Posted by: Carl Smith on Tuesday July 1, 2008
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.
9 Comment(s) Filed under: Business, nGen News
Posted by: Carl Smith on Friday June 13, 2008
We’re stoked to announce the launch of See Change.
See Change is an initiative of Students of the World, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit created and led by college students. Students from seven universities document global issues in local communities and return home to share and inspire others toward global understanding and activism.
Idea City partnered with nGen Works to produce the site. It’s built with the Expression Engine content management system, so authors are able to publish their own content directly to the site. The site features team journals, videos, photography and member profiles and you can follow a team’s progress via RSS feeds. It also introduces the nonprofit benefactors and enables direct donations to individual organizations.
The stories of the teams are very engaging and give you the feeling of being in the different countries and undergoing the struggles of the students as they try to make a difference.
We are honored to be a part of the Students of the World initiative.
1 Comment(s) Filed under: Design, nGen News
Posted by: Carl Smith on Wednesday June 11, 2008
After 5 years in business we’re about to do something we’ve never done before. Today we are announcing that we’re looking for a new nGeneer. Those of you who know us understand we’re very serious about not growing fast, so this is a very big deal for us.
Below you’ll find a basic overview of responsibilities, list of requirements, nice-to-haves and what’s in it for you. If you get through the list and you’re interested in applying for the job, follow the directions at the end of the post.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Production (This is NOT a design position.)
- CMS integration (mostly ExpressionEngine)
- Implementing design into code (XHTML/CSS)
- Javascript
- Site maintenance
Requirements
- Web standards ninja
- Cross-browser & cross-platform samurai
- Ability to tightly implement designs
- Self starter, self manager (even though we’ll manage at first)
- ExpressionEngine experience (we’ll help train)
- Mac user
Pluses
- Local or willing to relocate to Jacksonville (not mandatory)
- PHP knowledge
- Good at Rockband
What You Get
- Full health insurance coverage (for you and your family if you have one)
- Fun working environment
- A voice in company decisions
- Friday afternoons off
- 3 weeks off a year
- Personal days as needed
If you made it all the way to the bottom you must still be interested. If so, follow these directions to apply for the job.
Send an email to which includes:
1) An explanation of why you’d be awesome
2) Links to 5 sites you’ve produced (also include a link to your personal site)
3) Your applicable work experience (no worries if you’re green, we’re looking for potential)
4) Your salary requirements
5) Questions you have about the position
Anyone who doesn’t follow the above procedure will NOT be considered for the position. I mean, if you can’t follow these simple directions it’s just not gonna work out.
Good luck!
0 Comment(s) Filed under: Business, Interweb, nGen News
Posted by: Carl Smith on Tuesday June 10, 2008
Like many small business owners I have way too much stuff to get done everyday. To try and get myself organized I read the books everyone is reading, and try the techniques for getting my shite together that a lot of people do. Ultimately though, nothing in the past few years has really helped me as much as a little application called Gootodo.
At first glance there is nothing overly impressive about Gootodo. It’s just a very simple application that helps you keep track of things you need to get done. In a bout of temporary insanity six months ago I cancelled my Gootodo account. The reason? I was focusing completely on new business and Highrise was going to be my new best friend.
Highrise is great at organizing your contacts, tracking leads and conversations. The to-do list, though, isn’t so special. Type in the info and, if you want, you can assign it to a time and a category. It seems really similar from a first impression. But after six months I decided to go back to Gootodo. Here’s why.
Viewing Tasks
Highrise shows all tasks on one page with a visual break between things that are due today, tomorrow, this week, next week and later. The downfall is they are all on one page. Gootodo only shows the tasks for the day you’re looking at, with an easy calendar interface to navigate between days. That gives the perception that you have less to do by focusing on the day you’re viewing. To be more accurate, Highrise gives the feeling that there is more to do than there is for a given day. Most importantly when there is something I have to do next week that is an involved task I don’t want to think about it this week. With Highrise I have a constant reminder it’s there even though it’s low on the list. In Gootodo once I move something to the future it’s out of sight and out of mind. That makes the list feel manageable. That gives me a sense of control, and that’s huge.
Emailing Tasks
With Highrise I was starting to miss things because I couldn’t easily forward an email and change it’s title later to reflect what it was. So basically I wouldn’t shoot an email from my phone when I thought of something, I would wait and hope I remembered the task when I was back in front of my computer. Often, too often, I’d forget. With Gootodo the body of the message is included in the task detail. Not so in Highrise, there is no detail field for a task. So if I forwarded something and didn’t remember what it was based on the email subject, I had to log into email and search for it. Do that ten times a day and it starts to suck your productivity away. The other huge advantage of Gootodo is I can forward an email to a specific day such as wednesday[at]gootodo.com or july30[at]gootodo.com and it will automatically create a to-do for that day. Not so with Highrise. You can’t send an email to a specific day in the future. You have to forward the email to your main list, then manually assign a date to it once it’s in the list. It may seem like a small step but they add up.
Managing Tasks
I move tasks around a bunch and Gootodo wins that battle also. I can easily redate a to-do by clicking on the task and then a date on the calendar and it disappears into the future. I can set recurring to-dos such as paying rent. When a task is completed it is tied to the day it was finished, so it’s also a trail of what I completed when. By un-checking it it shows back up in the list on the current day. There’s just more flexibility and control.
To sum it up Gootodo is easier for me to keep current and it only shows what’s important to me when it’s important.
Highrise does a great job of tracking leads and conversations so I’ll keep using it for that.
Increasingly in our world of simple web applications, creating a custom collection of single-focus tools seems to be the best solution for many of us.
9 Comment(s) Filed under: Interweb
Posted by: Carl Smith on Tuesday May 27, 2008
Over the last five years we’ve built a reputation for creating websites that are both aesthetically and functionally top-notch. In addition to being kick ass web designers, we’ve also gotten a bit of a rep for being rowdy and having fun. So when a client says yes, what is it that they’re buying from us?
- A website? That’s what they walk out with, but that’s not why they choose us. A lot of companies create great websites.
- A good time? Fun is a big part of it. But even we know that there are better ways to spend money and have fun than hire us.
- Our process? They definitely want to know we have one, but the details aren’t as important to most clients as they are to us.
- Experience? Again, this is part of the reason but not what makes them say yes.
See, they don’t decide to hire us for the website they’ll get or the promise of beer and video games or even because we’ve got over 100 web projects under our belts.
So why do they hire us? Because we give them peace of mind.
When most clients set out to select a web firm they are probably apprehensive at best. What causes the apprehension?
- Remembering the pain of creating the first generation or two of their website.
- Partnering with someone based on an existing relationship or cost.
- Focusing on what what information they could put online instead of their customer’s experience.
- Investing too much of their time to keep things moving.
- Having no one help them through the process because there wasn’t one.
Peace of mind is something they feel when we discuss their project the first time. When we ask about the perception we need to create. When we discuss the process we’ll go through. When we show them the tools they’ll have at their disposal. This comfort level is what makes them say yes. They feel a sense of relief and know that we are looking out for them.
Interestingly, a few weeks ago we found ourselves in a situation where a client was agitated but couldn’t articulate why. The work was great and exactly what we had collectively agreed to. At one point someone mentioned we need to hold the client’s hand more. Eventually the comment came out that some clients expect a spa treatment when they hire us.
At first that took me by surprise. Why would they expect that? Where does that perception come from? The simple answer is it comes from us. Throughout the sales process and in the kickoff meeting we put all of our focus on our client’s needs. In that particular case we had unintentionally disconnected from the client and focused our attention on production to meet the launch date. But the silence that the client felt as a result was hardly the peace of mind they had bought. Instead they felt worried that they were no longer informed of what was going on. And while clients generally don’t want to drive, they do like to ride shotgun.
So now it’s time for us to back up and look at what the experience of working with nGen Works feels like. Is it a consistently awesome, fun and effective time? Probably not as often as we think. Where are the points that things get strained for a client? Where would a simple phone call make a huge difference in keeping a client feeling special? What can we do to create a consistently great experience for our clients?
Maybe the answer lies in spa treatments after all.
7 Comment(s) Filed under: Business
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