David-Andrew
03-14-2009, 06:25 PM
I would like to write a short post about my first mini-retirement in Curacao (http://www.curacao.com/), a tropical island in the Caribbean. To inspire and let you know how I got here.
Introduction
I am a webdeveloper/project manager/marketeer with a webdevelopment company in the Netherlands. I build websites, extensions to populair CMS software like Wordpress, and provide hosting. So I do digital products. The company is now 3 years old and the last year I have have being molding it to become more of a muse. Its not 100% perfect as a muse, but it doesn't have to be, as long as I get some more Liberation. My wife has different web shops and is importing goods to sell them in the Netherlands.
After reading Tim's book twice and about a year of development (molding my company and life into more of a muse and becoming "a new rich") we decided to take a real mini-retirement, a month abroad instead of just a short 4-day trip to Paris again. We decided on Curacao because this is the island I was born on, and its really beautiful.
Preperations
Last year I started development of a muse, a extension to a popular CMS. Its a specific product, only interesting for Dutch webdevelopers, and right now I am the only one that has this professional extension. I feel like Microsoft, with a nice monopoly.
Development was done together with a company in India. I don't like to say I outsourced development because its actually more like partnership.
The product is premium priced, and that has good results. People buy it because they think "its expensive compared to other solutions, so it is probably the best". Sales go up every month.
Not only sales went up, also support questions. Two weeks before we left I had 50+ open conversations (Gmail) in my Inbox, 200+ in my Action folder. All I did all day was give product support. And clients had to wait, got pissed off, asked for refunds etc etc.
Boy, I was stressed!
I contracted a VA from NZ that could read and write Dutch and English, very important as most of my clients were Dutch but I wanted to expand with more English products in 2009.
Two weeks before we left, the VA and I stared development on my new support website. It had digital manuals, FAQs, a ticket system and a forum. I did development (my engineers where busy on client projects) and the VA translated the manual and FAQ too English (so my support staff can also read it). The support site is multilingual. The site was ready only 3 days before we left!
From that moment the developers of the product (my engineers in India) are don the support, which frees my hands tremendously to do other things.
(From this you understand I am not interested in smart fast muses, but in building a good company on the the guidelines from 4HWW. I think that is much more fun and interesting then a simple e-book or something.)
The results
Now, two weeks into the mini-retirement I have 0 mails in my inbox, just 17 in my Action folder. Support is being done daily by my engineers, clients get helped fast en don't complain.
I have time to do some reading (4HWW again and Producing Open Source Software), think about new business ideas and other stuff!
It even has good effects on the software! We had two release candidates with lots of bugs in two weeks because the engineer now handles support and directly sees areas that need improvement.
I only check e-mail once or sometimes twice a day. Lay on the beach mostly or do some fun activity with my beautiful wife.
Next steps
I started reading the book again. This time making a lot of notes, doing (almost) all assignments. I am halfway now and I am now calculating my 80/20 on clients/profit.
The clients consuming 50% or more of my time only contribute 17% of my profit. Some are definitely getting fired! And I will also probably stop creating small websites, they cost a lot of time, and only get me 17% of my income. My muse now also gets 17%, so adding a new muse (already in development, new extension) will hopefully compensate for the small websites.
When I finish this its on to the next part: Automation. Just read it again, get inspired and take action!
---
Your ideas, reactions and notes are welcome!
Introduction
I am a webdeveloper/project manager/marketeer with a webdevelopment company in the Netherlands. I build websites, extensions to populair CMS software like Wordpress, and provide hosting. So I do digital products. The company is now 3 years old and the last year I have have being molding it to become more of a muse. Its not 100% perfect as a muse, but it doesn't have to be, as long as I get some more Liberation. My wife has different web shops and is importing goods to sell them in the Netherlands.
After reading Tim's book twice and about a year of development (molding my company and life into more of a muse and becoming "a new rich") we decided to take a real mini-retirement, a month abroad instead of just a short 4-day trip to Paris again. We decided on Curacao because this is the island I was born on, and its really beautiful.
Preperations
Last year I started development of a muse, a extension to a popular CMS. Its a specific product, only interesting for Dutch webdevelopers, and right now I am the only one that has this professional extension. I feel like Microsoft, with a nice monopoly.
Development was done together with a company in India. I don't like to say I outsourced development because its actually more like partnership.
The product is premium priced, and that has good results. People buy it because they think "its expensive compared to other solutions, so it is probably the best". Sales go up every month.
Not only sales went up, also support questions. Two weeks before we left I had 50+ open conversations (Gmail) in my Inbox, 200+ in my Action folder. All I did all day was give product support. And clients had to wait, got pissed off, asked for refunds etc etc.
Boy, I was stressed!
I contracted a VA from NZ that could read and write Dutch and English, very important as most of my clients were Dutch but I wanted to expand with more English products in 2009.
Two weeks before we left, the VA and I stared development on my new support website. It had digital manuals, FAQs, a ticket system and a forum. I did development (my engineers where busy on client projects) and the VA translated the manual and FAQ too English (so my support staff can also read it). The support site is multilingual. The site was ready only 3 days before we left!
From that moment the developers of the product (my engineers in India) are don the support, which frees my hands tremendously to do other things.
(From this you understand I am not interested in smart fast muses, but in building a good company on the the guidelines from 4HWW. I think that is much more fun and interesting then a simple e-book or something.)
The results
Now, two weeks into the mini-retirement I have 0 mails in my inbox, just 17 in my Action folder. Support is being done daily by my engineers, clients get helped fast en don't complain.
I have time to do some reading (4HWW again and Producing Open Source Software), think about new business ideas and other stuff!
It even has good effects on the software! We had two release candidates with lots of bugs in two weeks because the engineer now handles support and directly sees areas that need improvement.
I only check e-mail once or sometimes twice a day. Lay on the beach mostly or do some fun activity with my beautiful wife.
Next steps
I started reading the book again. This time making a lot of notes, doing (almost) all assignments. I am halfway now and I am now calculating my 80/20 on clients/profit.
The clients consuming 50% or more of my time only contribute 17% of my profit. Some are definitely getting fired! And I will also probably stop creating small websites, they cost a lot of time, and only get me 17% of my income. My muse now also gets 17%, so adding a new muse (already in development, new extension) will hopefully compensate for the small websites.
When I finish this its on to the next part: Automation. Just read it again, get inspired and take action!
---
Your ideas, reactions and notes are welcome!