Episode 7: How Obie Fernandez Used A Book To Grow An Agency

Hosted by  Brennan Dunn,  Eric Davis, and special guest  Obie Fernandez

Show Notes

• 00:23  - Obie Fernandez Introduction
• Author of  The Rails Way and  The Rails 3 Way
• Hashrocket
• Prominent figure in the Ruby/Agile communities
• Professional software developer since 1995
• Started a user group in Atlanta for Extreme Programming
• ThoughtWorks
• 04:11  - Importance of building a reputation and personal brand
• Controversial blogging
• Resistance against Java and then Rails
• 07:03  - Building a brand
• Client demand for Ruby on Rails experience vs custom software
• Reputation for delivery
• Referrals and content marketing
• 14:08  - Productizing and Product Offerings
• 321 Launch
• Rescue missions
• Storycarding
• 23:39  - Custom Software Development
• 27:32  - Estimation and client participation
• “Owning” the estimate

Resources

Obie  -  Sell Your By-Products by Jason Fried of 37 Signals,  Obie’s Document Templates,  750 Words
Eric  -  StrongVPN
Brennan  -  How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting by Patrick McKenzie

Action Step

Do an analysis of the work you’ve provided and that you’re getting referrals for, identify the commonalities, list them out in the ways you would list the features of a product and slap an identity on it. There’s your productizing effort!

Next Week

It’s a surprise (aka, we don’t know yet).

Transcript

We’re hoping to get a transcript later.