Slides from Dru Clegg's presentation given at the December BYU CocoaHeads Meeting

1. )
SCALING
SUCCESS
AS A FREELANCE
APP DEVELOPER

2. ABOUT ME
Dru Clegg | @DruClegg
WHERE I STARTED
Interior Design Program at Savannah
College of Art and Design
WHERE I ENDED UP
Engineering Program Analyst at
Solutionreach in Lehi, UT

3. A FEW QUESTIONS
Raise your hand if…
!
you hate coding
you hate
refactoring
standards
you think
freelancing
is easy
money
#
YOU HAVE LOTS
OF BILLS AND
NO SAVINGS
b
you don’t
like talking
to people
You’re
indecisive
most of
the time
you get
frustrated
easily and
lose
patience
you think
work will
come to
you

4. PRESENTATION SUMMARY
I
BEGIN
HOW TO
START
NETWORK
JOBS
SCHEDULE
SPECIALTY
II
HABITS
HOW TO
SCALE
VALUE
BEING THE
BEST
QUALITY
HIRING
MONEY
SHARE
PROJECTS
END

5. I
B
HOW TO
START
GET OUT THERE
!

6. NETWORK
start networking like your life depends on it
L
4
]
b
BIZ CARDS
EVENTS
SOCIAL
keep in touch
name, twitter, email,
what you do
meetups, user
groups, school
activities
keep it clean, up to
date, and stay
active
set reminders if you
have to
eventbrite.com
linkedin.com
meetup.com
twitter.com
moo.com
ming.ly

7. MARKET YOURSELF
how else will people know about you?
SOCIAL MEDIA:
linkedin, twitter,
instagram, etc.
PERSONAL WEBSITE:
blogposts, portfolio,
resume, contact form

8. FIND A JOB
ELANCE
YEEPLY
ODESK
www.elance.com
www.yeeply.com
www.odesk.com

9. JOBS EXIST. FOR SURE.

10. MASTER YOUR SCHEDULE
time management is key
Email
11 %
29 %
Phone Calls
7%
Meetings
Social Media
4%
desktime.com
rescuetime.com
Confluence/
JIRA
49 %

11. IDENTIFY YOUR SPECIALTY
•
don’t be afraid
SET YOURSELF APART
!!!!!!!!

12. BE THE BEST
invest in your success
Be good at what you do. If not, no amount of business wisdom will save you.
PUBLISH APPS
DEV COMMUNITIES
STAY UP TO DATE
TRY OUT OTHER APPS
Q
K
B
#
Write apps and get
them through App
Store review.
Troll developer
communities to find
out what’s going on.
Familiarize yourself
with the latest SDKs
and APIs.
Spend a lot of money
on the app store.
Duh.

13. INCREASE YOUR VALUE
•
keep raising your rates
»Put a dollar amount on
your time
»Learn on your clients’
dime
»Don’t lose yourself
»Everything you do
doesn’t need a price tag

14. II
B
HOW TO
SCALE
DEVELOP GOOD HABITS

15. MANAGING PROJECTS
and the clients that pay you for completing them
TOOLS: use tools to
keep up with your
project requirements
and communicate
frequently with clients
projectbubble.com
thrivesolo.com
triggerapp.com
podio.com
!

16. MANAGING QUALITY
STANDARDS: establish coding standards
inline with Apple best practices
Work to ensure your code is selfdocumenting
REVIEWS:
•phabricator.org
•atlassian.com
•codifferous.com
!

17. HIRING EMPLOYEES
•
avoid it as long as possible
hire those you
work well with
only hire from
referrals within
your network

18. MANAGING MONEY
FRESHBOOKS
XERO
SHOEBOXED
www.freshbooks.com
www.xero.com
www.shoeboxed.com

19. MANAGING REPUTATION
•
share and give back where you can
GROUPS: volunteer to speak at user
group meetings or local events
GITHUB: contribute to open source
projects
STACK OVERFLOW: answer questions
REVIEW: reach out to other developers
who may need code reviews
TESTIMONIALS: have clients write them
for your website
TWEET: give advice and use hashtags
monitor your reputation and analyze your
frequently tweeted topics- use
www.twylah.com

20. B
R
QUESTIONS
and
ANSWERS
"
Go ahead. Ask away.