It’s been almost exactly one year since my last update on this here Capsule Blog. A longish time. In that span of spacetime the whole world seems to have changed. My plans have changed with it.
In the current news of the day, the President of the United States dropped bombs on Iran, without congressional authority. Protests in Los Angeles have erupted to combat masked ICE agents abducting people en masse. There’s a new Nintendo. Ukraine launched a secret drone attack using “prefabricated homes” as containers for hordes of bomber drones that blew up a third of Russia’s bomber fleets. It’s just a very different world. You can read about that stuff over on my personal site: kow.fm.
It’s time to give an accounting of how I’ve done with Capsule, my little studio over the last year. Terrible. If a 50% success rate was good, then I’m killin’ it. Over the last year I’ve designed and developed my brains out. Grown as a person. Made new friends, new enemies, and turned some friends into enemies, and some enemies into worser enemies. So net negative. overall.
I’ll go into detail, the best I can, about what went right and wrong. But in brief: Charge enough, for the right thing, and don’t do too much.
Lot’s of new friends and projects. Creatively, It’s been the most successfully year of my life. I really grew as a designer and a front end developer. I pushed harder and farther than I ever had. I improved, made some mistakes, and got better.
My work ethic really changed during this time. Before I had an unnatural fear of showing work that wasn’t 100% done or perfect. I got over that fear. I improved and developed a habit of making frequent smaller changes. Particularly if I have two projects running at once. Running a number of smaller projects concurrently began as a lot of fun. If it was more sustainable, or practical, I’d love to do that more again.
I got better at sales. Not good, but better. Over a year of pitching and bidding projects, and fiddling with my rates, I learned to understand the realm of possible projects that I can possibly get. There truly is a job, or a project for everyone. The tough part is finding it. The market also dictates a lot of what you can do. What a client expects to pay, receive, and what it looks like. And that offering a service at an inappropriate price point for the market you’re in, will move you into a different market. So don’t do that.
I started using CSS :has and :where selectors a lot more. I’ve developed an interesting way of adding modifiers to components in HTML by targeting attributes in CSS. There are a lot of CSS advancements that I tried in the last year, and so many more I want to explore in the coming years. I feel really excited about this.
The visual style that I can design has improved greatly. It’s the best I’ve been able to produce. I’m very happy with it. I’ve also really stretched myself and designed some interesting things that I’m proud of. I got faster, and better. I think I have a better grasp of space and typography. I want to keep improving, but I probably don’t want to get hired as a designer again for a while.
50% of projects had some sort of negative outcome. Some outcomes were worse than others. But the root cause boiled down to one thing. Money.
It wasn’t high enough.
When I launched the service, it was unlimited design and development for either $1,000/month, or $2,000/month. And to boot I started with a 50% discount. I wrangled up a few clients. It was great. I was even able to work for a client that wanted a triple size plan. Basically more of my time. This is where things began to get difficult.
I underestimated the amount of time It would take to deliver well for my clients. As a result I was working practically all day. Some clients would be neglected and fall by the wayside. Others that communicated more, received extra attention. This went on for a while. Some clients were happy, and our engagements ended. Others were not happy, and I did my best to make them happy. “An Unlimited revisions until you’re happy” policy, just doesn’t work unless your client will give you proper feedback.
It wasn’t good enough.
Clients are sometimes fickle, they’ll either be very happy, or they’ll act happy and then have very negative feedback about everything you’ve done for weeks. A breakdown of communication is never good. The blame can sometimes be with the other party, but the responsibility to communicate well is always on you, the service provider. As an unlimited Freelance, designer/developer guy I was already trying to do too much. Although budgets were smaller, at least initially, expectations were not any smaller. Identifying problems early, or getting feedback on progress became crucial. Over time communication issues became less frequent. I tried my best to understand, and to articulate, client expectations. To do that I followed some simple principles:
I’m not a productivity guru. Don’t blindly follow my advice. Adhering to these principles, and practicing them, made things easier. Also more fun!
I had no savings.
I was operating without a buffer. Impossilbe to avoid as I was laid off in February and had to figure something out fast. I should have filed for unemployment, and started looking for another job. I started Capsule instead.
Operational cushion is a fancy way of saying Savings. Any business has ups and downs. Income months, and others that are a bust. Because I had no buffer, I was always living paycheck to paycheck. It wasn’t until I almost completely stopped Capsule’s unlimited subscription, and went hourly with clients, that I was able to save a little money. Sadly, now I’m in the same position as a year ago. No savings, scrambling.
Now, My philosophy is “expect catastrophe, and be prepared”. Don’t count on future work or money. If you’re not prepared today, then you’re in danger, TODAY.
Just hourly contributions. It was far easier for folks to buy into either larger plans, for example starting at 8k, or to just hire me hourly. This was a pretty useful lesson. The unlimited business model is a Niche idea. The market for it is small, competitive, and you probably can’t do it. Designers in this space are among the fastest, and best in the world. Other’s work a crazy amount of hours to keep up with workloads. Which in turn makes them better, and faster at their job.
I didn’t have a narrow focus, I worked on Design, front end, branding, and iOS apps. I’m not the best in the world at all of these, hell not even one of these. Splitting my focus across disciplines meant that the time I spent working 100 hours in a week, and burning myself out, didn’t pay dividends later. I got paid, but I didn’t improve fast enough.
Moving forward I’ll be reducing my services to be just Front End work, and Ghost. I won’t take on any more design clients. I enjoy designing, but I’m not good enough to do it well and fast. I think this ties into a focused philosophy that fits well with what I’m thinking. I need to train like an athlete.
The best athletes train to compete in a specific event. Sprint, Long Jump, Hurdles, Basketball, etc… Their training regiment and focus isn’t to be the best at everything, but to be the best at one thing. In the digital designer/developer world we often see teams that are looking for people that are really good at one thing, but also has a broad set of skills. Valve calls this a T shaped skillset. Personally looking at my skillset, and it looks more like an EmDash.
So focus on a single or a very narrow band of related skills is important. What do you want to be doing everyday? What does that look like? Now avoid everything that doesn’t fit those constraints.
Athletes TRAIN for their events. They exercise and then practice. These are different. Exercise prepares physically for an event. Practice is repetition focused on improvement. There just isn’t much exercise or practice in my routine. Curiosity? Yes. Exploration? Lots of exploration. But not much exercise or practice.
I’ve now come to think of myself as an athlete, and my career as a pursuit of perfect execution. What is the one thing I’m the best at? What am I undeniably so great at doing, that people are lining up to get me to do it? I didn’t have an answer to that question. I didn’t have a single skill that was absolutely remarkable. How am I expected to excel when nothing I do can be considered excellent?
So now I train and practice. I study the fundamentals in a circular fashion, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Typography. I pick up whatever book available on the subject, and read it like a novel. This is part of my daily routine.
I cancelled all but one side project, my programming language. I still have side projects though. But now they are purpose focused, and short. I train specifically to build websites fast, and well. That’s the whole kit and caboodle, from type and spacing, to buttons and forms. Build something fast, small, and complete. And ship it. Show it off somewhere. That’s the only way I’m going to get fantastically better. By building a thousand websites.
Anyways. Now I feel like I have a singular focus. A one thing I’m great at. I want to be the greatest at it.
Capsule isn’t going away. I’m not dead. yet. I’m pursuing a full time job somewhere. Capsule is now a waypoint, a rest stop on the journey. Perhaps a favorite stop on a road I travel often. I’ll be looking for only a couple of clients. It won’t be enough to pay all the bills, and it will be focused work.
The goal is to stay out of trouble, save some money, pay some bills, and be the most reliable, stable, and fast website maker on planet earth.
If you need help building the front end of your small to medium sized SaaS or Blog. Then hire me. That’s what I do.
-kow
]]>You know that thing about quality and timelines and money, and how you can’t have everything? That’s true. We all have constraints. Constraints are good. One thing you need to know is that if things are too cheap, you can’t choose between fast or good, because there’s not enough time to choose anything. The early strategy for Capsule was to sell services very cheap, get a lot of clients to “grease the wheels”, and then raise prices gradually over time. This offered mixed results.
A low price doesn’t lower expectations, it shouldn’t anyways, but it does lower the options available. Offering services for such a low price put us in a situation where we earned too little. Any mistake would be a disaster, any setback, a catastrophe. Was it fantastic to work with so many folks! Yes! With mostly great results, but the chance for a spiral of bad outcomes became too high, and quality suffered.
Returning to the old lesson, to truly excel you need to focus. to focus you need to be doing less things.
The last 4 months of Capsule taught valuable lessons. What I’m capable of, what my regular output is. Also how expensive going outside really is for a family of 6. It’s a lot. Like $50/hour or more. The sunlight will suck you dry. Outside is expensive. Living in survival mode again has clarified our true needs.
The only true resource is time. Everything else is won or lost against the clock. So too, in a service business like Capsule, There are only so many hours in a day. Not charging enough for that time will lead to bankruptcy. Charging too much for that time will lead to no clients. A healthy balance needs to be struck.
The solution, and the only true moat, is to improve the quality of the service we provide, in the same time that we provide it. Selling fewer hours for a higher price. Simple. The path to higher service is to offer less, a fewer number of services. Focus, deliver, and repeat.
To focus, I’m shifting my marketing, and study, to provide design and development solutions for the front end. I’ve made some really great stuff recently and I want to push farther and faster on that front. My mind is stuck in HTML and CSS right now. Sticking around in that space feels like it will make things easier.
I’ll still offer other services. Absolutely. I think a key differentiator that I have is that I have very deep technical knowledge. I can build everything, and be useful in a lot of situations.
Other trains.
In this analogy, projects are trains. The track is my time. The wrecks are a manifestation of a mistake in planning.
With so many smaller projects, ideally, it would be easier complete a project, and then move on to the next. But Capsule began as a subscription only service. Scope and limits are avoided to achieve simplicity for the client. Unfortunately this put too much complexity on me to manage so many projects at once, so even small things would slip.
Preventing train wrecks is all about planning. You can’t have more than one train running on a track at a time. Very simple. Thankfully the solution to preventing Train wrecks in Capsule is the same for doing less but better work. Run fewer trains, at different times, and they won’t crash.
Directly this means That I’ve raised my prices somewhat, and I’m more careful with scheduling to prevent train wrecks. Some of my time is just… UnSellable. It’s safety time, Buffer time. Security time. The other moat, or preventative measure is to get better and faster at my job. I feel like I’ve really leveled up this year so this feels easier.
The Capsule website’s latest redesign is an effort to simplify the visual representation, and to experiment with the technical composition. I still don’t have a showcase section of my work that I’m really satisfied with, but this is a big step in that direction. I rewrote everything from scratch. (With a little help from pico.css). It’s meant to be more simple, streamlined, and easier to change.
I’ve also split my product offering up a bit. Now I have Pro, and Rocket. Pro is the Monthly subscription product that I’ve been offering for a while, Always at a lower price. This higher price is actually sustainable, and will focus on folks that can afford the services that I’m offering. Rocket on the other hand is the more affordable, one-off service that I’m offering. It’s a one time payment, or a limited scope. Branding + Website. The goal is that folks that need something complete and not ongoing can have a fixed price. It still includes unlimited revisions, making the customer happy is priority 1. I’m also limiting the number of Rockets I sell in a month to prevent those train wrecks I’ve been talking about.
I feel like these changes will move us past survival mode, and into thriving mode.
-kow
]]>Karl here. I’m happy to announce to ya’ll that Capsule is officially profitable! It’s amazing! I’m incredibly happy and excited! I ain’t dirt broke no more. Just like REALLY poor. This is honestly very good news. The number one need for any digital agency is wifi, the number two need is food and rent money. And I got it.
Now I am unstoppable. Unflaggable. Unbeatable. With infinitely sustainable money and a lot of guts and grit I’m gonna kick the tires without fear, but plenty of fuel.
Real talk. I have been in tough/bad situations in the past, and worked really hard to get out of them. My break Even/Profitable number is $6,000. I have 4 kids, a boss (my beautiful wife), and a dog. Rent is 2k, car stuff is 1k. Plus food bills etc… So like things are TIGHT. But that does NOT matter. I have never been better at my job and I’m only getting better. Time is the only resource and we’ve got mountains of it. So like things are really good now.
Things are changing around here…
Capsule was originally patterned after unlimited design studios. All comms through trello, only one task at a time, only async communication. Clients pay upfront, which is great, and every engagement is a subscription. We’re on the hook to deliver.
There are lots of things to like about this model, but a lot that just doesn’t fit. Unlimited requests sounds like a good offering, and we provide that, but the assumption is that we’re just like… pixel pushers or code ninjas, That the only value we provide is what we’re producing, and what we’re producing isn’t much thought. That is NOT the service I want to provide. Nor is that what most of my clients actually want/need. Also I’m not as fast as those other designers. I’d like to be, but that will take a few months grinding at this job. Excited to do it.
So the service is going to change in how we’re organized, and what we provide.
I like quick iteration, and with Version 3 of Capsule we’re refocusing on being holistic partners. Art, Design, And Engineering in the pursuit of making your app, startup, organization, run better and smoother. That means meetings, thinking, research, being proactive and curious. That’s not possible if you just deliver pixels. Value focus, not work focus.
We’re hired to solve problems, and sometimes that means we write code or draw fancy rectangles. We provide value any way we can. This service is better described as Fractional Co-Founder, Partner for hire. A hype man, a Stilgar. Everyone needs a Stilgar.
pricing is intimately connected to the market you’re going after, and the types of projects and customers you want to service. A lower price is for more scrappy or new startups. A Higher price for more established or well capitalized folks. I’m grateful that I was able to find a good mix of these clients early on. Every project gives me an opportunity to truly provide value. In exchange I’ve learned so much about how to provide service for these wonderful folks in a cyclical fashion. Growing Capsule to a more sustainable position requires focusing on clients with a bit more capital, longer running projects, for some specific needs. To do that I’m changing the pricing structure a bit and raising some prices.
Existing clients will see their plans shift to these new service offerings, but as promised, their pricing remain the same. Our first clients are incredibly important to us. The first to believe, and the first to place faith in us. We’re focused on truly becoming their partners.
Rocket: The rocket plan will go away as a recurring service and instead convert into a One off purchase. The same great service, but just a one time payment, and a loose scope of work. Why? Rocket has been great, but it’s low price prioritizes lots of smaller clients that still require a baseline of attention. I want to compress that attention to delivering much more much sooner and iterating the completion of the project over a few weeks instead of a few months. I also feel like certain projects don’t require a constant churn of iteration. This would be a good price/value combo to serve those customers.
Existing Rocket Customers are basically upgraded to Pro, but with limited scope, No Ruby or iOS.
Pro: Pro is going to get bigger, The price will almost double, and the provided service will be pushed higher. I have one customer on this plan right now and they will receive an upgrade. By increasing the price of the baseline subscription service, I can provide more focus on clients, by having fewer clients. This also sets a good precedent for the expected output of my work, and the value that’s being received.
Bell Grande: This is staying the same price. But it’s service offering will be more clear. We want to be partners, not contractors. That requires a greater investment and commitment to prevent the fragmentation of focus. Bell Grande is twice the size of Pro, but the same service. The hope is that we’ll move to mostly these types of engagements, and provide stable support, energy, and enthusiasm. Lot’s of Art & Design, etc…
I’ve also decided to change the focus of Capsule, at least for a while, to particularly help development and product teams that have fewer or no dedicated resources to Art, Design, and User Interface. I can do that really well, and I want to double down on this. Like… NOT just Art & Design, which is honestly a broad thing, but an emphasis on user interfaces.
To do that I’m going to push really hard this month to either complete, or almost complete every project I’m currently working on. I want to have a lot of new things in my portfolio to show off the work, To drive value to my customers, and to just get faster and better.
I’m going to shift my marketing actions to help developers with design. Also I’m going to do an in depth walkthrough, a series of posts about the design and implementation of a rebrand for my friend’s Taco truck. My hope is that these actions will be helpful to demonstrate a project from beginning to end, and to establish a little credibility and authority.
That’s the idea anyways.
Well that’s it for now. I’m gonna hit the ground running. I’ve got a redesign of the site I want to complete sometime in the next week, Theres 3 delivery dates this week for client work, and a Ruby Meetup in San Francisco that I’m attending. For me it’s all steam ahead.
say hi! email me@kow.fm.
-kow
]]>It’s been a minute. Maybe 5. Usually folks say that all ironic like, as if it’s been along time. But it hasn’t been a long time, really. Anyways. Today marks 2 weeks from the official, “We’re open for business” date of Capsule. Which is great! Hooray for us!
Providing services is not new to me, but doing so in this format, and in this cadence is new to me. I think over the last 2 weeks I’d give myself a 50/100 score, not bad but not great. It’s been harder to stay either, on track with my projects, or communicating at the proper cadence with customers. So I’m gonna make some adjustments.
Firstly, I’m gonna start tracking my time, which client I’m working for and when. This seems obvious, but this model is all about doing as much as possible as fast as possible. Tracking time is more about measuring progress and ensuring I update folks at a good cadence, than for billing. I mean it’s a subscription everything is included, I’m not charging hourly. But I AM human, and have limited hours. This means that I can’t just load up on 100 clients and expect to deliver anything of value to each one.
So I’m setting minimums and maximums. Minimums for the time I spend on a client’s work in a 30 day cycle, and a maximum for how much time I spend working.
minimum hours: 20. Each client receives, at the least, 20 hours of my focused time and energy. That’s 2 solid days of work, assuming I’m working 10 hour days. If we convert this to an hourly rate that’s $25 or $50 an hour. That’s a 66% to 83% discount on my normal rates. Remember I’m doing a 50% off sale for the first 10 clients. After the sale ends My effective rate will be more like $50-$100/hour depending on the plan and the client. Which is more in line with a sustainable business.
BUT REMEMBER, we’re tracking hours to stay on track, NOT to limit delivery. That’s one thing I really really like about this model. The price is low enough that I can just do whatever it takes, and whatever is needed for a client, and billing is HANDLED.
Maximum Hours: 200. I honestly can’t deliver more than that in a month without ruining my personal life and my family. 200 hours works out to 50 hours a week, for 4 weeks. There are on Average 4.5 weeks in a month. I’m only working weekdays, So this is less than it seems. This also limits the number of clients I can realistically take on. Based on current plans, I could have up to 10 Rocket or Capsule Pro subscribers, or 3 and 1 third Capsule Pro Bell Grande subscribers. Revenue wise this works out to $5,000 - $10,000 a month. Which is just above my break even threshold for the business.
I would say that’s pretty good for this kind of service. An absolute steal of value for the service that I offer.
Messaging and communicating progress to clients is the other extremely important part of this model. From the moment a customer subscribes the clock starts ticking before it’s renewed again. There is a strong incentive to utilize as much as my services as they can. I in fact want that. But providing customers with the maximum possible service means I have to be very proactive with communicating progress, and production. This is where the key, 48 hour delivery window comes in.
I’m gauging how much time it takes to deliver a task by recording my time. Putting a 5 hour limit to any task before I report back with a deliverable, and move on to the next task. Assuming I stick to my cadence I can get 2-3 tasks done a day, and rotate all clients in 2-3 days.
This I think is ideal, but of course requires some more discipline about time, Communication, and organization around the work.
The other thing about this model is that it eschews direct communication, or chats, like slack, for only asynchronous communication through comments in Trello, or loom videos. Now this is generally a good thing. Less time spent on back and forth and we can get more done. The downside is that only clients that are absolutely focused on directing the work can thrive under this model. I don’t want to leave folks hanging if they’re busy. My biggest strengths lie in helping to shape the strategy and thoughts of my clients, not just production.
In the environment of all these things I have a really good understanding of what it will take to deliver really great value. I’m very excited to do so.
I still have 5 client slots available in my studio launch discount promotion ting. 50% for the life of your subscription. Or my life, whichever is cancelled first. Please tell your friends to hop on the Capsule train. Load up on medication, and start trippin’!
I’m really excited with who I’m working with right now, and some of this stuff will start to come out over the next month. I’m very excited to show off what I’ve been working on.
-kow
]]>Karl here. I’m runnin’ this studio product thing a little differently than you might expect. partly that is because I’m like teetering on the edge of financial disaster but also maybe not? ¯\(ツ)/¯ . The other part is that I want to run, improve, and maintain the studio thingy the same way I do the clients of the studio. Wanna give more transparency to the whole process. Let’s get into it.
Yesterday, Capsule’s first customer ponied up the dough and bought into our crazy plan. Which is incredibly exciting. I can’t wait to get started. Since launching the studio idea thing last Friday I’ve received an outpouring of love, lots of attention, and a thumbs up or two. Honestly I should have done this sooner. But inevitably there is a feeling of trepidation when embarking on a new venture. A sense of self doubt that you can do it, or whatever. I never felt that with the idea behind Capsule for a number of reasons, but the greatest is that I have confidence in myself that I can do it.
Anyways, as with any new customer-client relationship, the early days are incredibly important. Acclimating to the team, client, and project quickly is important to begin deepening your understanding of their problems, in order to find solutions to them. So, outside the initial meet and greet meeting, I’m organizing a comprehensive checklist (simply a short list) to cover the basics and advanced stuff I gotta know to deliver.
These seem pretty straightforward to me. But looks can be deceiving. The purpose of these questions is probe into the expectations and intentions of the client. Good communication is absolutely important to achieve a consensus of thoughts, patterns, and ideas. Doing that requires a lot of back and forth, critically thinking about what someone asks for, and what they really want. There is always a gap between the message transmitted by someone, and what is received. We all have our own understanding of the world, and it’s different from everyone else. Reaching that consensus, or at least a good foundation to that consensus, is what the first days of a contract are all about.
The ongoing project is compelling and fits the subscription model very well. But on to some other news.
The other day a great fellow asked me if It would be alright to sponsor my open source work, I of course said hell yeah! So for the next year I have an open source sponsorship, Payment and some money put behind me to push forward the projects that I’m focused on. Those projects are currently Camping, an MVC micro ruby web framework, and KonaScript, An experiment at replacing javascript on the web. My primary focus will be on Camping though.
This is great news. I’ve long known that financial investment is necessary to move open source projects forward, truly, and that we all ought to be more generous about how we donate to such causes. If ya’ll would like to support some open source work, then please do so. I suggest sponsoring Marco Roth, Joel Drapper, or Ruby Central.
I’ll continue to improve the offering at Capsule, deepen connections with folks that are in our industry and looking for work or providing employment, and iterate on the fit, polish, and marketing of the studio. Soon I’ll be writing a case study about the current design ethos of capsule.graphics, and what inspired it’s design. Tell then, Cheers. Have a wonderful day.
-kow
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