Who
Paul Boag of Headscape is the second freelancer to be interviewed by Focus Minded for Freelancer Friday. As you’ll see below, Paul is one busy man. He is involved in two podcasts, his own web design and development company, he is a blogger, a soon-to-be author, and a family man.
1. Can you briefly tell us a little about yourself?
I trained as a graphic designer back in the early 90s and after a stint at IBM and a boom/bust dot com company, I ended up founding a web design business called Headscape (headscape.co.uk) with two colleagues back in 2002. At Headscape, I do a mix of user interface design and web consultancy. However, I am probably best known for the web design podcast I run at boagworld.com. As if that weren’t enough, I also write for a number of web design publications both online and off. I occasionally speak at conferences and find myself currently writing a book.
2. How long have you been 100% self-employed?
Technically, I am employed by Headscape but seeing as I own the company I guess that means I am self employed! As stated above Headscape was founded in January 2002, so I have been self employed since then.
3. What did you do before you took the leap to full-time freelance?
I worked for a little known dot com company called Townpages. It provided local community information via the web and a network of touch screen kiosks. I hugely enjoyed my time at Townpages and got to watch the company go through its IPO and take part in all the madness
of the dot com boom.However, the company had a fundamentally flawed business plan based solely on advertising. The costs of running a network of internet enabled touch screen kiosks in the days before broadband was a bit more than any advertising model could support.
The company inevitably collapsed.
4. Was it an easy transition and why?
Generally speaking it was very smooth. Toward the end of its life Townpages recreated itself as a web design company in a desperate attempt to bring in income. We were actually remarkably successful and pulled in some big name clients. However, the legacy of the old business model eventually sank us and left all of our clients in the lurch.
Fortunately myself and my two colleagues who setup Headscape could “rescue” these clients and take over the development of their sites. Almost all of them came with us and as a result we were profitable from day one.
Don’t get me wrong, those initial meetings were terrifying and once we won all of the work we then discovered we did not have enough people to deliver it. However, we happened to know a load of people who had just been made redundant so we had a pool of people we could call upon.
5. Can you briefly walk us through a typical work day for you?
I am not sure I have a typical day anymore. I guess the best I can do is tell you what I did at the day of this writing.
I started with my normal wade through email. These are a mixture of business related email, sales enquiries and “fan” mail from the boagworld podcast. After that, I work through my RSS feeds. I have way too many of those but I need to stay on top of what is happening in the industry partly for my job and partly for the news section of my podcast.
Next, I spent an hour writing the book I am working on. I have only just started and have never written a book before so it is slow going at the moment. I am hoping to pick up momentum soon!
At about 10:30 am I had a Skype conference call with a couple of industry experts where we recorded the discussion segment for the .net magazine podcast I host. Then it was down to editing and recording the remaining segments of the show.
The show went live at about 2 pm and the rest of the afternoon was spent writing again.
I try and stop at about 6 pm by doing a final check of email and RSS before spending sometime with my family.
6. In a typical week, how many hours do you work on the following:
- Client Work: 4
- Personal Projects: 2
- Blogging: 4
- RSS reading: 7
- Learning: 3
- Podcasting: 12
- Writing: the rest!
7. For you, what do you think is the best way to attract new clients?
For me it is the podcast. The boagworld show gets about 35,000 downloads per show in its first week and nearly 300,000 downloads over an entire month. This generates a hell of a lot of leads and has led to several hundred thousands in work.
By sharing my experience openly on the show, potential clients not only realize I know my stuff but also get to understand our working practices. That means by the time they come to us they are already pretty much convinced they want to work with us.
8. If you had to list several industry ‘mentors’ or ‘heroes’ who would they be?
Steve Krug without a doubt. His book Don’t make me think has had a huge impact on how I approach design. I would also say Jeffrey Zeldman because he introduced me to designing with web standards. Finally, I would say Jeremy Keith (although don’t tell him because I know the guy and he will never let me get over it). He opened my eyes to the power of things like DOM Scripting and AJAX.
9. What is the biggest blunder you see other web design companies do?
Build and run. Too many web designers just build a website and then move on to the next client. We believe in nurturing our relationships with our clients. We talk to them regularly and keep them constantly up-to-date with innovations online that may apply to them. Not only is it good for the client but tends to generate repeat business which has a much lower cost of sale.
10. What is the most under utilized web element/technology in your opinion?
The humble hypertext link! The whole web is built on it but nobody ever gives it any attention. It is largely ignored and people don’t really appreciate the power it can offer. Too often it is abused… Okay, I will stop there. This is a subject I could rant about!
11. On the flip side, what is the most over used web element/technology in your opinion?
Flash. People say I hate flash, that is not true. I hate the way some people use it. Too often it is used without thinking and used with too heavy a hand. Flash is brilliant at somethings, but totally inappropriate for others. People just need to put a little more thought into it before going down the flash road.
As a matter of interest, I think we are reaching the point where we could say the same thing about AJAX!
12. Rapid-Fire Recommendations (URL and optional comment):
- Must read blog (other than yours): Depends on how you define a blog. If you mean personal blog rather than a group blog like engadget or techcrunch then I would have to go with Christian Heilmann’s blog (www.wait-till-i.com). Its quite technical sometimes but I find myself bookmarking a lot of his content which has got to be a good sign.
- Must visit website: http://www.43folders.com/
- Unusual site you visit daily: http://www.lovefilms.com (UK netflix)
- Most inspirational site for you: http://www.alistapart.com/
- Best site you’ve seen lately: http://www.pownce.com/
13. If there was one bit of advice would you have for those interested in creating or growing their web design business, what would it be?
Stop planning and do something. This is a lesson that has been driven home to me personally at the moment. The danger is you have an idea for a web business but you never take the first step in implementing it. You become so obsessed with doing it right and getting all of the elements in place that you never start. You are better off doing something and throwing it away in order to start again than not doing anything at all because the time is not right or you are paralyzed with fear of doing it wrong. Seize the day!
Recent Comments