Rock Your Screencasts with Serious Eye Candy
(And where you can find some real beauts)

Next month marks the eighth anniversary of my consultancy. I began with two clients, one of which was my former employer, who had promised me but a single small project as a parting favor. These were scary times, made scarier by the fact that I had just moved (with an unemployed spouse and a year-old baby) to a foreign country where my job prospects were virtually nil. After years of gainful employement, I was utterly on my own, in the classic sink-or-swim dichotomy where I either find success as a pro screencaster, or (maybe) get lucky enough to score a counter jockey position at Burger King.

So I put my nose down and started paddling like mad. And I'm pleased to report that with the noted exception of my son, I've never had to ask anyone if they wanted fries with that. (Besides, he always wants fries.) As the economy continues its downward spiral, I'd thought I'd take up a part of this issue laying out a few of the harder-learned lessons for anyone considering a similar path. While this is obviously the most applicable to those who screencast professionally, there are also lessons here for folks who screencast as part of their regular job as well as for those considering striking out into self-employment for ANY kind of business. So, regardless of your current professional situation, it would behoove you to spit out that gum, crack open your notebooks, and pay attention, because I'm gonna be dropping some serious pearls over here...

Lesson One: The 80/20 Principle is a real thing.

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of its populace. Decades later, business consultant Joseph Juran came to apply this "Pareto principle" to various aspects of business and of life. Nowadays, the Pareto distribution is applied mathmatically by economists and statisticians to gauge probabilities on populations, prices, incomes, etc. In practice, I've seen this play out time and again in my own consultancy. The following are but general rules of thumb, yes, but I'm often stricken at how frighteningly accurate the 80/20 principle can be...

• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your clientele.

• 80% of your income comes from 20% of your time spent.

• 80% of your complaints and hassles from 20% of your clientele.

So, how can you wield this information to help your business? By separating the wheat from the chaff, of course. When you successfully identify that key 20%, and focus your attentions on it, good things happen. If 80% of my income depends on 20% of my clients, identifying and rewarding those clients is key to my long-term success. Conversely, identifying the 20% of problem clients who really need to be jettisoned is just as critical. Which leads me to my next lesson:

Lesson 2: Don't be afraid to cherry-pick your clients and projects.

A lot of new consultants worry that if they turn down any project, regardless of how many red flags are flying from it, they'll be out of business by the following month. In a volatile economy, it's often more than a little scary to say, "Thanks, but we're too busy to take this on. Best of luck to you in finding another provider." But I'm here to tell you, these are two sentences that are much more likely to save your business (and your sanity) than kill it. Trust your instincts. If you get the sense that this is one of those twenty-percenters who's likely to bring on 80% of your headaches, run in the opposite direction.

"But they're offering a lot of money!" you might argue. Don't care. Not worth it. I've walked away from buckets of boodle when I got the sense that something was off about the client or project. Of course, I've also learned to occasionally accept less money to make screencasts for organizations from whom I get a particularly positive vibe. This is especially appealing if they have heavy needs, where it becomes clear that the initial project is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As a service provider, your most important asset is your time. Spend it with those who make your professional life a pleasure. And the ones who enjoy wasting your time and generally making life difficult? Kick 'em to the curb.

Lesson 3: Don't leave money on the table.

This may seem like a contradiction considering what I just said about discounting good clients, but when setting your general pricing, make sure your pricing is a good reflection of the value you provide.

For service providers just starting out, particularly in a competitive field, there's often an enormous urge to distinguish themselves from their competitors by advertising as the "budget provider." This is an awful trap to fall into. Budget-minded clients do not tend to "easier" clients than those with deeper pockets. If anything, they're more demanding. Even if you succeed in generating a lot of new business this way, you'll ultimately become a victim of your own success, scrambling to satisfy all these guys while reaping rapidly diminishing reward.

In addition, at least for the field of screencasting, it cheapens and commoditizes an industry that ought to be rewarding innovation. So what to do? Find other ways to distinguish yourself, naturally. This may mean educating yourself on related services you could be offering. Know a foreign language? That could be an asset as well. If you're a true beginner in your field, you simply have to accept a smaller fee until you have a chance to train yourself up a bit, but generally, aim for the high side of the industry average.

Lesson 4:  Get it in writing.

When signing a new client, I have a standard work order that has evolved over the years. Whenever I'd had a less than happy experience on a project, I would occasionally add a new clause to innoculate myself against a future occurrence.

I encourage my clients to read the work order VERY carefully, as it carefully spells out the rights and responsibilities of each party. This avoids ambiguity and gives you a leg to stand on when clients don't hold up their end of the bargain (which, for me, is thankfully rare). Being able to preface with, "According to the work order you signed, ..." avoids the he-said, she-said drama that can sometimes plague business-related conflict. Without a signed work order and a financial commitment (in the form of a deposit), I won't even start a project.

Lesson 5: Penalize changes that waste your time.

In my standard work order, I have two clauses that make the following provisions (greatly simplified here):

1.  If the scope of your project changes (in either size or complexity) from our original agreement, you owe me more money.

2.    Projects proceed in a stepwise manner. First the script, then the storyboard, then a video draft. They build on each other. Each step serves as a blueprint for the following one. If you approve the script, and then make radical changes to the narration once it's put into video form, then guess what? You owe me more money.

While many clients are very conscientious about not wasting your time, there are also those who simply don't take your time or sanity into account, and will sometimes request sweeping changes that would force you to practically start over from scratch. This is particularly likely with larger companies who like to critique "by committee". Whenever possible, I insist on having a single point of contact who serves as their organization's gatekeeper, moderating the feedback of perhaps a dozen or more of their colleagues who are all anxious to make their mark on my project.

Having clauses like this in place tends to force clients to consider your time and to respect the process of the end project's creation. In the end, they may heartily approve the blueprint, and then request that half the building be knocked down and built anew once they see it. But in that event, at least your interests will be protected, and you won't have to do a project twice for the same money.

Ideally, I'd like to do more segments like this in the future. Got advice of your own to share? I'd love to hear and possibly incorporate it in a future issue...

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