That was the case until recently. With new CSS box-sizing options and the latest version of Sass, developers can build responsive web sites much easier now, with a combination of a few new tools at our disposal.

Border-box and Sass 3.2

Like any developer, I’ve spent more time than I like to admit working on issues with the css box model. It can be really frustrating to adjust a bunch of container sizes just to change the padding on one element.

The new css rule

box-sizing: border-box

makes our jobs a lot easier. It changes the css box model so that containers don’t expand with padding and border width adjustments. This rule is new to CSS3 and is compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE8+ (with an available polyfill for IE6 and IE7). If you aren’t familiar with the border-box rule, you’ll want to read the articles by Paul Irish and CSS-Tricks on using it. Border-box especially shines when it comes to grids.

Another tool that really helps developers create sites easier and quicker is Sass. Sass is CSS, but much smarter; it adds the ability to use nesting, variables, and reuse snippets of code called mixing. If you haven’t used Sass yet, The Sass Way has a getting started guide. Sass 3.2 introduces even more smart tools especially for use with responsive web design. At this time 3.2 is the ‘bleeding edge’ version, so you’ll need to install it with this line:

gem install sass --pre

A simple Sass layout

Here is an example of responsive design using variables and a few simple equations to do the math for you.

Source

Demo

The example is a typical blog post: we have a large column for the article next to a smaller column for relevant information, a header on top and a footer at the bottom. But rather than choose the widths of the columns directly, we implemented a Sass mixin and some variables for a simple custom grid.

$columns: 12;
$max-page-width: 1200; /* Even though we mean 1200 pixels, we leave out 'px' so that the mixing below can perform calculations on it. */
$column-width: $max-page-width/$columns;
$column-padding: 1rem;

@mixin column($amount, $context: $max-page-width, $padding: $column-padding) {
width: percentage(($column-width * $amount) / $max-page-width);
padding: $padding;
}

Our variables at the top describe the grid; we have 12 columns of 100px each, with 1 relative em of padding. The column mixin lets you choose the amount of columns you want and optional context and padding amounts, then performs the standard target / context = result formula on it.

So that our padding won’t break our grid, add box-sizing to every element:

* { -moz-box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; box-sizing: border-box; }

Now we can assign width to our article, figure, and aside elements:

#content {
    float: left;
    @include column(8);

    figure {
        @include column(5, $padding: 0);
        min-width: 240px;
        margin: 0 0 1rem 1rem;
        float: right;
    }
}
aside {
    float: left;
    @include column(4);
}

Adding Breakpoints

Our page looks good now, at least on large screens. Rather than jump in right away and add a lot of media queries at standard breakpoints, we’re going to put in breakpoints based on our content. In other words, at points where our layout breaks, we’re going to adjust it with a media query based rule.

When we resize the window, it’s clear that around 800px window width, our article text is really getting squeezed by the image. This is a good spot to put in a breakpoint. Try it out for yourself by grabbing the corner of your browser window and shrinking it.

We can use another Sass mixin to make it easy:

@mixin breakpoint($size) {
 @media only screen and (max-width: $size) { @content; }
}

Now we can include the mixin to stack and resize our columns:

#content {
    float: left;
    @include column(8);

    @include breakpoint(770px) {
        clear: left;
        @include column(12);
    }

aside {
    float: left;
    @include column(4);

    @include breakpoint(770px) {
        clear: left;
        @include column(12);
    }
}

We could take it a step further and use variables for the width; The Sass Way goes into more detail on this and other Sass 3.2 features.

More testing by resizing the browser gives us another breakpoint at 600px – we’ll drop the article text below the image here.

    @include breakpoint(600px) {
        min-width: 280px;
        margin: 0 auto;
        float: none;
    }

Now, our site looks good at any browser width. The best part, though, is that using the Sass mixins and variables means that you can adjust the layout quite easily as you build and adjust a site design.

Going Forward

While this is just a simple example, I hope it will help you cut down on the amount of time it takes to build your next responsive site!

Do you build responsive websites? What tools and methods do you use to streamline your work?

Content strategy starts where all client projects start: with the brief.

Content and Strategy

Enough has been said over the past few years about what content strategy is. That song is so overplayed even the radio won’t touch it.

However, tradition demands we have a working definition to proceed, so we’ll go with a broad one from A List Apart article by Kristina Halverson:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

I also think that we all know by now that content is more than just copywriting. Web content today also includes videos and images, external files (like PDFs), contact forms, buttons (and other calls to action), maps, data tables, infographics, as well as the copy—titles, slogans, about pages, etc.

According to Halverson, it’s all about planning. A brief is a “useful, usable” way of putting it all down on paper (or .pdf). The content brief is a document that outlines all of the content (in context).

What Lucky Sap Gets The Job?

Who, specifically, should take lead on the content brief? Anyone that can listen and take notes will do. Whether they’re a copywriter, content strategist, project manager, designer, developer, whatever.

Can you type? Then you’re good to go. Thorough, organized, communicative, good with words, thinks of the big picture: these are also good qualities to look for.

In any case, a brief isn’t built by one person. Projects have many stakeholders. A copywriter may put together the rough draft or write revisions, but it’s the whole team’s job to put the brief together in collaboration with a client.

Clients have input from multiple stakeholders in their own company, too, so be careful not to leave anyone out of the decision making process.

What Goes Into a Good Content Brief?

A brief must take into account everything on the project.

The brief should cover all of it: not only what the client’s goals are, but what tone of voice they prefer, what the timeframe looks like, what content should be on the site, what should be left out, how the content fits into the context of the design, editorial strategy, who is going to add new content, and whether or not they need formatting guidelines to follow.

A good brief is a vital source of information for everyone involved in a project. Designers, copywriters, and even developers should be able to refer to it while they work.

Special note to designers and developers: a content brief is especially useful with clients who underestimate the work involved on a particularly complex project.

A Brief Example

This is the basic brief I use for website design projects. I often find myself adding new sections, quotes from clients (copy pasted from emails), and scribbling notes in the margins. If you don’t have to alter the brief to the context of the project, you’re probably missing something.*

• Basic Details
1. Company Name
2. Contact Name
3. Project Start Date
4. Projected Finish Date
5. Will this be part of a larger communication or stand-alone?
• Overview
1. What is the client expecting of the project?
2. Define the goals of the project.
3. What is the background and context for communication?
• Background and Raw Material
1. What material has the client produced before? How did it perform?
2. How does this campaign fit in with other communications produced by the client?
3. What images, videos, copy, and other material has already been created?
4. What images, videos, copy, etc. is missing?
• Target Audience
1. Who are we trying to reach? Why? How?
2. What mediums are we using to reach the users?
3. What is their profile? Do we need to develop personas?
4. What do they think about the client?
5. What’s going on in the marketplace? How crowded is it?
• The Core Message
1. What is the single, compelling message that must be communicated?
2. What supporting evidence is there to back up the claims being made?
• The Unique Selling Point
1. What benefit does the core message provide to the audience?
2. What makes this different and compelling in the marketplace?
3. Why should the reader bother to read the copy and respond at all?
• Creative Direction
1. How should the finished work look and feel?
2. Is there a brand style that must be adhered to?
3. Are there examples of similar work that can be used as a guide?
4. What’s the appropriate tone of voice?

After you’ve completed the brief, be sure to clear it with all stakeholders involved in the project. Each person may have their own perspective to add. The more people involved, the more comprehensive the brief will become.

The trickiest part of a good content brief is making sure that it covers all the angles. If it doesn’t cover everything, it may fall short or even fail entirely. Deadlines get missed, budgets run out, people get stressed out, and suddenly you’re drinking twelve cups of coffee a day, working weekends, or pulling a frantic all nighter.

Nobody wants that.

The Interview Process

When you’re taking the brief, you want to get into the mindset of an interviewer.

The person taking the brief has to ask the right kind of questions. Since there are usually multiple stakeholders involved in a project, be sure to talk to all of them. Interview them relentlessly. Ask the dumb questions. Be persistent. A bad assumption will cause you more work in the end, whereas a dumb question wastes a few minutes of time at most.

Also, don’t be afraid to call back and clarify. A good interviewer is thorough and goes back a second time if they feel like something is missing.

Tweak It As You Go Along

If someone realizes that the content brief is missing something—whether it’s a paragraph or a page or something bigger—the brief should be updated. If it’s a major change, be sure to notify your team! Nothing says waste of time like writing content that’s already been cut.

Discussion

Do you use content briefs in your projects? What kinds of questions do you ask your clients? Is there any place where content briefs fall short?

*Disclaimer: this brief outline is based off one from Copywriting: Successful Writing for Design, Advertising, and Marketing. If you like and use the outline, we recommend that you buy the book. Especially if you’re interested in copywriting. It is an indispensable resource.

Hire me or else! Illustration by Daniel Ferenčak

We have a high standard of design and development, and our clients come to us not only knowing that we’ll get the job done, but that we’ll do it well and exceed their wildest expectations. So when our business started growing and we had to hire more people, we knew that we had big shoes to fill.

Interviewing and hiring people over the past year has solidified a process that goes beyond a standard interview procedure to make sure that the people we hire are a good fit for our company, and nobody’s time is wasted in the process.

This process has been shaped and formed with the help of many others who are pros at the hiring process and have learned things the hard way like us. We hope you can use our hiring process to improve your own and find people who are a good fit for yourself, your company, and your clients.

Why Do People Use Your Product or Service?

Start by considering why people use your product or service. Do you serve a need that isn’t being met by anyone else? When clients think of your company, what do they think? Write down all those things and any brand promises that you have.

Next, if you’ve hired someone before that has been a success, think of why you hired them. Look at the emails/communications you initially had with them, and remind yourself of why you brought them in. Were they friendly and showed they read any listings you put out or about your company in general? Did they show excitement about the position and working with you?

Once you have all of these things written down, you know what kind of person you’re looking for. Everything in terms of skills and position requirements should only be figured out after this.

The Listing (Details are Important)

One thing we’ve learned about putting together awesome listings is writing out the responsibilities of the position that you’re hiring for, talking about your team and company, and mentioning what the new hire will be getting (pay, benefits, etc) in return for their work.

But more importantly than this, make sure you’re specific about all of the above – if you’re looking for a designer, are you looking for someone who has a specific style/designs in specific media (web, print, brand)?. If you’re looking for a developer, are you looking for someone who can take PSDs and bring them to life, or someone who can develop fully functional backends with a specific language (e.g. PHP, Ruby, etc)?

Applications

We’ve tried both forms for people to fill out and emails for people to apply, and there are definitely benefits to both. While forms can help make sure you get information you want and serve as a pre-interview, emails are our preferred method because it allows people to copy and paste messages and serves as an open conversation that shows how that person communicates.

Regardless, this is the part where you make the first cut of applicants. There are a few things we look for that tell us the person won’t be a good fit:

• They copy and paste a generic message they’re sending to every listing.
• They use improper spelling or grammar (communication is really important to us).
• They don’t have what we’re looking for in terms of skills or experience.
• They give us something we didn’t ask for.
• They don’t give us something we did ask for.

However, if the person is a good fit:

• They send us a personalized message that tells us why they want to work with us and why they think we’re awesome.
• They communicate clearly and sound excited about the position and opportunity.
• They give us what we ask for and omit any irrelevant information.

For every 25 applicants we generally get only 1 or 2 that fits the bill. Expect those kind of odds in your hiring process because good people are hard to find!
Before the Interview

Once we’ve got the application and think that the person might be a good fit, we email them back and schedule a time to talk about the position and what it will be like working with us. At this point, we look for two things before the interview even happens:

• How long does it take them to respond?
• Do they still seem excited and the same person as in the other email now that you’re communicating with them?
• Are they on time for the interview? Is it easy to schedule an interview with them? (If they seem too busy, they probably have their priorities mixed up!)

If they don’t do the above, raise your warning flags. In some situations we won’t even bother with getting them on the phone for an interview if getting ahold of them is too difficult because that’s a sure sign that working with them will be difficult as well.

The Interview

Ask anyone who works with us or has been interviewed to work with us – I’m terrible in interviews. I tend to talk more than I listen, and run out of questions to ask. To make sure that I’m on track and don’t get nervous (yes, interviewers get nervous, too), I have a list of points that I know I need to get through. Everything from questions to things I need to mention are written down so that the interview goes smooth. Sure, questions come up that aren’t written down, but in case I run out of things to ask about, I always have something to fall back on.

The way we do our interviews, we need an hour with the applicant to figure out whether or not they’re a fit. Not all interviews go the full hour, but blocking out that much time is important. We break down interviews like this:

• 15 minutes – Screening
• 15-30 minutes – Questions and finding out about the applicant
• 15 minutes – Talking about The Phuse, why we’re awesome, answering questions, and talking about next steps

Screening

This is the one part of our interview process that I think changed everything. Some companies screen interviewees before an interview is even set up, but we decided that we’d do it at the beginning of the interview. At this stage we talk candidly about the position, how much the position pays, what we offer in terms of other benefits, and the responsibilities of the person.

We also give the interviewee a chance to answer initial questions and hang up if they didn’t realize what they were getting into. This part of the process has knocked out a few applicants because the pay is too low for them or they don’t feel comfortable with any of the responsibilities.

If they’re good with everything we’ve thrown at them, we let them talk!

Let Them Talk

Since at this point I’ve likely talked for a good 75% of the time, I ask the applicant to talk about their experiences, how they got into what they’re doing now from the point they left high school (or sooner if they started sooner) to present day. During this part of the interview I tell them I’m going to be extremely quiet while taking notes to let them talk, and will ask them questions afterwards.

This is the closest thing we do to asking for resumes. I personally dread reading resumes, and think that hearing people talk about their previous positions and education helps me learn a lot more about them. I get to hear about positions they liked versus ones they didn’t like, how long they generally stay at companies, and what sort of responsibilities they had.

During this time, I’ll be writing down what I think of them – are they excited about certain positions more than others? Do I have questions about specific positions? You might also write down a scale for different criteria based on things you’re looking for that you’ll continually rate to see if they’re a good fit.

Afterwards, I’ll ask questions specific about the positions and about the position at hand, and most of the time it’ll be about things right off of the application. Do they know how to do X? How would they do Y? How do they feel about doing Z?

I’m generally looking for:

• Someone who is genuine and shows excitement and interest
• Someone who knows what they’re talking about
• Someone who Doesn’t half-ass answers to questions
• Someone who can maintain a conversation and seems like an interesting person

Talk about the company and position

Once I’m comfortable with everything that I’ve asked and have been told, I’ll generally talk about The Phuse. How did we start? Why are we shaped the way we are? Why do we do things the way we do? Who are our clients? All of this gives the interviewee a chance to take a break, listen, and form any questions they might have about the company (which is a really good sign).

What’s Next?

Once we’ve got everything for the interview wrapped up, we’ll talk about what happens next. For different positions, we have different ways of doing things. Generally, though, we’ll assign a small project not for any clients in particular to see how they do. For this “test”, we ask the applicant to only work one hour. We give a complete brief, and tell them exactly what we’re looking for.

Here are some project tests that you can use to evaluate potential employees:

For developers, the test is generally on an application page we’ve already done. We tell them to look at it and figure out how they’d develop certain technical components of it, and then let them hack away for the rest of the hour. Through this we find out:

• How they analyze things and if they know how to get the job done
• How much they get done
• The quality of the work they get done
• How they communicate what they’d like to get done and how long they budget for it to be completed
• What deadline they set for themselves and if they meet it

For designers, we give a wireframe to work off of or a simple brief with things that need to be done, and let them have at it. Again, we’re looking at:

• How they analyze any problems in the design
• How they follow the brief and style/brand guides
• How much they get done
• The quality of the work they get done
• How they communicate their decisions
• What deadline they set for themselves and if they meet it

None of this work is for any current clients and the work is just to see how they do, but we do pay for the hour regardless, at the rate they’d like to be paid.

If everything checks out and other members of the team are happy with the product, we’ll ask them on their first project with us. During this part of the process, we’ll do the same thing – we’ll make sure they deliver on time, deliver what they say they’re going to, and make sure the quality is up to par. Again we assess things and decide whether or not it’s a good fit – if not, we don’t show anything to the client, don’t charge the client, and move on.

How Do You Hire?

These are the processes that have helped us find people that are a good fit for our team. It’s important to be thorough in the interviewing process, and to test applicants on a project before we agree to any sort of contract. That gives us a chance to test each other out (both employer and employee) and decide if we’re a good fit for each other.

What works for you when you hire new employees? Do you interview extensively or let the work speak for itself? How hard is it to find a good fit for your company? Share your stories with us in the comments!

What the inside of your head looks like when you get a bright idea.

It’s one thing to have an idea for a site. Turning that idea into an elegant, functional and user-friendly website is another monster entirely.

The best way to take your idea from conception to completion, and make sure your site gets built as close as possible to the way you envisioned it, is to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

1. Determine What It Is

The obstacle to avoid.

The point at which “It’s a website” isn’t good enough anymore.

Start by making sure that the idea you have in mind really is a website.

Some good questions to ask yourself include:

• How is building a website going to benefit my business? My art? Myself?
• Is the internet a medium where my idea can thrive? (Hint: not if it’s a 500 page novel!)
• Is my idea original? (If you don’t know, research it!)
• Will people use the site?

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a lot of crap on the internet. It’s mostly crap, in fact. If I had to estimate the amount of crap on the internet like a jar of jelly beans, I’d say that 95% of websites on the internet are worthless crap. And that’s me being generous.

Another common misconception: “I need a website!” We’ve all heard this from clients, and when web tinkerers ask their clients questions like “Why?” and “What’s going on it?” and “What will it say?” they often get a blank stare in response. Don’t be that person.

2. Outline the Goals

Where’s the finish line?

Every project has a desired outcome. Once you figure out what the website is, you have to figure out what it’s going to accomplish. Ask yourself a few more questions:

• What actions will users be performing on the site?
• How often will users be visiting?
• Do I need a blog or other regularly updated content?
• Do I want to sell products on the site?

These are the kinds of questions we ask clients in our project questionnaire. They help us evaluate exactly what our clients need out of their website, what the end goals are, and what needs to be built. That should help get you started.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Trying to compete with a behemoth like Amazon by creating an eCommerce site without any unique spin on it is a sure path to failure. Not that you can’t compete with them: but know what you’re up against.

Also, if your idea can be built off an existing platform, then let that platform do the legwork for you. It will save you lots of time, money, and headaches. A lot of app ideas start that way. Facebook apps, for example, are built off of an existing platform and they have seen a lot of success.

This flowchart is also a savvy litmus test for your website idea.

3. Figure Out How It’s Going To Be Built

Learn what tools you need and define the scope of the project.

Tools

Website vary greatly in the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to build them.

A photography portfolio is on the lower end of the time/effort/money scale, for example. They are not typically too complex, and the web has been around long enough that free, customizable content management systems are available in abundance that are adequate to get the job done. Same with blogs. You can use an existing platform (like Tumblr or Blogger), or you can download WordPress and install it on your own server.

Not every website is so easy to create. Web apps are more complex and costly due to the necessity for back-end development (read: complex programming for customized functionality). eCommerce sites can be a massive drain on time and budgets simply because of their sheer size. Adding all the products, descriptions, a checkout system, user login, a settings panel, etc., and keeping everything up-to-date requires a lot of time and manpower.

Scope

If you don’t know enough to figure out the scope of your project yourself, ask an experienced web design/development company (like us!) for an estimate. They have enough experience to estimate cost and time accurately.

Underestimating what it takes to build a website is a very common pitfall with uninitiated entrepreneurs, and can become a point of contention if these issues are not cleared up early in the project.

Web Style Guide has a great article on scope, risk assessment, budget, and much more.

4. Find Someone to Build It

Do it yourself? — or hire a pro?

Now that you know what kind of website you want to build and how much work it will take to build it, you have to decide whether you’re going to build it yourself or hire someone to build it for you.

If you are comfortable with computers, and the idea is pretty simple (a blog, for example), then you might well be able to do it yourself. But there is a lot to learn if you’ve never tried building a website before. Even with all the free, customizable software out there, delving into the coding side of things can be extremely frustrating for first-timers. Let alone metrics and marketing, social media, and professionally tailored design.

Learning these skills takes time and you may be better off investing some money to have a group of professionals build it for you.

This is especially true with web applications, which are notoriously more complex than your standard website. For these you often need a design and a development team.

5. Find The Time and Money to Build It

… and come prepared!

Money Costs

Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to build it, everything costs time and money. For those that don’t know, hosting typically charges per month, and domain names charge per year. Web development companies either charge hourly or a flat fee for the whole project; there are benefits and drawbacks to both ways that we won’t go into right now.

Website projects cost anywhere from $500 to $50,000+. It would be impossible to list all the different possibilities. If you aren’t sure, crunch the numbers yourself or (once again) get a professional estimate.

Time Costs

Even if you decide to use all free software (i.e. a wordpress blog with a free theme), and do it all yourself, time is money, and the time you invest into building the site is time that could be spent creating content or marketing it.

Which brings us to another point: make sure you have valuable content ready before you launch the site. That means investing time and effort.

There is nothing more wasteful in the web design business than a pretty site with zero content value. Think Traffic has an excellent article on the value of epic content with specific examples from successful websites.

6. Make Sure You’ve Got The Follow Through

Follow through is everything.

The biggest killer of good website ideas is a lack of follow through. Make sure—before you start—that you have the nerve to see it through. Overnight successes are the exception, not the rule. Sometimes new brands and products stagnant for years before they find success. But then, that’s true about many things in life, and if you’re really serious about your idea, you already knew that.

Once the site is built, your job is far from over! The type of follow up depends largely on what type of site you’re running. With a blog, for example, nearly all of the time and effort are put in after the site launches. Content continually needs to be added.

If you built a portfolio, it’s important to keep it updated and relevant. Last year Google added a relevancy factor to its search rankings. The idea is that people want to find fresh, relevant content.

Cameron Kellogg also has some good advice about follow through from a business standpoint.

Final Words

If you’re still not sure whether your website idea is worth pursuing, ask us! We love hearing about new ideas, and who knows, maybe we’re just the people you need to build it for you.

There are a million opportunities out there for a successful website, whether it’s a business or a blog. Yours may be the next big thing.

What now?

The model of growth. Requires tender love and care at all times. Don't forget to water.

But for us, part of making our clients happy is being able to fulfill their needs. While we’ve managed to make our clients happy for years, we’ve realized that it’s time to put the gears in motion and grow with our clients. As their needs expand, our ability to meet those needs must grow as well.

Learning to balance our business without sacrificing the quality of work and customer service that makes our clients happy is a journey. Here are some lessons that we’ve learned along the way.

The Fork in the Road

The Phuse has always been a small business, and we pride ourselves on intimacy with our clients and with our team members. But we’re at a crucial point where the decision needs to be made as to whether the business grows, or stays the same size. We’ve chosen to grow.

Not being well-versed in the theories of business management, I started looking around for some good advice, and a friend of mine (Charles) told me about a program he’s involved in that really changed the shape of his Ruby on Rails development shop, Highgroove.

The program is called The Entrepreneur’s Organization Accelerator and it allows businesses of roughly the same size (making $250,000 to $1,000,000 in sales each year) to meet on a frequent basis to figure out how to solve problems they’re having (with a bit of great networking as well). Each group is a small packet of specifically-chosen people who are at about the same place in their business.

The program encourages participants to move up to the Entrepreneur’s Organization (at which point the business is making over $1,000,000 per year). In the U.S., a staggering 95% of businesses never cross this threshold.

Getting referred to the program by Charles landed me a screening interview which got me excited (and a little nervous) about what’s next. The decision to join the EOA is a big one that means we’re committing to growing the business.

It’s a tough decision, but one that we believe will benefit The Phuse in the long run.

A Stereotype: Entrepreneurs Are Only Interested in Making Money

There’s a really dirty stereotype that says that Entrepreneurs are more interested in exit plans than they are about building long-lasting and sustainable businesses. They don’t want a good business model, they want a big paycheck and to be able to wash their hands afterwards.

Of course, not all entrepreneurs think like this and they get a bad rap because of it. But The Phuse is not like that. It has never been about the exit strategy. The businesses we want to create offers careers, not jobs; that means a long-term strategy.

I also hate being called an entrepreneur because for me it’s never been about making money. It’s always been about making quality products that our clients love. So the thought of trying to make more money still seems strange to me.

Money is the Food of a Healthy Business

However, part of running a successful and healthy business is about making money. We have bills to pay, and the expenses we have even as a virtual shop (bank fees, currency exchange fees, on top of normal operating expenses most businesses have) increase with every hire we make.

We want a stable environment for our team where we’re not jumping between heavy loads of projects and dead-zones where there’s no client work to handle. An unsteady workload makes it harder for us to pay our bills, and even harder to grow at the rate we want to grow at.

Last month we brought on Jessica to help us out with sustaining a consistent load throughout the year. Then we realized we couldn’t handle all of the development work we had, so we had to bring on Tamera to help Jenna out with development. Now we’re at a point where we could still stand to hire another developer as well as another designer to help the team to meet its demands. The cycle never ends as we try to strike a healthy balance while our company grows.

That balance is important for a long-term business model, and every effort is being made to find that sweet spot as we expand. We want our business to be healthy and our people (employees and clients!) to be happy, and if we can get the money flow figured out the rest will be easy, and we can focus on doing what we love.

Taking Things to the Next Level

I’ve always been about taking things to the next level with myself personally and professionally. When I realized there were people out there better that I was at Javascript and more complex development, I recruited people that had those skills. When I realized there were people whose styles of design I wanted to tap into, we brought them on.

To this day we continue to hire people with better experiences and different skills to take our entire team to the next level with what we could offer our clients. We’re very picky with who we bring on our team, and we want to make sure we offer things to awesome people who want to be on it so that it makes sense for them and for us.

Growing our business is also about taking things to the next level. Every change we make to the business is aimed at the same end result: a long-lasting, sustainable business model.

Looking Forward

I’ve been meaning to write this article for a good part of the last year. Looking back since that year, The Phuse has doubled in revenue and quadrupled in how many resources (team members) we need to get through all the work we have in a week. This is a blessing to me because I get to live my dream every day while I help other people live theirs.

But what does that say about next year? Or, better yet, five years from now?

We’re not interested in investors or getting outside funding, and it’s not about selling out or exit strategies. I’m not interested in taking myself out of the business that I’ve put blood, sweat, and tears into. Far from it.

Learning what we have the last two years about running the business we’ve built today, we want to grow our business, not only for ourselves but for our clients too. There are enormous benefits to growing so that we can grow with them and make sure we always have available resources to help them with their projects.

At various points throughout the last two years we’ve had to move around resources to make things work from a project planning perspective. We don’t like that, and we’re doing everything in our power to give us more flexibility.

We want to make sure that there’s a consistency from our end so that our clients can rest comfortably knowing that the people working on their projects are so familiar with the project and the client that they don’t even have to ask questions. This also gives us the ability to offer better benefits to our team to keep on quality team members. Keeping quality team members is just another quality that a sustainable business looking at long-term goals can offer.

Growing the Business and Growing as People

In growing we know there’s going to be a lot we need to learn, and we know the experiences from clients and the Entrepreneur’s Organization will be valuable in expanding a business in a way that won’t affect any aspect of it negatively, from service quality to cost and beyond.

Writing things down always makes it official for me. It means looking at the idea square in the face and saying “I can do this”. The key to expanding The Phuse will be in keeping things simple, and keeping people around that inspire and motivate us on a daily basis. Those people make our dreams a reality every day.

We’re extremely excited about this new chapter in The Phuse. This doesn’t mean any changes to what we’ve been committed to (awesome customer service for our clients, a killer environment to work in for our team), but a realization that if we want to keep being able to offer this to our growing clients, we need to grow too.

We have to keep track of time differences, but it's often to our benefit.

As you may already know, all of the awesome people employed by The Phuse work remotely.

Our team is separated by oceans, mountain ranges, country borders, and time zones. And despite the generally accepted misgivings about working remotely, we’ve managed to build a company on it.

We would even say that a team working remotely can be just as effective—or more so—than a team that works out of the same studio.

Apart from our flexible schedules and thirty hour work weeks, we’ve come up with a few more reasons why working remotely is beneficial to our team.

1. Work at your own pace, set your own hours

Our work is task and goal oriented. With people located all over the world, that’s the best way we’ve found to keep projects on task. Our team members can work whenever they want to. The only caveat we have is that they have to meet their deadlines.

Of course, this process only works if tasks are completed on time and to spec, so before you give people the kind of freedom that a task-oriented work process allows, make sure you can rely on them, or be prepared to pick up the slack.

2. Negativity is contagious

The biggest benefit to working in a studio is that you are surrounded by like-minded creative people all day long. You can feed off their energy. However, you can also be hindered by their negativity.

If you are an empath, there are ways to get around it. But none better than working where you want, when you want (see #1). It’s easy to close Skype and focus when you work from home.

On the flip side, sometimes working alone gets lonely. That’s why we communicate frequently with our teammates, have weekly motivational meetings, send loads of emails, advocate coffee breaks on Skype, and condone off-topic conversations when deadlines aren’t looming.

3. Shrewd scheduling, and following the sun

It didn’t happen on purpose, at first. But as it turns out our lead designers for the past few months have been located in UK while our coders are in the US and Canada. That gives the design team a head start of at least six hours. Our day is extended and we can actually get more work done in a day than any team that works out of the same studio.

The Harvard Business Review blogged about how Virtual Teams Can Outperform Traditional Teams recently, and when we read that article we were pleasantly surprised to find that were were already following most of their advice.

4. We handpick our team

This method wasn’t allowed in gym class when choosing kickball teams, but in the real world cherry picking the best talent from the crowd is not only allowed but encouraged.

A bigger company may be able to find talent in different parts of the world and relocate them, but with limited resources we are very grateful that the internet allows us to collaborate with people in vastly different locations without forcing anyone to leave their favorite internet hotspot.

We have chosen the best applicants from all over the world because they’re good at what they do, and not because they live near us.

We aren’t limited by location. We surpass it.

The Spartan warriors were professionals and they acted like it.

Getting too close to your work can get in the way of actually doing your work.

Have you ever given up on a project even though the end was in sight? Have you ever had a brilliant idea that you never tried to execute because the idea of failure was too intimidating? Maybe you’re still telling yourself that you’ll write that novel—”one day”.

Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to deal with all that negativity? The solution is simple: adopt the attitude of a professional.

Getting too close won’t be a problem ever again.

Professional Distance

Last week, when we were talking about throwing your best ideas in the trash, I characterized the problem of getting too close as a light so bright it blinds you, and that’s often how it seems from a first-person perspective.

If you’re too close to a project, and you care too much about its success or failure, it can blind you, freeze you up, or make you give up entirely.

That’s why throwing your ideas away works, because treating your ideas as if they can be discarded keeps them at an appropriate professional distance.

Pressfield’s The War of Art

Keeping your work at a distance is one way to tell the professional from the amateur in any job, whether it’s writing, designing, coding, or running a business.

In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield explains how adopting the attitude of a professional is advantageous, and how it keeps you in the game:

“The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.

The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action. Playing for money, or adopting the attitude of one who plays for money, lowers the fever.”

You can love your work and still act like a pro. Not only is acting like a professional a buffer between you and the ruination of failure, but it’s a buffer between you and your work that makes it easier to get things done, too.

Among other things, Pressfield writes that a professional also:

• Shows up every day.
• Shows up no matter what.
• Is committed over the long haul.
• Plays for stakes that are high and real.
• Has a sense of humor about his job.

For a full explanation of Resistance, the force that keeps us from doing our work, and Pressfield’s professional solution, we highly recommend you pick up a copy of The War of Art.

We get nothing from you clicking that link and buying the book. You, however, will have just acquired one of those rare and elusive gifts that keeps on giving.

If it weren’t for our amazing clients, our team wouldn’t be able to afford to do what we all love to do for a living. It’s pretty clear just sitting in on our team chats and meetings with clients that the appreciation goes both ways. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I realized how important it really is to feel appreciated when times are tough.

Positivity Is Contagious

I’d like to think I’m a pretty nice guy. I’ve been known to overuse phrases like “awesome”, “thank you”, and “you’re the best” during the day when talking to my team or to clients to thank them for pulling together awesome work (see? I did it again), or just being plain awesome (this is getting a little sickening), since I can’t physically give them high fives.

So when clients tell us that one of the best decisions they made in running with their idea was working with us, the whole team gets all bubbly inside. Knowing how that feels makes me remember that it’s my responsibility to pass it on to others because positivity is contagious.

But positivity isn’t only for the good times. It’s even more important when times are tough. When projects aren’t going well, or something is behind, or there’s a big bug that someone is trying to fix—it’s incredibly important to show appreciation then as well.

Appreciated Also Means Motivated

Last weekend I was working on a project with a pretty tight timeline. One of our regular clients needed some help meeting a deadline, and I had to put a whole weekend into getting everything together in time for the launch.

Throughout the entire process the client kept good tabs on who was where and who was doing what through calls and IMs. He also kept a running list of things that needed to be done. Not only that, but he was incredibly patient as well. That’s the kind of appreciation we’re looking to achieve, and it helped us meet our tight deadline.

For example, at some point on Sunday (read: the day we needed to launch) I decided to take a nap, as I was ready to throw a fist through my cinema display. Not thinking I’d actually fall asleep, I woke up to a phone call some 3 hours later from the client leaving a hilarious voicemail telling me (in a much more profane way) to “wake up and get back to work”. That he said it in a way that made me laugh, and that made me feel appreciated, was all it took for me to get back to work.

Every call we had was filled with jokes, stories, and endless appreciation for the work I was doing, and for pulling together to the timeline we committed to and for changing my weekend’s plans including staying up until 6AM to get everything done.

Every time I got stressed out during the timeframe—running into bugs, losing focus, or finding more things that needed to be changed—I could laugh it off because I had that bubbly feeling in my stomach, knowing that the over-and-above work I was doing to meet the deadline was appreciated by the client.

Lessons in Management

So what does this mean for how you manage a team? Don’t lose that positivity. When you start stressing out, you’re only adding to the stress your team has. Be unnecessarily apologetic. Be happy that they’re hacking away. And help whenever you can to make sure they’re focusing on the hard stuff.

Burn out is a real thing. It’s not fun, and you don’t want your team burning out in the midst of a tight deadline. So make sure you show them you care through the good and the bad!

What do you do to show your team that they’re appreciated?

You write it down, and early the next day get to work fleshing it out. It’s no longer formless now. Whether it’s an idea for a business or a website or a blog, at this point it seems to have real-world potential.

Excellent. Now take the best idea you ever had and toss it in the trash.

Crazy Say What?

You’re probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind. “Throw away the best idea I ever had?” you ask yourself. “Is he serious?”

Don’t jump to conclusions. First, we need to understand how ideas work.

The Litmus Test

See the thing about good ideas is that you can’t kill them. You can throw them away, sure. But if the idea is truly good, it will always come back to nag at the edge of your mind.

For example, novelists don’t write books about the first idea that comes to mind, even if it is the best idea they’ve ever had. They write books on the idea that won’t leave them alone. Oftentimes, these ideas have been nagging at them for years, growing inside their minds, until eventually it takes all their will power NOT to write about it.

Throwing your best idea away isn’t crazy. It’s the litmus test of a good idea. Throw it away so you can put it to the test. If It’s truly a good idea, it will come back even stronger than before.

Good Ideas Can Be Blinding

One problem with a good idea is that sometimes it seems so good that you can’t see beyond it. The light is just too bright.

Throwing away your idea will give you the chance to look at it from a professional distance, to evaluate it with the analytical part of your mind instead of with the passion of your gut. Many a good idea has been ruined because of a lack of professional distance.

If your idea really is the best idea you’ve ever had, that won’t change when it comes back to you later and you’re able to treat it like a pro treats his ideas. It will still be the best idea you’ve ever had. The difference is that now you’ll know what to do with it.

Ideas Are Liberating

Human beings with ideas are some of the most inspired, happy people that ever lived. But ideas only matter if you can turn them into reality. Da Vinci’s helicopter was only an idea at first. And it was only an idea for a long, long time. What made it great was that it was turned from a drawing into a physically reality. Someone actually built a helicopter, and it could fly! How liberating.

So take your ideas and throw them away. The good ones will come back. The rest will stay in the garbage where they belong.

And when the good ones come back, make them real. Don’t let them waste away in a notebook at the bottom of a desk drawer. Build them, write them, show them to the world.

You don’t need it. In fact, you shouldn’t use it at all. Next time you are mocking up a design filled with lorem ipsum text, slap yourself in the face and do this instead:

Write the content first.

Content Precedes Design

“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”
Jeffrey Zeldman

That quote is nearly four years old. Why do designers still use lorem ipsum text? Have they ignored even the sagely advice of the wise Zeldman?

Trust me, you don’t need lorem ipsum text. In fact, your design will always benefit from having content to work with early in the design process. As early as possible.

Sometimes things don’t work out that way. Your copywriter is on vacation or you’re in a pinch. Or maybe you fly solo. Are you a freelancer who does everything from wireframes to design to coding to maintenance by yourself? The client didn’t give you any copy? What then?

You Make Something Up

You’re a professional. It’s easy.

Method number one, steal it. Say you’re making a website for a business: don’t they have brochures? Company newsletters? Hell, e-mail signatures? Anything will do, pick and choose until it looks like you’ve got enough to work with.

If there’s no old material to work with, write your own. Anyone can write. It doesn’t have to be perfect yet, just enough to cover the basic message. Again, just enough to work with. Your clients can give you more later when you show them what’s missing.

Working with a Team

If you’re working with a team, the planning stage has often begun before the content gets written. At The Phuse, for example, sometimes our designers use Lorem Ipsum text in the wireframes. That’s acceptable because it’s still the planning stage, and it’s not the designer’s job to write the content. We want them to focus on what they’re best at.

The copywriter is then responsible to make sure the designer has content to work with by the time the planning stage is done. It’s important for a copywriter or content strategist to work closely with the design team to make sure that no lorem ipsum text resurfaces in the design. And if it does, that content gets written immediately to replace it.

Practice Makes Process

As you practice, you’ll get a feel for how long copy will be, or how much space to leave for a thumbnail.

In short, you’ll develop a process.

There are some basics. Headlines should stay on one line when possible. Make the text easy to read. Leave enough room for all the content. Have plans for moving elements around to fit whatever content your client wants to add in later.

Each project is different because the content is different. But remember: “content precedes design.”

The Magazine Method

“There are cases where designers need never consider writing a single word themselves.”
Joshua Johnson at DesignShack

In magazines, advertising, and other large agencies, there are often separate design and copywriting departments. The writers deliver content to the designers which ensures that the designers can focus on their job and not get distracted or delayed by issues such as wording, semantics, grammar, etc.

Over time, these departments get better at working with each other. Eventually, one would hope they operate like two parts of one unit.

Obviously bigger companies have the resources to allow for this kind of work, whereas if you’re a freelancer you may not be able to afford it. If monetary constraints allow, consider hiring a writer who will trade you his skills for portfolio pieces, or an old friend who has a flair with words. Marketing and English students are frequently as happy to get the work (and at a cheaper price) than seasoned copywriting vets.

This Sounds Hard

It is. That’s still no excuse for lazy design that doesn’t take into account the essential role content plays in the design of a website, advertisement, press release, newsletter, etc.

Stay away from lorem ipsum text and you will be able to focus on the function of your design as well as the form. It’s not just text and images filling your page. It’s content. Get the picture?

Tell us: what do you do to ensure that content is ready to roll before the design? What are some common pitfalls and how do you get around them?