Perspective FM: Recent Episodes
Jon Darke
Perspective. A fortnightly podcast talking about the experiences of running and growing a creative/digital agency. This week Jon & Dan give some background to kick things off - exploring how their careers bought them to start their own agencies.
On this episode Jon & Dan take a listener question. Steve Cowburn writes in to ask:
“Why do people start their own companies, given that the rewards and workload can be tough? What is that 'certain something' that we get out of doing it for ourselves?”
To answers Steve’s questions, Jon & Dan cover the following topics:
What was the initial decision process in starting our agencies - what led us to take the plunge?
What was the turning point where it first felt like a business and an agency?
Working on our first ‘product’ and finding our niche
What were the first things that began to highlight how hard it can be to run a business
Doing the first business activities as new founders
Who did we look towards as inspiration - who could we learn from?
What was our fallback plan?
Business and personal milestones that forced us to make decisions
Hiring the first employee
What do rewards do we get from it personally
What are the purely financial rewards?
Working hard and what you need to put in
If for some reason we no longer had our companies, what would we do next?
Show notes
Maverick!: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace - Ricardo Semler
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse London - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
This week Jon is joined by Dan to talk about how we manage your time and feel productive while running our agencies. It’s a hard thing to quantify and we feel every business and person running them are different. But we talk about what works for us, along with what doesn’t.
In this episode they discuss:
How the problems changes as you begin to scale.
Various tools we use to manage team
Abiding by systems or not?
Understand what you have achieved rather than not achieved
Tracking your activity and productivity
Email etiquette, and when to allow it in
Meetings; good or bad?
Coming away feeling good
Diversifying task types and being realistic
Show notes
Perspective #13 Brexit; concerns about the leaving the EU
The book Jon was referring to but couldn't remember the name of; The E-Myth Revisited
The important/urgent quadrant diagram Dan was referring to; The Eisenhower Matrix
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse London - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
This week Jon is joined by Dan to talk about how to sell the value of the design process to clients. If you’re working with clients who don’t understand the value of design or simply don’t have any experience working with a design team, how do you communicate the value your design process can bring? The benefit of doing this well can mean:
the project will run better
the communication is easier
the decisions you make are understood and respected
everyone enjoys the process
the end result is likely to be more successful
In this episode they cover
How do you sell the value of design to a client?
How do we communicate the value of design thinking and the time to do it properly?
How do projects go differently if the client gets it or not?
How do the results differ if you've applied design thinking throughout?
Show notes
Book: You’re my favourite client, by Mike Monteiro
Lighthouse event, 14 March 2017 - An Evening of Startup Product Questions Answered
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse London - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Jon is joined today by Anna McLoughlin of Inkspiller. Inkspiller are a copy and brand strategy consultancy helping businesses find their inner voice and communicate to the world. Anna recently took Every Interaction through this process and the result was a new content strategy that led a revamp of their website.
In this episode they cover:
Creative companies and how they struggle to communicate what they do effectively
Making your agency stand out and getting your key differentiators across
How Every Interaction worked with Anna to update their messaging and website copy
Anna’s workshop and the exercises she undertakes
Working with different sized businesses
Creating a company brand handbook
Why should someone hire you over another agency?
Show notes
Made to stick - Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck (book)
Every Interactions new website (just the homepage & the 3 ‘about us’ content sections - more changes to come in 2017...)
Post about the process in rethinking Every Interaction website with Anna - how we used card sorting on copy to create a sitemap
Inkspiller academy & online courses
Anna’s FREE online Build a Standout Brand course
This week Jon is joined by Matthew Lenzi of Hanno - a globally distributed product design agency. Hanno are quite unique in the way that they run their business; a distributed team working around the world using a forward-thinking vision of 'how companies should work in the future'. They’re living the dream sold to us by the level of communication offered by the internet - something that’s quite unique and I’ve not seen anyone else do as successfully before. We talk about how they got started and made this model a success.
In this episode they cover:
The history of Hanno; how it formed and how the idea of using a distributed team model came from.
Using regular company retreats to work/be together in person.
Daily communication technique, such as: PPP - plans, progress & problems.
Working around the clock in different timezones.
Using ‘pods’ of team members on projects.
Letting everyone choose where and when they work, and how much they get paid.
Pairing up remotely by planning around people's schedules.
Over communicating.
Introverted and extroverted personalities in distributed teams.
Show notes
How I quit my job as a janitor and became a web designer - blog post by Arnas
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations
Teal Organizations
Hanno Playbook
Oskar the slackbot happiness tracker
Pingpong - user testing tool
This week Jon and Dan are joined by Andy Budd from Clearleft - a well known UX Design agency based in Brighton. Clearleft are well known for their high quality of work as well as advancing the field by putting on a number of UX, Design and Development events around the country.
In this episode they cover:
Small vs large agencies
Quality vs quantity of client work
How do Clearleft judge their success metrics
Taking on the projects you want to work on
Growing the team from the founders and adding new skills
How adding content strategy skills to the team has helped Clearleft enhance their offering
What are the driving factors behind the events and conferences Clearleft put on, and what effect does that have on their business
Giving back to the design community - why we do these things
Show notes:
Clearleft’s website, including their work and blog. Keep an eye out for the new website & rebrand launching end 2016/early 2017.
Clearleft’s new event; Leading Design (24 - 26 October 2016). At the time of publishing, now in the past, but sign up for details next year.
Clearleft’s other conferences:
UX London (24-26 May 2017)
dConstruct (on a break this year)
Every Interaction’s website update, taking a content-first approach.
This week Jon is joined by Pete Campbell from Kaizen Search - an SEO and digital marketing agency based in London. Pete started his agency less than 3 years ago by himself, and has since successfully scaled to 9 people.
In the episode they cover:
Starting a business as just one person
Hiring the first person
Should you take on interns or apprenticeships when you’re a small agency?
What skill levels should your early employees be?
Handling cultural differences in a small team
Show notes:
Kaizen Search website
Kaizen are hiring a developer
This week Jon is joined by Brad Flowers from BullHorn Creative - a brand & communication strategy agency in Kentucky USA. Brad and his fellow directors have been making changes to how they run their business, inspired by meeting folks at peer groups and studying business books. This inspiration has helped provide them with a more solid foundation for growth and stability. In this episode Jon and Brad go over this experience, and share how anyone else can do the same.
In this episode they cover
Focus on working more on your business than in your business.
Adapting and assigning roles to individuals as you grow.
Having accurate data to be able to make informed business decisions.
Understanding your core values of your business - why you exist.
Using peer groups to share experiences and learn from others locally.
Show notes
Entrepreneurial Operating System
📖 Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, by Gino Wickman
📖 Get A Grip: How to Get Everything You Want from Your Entrepreneurial Business, by Gino Wickman
Leading vs Lagging indicators
Making company culture a major focus of your core values. 📖 Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, by Tony Hsieh
Every Interaction new website with new value focussed copy, and the blog post about the process and the story we took.
There are some great blog posts over on Bullhorn’s blog. A few recent examples include:
An introspective look at Bullhorns own brand values
Some by-products of thinking about core values.
Brand language - what’s in a name?
Brand meaning - what do you mean?
Brand tone - take that tone
Jon is joined by Rory MacDonald from MadeTech - an agile development agency - to talk about how you can use agile methodologies to deliver website development projects.
In the episode they cover:
What characteristics make a successful agile delivery?
How to spot a if a client is going to be suitable to work in an agile way
Managing scope, budget and timelines with agile
Working with clients to understand complexity
Managing risk to ensure software is shipped and deliverables
Reassuring customers that the agile processes you are proposing will deliver them the results they need
Educating clients about the benefits of agile processes and transforming businesses from within using it
Show notes
Agile Manifesto - 12 principles
This week Jon is joined by Dylan Baskind - designer/developer and founder of proposal writing tool Qwilr. We speak about Dylan's journey from working in the agency world, having direct clients and hitting frustrations with creating proposals in the ‘print’ mentality of an A4 PDF doc that takes way too much time to create and delivers an inferior experience for both creator and client. We talk about how Qwilr came to be and what goes into making a great proposal.
Dylan also shared with us his top tips for making sure your proposal has the best chance of helping you win the work:
Make sure it looks fantastic. You can’t put a price on first impressions and if the first thing a potential client sees from you has a design that is not pleasing to look at, then you’ve almost already lost. That first impression must be made immediately, as they will form an opinion within the first few milliseconds. Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye.
Use data-driven quantitative proof to back up your claims for case studies. Tie your work directly to project success metrics to validate the worth and investment in your input.
Use a compelling story to communicate past case studies to clients. Teehan+Lax used to write case studies in a wonderful way. An approach we've started experimenting with at Every Interaction.
This week Jon and Dan talk about Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and how they both use this as a sales tool. How to introduce an MVP to a client, how to steer a client asking for an MVP in the right direction, controlling expectations and changing how people think about what an MVP is supposed to achieve. There are a lot of challenges to do this properly so that your client has a greater chance of success, and you get more work from them as a result.
Show notes
MVP definition on Wikipedpia
The Lean Startup (paperback/audiobook)
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Jon is joined again this week by Dan Gent. They talk about the UK’s referendum to leave the European Union and what effects Brexit might have on their design agencies. Covering their fears about the uncertainty the future might hold, possible impact on new business and hiring, as well as what they are both going to be doing to try and weather the storm. Trying not to focus too much on the negatives, they speak about how to make the best of Brexit and how small agencies might be able to turn this unfortunate series of events to their advantage.
The future is uncertain and so we may revisit this topic in time once the situation has evolved and we think it relevant, but this episode quite accurately captures our current state at this moment in time.
If anyone else out there is concerned about what Brexit means for their digital agency and would like someone to talk to - please reach out, we’d be happy to talk.
Further reading
Interesting survey from London Tech sector businesses finding that 74% believe the business environment may get worse, but only 22% expect to scale back their planned growth ambitions as a result.
This video from the brilliant CGP Grey speculates about the likelihood of various possible outcomes of the referendum result.
This week Jon welcomes designer founder Murat Mutlu from Marvel App to discuss what it's like for a designer to leave the agency life behind and found a product company.
It was great to hear about the journey, challenges and what the future has in store for this world class design tool. Marvel allows designers to turn their ideas into interactive prototypes that can be used to present and test.
Find out more and sign up for Marvel App
Follow Marvel App on twitter
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Murat Mutlu - @mutlu82
Jon is joined by Tom from Lighthouse London to talk about the filter process they both go through when deciding to take on or pitch for a specific piece of work or project.
The list of criteria discussed is not meant to be a prescriptive list we believe every agency should abide by, it’s just a discussion of the criteria that we run through when making those decisions and hopefully there are points that encourage or inspire others.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Special guest – Tom Johnson - @mrhaste
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
This week Jon is joined by his co-founder Neil Gardiner to discuss their experiences with mentorship. Every Interaction have been receiving business mentorship for 18 months now, so it seemed like a good time to reflect and go over some of the benefits having mentorship has brought to their business. They cover how they got started with mentorship, some of the exercise and topics covered as well as discuss alternatives.
Show notes
Our mentor Philip de Lisle
The Org chart exercise from The E-Myth (the book Jon thought was ‘Getting things done’)
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Neil Gardiner - @neilgardiner
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
In this episode Dan’s co-founder, Tom Johnson joins Jon to talk about how their designers and developers work together in their teams to deliver their client work. As the design focussed half of his company, it was interesting to speak to Tom and discuss the differences between Lighthouse and Every Interaction in term of focus, team make-up and collaboration of team members when delivering projects.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Special guest – Tom Johnson - @mrhaste
Light House - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
How you manage feedback from clients can make or break a project. It’s a tricky thing to handle and there are many ways you can go about dealing with it. This week Dan & Jon share their process and different ways of managing client feedback. They cover how to get the most out of presentations and being prepared to receive constructive feedback that benefits the project, you, the client and your relationship.
Show notes
Crystal Maze ticket collecting (yes really)
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
This week Dan and Jon talk time tracking and how they use this data to help run and grow their digital agencies.
Completing your timesheets is perhaps the most tedious part of your day, however the value this data can give your business is immense. Understanding how much time projects actually take helps you better quote for future work you are asked to cost up. Find out how to get the most from analysing your time and run your company more efficiently as you scale.
Show notes
Lighthouse use FreeAgent, which is also their accounting software (get 10% off with this link)
Slimtimer - something Lighthouse used in the very early days
Every Interaction use Harvest (get $10 off your first month with this link) to record time and invoice clients.
They've also started trailing Forecast to plan their resource and Xero to have visibility over their accounts.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Working for the worst client imaginable - yourself. Dan reveals the process and learnings from recently replacing the agency website for Lighthouse, and Jon talks about the what lies ahead for Every Interaction and the upcoming site replacement project they are planning.
How do we find time? Do these projects run differently to client work? How do you decide how to talk about yourself? All covered in this week’s episode.
Show notes
Lighthouse London's new website
Every Interaction's current website, soon to be replaced, hopefully.
Seth Godin; Obvious or elegant
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Dan and Jon talk about the process they go through when hiring a new employee and what they look for in potential candidates. They go into detail about the places they advertise, the applications that come in, the filtering that takes place and how the process is moved forwards into interviews. They also cover what they look for in potential candidates, short intensive courses, as well as gender equality.
You might get a lot from this one if you're either looking for a job in UX, Design or Development, or if you're also a small company looking for hire your early employees.
Show notes
Some of the places talked about where both Every Interaction & Lighthouse post job opportunities:
Authentic jobs
Unicorn hunt (3 beards)
Dribbble jobs
Women who code London
Girls in tech
The 50/50 Initiative
An Initiative to Change the Gender Ratio in the Advertising and Design Industries .
General Assembly
8-12 week intensive courses specialising in Android Development, Data Science, Product Management, User Experience Design and Web Development (as well as some part-time courses), in the following major cities around the world: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, Sydney, Washington D.C.
Find us online:
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Does having a specialism put you in a better position as a new/smaller agency? Dan and Jon fumble around what they think are their respective agency specialisms (defining exactly what you do is so hard!) and how taking that approach benefits them in what they do for their clients. We talk about how we both started out and how things changed as we matured. Both having come from full-service agency backgrounds, we discuss how that’s not where we see the future of our companies and how focus can help make your agency more successful.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
This week Jon & Dan talk about how they go about dealing with pitches and proposals. How to decide how much time to put into documentation and what is takes to seal the deal and convince a new client to choose you over other options they might have.
We both have slightly different approaches to winning new work and we explored our document structure, reasoning and logic behind our separate approaches. We also think about a little transparency across the industry might lead to a better situation for all involved.
Show notes
Dan's Sales podcast - The Brutal Truth About Sales & Selling, by Brian Burns
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Episode 2 of Perspective. This week Jon & Dan talk about how they go about charging their clients. How to determine if new business enquiries have appropriate budgets and how to approach the subject of money.
We explore how we both determine how much we should be charging based on a brief and how much a client can afford. We also cover the logic for accepting work with a budget in mind, and different ways of charging, invoicing and tracking work across our businesses.
Few sound issues this week, so apologies for any irregularities - trying to resolve these in future episodes.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com
Episode 1 of Perspective. A podcast talking about the experiences of running and growing an indie creative/digital agency. This week Jon & Dan give some background to kick things off - exploring how their careers bought them to start their own agencies.
Show notes will be a little light this week.
Find us online
Jon Darke - @darkejon
Every Interaction - @everyinteract / www.everyinteraction.com
Dan Gent - @gentusmaximus
Lighthouse - @wearelighthouse / www.wearelighthouse.com