
Ask Patrick McKenzie (patio11) anything - jroes
http://www.anyasq.com/227-i-made-bingo-card-creator
======
bh42222
I used to poor, like seriously, food was an issue, poor.

Both of my parents and other close relatives started many businesses. They all
failed. They are all intelligent people but they all suck, and I mean SUCK at
running/growing a business.

I'm a pessimist. I have zero risk appetite, and I mean 0, zip, zilch, no thank
you. And as an experienced software engineer, I make a quite a bit of
money.....

....but darn it, Patrick's going to push me into staying up late, starting one
side business after another, until one of them catches on, and I can quit my
day job.

And I've never even met the guy!

Thanks Patrick!

~~~
patio11
You're welcome, and thank you. That kind of feedback makes me very, very
happy.

~~~
pchristensen
In that case, I'll heap some more on.

I've been prevented from doing anything meaningful on a startup of my own for
~5 years, primarily because I was intimidated by the big picture of how much
went into making a "real business". But in that same time frame (and in front
of my over HN-ed eyes), Patrick has done great things and inspired me to
refocus on small, incremental progress that adds up over time. Now I make sure
I don't let a single week go by without doing _something_ to improve my
technical and business situation.

Patrick is inspiring because he seems like so much more of a relatable
Everyman that more developers can relate to. Plus he's a super nice guy!

~~~
prawn
What I like is that, even more so in the past, the financial figures are just
so small in comparison to what we normally read. So many HN stories are about
billion dollar valuations and million dollar investments, but with Patrick we
see $30k presented in epic detail and with pride because for a humble side
project I imagine it's been quite a journey. (I have a side project too that
grew from a bit of mucking around to enough passive income that I could
entertain a modest retirement, so I know where he's coming from.)

~~~
yeahsure
Could you tell us more about your side project? Your comment made me _very_
curious!

~~~
prawn
Catalogue of interior design photos for inspiration. Got lucky with SEO so I
don't think there's much value in describing it in detail like Bingo Card
Creator though - entire site didn't take much to put together. The parallel I
wanted to draw was watching the numbers (sales, ad clicks, whatever) come
through each week and sometimes pinching yourself.

------
kloncks
His answer for why he lives in Ogaki is amazing. Excerpt:

 _By total accident, that job was in Ogaki. I'm not much of a poet but I would
write love sonnets for this town. I love the air, I love the water, I love my
friends, I love my community, I love my little church, I love the little sushi
shop I've been going to for seven years where everybody knows my name, and I
love my girlfriend.

Tokyo is a nice place. New York is a nice place. Chicago is a nice place. But
I want to live in Ogaki._

~~~
shazow
Also this part:

 _I live in Ogaki. Ogaki is in Japan. If Ogaki were in Kansas, I would live in
Kansas._

------
rmason
I see they asked you about writing a book. I've been waiting for you to write
the definitive book on SEO.

Have you thought about bypassing a publisher and just producing a PDF and
selling it directly? Then the only cost you'd have would to pay for a good
editor and the rest would be profit.

I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO. I'd bet you could
sell a couple thousand copies on HN alone. Would that be enough money for it
to be worth your while?

~~~
statictype
_I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO_

I would too. The problem is, there are people that will gladly pay 500x that
amount for some of what he knows about SEO.

~~~
rmason
Yet some of the most successful consultants have written books on the subject
of their expertise.

Somehow I don't think a book would discourage consulting clients. They want
him looking at their situation and data with the benefit of everything he's
learned since writing the book.

If it gives him a higher profile it might actually result in more consulting
gigs.

~~~
patio11
_If it gives him a higher profile it might actually result in more consulting
gigs._

So if you take one gram of sodium and add it to a room filled with chlorine
gas, you end up with a wee little pile of salt. Pumping more gas into the room
does not increase the amount of salt you get, because the sodium is the
limiting reagent.

The limiting reagent in the number of consulting gigs I do every year is not
the number of people who wish me to consult for them. It is closer to "How
many weeks do I want to spend consulting?" That number is about ten to twelve
weeks a year. I can fill my dance card at that number without needing to work
very hard on getting the word out to new people.

It might make sense if I wanted to scale a consulting business up by hiring
employees, training them to be Mini Me, and then closing clients on consulting
engagements with fulfillment to be done by the Mini Mes. That is an option. It
isn't one which really fits in with my plans for life at the moment.

~~~
tomjen3
If you have too many customers for the time available, why not increase the
price?

And about the book, you can write down a somewhat detailed point-by-point
walkthrough and outsource the actual writing of the book. Then sell it as an
info product on your website for, say, $150 -- it is easily worth the money,
which you get to keep most of and you can A/B test it like crazy.

Heck you could dictate the book while traveling and never have to write a
line.

~~~
patio11
_If you have too many customers for the time available, why not increase the
price?_

:)

------
goblin89
Oh, Patrick's presentation on marketing to minorities is simply too awesome.
(Linked in the answer about the female market; just in case:
<http://businessofsoftware.org/video_10_pmckenzie.aspx>)

------
Inebas
For me, I can only sign in with my facebook or twitter account? Is that
actually intended?

I am uncomfortable using those two accounts to sign in.

If I could sign in, the question I would ask patio11 is this: What advise
would you give to someone who wants to run a solo software business so he/she
can live anywhere and travel anytime?

~~~
davidw
Have you read Rob Walling's "Start Small, Stay Small"?

It's the best book of _practical_ advice I've read on the subject in a while.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177)

~~~
getsat
Dude, disclose affiliate links on HN please.

~~~
davidw
Dude, I certainly don't participate here to get rich off of affiliate links,
and am not going to foist crap off on people to make a quick buck (my
reputation is more important than that), but I'm certainly not going to
disdain a few dollars for more books to read.

If you don't believe in making money, perhaps this isn't the site for you.

~~~
getsat
I make plenty of money from affiliate marketing, but this isn't the place to
use them without disclosure.

~~~
davidw
Just go ahead and downvote it instead of whining. Either the link was to
something useful and relevant or it wasn't.

The fact that there's an affiliate link has no bearing on that.

If someone's spamming the site with affiliate links, they ought to be banned.
If someone posts a link with one from time to time, I see absolutely no harm
in it. I think it's pretty clear what's what.

~~~
getsat
I'm not whining, it's just in bad taste. I actually up voted your post because
it was useful, and I DID buy that book this morning (just not through your
affiliate link).

This isn't the place to be using undisclosed affiliate links. Had you
disclosed it, I would have happily bought it through your link as it would be
a legitimate referral.

------
joeag
Patrick- this part is especially interesting to me - "This might be shocking,
but many of my software buddies _do not_ have fully automated fulfillment. If
you buy their software, they get an email, and then they have to do something
to get you what you bought. This is _insane_ in this day and age for commodity
software purchases. BCC will automatically generate a Registration Key for you
(for the downloadable version), and takes a variety of steps to automatically
upgrade the software without the customer's interaction. If they ordered a CD,
it uses an API at SwiftCD to arrange for that CD to be shipped without my
involvement. Bookkeeping entries get made automatically. etc, etc "

Although some of that process will be eliminated as more "app stores"
proliferate, it's still a huge and "non-core" part of the process for most
software application providers which should be outsourced, as credit card
processing has become. I remember the days 5 or 6 years ago where you had to
write your own payment gateway, etc, etc.

If you are interested in reselling this as a package to startup software
companies let me know, I would love to be involved, I think it fits a need.

------
losvedir
_I'm 29 today._

Ah, Happy Birthday then! Thanks for all the insights you share on HN and your
blog.

------
joss82
"It is a moral imperative that any job which CAN be done by a computer SHOULD
be done by a computer, because the alternative is a waste of an actual human's
life. We used to have clerks whose only job was to be MS Excel's summation
function. Hour by hour, day by day, they summed columns of numbers. After
Excel exists, the existence of that job is a sin: hour by hour, day by day,
they are wasting their lives doing something when they could be doing
something more important, more worthy of their talents, which uniquely added
value to the world."

This is so true. Does that mean that unemployment is not so bad after all?

~~~
relix
I think it has little to do with unemployment on the long term. Humanity has
been "automating" jobs since the invention of the steam machine. Some might
say even further: since the invention of the horse and carriage, since the
invention of the wheel.

If you look at the amount of automation we've got going on compared to 50
years ago, 10% unemployment is surprisingly low. Apparently, our skill in
automation is only surpassed by our skill in finding new problems.

------
damncabbage
Is there some ridiculous character limit for questions on anyasq.com? Most
appear to be squashed, truncated or generally just tweet-like in appearance;
for example:

    
    
      How do you create niche when you are entering a crowded
      market like travel..what would u hv done if thr ws bingo
      cc alre 
    
      You've consulted with FogCreek and Matasano, some
      heavies(literally and figuratively).What was your
      gauge for success?

------
3am
If you want to release an e-book with a little less overhead (and keep a large
fraction of the proceeds) you could go with lulu.com or createspace.com

------
sourc3
One thing that surprised me in the interview was the fact that Patrick went
with a sole-proprietorship model. When I started my B2B service as a side
project, I went crazy looking at all the possible angles (a business suing you
for a bug causing them loss of revenue, not being able to have a merchant
account without a proper LLC etc) and back then it made a lot of sense to
stick with the LLC model to create that shield in case something happened.
Heck, one lawyer I consulted with even suggested I buy insurance.

Either, I have too much to loose and I am not a risk taker or there is
something wrong with the advice I have paid for/read online :)

But the lesson is learned, from this point on, I will go with a sole-
proprietorship model and avoid paying over ~$1K for the LLC..

------
freshrap6
patio11 Thank you for your all your advice and insight, it is truly
motivational.

Have you always been so cheerful or is it a product of your environment in
Ogaki, or maybe even your success?

------
jcampbell1
> If we stopped onanastically solving the non-existent problems of poor white
> techy twenty-somethings and started producing actual value, nobody would say
> word one about prices.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what _onanastically_ means. I was
pleasantly surprised to learn it means "in a masturbatory manner", though I
think it is spelled onanistically.

