DEV Community: Kelly Vaughn

How I became an Entrepreneur

Kelly Vaughn — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 12:40:14 +0000

This week on the Ladybug Podcast, we talked about my advice for becoming an entrepreneur. I also wanted to share my story of how I became a freelancer and eventually an agency owner.

My Entrepreneurship Story

I taught myself to code when I was 11. I took on my first freelance client when I was 14 years old. My dad's friend needed a website, and I was the only person who knew how to build websites. I got paid a t-shirt. I know, great deal. And beyond that, it's not even my size; it's my dad's size. But hey, I do still have the shirt.

I continued to freelance through high school, undergrad, and grad school. The real reason why I started freelancing? College is expensive. I needed money to pay for my tuition and living expenses.

In 2015, I finished grad school and started a fellowship. About 8 months later I bailed and started freelancing full time. It turns out I'm not really good at working for anybody but myself.

I found my first clients on Twitter. (Side note: social media is a really great resource for getting your first clients.) I was following a friend of mine who was already freelancing. He tweeted, "Hey, I have too much work. Does anybody want to take on some freelance projects?", and I'm like, "Me, please, I'm poor." So we connected and it's actually how I started really getting a lot more clients.

The hardest one, the hardest client to get is your first client. Once you're past that hurdle, and you have some work in your portfolio from actually paid clients, and you have a testimonial, then things just kind of take off from there.

That same person who passed freelance work onto me also gave me my first project on Shopify. I immediately loved the structure of building a Shopify theme and how all the template files separate into a really, really readable format. Liquid, a Ruby-based language that Shopify uses to communicate with their backend, was really easy to learn real fast, so that was a major plus as well.

At that point, I was focusing about half my time on Shopify, and half my time on WordPress, which really require two separate brains. It's super difficult going back and forth. I was popping PHP into Shopify themes, and obviously, it would yell at me. So finally, I decided to just completely cut out WordPress altogether and put all my eggs in the Shopify basket.

Another interesting fact... I actually did not originally want to start an agency; I wanted to just do full-time freelancing. It's kind of funny, back in 2016, MailChimp did an interview with me about it. In the interview, I said, "I like having this hybrid model of just working with other freelancers." I didn't want to form an actual agency; I felt it'd be overkill.

Maybe a month or two after that, I completely changed my mind. I found myself hitting a wall on the size of clients I could bring on with just being myself, especially when I wanted to work with larger businesses. Kelly Vaughn Creative sounded like I was just a one-woman show, even though I had other people doing the design or SEO or content strategy, whatever it might be. So, that's why I made the switch from freelancing to actually starting the agency. I wanted to form an actual team and sound like a more of a legitimate company.

Listen to the full episode

You can listen to the full episode all about my entrepreneurial journey wherever you listen to podcasts!

I hereby challenge you to a programming poetry smackdown.

Kelly Vaughn — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 18:25:21 +0000

Give me your best poem. Here are two of my favorites:

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A guide to giving & receiving effective feedback

Kelly Vaughn — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 17:17:28 +0000

Feedback is key to ensuring you're making progress towards a goal. Without it, you're essentially shooting blindly at a target. Maybe you'll get lucky and hit it, but there's a good chance your form could be improved.

It's easy to take the feedback you receive personally – especially negative feedback – but it's important to try to take the feedback you receive as a learning opportunity instead. Giving and receiving feedback is a skill, and with any skill, you need to practice to get better. Below you'll find tips to help deliver feedback in a more effective manner to help prevent a negative reaction, and also some tips for becoming better at receiving feedback.

Providing effective feedback

Ask permission before providing feedback.

A simple "Hey, can I provide some feedback?" can go a long way. Whether you're delivering positive or negative feedback, you set the stage for what's to happen. If someone's already having a bad day, respect their wish to delay the feedback delivery until a later time.

Be timely with your feedback.

Feedback should be delivered within 24-48 hours. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to remember the specific events that occurred, and the more likely the person on the receiving end will also misremember and refute your feedback.

Frame your feedback in a future-forward manner.

We can't change what happened in the past. When you frame feedback towards something that already happened, people are much more likely to get defensive. Here's an example:

"You were late with this deadline. This caused our project to go off track."

vs.

"When you miss a deadline, we aren't able to complete projects on time."

You're still providing the same feedback (don't miss your deadlines), but the framing will change the way the feedback is received.

Drop the feedback sandwich and get right to the point.

The feedback sandwich has been a discussion for ages, following a guide of "positive-negative-positive" feedback. Don't sugar coat your feedback. If you need to provide negative feedback, just do it.

Don't forget to recognize accomplishments.

It's much easier to recognize wrongdoing. You're more likely to have an emotional reaction to a negative event vs. a positive event. Don't forget to recognize the good work delivered by your team as well.

Keep your emotions in check.

It's easy to jump on a negative emotion and immediately provide negative feedback. If you're angry, hold off on delivering feedback until you can discuss the situation in a level-headed manner. No good feedback comes from a moment of anger.

Receiving effective feedback

Be open to receiving feedback.

This is both the most important and most easily forgotten part. Whether you're a junior developer or you're the team lead, you should make yourself open to receiving feedback from those above, below, and at your level. Others will always have a different view of the work you're doing, and there's always going to be room for improvement.

Keep your emotions in check.

Just as it's important on the delivery, your emotions are important on the receiving end as well. Receiving any form of negative feedback is never easy, so it's easy to jump to getting defensive. Take the feedback, think about it, and then reply if you'd like to clear the air.

Understand the message.

Make sure you're fully understanding what is being said to you, especially before you respond. It's completely fine to ask for clarification if something is unclear.

When asking for feedback, be explicit in the type of feedback you want.

Whether you're looking for suggestions on how to clean up your code, how to best convey a message on a website, or just looking for feedback on a very specific section of your app, be as clear as possible in your request. This will lessen the likelihood of somebody commenting on something entirely unrelated. (And if someone ignores your recommendation and comments on something unrelated anyway, don't take it to heart.)

Both giving and receiving feedback effectively takes time and practice. You're not going to get it right on your first go, and that's totally okay. The more you practice, the better you will become.

Nevertheless, Kelly Coded

Kelly Vaughn — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 03:50:12 +0000

My name is Kelly and I am a developer. A business owner. An entrepreneur. A forever learner.

I am many things.

But one of the things I'm most proud of is turning a hobby that started nearly 18 years ago into the career of my dreams.

I don't want to make this post about my journey because it has been shared before, but here's the short version. I taught myself to code at 11 because I wanted to make my own guild on Neopets. Neopets turned into MySpace layouts, which turned into building my first client website (I was paid a t-shirt), and I freelanced all through undergrad and grad school. I lasted 9 months in a "real job" before going full-time freelance, which turned into building an agency.

Okay, now we're all caught up!

So why do I write this post for International Women's Day?

This post is for the women who have been told they wouldn't succeed in a development career.

It's for the women who thought they couldn't do it. The women who think they're too late to get started at this point.

Let's dispel some rumors here.

I'm not technically-minded, so I wouldn't do well.

Development is art. Sure, there's some math and a lot of logic involved, but in this career we spend our days creatively solving problems. Creating something new.

I'm already [some age], so it's too late to get started now.

My dad just learned how to code in Ruby on Rails. He just helped me build a Shopify app that will be submitted for approval next month. He's not in his 20s or 30s, or even his 40s. (Sorry, Dad.) He can absolutely start a new career in development at his age, and so can you.

I'm always going to be behind.

Okay, this one's sort of true. We're all behind! That's the beauty of a career in development. There's always something new to learn, and you'll always meet people who have the answers you seek to the questions that are holding you back. There will always be room for improvement.

I'm not good enough.

Yes you are. You are fully capable of having a flourishing career as a developer. I believe in you. This community believes in you.

Still on the fence about starting your career in development?

Reach out to me. DM me on Twitter. Send me an email.

Let me help you. Let this amazing community help you. Support you. Teach you. But remember: you can absolutely do this. If you want it, the development community is here to help you get it.

I'm proud of being a woman in tech in 2019, and this community is why I code.

How I learned to be more productive with my workdays

Kelly Vaughn — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 13:40:06 +0000

I'm the queen of distractions. If I see an email notification come through, I have to stop what I'm doing and check it. My phone lights up with a text? Ooh, someone wants to talk to me! (Nope, just AT&T letting me know my autopay has successfully processed.) I spent a lot of 2018 trying to figure out what I can do to make my workdays more productive. It's still very much a work in progress, but I found six primary behavior changes that helped me be more productive when I'm on the clock.

I turned off push notifications. About six months ago, I turned off all push notifications for social media. The result was an immediate increase in focus on my work. I used to pick up my phone every time it would light up, and inevitably I'd get distracted and begin scrolling through Facebook or Twitter. Next thing I know, a half hour has gone by. I strongly recommend trialing disabling push notifications for a short period of time and see if it makes a difference in your productivity.
All of my emails flow through SaneBox first. SaneBox is an incredibly useful tool that automatically filters your email so you're only getting notified about the important things that need to be addressed. You can train your email as well so the system gets smarter over time. On a busy week, I now only get notifications for about 75% of my emails, and just get a digest at the end of the day to let me know I have other emails to check. Plans start as low as $7/mo.
I don't take meetings on Fridays anymore. That's my "me" day. I'm on Slack and I'm still checking my email, but meetings either need to happen before Friday or will have to wait until the next week. This gives me a full 8 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted time to get work done.
I take breaks when I need them. Everyone needs a brain break. Developers especially need a brain break. We tend to get so caught up in attempting to solve an issue that we try and try and try until something hopefully works. 90% of time if I come back to a problem with a fresh mind after taking a 15-minute break, I can develop a solution or at least make progress towards one.
I'm learning that nothing is really that urgent. If it's not written down, it's not getting done. You know how it goes: you start your workday expecting to get A, B, and C done, but throughout the day G, H, I, and J present themselves, and by the time you get to the end of your workday you have barely even started on A. I'm getting better at accepting that not everything is urgent. If it's not on fire, it can probably wait until tomorrow.
I don't answer unscheduled phone calls. I know this doesn't work for everyone, and I know others are not going to agree with me here. But I have strong feelings towards phone calls in that if you don't shoot me an email or message on Slack to ask if we can have a quick phone call and instead call me outright, you value your time over my own. I'm probably busy doing something (hopefully) important, and picking up the phone will not only distract me from whatever it is I was working on but also throw me off my game after the call ends, and I'll need to regroup and figure out where I left off. Be kind and schedule calls.

What are your tricks to having a more productive workday?

What's your coding origin story?

Kelly Vaughn — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 16:57:47 +0000

How did you get your start in programming? Are you self-taught? Went through a coding bootcamp? Graduated from university with a CS degree?

The truth about impostor syndrome

Kelly Vaughn — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 04:38:20 +0000

"How did I get to this point in my career? I don't belong here."

"Oh, it was just pure luck landing this promotion."

"Eventually someone is going to call me out for the fraud that I am."

When is the last time a similar thought has crossed your mind? My guess would be at least once in the past year, maybe even the past 1-3 months. Why? Say hello to your new favorite inner enemy: impostor syndrome.

What is impostor syndrome?

It's the shadow living in the corner of your office, judging you. Except that shadow is yourself. It's that little feeling inside of you that says you're not good enough to do what you're doing. A persistent feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, like someone's going to call you out as a fraud.

Certainly not everyone feels this way, right? It's just me, right?

Wrong. Everyone feels like an impostor at times. Some may feel totally comfortable speaking with a group of junior devs but freeze up around their peers. Others are fine speaking with their peers, but feel they don't have the authority to speak to junior devs.

Regardless of how many years you are into your career, the feeling of inadequacy hits you out of nowhere. Nobody is immune to it. I've been coding for over 15 years now and it still strikes me, especially as I continue to grow my business. Impostor syndrome just pokes its head into new situations that I maybe didn't encounter before.

Okay, but what can I do about it?

Create a folder on your computer. Or if you're more of the "pen and paper" type, find a physical folder. Every time you do something cool - whether it's a project you're proud of, an achievement, an award, a nice email from your boss or a colleague, save it. Put it all in that folder.

Whenever you're feeling down on yourself, go through that folder. This is work YOU did, awards YOU received, kind words sent directly your way. This is all you.

Whether you're just getting started in your career or you're moving on up, just remember when you start feeling that bout of impostor syndrome creeping in:

You are here for a reason.
You are smarter than you think you are.
You are more capable than you think you are.
You earned this position in your career. You worked hard to be here. You deserve it.

Let's hear from you.

Impostor syndrome is an ongoing battle for many -- it's very common everyone regardless of career experience. When's the last time you felt like an impostor? What methods to do you take to overcome it when it shows up in your life?

Freelancing 101: How to get started

Kelly Vaughn — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 05:08:24 +0000

If you're looking for some extra cash and have a few hours a week to spare, freelancing is a great way to stretch your programming muscles and line your wallet. Even better, freelancing can be a very lucrative career if you have dreams of working entirely for yourself.

Before starting an agency, I freelanced all throughout undergrad and grad school and well into my first full-time job before making the switch to freelancing full-time. I turned a few side gigs into a six-figure career, and you can too.

Before you do anything else, build a portfolio.

Visitors will want to know more about you and your work before they think of hiring you. Remember: your freelance portfolio is not your resume. Potential companies and entrepreneurs looking for freelance help are not interested in what school you attended. They want to know what you can do and how you can help them further their goals.

Make sure to include some information about yourself. Include a photo if you're comfortable with that. Because you may never meet these companies in person (unless you have local freelance arrangements), put yourself in your best light online. Let your personality shine through.

Don't have paid work to display in your portfolio? Don't worry about it. Showcase anything you've built that shows off your best work, whether it's a redesign or a small webapp you built for fun. You can add paid projects to your portfolio as you take on more clients.

Getting your first clients

The first few clients will always be the most difficult to find and sign on. Your mileage will likely vary on your likelihood to find leads through these sources, but I've seen success for other freelancers getting their start in the following areas:

Upwork. I know, I know. Upwork is a love/hate relationship for many. But it's a great way to get in front of people who may not otherwise find you. Think of it as the Amazon marketplace of developers. Just be sure you don't fall into the race to the bottom on pricing. You're not going to appeal to everyone on there if you don't have the lowest rates, but you don't want to undercut yourself. Your work is valuable and you're being hired to do this for a reason.
Social media. Write a tweet letting your followers know you're available for freelance work and link to your portfolio. Ask followers to retweet it. Find some freelancer Facebook groups in your niche. Quite often I see leads being shared when someone has too much work or the client isn't a good fit.
Friends and family. Tell your friends and family you're getting into freelancing and you'd love to have them pass your name onto their friends who may need some work done. I receive a new lead at least once a quarter from a friend or family member who knows I'm in this industry.
Non-profits. This is a great way to add some client work to your portfolio while giving back to your community. Smaller non-profits in your community don't usually set aside enough money in their marketing budget to put any focus on their website. If there's a local non-profit you would like to support, reach out and see if you can arrange a deal with them to build out your portfolio at a reduced rate.
Cold calling/emails. In all honesty, I rarely hear of directly reaching out to a company offering to rebuild their website being successful, but it has happened before and can happen again. If you're okay with being rejected, it's worth a shot, I suppose! :)

Establishing your rates

My favorite topic! Everyone undervalues themselves - including myself sometimes. It takes just one potential client who says you're too expensive to make you second guess your rates. To be completely honest, I've been in this business for over a decade and my rates are something I continue to struggle with.

It's difficult to say "You should charge X" without knowing where you're located, what type of work you're doing, what your skill level is, and the many other factors that go into pricing a project. It's definitely important to take your market into consideration, as rates are going to differ from place to place. Take a look around the web to see the market value for your area and skillset.

A good rule of thumb is to do the following math to calculate your hourly rate:

Calculate how much you would like to make per year freelancing.
Add in any expenses you'll incur as a freelancer, such as credit card transaction fees, a co-working membership, additional equipment, and monthly/annual costs for software and services you'll need to conduct your work.
Divide this number by the number of billable hours you'll freelancer per year. Note that administrative tasks (marketing, communicating with leads, preparing contracts and invoices, etc.) will on average take up ~25% of your time, so don't include this in your billable time.

Now you have your target hourly rate!

Need an example?

Let's say I want to make $10,000 in my first full year of freelancing.
My additional expenses will be approximately $2,000. That means I'll need to make a total of $12,000.
I expect to freelance approximately 5 hours a week for 48 weeks out of the year. 5 * 48 = 240 hours. Remove 25% of those hours for administrative work, bringing you to 180 hours.

$12,000 / 180 hours = $66.67/hr.

It's not perfect, but it's a good way to get a starting ballpark rate.

Continue to increase your rates with each project or as you take on more complex work. Another agency owner once told me that if a client is willing to pay $6,000, they're probably willing to pay $7,000. If they're willing to pay $12,000, they're probably willing to pay $14,000, and so on.

Lastly, never reduce your rates for a client without removing something from the scope.

Landed your first client? Great! Now what?

First thing's first: don't do any work before you have a signed contract. Your contract is the only thing that will protect you AND the client from the horror stories you hear about freelancing. Whether it's a close friend or someone you've never met, send them a contract. If they won't sign the contract, don't work with them. Need a sample contract? There's one available on this Medium article. Adapt it as you need. It's well worth the small investment to have a lawyer review any legal documents you send to clients to make sure they're enforceable. It's a one-time cost that could save you thousands upon thousands down the road.

Next, get a down payment. How much you want to set your down payment for is completely up to you. Sometimes I require 100% up front, and sometimes I'll split the project cost over a series of payments as we hit certain project milestones. An easy rule of thumb if you're just getting started is request 50% up front and the final 50% before you deliver the final product. Not sure where to accept payments? I'm a big fan of FreshBooks and have been using it for a few years now. Their support is excellent and they make it really easy to accept credit card payments AND track your expenses (which you'll definitely need to be doing as a freelancer!)

Lastly, create a folder and save the estimate, signed contract, and any important conversations regarding the project details. You'll thank yourself later for having these immediately handy instead of searching through your email.

Okay! Now you can start working.

Common freelancing mistakes

Don't over-promise what you can't do. If it's a similar skill and you just haven't had the opportunity to dig into a specific facet of your preferred development language, it's fine to take on the project if you know it's something you can do based on your current skills. But don't say you can code an iOS app for a client if you've never done any iOS development before.
Don't work for free. I'm not talking about donating your time and skills to a good cause. I'm talking about working for exposure or to "prove yourself" to a client. Your work is valuable. The client wouldn't be giving away their product or service for free, and neither should you. If you're still building up your portfolio, you can discount your rates if you want so you can get some paying clients under your belt.
Be realistic about your time frame. The honest truth is projects almost always take longer than expected. If you think something will take you a week to code, tell the client it'll take two. Something will come up that will throw off your schedule. It's better to deliver earlier than expected than to have to push out a launch date.
Keep track of your expenses and set aside money for taxes. Look up your country's laws around freelancing and taxes as a contractor. If you live in the US, you should begin paying quarterly estimated taxes. Set aside a small percentage of your payments to put towards taxes. If tax law isn't your forte (as it isn't for most devs including myself), it's wise to consult a CPA to make sure you're saving enough and have your expenses properly recorded come tax time.

Whew, you made it to the end! If this article didn't answer all of your questions, ask below and I'll do my best to get you an answer.

Want more freelancing goodness? I wrote a book called Start Freelancing Today that is a deeper dive into starting and scaling your freelance business. Click here to purchase.

Happy freelancing!

What are your programming goals for 2019?

Kelly Vaughn — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 02:37:42 +0000

I asked this question on Twitter but figure this is a good place to continue the conversation. What are your programming goals for 2019? I personally want to become proficient in GraphQL. I've dabbled enough to be intrigued, and now I want to know everything. Your turn! // Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1068948408923230208-359'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1068948408923230208&theme=dark" }

Nevertheless, Kelly Vaughn Coded

Kelly Vaughn — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 03:49:44 +0000

I began/continue to code because...

I'm a developer, business owner, manager, entrepreneur, and all-around badass female in the computer science world. (Am I allowed to call myself that? I just did, so I guess it's too late to turn back now.)

I've been building websites as a hobby since I discovered I could create my own guild on Neopets when I was about 11 years old. (I still believe these were the best years on the internet.) Although I'm now being paid to code, I still very much think of it as a hobby. I love the challenge that comes with coding a unique design or complex feature. The more complex, the more fun I have.

While I've dabbled in various languages over time, my favorite place to be is in the frontend, doing custom theme development for Shopify. It's a particularly fun niche because my code is directly helping others launch and grow their own business. I've been working solely on Shopify stores for the past three years and change, and I absolutely love it.

I want to brag about...

My biggest accomplishment to date is starting a female owned and operated business called The Taproom Agency. What started as just me freelancing is now an agency utilizing the skills of 7 incredibly talented women to help entrepreneurs launch their own businesses. Learning how to run a business and manage others has been a challenge, but one I definitely welcome.

It was never intentional to have a team only consisting of women, but I'm so glad it worked out that way. In a crowded world of agencies, this single fact (aside from the great work we do) really helps us stand out. As an added bonus, not only do I have the opportunity to work with the women who make up The Taproom Agency - I get to work with so many other women (and men) working hard to achieve their own entrepreneurial dreams.

My advice for allies to support women and non-binary folks who code is....

If there's some advice I could give to another female developer and entrepreneur, it's to stick it out. Push through the hard moments. They'll come, they'll pass, and then more will come. People will tell you you can't do something, you're not talented enough, you don't have enough experience. Prove them wrong.

And most of all, support other women who are aiming for the same goals as you. Focus less on competition and more on lifting each other up. Our end goal should be to get more women interested in a career in computer science. The more women who are working in computer science, the better off we all will be.

Nevertheless, Kelly Vaughn Coded

Kelly Vaughn — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 16:46:11 +0000

I began coding because...

I got my start in coding at the young age of 11 when I really wanted to build my own little community (guild) on Neopets. I never would've guessed that before I had even become a teenager I would be beginning my career as a developer. I just felt such an immediate connection with development - the challenge of learning a new language, the sense of accomplishment that comes with making something function just as I had envisioned it (even if that meant building some really stellar tables and marquees back then). Fifteen years later, those feelings are still present throughout my day-to-day.

I'm currently hacking on...

I'm in the process of re-launching my own business. My career goals no longer align with the freelance life and I'm currently going through the rebranding process to grow into more of a pseudo-agency format. I'm working on my #GIRLBOSS mantra and building a team of experts to help me accomplish the goals I can no longer achieve on my own.

On the technical end, I'm also currently learning Ruby on Rails to start doing a bit more backend development, as I've always lived in the front end all my life. It's like I'm 11 all over again with the basic goal-setting and accomplishments, only this time I have a larger vocabulary of choice curse words when my code's not working as it should.

My advice for other women who code (or want to get into coding) is...

Seek out a mentor - someone who's currently doing the tasks you'd like to see yourself doing at some point in the future. There are so many other developers out there who would love to share their knowledge and experiences so you can succeed as a developer and (hopefully) not make the same mistakes I know we all have made in the progression of our careers.
Be a mentor. Contribute to the exchange of information and join your local chapter of a group that promote careers in development, such as Women Who Code, Girls Who Code or Girl Develop It. For me, the real reward comes when you've gone full circle and have helped others reach the goals you once had when you were just starting out.