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Using HTML5 Data Attributes to Write Clean Code
When you want to pass some data from HTML to Javascript what do you do? Before HTML5 data attributes this was a mess. Everyone had their own hacky solution. For example, if you’re implementing the...
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How Content Marketing Grew My Audience
Last year I launched two products. It was damn hard to get visitors on the landing page and even harder to get them to sign up. I told friends and family. I posted on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I...
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How to Have Meetings Only One Day a Week
Let’s face it. Meetings suck. They take time away from real work. But you’re really too blind to see it. I slowly started taking more and more meetings. 30 minutes here 30 minutes there and all of a...
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How to Pre-Qualify Your Freelance Clients
Our guest post at Guerrilla Freelancing: You meet a potential new client. Emails exchange, lengthy phone calls and coffee meetings occur. Communication is going well. The client is really excited. It...
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The psychology of how being told what to do impacts our productivity
I recently sat down with Erik Lukas of Geronimo. He’s one of the most laid back productive entrepreneurs I’ve ever met. In getting to know him I figured out how he came to be that way. Erik never had...
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What increases sales: Customer support that turns your customers into loyal fans
Bonobos customer support philosophy. I just bought a new suit from Bonobos to replace a 10 year old suit that I dusted off only for weddings. I went to Nordstrom, Macy’s and Men’s Wearhouse. The...
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The psychology of cargo cult programming: What type of coder are you?
Recently, I sat down with Calvin Lai to work on our book Learning to Code Rails for Absolute Beginners. We started talking about how Rails is so easy to use that you don’t really need to understand the...
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Making guesses for your startup is better than careful logical deductions
I came across an article by Aaron Iba about the use of logical deductions in puzzles. He came to the realization that the fastest puzzle solvers solved the puzzle by making guesses. They didn’t reason...
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The 4 elements of sales and how to master them
Last night I sat down with Kenny Truong of MJRE. He just had the highest gross sales of his life this month — $4M in inventory sold. I talked to him about how he got to such an impressive number. I...
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Are you an underpaid developer?
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with you blog readers over email about making a living as a developer. All the questions follow the same theme. Are you an underpaid developer? If you have to...
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Why a non-technical person should really learn how to code
Before I learned how to build web applications in Rails I was a product manager. All I did was come up with ideas and work with a developer to build it. Well, I left that job to do the whole startup...
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The power of remote developers: how to convince employers it’s better for...
During my office hours with Fred Ngo he asked a really great question — How do you land a gig where the employer is okay with you being remote? Working remotely is nothing new. Talented developers...
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The fine line between confidence and cockiness: How I fail at talking to...
I had a phone call today with a company that needed Rails instructors for their upcoming Rails course. I knew the number of candidates for this type of gig was extremely small so I bumped up my...
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Be loved or hated. Don’t fall in the middle.
Manuel Medina wrote a great article on the common traits of unusually effective freelancers. This particular section really resonated with me: Effectives Freelancers are genuinely interested in the...
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I’m actually eating Ramen. Am I doing it right?
Today, I’m actually eating ramen. Shin Ramyun, the fancy Korean ramen. Not that cheap Maruchan Ramen or Nissin Top Ramen crap. I even poached an egg in the soup. It was delicious. Before becoming...
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Dead Simple Beginner’s Guide to Freelancing
Source: Technorati I frequently get asked for advice about how to become a freelancer developer. It’s dead simple. A client needs a web application built. You know how to build it. They pay you for it....
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Unproductive coding sessions: are you having one of those days?
Wow, yesterday was super unproductive for me. I was just having one of those off days. You know you get down into writing code thinking you’re gonna go on a a tear. But you just never get into the...
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5 Ways To Stop Being a Wantrepreneur
This was originally published on the Lean Startup Circle blog. Source: AppSumo Almost everyone has an idea for the best product ever. All they need to do is build it and the users will come. I was...
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Web designers who can’t code
Source: FollowTheUXLeader Today I helped a designer, Erik Lukas, go from zero experience coding web apps to pushing a live application to Heroku. He setup Ruby, Rails, RVM, Git, SSH Keys and MongoDB...
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How I set up Cloudinary to replace Amazon S3 for image management
I was looking for an easy way to do image transformations and came across Cloudinary. It can crop, resize, detect faces, apply filters and a crap load of other stuff on the fly. Oh yeah, it’s a CDN too...
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