Birth of a child is a really, really hard work. It’s painful, it’s stressful or even frightening. You (and your wife) have a bad feeling. All the time you feel, that something is going wrong. You are scared about your wife. She is afraid for herself and a child.

It’s really hard experience. And after all… a huge relief and a a lot of happiness.

I truly believe, that in all madness there is a method. In the childbirth I found a recipe for being a good manager.

Alone? No!

In all important moments of your life, you should have someone else with you. You shouldn’t be alone. You should (or even must) have someone, who could hold your hand. You should have someone, with whom you can share your happiness and suffering. You should have someone, who knows what to do.

It’s like in a life of manager.

You need someone, who knows what to do. Who is a specialist in his field. If not – you won’t build anything, what would be worth of selling.

You need someone, who could hold your hand. Who is related to your company or product. Who is interested in developing it. Who wants to gain more customers and grow up your company or product. Who would say: “Everything is gonna to be ok. Don’t worry. If we won’t sell it, then we will create something better and we will sell it for a price, which will be a twice as big.” And what is most important: he truly believe in it. He wants it, too.

You need someone, with whom you could share all these hard moments. You need someone, for whom you work. You need someone, whom you care about. You need someone, without who you won’t see a sense of working.

The right people at the respective positions

When your car breaks down, you need a mechanic, for repairing it. If you want to build a house, you need to make a call to some builders. In the time of birth… at least one doctor and one nurse should be close to you. In our case, that was one nurse on the night shift and one nurse on the day shift. They were talking to my wife, they were caring about her, they were checking, is everything all right. In the time of birth, a doctor came to the room. And after all – two more nurses came to us. One to examine the child and one for filling the documents.

The same thing is with the projects, which you build. If you want to have a really good product – you can’t do it by yourself. You need to delegate some of the duties. You need to give a chance to some other people. Let them do, what they have to do. If all these people (and you, too) could cooperate – then you will achieve success. If not – then you will spend your time on the things, which were doomed to fail since the beginning.

Look at the our example: there was two people, who were taking care of a “client” at the beginning. Who were saying that everything will be ok, who were saying: “you’re gonna make it”. These people could answer for most of our questions, so since the beginning we know what will be done later. There was a one specialist, who came in, in time of realizing project (moment of birth). And two other specialists, who came after all. One to check is everything fine and one for fill all the forms and documents.

The right place

Finding the right place for living, working, etc is incredibly hard. Finding the right place for birth of a child is as much hard. It should be not so far away from your home, but it must offer appropriate standard. Employees should be nice and responsible. Rooms should be clean. Before you make a decision – you need to read lots of opinions, make some phone calls, ask friends about their impressions. At last, that will be the place, where your kid will be born and your wife would spend few really difficult days.

The same thing is in business. You need to analyze everything. You need to count all pluses and minuses of that place. You need to decide where your company or a project would grow up. Is it the right place for your company? Maybe you should move out to other city or even country? Maybe other place would be better for your cooperation with the main clients? Maybe this place won’t give you a chance to maintain secrecy of core aspects of your product? Think about it. It’s a really difficult decision. You should not decide rashly.

Time management

Birth of a child takes over a dozen hours. Sometimes less, sometimes more. You need to be patient and have a steel nerves. That will be one of the most difficult hours in your (and your wife’s) life. Your role (and people, that are with you – e.g. accompanying nurses) is to manage of this time the best you can. You need to distract attention of the pain of your wife. You need to find some things to do, in the time of waiting (not only for you, but also for your wife).

Our birth lasted about 6 hours. It’s not so long. However for a woman – it’s definitely too much. Nurse on the night shift told my wife, that she should jump on the special ball or go and take a bath. Nurse couldn’t say: “it will take few more hours”, when she saw, that it hurts my wife. That she’s on the brink of exhaustion. She has to say: “Go and take a bath. It will speed up a birth.” or “Try to jump on the ball. It won’t hurts you so much, thanks to this ball”.

In a life of business, you have to see when it’s a time for change. When it’s a time to say to the client, that he needs to wait few more days for something. When it’s a time, to fraternize with your employees. When it’s a time to work over the hours or to take a break. You need to have your eyes open all the time and react for all the signs, that are saying that you have to change something.

In a life of project, you have to see when it’s a time for do one functionality or another one. You need to know, that if developing of some functionality will take too much time – maybe it’s better to not doing it at all or change the requirements. You need to know when it’s a best time to delegate more people to one task, and when you should take some people from the task. At a glance: You need to plan a time of your work and a time of work of your cooperators to be as much productive as it possible.

Try to reach a target on a variety of ways

People are lazy from the day of born. Sure, they are. However in many cases of our lifes, reaching a target using the simplest possible ways, is not a result of our lazy nature. It’s a result of our analysis. It’s a sum of all pluses and minuses, which we found. Just like in a birth of a child… first they told you to jump on the ball. After that, they told you to take a long bath. And after that, they ask you to walk. At the end, they can connect you to the drip. Everything has it’s reason. Maybe something else than a drip could speed up a birth? That would be cheaper and “more natural” solution.

The same is with the projects. Why should you spend your time for building a solutions, which will handle a hundreds of millions visitors, when you need a solution, that will handle a hundred of visitors? Why should you spend a lot of money for offline advertising, if you could try cheaper ads in google adsense? Why do you want to hire other employee, when you could try to do it, by using those measures, that you already have? Think again about what you have already thought. Maybe you can do it faster, easier, cheaper?

Don’t try to automate everything. Sometimes it’s better to check something by yourself.

My wife were connected to KTG few times during the childbirth. However… although, that everything was fine on the monitor of KTG – when doctor came in and look at my wife he said: “It’s right now. I can see the head of a child”. Conclusion? You can’t trust machines in all kind of situations. Sometimes you need to do something by yourself.

Computers, web-based applications, programs… all of these things are a great way to speed up your work. All of these things cause that you are more productive, that you are more effective in your work. Don’t be afraid of automate some of your duties. However… remember that these mechanisms have been created to help you in work; not to replace you completely. Think about the things, which you can automate. Then – automate them. However don’t trust them immensely. Check them from time to time. All of the apps have some bugs. Human is still a human.

Pain does not necessarily mean something terrible

Childbirth is a great example of that rule. Sometimes something beautiful could be the result of a pain. Think about the future. You will have a child. You will have your own child. Is it not great? It’s worth of few hours of pain, isn’t it?

The similar situation you can find in a business. Not all of the faults are bad. Not all of the failures are the bad things. Try to think another way about all the troubles, which you have. Maybe the client is not worth of your time? Maybe you would have much more troubles with the project, than profits?

Or even better, try to think the other way… all the bad things should motivate you to work better!

And the second aspect… really often situation. You have a client, external client, which is really unbearable. You know, that he has a money. You know, that you need to finish this project, because you can earn lots of money, thanks to this project. But he is so annoying…

Think about it like about a childbirth… lots of pain, but a great result. Worth of clench your teeth? I think so.

Take a break

Everyone sometimes needs a break. Sometimes it’s after a hard day of work, sometimes it’s after difficult actions, e.g. birth of a child. Your wife has to have a break. That’s her law and a generally accepted rule. You can’t ashamed to take a break, too. Sometimes you can need it more, than anything else.

The same thing is with your work. Don’t be afraid to take a break after a hard days of work. Don’t be afraid to give your employees few days off. When they will be back… they will be relaxed and more prepared for next challenges. Do not overdo it with this rule, but try to reward hard work of your employees by giving them some day off from time to time.

At last: love can do wonders

Maybe I would be a little bit mawkish, but it’s true. Love is a really strong feeling. It could help you to survive all the difficult situations. It could give you a strength to take on the challenges.

When I was looking at my wife in time of childbirth… I was really proud of her. She was strong and she coped with all of that very well. And I truly believe, that it was easier for her because of love.

I don’t say, that your cooperators should love you or I don’t even say, that you should love them. But the truth is that the best companies are these ones, where the employees feel good. Where they feel almost like (or exactly like) in a family. Happy people can do more. Happy people want to achieve a success. They want to their project achieve success. And they tend to do so.

Be good for your employees and they will be good for your company.

First of all… why I didn’t write for so long? Because of one thing… I became a father. My daughter has been born in 26th of February 2010 and simply… last weeks of my life were dedicated to my family. My access to the computer was limited to absolutely minimum. Yeah… that’s a great feeling to become a father!

Ok… but let’s back to the present times. From few days I was rebuilding my blog. Just a little bit.

Now, please give me a chance, to share with you what has been changed here.

Community newses

I have added new section to my blog. I called it “community newses”.

That will be a place for all of you! For me as well. That’s the place, where all of you can share links to interesting newses and articles from the web. I hope, that all of us will find there something interesting for himself.

Advertising

Yeah, that’s true. I have added ads to my blog. It’s not a secret, that thanks to the money from these ads, I could spend much more time on building content for this blog.

Since now, all of you can find really good place for your ads. So… don’t be shy… spend some money on my blog. I promise, that I will be eternally grateful.

Title has been changed

“All kind of stuff around the web” is dead. Let me introduce you… new title of this blog: “Let’s talk about startups”.

Do I need to describe, why the title has been changed? I think not. However in few simple words… because in my opinion this new title is much better, than the previous one. I think, that the new title illustrates the leading idea of this blog. And that was my main intention. I hope, that you like it.

And… what do you think about these changes?

As you can see…

I’m an amateur. However… I had to try.

Whether it makes sense to create next episodes?

Help me to decide.

I think that it’s one of the hardest thing to do when you have to work at the project, which you have invented.

However that’s the fact. You can’t work on your own project, you can’t develop it. You are an entrepreneur, not a web developer. Even more… you are an entrepreneur, not a project manager.

Do you teach your kids the construction of the chemical elements, or maybe send them to the school, to let them learn from the pros? Do you cure them when they fall ill or maybe you punish them to go to the doctor? The same thing is with the project. You care about it, you are worried about it. You can even love it. However… your role is to take care of their character and temperament. Your role is to observe whether they are on the right road either they are not to far away of it. Your role is to give them the right conditions for development and funds to operate.

Notice that I am talking about the firm, that it is not any kind of one-person company.

Your project is not your firm. You are responsible for the firm, not one of its components.

Remember that if your project fails – that probably would be the fault of a project manager. If the firm will be closed – that will be your fault! Your project (even this most important one) is not your firm. It’s one of the components of your company. Sure… could be the most important… product. However it’s still only a product. It’s still one of the elements of your firm. And nothing more.

You have to be responsible for all kind of aspects of your firm. You need to think about the accounting issues, about the payments, about the bills, taxes, employees, about the investors, customers and a lot of other things.

Your project could be important. However without all these things that make up the entire company – it’s just an unfulfilled dream.

You don’t have enough time.

You shouldn’t have enough time to manage project. If you have – then you forgot about something. Did you pay all your bills and taxes? Did you transfer money to employees? Did you find new customers? Did you meet other members of your team and talk about new project? Did you reply for all your e-mails? Did you… ?

Remember:

1. Project management is a full time job! Even if you are the most organized guy in the world. Even if you delegate all kind of responsibilities. Even if you think, that you are gonna make it – you are not. Don’t even try.
2. Being an entrepreneur is a full time job. Often it’s much more then a full time job. All the time which you spend on managing projects – you could spend on managing your company. That would be much better for you, for your company and for your project!

If you want to be a project manager and an entrepreneur in the same time – you won’t be good in any of these roles.

All the good things, that you do with the company, will be twice as good for the project.

As long as your company will exist – your project will exist.

The bigger your company will be – the more it would be able to offer to your project. More money for hiring people, more money for marketing, more money for IT infrastucture (…)

Try to imagine positive aspects of your actions. You can manage your project without direct managing it. Think of it this way.

That’s the feature of good entrepreneur!

It’s not really hard to set up a firm. You need to go to one or more offices; fill some forms… and that’s it. Depends on the country… it takes from few hours, to few days. It’s easy.

However after that… you need to keep afloat. You need to build your project, gain customers, advertise services, negotiate contracts, or even answer the calls.

You can have a design company, which offer services of one type, for one client. You can have a software house, which is hiring by bigger companies for small works. However… if you are thinking about the real company – forget about the one-person firm!

You are not a specialist in everything.

Even if you are a great web developer (yes, even you!); great web designer; great project manager… you are not a great *** (you can put here anything you want). Really good web developers are not good web designers, good web designers are not good web developers. That’s the natural fact. If you want to be a good designer, you need to spend your time on learning how to become one of them. You can’t learn everything, because you won’t be good in anything.

Web developers are the worst, because they think that they are the specialists of everything (I know what I am saying, because I was one of them).

Do you want to build good product? Don’t do it by yourself.

You need to have a time for more important things

If you want your firm to grow up – you need to have a time for all kind of meetings with big players, for negotiations, for writing business plans, for gaining new clients, etc.

Your main duty is to keep your firm working.

That’s why… don’t be afraid. Hire virtual assistants, outsource as many things, as you can. You will be surprised of how many time for any other things you will gain.

You are too slow

You could be the fastest programmer in the world. You could be a world champion in gaining new customers. However it’s still too few.

Successful firm is not a firm, which can do some part of a project in few hours.

Successful firm is a firm, which can build the whole project, on time, without any problems. Successful firm is a firm, where project manager is engaged with a customer, designers are creative, developers are specialists, etc. Successful firm is a firm, where customer is happy about the cooperation and after all… he would be back for more.

(…) and in the mean time… successful firm would gain new clients for the next products and external projects.

Could you imagine, to do all of that by yourself? Probably not. If yes – then stop. You’re not gonna make it.

Don’t have enough money for more then one-person company? Think how to get it.

Don’t even think about building a company without any money. I did such a mistake. I thought that if I am a good programmer, my wife is a good designer… we’re gonna make it. We did not make it.

External clients didn’t pay on time; we couldn’t hire really good cooperators, because we didn’t have enough money; we had no chance to finish some of our projects on time; I was afraid to delegate most of my duties to other people. I couldn’t sleep for all nights, I was afraid about taxes, bills and payments. That was a disaster. Don’t do it!

If you don’t have enough money… don’t hire people for full-time. Try to outsource, hire virtual assistants and good freelancers, try to automate as many processes as you can, delegate things, which are not core for your company.

Focus on gaining money.

Write a business plan, create a kick ass presentation of your product, calculate everything. Then calculate it again. Try to look for a venture capital, private equity, business angel, private investor. Try to gain government funding. Participate in the contest. It’s not so hard. You need to have a plan and follow it.

Do not take a loan from a bank if you can not afford it. Investors are ready for the risk, banks are not. If your company goes bankrupt – you would still need to repay the loan installment.

I have read this book some time ago. However, because I want to describe here all the books, that I have read about project management, entrepreneurship, small business, etc – I will write few sentences about that, too.

Is it worth to read?

Answer is a bit too easy, but it’s simply true… if you are an entrepreneur (even non-web entrepreneur), project manager, web programmer or any other person related to web management or non-web management – then yes. It’s absolutely worth to read.

That’s one of these books, while reading it, you want to say: “these guys have a right!”. That’s one of these books, while reading it, you want to note all advices and quotes; and after reading it – you may want to come back and read it again.

I don’t agree with all of the rules, which I found there. However 95% of them are simply great and worth to try in our firms and projects.

You should read it!

Yesterday under my post “How long should be the post on your blog?” (yes, I know that there is a grammar error in that) James (I don’t know your surname or even your webpage so I can’t link to you) wrote that I need to learn how to write English.

What can I say? Sure, I need to. I should to. I want to… I even try to.

However… is it good enough reason to not to write here in English? I think’s not.

Everybody, who wants to be heard should write English. Everyone, who wants to talk to people around the globe – should write English. Even if you don’t know that language very well. Even if you make lots of mistakes, grammar mistakes… even then – you should write English.

It’s the most common language in business; it’s the most common language in the web. That’s why – you should be able to use it. That’s why – you should be able to write or talk using it.

Remember: only practice could give you a chance to improve your writing skills. The same thing is with the foreign languages. Only the practice in writing English could improve your writing skills in that language.

So… write English! Write, read and learn! Don’t be offense on people, who point out your mistakes. Try to learn from them.

It’s obvious fact, that facebook is a great tool for all kind of marketing actions. Thanks to all our friends, whole community (350 million users!), fan pages, external apps, etc our message could easily be noticed by lots of people. That’s obvious. However each of these parts of facebook have their own rules of good proceedings.

On fan pages your main goal is to achieve as many fans (or even engaged fans), as you can. When you have an external app for facebook – your main goal is to attract as many interested users, as you can. But what about our normal (private) account?

Is it so important to have lots of friends?

No, it’s not.

People (thanks to twitter) are accustomed to gaining lots of friends/users/followers. Call it as you want.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki (he is the most famous guy, who was saying, that you should fight for having lots of followers and follow everyone, who is following you) we think that the most important thing is to have lots of friends everywhere. And that’s true in social media sites like twitter, digg, stumbleupon, etc. However it’s not true when we are talking about our private accounts on facebook.

What’s the most powerfull thing about our private accounts on facebook? That we really know all our friends. That we trust them. That it’s possible to check out all links, which have been shared by our friends.

If some of our friends want to share some link with his friends – we believe that it could be interesting. And that’s why we click on it. And that’s the power of our private accounts on facebook!

Few days ago I became a friend (facebook’s friend) of Fabio Sasso (founder of abduzeedo). And it prompted me to think about that topic. He has 2,749 friends on facebook. Is it really possible to know all of them? Is it really possible to trust all of them? Is it really possible to have a chance to check all the links shared by these friends? I think it’s not.

One more thing (again, based on Fabio Sasso profile)… your private account is not for publish all kind of content from your blog. Your wall is not a wall of your blog(!)

And yes… I realize that this account is more like a fan page, not a private account (even short link to this profile is facebook.com/abduzeedo; not facebook.com/fabiosasso or something). However in era of facebook’s fan pages and apps like NetworkedBlogs we should simply be able to separate private accounts from non-private ones.

Based on these arguments – I can give you an advice:

• your facebook friends should be your (truly) friends; or at least trust people
• on your wall you should write about things, which are interesting for you; it shouldn’t be a feed of your blog

PS. I’m sorry Fabio for my negative statement. I just don’t agree with your “methodology”.

What is “Who moved my cheese?”?

In few simple words: that’s the book about the change management.

On whomovedmycheese.com you can read:

Who Moved My Cheese? is the story of four characters living in a “Maze” who face unexpected change when they discover their “Cheese” has disappeared. Sniff and Scurry, who are mice, and Hem and Haw, little people the size of mice, each adapt to change in their “Maze” differently. In fact, one doesn’t adapt at all…

Ok, so we know what is that. Now… is it worth to take some time on reading it?

After a few first pages I could say: no! Why? Because characters’ names were stupid, because the story was really shallow. However after reading the whole story, I can say: yes, it’s worth to read.

It’s not any kind of guide with golden thoughts. More… I didn’t even learn too much while reading the book. However it motivated me to think about the change management and to think about all kind of changes in my life from the past few years. And that’s why I could recommend this position. You won’t learn too much, but probably you would realize that changes are not so bad.

Worth to spend one evening on reading this story.

It’s really short (about 90 pages written using huge fonts), as well as cheap book (about $12), so don’t worry… one evening is enough and you won’t ruin your savings.

And one more thing… don’t even try to read Polish version of the book. Great example of terrible translation!

You can easily understand how long should be the post on your blog. Everything you have to know, is that the decision should be the sum of two components:

• human is inherently lazy
• everything depends on the content of your blog

So… let’s talk about these points.

Ad. 1 Human is inherently lazy

This is particularly clear in the 21st century, when we have to choose plenty from competing blogs, websites, podcasts, television and radio programs, etc.

I can bet, that each one of you subscribe at least 30 blogs. I’m sure of that. I’m even sure that most of you subscribe much more than that. And non of you have a time to read all of that. Particularly, if the posts are long. In my opinion – reading an article should take no more than five minutes. For the Internet – it’s almost like an eternity.

Ad. 2 Everything depends on the content of your blog.

That’s why I can’t tell how many lines your article should have . That’s why I can’t tell on how many screens your post should be placed.

Everything depends… if your content is for designers – you place lots of pictures, images and films; much less of text. If you are writing about sex or any other controversial topics (in non-scientific way)  – you probably should publish lot of short posts (not too much text, plus few images or films). If you are writing tutorials – you should have lots of screenshots or samples of code.

Short summary

So… in few sentences:

• Your visitors should be able to read your post in five minutes. Maximum 5 minutes. I prefer shorter posts.
• If you want to write longer post – don’t do it. Split it for few shorter ones and write that each next post is related to the previous ones.
• Look at the design of your post. If there is a lot of text in your post – use bold font from time to time; try to use bigger fonts for titles and most important things, use paragraphs and/or lists; use images (at least one per post)!
• If your post contains collection of images – do not put there more than 50. First of all: it’s heavy for your web browser; second: after you will see dozen of photos – you realize that each next photo is worse than the previous one – it’s because you think that each of them is similar to each other and you tired of looking at them… Much better idea is to split this collection for few posts
• If your post contains collection of films – do not put more than 20 in it. It’s to heavy for typical web browser.

And remember: in blogosphere the most important thing is to write often and regulary. For your readers two shorter posts are much better than one big! They have a chance to read all of them and (if you are not writing too often) they have a feeling that something is going on on your blog. That it’s not dying.