In my last post on this topic back in September, Phase II - The Clone Wars, I discussed the first phase of our business development. We talked about how I tried to duplicate my own skills and energies by hiring likeminded folks, and how this led to a lack of diversity and innovation. In this post we will pick up on some of the solutions to those issues. Let me say at the outset that some of these issues (founders syndrome for example) are systemic and require constant vigilance and an ongoing effort to resolve. After all, we didn't come up with this list overnight at Denny's and pop in the next morning with neat and tidy solutions to all of them. Some of the items on our list (the need for sales, the value of diversity, the importance of management, team building etc.) required some convincing and cajoling and even some hard knocks to move us in the right direction. But I can say that in spite of "peaks and valleys" (which was incidentally my nickname in high school) we are moving in the right direction. So let's talk about solutions for moving off of the clone model and to something more workable for a larger, team-oriented staff.

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I was recently chastised by a twitter follower (a beat down in 140 characters or less) for starting series that I fail to finish. So I'm coming back to my "Journey" series to add to the CF Webtools story a bit. When last we met on the subject I spoke of the 3 attitudes you need to succeed in the consulting business:

• Work Hard and Be Patient
• Be a People Person First
• Avoid Perfection Paralysis and Do What You Can Do

With those thoughts in mind I'd like to talk about Phase One of your consulting business - building Clones.

More of Me

Anyone who's ever been successful as a contractor and thought about expanding has thought to themselves, "If I only had 2 of me." Aside from the obvious stress it would put on my wife you would think that having 2 of the Muse would be exceedingly useful. But knowing me, I would doubtless be playing golf right now leaving me behind to do all this work. That's just like me. It would make me so angry I'd be beside myself. Still, the idea is compelling when you are starting out - so compelling that you think about it a great deal when contemplating that all important first hire.

Consulting businesses are often started by knowledge experts with little or no business experience. When expanding such a business the first choice is usually "more of the same". In my case since I worked a certain way, I geared all my documentation, proposals, and estimates to the skill set of the Muse. So what did I look for in my first hire? Muse II of course (same level of action with a weaker plot I guess). It made sense to expand the current way of doing business by simply gathering similar skill sets to myself and dividing the work up amongst them. My first hire (Jason Herbolsheimer who is now CF Webtools VP of development) was an energetic can-do programmer able to find creative solutions to difficult problems. He worked at a similar speed to my own and was (and still is) a terrific people person. It was a great fit. Suddenly we were able to do roughly twice the work as before. In fact, my first 3 hires where like that. They were proven CF developers who I had known previously. Two of them had worked with me at my previous Job. The 4 of us divided up our customers and simply worked them in the same manner that I had worked them when I was an individual contractor.

This approach reminds me of that moving company "2 men and a truck" (would that be a "Mac" truck?). My guess is they started out as 2 men... and a truck. When they decided to expand they were probably considered changing their name to 4 men and 2 trucks, then 6 men and 3 trucks. There's some magic to this approach. It actually works well in many cases - especially if you assemble the right folks. If your team members work well independently and have the right soft-skills (inner-directed, owning problems, eclectic skill set, customer driven etc.), it can work quite well. The 4 of us did fine and had a great time along the way. I know of 3 or 4 consulting companies who operate at this level and intentionally stay at this level. And why not? They make good money, have very low overhead, and the level of responsibility is less crushing. Still, if you plan to expand beyond a handful of developers, the "clone model" (not to be confused with cloning an actual model which my wife says is out of the question) comes with some penalties.

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I was privileged to appear on a local radio show called "Success in Action" on Saturday March 25th). The host is popular local business Coach Jim Barger. He works for "Action Coach" - an organization with which I was unfamiliar. But I found his low key approach (devoid of the usual Rah-Rah marketing hype) refreshing, and he had many insightful comments for me both on and off the air. The show explores strategies for successful business growth. It was fun and exciting to be able to talk about where we have been and where we are going. Check it out.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm starting a series about my journey in building a consulting company. It's my hope that a transparent look at some ups and downs of growing my company will benefit other aspiring business owners and generate discussion that we may all find useful. Now just to be clear, I am not covering tax laws, employment laws, accounting or incorporation. Get a good accountant and a good attorney - that's business 101 in my view. Outsourcing payroll and relying on an accountant will allow you to breathe easier and concentrate on other things (where your skills are no doubt of more use).

With that in mind let's start at the beginning with 3 hard earned attitudes that you will do well to settle in your mind as immutable. They are essential to your success. They aren't technical and they haven't changed since history began. If you don't have them, put your dream away until you do.

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In 1995 after 9 years of pastoring I left the ministry. Why I left is a long story of a self-destructive man hitting rock bottom and almost drowning - but finding redemption and new life through faith, family and the love of God. We won't dive into that here, but it's pretty compelling stuff I have to tell you. Meanwhile, the Muse had no skills other than piano playing and public speaking (and a penchant for Greek and Hebrew). Oh... and I could type like a banshee. So while I was trying to figure out what to do with my career (and trying to hold my marriage together), I took assignments with a temp agency. I collated and typed and copied while I scratched my head wondering what the heck I was good for anymore.

At some point I was given an assignment working the night shift at a credit union. I watched batch jobs run on a big DEC Alpha/VMS mainframe. Reports came out on 2 big green bar track printers. I watched for errors, updated reports and answered the phone. I decided I kind of liked being around all this technical stuff. I also discovered I had a knack for troubleshooting terminals and modems and the like. I checked out a "dictionary of computer terms" from the library and read it cover to cover while sitting in the lonely data center at 3 am. One of the ways I learn is by simply increasing my vocabulary and making connections. Pretty soon I knew how to ask the right questions to gain more knowledge. I believe God had given me the skills I needed to "start over".

To make a long story short, I read a bunch of books and took tests to become an MCSE and ended up working for a fellow named Jay at DTN financial services. I supported infrastructure for our division - sales tools, news feeds, laptops and desktops. Jay saw potential in me and I loved making him look good. One day Jay came to me with a ColdFusion script he needed to run. And that's where our story begins.

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I have been looking forward to Google Wave and I was excited to at last have my invite. I got signed up and imported my contact list and created a wave and then.... then.... well... in the words of the dinosaur in the animated movie Meet the Robinsons, "I've got tiny arms and a huge head... I'm not sure you thought this plan through very well." Ok, not the tiny arms part, but this whole invitation thing, while a neat way to create Internet buzz in the lighting world of social media, doesn't really lend itself to useful testing - at least not for a company.

Sure, I'm seeing a few folks in my contact list who have a wave account. They are mostly tech savvy developers. I know I could create a wave and collaborate with them. But what I really need is to be able to roll my company developers and select customers into a wave for testing. I'm not trying to chat about the weather or review movies. If I want to waste time I can Facebook or Twitter. Instead I'm trying to see if the new wave paradigm can enhance my current project management processes (maybe even supersede some of them). I sent out a passel of invites but I've yet to have any of them approved. I guess until I get the right folks on the inside I will sit here and wave to myself. If I ever do get a legitimate test going - and more importantly if I can figure out how to tie Wave into my tracking and billing system - I will make sure and post a full report.

As we have discussed in our earlier posts on the Business of Web Development inexperienced customers (ones who have never done an IT project) are often surprised at the cost associated with a project. This is partially the result of the reputation that the web has for being cheap. Customers look at services like godaddy.com for example, and they see that they can register and host a site for the cost of skipping a couple of frappuccinos a month. While this is true, it is really not the same as professional design and development services and high performing, scalable, redundant, mission critical hosting services.

In fact, if I could digress to hosting for a moment, customers often fail to see the cost benefit of a more complete "managed" hosting setup. They spend thousands on development and then try to save a few hundred dollars a year on hosting. Having settled on hosting "on the cheap" they often have to pay someone a high hourly rate to do things like troubleshoot an underperforming server or handle DNS settings or figure out their mail services for them, or (worst of all) alter their code to conform to a changing server environment - like when a host recently disabled createobject() on a server causing an application to fail for someone who is now our customer. Any savings they might have gained is eaten up in support costs and they are actually losing money on the deal. In the words of Jesus they "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel" (email me if you don't know exactly what that means - I'll enlighten you).

Of course when it comes to development costs there are other things that mystify customers. As we have discussed before, customers often only account for the visual "up-front" items of a web application. They see forms, lists, charts and displays when the reality is that the bulk of the work on many complicated projects goes into coding, revisions, Q/A and Project Management. Here are a few fallacies that range from the hair-brained to flights of fancy:

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In our first post on this topic, Red Lobster Eyes With a Happy Meal Wallet, we began the discussion of the difficulty involved in estimating projects for startup companies. We took the time to chat about the nature of the bright people with big ideas who choose to try something new on the Internet. Our main point was that Big Idea people often underestimate the time and money it takes to complete a project. Today we will talk about one of the principle pitfalls that arise in reaction to lack of resources.

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If you have read my post, Great Expectations, you know that I spend a good percentage of my time helping entrepreneurs outline requirements for brilliant new ideas as well as helping them figure out the cost. I am the "chief estimator" at my growing company. Creating an accurate Estimate is an extremely important part of running a company like CF Webtools - a large project can affect our profitability (or lack thereof) for the entire year. My goal in estimating is to charge enough to pay for the development - salaries, expenses and infrastructure - and of course to make a profit. A second, equally important goal, is to give the project its best chance for success for the customer.

In the next 2 posts we will take a look at the dynamics of this task and in particular the importance of managing the relationship between the customer and the developer or development company. But let's start with the role of the development company - or in my case, my role in particular.

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