“Your profile looks really interesting. Would you be interested in writing a guest post on our blog?” This was the brief and innocuous DM that I received on Twitter from BrainLeaf founder and CEO Jason Long on August 5, 2015. It only took me a couple of minutes to decide and respond that I would be very interested. And the rest, as they say, is history. Or at least I hope it will be anyway. There are no delusions of grandeur here.
On the morning of August 10, 2015, I wrote the first draft of what was then an 814-word article for Jason to review. The subject matter dealt with the some times surprising benefits of doing voluntary work for non-profit organizations, specifically in the area of web design and development. It was something that I had only recently started doing, but I had gotten so much out of it that I wanted to help spread the word a little. I had been considering starting my own blog anyway for quite some time, and this was a nice little challenge to get me started. His response was very positive and, by 9:30 PM that same day, I dropped a second draft that weighed in at a total of 932 words into a Google Doc and shared it with him. I was rolling and wanted to keep up the momentum. The blogging bug had hit me hard and had me in its grasp. It turns out that second draft ended up being the final one, too. I was even able to work in a plug for BrainLeaf that fit nicely with the article’s content.
So you may be asking, “What exactly IS BrainLeaf?” Honestly, I didn’t know much about it when I started following their account on Twitter. However, I ended up signing up for an account (it was in a free open beta) to find out.
BrainLeaf is an online application that allows web and app developers to quickly and easily scope and price their projects. It breaks down projects into the various pieces that make up the final product and even view them all hierarchically in one great big outline. You set the rate /and projected amount of time that each task will take, and BrainLeaf provides you with the totals. Doing so helps you avoid “scope creep” when working on projects. For small websites, I normally charge a flat fee, but a large site with a lot of complexity can be an extremely difficult thing to accurately scope. That’s where BrainLeaf comes in. It’s still in the fairly early stages of development yet, but the potential is outstanding in my opinion.
By the afternoon of August 12, 2015, I had added a short author bio to the article and received notification from Jason that he thought he would be able to get it published the following morning. Not bad for my first guest blog post. Eh?
I’ll update this post with the URL for the blog post once it’s been published on the BrainLeaf website, but feel free to check them out now anyway. While you’re there (and if you’re a web or app developer), sign up for a free BrainLeaf account to see what it can do for you.
UPDATE: The article was published on 8/21/15. Click here to read it.