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Monetize yourself
- 1. Monetize Yourself ONDREJ BALAS @ONDREJBALAS WWW.ONDREJBALAS.COM ONDREJ@ONDREJBALAS.COM
- 2. ONDREJ BALAS Microsoft MVP in C# Writer for Visual Studio Magazine Owner of UseTech Design (est. 2001) Building software that drives business Serial Entrepreneur WWW.ONDREJBALAS.COM ONDREJ@ONDREJBALAS.COM @ONDREJBALAS
Notes de l'éditeur
- The icons use FontAwesome. If they appear to be missing, try installing the font from here: http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/ This talk is about thinking differently about monetization
- A little about me… serial entrepreneur. I’ve been involved in a lot of businesses and a lot of this talk is my story. Along the way I have learned a lot of things, and that’s what I want to share. The reason I got started is interesting..
- I had dragons to kill. But they didn’t really look like this back then.
- They looked more like this.
- This is all about my philosophy – making money or having fun. If I’m not doing one of those two things, why bother? Don’t waste time.
- So really, the talk is about this: money.
- But most people dream of something more like this. But let’s start simpler.
- The value of money comes from trade. This is from a game called Settlers of Catan, a game about trade that demonstrates how important trade was in the past. Trading was important because unless you’re Survivorman you can’t do everything on your own.
- Now keep in mind that these early trade-based markets are from a time when 98% of the world’s population was involved in food production in some way.
- Sometimes you would have to trade for things you didn’t want, or you had too many and they would go bad.
- Trade also became more complex. People started making tools to make farming more efficient, starting a cycle. More tools meant less population needed to produce food, which meant they too could create tools, or luxury goods. But how could you determine the price of something? You needed a medium of exchange.
- People experimented with various mediums of exchange. Cattle was used for a while because it was easy to count, even if you weren’t very smart. But had cons: Can’t easily subdivide. Could get sick or die, or run away. Need something durable and portable
- You needed something durable and portable. More things were experimented with. Also with pros & cons. Not very common.
- Eventually currency was created. Some of the earliest coins came from Greece. Different coins were minted differently from different cities. Coins were a good medium of exchange, and markets formed using them. Now you could say that a product / service had some value in number of coins.
- Competition started – people competed on things like price and quality, which is where we are today.
- So how do you stand out amongst the competition and prove your value so that you can better monetize yourself? There are different ways to approach it – either to keep improving yourself and making yourself more effective so that you are providing more value and thus getting paid more (hopefully), or going the route of using your abilities to augment the effectiveness of others, thus providing more value in the aggregate.
- Going down the first route, you need to be able to demonstrate your value. You ARE a salesperson.
- Become a thought leader. Even if only within your own organization. Think about your problems and present possible solutions, start discussions, and continually revise your thinking and share what you have learned.
- Sharing your knowledge is important. You are here, but most of you probably have other developers on your team that are NOT here. Take notes and when you get back to the office on Monday, share some of the knowledge that you have learned here. Keep doing it because becoming the person that others come to for knowledge/information is a great way to be more valuable. Become your team’s source of knowledge.
- Talk about Brian Friesen and how we work together but also challenge each other, ultimately having much better results than we’d have individually. STORY – our first time working on our workshop together.
- Dissent is a good thing. If you’re in a meeting and someone comes up with some RIDICULOUS idea, don’t agree just because everyone else does. Say something – you will stand out and your feedback IS valuable. Conversely if you have an idea that you want validated, keep asking people until someone finally disagrees or has some criticism. Sure there’s a chance that you came up with something where nothing could possibly go wrong – but what are the odds?
- Trust is important at every level of every organization. Behave in a way that will make you trustworthy. Keep promises and tell the truth. Don’t just tell people what they want to hear. A great way to do this is to start with the assumption that everyone already knows everything, and if they don’t they will find out.
- Challenge YOURSELF. Do things that stretch the limits of your comfort zone. You’re here in a great place to challenge yourself. If you’re an introvert, start a conversation with someone new. Go to a session about some language or methodology that you would normally have no interest in, and spend an hour genuinely interested in learning everything you can about it. Story: Talked to a guy at Mammoth Cave for National Parks.
- Show your employer or potential employers your VALUE. Speaking is a great way to do that. STORY – how I got into speaking
- User groups, Conferences, Toast Masters
- As you become the person that people turn to and look up to, you will also inherently provide inspiration to them. When you go back to the office tell your co-workers about how great this conference is and all the things you learned. Inspire them to take it to the next level themselves.
- Telling you to just hit the center every time is easy, let’s talk about some techniques and tools.
- Pay attention to yourself and what you spend your time on. What if you could go to work one day a week but still get 80% of your pay? Now do that 5 times.
- Noise is a huge issue. Look at the communication you are involved in and see if you can figure out what is the signal and what is the noise. Watch out for meetings, emails, chat, people walking into your office with interruptions.
- To Don’t Lists – see http://ondrejbalas.com/to-do-or-to-dont/
- Every day I get a post-it note out and as interruptions accumulate I start writing down little notes of what needs to be done that day. Return a call, send an email, whatever it is. Crossing it off the list at the end of the day before I go home is very powerful.
- Written communication is being more and more prevalent. With emails and chat, writing reports, preparing presentations, etc., writing is used everywhere.
- You are here. Possibly on a Saturday. Keep it up! Books, Get a Kindle. Got 5 mnutes of downtime? Pop it open and read something instead of pulling out your phone.
- It’s like Pandora for people that have a hard time getting into the zone
- Context-switching can be immensely damaging to your productivity. Try to limit the number of things you work on, and do them one at a time if possible.
- 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off. Basic premise: 1) Decide what needs to be done. 2) Set timer (25-5) 3) When timer rings, immediately take a 5 minute break. 4) After four pomodoros take a longer break. During the short breaks avoid context-switching.
- Whether you like it or not, you are a salesperson. Written a resume? It’s a sales brochure.
- Know the culture and expectations, and then take it a step further. The way you dress sets the tone for interactions.
- Luck is man-made. Put yourself out there and it will find you. “Maximize your luck surface area”
- Be Positive. So many people forget this but it’s SO important. Being positive will make you more likeable and help you build trust, credibility, and respect.
- Lunch time is a great time to engage with people at your organization that you don’t often interact with.
- Detach your physical location from being a requirement of providing value. By detaching yourself physically you make yourself much more scaleable.
- Detach your physical location from being a requirement of providing value.
- This is hard to do. Especially if you’re working on a project that is “your baby”. It’s hard to trust someone else enough to write code the way you want it written, but it’s an important thing you have to eventually do. By delegating you will have more time and can spread your knowledge across larger solutions.
- Look at larger problems and the solutions for them. Get the high-level 30,000-foot view rather than focusing on the details on the ground.
- Not forever. But spending some time doing management will force you to start thinking about problems and people in a different way. Most people don’t want to be a manager as a career. But consider it as a stepping stone to your ultimate goal.
- Don’t just fail for failure’s sake. When you fail you must look at it not as a failure but as an opportunity to learn. With every failure you learn from you get one step closer to your next success.
- I will post slides to Twitter after this talk. Also check out my website at ondrejbalas.com where I blog about topics related to this and link to my articles on Visual Studio Magazine.