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?

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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

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My father's name, but no relation ;)

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

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.

Have friends who run graphic design agencies that find it useful to promote work this way, especially successful for packaging jobs. As a UX design agency we find it more useful to post culture/team shots, behind the scenes stuff. Don't expect to ever get work directly or even have clients follow you - mostly aimed at peers and promoting general brand awareness activity. Definitely would not spend a large amount of time on Instagram, it's a luxury if you can find the time in my opinion, but a good string to add to your social media bow if you can justify it.

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.

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On another note - would love to know how you installed/built the podcast miniplayer widget - it's really great!

Nice, that works :) Subscribed.

:( "failed to download podcast"