Matt Wensing from Stormpulse (disclaimer: I’m an investor, long story below) generously took some time off of managing the nation’s severe weather risks to appear on our podcast.  (Keith Perhac couldn’t be with us when we taped this, as he was celebrating the birth of his second daughter.)  It’s been about six months since our last episode but I think this probably makes up for it, as it’s a cracker of an episode. I apologize in advance for my audio quality — I was calling internationally from an iPhone.  If you’re an audiophile, we have a transcript below, as per the usual.  As always, the transcript includes notes from me [Patrick notes: called out like this.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: The long arc of Stormpulse’s transition from a bootstrapped freemium weather site to being one of the four links on Obama’s dashboard Why Stormpulse had a difficult time raising funding early, and how they eventually overcame this Some actionable tips on how you can avoid Valley pathologies if raising is in your future How to think about pricing and selling a critical B2B application, and how to move from scalable low-touch sales to high-touch Big Freaking Enterprise sales If You Want To Listen To It MP3 Download (~96 minutes, ~88MB) : Right-click here and click Save As. Podcast format: either subscribe to https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store. [powerpress] Transcript: Growing Stormpulse From Humble Beginnings To The White House And Beyond Patrick McKenzie:  Hi, this is Patrick McKenzie for the the Kalzumeus Podcast. Keith Perhac can’t be with us today, because he’s celebrating the birth of his second daughter. I’m here with Matt Wensing, who’s the founder and CEO of Stormpulse. Matt Wensing:  Hey, how you doing, Patrick? Patrick:  I’m doing great, Matt. Thank you so much for taking the time to have a podcast with us today. I was just looking back at Hacker News today, because I gave it up for Lent, but now that I’m back and can check [on the thread we met on], I realized I have known you for exactly 1,300 days. Matt:  [laughs] Patrick:  You had your first HN post of Stormpulse about three years ago or so, give or take, and it was a like, “Rate my brief elevator pitch,” and I gave you some advice on that.  We started our email correspondence after that. For those of us who have not been following you obsessively for the last 1,300 days, what is Stormpulse? Matt:  [laughs] Yeah, first of all, thanks. The HN connection is definitely fun. Stormpulse, it started out really just as a project and an idea that I couldn’t get out of my head, because a bunch of hurricanes had hit south Florida, which is where I was born and raised. It ended up growing up from just being a project that I worked on in nights and... For the full transcript see here.

Keith Perhac and I recorded our 3rd podcast episode with special guest Brennan Dunn.  Listen to it (or read the transcript) for: why you should increase your freelancing rate how to discuss your value with your clients such that they’re happy to pay your increased rates how to scale to a multi-employee consultancy, without being bankrupted by poorly timed receivables three stories from successful consultants on three very different trajectories in their businesses how you can use drip email to sell more product (and consulting gigs, too) a bit about the business of selling info-products: pricing anchors, marketing tactics, list building, and more If You Want To Listen To It MP3 Download (~90 minutes, ~211 MB) : Right-click here and click Save As. Podcast format: either subscribe to https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store. [powerpress] Transcript: Running a Consulting Business, With Brennan Dunn Patrick McKenzie:  Hi everybody. My name is Patrick McKenzie, perhaps better known as patio11 on the Internet. This is the, I think, third episode of the Kalzumeus podcast, with my buddy, Keith Perhac. Keith Perhac:  Hello. Patrick:  And our special guest, Brennan Dunn, of Planscope and “Double Your Freelancing Rate.” Keith:  Woo! Brennan Dunn:  Hey there. Keith:  That was our live studio audience. Last time, we had a theme song. But I don’t know. Do we have a theme song this time as well? Patrick:  I think we are totally theme‑song‑less. Keith:  OK. Patrick:  This is still a third‑rate podcast. So, Brennan, recently you had a product launch. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that, and we’ll segue into the discussion about it. Brennan:  Absolutely. So, for the last few months, I’m been thinking about putting together an info product, specifically one that is targeting, really, a passion point of mine, which is freelancers who undercharge for their services. It’s something that really came from my own experience. For way too many years, I charged dramatically less than what I was worth, and only recently have I fixed that. And since I’ve fixed that, not only has my income gone up, but the caliber of client that I work with has gone up also. And I really wanted to just not only spill the beans as to how I got there but also back it with pricing research that I’ve done. So I’ve done a lot of reading of really executive‑level books on the science of pricing and really targeting factories and massive companies that produce products, and I wanted to find a way to distill that into something consumable for an independent service provider. So I took that knowledge. I took my background. I interviewed, I think, six or seven what I deem “premium” freelancers, people who either charge a lot or have, really, a very good business around themselves. They’re not just developers. They’re not just designers. They’re true businesspeople. I condensed that into a book that... For the full transcript see here.

NYT bestselling author Ramit Sethi and I continued our earlier discussion about getting your first consulting client by addressing a common pain point for freelancers/consultants, particularly those just starting out: how do you price your offering? If you want me to tell you “You’re a Rails developer?  $100 an hour if in Iowa, $150 an hour if in SOMA, best of luck” you’re in the wrong place, because you should have learned in our previous installment that you need to present yourself as someone solving business problems rather than as a mere technologist. Instead, we’re going to go beyond the tactics and talk about the psychology of customers (and consultants) that poison cheap relationships, why we typically underprice to begin with, how to walk up your rate in such a way that your customers continue to perceive outsized value from your services, and more. When we recorded this, our agenda was to talk primarily about freelancing/consulting rates, but both Ramit and I have run product businesses for many years, so we couldn’t resist tossing in a bit about pricing for e.g. SaaS companies and info-products as well. (Want to hear even more about this topic?  There’s a podcast coming up next week with Keith Perhac and Brennan Dunn, where we talk about how we transitioned our three very different freelancing/consulting businesses from where they were when we were young and stupid to three different models which work out fairly well for different reasons.  Subscribe to the podcast to hear it when the audio engineer gets done with the editing.) If You Want To Listen To It MP3 download (~40 minutes, ~35 MB): Right click to save. Podcast format: either subscribe to https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store. [powerpress] Transcript: Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie On Why Your Customers Would Be Happier If You Charged More [Patrick notes: I have annotated the transcript heavily with my remarks, in this format.] Patrick McKenzie:  Hey everybody, my name is Patrick McKenzie, perhaps better known as patio11 on the Internets. I’m a small software entrepreneur who has run a series of software as a service businesses for the last six years. Concurrent with that, for the last couple of years, I’ve run a consulting business largely helping software companies make more money by delighting their users and increasing sales. I’m here today with my friend Ramit Sethi to talk about how you can price your freelance or consulting offering better. Ramit Sethi:  Hey everybody, Ramit Sethi here. Patrick, thanks for having me. I am the creator of a site called iwillteachyoutoberich.com. I also have a New York Times bestselling book by the same name. My background is in psychology and persuasion. I teach people how to use behavioral change, principles to change... For the full transcript see here.

Patrick notes: Hiya long-time blog readers.  Last year I wrote two articles on career advice for young engineers, largely informed by conversations with a buddy of mine, Ramit Sethi. Over the last twelve months, I have tagged every message in Gmail I’ve gotten from someone who applied the advice in those articles to effect in their careers.  Sample comments: “Your advice made me $20,000 in two minutes.”, “Your advice made me $35k”, etc etc.  The running total is at about $280,000 (a year!), which makes those two articles probably my highest ROI ever from just writing blog posts.  (n.b. If this were the whole of my business I’d need to have a quick heart-to-heart with myself about obvious inefficiencies in that monetization model but, luckily, the business does well enough to cross-subsidize the blog.) Ramit offered to do a series of interviews about freelancing/consulting, which I know is of interest to many of you, so I naturally took him up on the offer.  (Though I think much of what we talked about applies just as well to the software business, to be honest.) If you weren’t already aware: I don’t talk about it on my blog that often, but I do high-end consulting,  typically for improving the engineered marketing of software companies.  Ramit is a NYT best-selling author who makes a living teaching people how to do this sort of thing better.  Ramit is extraordinarily credible on this topic — in addition to his take on most things jiving with mine, I have word-for-word stolen some suggestions from him for e.g. client proposals, to the mutual benefit of my clients (they took the engagement) and myself (they paid $$$ for the engagement). This is the first in a series of three interviews — the other two will be out later.  Want to make sure you don’t miss them?  Either subscribe to the podcast (details below) or to my email list. If You Want To Listen To It MP3 download (~50 minutes, ~120 MB): Right click to save. Podcast format: either subscribe to https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store. [powerpress] Transcript: Ramit and Patrick on Acquiring Your First Customer [Patrick notes: Shoutout to CastingWords for this transcription, which I paid $75 for.   I always use them for transcription and then make a hand-pass to make things flow a bit better and format for the Internet. Can I mention they have an interesting pricing strategy, since it is relevant to y’all?  They price per-minute, but there are three levels based on how rapid you want the estimated turn-around to be.  I picked $1.50 a minute for the 6-day turnaround.  You can also buy 1-day turnaround for $2.50 a minute.  The same exact service, sold for a 67% premium based on expressed customer urgency.  I sometimes even get 1-day delivery when I paid for the 6-day delivery, but you understand I’m not paying for outcomes, I’m... For the full transcript see here.

Keith and I recorded the second podcast, this time with special guest Amy Hoy. (If you missed the first podcast, see here.) We’re still searching for a format which really works for us, so this is a work in progress. Please share your thoughts with us on what you like/don’t like about it. This podcast was recorded two months ago, largely because Keith and I got too busy to do the editing and post it. We’ll outsource more of that in the future. Of particular note: the 30×500 class that Amy talks about is already started, so if you’re interested in it, sign up for her email announcement (link waaay down on that page) for when it opens the next time. Major topics for this podcast included: why businesses are not price sensitive and how to price SaaS directed at them how bootstrapping product businesses with a side of consulting worked out the psychology of happiness Download Links Podcast link (MP3, 23 MB, approximately 80 minutes.) Subscribe in iTunes &tc: The feed https://www.kalzumeus.com/feed/atom/ technically includes all posts on this blog, but if you put it into iTunes or your iDevice, it will slurp in only the audio posts. (Have a more finnicky client than iTunes? Try https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed/ instead.) Transcript Patrick: Okey-dokey. You guys want to get started on the formal talking to people aside from the three of us thing? Amy: Yeah. Keith: Alright. Sounds good. OK, so we do the intro music [mimics intro music]. We don’t have intro music. Patrick: We don’t have intro music. [laughter] Patrick: This is a third-rate podcast. Keith: Welcome back to the Kalzumeus podcast and… Patrick: This is episode two with… Keith: Episode two, well, 2.5, because we actually recorded an episode two and then trashed it because it sucked. Patrick: Yeah. This is uh… Keith: Two alpha? Two Beta. Patrick: Two Beta. It was an MVP of a podcast and then we shot it in the head because it was not accomplishing customer goals or anything. Keith: Exactly. Patrick: And we are joined today by special guest Amy Hoy. Keith: Hello Amy. Amy: Hello. Keith: For our people, you want to do the introduction, Patrick? Patrick: Oh, introduction, yeah. I’m Patrick McKenzie, better known as Pattio11 on the Internet and… Keith: I’m Keith Perhac, not at all known on the Internet. Joining us today is Amy Hoy, who is the founder of Freckle and the new product 30×500, which seems awesome. We’re going to have Amy talk about that a little more coming up. Amy, do you have anything you want to add? Amy: There are a couple more products other than those. [laughs] Keith: Those are the big one’s that I know of, that I’m most familiar with. And, of course, your blog Unicorn Free, which is freaking awesome, by the way. Amy: Thanks. Keith: I was actually… I listened to the 5×5 podcast where you talked about where... For the full transcript see here.

Hiya guys.  My good friend Keith and I decided to do something a little different and tried recording a podcast.  We’re still rather new at this, so it took for form of a freewheeling conversation.  Major topics included: the experience of working at large and small tech companies in Japan the Japanese web application market career advice for programmers don’t call yourself a programmer us trying to sell you on starting A/B testing conversion optimization stories, including actionable tips which have actually worked for people a wee bit of generic geekery. The podcast weighs in at about 79 minutes long. Podcasts take a metric truckload of work to put together.  If you like it, please, say so.  If folks have interest in it, we’ll do it again.  If not, well, one more data point as to what the market wants. Podcast Link (M4A.  Click to play, right click to download.  The play feature may not work quite right in Chrome.  Feel free to put this on your iDevice.  (You may find this URL helpful: https://www.kalzumeus.com/feed/atom/ That technically includes all the posts on the blog, but iTunes and similar software will automatically pluck out the audio ones.) Podcast Link (MP3, for Chrome. Click to play, right click to download.)   Transcript (Because We Love You) Patrick McKenzie:   Hi, everybody. I’m Patrick McKenzie, better known as patio11 on the Internets.  This is my buddy Keith. Keith:  Hi, I’m Keith Perhac. I live next to Patrick’s and I’m pretty much unknown on the Internets. Patrick:  So when we tell people we’re right next to each other, we’re right next to each other in Ogaki, Japan. How the heck did we end up here? Keith:  Long, long story. So I’ve been here for nine years, you’ve been here for eight, pretty much. And we came here on the JET program. I was working as an English teacher, you were working at Softopia, which is apparently our prefecture’s gift to web development and iPhone development right now. Patrick:  Yeah, the prefectural technology incubator. Keith:  That was an interesting little incubator because it’s been losing money for the last seven years. And then when the iPhone came out, all of the iPhone developers and everything moved in there because rent is cheap. And suddenly the incubator is making tons and tons of money thanks to iPhone apps. Patrick:  Yeah. That was crazy. The number one, number two, and number three most popular Japanese iPhone apps of all time were literally right next door to each other, all in Softopia. They’ve been saying that they were going to make Sweet Valley, the name of this region, into the Silicon Valley of Japan. And I always thought it was a pipe dream. And now we have three successful software companies in literally like a 10‑square‑meter space in one building here. [Editor’s note: Perhaps not quiiiiite Silicon Valley yet…] Keith:  Yeah. Patrick:  It blows my mind. Keith:  Yeah, essentially we’re in the... For the full transcript see here.