Raising a Web Studio Without Selling Your Soul 👹
Tags: webdev, learning, career, community
Published: 2024-06-04 15:47:31

Building a business is hard. That’s a pretty obvious statement, but there’s so much nuance to it that it bears repeating. How am I going to get more work? How am I going to finish the work that I have? What about taxes? Did I send out that status update on time? Are my clients properly informed about the status of their projects? Should I start scaling? Shit. It’s a lot to think about. I’ve committed to building House of Giants in a way that ensures it will never become a soulless code farm churning out sub-par websites for profit. Here’s what it’s taken to get us this far. 

## Avoiding the Scale-At-All-Costs Mind Game ⚖️
I've seen it too many times and to too many awesome companies. The critical point where businesses decide to scale aggressively to take on more work, build faster, churn churn churn. This often means rapid hiring, taking on projects that aren’t the right fit, and pushing quick, generic solutions that don’t scale. Sure, it might bring short-term gains, but it usually leads to long-term headaches. A marked reduction in quality and a noticeable uptick in employee turnover. Nobody is happy doing that work. And the voices of the passionate few get drowned out by the shrieks of account managers making promises nobody can keep.

House of Giants was built to avoid these distractions. We focus on sustainable and thoughtful growth, putting everything we have into the work we love.

## Personalized Solutions Over One-Size-Fits-All 👖
Another massive issue with traditional agencies is their tendency to use the same set of cookie-cutter tech for everyone, with little to no thought into how that tech should grow with a business. This approach might make some processes smoother, but it often fails to address the unique challenges each client faces.

When we start a new project, we dive deep into our partner’s business, objectives, hopes, dreams, and desires. We conduct thorough discovery sessions to understand the specific challenges and goals of each project we take on. This means **asking the right questions** to get to the root of our partner’s issues and finding the best way to address them.

Every project is different. Sometimes the solution is a robust content management system; other times, it's a custom web application or a mix of several integrations. We tailor our technology recommendations to fit each of our partner’s needs, ensuring the solution we provide them can grow and evolve with their business.

## Emphasizing Collaboration and Partnership 🤝
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people passed from account manager to project manager, to executive and then back down to the production team before any meaningful collaboration has even begun. It’s exhausting, and business owners shouldn’t have to go through that when embarking on a website build. This only serves to break down communication and ensure that some key feature or functionality is built poorly, or not at all.

House of Giants prides itself on maintaining a small, supremely passionate team. Maintaining the small but mighty approach allows us to work closely with our partners, fostering genuine collaboration and partnership. This enables us to truly integrate with our partners and become an extension of them. We find immense satisfaction in understanding the issues of our partners and finding creative ways to solve them.

## Building a Flexible Foundation 🧘
We build solutions that solve our partners’ immediate problems and adapt as their business evolves. This means choosing technologies that are flexible and scalable, allowing for growth and change without needing a complete overhaul.

For small business owners, having a flexible technology foundation is crucial. Markets change, customer bases shift, and businesses need to adapt quickly. Our approach ensures that our partners are never locked into a single solution but have the tools and flexibility to pivot as needed.

## Staying Connected to the Work 🔌
One of my biggest fears in scaling House of Giants is losing touch with the production work. So many business strategists and YouTube evangelists advocate for scaling to free up the owner’s time, but this often results in a massive disconnect from the fun of the production. If we’re not enjoying at least some of what we do daily then why are we doing it at all? Every single time, when leadership becomes disconnected from production, it results in a painful tone-deaf existence and yields massive distrust from anyone else within the production team.

To combat this, I stay involved and thrive in the production process. This helps me maintain a clear vision of how House of Giants can improve and innovate. It also ensures that I remain connected to the quality of our work and the happiness of the partners and colleageues we choose to work with.

All this is to say that building a successful web studio doesn’t mean losing touch with your values or the quality of the work you produce. By avoiding the scale-at-all-costs mentality, focusing on thoughtfully built solutions, fostering collaboration, and staying intimately familiar with the production process, you can create a studio that not only thrives but also delivers exceptional value to your partners.

Running a web studio, or any business for that matter, is hard as hell. But with the right approach, it’s possible to grow sustainably while maintaining the integrity and quality that sets you apart. Let’s build something great together, without losing sight of what actually matters. ❤️