But I’m proud to say, this little startup of mine has officially launched in beta.  It’s called Restaurant Engine.

In a nutshell:  It’s a turnkey, hosted website solution designed specifically for Restaurants.  I won’t cover everything about the service here since you can read about it on the site.  In this post, I just want to touch on a few “behind the scenes” aspects of the project.

Building on the Collaboration Model

As I’ve written about extensively in the past, I’m a firm believer in the collaboration model for web design production.  The key to creating awesome work on the web is to team up with the very best craftsmen in the business.  And to constantly grow and mix up my network of collaborators to keep things fresh, grow and learn alongside A players in the industry.  This approach has taken my client web design business to the next level.

With Restaurant Engine, I’m applying the same approach to a template-based web design product.  I looked to my awesome network of designers and developers to help create the design templates (themes) found on Restaurant Engine, as well as the RestaurantEngine.com site itself.  The plan is to continue to bring in leading web designers to create upcoming templates for our customers.

Re-Thinking a WordPress Themes Shop

Restaurant Engine is a different take on a WordPress themes shop.  It’s a hosted service, with a customized experience and feature set tailored specifically to the needs of restaurant owners.  Much like a web designer who hosts the customized websites he/she builds for clients, Restaurant Engine does the same, only with more automation.  A Restaurant Engine subscription gives the customer web hosting, a website powered by WordPress (with custom-tailored functionality and options), choice of any theme in our collection, and of course dedicated customer support.

From my experience running ThemeJam (a traditional WP themes shop) I found the customer-base has it’s limitations.  We can make the following assumptions about a customer who purchases and downloads a WordPress theme:

• They know what WordPress is.
• They know how to find and purchase their own web hosting.
• They know how to install WordPress on their web server.
• They know how to install a WordPress theme.
• They know how to configure WP settings properly, find and install the right WP plugins for their needs.
• They know how to create an effective site map and develop a content strategy.

Technical Stuff

And now, a few notes about the tech going on behind the scenes of Restaurant Engine:

In case you haven’t guessed by now, it’s built using WordPress Multisite.
Every customer’s site is a site on the network.  There’s also a “template” site, that is replicated whenever a new site is created.  The template site has one of our themes pre-activated, various settings pre-configured, and a base sitemap and pages pre-created to get things started.

Signup and Stripe Recurring Payments
I’m really excited about this part.  Working with the talented Pippin Williamson, we implemented a custom signup form which simultaneously initiates recurring subscription payments (with a free trial period) processed by the Stripe, and creates a site and account on the network for the customer.  Stripe truly is an amazing game-changer in the world of online credit card processing.  Absolutely brilliant user experience for managing customers, orders, charges, discounts, etc.  No monthly fees.  All cards accepted.  I can’t say enough good things…

Customer Support
Another piece I’m really excited about is the customer support system.  After investigating several options, I’ve settled on Tender app for the support system and Knowledge Base.  For live chat support (and pre-sales chat), I’m going with Snap Engage.

Both services offer the ability to embed widgets.  So I’ve actually integrated both the support forum and live chat support right in the WordPress dashboard:

So that’s what has been keeping me busy (and quiet) over the last 6 months or so.  I expect this will be my primary focus for the remainder of the year (at least).  As always, feedback welcome…  And if you happen to know anybody in the restaurant business, you know where to send them

“This great room is the one place in the company where you can look around and see everything we have in the works… Steve will graze by the tables to see where all of the products are heading.  He can get a sense of the sweep of the whole company, the iPhone and iPad, the iMac and laptop and everything we’re considering.  That helps him see where the company is spending it’s energy and how things connect.  And he can ask, ‘Does doing this make sense, because over here is where we are growing a lot?’ or questions like that.  He gets to see things in relationship to each other which is pretty hard to do in a big company.  Looking at the models on these tables, he can see the future for the next three years.”

This was a real eye-opener for me.  I instantly realized how Apple is able to keep such a focused product line, with each product serving a specific market beautifully.  And it’s how they achieve the same simplicity and feel, consistently across all products in their line.

But it also shows us how important product design — and the design of the product line as a whole — is in making big-picture decisions at Apple.

The fact that they craft all of their products in the same room shows us how fluid and integrated their design and internal review process is.   And it shows how Steve Jobs was truly a designer in the way he approached business strategy.  One thing that is central to any design process is to consider the relationships between different elements, their push and pull with one another, their hierarchy of importance.  That applies when you’re designing a product, a web page, a TV commercial, and clearly in the case of Steve Jobs and Apple, the design of a corporate strategy.

Daily reading, watching, listening, and interacting is what keeps me going.  I’m constantly on the lookout for something new to learn that might help me get ahead in some way.  Or sometimes I just need to hear someone else’s story to get inspired to take action.  It’s how we as entrepreneurs stay in tune with what’s next: where things are moving and what we can do to align our work with where everyone else is headed.

So I want to take a minute to thank and share some thoughts on a few of my favorite content creators I’ve been following during the past year.  I honestly would not be where I am today without the work of these folks, who consistently put out interesting, insightful, useful, and valuable content on a regular basis.

Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com

Without a doubt, this goes at the top of the list this year.  Having chomped up every single fascinating video interview Andrew puts out on his blog, it was a no-brainer to pay up and become a premium member to gain access to the in-depth courses produced by the Mixergy team and guests.  The lessons and stories by and for tech entrepreneurs are amazingly insightful and actionable — exactly the stuff that guys like me crave.  And it’s been great to watch Andrew hone his craft of being the best interviewer out there.

Zeldman.com

Jeffrey Zeldman, known in some circles as the “godfather of the internet”, continues to be an inspiring, thoughtful creator and commentator for the web design industry.  Starting with his eloquent writing on his personal blog zeldman.com to his funny and creative interviewer role as host of the Big Web Show podcast, he’s the kind of writer/speaker who makes you feel smarter the more you listen/read.  He constantly raises the standard for what content-creation on the web is, and never puts out an ounce of fluff.

Dan Benjamin of 5by5.tv

Dan Benjamin has put together an amazing network of podcasts on 5by5.tv.  My favorite being The Big Web Show with Zeldman, other great ones are Founders Talk (interviews with entrepreneurs) and the always geeky/entertaining Hypercritical show with John Siracusa, which disects the world of Apple and their products in more detail than any company should ever wish to be covered.  Dan’s work on 5by5.tv was a big inspiration for us when we started Freelance Jam.

37 Signals & the Signal vs. Noise blog

Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson and the team at 37 Signals continue to inspire our industry to create awesome products, conduct business honestly, transparently and efficiently, and communicate our ideas with conviction.  I’ve been particularly drawn to the work of Ryan Singer, UI designer at 37signals, who not only is an amazingly talented UI designer, but he brilliantly communicates his ideas in his articles, talks, and demonstrations.

I’ve also been really into their Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud series of interviews profiling successful businesses that haven’t taken any outside investment.

Other favorites:

AVC / Fred Wilson’s blog – Although I tend to be more interested in the bootstrapped approach myself, I like reading his blog to stay somewhat in-tune with the VC perspective on entrepreneurship.

Adii Rockstar – Always inspiring to follow Adii’s thoughts on strategy and life, particularly as someone heavily involved in the WordPress space.

The Godfounder – Great little blog pointing out the little things that make web-apps great.  It’s all about the details.

A Smart Bear – Jason Cohen’s blog on “Startups + Marketing + Geekery”.

Think Vitamin – Team Carsonofied always puts out quality stuff, all the way down to their blog posts.  I had the pleasure of attending their Future of Web Design conference in NYC in 2011.  Ryan Carson is definitely an inspiring business owner to follow.

Trent Walton & Paravel – Man, these guys are good.  From their amazing design/web/illustration work to their clever copy and innovative tech work… if ya don’t know, now you know.  Film geeks, you gotta check out their awesome site, The Many Faces Of.

Usability Post – Been a fan for a long time now.  Well-written Usability/UI design blog.

Pippin’s Plugins – I’ve been working with WP developer, Pippin Williamson quite a bit lately.  He runs a great blog all about WordPress plugin development, with lots of value-packed tutorials.  This dude knows his stuff.

Amit Klein – Amit is a long-time buddy of mine, and one of my only hometown friends who actually uses Twitter  He’s a web/startup guy and keeps an interesting blog all about his work.  Check out his posts from the last few years when he lived/worked in India.

Making Good – Another friend and frequent collaborator, Ed Mullen, writes about design (among a variety of other topics).  ”Thinking about doing things better” is a good way to sum up his blog.

Mikes Lessons – I guess this counts as “content”… I’ve been learning to play drums thanks to this high-quality collection of video lessons.

Thomas Friedman & Paul Krugman – I read just about every piece from these NY Times op-ed writers.  Aside from their ideas, I really admire their writing style and their ability to effectively present complex ideas in a short, quick-read format.

So many more that just fly by in the day-to-day stream of content overload… Thanks to Instapaper, I’m starting to get a handle on it all

This year, I’m going with the unordered-list format.

Here’s what I learned in 2011:

Client Biz:

• Freelancing doesn’t have to be lonely.  Building a network of friends and collaborators is key.
• Fewer larger projects are better than many smaller projects.
• Keep your contract up-to-date and get it signed every time. (I had been lazy with this in the past…)
• I need to work from multiple locations throughout a week to stay sane.
• Find great people (to work with) and stick with them.  Working relationships get better over time.

Startups:

• Don’t over-think and over-commit.  Don’t force an idea.  The best one’s come to fruition quickly.
• Don’t over-broadcast my startup work before it gains momentum.  Things change quickly.
• Great partnerships evolve over time.  Don’t rush this process.
• Stick to what you know best.  Don’t pursue something too far out of your area of expertise.

Skills:

• Web copywriting was a big new focus for me this year.
• Information Architecture – sitemapping, wireframing, sketching, note-taking.  Lots of that this past year.
• Collaboration & Management – Better QA, delegating tasks, managing multiple teammates at once.
• Online marketing – Finally learned how to effectively use Google Adwords (still learning).
• Improved general writing skills, specifically for articles (I’m now working on an eBook).

Everything Else:

• Keep politics out of my Twitter stream.  Still searching for an alternate place to vent (G+ perhaps?).
• Running every day clears my head and makes me more productive.
• Drums are the instrument I wish I had learned when I was younger (instead of guitar).  Catching up on that now.
• Time with family is golden.

It was this time last year that I reached out to my friend, Dave Yankowiak, to see if he’d be interested in partnering to start up and co-host a new web show for freelance web designers.  Luckily, he agreed and by early 2011, we had posted our first episode of Freelance Jam.

I’m thrilled that the show has continued on for 18 episodes during 2011, with many more to come in 2012.  We’re having a blast planning and producing these shows.  It takes a lot of hard work, time and some cash investment (at no profit) to keep this show going.  So what makes it worth it?

Here’s a list of things that I get out of co-hosting Freelance Jam:

1.  Staying Involved in Our Community

The web design industry, particularly those working independently, is extremely community oriented.  Maybe more-so than any other industry.  We thrive on sharing ideas, teaching each other, and inspiring great work from one another.  The show has given me the opportunity to learn, teach, and get to know the folks that work alongside us (yet across the globe) every day.  This is the single reason that keeps me motivated to keep doing the show and growing our audience.

2.  Becoming a Better Collaborator

If there was one over-arching theme to my past year, it has been collaboration, which I’ve written extensively about in previous posts.  Partnering with Dave on Freelance Jam presented an opportunity to work as 50/50 co-owners of a long-term project.  That’s something many freelancers don’t get to do, but should.  As self-employed and highly self-motivated, independent business owners, we tend to have strong opinions about how things should be done.  Having a partner forces you to have a give/take, sometimes accepting an opposing view and go with it, sometimes pushing back.  At the end of the day, its our combined talent/professionalism that makes it work—much better than had we done it alone.

3.  Becoming More Comfortable With Video

Speaking and interacting on camera really takes some getting used to.  I can’t really pin down any specific tips here, other than to keep throwing yourself in front of a camera and gaining experience.  It took several episodes to begin ignoring the fact that we’re on camera and just have a normal (and hopefully interesting) conversation with friends.

Video content is becoming more and more important and effective these days, and I plan on doing a lot more video stuff with my other startups.  Freelance Jam gives me a great opportunity to build up on-camera experience.

4.  Impact On My Business?

I’m not sure about this one.  I can’t say I’ve had new clients approach me directly from seeing the Freelance Jam show.  And I wouldn’t expect that, since the show is really for other freelancers and web designers.  However, I have had a few clients check out the show only after we’ve been working together, which I think serves to strengthen our relationship.  There may be some indirect impact on business… Increasing visibility, networking opportunities, etc.

More to come in 2012!

As you may have seen, we just launched a fresh redesign of FreelanceJam.com.  We’re also in the process adding written transcripts to the shows for those who’d rather read than watch.  And of course, we have several great shows and guests scheduled for the coming weeks and months.

So stay tuned!

These are few and far between for me, since I work from my home office and serve clients and customers all over the world.  Almost all meetings are held over the phone, skype, and email.  But every so often, I’ll hop on a train to NYC for a client meeting.

Almost all meetings that I do have would be considered sales meetings — an initial meeting prior to giving a proposal.  Basically everything after this can be handled remotely, from signing contracts, to discussing progress, and site launch.  So here is my approach to the rare sales meeting:

During The Meeting

Basically, my approach to meetings is to keep it simple.  I don’t bring a notebook.  I don’t even take a computer or iPad — even though, what we’re talking about is web design.  I usually don’t hand out business cards.  To me, all of these things are distractions from what the goal of this meeting really is — to meet and get to know eachother.

I don’t take notes during meetings because they do more harm than good.  If I’m writing, I’m not listening.  The whole point of meeting with a client (or talking on the phone for that matter) is to listen as attentively as you possibly can.  If you’re distracted because you’re catching up on your notes, you won’t absorb everything they’re saying, which means your response won’t speak to their needs.  Your prospective client will sense this immediately.  On the other hand, if you speak to their direct needs, indicating you’re listening, you’ve basically won this meeting.  Now it’s your deal to lose.

As for bringing computers, printouts, or other presentational props — I don’t see the need.  They can check out your web design work on their own time, when they’re at their computer.  I try and articulate big-picture goals and ideas in a way they can understand conversationally, rather than muddle through a shared computer browsing experience.  Again, the whole point of the meeting is to show off your ability to communicate technical concepts in a clear and concise way.

After The Meeting

Immediately after the meeting — like during my train ride home — I try and jot down whatever important info that I know I’ll need later.  Since I was listening attentively, it should all be fresh in my head.  But I’m not sure it will be later this week when I’m writing the proposal, so I’ll just note some things down right now.

Then I’ll follow up with an email that sums up what we had spoke about and what the next steps are.  I’m going above and beyond to make sure I’m meeting expectations and not leaving them confused about anything.

What About You?

How do you handle sales meetings with prospective clients?

Calling Business Owners!

Do you run a business that relies on building a team to scale and grow?  We want you!  We’re asking business owners to start using the app and share your feedback and ideas.  We want to know how Skipper might fit your specific needs as a business owner/team-builder, and learn about areas where Skipper could become more useful for your organization.

Who exactly are we looking for?

• Solo professional who is building a network of subcontractors to collaborate on projects.
• Owner or manager of a distributed agency, managing a team of remote workers.
• Manager at any type of organization where you’re in charge of finding, hiring, and collaborating with a team— in-person or remotely.
• None of the above, but you still want to help us test Skipper

Get in Touch…

I’m extending this personal invitation to get in touch with me directly: brian@casjam.com.

If you are interested in taking part in the first beta, please reach out to me and give me a quick bit about yourself: Who are you, where do you work, etc. and we’ll take it from there.

Or if you know someone who might be into this kinda thing, please pass along the link to the blog post.

I’m looking forward to meeting you!

“People don’t want to be using software.  They want to have used software to achieve their goal.” – Josh Bartlett interviewed on Mixergy

On my daily listen to Andrew Warner’s awesome Mixergy show, this quote from Josh Bartlett stuck out because it relates directly to what has driven my work on Skipper, the app I’m co-creating at the moment.

The spark of inspiration that led to the idea of building Skipper was my need to reign in the chaos of my rapidly growing team.  My end-goal is to grow my business, build a great team, improve my relationship to my team, and systemize and scale this growth.  If the Skipper app will have helped me achieve these goals, then I’m a satisfied user.

Every design decision, feature idea, and technology implementation is centered around the question: “How does this piece fit within the user’s goal of growing and scaling their team?”

As important as it is to keep things simple and avoid feature bloat, the real key is to keep things focused around the end goal of the user.  Sometimes that means a few extra bits of functionality, sometimes it means stripping out the unnecessary.

“No company can grow revenues consistently faster than it’s ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company”. – Good to Great, by Jim Collins

This quote from the amazingly insightful read, Good to Great, hit a nerve with me the minute I read it.

For an owner of a young business—particularly a first-time business owner (which I still consider myself to be)—hiring is among the most challenging things.  Why?  Because you’re taking a leap into the unknown.  You can’t know for sure that you’ll get a return on your investment when you hire someone.  You have to place an enormous amount of trust not only in the person you’re hiring, but also in the strength of your business to ride this wave of growth and turn it into profit.  Ultimately, you’re placing trust in yourself that you’re making the right decision—both in terms of when to hire as well as who to hire.

But the concept in this quote turns this challenge on it’s head.  The wisdom here is that you must hire great people first, then thrive, not the other way around.  It’s this trust of yourself, your company, and your people that separates the good from the great.  It ties directly into the central theme of the book, which is that good is the enemy of great.  That it is possible to coast by and never fully fail, but the only way to become great is to abandon things that just work, and embrace changes that will make you thrive.

Applying These Ideas

2011 has been somewhat of a turning point in my business.  This is the year I’m fully embracing the idea of the distributed agency model and abandoning the do-everything-myself model.  While this transition started about two years ago, it’s reaching a critical stage right about now.

Up until now, I had always maintained a balance between doing technical work myself and hiring help.  As an experienced designer/developer, it felt natural for me to assume those technical duties while at the same time running the business (which are two very different roles).  I went from being a solo freelancer, to hiring help on 10% of the work, to 50% of the work, to today where I rely on my team for roughly 90% of the technical work that goes into client projects.  It’s finally time to hand off that remaining 10%.

The reason this transition played out so gradually over a long period of time (relatively speaking) is I had always hired based on a pre-existing need.  I’d have a green-lit client project with a budget and I’d bring on contractors to work with me on it.  On a project-level, the economics are easy:  Project budget is X, hiring costs are Y, X minus Y equals profit.

But on a big-picture level, you begin to see the risk.  Hiring teams on all projects limits the overall profit margin of the business.  So I had to pick and choose when to hire and when to handle the technical workload myself.  As more projects with larger budgets came in, I shifted that balance slowly over time.  But there was always that nagging fear of hiring out too much of the work.  Something in me always feared a potential slow-down in new projects, leaving me with too much time on my hands when I could be doing some tech work myself and saving on hiring costs.  Too much time on my hands?  Good one.

This year, I’m beginning to fully realize the benefits of hiring teams 90-100% of the time.  There is no such thing has having too much time on my hands.  There will never be enough time in the day to cover everything I need to do as the owner of this business.  From strategy and building systems to networking, hiring, sales, marketing, and administrative duties, I have more than enough to keep busy.  I’d add project management and information architecture as part of my job, which arguably are a bit technical, but are more strategic and collaborative in nature, which is what I enjoy most about client work.

The critical decision I’m making right now is to build teams for all technical tasks on all projects moving forward.  Those tasks would include: Designing mockups, copywriting, front-end and back-end coding.  I’m going to focus 100% of my effort on the things I mentioned above, which is precisely what will keep the business running smoothly and ensure a steady stream of new (and hopefully bigger and better) projects coming in the door.

After spending the last 2+ years improving the processes of hiring, collaborating, and growing the business, I’m ready to put my full trust in these systems and move the ship forward.

If you’re a WordPress expert, your products and/or services are part of a rapidly growing market. In fact, over the past few years, we’ve seen the launch and success of businesses that are built entirely around WordPress.

In this article, we’ll look at various business models that have proved successful in the ever expanding WordPress arena. We’ll look at the mechanics of each model and how they differ in terms of craft, operation, benefits and downsides. If you’re a designer or developer looking to leverage your expertise in WordPress to build a business, let’s just say you have quite a few options to consider.

Read the rest on Mashable