Studio missive #10: a business retreat

Hi friend,

Happy Friday! I’ve been travelling this week for a retreat. Picked up a cold, probably at one of the airports. You’ll have to forgive me if my writing is a little loopier than normal.

With all that being said: here are a few cool things from other designers and some BTS from studio life this week.

What’s been inspiring you?

1. In love with some great new typefaces. I love TypeMates’s new Gregory Grotesk, which serves as a companion to the similarly excellent Gregory Poster. This year has been an embarrassment of riches so far. Dan Cederholm also released Turbeau recently, which is a really fun typeface inspired by Knight Rider (great show). Klim released American Grotesk earlier this year, which is a fantastic revival of Franklin Gothic that I’m dying to use somewhere (and comes with a great companion essay. And it turns out, if you’re like me and find yourself using the same typefaces from the same type foundries over and over again, the Type Foundry Directory exists for this reason — an index of all sorts of type foundries all over the world. Very cool. (Most of these links were found via Elliot Jay Stocks’s excellent newsletter)
2. I can’t get over the Working Stiff Films website. The design breaks almost every rule I would adhere to, but I love it. There’s a lot of motion, so fair warning if you prefer less, but the use of colour here is fantastic, and the animations are generally unreal. 
3. Loved the branding Studio Ongarato did for Hank’s Bagelry. Fun, playful mascot. It reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on it. Cute website too.

What are you working on this week?

I spent the week at a retreat with a group of other business owners in Kansas City. We spent three days riffing on what we want to do with our businesses, both in the long and short term, and took turns sharing our goals (and problems) and asking for feedback. We do this twice a year, and it’s always a great time.

It’s hard to solve your own problems as a business owner. You’re too close to the issues. It’s so useful to talk with other business owners in other industries, and gather their perspectives on your problems. They’ll have ideas and approaches your direct peers might never have considered.

I thought it might be interesting to document what I shared this week with the group, and what my takeaways are after a day to process what I learned.

Over 80% of my business comes from referrals. I’m very proud of that, and I love that my clients are confident enough to refer me to other people who need websites, e‑commerce solutions, and product designs. 

But here’s the problem: how I get the remaining business is kind of a mystery to me. Every time somebody contacts me who I don’t know, it feels like luck. I’d like to grow that slice of the pie, and I’d like to get better at marketing to people who don’t know me at all. I’ve spent my year working on inbound marketing, without really knowing that’s what I was doing. But after this fall’s retreat, my problem feels better defined, and I have some good next steps.

After the retreat, my goals for the quarter are the following:

1. Build landing pages for niches and market sectors in my portfolio. I’d like to build pages for ​“web designer near Toronto,” for example, or ​“e‑commerce website developer for non-profits”. My friend Josiah Casey, who is far and away the best SEO consultant I’ve ever met (and also the owner of KC Visibility), is going to help me with that.

2. Start shooting highly relational, tasteful marketing videos. I’ve been thinking about making talking head videos about the design process for a while. My favourite suggestion of the week came from my friend and mentor Shawn Blanc, who hosted us all in Kansas City. He suggested doing a ​“roast my website” campaign, where I roast websites (upon request) and tell people how to make it better. This could be a private Zoom call, or maybe a YouTube video. Whatever works. (I have a bunch of other ideas for video too.) 

   It might take me a while to figure out the logistics of this. (Shawn, if you’re reading this, I know you’re rolling your eyes.) My studio is only 8×10, with one window well for natural lighting. I am not totally sure where to place the camera. I want these videos to be tasteful, because I’m a designer, and taste is what I sell. One of my goals for the quarter is to figure this out and get started.

3. Finish a few new case studies on my website. I wanted to write more case studies this year. I have four on the go right now, which is a busy-sounding way of saying I have zero on the go, because I can’t actually work on four at once and I’m not making any progress. My goal is to get all four case studies up this quarter, but I’ll be happy if I get two or three done. It would be great to make video a party of those too. I might be throwing three launch parties this fall too, and trying to be more purposeful about them as I go.

Looking at the list, I feel a little overwhelmed. But I’m also excited. Primarily, I’m excited to get over this cold so the list feels less overwhelming. But secondarily, I’m excited to dig into these. I’m excited to spend a few hours deconstructing (and then reconstructing) my office to play with my tripods and camera gear. I’m excited to work with a good friend on my SEO, and to be the client for a change. 

Most importantly, I’m optimistic. I only know one way to be successful in business: show up, with your butt in the chair, and take a lot of shots. The only way to get successful is to fail a bunch. I’m confident I’m going to fail.

But I feel pretty good about the odds.

Many thanks to Shawn for hosting and guiding all of us this week.

Talk to you next week,

Nathan

P.S. This is a great way to film an iPhone review.