I fired one of our first clients last week. It was messy and no fun for everyone involved. I also managed to get a lecture from the president of that company on how to run my business and better serve the needs of my clients.
While the initial reaction for any of us would probably be thoughts of a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face (in slow motion, of course), the whole incident made me think hard about what 47m is at it’s core, and what it truly means to serve a client. I think there are two ways to serve a client:
Scenario 1: Blind Serving
In blind serving, you’re always making the logo bigger or adding starbursts because the client says so. Not because it’s better for them, but simply because they demand it. A lot of companies won’t fight this because they’re just trying to make a living. And that’s ok. I think everyone starts out serving blindly. Get the job done ? client happy ? get paycheck.
But at some point, you come to a crossroads. At some point, your experience will tickle the back of your brain and say “That’s a bad idea!” So what happens then?
Keep Reading
I would wager that the majority of web designers end up doing work for small to medium-sized businesses. And I’m sure we all have a fantastic story of how ludicrous they can be sometimes. After a few “interesting” experiences, I’ve had this one rolling around in me for a while. Small business people; we love you, but pay attention, alright?
We Understand it’s Your Baby
If anyone can sympathize with a small business owner it’s a small web design shop. We know you busted your tail, working night and day to get this off the ground. So did we. We know you’ve had to wear so many hats it’s not even funny. Salesman, bookkeeper, account manager, marketing guy, the list goes on and on. We do it all, too. It’s exhausting. And so when you bring someone else in to help you visually define what you are; it’s like we’re messing with a part of you. Here’s the thing, though. You’re too close. You need someone with a neutral perspective to help you make decisions for the better. My favorite saying goes, “You can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle.” You’re so close to the details and emotional attachments that it’s hard to see the big picture.
Keep Reading
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a workshop at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden, Netherlands October 22-23, 2009. I’m really excited about this trip because 1.) I’ve never been out of the country and 2.) The group of people at this conference are amazing. Honestly, I’m quite humbled by the lineup. How did I get to be invited again? I can’t even list them all here, but include household names like Leslie Camacho of EllisLab, Veerle Pieters of Duoh!, Brandon Kelly of LEVEL Studios, Leevi Graham of Newism and Ryan Irelan of Happy Cog. Like Veerle laments, I’m not much of an EE coder compared to everyone else, so here’s to hoping I can bring something good to the table. In fact, I’ll be talking about how we take our static HTML/CSS pages and speed up development putting it into EE first and then building out real links and content.
Keep Reading
This post has nothing to do with web design. In fact, the link I’m about to give you is to a horrible flash driven site. This company specializes in building secret passageways into your house! So, take a break you hardworking web designers/developers/ninjas and check out how you can finally get that secret lair you’ve wanted since you were 9. The staircases are my favorites. What’s yours?
Hidden Passageways
So this little blog popped up a couple of weeks ago called Minimal Mac. Yeah, yeah Macs are minimal; we all know that right? Steve Jobs hates buttons, blah blah blah. Ok, but how about when you’re using them day to day?
As we’ve become more involved in the community I’ve been finding myself more and more distracted as of late. I’m trying to work, but there’s a new RSS feed I need to read. Or a new email that just came in. Twitter just never stops. Ever. There’s something about new stuff that gets us all excited and makes us feel like we need to see it now.
Keep Reading
Continuing on our theme of planning and making goals, I want to talk for a minute about why it’s important to write things down. I’ll be the first to say that I have failed miserably at this over the past year. In my never ending attempt to “de-clutter” my life I’ve tried to put everything in the computer and rid my desk of all those pesky pieces of paper. Well, I think I may have been wrong on a number of levels. For now we’ll focus on why you need to write down your goals.
Keep Reading
I’ve been trying to come up with something to write about for a couple of days now and just realized that there’s nothing wrong. If you think about it, we usually write when we’re upset about something or when there’s a problem we’re trying to fix. Maybe we like to vent or rant all the time, but I thought it might be nice to take some time and tell you what’s good in my life. Not that my life is better than yours! I’m just finding the good in what I’ve got. I hope you’ll try to do the same.
My Family
I have the coolest family. My wife is totally awesome, and we’re expecting our 3rd child in October. She cooks seriously amazing food all the time, does the books for the business, takes care of the kids and manages to find time to clean the house. I could not do that!
Keep Reading
Jon and I were talking earlier today about goals and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you. Many of us have these vague and vaporous ideas we like to call goals. That’s me included. We call them goals, but really they are just dreams at this point. Why? Because we have no plans to make them reality.
I’m defining a goal this way: “A goal is a desire to achieve a result measurable in concrete terms.”
Keep Reading
It’s official! Mr. Dan Denny (aka webdesignfanboy) is putting together the Front-End Design Conference, a single day event with a focus on content, presentation and behavior.
Keep Reading
Hello and welcome to a new segment on the 47m blog! Annoying: a place where we get to vent about things that really tick us off. I think it will be very therapeutic for everyone!
Today’s topic is “people that don’t get back to us.” We get quite a few job requests that come through our site and I’d say about 30% of them never respond back to us. I don’t understand why. I mean they contacted us first! We’ve just shot them an email back to setup a time to talk. What’s the deal? Is it that hard to hit the reply button? At least tell me if you’re not interested anymore so I can take you off my list of people to keep responding to. All the checking and rechecking is quite a time waster.
Keep Reading
Just a quick thought. I’m in the middle of a rather nasty family emergency where one person has been mind-bogglingly selfish. Like he is the only person in the world selfish. It’s really bad.
Keep Reading
Ever wanted to find friends based on the books they love? Then Bookmesh is the place for you. We’re incredibly excited to announce that it’s finally ready for some beta testers, and you’re invited.
Keep Reading
We’re coming up on our second year of calling 47m our full time job so I thought I’d share some things we’ve learned along the way. I’m attempting to shorten my Top 10 lists…not by number but by content. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a Top 10 list now would it? So without further ado, the slimmer Top 10!
1. Don’t Go in Debt
Ten years ago you needed a detailed business plan and a hefty loan from a bank to start a business. But web based businesses have changed everything. You don’t need a office or a fancy new desk. You don’t need a company car. You really don’t need much of anything except a computer and some software. I’m happy to say that we slogged it out for two years working full time jobs and doing 47m on the side until we built up enough cash inflow to make it our day jobs. Not only does it make you more responsible, but in this economy debt is like poison. Get rid of it now!
Keep Reading
I went to Food City to buy some groceries today, tried to slip through the self-checkout because I was in a hurry and guess what they don’t accept there? Their own gift cards. Seriously? So I have to cancel my order and walk 5 steps to a register with a person behind it. And then guess what? I use the exact same credit card processing machine and the cashier never touches my card!
Keep Reading
Efficiency. The word that strikes fear in the heart of designers everywhere. Somehow along the way to becoming our artsy selves, we’ve managed to throw all structure out the window. “We’re above that sort of thing; we’re creatives!” we say.
It’s ok, we’ve all been there. I know it started with good intentions: we knew if we had a little more time or a change of scenery, it could make the difference between something good and something amazing. But then somehow it turned into an excuse to take longer to finish things. And an excuse to take longer breaks more often. And before you know it, we’re taking twice as long to finish projects, but they’re not anymore awesome than before. What happened!?
Keep Reading
Want even more 47m? Well now you can have us!….no wait that’s weird. What I mean is we’re officially on Twitter and Flickr now so you can follow us or check out our portfolio elsewhere.
Keep Reading
Well, in case you hadn’t noticed there’s an election coming up pretty soon. A pretty big one, actually. So in the spirit of all that is “true” in these crazy times, we want to share a small project with everyone.
It’s called USATaxDollars.com. Just put in your annual salary and you see every last dollar that the government takes out of your paycheck; and what they spend it on. Guess what? I’m giving the government more money each month than my house payment! Now that’s depressing.
Keep Reading
Yeah we know. It’s been way too quiet around here. Not many new portfolio entries; not many blog posts. We’re slackers, I tell you! Well, maybe not 
First, we have been doing a TON of work. Web app design, social network design, interface design. Except none of it’s live to the public yet. The backend guys are still doing their thing. And in the past two weeks we just pushed through about 3 or 4 major front-end design projects that should be live shortly. Plus, we’ve done several for other agencies that you can only guess that we did by their awesomeness cause they won’t let us put it in our portfolio. But such is the way of the wayward web designer.
Keep Reading
Continuing our “Why It’s Fun to Have A Camera In Your Phone” theme, we bring you this culinary geographical/zoological puzzler.
Keep Reading
Most of us have gotten used to carrying around a phone that also has a camera in it. Makes for great quick shots when you wouldn’t normally have time to grab your regular camera. I happen to have an iPhone, and yes I know it’s camera isn’t that great, but hey it was better than the old Razr’s so there you go. Plus I can show people in style by flipping, zooming and pinching. Yeah that’s right .
So anyway, I’ve been accumulating some really random pictures I snapped on the fly and thought I’d share them. Enjoy!
Keep Reading
