What advice would you give someone starting out their own software company? Are there specific resources you found helpful to define how you wanted your company to be formed?
Hey Corey, I started a while back (in 2010) so back then I sort of had to piece together information and learn from experience.
However, one resource I very highly recommend is The Futur. They have tons of content in their YouTube channel that helps freelancers and entrepreneurs of all levels.
In my opinion, it is by far one of the best resources you will find. They tend to lean towards designers, but there is just so much good info for independent professionals in general, it will definitely be of big help to you for sure.
Some advice I can give you to be successful is:
1 Do amazing work. This can't be understated. The actual work you do should be of very high standard, but this goes beyond the actual tasks you do. A big part of it is being communicative, responding promptly to emails and messages from clients, being proactive, being a curious person (wanting to learn constantly), wanting to improve, and working well with teams. If I could pick out a single reason for the success I've had it is this one.
2 Set up a company structure. Form an LLC or S-corp, get yourself a separate bank account for business revenue, pay yourself at regular intervals (don't touch the business money for personal things), work with a trusted accountant. Don't deal with tax issues on your own. You will go mad.
3 Document everything you do, measure how long it takes you to get work done so you can better price your services, and document everything you learn. Get as much insight as you can with how you work, so you are able to know where you need to improve and what is working well.
4 Use your time wisely. Your time is your most valuable asset. Work smart, automate tasks, build processes, create your own templates and configurations.
5 Blog about what you do and engage in social media. Get your name out there, keep yourself on people's minds. This will increase the leads you get. This is something I personally have recently started to take serious.
6 Learn to write well. I realized this myself by listening to Dan Lok once (another resource I recommend) when he talked about copywriting and the impact your words can have on others. It is a fundamental skill that anyone should have.
This helps you in writing about your process, it helps you when writing to clients and explaining complex ideas. It helps you in sales as you persuade leads to use your services, and it helps you in your personal life too.
I'm on this path myself now. I bought a book called On Writing Well which has some great tips. It's been a really interesting read and I try to apply it as I blog.
Definitely a book you will probably read a few times. It has a lot of information.
There are a lot of other things that can be mentioned, but I think these are the most fundamental to me so far. Good luck!
By god! This is the best write-up ever. This should actually be in your main article, not just in the comments!
We're also doing the same with our engineers. We document everything. Our knowledge base kept growing. We've come to the point where we have so much knowledge stored up that we're now trying to organize the knowledge via publishing books on LeanPub.com. (We just started there.)
Thanks @jonw
, really glad this helped! Yes documenting is so important! You learn so much valuable info every day even from the smallest task that you do, it is so worth writing it down.
Not only do you help yourself stay organized and re-use info, but the act of writing helps you remember what you learned, it helps you understand even more what you think you knew until you wrote it down, it helps you save tons of time because the info is always there to come back to, and it also helps you have organized info for blogging.
LeanPub.com sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out!
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What advice would you give someone starting out their own software company? Are there specific resources you found helpful to define how you wanted your company to be formed?
Hey Corey, I started a while back (in 2010) so back then I sort of had to piece together information and learn from experience.
However, one resource I very highly recommend is The Futur. They have tons of content in their YouTube channel that helps freelancers and entrepreneurs of all levels.
In my opinion, it is by far one of the best resources you will find. They tend to lean towards designers, but there is just so much good info for independent professionals in general, it will definitely be of big help to you for sure.
Some advice I can give you to be successful is:
1 Do amazing work. This can't be understated. The actual work you do should be of very high standard, but this goes beyond the actual tasks you do. A big part of it is being communicative, responding promptly to emails and messages from clients, being proactive, being a curious person (wanting to learn constantly), wanting to improve, and working well with teams. If I could pick out a single reason for the success I've had it is this one.
2 Set up a company structure. Form an LLC or S-corp, get yourself a separate bank account for business revenue, pay yourself at regular intervals (don't touch the business money for personal things), work with a trusted accountant. Don't deal with tax issues on your own. You will go mad.
3 Document everything you do, measure how long it takes you to get work done so you can better price your services, and document everything you learn. Get as much insight as you can with how you work, so you are able to know where you need to improve and what is working well.
4 Use your time wisely. Your time is your most valuable asset. Work smart, automate tasks, build processes, create your own templates and configurations.
5 Blog about what you do and engage in social media. Get your name out there, keep yourself on people's minds. This will increase the leads you get. This is something I personally have recently started to take serious.
6 Learn to write well. I realized this myself by listening to Dan Lok once (another resource I recommend) when he talked about copywriting and the impact your words can have on others. It is a fundamental skill that anyone should have.
This helps you in writing about your process, it helps you when writing to clients and explaining complex ideas. It helps you in sales as you persuade leads to use your services, and it helps you in your personal life too.
I'm on this path myself now. I bought a book called On Writing Well which has some great tips. It's been a really interesting read and I try to apply it as I blog.
Definitely a book you will probably read a few times. It has a lot of information.
There are a lot of other things that can be mentioned, but I think these are the most fundamental to me so far. Good luck!
Thanks Daniel! Appreciate the response and solid resources you linked. I'll check them out. :)
No problem Corey, I'm glad I could share those with you!
By god! This is the best write-up ever. This should actually be in your main article, not just in the comments!
We're also doing the same with our engineers. We document everything. Our knowledge base kept growing. We've come to the point where we have so much knowledge stored up that we're now trying to organize the knowledge via publishing books on LeanPub.com. (We just started there.)
Thanks @jonw , really glad this helped! Yes documenting is so important! You learn so much valuable info every day even from the smallest task that you do, it is so worth writing it down.
Not only do you help yourself stay organized and re-use info, but the act of writing helps you remember what you learned, it helps you understand even more what you think you knew until you wrote it down, it helps you save tons of time because the info is always there to come back to, and it also helps you have organized info for blogging.
LeanPub.com sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out!