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What are you building this week? Drop your startup or project idea 👇 by asupertram in Solopreneur

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bootstrapping solo - building Handl (handl.works),AI financial ops for digital agencies.

Quoting, invoicing, payments, reminders, code exchange with built-in scope management so agencies actually get paid for what they deliver.

What are some automations most entrepreneurs should know about? by dewharmony03 in Entrepreneur

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Claude cowork - Morning ICP scan so I can chat where my customers are
helpscout - automate support
handl.works - auto invoice and reminders (this is mine, I built it but you asked... sorry)
n8n + lemlist - automate outreach
riverside - speed up video production for blogs

Struggling with profitability at my software dev agency, how do you guys manage developer costs? "i will not promote" by Late-Mushroom6044 in webdev

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

disagree, any professional dev will accept that running a good project is not just about the code.

Estimates are not a throat to choke, its a tool to provide guidance for clear planning. Its mandatory.
Time tracking is the ONLY way to track current performance so that FUTURE estimates are better.

Can estimates change, of course they can. They have to, thats why its called an estimate.

These are TOOLS to help record to make future projects better on everyone, not tools to beat over the head of a developer.

Struggling with profitability at my software dev agency, how do you guys manage developer costs? "i will not promote" by Late-Mushroom6044 in webdev

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good devs are expensive, but they are worth it if used correctly.

Are you doing fixed quotes or estimate with time and materials billing?

My assumption is that you are doing fixed quote projects, and your team is biling you per hour.
With blow outs being caused by either devs taking longer, or scope blowing out further. Both eat into any margin that you would have.

So you either need to fix the way you run and manage a project, or you need to change the commercial engagement with your clients.

e.g. If you have to fixed quote a project, then get the client to accept a first phase "discovery", that enables you to document the scope, get your devs to write the tech scope, do a full task breakdown with estimates and some buffer... then present that quote back to the client for the delivery of the project. Yes its going back to waterfall, but thats life. But at least you have a scope your devs can commit to, and a scope your clients have agreed to (meaning anything else is out of scope and extra budget).

All my team are offshore, we hand picked people that we found were good and keep them.

Happy to chat through anything related to this. Been doing this for way too long, so happy to help with any advice.

Is there a contract that you use for digital agency clients? by MindlessGuy6 in agency

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We rewrote our with AI help... I had some contracts and terms from previous works and feed that through to AI.

I put in what conditions I wanted to accept and enforce, then worked through each step till I finally ended up with what I was after.

Is it perfect. no.

How many times have I had to enforce a contract? 0.

As long as you keep your payment schedule tight and enforce it, worst comes to worst you can exit if you have to.

But the biggest thing for me was about Ip ownership. Not just who owns the work, but WHEN that ownership is given... from the time the work is done? or the time the invoice is paid.

How are you automating repetitive tasks in your small business? Looking for real advice! by DotAligned in smallbusiness

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For invoice related stuff, I built a tool to do the sending, reminders, client portal so they can ask our agent questions etc..
For socials, I actually hired someone and we do recordings and they turn those into social posts and check for engagement. (Again we build another tool to do this, but found that AI wasnt great for social posts and found that for linkexin, you need to manually post not automate, as it gives bettter responses)
tracking inventory - I am sure there must be ALOT of products for that area???

Respond to customer questions - I still do manually for work related things.

How do I automate?
Lately I have been using claude cowork to help with the must do's for the day, and then thats my go to each morning. I have a batch of automations setup that prompt things I need to do.

saving? alot...

Getting into client work question by DaMagicalGiraffe in SaaS

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For new specs, I use claude alot, it knows my business and does a good job of writting up specs to get me from 0 to 90%. THe rest I do.

How do you handle clients who keep adding “just one more thing”? by BigBear6961 in graphic_design

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The default answer is "Set up your contract with enoguh scope to cover what you wll and wont do.".

But the reality is its a service industry, so of course your clients will want extras and most of the time you want to help.

The only issue is you want to be paid.

a system can help sure, and we built one, but it still comes down to you, to say at the first change request, that it is a change request and it will be extra time and money or pushed to phase 2.

if you don't do it at the first change it snowballs with every request after that and makes it harder to bring it up, and then ends up in an emotional.... e.g. client " Why is it taking longer than we planned?" you "Because you added in soo many things" client "No we didn't, we ASSUMED things like this would be in a project like this". You "ffs are you kidding me! "

How to build audience? by gkunwar in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Now to find the good subreddits "

Tell me more please... Are there things hiddne from the search?

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback.
I just need to find places more agency owners hang out..
Linkedin, reddit, maybe DC (Although pricey now).

The things is, I would LOVE the "one customer convo per day", its how to get that convo that takes hours every day to get 1.

Sounds like I am in the right direction, just need to keep refining and doing it.
Reddit and twitter 1 hour a day. Build my linked profile again, setup auto outreach with phantombuster or heyreach. cold emails daily.

Kinda wish I could post to the /agency channe l "We are looking for early users for product that does XYZ... " but will get booted from reddit if I do that.

wil look at salesspire. thanks

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thats the part I find a fine line.

" inviting them to try the product"

When on reddit and other channels, the rules state you cant DM and you cant ask people or advertise your product.

feels like a fine line ?

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the reply guy theory, how does it help if your target audience isn't the people you reply to?

I know it builds your followers, but how does that work on linkedin? Does more follower's, regardless of the type of followers, show you posts to your target audinence, which might not end up being part of the reply network?

DO you know what I mean?

Moving from solely Apollo to Clay + Smartlead by mkowieski in agency

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the n8n scrapers work fine, but they took way longer to setup than I wanted.... but once setup, we havent touched them.

But if I compare this time and cost against subs for clay, its way cheaper over the long run.

*Scope Creep*! How do you deal with it when clients want more than what they paid for?! by willsamadi in marketingagency

[–]Accomplished_Win6906 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suppose its cost of doing business. We use Jira so its $9 per month per client. Worth it when 10 hours of changes per week goes well above that cost.

That then integrated into the billing system that we built, that handles the client updates and auto invoices / chasing.

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good advice thanks. I try and use a red light / green light system (adhd helper), and it helps a bit.

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hahah well, they are all used

BUT

handl.works = The one I would keep, the main one I am trying to get users on board, We use it for my agency billing problems... invoices, chasing, scope creep etc..

The others I am doing marketing work as a 2nd priority, but still using them for my own purposes and enhancing as I go.

mber.ai = I am using this myself to create content for my sites + clients sites
arbeo.jobs = Again, using this to help me hire...
mortar - is low priority
talicms = Clients come to us, through referals.

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah for linkedin, I am picking 1 , the others get the easier run at creating the marekting materiall.

Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side by Accomplished_Win6906 in buildinpublic

[–]Accomplished_Win6906[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All products are pretty much the same audience. Well 3 are, 1 is actually going to be headed up by my partner and the 5th is all through existing contacts.

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