sacha chua living an awesome life

After sketchnoting all these designers and artists talking about the value they get from experimenting with personal projects, I’ve been thinking about how I want to be deliberate about how much time I spend on other people’s projects versus my own.

Professional projects are easy to decide because I know the value of each engagement. I can then choose how much I want to work, and fit as much as I want inside that time. It helps that my savings mean I don’t need the money, and the experiment structure means that I need to carve out time to explore self-initiatives instead of just saying yes to what people ask me to do. I like my main consulting engagement, and I accept the occasional illustration or sketchnoting engagement depending on my interests and availability.

Pro-bono projects are where I get to exercise choice and negotiation. There are many, many things I would like to do with my time, of course. Some requests are someday/maybe things, so I add them to my list of things that people are interested in(with a note about who asked), and I get to them when the mood moves me. Some requests are time-based, like sketchnoting an event. Some requests are a mix of flexibility and commitment, such as when I schedule time to help someone with Emacs or similar things.

So I’m figuring out my rules of thumb for saying yes or no to requests, and for increasing the value that I get and create out of moments like that. I can simply say yes or no, but wouldn’t it be awesomer to use that for negotiation practice and to open up even more opportunities? Here are some of the things I’ve been thinking about:

SKETCHNOTING

If the event charges for participation or has significant sponsorship, then it’s fair that I charge. These are the not-really-pro-bono projects. If you’ve managed to demonstrate the business case for participants or sponsors, we should be able to work something out. In rare situations, I may swap this for some intangibles, but you should then be prepared to invest time or introductions.

If you don’t have a large budget but you really want me to help, talk to me anyway. I can help you build a business case that might draw in additional sponsorship. We might be able to find non-monetary things to swap, such as time and insights. I might give you an “awesome people discount” because you’re working on a cause that I want to support.

If I’m pitching an event that I really like, it’s too late in the budget cycle to rustle up more money or I know it’s the sort of event that tends to run at a loss, and it’s the sort of thing that will be a good fit for people who read my blog, I may do it for free, with the understanding that I may switch to something else if a professional opportunity or something more interesting comes up.

If you want white-labeled sketchnotes with only your branding and no mention of me, exclusive distribution (including confidential sketches), multiple revisions, or the copyright, that definitely calls for a premium rate.

Toronto venues (accessible by bike or public transit) are good, as are high-quality live-streamed conferences (good audio and view of the slides). I limit my travel, so it would have to be something truly exceptional for me to leave home.

If the event is free to attend, there’s minimal sponsorship, and it’s a cause I want to support or a topic I’m interested in anyway, then I may take it on (again, with no commitments). In terms of topics, I’m interested in entrepreneurship, business, technology, and design. I prefer to sketchnote fascinating speakers, particularly those who blog or tweet interesting and things (not just self-promotional broadcasts). I can sketchnote a badly-structured or unengaging talk, but it’s not fun, and I may end up sketching the talk I wish the person had given instead.

I’m leaning towards reducing these and spending more time drawing my own things, though.

TECHNICAL HELP

I occasionally help people with Emacs, mostly through the #emacs channel on irc.freenode.net or through questions and comments on my blog. I do this for free because I like the Emacs community and I want to help it grow. I can do one-on-one coaching sessions on a pay-what-you-can-and-what-you-think-it-was-worth basis. I accept Paypal, donations to Emacs-related things like the Emacswiki, blog posts / written-up notes after the session, and a number of other things that I value.

For more involved help (WordPress, Rails, computer help, etc.), (a) you have to be directly related or a really good friend, OR (b) it has to be a one-off question that intrigues me and promises to be a useful blog post. Also, you have to be cool with my potentially making mistakes, so I don’t want to be on the hook for anything mission-critical.

WRITING

I don’t accept unsolicited self-promotional guest blog posts on my blog, so people can stop pitching me. =) I generally don’t accept invitations to write original content for other people, mainly because I’d rather post things on my blog. You can suggest things you’d like me to write about. If I think it might be interesting, I’ll add it to my blog post ideas and write about it when it makes sense. I try to note who asked for a topic, so I might e-mail you once it’s up.

You are free to syndicate or excerpt my blog posts. I’d appreciate it if you link to the original blog post, and I’d love to hear your take on the topic and what other interesting discussions ensue.

WHAT PEOPLE MIGHT SAY, AND HOW TO REMIND MYSELF TO NOT JUST GIVE IN

“It would be great exposure!” I’m doing fine exposure-wise, actually. I don’t mind giving up short-term exposure in exchange for developing in my own way. I don’t need to be famous, and I don’t really need to go and reach a gazillion possible clients. For the next few years, I can work with only people I really like on things that people value.

“It’s a learning experience.” So are a lot of other things I can do, especially when it comes to learning how to follow my own initiative. =)

“There’ll be more work down the road.” I’m fine with the level of work I’m doing now, and I’m also fine with not having any of this and working on my own things for the next few years. Ah, the luxury of an experiment.

“How about being one of our sponsors?” This is related to the exposure thing. I don’t need the PageRank, the links, the referrals, or the warm-and-fuzzy glow. It’s nice, but the event should be interesting enough on its own.

“Hmm, that price is too high…” I’m experimenting with not lowering price unless I get extra value, do less work, or feel that the difference is something that passes my pro-bono guidelines. It’s actually easier and more fun to price that way instead of dealing with ambiguous value or talking yourself down. Besides, letting people make the negotiation all about price misses the point, and giving in teaches people to push without giving.

One of the interesting insights I picked up from FITC was the idea of value-based pricing – not just the value that the client gets, but the value of your time and energy. My experiment and my skills allow me to treat my time as valuable, and so I will.

FITC hired me to sketchnote the FITC Toronto 2013 conference/festival, which finished yesterday. Since the conference focused on art, design, and technology, visual notes made perfect sense. =)

Workflow: Because I do digital sketchnotes using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on a Lenovo X220 tablet PC, I could sit anywhere in the audience, sketch during the presentation, and publish and tweet the finished, highlighted sketchnotes 5-10 minutes after the event ends. This was very convenient, because it meant that I didn’t need any special room setup (so I could go to whichever session seemed the most appropriate) and we could tap into the buzz on social media while the session was top-of-mind. It also meant that the speakers could see (and share!) the summaries right away, as they typically monitored Twitter for feedback.

I spent about five minutes before each session setting up the image: copying the speaker’s picture, spelling the title and the speaker’s name carefully, and so on. I used the colours from the track indicators, although that ended up with this shade of pink for most of the sketches. I drew using my base colour, moving things around as needed. I added highlights on a lower layer in order to make it easier to focus on key points. I didn’t use placeholder filenames this time. I simply switched back to laptop mode and typed in the talk information. Then I used WinSCP to copy the .PNG over to the NextGEN gallery directory I’d previously created, and I rescanned the directory using the web interface. This worked out much better than uploading the files through the web interface because scp-ing it preserved the filenames and allowed me to not worry about timeouts. After the system generated thumbnails for the newly-uploaded image, I copied the talk information into the image description, and I used that in the tweet as well. I used AutoHotkey to expand !f into http://j.mp/fitcto13sketches so that I didn’t have to worry about mistyping the URL. (Although it turns out that I should probably choose shorter custom URLs…)

What would make this even better?

I can advertise the sketchnotes in the real world. A foam-core board on an easel would be a great way to point people to the URL for the sketchnotes. I could either hand-draw an image or print a poster. (Might even pull off a custom poster for a multi-day event!) That way, even people who aren’t monitoring Twitter or checking the blog could come across the sketches. It would probably be good to set up the publishing arrangements beforehand and include it in the program too, again to increase the value that people get from the sketchnotes.

I can try out reverse video. The room was kept very dark during talks to help people see the slides, so the light from laptops stood out. I created an inverse version of my grid, but I wasn’t sure how well I could deal with inverting the drawing colours too while keeping it printable. Maybe developing a set of colours that work well inverted? Might be something to consider for next time. Ex: Lynne Cazaly’s sketchnote of Frank Trindade’s talk

I can increase thumbnail size. In a week or two, once clicks have gone down or once I’ve gotten a proper development environment set up again, I’m thinking of tinkering with the theme on Experivis so that I have three columns of thumbnails that span the whole page. I might also experiment with embedding Flickr galleries, because Flickr might be a decent content-delivery network that takes the load off my server.

I can revise the images to remove information. If I write less, I can draw more. Revising old images is a way to prototype that look without having to think about getting to the right balance in real-time.

I like drawing conferences. I’m going to specialize in digital sketchnoting and book reviews with the occasional illustration or presentation design. No analog for me, as there are plenty of other people who can handle that and I don’t like doing post-processing as much!

See http://j.mp/fitcto13sketches for the sketchnotes. Enjoy!

The Culture Blueprint is an upcoming book that draws on lessons from Zappo’s corporate culture. It offers a mix of high-level advice as well as practical tips on how to influence your company’s culture and help your company be more effective. I liked the chapter on implementation, which includes a sample conversation showing how someone negotiated an experiment’s scope until the person got the resources and commitment needed. The tips are geared more towards medium- to large-sized companies, but even small business owners can benefit from the focus on values and stories.

Hope you find this visual summary useful! Click on the image to view a larger version, and feel free to share it with others. © 2013 Sacha Chua (Creative Commons Attribution Licence) – http://sachachua.com

Disclosure: I received a copy for review. If you have or know of an interesting, well-written book you’d like me to review, I accept requests.

Because I incorporated my company instead of being a sole proprietor, I need to file annual returns, update my minute book, and have either a shareholder’s meeting or pass resolutions. Since it didn’t make sense to have a meeting by myself, I combined this template for shareholders’ resolutions and sample minutes of a shareholders’ meeting to come up with the resolutions below. (Not legal advice; please go talk to a lawyer if you need one.)

SHAREHOLDERS RESOLUTION OF _________

The undersigned, being all the shareholders of _________, hereby sign the following annual resolutions.

RESOLVED THAT:

1. These resolutions are in place of an annual meeting of shareholders of the company.

2. The financial statements of the company for the fiscal year ended __Date__, are received.

3. __Name__ continues as the director of the company.

4. No auditor be appointed for the current fiscal year of the company.

5. All by-laws, resolutions, contracts, acts and proceedings of the board of directors, shareholders and officers of the Corporation enacted, passed, made, done or taken since __date__ as the same are set forth or referred to in the minutes of the Corporation or in the financial statements submitted to the shareholders of the Corporation on this date are hereby approved, ratified, sanctioned and confirmed. The acts of the Board of Directors since the last annual meeting of shareholders are approved and ratified.

DATED: ___Date___

__________________________________________

__Name__

This week, I’ll file the federal annual return. Another milestone! Maybe next year I’ll learn how to pass resolutions for dividends, or make myself a proper employee of the company so that I can set up a private health services plan.

Helping people learn is so much fun. I loved teaching introductory computer science. Even though sometimes it was frustrating, it was such a thrill getting people to those "aha!" moments. I speed-read, so it’s easier for me to skim through Google results and documentation to spot just the right function. I’ve made lots of mistakes, so it’s easier for me to debug things than it is for people who are starting out. Sometimes all people need is a nudge in the right direction, a snippet of sample code, and then they’re off. I get such a kick out of it. It’s high-leverage – a little help can go a long way.

Problem decomposition is a key skill: breaking a challenge down into small, motivating steps, identifying the things you need to figure out first so that you can build on top of them. It’s hard when you’re new, and easier when you’ve solved lots of similar problems. I want to get super-good at this, which probably means doing this with more breadth and depth so that we have more building blocks to play with.

I’m figuring out what I like. I like one-on-one sessions and co-working chats more than group tutoring or teaching a class. I don’t mind looking at someone’s screen using Skype. I’m not an expert, but we can learn together, and I’ve been told that my enthusiasm is infectious.

What could this look like, if I folded this into my experimental life? Maybe it starts with informal coworking in a shared space, helping people while hanging out and doing my own work. (I might have a "Do Not Disturb" / "Open for Helping with …" sort of sign on my laptop.) I’m planning to join HackLab.to in March, after my current consulting gig winds up. (I hope the weather will be nicer by then!) More formally, people might book hour-long sessions in a cafe, coworking space, or library, like the way tutors meet with students. I’d get paid in cash (pay-what-you-can) and/or barter. I could offer virtual help, too – e-mail? Skype?

So there’s this idea of code coaching, for those questions that you can’t ask on Stack Overflow or on mailing lists, and for learning not just a specific thing but also the process of learning it. Shall we give it a try? I’m open to inquiries about Emacs Lisp, PHP, Ruby, Rails, JQuery, Excel functions and reporting tools, AutoHotkey, Bash scripting, and other things people might want to learn.

I’m a little anxious about the impostor syndrome, but I should just get over that. I confess up front: I’m not an expert in any of these frameworks, especially since most of them move faster than I can learn. <laugh> (You won’t believe the kinds of things people are building with Emacs Lisp these days!) I’m always going to be looking things up, because I switch between languages and don’t have all the syntax in my brain. I sometimes have to look up how to do basic control structures like a for loop. And I’ll tell you if I don’t have the foggiest idea how to solve something, but at least I can show you how I’d look for it.

This sort of mentoring is an expected part of teamwork. Who’s done this as an independent? Are there things I should watch out for? Will it hopelessly fragment my brain?

Who’s interested in exploring this with me? How would you value it, and how do we test whether it’s worth it for you and me? Jan/Feb’s busy with consulting, but maybe we’ll see what this looks like in March, or we’ll do low-key coaching for starters…

Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857854

People ask me if sketchnoting is my passion. At the risk of losing business because we’ve bought into this myth that your work should be your all-consuming passion—no, actually, it isn’t. Or at least it isn’t my only passion, or even my strongest one.

What I’m really passionate about at this moment is learning. Sketchnotes are an excellent way for me to remember and share ideas. Bonus: I get to connect with speakers, authors, and fellow learners along the way. But the reason why I am focusing on building it as a business is because I want to learn more about marketing and sales. People tell me that my notes of conferences and events are awesome, so it makes sense to learn about marketing and sales in the process of selling something that people can appreciate and value. I sketched more than a dozen businesses I could be in, and this seems as good a place as any to start.

I’m curious about sketchnoting, but I’m even more curious about building businesses. I have a feeling that this must be weird. I think many programmers and artists shun business because it distracts from their work. I don’t see the business-work as all that different from the other things I enjoy – coding, drawing, cooking. I get to learn. I get to tweak. I get to hack. I get to debug. I get to play. I get anxious about accounting and paperwork, but even that is a learning sort of anxious.

People wonder how I can do so many different things. The truth is that it’s the same thing, again and again, and that’s what helps me learn. Find the unity of what you do and what you want to learn, and learning becomes easier.

I’m still figuring out how to calibrate my stress level when it comes to accounting and paperwork. While reconciling my business credit card statements, I realized that I had double-entered my September credit card charge from WIND Mobile. Correcting the mistake meant fixing last fiscal year’s corporate tax and sales tax returns. Digging into my records, I noticed that I was also missing a few months of bills from Fido, my previous cellphone provider. I’d forgotten to download the electronic statements before moving to WIND Mobile, and once that went through, I didn’t have access to the system. Meep!

“I am definitely not panicking,” I said. “No, sirree.” I took a deep breath and researched the process for amending a T2 corporate tax return. It involved sending a letter to my tax centre. The HST return was much easier to adjust: just change the numbers through the Canada Revenue Agency website. After updating my numbers in Quickbooks and TurboTax, I drafted a letter with the particulars. I hunted down the schedule form and the line items that needed to be changed.

Then I spent an hour working on avoiding the same problem in the future. I downloaded all the other statements I could get my hands on and setting up my routines so that I’d get a reminder to do this quarterly. I also added a checklist for when I’m closing accounts or moving to another company: remember to download statements!

The following morning, I called Fido to find out if I could get electronic copies of my bills. The agent told me that the electronic copies were deleted when my account was closed, but that I could request paper bills for $4 each. Since I probably wouldn’t be saving that much more by claiming it, I decided to remove the missing months from my tax claim.

Then I called the Canada Revenue Agency. The agent confirmed my understanding of the process for amending the T2 corporate tax return – send a letter with the items to change. In my case, I didn’t have to attach all the bills for the telephone; if they wanted additional documentation, they could ask. Yes, I could remit the payment beforehand in order to minimize interest. I told the agent that it probably came out to a difference of $30 or so. I asked, “Should I be majorly stressing out over this or minorly stressing out?”

The agent laughed and said, “It’s no big deal. Don’t worry.”

This is what I mean by calibrating my stress level. There are so many things I’m still figuring out. If I stress out too much, it’s expensive. (Get an accountant to chase all these little things down? That would probably cost more than the tax savings.) If I stress out too little, that can be expensive in terms of time and money and well-being too. Talking to people helps. I want to know what I should be paying attention to, and what can be sorted out later on.

The other thing I have to remember is that this doesn’t have to be that scary. The CRA reassessed my tax return for an extra $146, but they weren’t intimidating about it. I’m up front about the fact that I’m learning, but prospects and clients are cool with the experiment. The consequences of making mistakes are not as earth-shattering as my lizard-brain sometimes fears they are. As I learn to trust, I’ll be able to try things out more freely.

Learning from other people’s experiences helps a lot. I occasionally browse through small business forums and blogs for glimpses into other people’s adventures. I need more stories of uncertainty and starting out, I think. There’s this temptation to gloss over the rough spots, to present an image of smooth running.

I like hearing stories like how my parents carefully, carefully considered their equipment investments back when they were starting out their studio in the tight import-controlled environment of the Philippines in the 1980s. Do they buy this piece of equipment and risk that their capital gets tied up in something that lies unused if the jobs aren’t there? Do they pass on it, taking the risk that if they decide they do need it, it’ll no longer be available? I want stories of figuring things out.

Some people tell me that they like these business experience reports. If you like these experimental observations, can you recommend any other people that I should be reading too?