“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

-Albert Einstein

I’ve been working on a project to play around with Python and Flask and it snowballed into a full blown web app which I’ve deployed.

The app is called Stock Glasses, and it’s purpose is to provide a tool for focused and simplified stock analysis based on concepts in respected financial investing books such as “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham and “The Intelligent Asset Allocator” by William Bernstein.

Use the working app here – https://stock-glasses.com

Follow on Twitter: @GlassesStock

Also see the Stock Glasses YouTube Channel for demonstrations of using the app to analyze stocks.

Inspired by First Principles thinking and the quote by Einstein above, the goal is to eliminate noise and focus on the essentials to evaluate a company.  Basically the app focuses on analysis of these fundamentals:

1. Top Line – Revenue
2. Bottom Line – Profit/Net Income
3. Financial Health – Current Assets vs. Total Debt

For a full explanation of how to use the app, visit the How To Use Page of the app.

Future plans for this project include turning it into a progressive web app for offline use and playing around with comparison analysis further.

The app was built with React/Redux, Python Flask and utilizes Firestore for persisting data.

I welcome any feedback, particularly from finance people who might be able to  critique or offer suggestions/improvements on the metrics and analysis tools offered by the app.

Usual disclaimers apply: I’m not a financial advisor or pro investor, so use and invest at your own risk.  I do think it is a potentially useful tool for learning about basic stock analysis, understanding some common metrics and a good introduction to Value Investing.

Additional resources which inspired the app:

• “Poor Charlies Almanac” by Charlie Munger – This book explores common mistakes of thinking and the use of mental models to problem solve and look for investment opportunities or pitfalls.

I’m often asked, “How do you find your clients?”.  This blog post will attempt to answer that question.  The simple answer is, I look anywhere and everywhere all the time.  Freelancing is tough, make no bones about it.  I basically spend all of my time during the day working on client projects and after that, the work isn’t done.   I’d like to share what I’ve learned about how to approach and engage with potential clients, and what has proven to be the most effective strategies and methods for finding clients ‘in the field’.

I’ll first list and illustrate a few ways I try for approaching (or being approached) by potential clients.  The second part of this post will address breaking the ice with people and approaches to conversing with them since this is something that some people find difficult about being a freelancer.  In the final section I will list my conclusions on which methods seem to work best as I have been taking note of my interactions to try to determine what approaches work better than others.

Ways of Searching for and Finding Clients:

1. Bring a web development or programming book with you, wherever you go and put it on the table or counter in front of you so it is visible to others.

I’ve found this so far to be an extremely effective way to open up a dialogue with people.  It’s a great conversation starter.  My book of choice is Refactoring by Martin Fowler.  It has a nice big title (and is a cool word that intrigues people) and is large enough that the book can be seen from a distance.  I’ve taken this book into many different places and even carried it on the street so the title is visible and almost without fail will be approached by others to ask about what I’m reading.  Even bringing it into a cowboy bar downtown, I was approached by multiple people, one of which was a developer with their team and said how happy he was to see someone who knew who Martin Fowler was there.  I wound up handing out 3 cards that night.  Seriously, try this.  The key is that it attracts people who are either interested in technology or interested in people who are interested in technology because…maybe they need a website.

2. Find out if there are large conferences going on in your area, what hotel or area most of the attendees stay at, and make the rounds there.

This is a very effective way to look for clients because usually there will not only be attendees of the conference, but other business owners and representatives there that may need website work.  I’ve found you can strike up a conversation with many people involved in the event if you go to the hotel where most people stay and hang out there.  I recently attended the Stock Show in Denver and it proved to be a great place to meet business owners and people who might need website work done.

3. Go to venues that are related to an interest you have.

I love jazz and hearing live music, and it just so happens that other people do as well.  It may also be in the cards that one of these fellow music lovers may need a website or web development work.  Just by being in a place patronized by other people with a similar interest, I immediately have something in common with everyone there and an easy way to open up a dialogue and conversation which could potentially lead to meeting and working with a client.

4. Go to Meetups

Tech meetups are great for finding potential clients.  Particularly ones that focus on your areas of expertise or ones that are more social in nature than presentational.  I found one client going to a React meetup.  Usually at these meetups there will be a portion of time dedicated to letting people looking for developers make a quick announcement.  In this case, someone was looking for a React developer for their project and we exchanged information and have been collaborating ever since.  Another meetup in the Denver area, Denver Develop Happy Hour, is great for networking and meeting potential clients because it is entirely social in nature – there are no presentations or lectures, just a bunch of people in tech or interested in tech in one place hanging out and socializing.  I met another client looking for a developer for their project at this meetup.  Since I also play drums, I sometimes go to music jam meetups, so if you have another interest (i.e. hiking, painting, books etc.), then it may be worth it to go to those as well to not only meet people with similar interests and make new friends, but potentially meet new future clients.

5. Experimental: Find a venue hosting an open mic and put on a performance

If you can sing at all (or even if you can’t – it doesn’t matter since it’s an open mic and not a professional performance), or if you can do stand up maybe, find an open mic night and perform.  At the end of the  performance, if the owner or event host won’t get too mad, make a quick announcement that you are a web developer and invite anyone that needs help with their website to come talk with you.   This is a recent discovery and method I’m trying and going to keep experimenting with, but after putting on an A cappella performance at an open mic night, I realized that this provides you with the opportunity to essentially have a captive audience of everyone in the room.  Instead of having to make the rounds and find out who might be looking for your services, you can just ask literally everyone there in one fell swoop.

6. Look at Linkedin feeds and social media feeds

One day I just happened to see a post from someone looking for a developer for their project.  This was by accident initially, but now I actively look at social media feeds (especially Linkedin) in case someone posts a request for a developer they need for work.  Reddit also has a ForHire subReddit that is worth checking out.

How to Converse and Engage with Potential Clients:

Note: Some of these principles may be more effective outside of the context of a conference or networking event where the sole purpose is to network and the participants all possess or are looking for a particular skillset.   They might be more useful ‘in the field’ when you are looking for clients outside of the contexts mentioned above in more everyday situations (since as a freelancer, depending on your situation there may be times you have to look for clients more or less every day).  Also, it goes without saying that at some point you need to identify the problem a potential client has and offer ways you will solve it – that is a given and not the focus of this blog post.  The principles outlined below are more about how to start the dialogue with this person at all, which can be a pain-point for some people, and eventually get to that point in the conversation.

Key Principles:

• Be Patient:  Often, just sitting and enjoying yourself without actively engaging others can work just fine and be a good baseline to operate on.  Good things come to those who wait –  I’ve found that if you are trying too hard to engage potential clients, it can look a little desperate or simply be inappropriate to bother people and so it can wind up turning people off.  Just being patient and observant (see below) and being relaxed makes you more approachable and usually this invites others to open a dialogue or at least doesn’t put them off.

• Be Observant:  This is a sibling to the principle above (Be Patient).  You need to be able to sense when to engage with another person.  Sometimes, people may actually want others to engage with them and you’ll have to read body language and use your intuition to tell this – it can be fairly obvious (they constantly turn to look at you, or make comments out loud to nobody in particular about the venue or what’s playing on the TV).  This is usually an implicit invitation to engage in a dialogue with the person or a sign that they do not wish to be left alone, and you should seize this opportunity.  Make your responses to their comments or glances brief at first to test the waters, and then things should open up from there.  In addition, if you over hear someone nearby speaking about a common interest, then this is also an opportunity to engage in a dialogue about that interest – you’ll have to use your discretion on when to approach them about the subject so as not to interrupt.

• Enjoy the Thrill of Taking a Risk and Exploring the Unknown: It goes without saying that not every conversation or engagement with a potential client will go well.  This should not be something to be feared, but embraced.  You need to enjoy the adventure and thrill of not knowing how things may turn out.  This is exciting – think of it as being like Indiana Jones going into the Temple of Doom (or pick your favorite hero) and daring to embark where others fear to tread dodging all sorts of booby traps and steamrolling boulders along the way.  You are an adventurer, like Lewis and Clark on an expedition to explore the unknown.  Even if there is danger of failure, you have to remember that there is the potential of wild success and the discovery of something great just as well.   I find it helpful to romanticize my excursions to find clients in this way.  For the most part, the worst that happens is an interesting conversation with someone you haven’t met.

• Do Not Make a Pitch Initially or too Quickly: Making the pitch too quickly, or sometimes even at all turns people off and puts them on the defensive; Nobody likes pushy people and most are usually skeptical of salespeople.  I’ve found it much more effective to make having a genuinely enjoyable conversation and developing a genuine interest in the person you’re speaking with your goal, and then at some point along the way as the conversation progresses, usually you’ll wind up asking each other what you do for a living and that can open the door for mentioning your web development services.  They may need a website, or not, and respond accordingly.  If there is not explicit interest, then at least you’ve had an enjoyable conversation, maybe learned something new and you can tell them how much you enjoyed talking with them and casually hand them your card saying if they have any need in the future or know anyone who does, feel free to get in touch.  And they just might…

• Find Topics of Common Interest to Talk About:This could be the kind of music you both enjoy, places you’ve been or traveled to, being curious about where they’ve lived, favorite foods or drinks, etc.  This typically should be the focus of the interaction.

• Be Genuinely Interested in the Person You Are Speaking With:  This is probably the most important fundamental principle and idea to successfully engaging in conversation with others and potential clients.  At the end of the day, people actually are incredibly interesting, each like a complex Symphony with different perspectives and experiences from your own that you can learn from.  People are mind-bogglingly fascinating and realizing this is key to enjoying the process of taking part in and looking forward to opening up a dialogue.

Concrete Examples of Conversations I’ve had while looking for clients:

These are examples of actual conversations I’ve had while making the rounds looking for clients.  My hope is that they provide a real life example of how these dialogues can begin and give a feel for how one can start a connection with someone who may need your services. Some of the details of the conversation have been altered to make the parties involved anonymous.

• At a venue watching a basketball game involving the Utah Jazz:

Potential Client: "So, who are you rooting for?"
Me who doesn't follow sports:  "The Utah Jazz, just because they have Jazz in their name."
Potential Client: "So you like Jazz?  Me, too.  Where can I go to hear some jazz around here?"
Me: "...[tells him where to go]"

And the conversation evolves from there during which a question of what each other does inevitably comes up.

• This was during the Stock Show where I met a potential client in the Brown Palace needing work for his website.  He had sat down to order food and while he was waiting for the order to come out he seemed unoccupied and approachable, so I leaned over and asked:

Me:  "Are you involved with the stock show?"  
Potential Client: "Yeah, are you here for it? 
Me: "Yes..."
Potential Client:  "Did you go to the rodeo, you don't look like a rodeo rider... "
Me: "Definitely not.  I've just been checking things out since a couple I met recommended going to the Stock Show.  What are you involved with here?"
Potential Client: "I'm selling [supplies]..."

He then tells me about where he is from and being really curious about the place, I ask about what it’s like to live there and if there is a tech scene.  He tells me about it and then mentions that he has a website he is not quite happy with and might be able to use my help.

• Again at the Stock Show speaking with an owner of a company that sells medical equipment.

I was sitting at the hotel bar waiting patiently and a gentleman comes up and orders a Scotch.  I thought it would be a good conversation starter if I ordered the same drink and then ask him how he liked that brand of Scotch to confirm that I made a good choice.   This starts a conversation about Scotch and I tell him about Bruichladdich which was recommended to me by a friend from Scotland years ago (just to be clear, I don’t make things up – I really had a Scottish friend recommend that Scotch to me).  He writes it down on a napkin which leads to a discussion about what we’re doing at the Stock Show.  I’ve found that telling people you are directly trying to find clients is not effective and has a similar effect to making a pitch too early.  Instead I tell him that a couple I met recommended I check the Stock Show out (which, again, is true).  We also spoke about where he was from, which was interesting to hear about.  Eventually he asked what I do and I was able to hand him a card at the end of an enjoyable conversation about Scotch and different parts of the country.

Conclusions:

• Going to Meetups has proven to be a successful activity to engage in to find clients looking for freelance developers.  Don’t expect a hit every time, but persistently attending them could be worthwhile and lead to finding people looking for your skills and hiring you.
• While the Meetups can be fruitful, going to hotel bars or restaurants where a large convention or conference is being held allows for more opportunity to meet established business owners that may need website work.
• The most effective strategy for opening up a dialogue with people about Web Development and Programming is taking a book with you and making it visible to others nearby.  This is almost without fail a conversation starter and a great way to break the ice and converse with others who may need website work and could use your services.
• People don’t like being given a pitch and are skeptical if you come out swinging directly trying to sell your services (this, of course, can depend on the context).  People do like having a good conversation (just like you do) and that should be the focus and goal.  You will find a much more receptive attitude towards you when you bring up web development in the course of the conversation.
• I’ve found that going out ‘into the field’ and meeting people in person is the best way to find clients as a freelance web developer.   Online freelance sites like Upwork, etc. have proven to be ineffective and not fruitful.  Meeting as many people as you can and getting involved in the local scene seems to be the best way.

Other Resources:

• How to Win Friends & Influence People – Classic book about practicing active listening, empathy and genuine interest in other people.

After a frustrating couple of days trying to get socket.io to connect to a web socket on my Node/Express server for my project HereHere (place based chat app – please check it out if interested), I finally found out how to make it play nice with React-Native (v0.57).  After reading through numerous posts, GitHub issue threads and blog articles, I thought it would be nice to have one place where you can go to get socket.io working with your React-Native project, so this is just a quick post on how to get it set up and working.

Key points:

• You need to use socket.io-client on the react-native client side of things
• The latest version of socket.io-client 2.2.0 does not work with React-Native currently apparently, so you need to install and use version 2.1.1
• In development, the connection URL on the client side may need to be set to one of three possible values: http://localhost:<serverPort>, http://127.0.0.1:<serverPort>, http://<your IP assigned by your router>:<serverPort>, or if using an Android emulator (I did not need to do this, but it was recommended on a Stack Overflow post, so try it if all else fails) http://10.0.2.2:<serverPort>
• In production, the connection URL on the client side needs to be pointing to the URL where your server is hosted that handles websocket connections: https://yourserverurl.com
• Note: I am using Expo to bootstrap my React-Native project.
• I am also using a Node.js server built with Express on the back end.

Steps:

1. 1. Install socket.io-client v2.1.1 in your react-native client side project.
      $ npm install [email protected]
   2. In your main App.js file or wherever you would rather initialize socket.io, import the library:

      import socketIO from 'socket.io-client';
   3. Connect to a Web Socket connection to your server by assigning a const to a call to the imported library function and pass in the url to your server (see the possible values in key points above!!) .  Also, pass in some config params, the most important of which is the `transports` key set to `websocket`.
   4. Connect the socket with .connect() and and add a listener to confirm the connection with a console.log.
      Note: initialize socketIO in componentDidMount() in your main App.js file for your React-Native app.  You could extract the code to a module file and call it ‘startSocketIO.js’ to make things cleaner in App.js.

In App.js (your main app component on the client):

import React from 'react';
import { Platform, StatusBar, StyleSheet, View } from 'react-native';
import { startSocketIO } from './services/socketIO';
// ...any other imports needed

export default class App extends React.Component {
  state= {
    isLoadingComplete:false,
  };

componentDidMount() { 
  const socket = socketIO('http://192.168.0.8:5000', {      
  transports: ['websocket'], jsonp: false });   
  socket.connect(); 
  socket.on('connect', () => { 
    console.log('connected to socket server'); 
  }); 
}

// In this case, note that I used the IP address for my machine assigned by the router (in Network Connection details).  This got it working in my development environment.

For further clarity here is an example of some of the code in my Socket IO module where I initialize and use the library.  I export the module to be used in componentDidMount() in my App.js component (top level App component):

import socketIO from 'socket.io-client';
...other imports like config file containing Server Url, any secrets, and actions...
// Initialize Socket IO:
const socket = socketIO(config.SERVER_URL, {
  transports: ['websocket'],
  jsonp: false
});

// export the function to connect and use socket IO:
export const startSocketIO = (store) => {
  socket.connect();
  
  socket.on('connect', () => {
    const { userId } = store.getState().user;
  
  socket.on('disconnect', () => {
    console.log('connection to server lost.');
  });
  
  socket.on('newMessage', (message) => {
    store.dispatch(storePublicMessages([ message ]));
  });
};


// In App.js:

import startSocketIO from ...

export default class App extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    startSocketIO(store);
  }

  render() {
      return (
        <Provider store={store}>
          <View style={styles.container}>  
            <AppNavigator />
          </View>
        </Provider>
      );
    }
  }
}

SETTING UP SOCKETIO IN PRODUCTION:

In order to get it going in Production, you need to pass in the domain URL pointing to where you are hosting your server.  In my case I hosted a Node/Express server on Heroku:

In App.js inside componentDidMount():

const socket = socketIO('https://myserver.onheroku.com', {
  transports: ['websocket'], 
  jsonp: false 
}); 
socket.connect(); 
socket.on('connect', () => { 
  console.log('connected to socket server'); 
});

This was mainly about getting things setup to work on the client side with React-Native, but just for completeness sake, here is a quick snippet of my server.js file which sets up an Express server and socket.io.  Note that on the server side I am using the socket.io library (the latest version) and not socket.io-client.  Also note, that you need to use the builtin https Node module to create a server which you pass the express app into, and then pass that server to socketIO.

Example Main Server file in back end code of the project:

const http = require('http');
const express = require('express');
const socketIO = require('socket.io');
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const keys = require('./config/keys');
require('./models/Message');

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5000;
mongoose.connect(keys.mongoURI);

const app = express();
const server = http.createServer(app);

const io = socketIO(server);
io.on('connection', socket => {
  console.log('client connected on websocket');
});

server.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log('server started and listening on port ' + PORT);
});

I’m excited to have just deployed a working demo of a React app I’ve been developing which allows users to pull comments from Youtube videos and search them by text/author/date/like count.

Click HERE for the Prototype Full Version.

How to use the app:

Just find a Youtube video you have an interest in exploring the comments section of, and copy and paste the URL into the form field on the landing page.  Click the Display Comments button and you’ll be presented with a list you can search through using the filters at the top of the page.  If you want to reply to or edit and delete your own comments, just log in with Google by clicking the button in the top header of the page.

The reason for the App:

I was always frustrated when reading through comments on Youtube videos to see if a question I had about the video topic had been addressed by somebody already.  Since the comments are loaded as you scroll down the page, you can’t just hit CTRL-F and search for what you’re looking for without sitting there for a long time scrolling and scrolling.  With this app, pages of comments are downloaded and searchable by text, date, author and sort-able by like count and newest/oldest making it easy to search for comments that match what you’re trying to find.

Use Cases:

• Social Media Managing Tool: Monitoring and exploring comments for videos in an easy to use GUI (Graphical User Interface) for small businesses or content creators.
• Researching a particular topic of interest and seeing what other people  have to say about it in the comments section.  For instance, if someone is interested in a phone or laptop, they could search the comments for “battery” or “good tips”, etc.  This could be for any topic such as a video on a hiking trail, investment related videos and whatever else you can find on Youtube that is of interest.  The possibilities for research and discovery by scouring the depths of the comments section was the original inspiration for creating this app.
• Finding new ideas for insults or names to hurl at other people.  The comments section can be a very useful resource for this.

Main Features:

• Search a list of comments for a video by text (phrase or keyword) or by author. 
• Respond and reply to comments found in search results through the app Interface easily by logging in with Google.
• Delete or edit comments of which you are the author after logging in with Google.
• Sort comments by date, like count, thread or spread out individually.

Features in the full version:

• Dashboard for managing saved comments and previous searches with the ability to organize saved items in category folders (i.e. you could have a “Customer Complaints” folder or a “Response Complete” folder for managing comments posted by customers and viewers).
• Retrieve up to 40 pages of comments (would equate to potentially 4,000+ comments) for searching, exploring and managing comments on videos of interest.  The demo currently only allows a search limit of 5 pages of comments (~500 comments).
• Easily Mark comments as spam or remove them from your video comments page as a content creator.

Example of a list of comments on the results page with search filters, etc:

Tools and Technologies Used:

The app consumes the Youtube DATA REST API and is currently awaiting approval for commercialization from Youtube.  It was built with React using Redux, Node.js with Express, PostgreSQL using Knex.js as the ORM.

I hope you find this app useful and fun to use and I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions from anyone who uses the app.