WordPress, agency life, and entrepreneur observations
Excerpts from The Friday Chaser
Here you are — now — with the decision
Have you ever caught yourself sinking hours into something and wondered “Why am I doing this?!?!”? I have… more times than I’m comfortable admitting. In fact, just the other day I spent about 4 hours…
Oct 6, 2023
*This* is expensive
Have you ever tried baking bread from scratch? I love to cook — so I figured it couldn’t be that difficult. Unfortunately, what I produced didn’t fit the legal definition of “bread”. The kids — my biggest…
Sep 29, 2023
Claim back a little of your time
Nothing will start my day off on the wrong foot like opening up my calendar to realize I’ve got a day full of back-to-back-to-back meetings. It’s like PTSD from the dozens of times I’ve gotten…
Sep 22, 2023
Building our defenses
When you see a post in the group about burnout, does it feel like a familiar stab? Like someone is narrating a page from your life story? Happens to me every single time — and…
Sep 15, 2023
Business MRI
This week I was faced with a challenge: create a list of 27 things that have helped my business get to where it is today. If you’re anything like me, you’re immediately asking “why 27?”….
Sep 8, 2023
The shadow of opportunity
Picture this… You’ve just landed your best client ever — the unicorn of clients. Their projects are interesting, they’re easy to work with, and let’s not kid ourselves; they pay well. Very well. Months roll…
Sep 1, 2023
The unsung hero
I’ll admit it… I’m a sucker for those nail-biting, overly-dramatized sports movies and documentaries. With the NFL season rolling in, it’s given me an excuse to binge on the marathons they are running (and eat…
Aug 25, 2023
Horizons of possibility
Picture yourself looking out of an airplane window down at a field below. The patchwork of land intersected by streams, roads, and highways. Now, picture standing in the middle that field with both feet on…
Aug 18, 2023
Tuning into the right frequencies
Have you ever imagined what the internet would be like if it were a physical space? Imagine walking down its streets being constantly bombarded with bells, whistles, shouting, lights, explosions, and total chaos. Everywhere you…
Aug 11, 2023
The fastest path to irrelevancy
Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”. Of course he was talking about evolution — but I…
Aug 4, 2023
More pickles than I can count
Have you ever found yourself torn between a reluctant ‘yes’ standing our ground with a potential relationship-straining ‘no’? Who said running a business was easy? Thankfully, I’ve found a two-word phrase that has gotten me…
Jul 28, 2023
Not *the* best; *our* best
In a recent TABLE call, a question was tossed into the discussion that really caught my attention. It wasn’t about the usual suspects — client acquisition, pricing & profitability, or juggling work-life balance — it…
Jul 21, 2023
What gets measured gets managed
The saying goes “What gets measured gets managed”, and I know I’ve seen the most significant changes/growth in my agency when I was actively measuring the success of my efforts. Not only does it help…
Jul 14, 2023
Perfection, practicality, & profitability
I’ve often thought of a website designer/developer as a type of craftsman. It’s part art and part science, where aesthetics and utility come together in some sort of balance. But where that balance lies can be really difficult…
Jul 7, 2023
Still not batting 1.000
With all the extra headaches that come with owning my own business, the last thing I want to be is miserable working in it. A big part of that, for me at least, is working…
Jun 30, 2023
It finally dawned on me
I used to get really frustrated by the other agencies in my town… They built inferior websites, charged twice as much as me, and still had 10 times more customers than I did. For years…
Jun 23, 2023
Going on offense
In the website industry we’ve always had a pretty poor reputation for customer service. Many of us entered this field because of a passion for technology, not necessarily for human connection or business acumen. And…
May 12, 2023
When you do the math
In a TABLE meeting this week we got on the subject of pricing and profitability. I asked the question “do you know how much it costs you to operate on an hourly basis?”. This was…
May 5, 2023
Who’s who?
There are a lot of web agencies out there. A lot. Thankfully, there’s also enough work to go around that most of us can stay busy (I’m very much of the “abundance mindset”). But with…
Apr 28, 2023
I keep needing a refresher
The longer I’ve been in this business the more I realize that having a process for something is really the key to succeeding (I know I’ve talked about this a million times before — but…
Apr 21, 2023
