7 ms·

I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are har

by level 4y ago

I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are hard to land we'd pick up small jobs in the meantime, just like the project that you're describing here. In my perspective, this isn't someone deliberately ripping you off. I imagine they intended to ship at the cost they quoted, but the team didn't adjust their working style to match your price point. All the variations of the logo and design mocks are clearly overkill for a $15k project. The design team had time to fill and wanted to provide lots of options for you to pick from, as they typically would on a larger project. Those variations are an expectation for $100k clients, and you got the $100k customer treatment, but unfortunately not at a discount. The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then need to re-contextualize and regain momentum, all on your dime. Your takeaway is correct, don't be a small fish for an agency. If they're busy they won't take your work, and if do show interest, they are desperate for work.

TheCapn 4y ago
>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then need to re-contextualize and regain momentum, all on your dime. Man. That 3rd paragraph resonates so well with me/my employer. We're an industrial automation company. Family owned. Started from the owner's shed and grew to what we are now. We were built on smalltime clients and our product quality got around through word of mouth and are now at the point where we have massive multi-million dollar clients. We still support the little guys though. And we get more little guys under our umbrella every year. I think there's still a part of our company that recognizes we have roots in helping the farmers automated their cleaner processes. We also have the nearly identical issue that our OP is bitching about: we're married to these massive clients and we fill the gaps with the little projects. But when the timing is getting tight, the little guys are who loses out. I'm starting to see the cracks. Clients who built our foundations are losing out on support and growth opportunities. We're more concerned with the next mining project or new facility build than we are selling small guys upgrades and ongoing modernization. It's fine as far as the pocketbook goes but I feel like we play a dangerous game allowing our work schedules to be dictated by the big guys. Eventually they all grow to realize the same thing: the controls part is crucial enough to the business that it needs to be brought in house. Once that happens our value falls off quickly. It's only bad because we're losing our core for the opportunity to play puppet to some truly massive clients. I feel like I'm getting a bit lost in the weeds, but really my point is just how I haven't really thought clearly about what the perception of our business must be to the clients, both big and small. We play a critical service role among many industries but we also run the risk of alienating the business that's virtually guaranteed to be there in hopes of marrying ourselves to somebody who only needs us now, and probably not tomorrow.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  If retaining the small clients is a business goal, you should have a (small) dedicated team devoted to them, that knows how to work in the way that these small clients need.
  - romanows 4y ago
    Don't you think that'd become the "B-team" pretty quickly, though? I think it might fall apart. What might also work is something more like the "pro bono" model of lawyers? Make it a marketing thing, maybe see if the big clients would want to get in on the PR benefits of helping the little clients, maybe rotate your rockstars through the smaller projects and help develop less-experienced talent that way?
    - sanedigital 4y ago
      Other way around, in my experience. We run a team of ~20 at our studio—the "A-team" all want to work on the smaller projects because they're usually more interesting, they have more control, they get to move faster, etc.
    - hnick 4y ago
      It has the risk of being a B-team but it's also a good way to onboard new hires. You get a much higher turnover rate of new things to try, do, and learn. One place I worked did communications generation (PDF letters etc), we had massive clients and 300 hour projects and we had 3 hour simple letters. Churning those small ones out was the best way to get me to learn when I signed up. Just as long as someone sensible and experienced is watching. And some people just don't gel well with project marathons - I'm definitely a sprinter who loses focus on huge projects despite my years of experience. I'd rather do a lot of small ones. It eventually got sold to a bigger more respectable company and those 300 hour quotes crept up north of 1000 hours and it was impossible to finish any job in under 10 hours but that's another story about internal red tape.
- aetherspawn 4y ago
  As the owner of a control software company, your explanation about big companies bringing things in-house matches our experiences perfectly, and instead of assuming that they will never be able to bring things in-house due to the niche and a lack of experience, it has inspired me to put some more thought into how to solve this problem as we grow by focusing on having teams dedicated to dealing with and keeping our smaller recurring clients (i.e. have A and B teams as suggested).
mtlynch 4y ago
Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing! >All the variations of the logo and design mocks are clearly overkill for a $15k project. The design team had time to fill and wanted to provide lots of options for you to pick from, as they typically would on a larger project. Those variations are an expectation for $100k clients, and you got the $100k customer treatment, but unfortunately not at a discount. Oh, huh. I was thinking about this as I did the writeup. It didn't feel at the time that they were spending excessive time on the logo variations, but I went back to the notes I took on our first call and realized how out of line all that early work now feels relative to their 30-40 hour initial estimate of the rebrand.
- anthony_barker 4y ago
  Couple of questions: 1) Did you pay everything up front or was it a 50% up front and 50% on delivery basis? 2) Did you manage any deliverables on a google sheet (dates, owner etc) or something similar?
- dbingham 4y ago
  Here's the thing I don't get. Did you not have some guarantee of completed work? When they quoted you the $7k, I could see building timeline flexibility into that quote, but I have a hard time imagining building so much flex into the contract in terms of budget that they can hold your work hostage to where you sign the retainer contract. It seems like you should have had some sort of legal recourse to hold them accountable to delivering the promised work in a reasonable time frame before you went the retainer route and found yourself on the hook for an extra $40k. Was there not? Also, I was surprised by how much you let Isaac get away with. He admitted he badly mismanaged the project, and made decisions that lead to that mismanagement with out consulting you. He badly blew his estimates for you, and was pretty clear that it was his fault. I would have pushed him to eat much more of the losses than he did.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tamrix 4y ago
nerdawson 4y ago
I've worked at small agencies for the better part of a decade and couldn't agree more with this summary. A lot of the comments seem to take the view that this was some deliberate ploy to overcharge. In reality, it was just poorly managed. > Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. My guess would be that when quoted, the project was expected to be completed by a certain date. Because the team failed to adapt, the project overran, new projects took over leaving this one to languish.
- markdown 4y ago
atourgates 4y ago
I've been at a small agency that's grown into a midsize agency over the last decade+. Everything about this story rings true, and the author's conclusions are absolutely on point. Now our agency is at a place where we can say no to work like this, both because we have a solid client base that supports us financially without projects like this, and because we've learned that no matter how good our intentions, neither we nor our clients are going to be happy with the end result. All that said, my bigger question is: does the new website bring in more business than the old? It's certainly better designed, but looking at the copy and IA, I'm not entirely sure that the new site is going to convert better than the old. To me, the old version was distinctive and unique, while the new looks like basically every other SAAS site designed since the year 2020.
- JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
  FTA sales increased 66%
  - eCa 4y ago
    Yes. But what we don’t know is 1) How would the old design perform during that time period 2) How would a hypothetical $7k design perform during that time period #1 is of course why a/b-testing was invented, while #2 is even more speculative. But we don’t know how much of the 66% can be attributed to the new design.
    - bornfreddy 4y ago
      Also the earnings chart shows a clear upwards trend, so 72k is not really an outlier. Fwiw, I liked the previous design better. No idea how the codebase looked like though.

by level 4y ago

TheCapn 4y ago

>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then need to re-contextualize and regain momentum, all on your dime. Man. That 3rd paragraph resonates so well with me/my employer. We're an industrial automation company. Family owned. Started from the owner's shed and grew to what we are now. We were built on smalltime clients and our product quality got around through word of mouth and are now at the point where we have massive multi-million dollar clients. We still support the little guys though. And we get more little guys under our umbrella every year. I think there's still a part of our company that recognizes we have roots in helping the farmers automated their cleaner processes. We also have the nearly identical issue that our OP is bitching about: we're married to these massive clients and we fill the gaps with the little projects. But when the timing is getting tight, the little guys are who loses out. I'm starting to see the cracks. Clients who built our foundations are losing out on support and growth opportunities. We're more concerned with the next mining project or new facility build than we are selling small guys upgrades and ongoing modernization. It's fine as far as the pocketbook goes but I feel like we play a dangerous game allowing our work schedules to be dictated by the big guys. Eventually they all grow to realize the same thing: the controls part is crucial enough to the business that it needs to be brought in house. Once that happens our value falls off quickly. It's only bad because we're losing our core for the opportunity to play puppet to some truly massive clients. I feel like I'm getting a bit lost in the weeds, but really my point is just how I haven't really thought clearly about what the perception of our business must be to the clients, both big and small. We play a critical service role among many industries but we also run the risk of alienating the business that's virtually guaranteed to be there in hopes of marrying ourselves to somebody who only needs us now, and probably not tomorrow.

ghostly_s 4y ago
If retaining the small clients is a business goal, you should have a (small) dedicated team devoted to them, that knows how to work in the way that these small clients need.
- romanows 4y ago
  Don't you think that'd become the "B-team" pretty quickly, though? I think it might fall apart. What might also work is something more like the "pro bono" model of lawyers? Make it a marketing thing, maybe see if the big clients would want to get in on the PR benefits of helping the little clients, maybe rotate your rockstars through the smaller projects and help develop less-experienced talent that way?
  - sanedigital 4y ago
    Other way around, in my experience. We run a team of ~20 at our studio—the "A-team" all want to work on the smaller projects because they're usually more interesting, they have more control, they get to move faster, etc.
  - hnick 4y ago
    It has the risk of being a B-team but it's also a good way to onboard new hires. You get a much higher turnover rate of new things to try, do, and learn. One place I worked did communications generation (PDF letters etc), we had massive clients and 300 hour projects and we had 3 hour simple letters. Churning those small ones out was the best way to get me to learn when I signed up. Just as long as someone sensible and experienced is watching. And some people just don't gel well with project marathons - I'm definitely a sprinter who loses focus on huge projects despite my years of experience. I'd rather do a lot of small ones. It eventually got sold to a bigger more respectable company and those 300 hour quotes crept up north of 1000 hours and it was impossible to finish any job in under 10 hours but that's another story about internal red tape.
aetherspawn 4y ago
As the owner of a control software company, your explanation about big companies bringing things in-house matches our experiences perfectly, and instead of assuming that they will never be able to bring things in-house due to the niche and a lack of experience, it has inspired me to put some more thought into how to solve this problem as we grow by focusing on having teams dedicated to dealing with and keeping our smaller recurring clients (i.e. have A and B teams as suggested).

mtlynch 4y ago

Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing! >All the variations of the logo and design mocks are clearly overkill for a $15k project. The design team had time to fill and wanted to provide lots of options for you to pick from, as they typically would on a larger project. Those variations are an expectation for $100k clients, and you got the $100k customer treatment, but unfortunately not at a discount. Oh, huh. I was thinking about this as I did the writeup. It didn't feel at the time that they were spending excessive time on the logo variations, but I went back to the notes I took on our first call and realized how out of line all that early work now feels relative to their 30-40 hour initial estimate of the rebrand.

anthony_barker 4y ago
Couple of questions: 1) Did you pay everything up front or was it a 50% up front and 50% on delivery basis? 2) Did you manage any deliverables on a google sheet (dates, owner etc) or something similar?
dbingham 4y ago
Here's the thing I don't get. Did you not have some guarantee of completed work? When they quoted you the $7k, I could see building timeline flexibility into that quote, but I have a hard time imagining building so much flex into the contract in terms of budget that they can hold your work hostage to where you sign the retainer contract. It seems like you should have had some sort of legal recourse to hold them accountable to delivering the promised work in a reasonable time frame before you went the retainer route and found yourself on the hook for an extra $40k. Was there not? Also, I was surprised by how much you let Isaac get away with. He admitted he badly mismanaged the project, and made decisions that lead to that mismanagement with out consulting you. He badly blew his estimates for you, and was pretty clear that it was his fault. I would have pushed him to eat much more of the losses than he did.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tamrix 4y ago

nerdawson 4y ago

I've worked at small agencies for the better part of a decade and couldn't agree more with this summary. A lot of the comments seem to take the view that this was some deliberate ploy to overcharge. In reality, it was just poorly managed. > Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. My guess would be that when quoted, the project was expected to be completed by a certain date. Because the team failed to adapt, the project overran, new projects took over leaving this one to languish.

markdown 4y ago

atourgates 4y ago

I've been at a small agency that's grown into a midsize agency over the last decade+. Everything about this story rings true, and the author's conclusions are absolutely on point. Now our agency is at a place where we can say no to work like this, both because we have a solid client base that supports us financially without projects like this, and because we've learned that no matter how good our intentions, neither we nor our clients are going to be happy with the end result. All that said, my bigger question is: does the new website bring in more business than the old? It's certainly better designed, but looking at the copy and IA, I'm not entirely sure that the new site is going to convert better than the old. To me, the old version was distinctive and unique, while the new looks like basically every other SAAS site designed since the year 2020.

JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
FTA sales increased 66%
- eCa 4y ago
  Yes. But what we don’t know is 1) How would the old design perform during that time period 2) How would a hypothetical $7k design perform during that time period #1 is of course why a/b-testing was invented, while #2 is even more speculative. But we don’t know how much of the 66% can be attributed to the new design.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    Also the earnings chart shows a clear upwards trend, so 72k is not really an outlier. Fwiw, I liked the previous design better. No idea how the codebase looked like though.