Finding direction for yourself/business

Business
1

Each day I’m struggling to determine how I want to proceed with the future, and what role I’d like to undertake.

Currently, I run a company which employs just me. I spend most of my time building websites for other design companies and marketing agencies. I mainly convert PSD’s to HTML/CSS and build backends in PHP/MYSQL and sometimes .NET.

I don’t mind doing this job, but when you’re splitting designs up it tends to get tedious, doing the same thing all the time, just with a different layout.

Then there’s the backend side of things, I really enjoy doing those, but, although I class myself as a good programmer, I find the limited budget on projects prevents me from being able to plan what I’m going to do, I end up just building it from ideas in my head. Usually, I get to the final product and I’m not happy with it. It works, but I feel I could of done it better.

So, that leaves me to target clients directly, which I’m currently trying to do, but I’m so busy working evenings and weekends at the minute, I’m finding it difficult to go out and find these clients. Even when I get new clients, do I really want then want to spend time doing meetings and proposals, which depending on the clients budget is difficult to incorporate into the costing of the site.

Should I start building web apps? I don’t know. I look at some of the stuff 37 signals have done, and I could never have come up with something so bloody simple…but effective. I’ve no doubt I could build the solution, but it wouldn’t be as easy to use as their stuff. When I think about building web applications, I struggle to actually think of what I could build, there are already so many apps for all sorts of different things available on the net.

Then, I’m a qualified teacher, and currently expanding on that studying a degree in Education (part-time). So part of me thinks I should blend my development skills with my teaching knowledge and do something relating to e-learning, but what? where would I start. I don’t want to teach…I don’t like it, but I wouldn’t mind helping teachers to use the web more effectively for teaching, i.e. help build learning objects etc.

I have so many options available to me, but I don’t particularly have a passion for any of them. I think I’m good at what I do, but I don’t know how I want to apply it. Maybe I’m thinking to negatively?

I always come up with ideas…“I’m going to do this, or that”, but I lose interested in a couple of weeks, it’s so damn frustrating.

I’m sure I’m not the only one in this kind of position? and just wondered if anyone had any advice?

2

I struggle to actually think of what I could build, there are already so many apps for all sorts of different things available on the net.

Basecamp is a scheduler, moved online. It had to be simple …if you wanted it to load the same day you logged in.

Quite a lot of this zeitgeist and brilliance is bandwidth imposed. 37sigs embraced the constraint and most don’t. Others tried to move PC-based software online, while Basecamp is a web-based app. Different philosophy.

Then, I’m a qualified teacher …I have so many options available to me, but I don’t particularly have a passion for any of them.

Now there’s the formula for a web class that makes for the kind of sites I never want to visit.

Maybe I’m thinking to negatively?

I am not at all sure that’s possible.

Rarely could you identify an idea or purpose behind the site, or name a possible user goal the site was intended to facilitate. There was no flow, no legibility, no usability. It wasn’t so much that the designers had contempt for their users as that they seemed never to have been taught to think about users at all. One gets the feeling that the web design curriculum at too many colleges and universities consists of little more than tips on how to use Flash to imitate sites that won awards five years ago.
–Jeffrey Zeldman

Ask yourself what’s missing from the picture. The computer is not a gazing mirror. Perhaps taking focus off you and onto an underserved user group might give you some purpose which holds your attention.

3

Thanks for the reply.

One thing I have been passionate about when teaching web design and development, is that I like people to do it properly. Many of the web design courses within colleges at the minute are way outdated, using tables for layouts, and even level 3 courses cover “How to create a hyperlink”, I mean come on, at level 3 people should be way past creating a hyperlink. When you’re delivering a course like that, it’s difficult to get passionate about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love working with web, and that’s where I want my future to be…I’m just not sure how I can apply my love for what I do.

Whatever I do, I want to be able to sit back, know the end user/client is happy with it, and I want to be able to pat myself on the back and say well done. but lately I don’t feel like saying well done, because I’m always thinking I could of done things better, especially when I look at what others are doing, it makes me think “am I really good enough to be doing this?”.

4

Many of the web design courses within colleges at the minute are way outdated, using tables for layouts, and even level 3 courses cover “How to create a hyperlink”, I mean come on, at level 3 people should be way past creating a hyperlink. When you’re delivering a course like that, it’s difficult to get passionate about it.

Oh so not what I was talking about. You and I have differing views of properly done site design.

Technical political correctness to the exclusion of all else is not proper. (And I do some pretty nifty stuff with CSS, and eschew tables) Put three programmers in a room and you’ll get three “more optimal than thou” attitudes and no room for a user.

Nobody needs a class on how to jump the shark with mootool, jquery and a dozen assorted stupid CSS tricks. They do fine on their own.

I shall leave you with the words passion breeds talent.

5

Hi littnened,

I think you may think to negatively, yes.

Obviously you have a wide range of technical skills and therefore choice of what would be reasonable to expect you could do.

From a technical perspective you can reasonably expect to be successful at the following things:
1 High quality front end production
2 High quality backend development - custom/bespoke
3 High quality backend development - productised
4 High quality teaching/ tutoring - productised
5 High quality teaching/ tutoring - bespoke

I noticed that you don’t sound happy delivering average results. You should focus on finding people that appreciate high end results - monetarily and through thank you’s.

From the above list, I would discard/downgrade 1 and 4

1: This are is already being taken over by frontend designers and CSS grid frameworks, therefore your skills don’t fit the effective market job descriptions IMO

4: I don’t think there is a market for this as there is an inherent conflict between “high end” and “productised”

In my opinion, point 3 requires cash assets and luck

However the most important thing is to take some time off from your normal work and figure out what your passion is. There is a myriad of recommended reading on the Internet about this, maybe go with some well known and recommended Guru reading such as top authors on Amazon or someone like Steve Pavlina. Don’t take any of them too literal and try to apply it to your situation.

Also don’t accept any “not possible” thinking. I personally do very well with 2) and I have learned all the business, networking and selling skills from scratch in the past 5 years. Its not hard.

P.S.: Also note my bias to the list I made, its gotta by your passion, not someone else’s.

HTH, Jochen

6

What is it that you love and have passion for?

7

to be honest I find I can have passion for things. At the minute I have passion for building a web app, but I know in 2 weeks time I’ll have got bored or lost interest in it.

8

That’s a bit of a non-answer, though. Fleeting passions are a different thing then legit passion. Let me ask you this: what do you do when you aren’t working, for fun?

9

When I’m not working…

either playing football
DIY on the house(we’re in the middle of ripping it apart), though I wouldn’t say I have a passion for this, rather it needs to be done.
I read books, mainly to do with whatever it is I’m interested in at the time
Watch movies
Go out with the wife.
Read forums like this one.

10

This sounds like a case of “doing everything and nothing” :smiley:

Dont just do something, stand there!

By this I mean, its time to re-evaluate your chosen business model, direction and goals.

Step back for a bit and reconsider what you REALLY want to do.

In the meantime - dont do anything!

11

Maybe you can specialize in football, DIY, or book-related sites. Something like that. If you don’t have an ongoing interest in the material, it’s so hard to keep going.

12

My general advice for this kind of question is to build a list… write down all the things you enjoy online and offline, and then cherry pick those things which you find you have a near endless drive for, have a brainstorming session and think about how you could incorporate those into your business (or evolve what you already have). I tend to have fleeting ambitions as well (you should see my programming archives) but I simply decided that whatever I did I had to really enjoy and more importantly, it wouldn’t take me years to have something I can work with (if you get distracted too easily, long term projects can be a real killer) :slight_smile: