I run a discussion group that meets once a month - our tech stack is 1. A blog running WordPress that I use to announce meetings 2. A meetup.com account (free tier) that has the same information as the blog 3. A MailChimp account (free tier) where I send notices about the meetups 4. A very active Slack group (free tier) where I announce meetups and we have entended discussions. Discord would probably work just as well.

I've never used Facebook for anything, but the above four tools work very well for us.

This is why Facebook ended up being the tool of choice. Stay in one app instead of logging into 2 and checking your email and a website. I'm only surprised that 1-3 can't all be done via Meetup.

> Stay in one app instead of logging into 2 and checking your email and a website.

The point seems to be that you can pick whatever service you want and will still get the information because it’s repeated across channels. The manager needs to post to all four, but everyone else picks one.

They all can be done through Meetup - I think the point here is that multiple channels avoids vendor lock-in and increases the likelihood that a user will overlap with one of the 4 communication strategies.

All of those can be done on meetup - but then we would lose a lot of people who are not, and will not be on Meetup.

The email list is probably the single most important part of the tech stack actually.

Discord has replaced facebook and reddit for some of my communities and it works really well in general. Unfortunately we are seeing them turn toward incorporating ads which is somewhat offputting. I'm already looking into a self hosted discourse forum as an alternative but it lacks the immediacy of live chat for better or worse

You don’t see how much more work that is?

I've got it down to 45 minutes a month, including a phone call to the venue.

And what happens when he gets tired of managing all of that? With Facebook he can just give someone else admin access.

Organizing people takes work, and passing off a single set of credentials to someone else doesn't mean that work will still get done - whether its all in one place or not. Look at all the subreddits which are lost because of no moderation, even when they used to have a team.

When they eventually get tired of managing all this, they will eventually need to hand the reigns off to someone else. Hopefully someone will step up, because if someone doesn't it won't matter if the group is in 4 places or one.

Which is easier - finding someone that can manage a Facebook group or finding someone that can manage his Rube Goldberg setup?

I can just give the logins to someone else. My current setup is a workable, optimal, but not clean solution to the problem.

It's important not to overthink this - You're a specialist at being you, more specifically you have a bundle of skills, some of which will be useful to people with both problems and money. All you can really do is to isolate those skills, give them a name, and offer that as a service.

Based on your original description - you are an expert in "back office" skills.

1. Care about technical matters and show that you care about technical matters - if you're selling something technical it's good to have complicated opinions on technical matters

2. Someone who is difficult in good times will be a monster in bad times

3. Repeating the words of other's back to them is eerily effective

4. Every client is in the middle of some sort of political drama, you will be some minor part of that drama - this is normal and not that meaningful

Risk is independent of prior events, habits are not - I think that was what the anthropologist story is about

Maybe I've just gotten better at what I follow/comment on, but the mood feels like it's gotten a bit better over the past few years, more tolerant, more heterdox, less shrill, more interesting, less combative, less "performative", etc. Not perfect, but improving over a few years ago. It does feel like the average age of the commenter has increased though.

I've done a fair amount of that - some mistakes I've made -

1. Not getting money up front

2. Extending credit

3. Open ended meetings

4. Being insufficiently explicit about what is being delivered

5. Working on a handshake (seldom a problem with big clients actually) - get them to sign something

6. Not actually meeting in person at least once

7. Not being clear on who owns the code/technology (if you're going to do more or less the same thing for the person across the street then make sure to let the client know that they are getting a license (or something similar))

8. Scheduling meetings in their downtime, but your worktime

9. Not having a template, or even an idea of what a good referral would look like

10. Having a specified finish line - much more important for the smaller client than the larger ones IME

Spot on. Only thing I would add is

11. Invoice frequently, on schedule, like clockwork. Drop anyone who doesn't pay on time.

12. If you are doing them any "favours" for any reason (discounts, work you might do but don't charge for), put it on the invoice.

I didn't understand your point 12 at first but I think you mean that you should always write down in the invoice what you did for free so that the client is always in the loop about all the work you do (whether you bill for it or not). That makes a ton of sense. Easy for humble people to not think of. Better to keep everything in the open.

You can do twice as much work as you bill for, but if you don't somehow show the client it's all for nothing. You get no goodwill, which is typically what businesses are looking for when they do free work. I try to always show any extra work done and what it would have cost on the invoice.

I'm not the parent poster, but I have always found that, to an extent, the more detail you put on the invoice, the better. There are some people who seem absolutely compelled to say "but you only did x" if they only see one thing on the invoice, no matter how involved that one thing is. Next piece of advice is to fire anyone who questions the price (at least more than once maybe...)

Put what you did with a price attached. On a separate line put a discount for that much money (with reason for discount if you want). So instead of "what you did for free" it's quantified $X discount.

Which is another way of saying "Don't do anything for free" or "There's a big difference between $1 and $0."

If there's a line item you're charging them, and then a credit, it's apparent to everyone that your work has value. If it's just missing... then the value can be forgotten much more easily.

You're still doing it for free. But at least it's properly accounted for.

Yeah, it's about setting and managing expectations. Small favours can help build relationships, discounts can help close a deal, and so on. Less relevant for larger clients, but may be necessary when working with smaller clients.

Writing it down can be the difference between the client thinking "I understand what you did there is a one-off favour and I appreciate it", versus the client taking it for granted as something normal and always expecting it in the future at no cost / discounted cost.

Yes, you don't negotiate from a discount. By putting this on there you're showing that they are already getting a discount; when they ask for more you'll be able to highlight the stuff you've already done for free.

> Invoice frequently, on schedule, like clockwork. Drop anyone who doesn't pay on time.

THIS. We bill monthly but sometimes I'll hold a project that isn't complete. BIG MISTAKE and my wife who's the CFO reminds my everytime she "finds" time logged from 6 months ago that was never billed. I'm better now, but the business world works on a schedule, your billing should too!

I will admit it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn this lesson and become disciplined enough to do it.

But it really is better for everyone involved, clients don't like late or unpredictable invoices either!

Detaching emotion from billing is important. Sometimes I would hesitate to bill because of a recent bug or miscommunication. Hug error on my part. Everyone gets billed every month no matter that status of your project. I also will bill some clients EARLY if I'm concerned, they won't pay or will balk.

Let's say I write some JS widgets and want to reuse them on multiple sites. What kind of license do you recommend? It's not open source, but is there a good boilerplate for this kind of thing? Or a question-tree like GitHub's pick an open source license, but for non-open source?

Don't mess with licenses. Just keep the copyright with the code in the project. They have your permission to use the widget (implied license, basically), so they're in the clear, but they won't be able to distribute it beyond what you've allowed, legally.

Not an expert, but going back to basics you only license things you own. So if they will retain the IP you don't license anything.

Pretty much all of this.

Many things can be said but you will experience an emotional range like you've never felt before - the lows are really low and the highs are really high - plus a lot of your life will no longer be within your control, which always adds a bit of adventure to things.

> the lows are really low and the highs are really high

This resonated with me; I am yet to experience the lows because my kids are still young - the highs are just unparalleled. The happiness and calm I feel from having my son putting his head on my shoulders listening to bedtime stories is unmatched by anything else going on in my life.

It can be nice in big cities too, maybe a little harder, but still pretty easy - all you have to do is remove social media and the clickbait/outrage web and life becomes pretty normal.

I'm not sure it does. I see weird people in the subway most days, I see all the time people that look like they spend all their day being outside - doing nothing, there are people making noise at 2 am on a week night, there are people going at crazy speeds on the street, at night or during the day. I feel like lots of people have some kind of weight on their shoulder, and/or one or multiple things bothering them a lot. Sometimes the atmoshpere feels a bit tense and everyone seems a little crazy.

I think it's a bit reductive to put all that on social media and the web. People are packed together in cities, sometimes you smell piss while going to and getting back from your job, sometimes people make noise when you want to sleep, it's hard to see nature, it's hard to be alone, it's hard to escape the noise and the light, public transportation can feel suffocating, the air isn't clean, it's very hard to have space to grow some food or practice some hobbies.

Most of it is "normal" in that many people live like this. However, I feel like all that I mentionned has a negative impact on my mental health, and on the mental health of the people around me. One that could translate to people being more aggressive, more tense in general.

> I feel like lots of people have some kind of weight on their shoulder, and/or one or multiple things bothering them a lot.

With very few exceptions, there’s nothing healthy or normal about living in chaotic, densely populated urban areas with high crime and endless noise, air and light pollution. In addition, there’s nothing natural about needing to work a bullshit job just to survive.

People ought to really start asking what is being afforded exactly when it comes to making city life “affordable”.

> With very few exceptions, there’s nothing healthy or normal about living in chaotic, densely populated urban areas with high crime and endless noise, air and light pollution. In addition, there’s nothing natural about needing to work a bullshit job just to survive.

That's how I feel too. The only difference is that where I live the crime rate here is not that high. But the rest is the same.

> I see weird people in the subway most days, I see all the time people that look like they spend all their day being outside - doing nothing, there are people making noise at 2 am on a week night, there are people going at crazy speeds on the street, at night or during the day.

Is it New York?

I agree that cities can be great at times. But as a whole comparatively they are not as stable or peaceful.

From everything I have read cities are generally safer than rural areas.

Things I know I will need in the next month get scanned and sent to Notion - Tax Docs go to a folder on my desk

Everything else I place in a large pile on the side of my desk - once it looks like it's going to fall over I go through everything, throw out what looks useless and put the rest in a separate pile. Every once in a while I scan the separate pile documents to OneNote and shred them. It's worked surprisingly well for the past 15 years or so.

Nice catch actually