Jason Long heads up Brainleaf, a project scoping tool for digital agencies. He joins James to talk about why properly scoping your projects is so important, even though he hates doing it himself.
Naturally, he’s found ways to make it easier and rolled it into Brainleaf. Favourite quote from the episode: “Why are you letting people walk out with your apples”
In the second half of the chat, you’ll learn about creating a SaaS business and some common pitfalls that agencies make when moving into this space.
Topics also include:
- How to re-use or template scopes to save work
- Whether to include prices
- How granular to be in your scope
- Stop letting people walk out with your apples
Resources mentioned in the episode
- Brainleaf - project scoping tool
- Jason’s free book on scoping
- HowToKickSaaS
- JH Media Group
Connect with Jason
For me:
For BrainLeaf:
JH Media Group:
About Jason
Hey There! Thanks for reading my bio! I'm going to write it out like a story rather than the standard, 3rd person "That fancy guy did that fancy stuff." I think it's more fun that way. So... I've been an entrepreneur for most of my life. When I was 14 years old, I started selling paintball equipment to my friends so I could afford to play as well. From there, I went on to a small operation managing gum-ball machines around Atlanta. Around 2000 I started a one-man web design company so I could have some beer money in college and afford to take some ladies out (it didn't help, they still wouldn't go out with me). Unsurprisingly, it difficult to sell websites to people who thought the web was a fad at the time. But over time it grew and I quit college to pursue the business.
Around 2008, our 28-man company crashed to the ground along with the rest of the economy and I had to start over. It was rough, to say the least, but a great learning experience. My business partner and I picked things up and started growing it all again. But this time along with our first SaaS, Map Dynamics. That company is still in business, being run by solely Jeremy, and doing amazing. While he took that over, I started to focus on JH Media Group on SaaS development and built a number of businesses that are still running, and a few that aren't. I learned a ton about how not to run a business and a few things about how to grow one.
I feel like a lot of people talk all about their successes, but I like to talk about my failures, and I have a ton of them. So any time people ask me about business, I tell them "I can't tell you how to make your business successful, but I can sure tell you how not to fail. And maybe by not failing, you can last long enough to be successful."
It's been a bumpy ride getting here, but in the end, I don't think I could have had it any other way. I had to follow my dreams.