HDC

05/25/2021

If there’s one thing owners, employees and contractors agree on, it’s that it is always nice to have some skin in the game, especially when business is thriving. A successful profit-sharing program inspires and motivates your employees. It allows you, as the owner, to give back to your team. It even makes for a great story when an employee experiences a windfall.

But for a small business owner, setting up a simple and effective profit-sharing system is a daunting challenge. I know, because I spent the last year building mine.

In today’s article, I’ll show you how to go beyond the common (but misleading) examples of public and venture-backed companies and set up a simple, easy-to-manage, easy-to-understand profit sharing system that will make you and your team members proud.

http://ow.ly/GDek50EhULW

05/18/2021

Earlier this year, I transitioned my company to an equal-pay policy. Among our developers, everyone is compensated in an identical way, and those numbers and formulas are public to the whole team.

It almost goes without saying that equal pay and financial transparency are good things—they’re critical to closing the wage gap as well as building a strong, cooperative and dedicated team. Nonetheless, many companies (including those who talk-the-talk about equity and inclusion) have large, irrational pay disparities among workers who do very similar jobs.

In this article, my goal is not to present our system as perfect – in fact, I’ll call out some of the flaws and areas where I need to make future improvements. I’ll also dig into other important elements of our compensation system – such as our revenue-sharing program – in future articles, so this article is about one part of our system, not the whole.

For now, I hope this can act as a simple framework for other business owners, employees and contractors to introduce equal pay and greater transparency at other companies. I also hope it will prove that anyone can implement a similar policy with relative ease.

http://ow.ly/QAP450EhUFr

05/11/2021

During my two decades as a professional web developer, I’ve watched the Internet evolve from its simple and humble origins into a complex and ever-changing cocktail of browsers, devices and edicts from the major tech companies.

Core Web Vitals is one of those pivotal changes. Soon, Google will begin ranking your site — and potentially labeling it for visitors – based on whether it meets Google’s exacting standards for page speed on mobile devices. It’s an opportunity to get ahead of the competition – and you’re at risk of falling behind if you let your site languish rather than optimizing for the new rules.

Learn how to get ahead of your competition by optimizing your WordPress site for Google’s Core Web Vitals, the latest update to their rankings.

http://ow.ly/Ww4v50EhUjp

05/04/2021

If you’ve read Rob’s Agency Owner’s Guide to Hiring Web Developers, you know that one of his core values is building long-term relationships with both his clients and his team. He treats them as his friends — people he’s going to be working with for many years.

Rob was a recent guest on Susan Boles’ Break the Ceiling podcast to discuss why he prioritizes these long-term relationships and how he orients his business and its offerings to encourage them.

Listen here: http://ow.ly/BhEy50EhTOM

04/27/2021

It can cost your business up to four months of a new employee’s salary to recruit and train them. Instead, learn the three best ways to keep the great web development talent that you already have.

http://ow.ly/jssc50Efw86

04/20/2021

Learn how the principles of managing a team of remote web developers can help you as we all adjust to working from home because of COVID-19.

While the focus of this article is on web developers, many of the same principles can be applied to any remote team. Flexible scheduling, effective communication, and uninterrupted sessions of deep work are all essential to maximizing our productivity at home.

http://ow.ly/IqRu50Efw5d

04/13/2021

You’ve probably read a lot about dearth of diversity in technology – it’s true for Silicon Valley behemoths and for the vast majority of smaller creative and technology companies, too.

This is a complex problem, so I want to focus on what we can do today, as small business owners, to help the tech workplace better reflect the population at large.

http://ow.ly/iOn050EfvFU

04/08/2021

Multiple projects, competing priorities, scarce resources, client feedback, and changes in requirements — if you’ve ever run a web development team, it’s likely that you’ve faced one (or all!) of these challenges.

At Howard Development & Consulting, we’ve taken the basic principles of Scrum and adapted them to how we work best.

But what exactly is Scrum, why do development teams love to use it, and does it need to be adopted wholesale or can it be adapted to individual needs?

http://ow.ly/8CAD50Efvys

04/07/2021

With the end of the pandemic in sight, the nation is a ball of pent-up demand: for long meals at restaurants with friends, for stress-free air travel, for normalcy in schools, grocery stores and public places.

The one thing we’re not excited about? Going back to the office.

Rob shares his thoughts on the future of work with Entrepreneur:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/366694

04/06/2021

Join me at Freelance Business Week (virtually, of course) where I’ll be talking about how to navigate one of the best problems you can have as a freelancer — having more work than you can manage yourself.

Learn how to scale up a small, powerful, flexible freelance team and avoid the common mistakes that cause many freelancers to waste huge amounts of time, money, and energy on hiring.

Get your free tickets here: http://ow.ly/1fRI50Efsuu

09/09/2020

What's the WORST experience you've ever had with a web developer?

I'll start!

- I've had developers bill me for thousands of dollars of work they never completed
- I've seen developers insult their own clients during large group conference calls
- More than one developer has held a client "hostage" because they didn't want to lose their maintenance contracts, even though they were chronically under-delivering
- And a shocking number of developers completely ghost their clients the day of the big launch

It is HARD to hire a good developer, especially when you're busy juggling lots of projects, like every high-end creative agency owner.

That's why I wrote The Agency Owner's Guide to Hiring Web Developers. You can get it for free at the link below.

The free guide compiles everything I've learned in my 20+ years hiring web developers and working hands-on with creative agencies. You'll get immediate, free access to the exact system I've used to hire dozens of high-end developers, and I'll show you how I've crafted job descriptions and business models that retain great people for the long term.

Grab the guide today, and in the meantime, comment below and tell me your WORST developer experience in history...

Skip the sleepless nights and painful trial-and-error – and jump right into building a successful web development team. Download your free guide today.

02/03/2017

Your web host makes or breaks your site's performance and security – here are the ones we use and recommend to our clients.

No matter your level of WordPress expertise, your site’s performance, security and success are ultimately at the mercy of your web host. We’ve laid out our top WordPress hosts, based on our experience over more than a decade with just about every hosting provider under the sun.