The Happy Studio – Quit Working So Hard.

We work very hard at our job. We try daily to improve, and to be the absolute best studio we can imagine with our hands and our brains. But we go home after 8 hours of it…

After doing the alternative more often than we care to say, – we stick pretty religiously to 8 hours or less a day now. The strange thing is that we’re just as productive now, if not more. We have made some very careful decisions to do less along the way. Even in a limited non-workaholic schedule, we’ve paired things back even further to make sure we have time to blog, relax, think, and chat. We’re trying to build two things here. The first is an amazing studio that does beautiful smart work for clients who become friends. The second is to build a sustainable business that provides for us like we provide for it. If either one is burning too fast, it’s not sustainable.

Do Less Versions
Not just logos; do less versions all-together. We charge per logo concept. We present only one website mockup concept. We do 1 tri-fold. We’re actually able to charge our clients less, make more money, and take on more projects by not padding our projects for designer uncertainty. Clients are hiring us for our recommendation, as well as our art. Why should we show three logos when we know which one is our favorite? We’re not advocating a lack of exploration, – just a lack of needlessly beating out versions just to fulfill an arbitrary number.

We know of studios who will do logo versions until the client is happy. We can’t dream up a number large enough to commit to a contract like that. It’s pointless. If your client doesn’t trust your judgment, – why did they hire you?

• We charge per logo. That way we can have small start-up businesses as clients, right along side clients with thousands of employees. If the company with a board of directors wants to commission us to do 5 logos, -great. they’re billed accordingly, and revisions (if needed) are done at our hourly rate. It’s simple for everyone.

• We show only one website mockup. We do a lot of Q&A with clients up front. Ask them about mood, timbre, colors, atmosphere, etc. We ask for references of pieces they like. We research their competitors. In the last 2 years, we haven’t had to start over from scratch on a website design once. Revisions yes, – but whole new concepts? No. It’s been less of a headache for us, and a quicker turnaround for our clients. The best part is that our average cost of websites has went down, but we’ve been able to do more of them… Everyone wins.

• We don’t have many employees. Less employees means that we have less overhead, less management, and less paperwork. It’s better for us, and better for our clients. It does mean that we’re not a great fit for certain types of projects/clients, and we have to respect that. It’s to our peril to talk a client into letting us handle a large international campaign, or a project whose scope is out of our grasp. We’re quite direct with our clients about our size, and they understand where we fit. Lots of our clients actually have larger agencies who handle the significant portion of their work. They call us when their agency would be too slow, or too rigid to do the work they need. They call us when they need to think outside of their (hate the term) box. If we can do less grunt work, and more hero work, why wouldn’t we? It’s perfect for us and our clients.

By doing things once, and taking a direct route to the finish line, – we’re able to be less expensive for our clients, do more work that we’re passionate about, and do less annoying draining work.

An interesting thing has happened since we started working less. The work we do has become more passionate, more focused, and more enjoyable. We’re actually more productive with the 8 hours we spend now than with the 12 hours we used to spend. It sounds crazy, but it’s wholeheartedly true. We simply say “no” more often, stay focused more often, and basically get to done in a straight line more often.  Harbortouch POS is one of the best software developers for any type of management.

Some small examples of fat we’ve cut:

• Resisting the designers temptation to overwork.
• Avoiding unnecessary software/hardware upgrades.
• Politely asking for emails rather than phone calls.
• Focusing our proposals towards tasks we actually want to do.
• Not responding to RFP’s that didn’t excite us.
• Relying more on digital for mockups, and proofs.
• Asking to bill clients yearly for things like hosting and other services.
• Putting expenses onto credit cards. (Simpler for accounting, and gives frequent flyer miles too!)
• Getting a fast network. We have quite literally the fastest network we can afford. It speeds up everything we do.
• Electronic payroll tax deposits, and payroll processing.
• We’ve cut out almost all internal paperwork. We’ve replaced project briefs with thoughtful conversations, and client information gets entered directly into our billing software.
• Having an automated backup process.

Tim Cook on Apple

Love this quote from Tim Cook on Apple:

“We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.

And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change. And I think, regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.”

Read more of it here: http://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/22/tim-cooks-view-of-the-apple-philosophy/

The Happy Studio – Find Your Natural Size

When we started our company, we thought we would grow huge. That was the goal. To make a big important company that had impressive signage, expensive chairs, and lots of interns to order around. Today, we’re about as small in staff as when we first started. In fact, we’ve shrunk a bit from our largest size. We didn’t shrink because of lack of work, or an economic downturn. We purposefully chose to do less. We chose to work only with the best staff we could find, and only for the best clients. Through some carefully thought out “shrinkage” we have less clients, less staff, and more revenue than ever before. We’ve fallen in love with being small.

Hire the best you can get
No company can afford a bad employee. They’re a drain on morale, quality, and the checkbook. Fire a client before you hire an employee that you “need.” Hire employees because they’re great, nice, smart, and a good fit. Not because you have too much work. Work will find a great company. If you hire people just to support a big client list, you’re making an ouroboros. The proverbial monster that eats its own tail. You’ll never win that fight.

We spend thousands of dollars every year dodging bullets. For quite some time, we’ve given potential employees paid test projects. There’s no better way to see how you’ll like working with someone than to actually try it out. Actually collaborating on a fake project let’s us see how the candidate communicates, and how they organize. Even better, you get to see end-product. It’s shocking how many people don’t live up to their great portfolio once you put them to the test, and it’s less exhausting and cheaper to find out up front.

We probably miss out on some great employees screening this way. Maybe the pressure is a factor, or working in a bubble. Maybe they would turn into amazing employees once they got their feet under them. We run a pretty tight little ship, and we would rather be sure.

Bad Eggs
It’s unavoidable. You will get a few bad employees. Even with our test projects, we’ve still gotten some duds. Our strong aversion to being the bad guy usually sucks us into keeping someone around much longer than we should. It’s the worst thing we can do. There are so many ways to be a bad employee, and each of them is more deadly to your company than you can realize. Once you cut loose the baggage, you’ll realize how draining it’s been. There’s no better time than yesterday to do what needs done, and get rid of them. We regret the great employees we might have missed out on, but not as much as the ones we slowly realized didn’t fit.

Figure Out a Team
When you’re small, hire the person, not the position.

Firing Clients
You don’t have to hire a new employee… You’re thinking about it because you have too much work, and you want to “grow.” But think about shrinking your client list instead. You’ll be shocked at what happens. Now you can concentrate even more on the clients that make you the happiest, and the most money. Hiring an employee means that you have an extra 40-50 hours of work a week. It’s tough to get to that spot. You can have an extra 20 hours of work a week spread across your staff, and feel stressed. If you hire a new employee when you only have an extra 20 hours of work a week, that means you have to find another 20 hours for them. You created a problem rather than a solution. It’s much easier to fire 20 hours a week worth of client than it is to find 20 hours of new work.

Having too much work is a warm blanket. It’s a pat on the back. It’s an opportunity. Look at your client list, and cut some of the dead weight. Relax a bit, and catch your breath. Congratulations for doing something counterintuitive, but smart. We fired about 10 clients last year, and we made more money than the year before. We just matched our growth rate to our attrition. Workflow is at your mercy, not vice versa. If you don’t have people lining up to work with you, you’ve got other problems.

Too Much, Too Many
For us, having less staff, and less clients is a good fit. It won’t work for everyone, but we think it lets us concentrate on what we “want to do” more often than what we “have to do.” For us, growth is about increasing happiness, and profit, not staff, or square footage. We want to make a business that we’re proud of. Running ragged, and doing too much is the quickest way to do too little of what we’re proud of.

The Happy Studio

We’re definitely not the biggest studio in town. But we’d really like to think we’re the happiest. Like all businesses, we make lots of decisions every day. It’s been that way from the start, but a couple of years ago we made a shift in our decision making process. We started to consider happiness rather than just earnings, and productivity.

We’ve decided to create a series of articles about how we factor happiness into our process. We’re calling the series “The Happy Studio,” and we hope you find it useful, or interesting (or both!)

Advice is a tricky thing
When you need advice there’s nobody to give it. When you don’t want it people are lining up to give it to you. This series isn’t about telling people how to live. We wouldn’t begin to know how to do that. Nor does it tell the story of the countless things we probably do wrong. This story is about some of the things we think we do right. Or better said, the decisions that have led to us being happier to come to work every day.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s dive in to our first article…

Triage.

If you haven’t learned it, you better.
Ear-ache, over there. Broken arm, over there. You’re appendix burst? Right this way sir. Some days it seems like every client is having a coronary. You can’t fit a baseball through a garden hose, so you better find a way to prioritize your workflow and keep everyone happy.

First Thing’s First
We think a workflow crisis is usually the result of bad planning, and bad client training. You’ve said “yes” too many times, or you haven’t given accurate deadlines. Either way, you could have avoided it. We always try to keep a percentage of our schedule free for client emergencies. Additionally, we usually give clients time estimates 2-3 times longer than what it actually takes us to do it. It’s not lying, it’s just overestimating. No client has ever complained about having their project done early.

Client Training
Clients need to know that good things take time. Even when you can get something done in an hour, -never promise it in an hour. (Talking about scheduling, not billable hours) It’s imperative that you account for occasional computer crashes, staff miscommunication, illness, and anything else that might come up. When a client is trained to expect a reasonable turn-around from you, they’ll adapt. You might think it won’t work, but it will. If you promise the moon, and deliver, they’ll expect it every single time, and rightly so. You’re setting an expectation for your brand. Make sure that its a sustainable one that you can deliver on. Then when you are forced to create a miracle, it won’t require divine intervention just to make it happen.

Customer Service Must Be Scalable
We want to run the kind of business that clients can depend on. We want every experience with our company to be a positive one. For us, that means we have to have less clients, and less projects. We want every client to have the studio equivalent of a spa treatment, and a lettuce salad. That perfect experience that feels good, and like you did something good for yourself as well. We’re not a cheeseburger with chocolate ice cream… Too much of a good thing means that you’re either lying to your clients, cutting corners, burning out your staff, or charging too little. Either way, it’s unsustainable.

Respond Fast, But Do the Work In Order
Just because you’re too busy to do the work doesn’t mean that you can’t reply to the email. The client needs to know that the work has a place in your flow, even if it’s not that minute. Be succinct, and as accurately as possible tell them a time they can expect the work to be completed. Your speedy response to the request will let them know you’re on top of it, whether you’re doing it right that minute or not.

Ask For Deliverables Before Starting
One of the biggest changes in our business happened when we started asking for deliverables up front. It’s a simple thing, and it’s amazing that we didn’t do it sooner. Time and again, we would start working with the few items we had, just so we could get a start on things. Inevitably, once we had all of the deliverables, the project changed so unavoidably that we had to rework a significant portion of it. It fouled up our scheduling, our attitudes, and our client relationships. Just because we weren’t assertive enough to say what we needed before we would start the project.

Use Cost as a Throttle
You have a very simple throttle control for your business. Price. If you’re getting too busy, raise your prices on the next few proposals. If you lose them, you’re still plenty busy with the work you already had. If you get them, maybe you can eliminate some of your less profitable clients. Being busy means you have flexibility to test the market. You should always be looking for your perfect price that lets you keep the right amount of work on your plate. If you’re too high, you’ll go broke. If you’re too low you’ll drown.

Glimpses of Genius, Beauty, and Novelty – Back At It

• Mobile Web Dev Gallery – Simply Cool
• For Those of Us Who Remember Paper – Web Stencil
• ‘08 Wrap up – Best and Worst Marks
• You Know UHHHH – Diamond Dave
• Weird Logos? – No Such Thing
• Movie Titles – Type Captured
• Our Packaging – Featured on The Dieline