John Jantsch’s book started shipping yesterday. I wrote about it in December.  John offers practical, actionable, easy to digest marketing advice for small business owners.  Listen to a teleseminar with John and me or buy his book.  5 stars our of 5 on Amazon so far - go John.

Getting your branding right can be tough. We renamed our service this year already. Today I send an alert…we are going to rebrand our blog soon too. Why you ask?

When I was at the Web 2.0 Summit I had the good fortune to bump into Ryan Carson. Ryan is an inspiration to me. He has done so much in the web application space over the past two years I can hardly comprehend it all…building services, organising conferences, developing topical content. Genius.

Having spoken on the phone and traded emails - but never having met - we went out to dinner to get acquainted in person. It could have been a 45 minute dinner…but it wasn’t…it wound up being about 2.5-3 hours and I enjoyed every second…including the part where Ryan said to me, “I would have subscribed to your blog, but I thought it was just about FreshBooks.” To which I was thinking, “D’oh!”, and to which I said, “Really?”

This “FreshBooks Blog” is largely about entrepreneurship and running and building websites. The problem is that the name “The FreshBooks Blog” suggests it is mainly about FreshBooks, and because of that, people who would enjoy the posts we are writing are not signing up or returning. So we are going to rectify that.

Expect a new blog name and some other related annoucements soon. And if you like this blog, be sure to visit Ryan’s properties (like ThinkVitamin) which are listed above.

This weekend I was talking with a friend who works for a consulting firm - he does city planning. He mentioned the partners regularly work 15+ hour days.

It got me thinking about work weeks and what is too much. Lee Iacocca wrote an excellent autobiography of his time at Chrysler and Ford. It’s a great read from a truly motivated individual. One of the big takeaways for me was that Lee - world famous CEO of Chrysler and turn-around artist - did not work on weekends…ever. To him, weekends were family time and totally off limits.

I believe that you need to be refreshed to be effective. When I first started out seven years ago as a solo consultant/freelancer/web designer - a true one man shop, jack of all trades - there were times when I worked too much. Gradually I learned how to achieve my work/life/day balance and stave off burn-out - it’s always lurking and if you are not careful it will snag you.

So how long is my work week these days? I usually get to my desk around 8:00 AM and leave around 7:00 PM. While I sometimes arrive earlier or later, I rarely work past 7:00 PM. I think it is important to have a clear and consistent end to your workday. So, I work about 11 hours per day (55 hours per week). Now, that does not include the .5-1 hour of reading I do (almost always business related) each night (3.5 hours per week). Nor does it include any errands I run after hours (office supplies, sending of documents, etc), nor the inevitable after hours phone call or two (2.5 hours a week there). Every Sunday night I spend about an hour planning my week and frequently (weekends and weeknights) I go for one to two hour walks where I just think about things (4 hours per week). I also spend about 3.5 hours a week on outside projects like mesh.

So, here is how that looks in a more palatable format:

Mike’s Work Week
++++++++++++++

55.0 hrs - driving the desk
2.5 hrs - running errands after hours
3.5 hrs - reading and professional development
1.0 hrs - Sunday night prepping my week
4.0 hrs - after hours time dedicated to thinking
3.5 hrs - outside projects
————————————————–
69.5 hrs - THE GRAND TOTAL

With this kind of schedule and this kind of discipline, I feel both productive and passionate. I could work more hours, but it would come at a cost.

How long is your work week?

If you, or someone you know, lives in or around Toronto - or is looking to move to the area - and wants to be part of a small, innovative team (that’s us), this is your lucky day.

We are looking to add two junior members with exceptional attitudes to our team. You can expect to be treated as an equal with everyone in the organization, and if you want to work in a casual and professional environment where you will learn a ton and set your design and/or software career on track, do not delay - the final day for receiving applications is January 19, 2007.

For more information and how to apply, visit these links:

Web Designer Job Posting

Web Developer Job Posting

The past two weeks we’ve had “summits” - day long get-togethers where we chart our course for the upcoming year. One of the agenda’s items was a review of our respective schedules.

It was decided that I had to drop two projects I was working on. My rational mind knew that dropping them was probably the right thing to do, but part of me wanted to see them through - if for no other reason then I had started them.

The summit was Thursday, and Friday I made phone calls I had not been looking forward to … calls where I explained I had been re-assigned and I was sorry but I won’t be able to contribute in the same capacity. Guess what happened? Both calls went well, the parties involved respected the decision that had been made and that I addressed things with them quickly.

The moral of the story is that you can’t be afraid to let go of a project here and there if you know it’s the right thing to do. While you may dread the prospect of saying “I’m sorry…but I have to bail”, don’t let it be an impediment to your focus and your true priorities.

This is the second in a monthly series we’re going to be doing on the FreshBooks Blog. It’s called Ripe Data and it is an assortment and analysis of various metrics we track here at FreshBooks. Please note, Ripe Data will not include the valuable industry benchmarks active FreshBooks users will have access to in 2007. With that said, enjoy.

For companies who accept online payments:
- November, 17.5% of payments were accepted online
- December, 14.7% of payments were accepted online

Analysis
This is a fairly significant month over month drop in the number of people who choose to pay their invoices online as opposed to sending payments via check. It looks like people conserved cash flow as the holidays approached.

Payment Methods:
- Visa: 17.3% in November, 16.5% in December
- MasterCard: 7.3% in November, 7.7% in December
- Amex: 4.0% in November, 4.2% in December
- PayPal: 5.3% in November, 5.6% in December
- Other (including check, cash, account credit, etc.): 66.1% in November, 65.9% in December

Analysis
The increased in PayPal and the drop in VISA may hint that customers monitored credit card spending with the holidays on the horizon. Customers may have accumulated funds in their PayPal accounts, which in a sense is “easier” to spend, as it doesn’t technically come straight out of the bank account.

For companies that send invoices by both email and by ground mail:
- In November, 96.0% of invoices were sent by email and 4% were sent by ground mail.
- In December, 95.9% of invoices were sent by email and 4.1% were sent by ground mail.

Analysis
Since our August release, which introduced the ability to send invoices through the US Post, we have seen increases in the percentage of invoices sent by ground mail climb every month. We believe that this trend will continue in 2007 until a balance is reached, but over a longer horizon the scale will tip in favor of electronic billing as more invoice recipients become comfortable with receiving electronic invoices. In the meantime, FreshBooks is helping businesses handle the client preferences, a real source of pain for many businesses.

Browser Usage:
- Internet Explorer 7 - November 9.68%, December 15.42%
- IE 6 - November 36.77%, December 34.78%
- FireFox 2.0 - November 24.51%, December 21.85%
- FF 1.5 - November 22.07%, December 17.61%

Analysis
Apparently Microsoft is back on track with IE 7 and stealing significant market share from Firefox.

Operating System Usage:
-Windows - November 85.87%, December 86.97%
-Macintosh - November 11.41%, December 10.27%
-Linux - November 1.92% December 2.09%%
-Unix - November 0.06%, December 0.06%

Analysis
This may be an early sign that the market is experimenting with Microsoft VISTA, but time will tell.

Who Else is Talking About Ripe Data
I had a good back and forth with Zoli on the last edition. Worth a look if you are interested in SAAS and/or the semantic web.

Let me tell you a little story about a restaurant I love.

The restaurant is Churrasco Villa (beware the audio). I like them because they are fast, the quality is always good, their meals are nutritious, their facility is clean, their staff courteous and I can collect a take out dinner when I need to (usually 3-4 times per month). It’s the kind of neighborhood restaurant that always has people in the take out line and most of their seating capacity is full.

A few weeks ago I was deliriously hungry. You don’t have to spend much time around me to learn I eat every 3-4 hours and the wheels start to fall off if I have to wait much longer than that. So I called up the take out line and ordered.

When I went and picked up my food, I asked if I could sit at an unused table near the door and quickly eat my meal. The take out person said no. I then offered to tip the wait staff even though they would not be serving me – just for the quick use of that area and because I thought that might be the issue. The answer? No. And guess what? Now I’m mad.

As I quietly turned way from the counter I asked myself, “how did I turn so quickly from loving this place to being SO mad at it?” I was so mad I wanted to tell everyone what a dump it was. The trouble was I knew that was untrue…my rational mind still knew I loved the place.

So what happened? Clearly the staff at the take out window have been given some kind of policy that runs something like this: you can’t eat in if you order take out. Fair enough! The trouble is, how often do people really ask to do that? Once a month? Once a quarter? I’m willing to bet I looked awfully hungry when I collected my food, and as a regular customer, could they not cut me a break? Sure they could, the trouble is businesses fear the worst when they open the door to something like this because they fear it will be abused – the reality is they shouldn’t be afraid. Few people abuse your business and your policies and this fact is true of web applications too.

Inevitably when you are designing a web app or a website you will think of a scenario where a user can - in small way - abuse your site or game your system. It might be a really small thing like not entering a valid email address then they sign up. To prevent this you may force them to validate their email address before they can access their account. In theory you convince yourself that you are acting in your own best interest. The truth is you are not.

Trust your users and don’t worry about the small percentage of abusers – they won’t act ethically no matter what you do, so don’t invest your time trying to change them. The fact is very few people will abuse your sign up form, and invariably it takes more time to develop a form so that people can’t “trick” you. Also, designing and developing with a paranoid state of mind almost always adds a barrier to entry (i.e. “I have to check my email to get started? What a pain…forget it.”) that will get in the way of ethical users who want to use your service. These barriers will slow adoption and cost you in the long run.

Hi folks, here are some useful tools/resources that I’ve come across on the web. Some may be of use to you and some may not. Check them out:

AJAX loading gif generator - Ever wonder where everyone is getting those cool little animated loading images on all those AJAX websites? Check this site out. You can select from a number of different loaders and even customize the colours.

Brands of the World - Ever need another company’s logo in vector format? Or need some inspiration for a new logo or icon? This website has a huge database of company logos from all over the world.

Design Melt Down - There are a number of design websites I use as a resource or for inspiration. This is one of them. I especially like this one because it categorizes websites by colour usage, design elements and design trends.

Lorem Ipsum - Some web designers don’t agree with using this as dummy text in the preliminary rounds of their designs because it does not accurately represent the copy that’s actually going to be in there. I agree with this but it’s very handy if you quickly need to pop in some text without any fuss.

.htaccess generator - By manipulating the .htaccess file on your webserver you can accomplish many things. This website will generate a custom .htaccess file for you. It’s very helpful if you’re new to editing your .htaccess file.

If you have any that you would like to share with others, let’s hear it.

Laptop computers are great for work! For games, they are not so good. 

I use a mobile laptop computer for most of my work here at FreshBooks, although I would be hard pressed to differentiate it from a desktop computer with my current setup.  The laptop is connected to a separate 17” monitor, a full sized keyboard and an optical mouse.  The immediate advantage is that I can take my laptop and go mobile if I need to at any time.

Another bonus is that when connecting the laptop to a separate monitor, I essentially have two monitors.  With some configurations in my display settings, I can setup my system to use both screens as my desktop space.  This allows me to have my email application on my laptop screen to my right and the full sized monitor for coding directly in front of me.

Mike made a post a while back ago about productivity and bigger monitors, but two monitors can do a good job if you want to avoid buying a bigger monitor.  The kicker is that I don’t have to use each monitor for separate applications.  Sometimes I drag the window so it takes up both screens.  This can sometimes be useful for viewing database tables or excel spread sheets with lots of columns.

On the down side, laptop computers can’t really be easily upgraded and typically cost a lot more then the typical desktop computer of equal performance.  That’s why I have a desktop PC for recreation at home and use a laptop at work.

Some people might say that laptop computers won’t last as long as their desktop counter-parts.  This could be true because laptops generally are subjected to more physical movement than the stationary desktop computer.  However, if you are careful with your laptops or use a laptop computer in place of your desktop computer, they are an excellent choice for the office.

You have to hand it to the team at 37Signals. They keep one of my favourite blogs, and in reviewing their best posts of last year they did not make one list, they made six and released them one after another…the 42 best posts of 2006.

Though they have not come out and said it, I’m sure they released six lists because they did not want to have more than seven links listed in one post. Seven is the “magic number”…the human brain does not do well when it has to retain or digest more than seven options/choices. Ever notice how our website only has seven main navigation links? No fluke there.

Happy New Year everyone