Surviving the next 5 years
nGen Works recently celebrated five years in business. Anyone who runs a business knows that it’s damned hard to survive that long. You have to make a lot of sacrifices and painful decisions. In my opinion, and according to research, the only thing tougher than surviving the first five years is surviving the next five years. Recent research shows that 50% of all new businesses go belly up in the first five years, and 50% of those that survive die in the second five years. So 75% of all new businesses fail in the first 10 years.
So the obvious question for us becomes why? What causes those failures of companies that were surviving and often doing well? Personally, I think it’s because they don’t keep evolving and finding new ways to improve and streamline their operations. They get comfortable. What that means for us right now is giving in to something we’ve fought for a long time. It may be hard for anyone from the outside to believe, but in five years we have never created a schedule for a project.
The reason was schedules always get changed and you ended up managing a schedule instead of a project. The nGen alternative was having weekly calls to get everything we needed to move forward to another milestone. Clients who weren’t ready went on hold that week. Clients who were ready got priority and got their project completed quickly. What we avoided was constantly wasting time trying to track down missing bits and pieces instead of building sites.
The system worked really well until we reached a new level of client and higher work volume about 9 months ago. Suddenly we had too many weekly calls, and a list of cool clients we wanted to work with that we couldn’t get in the door. Part of the solution is obviously to hire another nGeneer or two, which we’re doing very cautiously. The other solution is to start truly managing the projects from a higher vantage point of all of the work in the shop, not just what’s going on this week.
What we didn’t want to do was lose the good part of the previous system which was rewarding good clients who had their act together. But the way we worked you sometimes couldn’t identify the good clients from the bad ones until you were already into a project. And even if they went on hold for a few weeks when they came back you had to fit them in. In essence, they could be an even bigger problem in the new system by causing us to have to shift every project.
Now that we’re going to use schedules we also have to change our process. Taking a page from our good friends Hashrocket, we will be helping clients get everything together before we have a kickoff meeting. They will be gathering all required elements for the project (i.e. initial sitemap draft, photography, background info, etc.) before we schedule the first meeting with the entire team. The key here is good clients who are prepared still get rewarded and we have a smooth workflow. Clients who have difficulty getting everything together will wait at the door until they’re ready. This helps avoid false starts and the incessant re-scheduling that so often plagues traffic managers.
Taking it even a step further, we are now requiring that we manage content development. Many clients have the best intentions of saving money and time by developing content themselves. But when they do, it’s always late. And most of the time it’s not all that good when we do get it. It’s not their fault, they are business people not web writers. To prepare for this change, we have put our best writer on retainer to make sure things flow in and out easier. Before our page description diagrams detailed the content needs of every page, our writers had to wait on design to be approved before they could start. With the revised process, content will begin in conjunction with design giving it a good head start from our old model. Only in rare cases, such as having an actual writer on staff, will we give up control on content going forward.
The past few weeks have seen us putting a lot of time into finding the right applications to help us with scheduling and I’ll write another blog post on why we selected OmniPlan soon. One thing I will mention now is it allows us to weight schedules quickly based on clients who meet milestones versus those who are always late. As you’ve picked up by now we love good clients and give them our best. We give not-so-great clients our best too, they just have to wait for it sometimes.
So here we go, stay tuned for updates on how the new changes are working.
Comments
Here’s to another five years for nGen Works!
Step 1: Survive the first 5 years
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
The underpants gnomes have taught us so much…
Ya, ya, ya. But what about step two? :)
Best wishes for another 5 years, fellas!
Congrats on 5 years!! I know how much of an accomplishment that is. :)
So, in regards to schedules and managing projects, I think your take here seems like a good one. I know I used put quite a bit of time and effort into managing our schedules and resources and now that I’ve eased off a bit I’ve noticed that very little has changed, I’m just not working as hard. :)
You bring up a good point about clients being prepared. We’re almost never late. It’s so rare I can only remember 1 or 2 times Blue Flavor has been late on a milestone. However, our clients are very often late with their milestones. You bring up content, which is common sticking point. This makes the managing schedules very difficult.
So much so that while we do have schedules, we don’t fret much any more when they slip. Occasionally this results in some resource being overloaded, but more often then not we’re able to sort it out without too much pain.
It all comes down to being honest about your workload and taking the time to keep people informed. Sure things are going to go haywire every once in awhile, but that’ll happen regardless of how you manage these things.
Ah, anyway, I could talk process all day, but in my opinion any process, schedule, resource problem, etc. can be taken care of pretty easily with good talent, hard work and lots of communication.
Best of luck in your next 5 years!! I’m sure you’ll do awesome!
Congrats to 5 years of great work! And I’m sure you’ll survive another 5, and then an…
As allways I’m impressed with you carl, this article is quite an inspiration! Looking forward to your omiplan post, I’m using it as well.
Cheers from Germany
Adrian
I’ll forgo my usual sarcasm and say that I totally agree. We hit a rough patch in our sixth year because we got comfortable and didn’t keep our eye on the ball (that ball we’ll call overhead).
Streamlining is important and so is continually looking for ways to do things cheaper and more efficient without sacrificing quality.
Here’s a challenge. Building sites at your level is as much about brand development as it is about great design and functionality. It’s tough to gather content without having a discussion about the big picture. Maybe there are two kick-offs – Discovery and Design.
I think we always have this problem because of the comprehensive nature of Web development. But if you can increase content development efficiency on even 50% of your projects, you’ll see a bounce in profit and less time in the dugout.
Congrats on 5 years Carl (and all you other nGeneers)!
I am less than three months away from venturing out on my own and am determined to build a killer company as you guys have. There are few firms in the industry that have their shit together as well as you seem to. I’m sure you’ll have no problem adapting to your growth and teh ever-changing intarwebz.
Any special advice for a noob on lasting the first 5?
Congrats on 5 years! You guys create amazing websites and have an awesome work ethic. The way you value your clients will always give you that extra oomph to keep your company growing and keep your clients coming back (and referrals coming in).
Again, congrats and it was nice to get some more insight on how nGen Works… works. :)
@Bruce Floyd, thank you sir. See you in August for our talk at UF!
@Joshua Lane Step1 – Step2 – Stepofftothedancefloor!
@Jason Beaird Much thanks to you also sir.
@DANGER We really need to connect and geek out on process sometime soon. We’re very similar in that I don’t remember missing a milestone, but clients often do. For the most part slippage is cool, unless it starts to F with cash-flow. Then very very uncool.
@Adrian Vogel Awesome to hear someone else is using OmniPlan. Thanks for the kind words.
@JDouglas You read our minds on our approach to several new approaches we’re considering. once thing we’re always conscience of is not trying too many things at once so we can truly see what’s making a difference. Glad you bounced back so strongly.
@Travis Gertz My advice would be charge what your worth and don’t apologize for it. One thing I would have done differently would be to charge more in our early years. Then, even when you’re charging rate go the extra notch free of charge to make the client happy and the project better. Ultimately the current project you’re working on leads to the next project you’re going to get. Keep moving forward! (Oh, and learn to love salad and beans.)
@MandyBee Wow! Thanks. Sometimes I’m amazed how lucky I am to sit with the team at nGen. We all care so much and really try to make every project the best it can be.
@Everybody You guys all rock. The positive comments and amazing energy you send our way make it even more rewarding.
Congrats on 5 years! Quite the milestone.
Having experienced the efforts to evolve systems, processes, staff and the like, I thought I’d share a simple phrase that has helped me keep perspective. I have found that… not losing track of what you love to do, not drowning in what you have to do and making the time to take a step back to realize what is you are doing… keeps the next five years headed in the right direction.
Cheers to the next five years for nGenWorks!
@Will Excellent phrase sir, I shall commit it to memory momentarily!
Amen to what everyone else has said before! It’s been awesome to know you guys long before nGen Works kicked off five years ago (and was still in its conceptual stages), and I am always amazed to see what you have done with the company in so short a time. Ah, so proud to be a part of the extended nGen family!
I wish you nothing but the best as the company continues to thrive, and I look forward to seeing what’s next…and to more nGen Fridays =P
I’d like to hear more about why you chose OmniPlan. After abandoning Basecamp and not feeling the vibe with ActiveCollab, one of the remaining products that appeals to me is OmniPlan. My main concern is that it’s not web-based (although that’s an advantage when the Internet goes down as it often does here in Whitehorse) and thus not accessible when off-site or via mobile, which has historically been important to me.
Carl, congrats to a great 5 years! I must say that I am extremely impressed with the way you guys run your business. Although we are in a different field,event planning, I feel that you guys are great role models for us. The companies that provide world class service are rare; but you guys have it nailed. And as clients we can vouch for that! We want to nail it as well :) So I wonder what has contributed to your success in your first five years?
Please let me know if we can call you and pick your brain about how you’ve been able to grow your business and keep on improving it.
@Geof I’d be happy to talk about why I chose OmniPlan, and even happier to talk about it’s shortfalls and what we’re doing now. It could definitely fill another blog post, or a nice chat if you’ve got time.
@Pili Wow, thank you for the kind words. It always means more coming from a client who actually experiences the process. For us the trick to providing great service is having clients you care about. I’d be happy to talk more about how we’ve grown and strived to keep improving nGen Works. I’ll get in touch early next week.
Carl, I’ll contact you regarding a good time to chat.