placed number one on the market over the other web hosting companies? Why their success? as always, there are a lot of answers for those questions, but they all can sum up into one simple answer: they know their customer.
DreamHost is the first hosting service (as far as I know) that offers all their features for every plan. They don’t have three or four plans. They have just one big plan, with EVERYTHING in it; the only catch is you need to select how to pay and that’s where they get those little cents that makes life easier. If you choose to pay monthly, you will have also need to pay a set-up fee of $40 bucks; but if you choose to pay yearly, that setup fee is gone, caput, dead. You only pay $9.95 per month ($119.40 per year); which is really great if you have paypal. But, if you pay, two years in advance, then you get a good discount and instead of paying $9.95 per month, you will be paying $8.95 per month; doesn’t sound like much but it’s actually $107.40 per year. Pretty neat uh? [Read more →]
Wordpress is one of the best tools out there to have your own blog and right now there are more than 2.000 themes that you can add to your wordpress installation. Well, I’m happy to announce the born of a new wordpress theme in the next few weeks. It will be totally free and scalable to whatever your needs are; it will have a simple yet-cool design and the CSS will be documented (thing that doesn’t always happen with themes out there) so you can catch it up in a breeze.
We still don’t have a name for the theme, but we are thinking on doing a pack theme where you can choose the right one for you. Stay tuned because it’s coming!
Javier Cabrera. From EmaStudios HQ.
So, this is the first video post I’m doing so be kind. My spoken English is not the best but that’s actually more than my President can speak in English so we are alright. I’m recording this video from my eeepc which has been a pain because although it’s a happy little mini-laptop I always carry around, it’s web cam it’s very very bad. It freezes at some points but still, it’s good. It’s 6 minutes long, so enjoy!
First of all (and before someone kills me), I respect Guy Kawasaki. And I respect him a lot. Even with that hair, I respect him. He is one of the few people I admire and that actually drain my day-to-day activity into reading his blog rss feed and books. If I have an advice to give to anyone is this: read Guy Kawasaki blog, the man knows what he is talking about. He understands business really well, and although you may not be in the same business as most of his public, listening and reading his blog WILL (pay attention, it’s true!) OPEN YOUR MIND to new ideas and better practices.
I was taking a beer with my ex-boss (back from the dot-com golden age era) and talking about business and life. He owns a telecommunications company today and I own EmaStudios. We were actually talking about the changes that comes to the every day business life and came to the conclusion we both have different ways to “get there” and although, both are valid; my way may be better to avoid surprises.
But not everything is lost: being an entrepreneur can be one of the most challenging things on earth and anyone can do it by just realizing there is more out there. But it won’t be hard (as I always say) it will be HELL to go through. With luck, you will have realistic articles like this, based on personal experience and facts that will help you in the darkest times (there will be for sure) on your entrepreneurial career.
Ok this is not a long post but, it is worth it. I came today with new pants to the office; never used before this morning and they are so tight, I was choking myself with them so I had to do something extreme: I took away my pants. That’s it. I’m working with no pants, as silly as that can sound. Going back home and change my pants for a more comfortable ones will take me an hour and half there, and a hour an half back here; waste of time so I took a dangerous and extreme decision, I took away my pants and leave them on the couch. Currently I’m working just on my underwear’s; and it’s damn cool.
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