Today’s guest on The Membership Site Success podcast is Alec Kinnear!
Alec is the founder of FolioVision and the FV Flowplayer. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Alec is a force of personality who joins us today to share his strong opinions on WordPress, Oracle, PASSION, business ethics, overcharging and much more!
This is one of my favorite episodes I’ve recorded and I got a TON of value of it so I hope you will too. Enjoy!
Key Insights from Alec
- Lose the employee mentality. Even if you’re working for somebody else, treat your work in the same manner as you would if it were your own company. In other words, take ownership, take responsibility, deliver quality results consistently.
- Make bonuses a substantial part of your employee compensation. This incentivizes performance and teases out good-on-paper-only team members. Alec offers his team members bonuses that in some cases equate to about 100% of their base salaries! This is one of the means he uses to keep A players on board.
- Something that destroys many software companies is selling their product for a low fee (let’s say $50) and then providing ongoing support for a yearly fee (let’s say $75). What Alec has done to protect against this with FV Flowplayer is to field questions on the forum for users of the free version of the player and reserve higher-level support for paying users only.
- Don’t spend so much time trying to save time (using apps like Keyboard Maestro and Typinator) that you actually lose time
- Don’t bother updating your operating systems constantly. This can cost you a lot of time and create issues with software incompatibilities.
- Don’t underestimate the value of being a middleman if you can retain your integrity and brand
- Don’t use too many tools. Less is more.
Mentioned On The Show
FolioVision – Alec’s boutique web design and digital products company
JustRecord.it – Vic’s end-to-end podcast production company
Topgrading – A proven hiring methodology
FV Flow Player – Alec’s video player
NetFlix in a box – Alec’s video membership site setup service. According to Alec: “I hope to God we never sell this service because the first person who buys this is going to get $50k worth of development for $10k.”
Alec’s has a bone to pick with WordPress – read about it here.
The Checklist Manifesto – a must-read book by Atul Gawande about the power of a simple checklist. Required reading for business owners!
Work The System – yet another game-changing book for entrepreneurs. This book got me to start documenting everything in SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and I haven’t looked back!
Dynamite Circle – A private, referral-only business community of which I’m a member.
John Logar – I saw John speak at the Dynamite Circle yearly event in Bangkok. He has some very interesting things to say about consulting, finding premium clients and raising your rates…a lot.
Teamwork.com – Project management, support desk and chat suite that Alec and his team use at FolioVision.
FreshDesk – My preferred help desk app.
Witch by Many Tricks – A Mac app that makes it simple and fast to switch between screens.
Typinator – a text expansion app built in Austria
Keyboard Maestro – Macro app. Let’s you create keyboard shortcuts that save ridiculous amounts of time.
