andersthue

I have not only used timeblocks with great success in my consulting business where I forced every employee to split every day into two blocks, one before lunch and one after lunch. The employees also has to map out EVERY project and task into timeblocks.

This and a few other rules worked so extremely well that our revenue increased 33% and all our customers are very happy.

Timeblocking was such a huge success for us that we started building a SaaS app on top of our method called ... ... ... (wait for it)

http://timeblock.com

:)

We actually build excatly what you describe but failed to get any traction for it - I guess most people talks about sorting their image but few actually takes the time to do it!

The windows app is here: http://tsr-soft.com/products/photo-manager/

best forum I know of : https://www.webmasterworld.com

Best SEO person I know : https://www.softwarepromotions.com

And then there is a ton of free e-books out there, but the best way is to build a site and try to get it ranking high.

I am too building a SaaS app in europe and are looking at getting us customers, here in europe we charge by invoice but in the us we will use either stripe or cleverbridge as payment provider.

Edit: The nice about cleverbridge is that they handle all vat and EU Vat moss - Stripe is faster to setup.

Sorry for the shameless self promotion below!

I have been running a consultancy for 15+ years without much success, then this january I changed some elements on how we worked and wrote a manifesto about what is most important for our company, this has made a huge change in how or success and the sustainabillity of our business.

This change has since evolved into the TimeBlock method, a simple method that takes 30 minutes to learn, a couple of weeks to be comfortable using and probably a lifetime to master.

The methods manifesto is about Transparency, Planning, Sticking to the plan & Learning from our mistakes.

You can read more on http://timeblock.com or email me : anders (at) timeblock.com

If you find it interesting and want to learn more I'll gladly take a skype call explaining the method in details.

I have a few employees, one is a rockstar programmer (programming an OS in his spare time) and the others are not.

But this rockstar cannot talk to customers so one of the other devs dows that, and he is a rockstar in that field.

Another dev delivers solid work every day, every hour and never miss a deadline, he is a rockstar at being rock solid.

If I only had rockstar programmers I would never be able to get everything done.

So even though you are not a rockstar hardcore dev, then be hardcore and rockstar in whatever you are really good at!

Yes I am, as any proper dev I am building my own ;)

The interesting part is that instead of building a project management tool I (unintended and accidental) invented a new way of working and doing projects (now it is called TimeBlock)

I told other project managers, business owners, personal efficiency experts and Makers about the method and people started copying it in more than half the times I told about the method, to the point that 6 other business were using the method before we had written a single line of code.

This way of working has made me and my consultancy business employees much happier and we even had CEO's question if we hid something from them because the projects ran so smoothly :)

Mail me or go to our website to learn more http://timeblock.com

They build scar tissue, not broken bones!

You will do permanent damage to your brain if you choose the stress/burn down way!

Besides all the research pointing to that fact, I myself has burned myself into smitherines from stress and a toxic working enviroment. It took me two (2) years after my burnout to be able to work more than 2-3 hours a day and 4-5 years before I could work 8 hours a day for a week!

The brain is plastic, this means that it changes from stress and once you have overloaded it, it becomes more sensitive!

It's like breaking a bone - even though it grows back together, it will always be weaker.

Shortly after I started my first consulting business back in 1998 one of our customers wanted us to upgrade their compaq server from one disk to a raid.

We started Friday after normal working hour by checking that the backup worked (it did) then proceeded to upgrade the server with a raid backplane and three new scsi disk, installed Windows NT, installed the backup software and started a restore while getting some takeaway.

The restore only took like 15 minutes - and to our horror we discovered that the previous IT admin had set it up to do an incremental backup on the same dat tape overwriting it every day!

Ok, no worry, we had not used the old disk, so we installed it and turned on the computer.... Nothing happened.... Strange, we removed the raid backplane, installed everything as it had been... Still nothing.

After 24+ hours working on the problem, including several hours talking to compaq support (best support ever!) we had to go home for some sleep. When I got back to the server room I fired up Norton Disk Editor and painfully figured out the MBR was all zeros on the disk, luckily the rest of the disk look like correct data!

Several hours later, just before sunday turned to monday I finally got an MBR written using NDE and NDD, booting the system and seeing everything was all right.

Monday we told the customer we had some problems and would do the upgrade another day (after we had taken multiple backups :)

I still get a couple of thousand every month from my TSR projects, mainly http://www.watermark-image.com but some of the other TSR products are getting some traction.

The TSR LAN messenger has been getting some traction because people are scared of the privacy concerns with public chat clients. http://tsr-soft.com/products/lan-messenger/

The TSR photo manager gets a purchase every know and then, but to be honest I don't promote it much. http://tsr-soft.com/products/photo-manager/

All income frome those TSR projects is funneled into a new SaaS project http://timeblock.com

(My main income is from my consulting business.)

I was in a bad working relationship for way too many years, the one thing that helped me turn my life around was Taoist Tai Chi http://taoist.org

I told my founder story on the Rouge Startup podcast recently http://www.roguestartups.com/rs023-perseverance-with-anders-... for more info!

Base income from http://www.watermark-image.com - it makes some thousands every month.

I am using the income to build a SaaS app for my new working method called TimeBlock that helps Makers & Managers work better together and deliver a better product to their customers while being transparent and sleeping better.

Currently it is making 490$ in MRR from 4 customers with a total of 10 users.

Read more at http://timeblock.com

I read a article that had dug into this and found out that lack of light (sun) was the cause of bad eyesight in kids in asia.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/4140371/Spen...

So have a brightly lit room and get outside during the day, that should minimize your risk.

I read Simon Sinek's book "Start with why" last year and realized that my why is "happiness".

This made it much easier for me to choose what to work on, and currently I am using my time and energy (and all of my surplus money I get from my consulting business) to create and spread the word about TimeBlock - a new way of working that has made me happier, my employed Makers happier and our customers happier!

My goal is to help Makers, Managers and customers become just 1% happier if I can do that I will feel very priviliged.

As with competition the less mind space you are using on him the better.

I am pretty sure a future investor has seen this before and will understand that he is a fake.

Ideas besides the already mentioned forums and other online places:

Go to a bookstore and talk to the owner to see if they would promote your software (if it adds value to the bookstore)

Go to a library and talk to potential users about the idea, get some to test the app and give feedback (buy them coffee/donuts as a thank)

Talk to the librarians, they probably know your user base, ask them how to promote the sw.

Go to a coffee shop and talk to those sitting and reading books - tell them about the app and get feedback.

Submit as show HN Submit to product hunt Submit to all the beta lists out there if it is in beta

I started by creating a free version of my Windows software and when it was more mature and had some traction, I added some more advanced features and stared charging.

Now it is a nice side income that helps me bootstrap my SaaS app :)

How come you have not told us more about the startup, type, traction, what it does, the vision, the posibilities, the dream?

Perhaps this is one of those time in life where you already deep down has made the choice and now you are looking for external verification?

Or could it be a case of "when in doubt, there is no doubt" or perhaps it is time to think if it is a "hell yes" or a no?

I'm working on TimeBlock, a new agile work method that helps managers become leaders and help Makers to be more in flow so they get stuff done.

The method is also focused on getting Makers to be transparent once a week thereby informing Managers, in exchange Managers leaves Makers alone during the day so they get more time in flow.

Since last month we have signed two paying customers up for the app, rebuild the frontend in mvc and added a kanban board for managers to collect ideas before they are transformed into TimeBlocks.

Read more here http://timeblock.com and sign up on our launch list to learn more about the method and be the first to get access to the app.

I strongly believe that "perfectionism" is the most deadly way of procrastinate.

The cure is two sided, first you must work with acceptance of your inner resistance/monkey mind - books like the war of art, the dip and do the work can help you here.

Secondly you must work on shipping your product/code/content often and full of errors, this will help you accept that not perfect is okay - my biggest inspiration for this is Seth Godin's blog.

I can also reccomend the letting go book from http://zenhabits.net/lg

Oh, I forgot

Get into a mastermind group (or two) Listen to "startup for the rest of up" podcast Listen to "the startup chat" Attend MicroConf Europe Read books like "the lean startup", traction, smartcuts, the war of art, the dip, etc...

It sounds like you do not provide enough apparent value and hence people do not pay!

I am not talking about there "real" value you provide but what value you are able to communicate to those who actually lands on your site.

My advice would be to talk to customers, either those who have signed up or alternatively you could go out in the real world, find some target customers and talk to them.

This could be in a coffee shop (ask permission from the manager) where you could offer to pay for the persons coffee, then let them use the software and get them talking about what they see, their experience and thoughts - take notes of everything and most importantly shut the f*ck up, do not explain nor complain!

Take what you learned and use in your copy writing and development, then go back out again and repeat until you either has proven that people do not get value from what you are building or that they do!

I have just started using close.io (a YC company) and like it, I am a founder/sales guy and have seen a few crm's

http://close.io

The best hand on experience I have ever read about firing people due to lack of funding is Steli Efti from Close.io in this blog post : http://blog.close.io/i-fired-half-my-team

I have fired people recently and wished I had read that blog post first!

It's held twice a year, in Vegas in april and in Europe in the fall, previously it was in Prauge, this year it is in Barcelona sep 30'th - aug 1'st.

The conference is made by Rob & Mike from the essential bootstrap a business on the side podcast "Startup for the rest of us".

There might be a few tickets left for Barcelona - I'm attending (and my saas startup http://timeblock.com is sponsering !)

Hope to see you in either!

Yes, besides Patio11 a lot of those attending MicroConf has done it!

The more honest, transparent and unattached to feelings and stuff I am the more tranquility I am able to feel.

To help me I do Taoist Tai Chi, meditate, see a therapist and read books and blogs that is about being happier and balanced.

What has surprised me the most is how "silent" my mind and my life is now, happiness and getting things done is somehow inverse to how "busy" you feel and how much static noise is in your head!

I would say that every time I make a leap in my happines and efficiency it is because I am transparent and honest about something personal, I believe it is because by understanding and embracing myself I stop using energy being ashamed about who I am and release all that energy to create.

Building a startup (actually others are doing the building, I'm doing everything else :) I would bring one or two books (Traction, Lean Startup, Smartcuts, etc.) and my iPad.

I would use some time reading and some time writing either ideas/notes or blog posts.

My last enployer was not very good and did some things that did not align with my moral, so I thought to myself "I can do better than him" and started a company with three other student friends to prove that I could do it better.

This was back in the days when coax cable & token ring was still a thing and IE was the only browser on windows...

Took a loong time, but now I know I am doing better :)