2. Introduction  How I Got My Start  The Business End  Why Start Your Own Business?  Getting Clients/Advertising  What To Charge  How to stay successful  The Business Plan Competition  Conclusion 2

3. How I Got My Start  Fell into my lap  Parish was first client  Forced me to learn HTML (using Frontpage)  Stuck with/kept up with technology  Learned a lot in my first few years  Consider myself lucky 3

4. What Did I Learn?  Have confidence in your work  If you don’t believe in your work, why should someone else?  Communication with Clients  Put things in English  People skills  Specialize  Proper Business Workings 4

5. The Business End  Why Start Your Own Business?  Getting Clients/Advertising  What To Charge  How to stay successful 5

6. Why Start Your Own Business?  Be Your Own Boss  Greater Payoff  Potentially More Money  More Satisfaction  Do What you like to do  My Own Business vs. My ‘steady’ jobs  Create work you can call your own. 6

7. Getting Clients/Advertising  Word of mouth  Talk to people you know  Referrals are key  Build a portfolio  Do some pro bono work to get started  Do good work. 7

8. Getting Clients/Advertising  Put yourself out there  Website (www.casabona.org)www.casabona.org  Business Cards  Job/Gig Boards  www.gigs.37signals.com www.gigs.37signals.com  www.authenticjobs.com www.authenticjobs.com  www.freelanceswitch.com www.freelanceswitch.com 8

9. What To Charge  Hardest Part for Me  Don’t go too low  Will show you’re not confident in your work  Prove your worth  Don’t get pushed around and cheated.  Be up front with the client  Know your target market 9

10. How to Stay Successful  Have a plan and follow through  If you have an idea, run with it  Network  Make contacts, remember people  For me, it’s side projects and services  You can’t always count on having clients  Offer some service that will constantly bring in money 10

11. How to Stay Successful  Don’t let your business go stagnant  Redefine it  Keep up with changing technology  Take Risks  Set Attainable Goals  Start projects by taking smaller steps  Great Plans are nothing if you have no base 11

12. Recommended Reading How to Start a Home-Based Web Design Business By: Jim Smith 12

13. The Business Plan Competition  Competition Background  The Idea: Into the Open (www.intotheopen.com)www.intotheopen.com  What I will be doing:  Creating a business plan  This will force me to really think about my business 13

14. Conclusion  If you have an idea, run with it  Have Confidence in your work  Be willing to take the risk  Keep up with the technologies  Since I got my start: CSS became the standard, HTML evolved into XHTML, AJAX got very popular 14

15. Questions/Comments? If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers. -John Carmack 15