LessEverything

LessMoney Speaker: Geoff DiMasi of punk avenue

2012-05-02T10:39:23-04:00

Geoff DiMasi, chief keeper upper of p’unk avenue, will be speaking at the LessMoney Conference, June 6 & 7 in Tampa Florida. Learn how Geoff and P'unk Ave make a good living and still adhere to their core values.

Watch this 2 minute preview of Geoff's talk at LessMoney Workshop

Learn more about LessMoney Conference right this second or regret it later.

Whose job is copywriting?

2012-05-02T09:48:31-04:00

Periodically I work with a few freelance designers and when starting a new project, they ask for copywriting before they start the design. For me, I've always designed before the copywriting. Asking for "two paragraphs on the feature set" or "a list of the key uses of the product". Maybe I'm backward, but I can't seem to define the role of a "designer" and if copywriting tasks should be a part of their tasks.

Wikipedia says "Copywriting is the act of writing copy for the purpose of marketing and advertising a person, business, opinion or idea. The purpose of marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the reader, listener or viewer to act."

Is copywriting part of design?
or is copywriting a task for someone who specializes in "branding" since it sets the overall tone of the website/marketing?
Is typography actually part of copywriting?

I find the most interesting/creative/full-of-personality designers seem to do alot of the conceptual copywriting themselves because it sets the tone of the design in turn the brand.

So who's role is copywriting in your company?
Do you have suggestions for workflows of sharing copywriting responsibilities?
What are your favorite websites that have great copywriting?

Great copywriting excites me more than a pretty site, here's some of my favorite sites for copywriting.

Brewdog.com
BlueOxJerky
SaddleBack Leathers
BellStrike
ScoutMob
BetaBrand (product descriptions)
Got a favorite?

2nd Chapter Released (Partnering Up)

2012-04-30T09:39:35-04:00

We've released the 2nd Chapter of our ebook "Don't Let Your Business Run You". This chapter is on the benefits and pitfalls of partnerships in business. We reflect on why we decided to become partners and why we believe you have to have a business partner.

Here's a direct link to download the chapter. - Download it!

Here's the link to the eBook section of our site - More Chapters

Did you see our Barcamp Orlando talk about Sales and Marketing? Watch this 20 minute talk

Want more? LessMoney Conference is a 2-day event where 50 people come together to learn & discuss how to become a more profitable, less stressful business owner or freelancer. Check out our upcoming event

Business is hard as shit

2012-04-27T13:54:49-04:00

A few days ago we hosted a casual dinner in Chicago for entrepreneurs. Some of the people that attended use our apps & some don't. I spoke to as many people as I could. Most of these business owners had questions about how we run & grow LessEverything. They seemed to be relieved to hear how much of a struggle LessEverything has been to build.

They were relieved... Relieved? Most business owners are questioning everything they do. I certainly do because I don't have all the right answers. When you hear other people talk about the stress and sometimes torment of running a business it's reassuring that others are in the same boat.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that as entrepreneurs we need to make growing a business appear easy, as if we have the right answer for everything. There are a lot of business owners that do this. Either they do have an easy time or they want to have this persona. Well I'm here to say growing a business is hard as hell. There are so many ups and so many downs. Steve and I question our decisions all the time, we make gut decisions and run with them. We make thoughtful decisions and hope for the best. We have to talk each other down or pump each other up as needed.

Please, when you look at us don't feel like we have all the answers. This adventure of LessEverything has not been easy. We've clawed and scratched our way into a profitable business and still worry about letting the people around us down.

Business is hard as shit and the people that make it look easy only make us doubt ourselves.

LessMoney Speaker: Carl Smith of NGen Works

2012-04-27T08:53:23-04:00

Carl Smith, chief keeper upper of NGen Works, will be speaking at the LessMoney Conference, June 6&7 in Tampa Florida. Learn how NGen Works does things their own ways and still is highly profitable.

Watch this 2 minute preview of Carl's talk at LessMoney Workshop

Learn more about LessMoney Conference right this second or regret it later.

LessMoney Conference Promo Videos

2012-04-18T10:00:07-04:00

LessFilms released a couple of promo videos for our upcoming conference focused on being a more profitable, less stressful web shop or freelancer.

Part 1: Burned Out, Down & Out

Part 2: The Nightmare

If this perked your interest. Perhaps you should find out more about this event.

Credits

Stubby Dawson (the bum)
Anna Branch (the Mom)
Jimmy Branch (the boy)
Lou Columbus (Audio)
Eric Darnell (Director + everything else)

Steve & Allan's Session from Barcamp Orlando

2012-04-17T10:32:53-04:00

This past weekend Steve and I attended Barcamp Orlando. During our session we spoke about marketing & sales of our ruby on rails consultancy. Here's the recording of the talk.

This is just a preview of the talks we're giving at the LessMoney Workshop, June 6 & 7 in Tampa Florida. See the other speakers.

Hiten Shah talks at LessConf 2011

2012-04-09T13:47:36-04:00

LessConf Session Video by Hiten Shah

Hiten Shah has launched many web-based products, and with them he's had many successes and several admitted failures. Hiten talks about how he's marketed and gained traffic for his products.

Hiten's Apps

LessEverything eBook Announced

2012-04-05T15:18:54-04:00

We've finally started to release our ebook! It only took us three years to get it the content to the state of a rough draft.

Titled: Don't Let Your Business Run You.

Sub-title: How LessEverything makes $1mil annually from client services

The first chapter is here & it's free.

Check out the first chapter

LessMoney Speaker: Chad Pytel of Thoughtbot

2012-04-27T08:54:49-04:00

Chad Pytel, CEO of Thoughtbot, will be speaking at the LessMoney Conference, June 6&7 in Tampa Florida. Chad has years of experience running & growing Thoughtbot into a multimillion dollar company with ventures include consulting, products, workshops & open source projects.

Learn how Thoughtbot markets their revenue streams and has build and sold one of their products already.

Watch this 2 minute preview of Chad's talk at LessMoney Workshop

Let It Slide

2012-03-29T11:54:19-04:00

I have a friend; a super smart girl who does marketing. She's going crazy with too much stuff to do; too many opportunities, too many people who want her help and not enough time to do it all (forget finishing her Masters Degree or having a few minutes at the end of the day for herself or to sleep).

Allan and I have always been in the same boat as this girl (except for the whole Masters degree thing, yuck). We've always had a ton of stuff we could do, and we truly want to do it all, but we can't. At first we tried to just work all the time, but that's unrealistic on a long-term basis.

I think one of the things Allan and I do quite well (something that most people are unable to do) is to draw a line in the sand and say, "That's enough." And we're fortunate enough to even be able to see that line before we begin a project.

There's a part in Fight Club where the narrator explains how Tyler Durden handles his problems. He says, "You had to give it to him: He had a plan. And it started to make sense, in a [Fat] Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not truly matter, slide."

You can't do it all. You have to draw your line in the sand. You have to figure out what truly matters and let the rest slide.

Iterations of the NEW LessEverything Logo

2012-03-15T12:59:00-04:00

Disclaimer Pt. 1

Before you start reading, there's no real "lesson" here. I just thought it would be interesting to explain our thought process for the redesign of our logo and how/why we changed it.

Disclaimer Pt. 2

I’ve never really thought the logo of a site mattered a whole bunch. I like a nice logo as much as the next designer, but it’s role in the overall feel of the site is strictly aesthetic. I’m not a designer that preaches that your mark should “brand” your company.

Background

Our logo has been the same since 2007 when I first designed it. I never really changed it because it never bothered me too much. We’ve never promoted “LessEverything” as a company; we’ve always just promoted our products or ourselves.

Why We Changed It

About a year ago, I started to hate the LessEverything logo (I hated the website, too, but I’ll talk more about that redesign later). The old logo started being painful to look at for one reason or another, and I began to research logos that I liked. I tried to think about why I liked certain ones more than others. I tend to gravitate toward designs that feel timeless. If you look at graphic design over the past 100 years, you'll obviously see a trend. Design has become nothing more than a series of pixels created with a mouse on a computer using Photoshop.

I love logos, lettering and signage from the early 1900s.

When I see this, I imagine a guy (or gal) taking a pen or a paint brush and creating something--by hand--from a gut feeling. I wanted something reminiscent of that, so when I started looking for a logo designer, I went to Dribbble and found Sergey Shapiro.

A big thing I wanted our logo to subconsciously convey was something handwritten, but not handwriting. Know what I mean? Take the Disney logo for instance. It has the “by hand” look, like it might be a signature, but it doesn’t feel like handwriting.

Working with Sergey

Once I found Sergey, I emailed him (he's Russian, but his English is fairly good), and we worked out a price: $1000 for X number of comps.

Side Note: the only part of the process that sucked was paying him through MoneyGram.com, because it’s even worse than PayPal to use.

When Sergey delivered the comps, he delivered more than we agreed upon (which is totally awesome), but having so many choices to pick from made it tougher than we expected.

We started the selection process by eliminating ones we just didn't like at all. They simply didn't feel right or didn't fit the image we wanted our company to portray. I don't know how else to explain it. They just didn’t jive.

After that round of cuts, we had 4 left. The next round were ones that reminded us of other logos or ones that could be easily mistaken for purchased fonts.

We ended up buying 2 designs from him. Yes, we have two logos. Weird, I know.

Our company name, LessEverything, makes for a long horizontal logo. The visual length definitely puts constraints on the design of the website, so I ended up only using LESS out of the whole illustration. It just seemed to fit better.

Announcing: LessMoney Conference

2012-03-16T11:47:38-04:00

Steve and I are excited to announce LessMoney Conference, which will take place June 6th - 7th in Tampa, Florida. LessMoney Conference is a 2-day event where 100 people come together to learn and discuss how to become more profitable and keep stress to a minimum as business owners or freelancers.

After blogging for a few years about running our business we noticed the highest traffic blog post were the ones where we talked in depth about the challenges we faced. So in late 2011, Steve & I decided to host a few small workshops about the business side of freelancing and growing a web consultancy (design or development shop). These workshops were well attended and the attendees seems to really have a lot of questions so expanding the concept to reach more people seems like the likely step.

FYI This event isn't replacing LessConf.

Failed to meet an unspoken expectation

2012-03-06T09:55:27-05:00

Relationships can be easily damaged by miscommunication. One type of miscommunication happens when one person’s expectations for another aren't clearly expressed, resulting in confusion, frustration and often hurt feeling.

This can happen at work, with your spouse, between you and your business partner and even between parents and their kids. We all have expectations for each other, but when someone falls short of those expectations (whether they were correctly expressed or not), you have the choice to respond in 1 of 3 ways:

Suppress your disappointment. This will result in the other person never knowing that they didn’t deliver on, thus they will continue to fall short. Eventually you’ll boil over with disappointment, and the relationship will suffer.
Be passive aggressive and hint around at what they did “wrong”. The only way this “works” is to eventually beat the other person into submission with your passive aggression. This usually isn’t the way to build a healthy long term relationship. (This is what I do to Steve.)
Clearly express your expectations of them. Next time they can hopefully deliver what you expect. How you communicate your expectations can often be tricky, but this is the best option.

Inherently, humans want to make others happy. For the most part, how clearly you can communicate your expectations will reflect how well and how often others deliver on these expectations. If they fail to deliver even when your communication is great, keep trying. Some people just need time.

LessFilms Needs Help!

2012-03-09T10:50:00-05:00

Less Everything is growing and we need help. Our latest project, LessFilms, has become an animal. The project's talents are being sought after and we're looking for someone to keep this project growing.

Characteristics we want in this person

Organized like a mofo
Creative like a ... I dunno
Personality, must have a personality
Cool with multi-tasking

Soft Sales Tasks

Leads come in via the website, we need someone that can call these people back, talk them thru our services, give them rough estimates. It's not hard sells, no cold calling, just telling them what we offer. If you're not a "sales person" no worries, we can train you.
We do need someone that can chit-chat with others.
Send invoice Get a check from the client Get the client on the schedule

Producer/Project Manager Tasks

Book travel when we're going on an out of town shoot (possible travel).
Work out logistics of scheduling upcoming shoots.
Work with the clients to get storyboards approved.
Help write scripts and come up with ideas

The position is filled!

Fill out our application