Gelform builds web apps

I met with Kelley Boyd and we were talking about the value we bring to a situation as consultants. It’s not always the work at hand, but often the experience you’ve collected, allowing you make better decisions. Everything you’ve read, every story you’ve heard, every experience you’ve had, become “theory on the shelf”; a resource you can draw from anytime. People like Kelley are extremely valuable, because she works hard at it. She reads voraciously. She talks to people non-stop. She’s involved.

I was able to get the proof of concept for my newest venture, the Birdy, out the door in a weekend, because I’ve been effectively practicing building web apps for 10 years. Now comes the hard part of actually turning it into a business, but I feel prepared because for the last ten years, I’ve also read every book I can get my hands on about business, I’ve gone to meetups, I’ve listened to podcasts interviewing experts…

My friend Brandon tells the joke:

A tourist walks up to Picasso, hands him a napkin, and asks for his autograph. Picasso signs it. Then the tourists says, “would you do a little drawing on the back?” Picasso does a little sketch, hands it back to the tourist, and says, “That’ll be a million dollars.” The tourist says, “But it only took you 10 seconds.” “No,” replies Picasso. “It’s taken me 60 years.”

37 Signals talks about releasing code bits as libraries, or collections of features as a new product.

If you are working on marketing, this idea goes even wider. Your goal is to constantly be in the conversation. What’s the rule of seven? Someone needs to see your brand name seven times before it sticks. Even if it’s not exactly true anymore (it feels like it’s gone up), it’s not a bad rule to live by.

If your goal is to get someone’s attention seven times, everything is an asset. Anything you’re involved in can be republished, retweeted, or written about. Give a presentation, write a tutorial (on your product or someone else’s), post an idea.

The extension of this is promoting other people’s stuff. Retweet, link to, republish, react to… Help promote other people, and they’ll do the same for you, even if they’re just promoting you promoting them.

Your audience just doubled. You got a pair of eyes one more time. You (hopefully) added a little value to someone’s day, and they’ll appreciate it.

I’m a successful freelancer here in New York City, and I’m going to give away all my secrets.

I started by deciding what I wanted to focus on, professionally. I love helping people accomplish tasks, solve real problems, with software. These days, the way we do that is with web apps. So I decided to focus on web application development.

I can build my own (and I do) but I have rent to pay until those are earning enough revenue. So I looked around for people with ideas for web apps, but needed help building them.

In New York City, those people hang out at Ultralight Startups, my favorite meetup. Every month, 100+ people get together and talk about starting businesses online. Too easy.

Because I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to do, I was able to define my customer. That led me to a room full of leads, potential partners and many customers. Can you describe your fish?